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I send friends + family to Squarespace for simple websites, or Shopify for e-commerce. Works well!. Squarespace has design templates, a gallery of blocks, doma

by nikcub 2y ago

I send friends + family to Squarespace for simple websites, or Shopify for e-commerce. Works well!. Squarespace has design templates, a gallery of blocks, domains (what's a DNS?), news section, email marketing, signup forms etc. all built-in making it easy and one-stop Shopify is Shopify and doesn't need much of an introduction.

Spivak 2y ago
Squarespace is comically overpriced for a simple site. I don't understand why people recommend it so soften for "non-technical family member needs an essentially static site." The https://neocities.org/supporter https://neocities.org/supporter tier gets you a custom domain for $5/mo and is as usable as MySpace. https://zume.net/ https://zume.net/ gets you WordPress for $5/mo which makes for a quick migration.
- nikcub 2y ago
  > Squarespace is comically overpriced for a simple site. Most customers are SMB's and $20-30 a month is nothing, considering how critical websites are. It's a third of the price of accounting software and gets you a day of Google or Facebook ads. The old alternatives of Yellow Pages and newspaper advertising would run 10x+ that. > The https://neocities.org/supporter https://neocities.org/supporter tier gets you a custom domain for $5/mo and is as usable as MySpace. https://zume.net/ https://zume.net/ gets you WordPress for $5/mo No offence but I'm not sending either of those sites to anybody not a techie or a nerd. cPanel, NVMe, SSL certificates? That's _after_ you get through the confusing choices on the homepage of premium, managed, virtual server? It needs to be easy to use and understand like opening and using Microsoft Word. That's what the online choices are. My brother has barely typed up a letter since high school and I sent him to Squarespace. Without even asking me anything, he had a great looking website up in a day with a domain, logo and everything. Multiple non-technical friends setup businesses (especially during lockdowns) and almost all got on with setting up Shopify with zero assistance from me. I value my time more than anything - $20-50 a month is nothing and the results are better. Sometimes you just need to get into and understand the mindset of 90%+ of potential users and what they need. That's why these companies are household names and I've never heard of either site you sent me - and I'm _very_ online.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Well Squarespace is a household name because 90% of their operating budget is ads repeating their name over and over. But yes for an SMB the difference between $5/mo and $30/mo is nothing and Squarespace does have a nice onboarding process. But for an individual $5/mo and $30/mo is a completely different tier of service. The kinds of things people use personal sites for is not worth 1.5 Netflix subscriptions.

by nikcub 2y ago

Spivak 2y ago

Squarespace is comically overpriced for a simple site. I don't understand why people recommend it so soften for "non-technical family member needs an essentially static site." The https://neocities.org/supporter https://neocities.org/supporter tier gets you a custom domain for $5/mo and is as usable as MySpace. https://zume.net/ https://zume.net/ gets you WordPress for $5/mo which makes for a quick migration.

nikcub 2y ago
> Squarespace is comically overpriced for a simple site. Most customers are SMB's and $20-30 a month is nothing, considering how critical websites are. It's a third of the price of accounting software and gets you a day of Google or Facebook ads. The old alternatives of Yellow Pages and newspaper advertising would run 10x+ that. > The https://neocities.org/supporter https://neocities.org/supporter tier gets you a custom domain for $5/mo and is as usable as MySpace. https://zume.net/ https://zume.net/ gets you WordPress for $5/mo No offence but I'm not sending either of those sites to anybody not a techie or a nerd. cPanel, NVMe, SSL certificates? That's _after_ you get through the confusing choices on the homepage of premium, managed, virtual server? It needs to be easy to use and understand like opening and using Microsoft Word. That's what the online choices are. My brother has barely typed up a letter since high school and I sent him to Squarespace. Without even asking me anything, he had a great looking website up in a day with a domain, logo and everything. Multiple non-technical friends setup businesses (especially during lockdowns) and almost all got on with setting up Shopify with zero assistance from me. I value my time more than anything - $20-50 a month is nothing and the results are better. Sometimes you just need to get into and understand the mindset of 90%+ of potential users and what they need. That's why these companies are household names and I've never heard of either site you sent me - and I'm _very_ online.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Well Squarespace is a household name because 90% of their operating budget is ads repeating their name over and over. But yes for an SMB the difference between $5/mo and $30/mo is nothing and Squarespace does have a nice onboarding process. But for an individual $5/mo and $30/mo is a completely different tier of service. The kinds of things people use personal sites for is not worth 1.5 Netflix subscriptions.