Traditional website building is generally handled in a three step process. Register a domain name, set up hosting and build your website {not necessarily in that order}. You probably end up using a different service for each step as well, which can get quite annoying as you try to balance quality and price. What if you could do it all in one place?

The concept of an Online CMS that provides you hosting and/or management functions is a concept that is quickly catching on. Below I’ve profiled and reviewed 5 Online CMS services that can let you build a full fledged website.

Build your own website online -

Weebly - One of the first to enter this market Weebly has come a long way since I first saw them a while back. More robust features have been added and it is quite easy to use. Once you have designed your site or blog you can even download the entire thing as a zip file and upload it on your own hosting server.

I have to say that I started writing this review in reverse, meaning I reviewed the last one on the list first, and Weebly is the most fun one yet. It’s very Web 2.0 with its GUI, drag and drop functionality and use of AJAX. You can do a lot of things in Weebly from adding photo galleries, videos, maps and more. No such things as storage limits, you get your own sub-domain, basic site stats and a few more things.

Some might say that it’s limited but I think the biggest winning point is that it is very easy to use for basic users. Any files you upload get scanned for viruses before being saved, which I thought was nice.

One thing I had trouble with was the “Imported” element under “More”, I couldn’t figure out how to import anything as it doesn’t show any way to do so? Anybody have a clue? {pic above}

But if you’re looking for a really easy to use hosted online CMS, give Weebly a try. Here’s my example.

TweakCMS - Another online CMS solution, Tweak CMS says they respect standards and don’t empty your bank accounts. I pay $3.95 a month to host this blog, they want to charge me $49 a month to get RSS feeds in their “Basic” plan! But it is very powerful CMS nonetheless.

First off they do not host your site, instead they just provide you a platform to edit your site as you please which then connects to your web server, where ever it is, for publishing. So if the Tweak CMS itself were ever to experience server issues, your site or your clients site would not get affected.

You can use any scripts you want from ASP, PHP, JavaScript etc… to customize your sites. You can also upload your own templates, they have provided extensive support for making your templates work with their system. So make sure to check them out before you proceed to build one yourself.

Comparing the plans you can see that the more you pay the more options you get. Though this might be more for a corporate type of set up and probably not the best solution for a blogger.

If you assign more users to a site then each and every change that is done gets attributed to them. So you can easily see who jumbled up anything on the site.

They are a new service and while the free version does offer quite a bit, it doesn’t justify using them over other Online CMS’s or even a self hosted one like Joomla or WP.

SpeakLight - Billing itself as a Web 2.0 Content Management System, SpeakLight was launched last Septemeber {2006} and seems to be steadily carrying itself along. They offer you a free version to put up your own 3 page website {tweakcms offers 15} and all the features are standard across all the packages {stats not available in free version}, the only variables that differ are the amount of storage space, pages and users that a site can have.

The Premier package which goes for $129/mo gets you 3GB of storage, while the free version provides you with only 5MB. The best part is that if you work as a freelancer you can actually resell their packages under your own brand to your clients. Giving you a little extra income on the side. No email accounts are offered, so you or your clients will have to think of some other options for email. Actually I think it’s about time domain registrars provided a free email account with domains names itself, instead of buying a hosting account for email.

I set up my test site and it was quite easy doing so. The features are nice and the GUI is very intuitive. I might even use them for one of my own sites in the future. Adding elements was as easy as click and customize. If you’re building a blog, they provide free RSS feeds

Mind you there is no FTP access, and no room to install a PHP script so that’s where it gets kinda tangled up. But like I said above I see this being a great way for freelancers to sell their services under their own brand to clients who couldn’t care less where they are hosted and who want to be able to modify small things by themselves without calling you all the time. {Check out FreelanceSwitch for an extensive review.}

SiteKreator - This CMS was quite easy to get used to. I loved the fact that there were so many pre-built designs which I could edit if I wanted to, depending on the package that I signed up with. The Free package has 6 standard themes that you can use. If you want to customize your theme then you going to have to sign up with the Business plan {$19.95 a month}.

Here is my example, New Web which I created for this review. It took me all of 10 minutes to get done. Though it is a standard theme I have no options to customize the look, only add as much information as I want. The downside is that I get a domain as a folder domain i.e www.sitekreator.com/newweb and not newweb.sitekreator.com. Though for those serious enough they should just get their own domain name and use it with the CMS from SiteKreator.

The free account gives you 10MB of storage, basic content like text, images and files. That’s about it. The Power package priced at $39.95 gives you some really nice looking templates which are totally customizable, you can even add HTML snippets, have a blog, a forum, a separate members area along with 1GB of storage and 20 email accounts. This is the only Online CMS solution that offered email along with their services.

Have a look at SiteKreator.

Creataplace - This one is new on the scene and sadly I have to say the poorest among them all. With just three designs to choose from, each with their own “catchy” name, there isn’t even a free service to choose from. The sites cost $29.95 a month and you get a free 30 day trial, wowzers!

So I didn’t bother signing up with them to test it out. They have some videos about how it works, nothing too inspiring. The web has grown past being mesmerized about how I can insert text and images into a template. Features people, Features! with a free version might help too.

Oh! and if you want to include your logo, you’re going to have to email it to them so they can add it! GASP!

Visit Creataplace, if you really want to.

So after looking at all these above options, Do you think going forward we’ll see more robust types of Online CMS and hosted solutions being offered. Perhaps with a test scripting environment as well?

Let me know in the comments if you have ever used any of the above services or plan to.

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About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.