The following article appeared on the Webuser blog recently in a group test of online website builders. Moonfruit received the Gold Award but we were also pleased to see that our partners came 2nd and 4th.

The full article in pdf format can be found here Moonfruit_Web_User_review_Aug_2011121.pdf while the review of Moonfruit is reproduced below:

Moonfruit ❘ ★★★★★

If you’re looking for a simple way to put together a website that looks like it’s been designed by a professional, Moonfruit leads the way. Its attractive website isn’t just a shallow bid to get you interested, but a genuine indication of the kind of site you’ll be able to create.

Considering the calibre of website it aims to produce, Moonfruit is amazingly easy to get started with. To begin the 15-day free trial, just register a username, email address, and a password. Click one of the eye-catching templates (there are 100, and every one of them looks great) and your website appears in front of your eyes, ready and waiting for your content. Click a text box to enter new text, or click an image to change it.

There are some elements, however, that you can’t immediately change. Moonfruit uses a master page, which acts as the base layer of your website. This holds the elements that appear on every page, such as the title and navigation. It’s a neat system, once you get your head around it, since it ensures key elements are identical on every page. This makes your website look coherent and well-designed.

The basic package costs £4 per month, for which you get 500MB of storage for a single website. The number of pages is unlimited, and you get 10GB per month of bandwidth. This is actually not a huge amount of space, but it ought to be enough to hold a modest website with plenty of content, and you won’t be restricted by the page count.

If you double your payments to £8 per month, you can have a domain, PayPal integration, twice the storage and bandwidth, and the ability to create five websites. If you’re feeling really ambitious, there are also £15- and £35-per-month packages available. The first offers 2.5GB of storage, 15 websites and unlimited bandwidth, while the ‘full-throttle’ package gets you 5GB of storage and a whopping 50 websites.

Verdict: Moonfruit has led the pack in offering attractively designed websites that are easy to set up. This latest incarnation is no different, and offers a collection of gorgeous templates to choose from and a good smattering of features to play around with. The site is split into two layers, so you can’t muck up the overall design by changing things on your various pages. If you find that adapting the templates is a bit tricky, there are blank ones available that let you start from scratch.

Price: From £4

Features: ★★★★★

Performance: ★★★★★

Ease of use: ★★★★

Value for money ★★★★

Overall ★★★★★

For the original Webuser page, please click here