Over the past few weeks, Intuit, the same company that makes Quickbooks, has been advertising the heck out of their ‘website builder’ software. And because I’ve had several past, current, and prospective clients ask and heckle about the prices associated with setting up a website, I’d like to offer a little insight to this Intuit product.
The “For as little as $5 / month” tag they advertise on the radio might as well be “As little for $5 a month.” That Starter Package will only provide you with 5 pages, and barely enough storage space to showcase a few high quality photos and PDF downloads. That also doesn’t include a domain name or any email addresses.
The Platinum Package for $50 per month won’t be enough. Yes, they do give you 10 gigabytes of storage and unlimited pages, but they don’t give any functionality outside of words on a page. Remember, the purpose of advertising is to impress people, not to just slap words on a page and hope they care or are interested enough to read it.
Intuit’s “professionally designed templates” are garbage. A website should be built around a brand’s image and appeal to it’s viewers. If the site looks like a cheap template, your business will look like a cheap template.
Their claims to ‘get you to show up in search engines’ are bogus. I’ve looked at several sites created with Intuit’s site builder, and not one of them utilizes the latest SEO strategies. If you think your new Intuit website will show up in Google, you’re in for a surprise.
And I almost forgot to mention – how trustworthy is a company that sells you a piece of software through Amazon.com that arrives with no software in it? (click here to see -> http://bit.ly/2DMWS5) There is no disc, no program, just a website address printed on a sheet of paper directing you to Intuit’s website.
So, if you sell trinkets, don’t pretend to build websites. We’ve spent years devoting our attention to the web and everything surrounding it. You should spend years learning everything there is to know about trinkets, and hire a web expert when you need a website. You’ll be much happier with the end result.
