CityMax – No option to add logo to pre-designed templates – No built-in image re-sizing – Overly salesy homepage – You’ll have to pay extra for certain add-ons – 50MB disk storage.
irun – Sub-standard support documentation and promotional tools – Still has a number of bugs and error messages – Must open a separate window to view your site – Hard to customize the templates, which they have few of compared to other builders – You get 10 email addresses free (extra ones cost $2.95 each with 4 MB disk space) – Monthly bandwidth limits. Extra disk space is $3.65/ 5 MB.
Homestead – Three different editors to learn (if you’re doing e-commerce) – Communications tools not well designed for business applications – Time-consuming when setting up more complicated pages – Homestead has many flashy editing tools for making fun personal sites, but lacks the professional features businesses seek. It allows a high level of design customization, but is hard to learn because it uses several editors – you can put up a simple calendar icon displaying a date, but there is no event calendar that allows you to show a business’s upcoming events – They also have a visitor chat room but no message board, which would have greater value for business websites – Monthly bandwidth limits – Integrated Shopping Cart is very basic and only uses PayPal.
GoDaddy – Go Daddy’s builder is hard to use because it combines several kinds of software, each of which has a different way of doing things. It has a nice shopping cart though, and solid phone support (you’ll need it!) – Online support documentation incomplete – Hard to customize to your businesses needs – Hard to get around the site while editing and adding text – You have to pay extra for the shopping cart – Monthly bandwidth limits.
ProStores – Look and feel of builder inconsistent and confusing – Just a storefront, limited customer-focused features – Additional transaction fees charged on items sold – Templates are outdated – Monthly bandwidth limits.
Moonfruit – No pre-designed templates or headers – Support documentation is limited – Not for full e-commerce sites – Moonfruit is the only builder that uses Flash technology. It’s great for making fun sites with lots of animation, but has no business tools and no fully integrated shopping cart – Monthly bandwidth limits.
Yahoo – Hard to learn – not user-friendly – No useful communication tools for businesses – Poor design (unless you know HTML) – Monthly bandwidth limits – Transaction fees are applied to each transaction processed through your online store.
