Site Builder Wizard

[drweb]

I actually have a Plesk server, and it all works great (exept CS Module).
The only problem with Plesk, is that all their packages are limited...
If you have 100 customers/domains then it's OK, but if you have more customers, Cpanel with Fantastico and Sitemagix comes cheaper and works just as well...

Greetz,
Dr WeB

 

[drweb]

Mr Wonderful,

The sitebuilder included in Fantastico isn't free...
Check out their site and you will see that it is actually quite expensive...

Greetz,
DrWeB

 

[gorilla]

so whats your experience with Sitemagix ?

 

[ThunderHostingDotCom]

Free isn't always good either!

 

[lloyd_tennison]

The sitebuilder included in Fantastico isn't free...
Check out their site and you will see that it is actually quite expensive...

I gues that depends on what you consider expensive. All of the features that I see that almost anyone using a site builder would need is $9.95 a month. The missing stuff that makes it "expensive" there are already scripts in Fantastico to pick up those, i.e blogs, web calenders, shopping carts, etc.

 

[anup123]

I have had a long series of mails exchaned with psoft.net and have finally decided for going for the same for following reasons:

(1) They were pretty fast on fixing the bugs which were pointed to them even during the trial download.

(2) Costs 150$ for 100 users so if it doesn't really turn out to be exciting commercially, it's not a big loss.

(3) Sitebuilder Clients are not expected to know what style sheets etc are so it's pretty much pointless in complicating a sitebuilder with things like style sheets etc etc. It should be just point type and click ...

Just my opnion though. Incremental licensing (like upgrade for additional features etc) doesn't make sense to me. Involves admin costs too, upgrading/degrading an account. Just one licensing policy on per user basis (no low end/high end classification) is much easier to operate with.

With psoft.net taken over by some other company (trustix vendors .. not sure though), there would be expected improvements in service levels as i could see that they were pretty much proactive even during the trial phase. Bugs mostly related to broken images. If it has to be a higher quality software, sitegalore would be the best, but costs are prohibitive :/

Anup

 

[drweb]

Fantastico modification

Hi all,

Apparently Fantastico understood that an expensive paying option wasn't very interesting and they added another website-builder based upon Via Step's SohoTemplates but named Templates Express... This looks quite more interesting than the SohoLaunch proposal !
They actually have about 15 templates for now and will expand it to about 50...

"Templates Express are templates designed by ViaStep's Sohotemplates division, a company specialized in creating templates for Soholaunch Pro. Please notice that Templates Express templates are independant of Soholaunch Pro and do not require any additional license nor can they be used with Soholaunch Pro. They are free for use with any Fantastico licensed server and all accounts on this server."

Unfortunately, you cannot test it (no demo)

But after a few email-exchanges with SiteMagix, it's their demo, their professionalism and rapid response that made the balance go in their favor...

Greetz,
Dr WeB

 

[ThunderHostingDotCom]

Yes but these are templates & NOT a site builder! They really need to get another site builder since SohoLaunch is such a problem for so many!

 

[rs-freddo]

troll

Dr Web has made 4 posts and all are about how wonderful sitemagix is. Does this sound like trolling to anybody else??? Maybe Dr Web works for sitemagix????

 

[anup123]

I had tried sitemazix demos on their site. To me few things look discouraging:

(1) Incremental licensing policy: This is a big negative in my opinion. There should be nothing as low end and advanced... it should be a single software with no classification of features into different levels. Leads to higher admin costs managing such systems -- upgrading /downgrading etc.

(2) A Sitebuilder client is not expected to know css etc so why bother him with that. It could (again my opinion) lead to higher support handling costs.

It would have been better off with just "No Low End /High End" classifiation. A Single Software with common list of features and that's it. Even if it works out 0.5$/user costlier than the others it would be fine. But a jump from 1 to 10$ just for few extras doesn't make sense to me when there are competing alternatives available.

No offense meant. Business decisions are more driven by bottomline. This is just my personal opinion.

Anup

 

[drweb]

Hi rs-freddo,

No I do not work for SiteMagix at all ! I've got my own little ICT-company in Belgium...
And that's more than enough work for me ;-)

I'm just the kind a guy, that when he is convinced about something, he wants to share his opinion/knowledge with others instead of keeping it all for himself. I would react just the same if this would be a forum about anti-virus software and people would be discussing "which product is better ? Norton or eTrust" Well you would read my posts saying that eTrust is to my opinion the best product your money can buy.

Also very important is the fact that when your customers satisfaction depends on a product that you represent but that you can't change anything to it, than its better to know the company or person who can make a difference...
In this case, SW Soft has great products (and so do others), but SiteMagix is a smaller company and your mails are answered by the guys who created the software in the first place; not just a person who answer the phone at a helpdesk...

I would also like to mention that I'm still a critical person; business is business after all and its the best products with the best servives that will get the deal. Why else would there be so many hosting companys using Cpanel ? Because its a good price and its just as good as Plesk.

And to answer anup123, me to I would prefer to have a different kind of price-setting, but that's the name of the game...

Greetz,
Dr WeB

 

[rs-freddo]

Don't get me wrong I think instant zen is a nice product. i just can't use 150 licenses.

Maybe 2 other small hosting operations would like to form a business entity with me to buy 150 seperate server user licenses (50 each). PM me, if you're interested.

 

[gorilla]

think the licence would be server IP depending and i dont think you could share this with 3 different servers IPs, although if you find a solution i would be interessted in joining forces with you :D

 

[rs-freddo]

The per user license says it can be used across servers.

 

[gorilla]

Lets do it then PM me your phone number and I'll give yah a ring

 

[rs-freddo]

"Michael,

Thanks for contacting us and I understand your point. We believe that $150
as an entry level price is reasonable for this tool. I think you will find
that consistent with other products of this nature. I am sorry if that does
not meet your needs.

Thanks.....Sam

> comments: 150 licenses are far too many for a small web
> hosting business. I have two other hosting businesses that
> are interested in going thirds with us on the 150 user
> licence product. Is this OK with you. If no, you REALLY need
> to offer a 50 license package."

sitemagix is pretty concrete on their pricing model so I'm not interested in persuing this thread anymore. Good luck all.

 

[gorilla]

you cant always get what you want

 

[magixman]

magixman, to promote your product to my customers (assuming I buy it), I would like to create a link on my "pre-sales" page to a demo, like "All hosting plans include our free Site Builder software" and then that would be a link to a demo of the product.

If I purchase the software and install it on the server, does it create a branded demo that I can link to? Or other suggestions for showing off the software to customers before they buy hosting with me?

- Scott

Yes you can setup the demo and you can also display the templates on your site. Many of our customers do this and also copy and then personalize some of the verbiage from our site to make the offer fit their style.

 

[Aric1]

Keep in mind that SiteZen, soholaunch etc. are very restrictive about what you can use when creating your sites. If you aren't using IE on a PC, you can't use those products to create sites. So you need to decide if that works for your business model or reaching out to Linux, Mac and PC users who don't use IE is important to you.

SiteStudio and sw-soft's SiteBuilder work on any computer. You can build or view the sites with any modern browser on any platform. SS costs $150 for 100 licenses and those licenses can be on multiple servers if you choose not to integrate SS with CPANEL.

SW-Soft's Site Builder is $99 for 100 accounts on a single server, but if you want to use the licenses across multiple servers it costs you an additional $500 (which I think is a bit steep, but if you have lots of servers, the added flexibility may be worth the cost).

I've used both, and Site Buider feels like a more professional product, though it does tend to be a bit slower loading. SS is a great choice for a small host that needs a decent site builder for a modest cost. If you only have one server and want all customers to have access to SS, the CPANEL integration is a nice bonus as it saves you from having to set up a SS account separately. SS hasn't been all that actively developed lately, but support is decent. I don't know anything about sw-soft's support.

 

[247logistics]

I purchased sw-soft's SiteBuilder and had problems installing it... I tried to email them several times as the general publishing version was supposed to work with CPanel. I have yet to receive any response. The forum for SiteBuilder is no help and hardly has any posts. I even tried to pay the tech support for my server and they couldn't seem to get it either. It looks good but so far I've had no luck or support with it.