Hey Guy, DO you Prefer your hosts to offer a free Web site builder like rv sitebuilder? Or do you think its a bad idea?
Hi Andy, Most hosts do offer a wide range of free site builders and many other free scripts via Fantastico or Elefante with their hosting plans. We think its a good service and we assume, so do our clients who appear to use them extensively. Good luck.
We have RV Site Builder installed on all our servers, but very few people use it. We're actually thinking about getting rid of it. I'm assuming most people just use WordPress or such instead.
Most number of web users are not able to design and develop a website. Many prefer to use open source CMS and blog software to build a website. It's good to have a Sitebuilder bundled with a web hosting package. It will be useful for such users.
I'm curious, do people actually use them with you guys? At $120/year or whatever it costs now across all the servers, it's ridiculously expensive, but we only have 5 or 6 people actually use it.
We too find that many users do not use it but we also get sales request asking if we offer any sitebuilder.
Thanks for your Input! So from what you guys have said together, not many people use them but it a good idea to have for the few that do use them? and offering a 1 click installer like Fantastico for cms is a good idea?
We've never offered them, and never been asked for them, and these days you're probably right about CMS systems being a much better proposition. After all, how good a site can someone REALLY create from a site builder if they are not a designer...and if they are a designer they wouldn't be using them? Things like Wordpress and a decent template will beat the "self made" design any time. On the TV in the UKm 1&1 have been doing a lot of advertising recently of their site templates/builder, but if you've ever seen a site created by them you wouldn't be impressed. Some people will take them up on the offer thinking they'll get a site for free, but the results are rarely of any value and people wonder what the point of a web site is if it doesn't bring them traffic - not realizing it's their cheap site and poor design that's stopping people finding them. I'd say get rid of them if they're costing more than they are bringing in...but that applies to anything you offer.
Only few persons will use a site builder. Mos of the users use wordpress/drupal and they can choose from a lot of themes.
Ron, that sounds about right. We're going to have to make the decision in the next couple months, as most of our RVSitebuilder licenses expire at the end of the year. Just not making financial sense for us anymore.
Hello, It depends on the clients, some of our clients have absolutely no coding experience and just want a simple website for their business. We have a decent amount of clients that use our website builder. We use BaseKit instead of Rvsite builder. -Jason
Hi, It is a good idea. If your web host offers you a website builder then nothing like that for Individuals because they can build their own website without any technical knowledge. I also prefer a web host that offers website builder and currently i am taking hosting services from Net4 and i found their website builder easy to use with number of attractive templates.
I don't think that's a bad idea as RvSite builder / Soholaunch Pro / Templates Express and more, would be very useful for the beginners and not only for them
Templates are also freely available with the hosting plan purchases with most hosting providers, or there're lot of ready-made template websites available too, like templatemonster.com etc.
Agree, Softaculous and Fantastico became very popular today with their collection of one-click install scripts and many hosts are offering for free. So it's very easy for everyone to start a website.
Most offer free website building. I would though consider paying a bit to get everything you need under one roof. Just saying.