Moonfruit – Stylish Sites Without the Cost

Moonfruit is a website creation tool that lets users build stylish sites for business or personal use without spending a dime in the process. Individuals and entrepreneurs who need sleek, branded websites but don’t necessarily have the time or the money to spend creating them from scratch would be smart to check out what Moonfruit’s templates can offer.

Moonfruit’s website builder tool is completely free, which means there is no reason not to head over to Moonfruit.com and start designing your new site right away. Scroll through screenshots of sample designs, and click on the site that you like best. Once you’ve created an account, you’ll be directed to an editing page where you can customize the site to your heart’s desire. Add new design elements, change the dummy text already on the page, and upload your own images to appear on the site. When you’re done with your design, click “View my site” to get a better idea of how the final product will look. Moonfruit gives you two options when publishing your new site: free or paid. Free sites don’t cost you a dime, however you are required to update them at least once every six months as part of Moonfruit’s terms of service. Paid sites, meanwhile, come with additional storage, mobile optimization, and a handful of other useful features.

Not only does Moonfruit help people launch their own stylish, customized websites, but the web-application also offers a useful ShopBuilder tool that online retailers can use to create online shopping outposts that are integrated with PayPal. Shopping sites built with Moonfruit are optimized to work on mobile phones, making it easy for shoppers to make purchases at any time, day or night.

Practical Uses:

• Create a stylish website for your new restaurant
• Build a personal site to promote your new freelance career
• Start selling the products you design online
• Increase visitors to your online retail site by creating a blog for your business

Insider Tips:

• Users can choose between free and paid websites
• Moonfruit gives people access to royalty-free images from Getty Images
• Google Analytics can easily be set up for any website created with Moonfruit
• Pages built with the ShopBuilder tool are integrated for payments with PayPal

What we liked:

• Online retailers can automatically ‘push’ new products to Facebook and Twitter
• All Moonfruit sites are search engine optimized
• Member-only pages are great for professional groups and organizations
• Moonfruit users can easily create blogs that link to their new websites

What we didn’t like:

• Retailers don’t automatically get email alerts from Moonfruit each time a new order is placed

Alternatives:

• Weebly – http://www.weebly.com
• Yola – http://www.yola.com

Company Info:

• Launched: January 2000
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: London, England
• Founded by: Wendy Tan White and Eirik Pettersen
• Web site: http://www.moonfruit.com

Costs:

• Free web pages
• Standard plan is $12/month
• Plus plan is $20/month
• Max plan is $32/month