I started out my day ready to review the website builder at trendyflash.com. They call themselves Trendy Site Builder, Flash Website Builder.
I thought the name was a bit awkward and problematic, since Flash was part of their domain name. And then, much to my surprise, upon visiting their site, I see they look pretty identical to Site Cube.
Someone is clearly a reseller of the other. I am thinking Site Cube might be the reseller. They didn’t do so hot when I reviewed them. I am very curious to see if these folks do better. But here’s the thing, if you are going to be a reseller of someone else’s product, go for it, just look unique, using your own business’ branding. Otherwise, be loud and proud that you are affiliated with the parent brand and make sure you state clearly why it is awesome to use your company in lieu of the parent. Perhaps the parent company isn’t giving a lot of independent branding options, and that’s a shame if this is the case. But if you do have the option to brand the parent’s product to look however you want, DO THAT. Because by both websites having the same – identical – look, both companies look really silly. And since I am not sure who the mothership belongs to (which is who I would want to use), I am inclined to use neither.
Industry Specific?
They do the standard thing and offer a bunch of templates that are customizable to any industry.
Pricing
I am a really big fan of free accounts or at least a free-trial period. These folks don’t appear to have that. They only are advertising one tier, a Premium Unlimited Site tier, for $59.00/year (normally $99.00/year).
Would you like some free help preparing for your site? Cool. Here’s a free download I created just for you.
Mobile?
They have a free mobile site builder.
In What Browser Does the Website Builder Work?
It doesn’t say, so I’ll go with the assumption that it works in the most modern browsers, like Chrome, Firefox, and IE 10. The majority of builders don’t say anything about this; because of this, I’m giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.
Search Engine Optimization?
You can enter your own meta information. There is nothing about web site statistics; it’s kind of important to have those.
Blog Features?
It doesn’t say. I reviewed some of the sample sites and they did have “blog” links, but when I visited the “blog” portion of each site, I didn’t see what looked like a true blog. A true blog should have dated posts, ability to accept comments, and typically categories of blog posts. The sample sites’ blog pages looked like normal pages, lacking all of the features I just mentioned.
Ease of Use
Trendy Flash Website Builder has a live demo of their site builder at the bottom of their Features page. I am impressed that this is there to play with as much as you would like and it has tool tips walking you through what to do and when. Nice.
Use Your Own URL?
It doesn’t say.
My Initial Impression
Well, it appears this website building tool creates Flash-based sites. I’m not a huge fan of Flash for an entire site because it usually doesn’t hold up as well for search engines as HTML-based sites do. Since being found in search engines is huge for pretty much all businesses, I’m concerned about this tool’s effectiveness for business building purposes.
Click here to grab my free download to help you get all your ducks in a row before your build your site.
Even though I made it for people who are getting ready to hire a web pro, 80% of it will help you if you are building your site on your own.
Leave a Reply