Doodlekit Brings Advanced Functionality to Easy Website Creation
Mark Hendrickson
28 comments »
Website-creation tool Doodlekit is over a year old but has somehow managed to fly under the radar, even after releasing its free version this past October.
Several similar services are out there: Weebly, Synthasite, Jimdo, Google Pages, SiteKreator, and Sampa to name a few. They all intend to make it possible for non-techies to make modestly attractive and functional websites without touching a line of code.
Doodlekit succeeds in this respect, but it goes even further by providing a suite of advanced features, all of which can be set up with a few clicks of the button: forums, customizable forms, shopping carts, advertising, user accounts and profiles, restricted areas for approved members, file uploading, full site search, RSS feeds, photo albums, blogs, basic site statistics, and domain mapping. Some of these features are available for free, but many will require that you pay $15 or more per month. See this pricing sheet for how the service packages break down.
All in all, it’s nice to see a website creation tool that appreciates the fact that many low-level users won’t be satisfied with flat pages anymore. They want to collect data from their users, support small online communities, publish rich media, etc. Doodlekit is moving in the right direction while others (with the possible exception of SiteKreator) continue to provide a fairly limited range of dynamic content possibilities.
As the WYSIWYG market develops, I’d like to see companies like Doodlekit leverage easy database creation/management tools like upcoming Blist. Then, a wider range of people will be able to collect, manage, and publish their organizational data online without needing to rely on web developers. As for more short-term improvements to Doodlekit, it would be nice to see an even better WYSIWYG HTML editor (I have yet to find any online that doesn’t end up frustrating the hell out of me). They could also take some tips from Weebly and implement drag-n-drop editing functionality, which I find more intuitive and satisfying than clicking through several pages to make changes.
Suggestions and long-term visions aside, Doodlekit strikes me as a solid offering in its current incarnation. The company says it has reached 1,700 hosted sites since starting to offer a free version six weeks ago. I expect that number to increase substantially as the word gets out.
I think this suffers from the YA, or “yet another” phenomena.
I do like the additional products it has, which is something I’ve wondered about with the competitors, who seem satisfied with giving the user only a basic site.
Add in the Weebly drag and drop, as Mark said, and they’ll definitely be ahead of the pack.
Mark, thanks for remembering Sampa (www.sampa.com) on the list of web site creation services.
Two comments I want to make.
1) Keep in mind that you shouldn’t put DoodleKit (and many of the others) on the same bucket as Sampa. Clearly, DoodleKit is a small-business play. How many consumers want to have Forums and Shopping Carts on their site? Sampa is for consumers to create *personal* websites. Hey, DoodleKit doesn’t offer Family Tree, we do!
2) You should really check out Sampa before you say the others “continue to provide a fairly limited range of dynamic content”. We add new things almost on a weekly basis. Just to list a few things about Sampa, in no particular order:
- Multiple Blogs with multiple authors
- Lists w/ integration with Amazon.com
- Blogs Posts integrated with Amazon
- Photo Albums
- Family Tree
- Mashups: YouTube, Flickr, Twango, Amazon Wish List, Del.icio.us, Faves (BlueDot), etc.
- Built-in stats + integration with Google Analytics
- Secure content, with users/groups controls
- Deep Two-way Email integration (post via email, subscribe via email, etc.)
- “MyBlogLog”-like Recent Visitors
- WISYWIG Layout Editor
Give it a try: http://sampa.com
Marcelo Calbucci
Founder & CTO
Sampa
I’m personally still a fan of what weebly and Jimdo are doing. Doodlekit isn’t WYSIWYG. You edit elements by going through a series of menus, not dragging , dropping, and editing elements in place.
@lateefx - ???
I agree with Marcello’s post — Weebly and Sampa are for “very end” users and Doodlekit is geared to a business crowd—like my product JoinSources. If there is no distinction given then many good CMS startups will not see the light of day.
Drag and drop sites like Weebly are good, but as a professional designer and developer, I get frustrated wondering why I cannot easily align an image next to text. I have client sites to build. Why do I have to stack all my page elements on top of each other? Where do I edit the CMS? Where do I import my own template? How many small businesses really want to have a generic template for their Web site? How can you get the blog look and feel you really want without working with a designer?
I don’t think this market has matured. There is no ‘top-of-mind’ product for building a small business Web site (or sites in general). So many people want to squeeze the design and development out of a Web site. And in reality, many people don’t realize the designers and developers are the ones making the technology recommendations for small (and really small) businesses. There’s a market there and we want to tap into it—rapidly converting static small business sites into sites people can edit on their own.
And what I like about one of my own competitors—Doodlekit—is they are creeping in features that larger CMS systems have—ones that small businesses can never afford. Web 2.0 (ugh) is starting to bring enterprise CMS tools to the masses.
One more thing…how does these systems handle 100 page Web sites?
Marcelo and Don: I agree that Sampa is it’s own animal and can be considered to have its own types of advanced features. It doesn’t quite line up with the intent of these other website creators, so I suppose I downplayed its sophistication a little.
Nick: The WYSIWYG aspect of Doodlekit may not be obvious until you download and install an HTML editor plugin.
Thanks a lot Mark. We’re very excited, considering the amount of signups we’ve been seeing. BTW, one of the features we’re very proud of is that all Doodlekit created websites are W3C Valid XHTML & CSS. Peeps can go into the source code and jack that up if they want, but for those that stick with the editor, their sites will be 100% valid. We put a lot of work into making that happen, so I just wanted to mention it. Thanks again!
Mark,
The big players in CMS are Red Dot, Open Text, Ektron, Hannon Hill. Their products are not at all cheap, or really that easy to use. But the features these giants have are what people REALLY need when they’re serious about maintaining Web site—no matter what the size of the site:
- Version control of content
- Multiple Users with permission levels
- Sophisticated Navigation Control
- Sophisticated Customization of Templates
- Interfaces that can support managing Web sites with hundreds of pages
- Control of Javascript and CSS
These features are not available in a cheap CMS solution that regular people can use. I think what my team (and Doodlekit) are trying to do is bring some of the features of these big boys to the masses. Furthermore—these are the features the enablers (designers and developers) need to build sites.
Software-as-Service CMS is an emerging new market. It’s a market the big CMS vendors have been scoffing at because the products we create will make their $25,000 price tags seem ridiculous. I think the dummy-proof products like Weebly and Sampa make it hard for REAL (I said it) CMS systems to get attention when we’re trying to kill a billion-dollar industry.
My opinion is while Weebly and Sampa may attract some business users, those users will eventually move away when they want to gain more control of their sites—business customers are the ones who pay. If you run a small law firm and need a good Web site up and running, you’ll gladly pay $50 a month to control every aspect of your Web site—top to bottom.
The ability for businesses to easily create and quickly distribute portabe, self-tracking websites is critical. Many companies do not have the technical or design resources on staff to be able to create interactive content that supports their business goals.
FLIMP (www.flimp.net) is one alternative that lets companies create, distribute and track rich media microsites that can support video and flash. This all-in-one platform lets designers and marketers create interactive sites in an easy-to-use WYSIWYG with professional designer features that enable images and content to fully align. The FLIMP platform offers a number of easy-to-use distribution options ranging from email distribution to integration into existing websites or integration into web ads. Finally, FLIMPs offers actionable reporting data presented in an easy-to-understand format.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ snore
*flush*
where will they be working next year?
lol - this is a sleeper story.
all the major domain registrars offers website creation tools already, and it’s free on 1and1.com - with a wide variety of templates/features
hello,
i need a website for my computer so i can do the business on internet. you know where? man in india say only 300 dollars for big website. i want sell product. please help.
An easy web site creator? Another one? not exactly earth shattering news…
Unfortunately the site look stupid!
Great post Mark!!
lol thanks Coffee Man
How can http://www.squarespace.com not be mentioned, it is one of the most complete solutions out there and solid also.
(Just a satisfied customer)
Yes, whoopie, boring. But guess what, small businesses need modern websites (not the free limited 1and1.com stuff). And many of them do not have the $$ and time resources to hire a web developer/designer to do a custom install of Joomla/WordPress or Whatever-CMS-that-is-so-not-friendly .
Going to a hosted on-demand solution for their website is a smart choice. We’ve have been doing it for the last 2 years at UGAL (http://www.ugal.com) and we will still be doing it next year
I am not worried about that.
I wasn’t even aware that these programs exist. I think of most sites as CMSs, for everything else, there are the established blog platforms. I’ll try this (s)tool as soon as I have the time.
An issue we face in this market is the fact that our product is not something that you can just try out and embrace. YOU NEED TO ACTUALLY BE NEEDING A WEBSITE. If you demo a CMS product, just as some passer-by TechCrunch reader, you won’t even be in the right mindset to be evaluating the products. So they view our products as boring, too saturated market, etc. We know we will never get the attention we deserve.
What we see (and others don’t) is that there is no TOP OF MIND product in this market. No one continually recommends a CMS to their friends. Without Techcrunch, how many of us would even know what products exist?
Before one criticizes, wait until you need a Website, and then evaluate all these products the way a buying consumer would. We don’t live off page uniques—we live off long-term relationships with individual customers.
I’m a big Doodlekit fan for obvious reasons. I created my site using its tools.
The best part about this product is that I don’t spend any time messing with code, so I have more time to write my stories.
If you want to see the sleeper in this category, check out our beta.
http://kommonwealth.com
Some examples sites built entirely with Kommonwealth (no templates used)
http://kommonwealth.com/pjclawgroup
http://kommonwealth.com/tlc
http://kommonwealth.com/wildernessalert
http://kommonwealth.com/maplebear
And my blog -> http://kommonwealth.com/tb
Some features
- Drag n drop page elements.
- wysiwyg text editing
- Multiple sites - intuitive namespacing
- Auto generated nav bars
- Auto centering of page elements
- 65+ font graphical image generator
- SEO mgmt.
- Advanced widgets, including myDB, project mgmt, RSS, Carousels, image galleries, mashups etc.
- Multiple file uploads / Image mgmt.
- Tons of widgets, including some beta social networking
There is a big problem with these web creation tools business owners don t want to have domain .dodlekit or .sampa etc … there are to reasons
1) everybody realize that you didn t pay for your site so your users will not trust in your business is like telling them hey i have no money to pay for professsional site,
2) it s diffcult for users to remember your url 3) Your custoers don t expect that a small medium or large company to use the same tool they use at home.
4) Do you take seriously a company which mail adress is abc..@hotmail i gess you just think they have no money to make a site.
5)These tools not alow you to take data from a database. in same cases you dont even change the font colours etc. Conclution i think this sites are appropiated only for home users but maybe i m wrong please share your thoughts and tell me if u would use these tools for business porpose how and why?
So how much does it cost to start up a web creator company?
You definitely need to salary a CEO with no hands-on IT experience a few hundred k, plus a sign on bonus. The CEO will need a secretary. Then a marketing firm should be retained. Project managers, accountants, employee benefit specialists are required. Oh yes, and you need programmers that are required to report to the Sales and Marketing VP.
And yes, I am being facetious.
Larry (#18): I continue to be fascinated myself as to how that list could possibly not include us
Once you get past the limited, ad-supported free version of doodlekit, you’d be getting a lot more for less from http://www.squarespace.com … I’ve been a very happy customer for 2+ years now. If you need a hosted site enough to pay for it, there’s just nothing better out there.
PS As for Blist, I’ve actually been ecstatically happy with http://www.dabbledb.com …