Snappages: Freemium Do it yourself website builder, why (web design) outsourcing companies will have a tough time

How much does a website development costs these days? In times of recession, businesses do cut back in spending and for other small or medium businesses to update or to purchase a new website. How about if you already know how you want your website to look? Snappages seems to have an answer for this, which is the Do it yourself (D-I-Y) website. What’s great about it…

… is that it allows people with no knowledge of html to build really professional looking and web 2.0-like website. The user interface is made with flash and resembles MS paint, where all you do is drag, drop and edit. You can literally drag and drop from video players, to photos, streetmaps etc.:

– Screenshot Snappages –

 

You can customize everything in the page with drag and drop. They offer 2 versions, a free and paid ($50/year) version. A free version allows you to have all the functions like Photo Gallery, Public Calendars, Contact Forms, Personal Subdomain and customizable themes. It also gives you 1 Gb of storage space and 5 custom pages. While the paid version, has all the features of free plus premium themes, custom branding (no snappages traces on the website), Custom Domain Name (your own .com …), SEO settings and Google Analytics. The storage is also upgraded to 10 gb and unlimited custom pages.

 

This website is great for those who do have an idea and feel of what their website should be (look and feel), but a professional web designer would still have the necessary expertise and knowledge to make the website more user friendly and more relevant. There are dangers of designing on your own and it’s a risk you have to take. But with a big price difference $50 / year vs. $30 / hour (roughly around $300 + per website) designer work plus web hosting, there are big savings to be made.

 

Overall, this is great for companies to have their presence online and to be able to try it out before any commitments. The freemium model would certainly help users to understand the value of their tools and thus converting them into paying members. These companies are the reason that I don’t believe in outsourcing business, if technology becomes in our reach, then we could do so much instead of outsourcing things.