What is the difference between hosted website builders and website builder software?

You can actually get the convenience of hosted website builders with the flexibility of website builder software with UltimateWB, combining the advantages of those 2 traditional solutions into the BEST solution.  Let’s start with an explanation of Hosted Web Solutions vs Downloadable Web Software.

Hosted Web Solutions – your website builder is online, attached to your web hosting company.  Convenient because you can login to your website admin panel and create, design, and manage your website online from any computer.  Limited though because like I said, it is attached to your web hosting company, and also, the hosted web solutions on the market now are very, very limited in features and expandability.  For example, compare GoDaddy’s website builder, Yahoo’s Site Builder, Wix, Weebly, and VistaPrint with UltimateWB in the website builder comparison chart here.  You can’t add new features you want, even if you can code them or hire a programmer to write the code for you – they don’t allow it and it’s not possible with their web solutions.   If you find later that your website would benefit from a comments section, members area, e-commerce, or some other more advanced feature that your hosted website builder does not offer, the most you can do is email your feature request to them … fast forward…  i.e. most likely you need to switch your website builder.  And it’s not just about features, it can be the type of design or formatting you want.  Choosing a template and “customizing” it just isn’t the same flexibility as being able to create your own template, style, and formatting.  You might think that’s what you’re stuck with if you don’t know coding or don’t have a huge budget, but that’s not true with UltimateWB.

So with web hosted solutions you’re stuck with the features they have.  And also on the money side, you’re stuck with their web hosting prices, which may incur price hikes when they want.  You can choose to pay it, or lose your website and start all over.  Your web hosting is your website – lose that and lose your website.  That also brings in one more factor to consider – what if you don’t like your web hosting – what if they don’t provide the tech support you need or your website is offline a lot and you are not happy with the service.  Even if you prepaid and can get a refund, or didn’t prepay and are paying monthly as you go, you lose all that time you put in your website.  Also, if your are using a hosted web solution, make sure you own your domain name if you have paid for it through their company.  All domain names purchased through UltimateWB are owned by the buyer.

Downloadable Website Builder Software – the most commonly known one is probably Dreamweaver.  Expensive yes, but easy no!  You better know website coding if you want to create your website with Dreamweaver.  Check out the built-in features Dreamweaver offers in this website builder comparison chart.  There are barely any.  If you want to create a contact form you need to know php.  A member login?  You need to know php, mysql, jss.  Same with adding a comments area.  You need to know coding to create a drop down menu or even to make sure your website will be cross-browser/platform compatible, i.e. work and display on the major internet browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome, or work on people’s smartphones and tablets – that is a major portion of the web surfers (hence Facebook’s increasing focus on mobile ads).

Besides the coding requirement aspect, there is also the factor of convenience and ease of use.  Even if you do know coding, Dreamweaver may not be your #1 choice.  Each time you want to make an update to your website, you will have to edit your file, and reupload it to your server.  Also, coding everything – everyting – from scratch takes time.  Having a CMS (content management system) built-in for your website cuts down on the web development time by a lot.  But of course, it’s not worth it if it means you will be losing the flexibility that building from scratch offers.

This is where UltimateWB comes in.  It is website builder software, but it is online website builder software that you can upload to your own server or choose to use on the UltimateWB servers and take advantage of the excellent web hosting and free installation/upgrades services.  UltimateWB is very dynamic and very flexible.  How flexible?  If you want to compare it to something, it’s like a rhythmic gymnast doing oversplits.  The online website admin panel allows you to design, create, and manage your website from any computer with an internet connection.  The built-in apps are fully customizable and easy to use, requiring no coding experience.  But, at the same time, if you want, you can add/edit your own coding.  You can even copy/paste plugin and media codes, like for Google Analytics, YouTube videos, or other social media tools.  Test it out yourself on our online Demos!