Wix.com vrs MediaToNet Review

This review, by PC Tech Review, summarizes the features and the drawbacks of WIX, some of which are hidden from the user until the users finally find out about all the problems after their site is already created!  Below is the review "Flash-on-the-Fly is not necessarily the best solution".

Flash-on-the-Fly is not necessarily the best solution

The introduction of the long awaited WIX, along with other similar rivals, has now arrived in beta testing.

First, the concept of WIX, creating of on the fly automated flash sites is a great concept.  If this were possible, many larger corporations would be using this type of system.   However, in the design of the sytem, several HUGE problems have been discovered and it is only fair the alert the user of the positives as well as the negatives before using any solution.

Posifitves of WIX:

Flash site, created for little or no money, which can be changed by the user on the fly with a log in account for a flat hosting fee.

Negatives of WIX  and why any serious company should never use WIX:

1. NO PROFESSIONAL EMAIL ACCOUNTS- The first and most serious drawback of WIX is that you pay for hosting fees, but, get NO EMAIL ACCOUNTS- NOT EVEN ONE EMAIL ACCOUNT! But the worst problem with this fact is that you pay for HOSTING FEES, and you can't even get your own professional email setup, such as YourName@YourCompany.com - Instead, they instruct the user to go to google or yahoo and get an account. HOWEVER, having a name like tim@yahoo.com or tim@rocketmail.com is just very unprofessional compared to tim@AccountingSolutions.com , which has the name of the domain in the email. MediaToNet always gives users UNLIMITED email accounts which contains their company name in the emails, for a professional looking web solution, which users can set up in their own account.

2. SERIOUS SEARCH ENGINE FLAWS - The main reason for having a site, simply put, is to get noticed and get our there in the world and attract visitors from around the world and around your block. The main benefit for having a MediaToNet site is that every site is SEO optimied for EVERY PAGE on the site. However, the WIX solution, which is a flash encoded site, only shows up on the search engines on the main page. Although WIX site claims that WIX is SEO friendly, the fact is clear that only the first page, which is the flash object, is indexed on the search engines. This is a HUGE problem, as you create artices and other pages, they will be invisible to the search engines. Even if WIX places the text of the page into the site, it will only return to the first page and not the individual pages of the site. This is a very serious search engine flaw which Media To Net has a HUGE ADVANTAGE.

3. SLOW AND SLUGGISH UNCOMPILED DYNAMIC FLASH - The Wix created sites are done on the fly, therefore, the sites show up as FLASH, however, they are actually running on the fly, instead of COMPILED. A normal flash site is compiled once and then runs super fast for its visitors. Using WIX, however, your site is run on the fly, dynamically, making the run time very slow. Compared to MediaToNet.com all flash is always compiled so it runs very fast for its viewers. Additionally, Wix offers FREE sites, and with thousands of sites being created for FREE, the hosting is VERY SLOW, the average speed it takes for each page to load in wix, righ now, is OVER 10 SECONDS compared to less than ONE SECOND for MediaToNet, on average. Corporations have a 5 second RULE, they will not allow any site to load in less than 5 seconds per page. The 10 second or more per page delay in WIX makes most serious sites unusable. What's worse is that the delay in seconds seems to be growing as more FREE users sign on and create sites with wix.

4.  LIMITED FEATURES DON'T USE MAIN REASON FOR FLASH - The main reason for using flash in the first place, is to interactively ENGAGE your users with real live dynamic features.  However, the WIX concept doesn't use any of the main reasons for using flash in the first place.  Instead, the WIX solution is for a  graphical flash design only.   There's no advanced features or code that will make your site interactive for your users, just a visual interface built in flash.

5. Bugs and slow design time - You can spend hours and days trying to design a simple site in WIX, which can be accomplished in MediaToNet and many other systems in only minuites.   Afer a design in WIX, the pages, when you add content to them, cause the display to make the site appear very small on the users screens with bugs that seem to appear and cant be resolved easily by the user. I guess why they say its still in BETA, due to all the bugs in the system, they have been designing WIX in 2006 and it is still in Beta testing.

6. FEE Structure subject to increase and high plans actually very costly- Another really big drawback of WIX is that the Terms of Service (TOS) state the the fee structure can change at any time. Therefore, the $9.99 you pay each month right now, is subject to increase at any time. If you have a shopping cart or advanced access, then you can pay upwards of $39.99 per month. Calculating that out, that is about $500 per year. If you keep your site for 5 years, you are actually paying WIX $2,500 for that FREE Flash site. You could have designed your own compiled site for about $500 to $1,000 and never pay the high fees over and over. The price savings that seems to come with WIX is actually no savings at all. Unless you want the free site with WIX plastered all over it, there is realy no REAL cost savings when you calculate the cost over time using WIX.

7. Little or No Support - Try to reach a WIX operator is virtually non-existant. If you need support or help, you can try to call or email, but the huge amount of FREE users and emails that they get, most emails are either not answered or returned as undeliverable in the WIX system, therefore, unfortunately, there is little or no support in WIX. Another major drawback, any serious user or company would need some serious support.

In summary, most of the users in WIX are relatively young, unexperienced web users, who are simply looking for a flashy site. A serious web professional or professional company who needs a serious site would probably find the WIX system useless due to the above serious flaws, although, the concept of WIX is a really good one, but the reality is a much different one.

PC Tech Review, 01/10/10
 

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