Lately, there has been a boom in online website creation tools.
These sites allow you to create your won sites that can be really easy to set up and very (very!!) cheap.
The best ones I have seen are
http://www.wix.com – For building cool looking Flash-based sites
http://www.squarespace.com/ – Very comprehensive HTML based sites
http://www.wordpress.com – Old faithful but limited functionality although there is an iPhone app.
http://www.mrsite.com – Haven’t used it but the portfolio looks pretty good.
http://www.tumblr.com – pretty cool if all you are after is a basic Blogand also has an iPhone app.
http://www.goodbarry.com - Just added this last one long after writing this blog but it looks like it may be the best. Will give update soon.
WIX.com
Starting Price: Free unless you want to use your own domain name
The Good
- The interface to WIX is incredible!! So easy and so much fun to use.
- Tons of cool functionality
The Bad
- It’s all Flash. No matter what anyone says, I am yet to see how Flash sites can compete against HTML sites for SEO friendliness
- Your design options are limited to the templates provided. Granted there is a lot of scope for customisation.
Verdict
If SEO is not your main concern then this is a great option.
So easy to use my Grandma could build a great looking site in minutes.
Squarespace.com
Starting Price: $8 per month
The Good
- Beautiful interface. These guys really take their design seriously.
- Very flexible layout and CSS customisation options.
The Bad
- Limited functionality.
- Although it is well designed will still require a decent amount of learning to create a site.
Verdict
If you are money poor but time rich then you can create a very decent site.
As long as you don’t need any specific functionality (or ever will) then definitely worth trying the free 2 week trial.
If I was creating a brochure site on the cheap then Squarespace would be my pick.
Wordpress
Starting Price: Free unless you want to use your own domain name
Although technically Wordpress is blog software, the fact that they allow you to add non blog pages to your site means that a lot of people are using Wordpress for their main site.
The Good
- It’s fast, easy to use and cheap and works very well if you just want a good Blog.
- It’s very widely used so there are a lot of third party add-ons and a large community.
- Very SEO friendly
- If you just want a blog you can download the Wordpress software and add it to your site.
- All open source so if you have a PHP developer handy, you can really do what ever you like with it.
The Bad
- To utilise third party add ons or create your own themes/skins, you will need to either host the site yourself or find a hosting provider. Wordpress won’t host customised sites.
- If you want a decent public facing site you will have to choose this option as the Wordpress hosted sites give you minimum functionality. This is fair enough as it is not really designed to be a full CMS.
Verdict
Great for Blogs but wouldn’t cut it as as a stand-alone CMS.
Final Conclusion
I haven’t tried Mrsite.com but it looks good. Also www.tumblr.com is worth a look for those wanting a cool blog site.
The online tools for creating websites are getting better and better. Squarespace.com is certainly a very mature, effective and highly usable piece of software.
If all your organisation requires is a good looking brochure site then with a great web designer you should be able to achieve your requirements very cheaply.
If you need any custom functionality such as integration with internal systems, Shopping Carts etc then you will always need a proper CMS system such as kentico or Sitecore
