Best Website Builder plugin

[petru]

Hey guys,

I run a business Building websites and Reselling Hosting Accounts.
I was looking to add a feature to the business for those that Can't quite afford a Professional Business Website.
So I figured a Web Builder would be the best way to draw attention to the business, The problem is, I want a really good Web Builder. And something that a Grandmother could use. I really don't mind about pricing. The whole idea is to get something really good so we can at least make some revenue from it. So it needs to be something that people would pay for. I'd also like to create a package on WHMCS with it but im not too sure how I could do that. I guess I'd need to restrict access to the plugin through other Packages and only allow access to it with Selected Packages? If thats possible?

I've looked at Trendy Site Builder and I think thats probably the best thing I've found, Yet still not good enough :/
Anyway, If you can give me your thoughts on other Platforms that would be great. Im also Extremely sorry if this is in the wrong section of the forum. Or if it shouldn't be on the Cpanel Forum at all. I really had no idea where else to go

 

[ThinIce]

Personally, I think they're all a giant pita from a sys admin perspective. One thing that may interest you is that cPanel purchased sitezen some while back, the product was then dropped and license checking disabled for existing installs. Since then I've always rather hoped cPanel would get the feature built in, but there has never been any announcment to that end

 

[petru]

Hi Thinlce,

Thanks for your reply. You're Right, A Lot of the Web Page Builders are quite crappy. But there has to be at least something that is decent enough to pay for.
I just found something called "Soholaunch" Which seems to be quite a good Builder, But I cant seem to find any Demo of it to look at the back end to see the UI. Do you know much about Soholaunch? If so, How would you compare it to others? Or do you know of a demo I can view?

Regards,
Petru

 

[ThinIce]

I honestly can't say I've used it. Someone appears to have submitted a not entirely positive comment on the app catalog about it though

Soholaunch | cPanel App Catalog

 

[petru]

Kinda sounds like a Fake Comment from the devs to be honest. They don't really seem like a great company, Although their products doesn't look all that bad, If only they had a demo to show it off. Getting kinda sidetracked from them at them moment, I tried contacting them through their Online Contact form. didnt get a reply. Contacted them on Facebook, don't seem to be very active on there. I guess they don't have interest in new customers nor would I settle for support with wait times like this either.
Im about to contact /http://www.iscripts.com/ to enquire about their Site builder. Hopefully its something half decent.
I'll update once I find something decent for future readers.

Regards,
Petru

 

[ThinIce]

Yeah, I meant the one about the revenue split I try to be very 'old world' when expecting a reply from companies, giving them the old two business days, which protects me from those places hiring lots of twitter people rather than say extra developers, but then I'm old and crotchety that way. Guess you've been waiting a while for a response outside what's reasonable.

I wonder if an easier (for a given value of easier) propostition might be wordpress with a drag and drop theme editor, I think there are several commercial theme frameworks which offer this but don't recall having come across an open source one. Still commercial lockin of a sort, but I believe at least some of them are available with ISP style licenses for unlimited sites... Got to be better than being locked into site studio / parallels sitebuilder etc etc

 

[petru]

Yeah Im generally pretty patient when it comes to support. But I've learnt my lesson from previous Server Hosts not to be so patient,
Because 99% of the time, It's your Hosting clients who are 6ft up your butt about issues, So I try to get the best support that I can, Not for myself but for the Clients, So when theres issues, I can get a quick fix for them if its a 3rd party issue.

I had a look at iscripts, They were okay but not as good as I expected. I've decided to settle for Trendy Tools, Not that its good enough for a revenue based product so I'll allow access to all hosting accounts and create a small 1gb plan for a couple bucks a month to mainly use the Web Builder but at least be able to host a wordpress site on it.

I'm quite disappointed that I couldn't find anything "Great!". I was looking forward to adding that to our New Year Announcements :/

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

One of the more common third-party site builder applications I see in-use is RVSiteBuilder. I've not used it personally, so I can't give an accurate opinion on how well it works. Note that you are also welcome to submit a feature request for a more robust website editor within cPanel:

Submit A Feature Request

Thank you.

 

[petru]

Thanks for your reply Michael.

I was also looking in to RVSitebuilder. But I had a quick look at their demo and couldn't even figure it out myself.
Maybe they have a few bugs at the moment but When I got in there there was System Logs with Errors and Simply Memory Logs from the Server, It was quite annoying. then tried to edit a template to see how easy it would be and couldn't seem to figure out how to edit the Content. As the Header was automatically selected. Really isn't as simple as I thought. Probably one of the most frustrating ones I've used actually.

If Cpanel Created a powerful Web Builder, I can almost guarantee that Cpanel would get more sales.
Alot of todays websites are built on Wix or Weebly or something like that. Not many are actually paying for Web Design services anymore, And would rather pay for Wix something of that nature.

Having a Powerful Web Builder in Cpanel would mean that all Cpanel Hosts can offer a Powerful Web Building solution to many Clients for a more competitive price. It would seriously be a big step for Cpanel. A Bigger step than it actually looks like.

I'll submit a Feature Request Now! Thanks!

Regards,
Petru

 

[4u123]

Thanks for your reply Michael.

I was also looking in to RVSitebuilder. But I had a quick look at their demo and couldn't even figure it out myself.
Maybe they have a few bugs at the moment but When I got in there there was System Logs with Errors and Simply Memory Logs from the Server, It was quite annoying. then tried to edit a template to see how easy it would be and couldn't seem to figure out how to edit the Content. As the Header was automatically selected. Really isn't as simple as I thought. Probably one of the most frustrating ones I've used actually.

If Cpanel Created a powerful Web Builder, I can almost guarantee that Cpanel would get more sales.
Alot of todays websites are built on Wix or Weebly or something like that. Not many are actually paying for Web Design services anymore, And would rather pay for Wix something of that nature.

Having a Powerful Web Builder in Cpanel would mean that all Cpanel Hosts can offer a Powerful Web Building solution to many Clients for a more competitive price. It would seriously be a big step for Cpanel. A Bigger step than it actually looks like.

I'll submit a Feature Request Now! Thanks!

Regards,
Petru

I couldn't agree more with this. There currently is not a decent site builder application out there for use with cpanel. We use RVSitebuilder - but our customers hate it and the few that use it are continually having problems. It isn't very expensive but as hardly any of our customers use it - what little it costs is pretty much wasted.

Weebly and Wix have both been very successful and we see customers cancelling their hosting in favour of those products all the time. Today - the market for self build websites is huge and if cPanel could create something similar that is easy to use, it would be a huge benefit. We'd be willing to pay for this as an additional feature.

I just wanted to add that HostGator are offering Weebly with their packages, claiming that "Weebly is included". I'm guessing this is simply an affiliate setup or business agreement between HG and Weebly - as they won't be running it from their own platform. They are selling Weebly plans directly from their site.

From the HG site... The Weebly website builder is a WYSIWYG website construction tool which will aid you in creating and publishing an attractive website in no time! Weebly website builder (basic) is included with your Shared hosting plan.

 

[trendytools]

I'm quite disappointed that I couldn't find anything "Great!". I was looking forward to adding that to our New Year Announcements :/

Can you suggest me 3 things that you would like to see in the TrendyTools Site Builder suite to make it a preferred web host site builder?

 

[petru]

Hey! Glad you asked that question.

I think the User Interface needs to be much better. As you can see from what I've wrote about it. It was so complicating I couldn't figure it out myself.

I also think you should make the pages easier to edit. I remember playing around with the demo. I was able to edit content on the homepage but couldn't figure out how to change content on the other pages. all it would let me do is change the SEO. It was extremely frustrating, And literally gave me a headache. I'm not over exaggerating either.

I also think that there should be more features involved. I know it would be a great deal of work but if you we're to create something more administrative that would allow the administrators to Create Blog posts, Have users Sign Up to comment on stuff.

I'd also like to see a Custom Editor too. For those who know a little about HTML and CSS they can make their own small edits etc.

I would also love to see more quality. The templates that are being used look so "blocky" Maybe if there was some CSS3 or something to make it look more modern, Maybe have the ability to add more powerful sliders. and over all more professional.

I'd like something that my clients can use to create a decent website to sell their products or services on a budget.
for really small businesses who are starting up with little money. Something that us Web Hosts can charge users to use. the way trendy tools is now, I don't think anyone would pay to use it. and Wix and Weebly are sucking the life out of us. It doesn't help.

I know the changes i'm recommending would be a pretty huge task but if you created something that powerful. You could put any price tag you want on it. I'd pay whatever it takes to offer great services to my clients.

 

[GoWilkes]

Let me add to this...

The most important things I need, in order, are:

1. Easy to use.

2. Easy to use.

3. So easy to use that a monkey could do it. Seriously.

Like someone else said earlier, we've lost the majority of our hosting accounts to GoDaddy, Weebly, etc, because they simply can't figure out the tools we have to offer. I'm talking about people that literally struggle with Word, so Wordpress is WAY too complicated. They need a simple form to fill out, and that's all.

We can't even give hosting away anymore. And I'm being serious; I've sent out emails to local Chamber members, etc, just offering free hosting in the hopes of selling them on other services, and I've not had any interest.

 

[trendytools]

1) The problem with inner page editing has already been address in this new release. Clients can now edit the inner pages like the way they edit the home page. Problem one is solved. There are a few glitches in the new release which will be addressed within few days.

2) There is always a trade off between functionality and ease of use. And this trade off is subjective to every web hosting company. A few web hosts want ease of use and others want functionality.

3) We have an option to add HTML code in form of Embed code. This will allow clients to add their custom HTML in the website. We however do not allow tweaking the existing code in the template.

4) We are constantly working on making the templates designs look better. I am confident we can address this problem also.

5) The reason TrendyTools was born is to try and help web hosting companies from increased churn rate to website builder companies and this is why your feedback is so important. We want to reduce the overall cost your incur with every additional server.


I have forwarded your suggestions to our development team and will keep you posted with updates. Feel free to add suggestions as it will only help us do better.

 

[robb3369]

2) There is always a trade off between functionality and ease of use. And this trade off is subjective to every web hosting company. A few web hosts want ease of use and others want functionality.

Then you need to make it easy to select "simple" or "advanced" modes... Our clients actually disliked TrendyTools more than RVSiteBuilder which was surprising... but they are the ones paying the bill.

I've just submitted a cancellation and refund request.

 

[trendytools]

Rob, I am sorry to hear that. We are soon introducing new tutorials to help clients understand trendytools better. Also lack of categories is another challenge we need to meet very soon. The positives are that we are willing to tweak all it takes to offer a better site builder to web hosting community.
I will check with the billing team to see if your cancellation request has been processed promptly.

 

[alinford]

Trendy,
I like how your product works in general, but your templates look like they were made by kids. I understand that you can turn off animations, but you are scaring away clients with all of the moving pieces. People did not like flash websites, which is why they have gone away. HTML5 sites that look and act like flash sites is not what people want. Please create some basic templates that do not have all of the moving pieces, nothing bouncing around, normal dropdown navigation, add a jQuery slider, etc.

 

[petru]

Trendy,
I like how your product works in general, but your templates look like they were made by kids. I understand that you can turn off animations, but you are scaring away clients with all of the moving pieces. People did not like flash websites, which is why they have gone away. HTML5 sites that look and act like flash sites is not what people want. Please create some basic templates that do not have all of the moving pieces, nothing bouncing around, normal dropdown navigation, add a jQuery slider, etc.

+1 Here

Not to mention that google can't index Flash Content....

 

[domeneas]

Late to the party here, but I second the last couple comments about Trendy. We spent most our time just turning off animations and such before we could actually test anything. Our customers would give up way before we did.

Plain, clean and neat is what our customers want, not trendy, flashy and blingy.

 

[pachiko]

Site builder for cPanel server

Hi,
What are the bests sitebuilders for WHM server?
is there any free plugin for sitebuilder?

Thank you.