One of the biggest names in the industry, the Homestead has been a pioneer in the drag and drop website building niche, the platform has a seen a considerable downfall in its popularity over the last decade or so. Being into existence for over 20 years now, the company was acquired by Intuit in 2007 and later was sold to Endurance International Group in 2012. Intuit did not know what to do with homestead, which led to its considerable downfall and this is the reason, it is where it is today now. However, being said that, let us look into more detail about the feature offerings of the Homestead for building a website and if it is a good bet for you to design your own new website.
- Editing Your Site
Once you register yourself on the Homestead platform with your email address and chosen password, you can select a template from over 200 plus designs for building your new website. You can filter through the options of available template using the keyword which best suits your business niche. After selecting the template, the design will be opened inside the platforms editor that will allow you to customize the website and or template using the simple drag and drop option. You can add different contents and pages to your website, insert a blog, or choosing different applications to be integrated – if your plan allows you to.
The editor also allows you to see the preview of the website in desktop or mobile view and redo or undo actions if needed. It has a nice UI that makes building a website relatively easy and comfortable experience.
- Features
The site builder allows the user to display images, YouTube videos, and galleries for your newly created website. You can also customize certain elements if you wish to do so. With its efficient image management functionality, users can upload multiple images and can properly organize them into a group of folders, if they like. You can even add a blog inside your website with the site builder.
- Support
With its limited capability and features, users might still want to try it and build a website using Homestead site builder. However, support is something where the company lacks exponentially in comparison to its competition. There is no published data available as to what a newbie should do when they encounter certain problems. The no way to get your answer available is by either speaking to the customer support or through community blogs, which are often cluttered with unnecessary questions and details. Even customer support has only one number in the US and the timing is also limited, making it a difficult option to choose for international clients. If you mail, then you probably have to wait for 2 weeks of time to get your question answered. That is a long time.
All in all, once a powerhouse for online website building, the Homestead has lost its juices and you will be better off choosing other options that have more functionality offering and features, as opposed to homestead.