An Effortless Way to Create a Website

7. Homestead

Homestead.com represents another veteran of Online Website Building market. It provides small businesses with affordable, easy-to-use tools and services that help them tap the Web to compete more effectively and win more business. Being founded in 1996 Homestead is considered to be one of the first tools of its kind. Since that period of time more than 12 million customers have used its products and services to establish their presence on the Web, maintain and promote their site, and sell or market their products and services. In December, 2008, Homestead was acquired by Intuit Company – an American software company that develops financial and tax preparation software and related services for small businesses, accountants and individuals.

There are three different types of accounts available – Starter, Gold and Platinum. Unfortunately none of them is free; still you can sign up for 30 days free trial in order to check the features of this solution. Make sure you have your credit card with you, because even when you getting a free trial you need to introduce the credit card info; the fact that can be considered as an annoying one by some of the users. Although there is a quick tour to watch, it’s too general, so 30 days free trial will be the best way to check the functionality of this tool.

The user interface of Homestead is pretty simple and straightforward. Let’s check the screenshots in order to have an idea how it looks.

The Editor Page:

 And the Sample Website created in 2 minutes:

 As far as the features of Homestead are concerned, here are the ones which should be emphasized:

• The opportunity to get 3 free personalized domain names (with Platinum account)
• You can create the unlimited number of sites (Platinum account)
• Tracking and collecting visitor information
• WebListing in search engines
• Search engines advertising credit (to run ads on Google) and many others.

8. Only Business

 OnlyBusiness.com being a very functional solution was formed in order to make online business accessible to all. From the very beginning of the project that was first launched in 2007, though being conceptualized in 2005, it promotes the network as a whole, holding the opinion that “each members site is no longer an ‘island’ in the sea of the internet, but rather a vital component of profit-bearing network, where the members collaborate to develop the platform in the direction that they all want and need it to go”.

As you understand this is a paid service, still there are 4 different packages to suit everyone. Moreover the first package, being quite a limited one in features, is 100% free with no trial periods, so you can take your time to decide if there is a necessity for you to get a more functional package. Another nice thing about OnlyBusiness is their collaborative approach – their major goal is to provide all of the products, services, features and functions that a typical business would need in order to build a financially successful and profitable online arm to their business. Please check How It Works page to see the graphical demonstration.

As for the design of this solution to my mind it’s extremely nice looking and user friendly. Probably the screenshots won’t help you significantly to understand that, so I would recommend you to create a free account.

The Website Editor:

And Sample Page created with this tool:

Now let’s specify the most significant features this solution has:

• You can create auctions to let buyers bid for your products
• Support for Third party Design tools like Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Frontpage
• The opportunity to use automated web tool to create your own Flash navigation menus (animated menus)
• 24×7 Phone Technical support (except Free account)
• The ability to use auto-responders
• Real time statistics and etc.

Please visit Business Plans page to check all the features available for each account type.