Why free website builders is a bad idea you should avoid at all cost
Lately it's being a lot of advertising from all these free website builders companies every where you look at, the main ones are Wix, Weeble and Squarespace and they are everywhere... google, facebook, TV, Radio even in the super bowl! Come on... the super bowl? Well... all of them ads are suggesting the same message, a FREE website for anyone no matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter what you need...Another message is about how great any person can make a web site look by using their build-it-yourself software and how easy it is to work with.
And the first thing that come into my mind is:
How all these free website builders companies that promote free and easy to use website for everyone can make the amount of money needed to place an ad on the super bowl?... This year's super bowl ads were about 3 millions per 30 secs ads... and I ask myself again, how this happen? How it's possible for someone that charge no money for their services can have the money to pay for these ads?
The answer is simple:
They are not saying the whole true and things are not always the way they advertise, all you need to do is to go to their websites and check the prices tab, some of them hide this tab at the bottom of their web sites or camouflage it with some other name... but if you look for it you'll find it.
Based on that information what you can get for free is just a simple... very simple site that look like a million other and is hidden behind their main domain name. There is no possible way that someone will find you in an organic search if you use one of these "Free" types of website as search engines have no reference to it.
But they make it easy:
For a simple moderate price that you will pay every month you can have several other already-built apps added to your site in order to help you with promoting your site, price varies but you get the idea.
Now, lets say you want to add your domain name to your web site as any dissent website would have... well, here things start changing, you will have to upgrade your plan and make monthly payments in order for they to allow you have it that way. Based on logic you'll need to start adding more and more money to your budget as you upgrade your plan and add apps that make it possible to do any of the basic stuff a regular website will do.
Still, I'm not done with the bad news:
Here we will jump into something not many other people talk about on the net. Are you a creative and well versed web designer? If not you can forget about making your site look like the ones they place on their showroom, yes the capabilities and functionalities may be there but many of you will agree with me that creating a nice and attractive website is something not everyone can do, we've being doing websites for a long time and if you take a look at our portfolio you will see how fast and often online tendencies about design change, if you are not a good web designer you will need of someone that does that work for you, so here we go... More money from your side to go out of your pocket. Here people will say... come on... they have a lot of pre-made templates ready to use, and what these people doesn't see is that in case you do that too will be hurting yourself even more as your brand new website will look like a thousand other websites of people that selected the same template for theirs... Of course the nicest the template is, the more people use it.
So:
I know you hope I'm done with all this issues as you are making a little research before getting involve with a company that give their services away for free but still have money for massive ad campaigns and here goes another big disappointment for you again and... based on my research this is the worse part.
You go to one of these companies to create "your" website or a web site for "your business" and I'm sorry to inform you that whatever you do with this companies is NOT yours, if one day you decide that paying this guys a good chunk of money every month is not your ideal business plan I have bad news, and it's because the site you paid a web designer to create a unique design for you and spend all this money in apps and upgrades per month CAN NOT the taken out of these companies servers, if all of a sudden you decide you want to have your website somewhere else or need things on it that are not available on these companies apps store, or even worse, you want a mobile app that uses the same information the websites uses, I'm sorry to tell you that you can forget about it, all the money, time and effort invested was in vane.
Conclusions:
Don't waste your time and money renting a website where you'll have your business placed on, online presence in today's business world is a requirement but you need the right one in order to be able to compete and grow on it's basis, don't make the mistake so many has already made believing on ad campaigns directed to all of us and representing the wrong message. Finding the right web design company is not always an easy path but still is the right one and the only one that can bring to you what you really need without complications.
Best of the lucks in you online endeavor and avoid free website builders companies always!
