Creating a Website with Site Builder Tools

What are my options ?

Essentially, you can choose one of three options for building your website.

1. Hire a Web Designer to build your site
2. Learn how to create a site yourself
3. Use a Site Builder tool

What are the advantages of using a Site Builder Tool ?

Price. The biggest advantage of using a Site Builder tool is that it is the cheapest alternative. Many hosting companies, including FlashWebHost.com and HostOnNet.com offer it for free with their hosting packages. Hiring a web designer could cost you thousands of dollars.

Quick. Another advantage for using a SiteBuilder tool is that it can be finished within a matter of minutes. I am a very experienced web developer but it still took me weeks to develop this website. I use SiteBuilder tools for some of the things that I do just because it is a quick solution and gets the job done.

Simple. For those of you who don't know HTML this is your solution. There are a lot of intricacies with creating a website, designing graphics, posting it on your web server. It can become real complicated in a hurry. This is a good solution if you aren't the most technically savvy person out there.

Please do not think that you need to have fancy dropdown menus and flashy graphics to make your website good. In fact, these things are looked upon poorly by most consumers because it slows down your website. Especially users with slow Internet connections. Search engines like simplicity so a web builder tool is just that...simple!

What are the disadvantages of using a Site Builder Tool ?

Flexiblity One of the obvious disadvantages to using a SiteBuilder tools is the ability to add design elements to your page. There are graphical limitations to using a template driven website. There may be certain elements that you want in your website such as a search box that may not be possible to have.

Look & Feel Again, you are limited to the design of the template. There are some decent templates out there but you pay for what you get. A free template usually means that it's not going to look like this website.

Originality There may be other sites with the same template as you. I don't think this is a big deal because you can change the look of your site using images and text placement, logos, etc. It is something to consider if you are using a template to build your empire (unlikely).