Hosting and Site Builder selection

This week for my business class I had to research and evaluate a number of site builders and hosting solutions.

I took a look at weebly, wix, and squarespace for site builders and they look like decent options for someone who is going to do a drag and drop.  The Wix and Squarespace options were the most compelling, Squarespace looked the easiest to use, whereas WIX had a much better developer API than Squarespace.  I have to do a lot of custom development for my product line though so these drag and drop solutions just don't cut it.  Perhaps I'll use them in the future and I'll either go with Wix or I'll use Squarespace.  I've also thought about maybe using them for some of my landing page systems because they are a lot easier to use then the wordpress interface so that's a thought for the future.  As far as price goes they are fairly inexpensive at $20 a month for the business package on squarespace and ~12.50 a month for Wix.  However, since I pay nothing for wordpress that's something to consider.

I also had to consider hosting solutions.  If I had gone with a Wix or Squarespace they are the hosting provider and the site builder, but since I chose to use wordpress I had to use something else.  Now I've done a lot of research in this space before, but it was good to look across the landscape again.  I looked at a number of companies but I still didn't find anything that compared with the $5.00 a month option I'm getting from digital ocean for a good virtual private server.  Now as my business grows I'll probably have to spend more money to scale it that I otherwise wouldn't with Squarespace or Wix but I still can have the customization I need for my site.

One other thing I would mention is how important it is to get a good mentor.  I was able to answer a lot of people's technical questions in my business class on hosting and site builders because of my large amount of experience in this regard.  What I would love to find is someone who can mentor me on the business aspects just like I've been able to help people with the technical.  I know most businesses don't succeed on technical merit alone, but they need sales and marketing.  I wonder how much people enjoy sharing their knowledge just like I enjoy sharing my technical knowledge.  It will be interesting to see how I learn from my business class student peers as we get deeper into running our business.