[elementfusion]

Hi everyone,

We offer a web-based content management system for web designers. It's called Light. You can private label the system with your brand and resell it as your own. It is extremely flexible with custom designs. It lets you design and build websites that your clients can manage themselves. It's really easy to use and you can make money every month reselling it.

If you would like to check it out and leave your feedback here, we would appreciate hearing from you on what you think about the product and how we might be able to improve it.

Check it out at: speaklight.com.

Thanks,

Tim

[iblastoff]

not sure why anyone would want to pay a monthly fee just to use a cms?

[bluesage]

The idea and concept seems interesting however Im not sure I fully understand what your offering. It seems to be like a hosting solution combined with an online webpage builder with advanced features.

I think it would be preferable if the application would be installabel on personal servers just like most CMS applications.

Im not sure how it works, an account per website on the application ?

[iblastoff]

Originally Posted by bluesage

The idea and concept seems interesting however Im not sure I fully understand what your offering. It seems to be like a hosting solution combined with an online webpage builder with advanced features.

I think it would be preferable if the application would be installable on personal servers just like most CMS applications.

Im not sure how it works, an account per website on the application ?

the concept seems odd. it seems like they want your designer/developer->client relationship to be ideally set up like this:

you set up site on speaklight. you then for some reason, have to pay re-incurring monthly payments TO speaklight just to have your clients site up, all the while your client is supposedly paying you more than what you are paying on a monthly basis as well just to keep their site online??

i'm not sure how that is beneficial to anyone. you can find much cheaper hosting solutions than even speaklights cheapest offer of 19$/month and even at that rate you're only allowed to have 10 pages and 1 user?

and the feature list checklist itself is a joke.

-Text/images!
-Files/Links!

Wow, if you consider those to be 'features', i'm not surprised you're charging $129 PER MONTH for the 'premier' package which basically equates to any other decent host who charges 5-10$ per month for what you are offering, except you have your own choice of free open-source CMS to use, exempt of any ridiculous # of page/user limitations, as well as most likely getting more storage in general. oh and saving your clients money.

[Transmogrify]

I don't know.. $129 a month? I hope it's fully managed for that kind of money. What is it based on? php or something else? Can you customise the CMS or the front end to add specific functionality? For $129 a month, it's going to have to be a seriously impressive and functional CMS and a fully managed server.

[elementfusion]

Thanks for the feedback so far. We appreciate it.

Our product is targeted at those web designers who either don't know how to, or don't want to take the time to configure and host their own solution. Naturally, there is a price advantage and a customization advantage with open sourced software, but there is a time factor in that the time (and knowledge) required to install, configure and maintain / upgrade that software is substantial.

With Light, everything is hosted and maintained completely by us, hence the monthly fee. The system allows designers to easily add multiple websites for their clients and brand the interface with their own brand. They can maintain all client websites from one account dashboard. Setting up a new website literally takes just seconds, and the CMS functionality is made such that it is extremely easy to use.

We are finding there is a quite a market for the product among designers who don't know how to host / configure themselves and even those who do, but need an easier solution for their smaller clients.

I hope this clears up some of our intent. To answer the more specific questions, it is built in ASP.NET and the functionality is not customizeable. It works beautifully with custom designs, however. We fully manage the servers and the application so the user has none of that to worry about.

I appreciate the feedback and would love to hear any more comments you guys or others might have.

[Transmogrify]

While not having seen the CMS, 129 a month seems really, really expensive for what you're offering. I'm sure you've got a market but I dunno.. seems like a lot of money to me. Good luck all the same.

[elementfusion]

Yeah, the premier plan at $129/month is only used on occasion. It provides for unlimited users so it is good in a situation for creating an intranet or other multi-user, permission controlled environment. The $69/month plan is most popular, with the $19 and $29 plans being up there as well.

[EngAdven]

The concept is good. Every web design company should offer this to avoid the low budget clients nobody wants.
An alternative is website design software and site builder optimized for search engines
This is a downloadable webuilder so only a one off fee and no servers to worry about. Earnings are automatic through the inbuilt affiliate links.

[roto]

element, is this your voice(?):

Video: Your designs | Light

You don't sound like a native Oklahomian...

[crewebiker]

Designers who don't know how to manage hosting etc? Ok... i know some designers only do the graphics and the css etc and don't have a clue about writing their own cms with php or something, but even the most simplistic designers know how to take third party (usually free) cms software and bang it on their own hosting for a fraction of what you're offering.

If they don't even know that then I'm surprised that they even label themselves as designers.

My brother in law, he's a graphic designer by trade, but has done the odd small website from home for a friends business etc and done a pretty god job considering he doesn't label himself as a WEB designer and he knows no where near as much as professional web designers.

Sorry if I'm coming across a bit arrogant but I have an image in my head of some 'designer' coming to use this system, and his/her client being totally overcharged for something that a more knowledgeable designer could have done cheaper and probably better, i.e. a more unique system, own design etc.

[EngAdven]

No one will disagree with that crewebiker, but that's not the point.
There are lots of people that don't want to pay website designers and just want to make a low cost site themselves using a CMS or site builder.
It's time consuming to set up and manage a Joomla site for them so you'd have to charge but it would be good to be able to offer your clients a more simple, low cost branded system they can just use themselves. Generally web designers don't want clients with very low budgets so why not offer them a self build system where you still make some money but do no work, you also keep them talking to you for when they want additional services or an upgrade.

[iblastoff]

Originally Posted by EngAdven

No one will disagree with that crewebiker, but that's not the point.
There are lots of people that don't want to pay website designers and just want to make a low cost site themselves using a CMS or site builder.
It's time consuming to set up and manage a Joomla site for them so you'd have to charge but it would be good to be able to offer your clients a more simple, low cost branded system they can just use themselves. Generally web designers don't want clients with very low budgets so why not offer them a self build system where you still make some money but do no work, you also keep them talking to you for when they want additional services or an upgrade.

uhh what??? isn't joomla or any other competent cms basically a 'self build' system? if joomla is too 'complicated' then use something simpler like textpattern or wordpress. how exactly are sites built faster/cheaper using 'speaklight' as opposed to any other free, open-source cms? you're still using a cms except you/your client has to pay monthly to even use it.

this is a blatant rip-off pure and simple.

[IronGod]

all bullshit....go get a joomla system and pay someone 10$ a year to manage the shit...

[jekie]

My issue with Light was it gave the users too much control. I personally want to lock a site down so that its editors would only be able to update a few things:

• h1 text
• paragraph text

Light offered the ability to add blogs, calendars etc. I couldn't turn this feature offering off. I trust users to make small changes, but when they have the ability to add pages, and add new features, they will quickly degrade the user experience because they don't know when these features are appropriate.

I'm currently evaluating Contribute, but all of my XHTML compliant pages break in edit mode.

If anyone has a good solution for me, I'll be eternally grateful.

~jeff

[EngAdven]

>> Joomla is a self build system.
Yes. But as a web designer I'm not going to tell my clients to build their own sites with it. Most clients would not even even have the skills to maintain the content let alone set it up.
The point is webdesigners need a solution for their clients as Jekie suggests, e.g. simple and it takes no time to setup and learn.
If the client does not have the budget for you to make a proper site then at least have an instant site builder solution to offer so you can make a bit of money from them.
Either way, Joomla is certainly not the best solution for this type of smaller text based site anyway.

[web design NI]

Don't think any developer is going to pay that kind of cash for a CMS that they cant edit themselves. We built our own and only offer it exclusively to our clients as we wanted to have control over our own code and this way we know it inside out you can check it out @ go-udo.com