I am interested in starting a new brand specifically for those individuals who would like to create a website, but don't have the technical know-how. What is the best site builder software available for this type of customer?

There are a ton of website builders which you can supply to your clients for them to utilize. Two of the nicer and most popular ones would be SiteBuilder (what an original name :rolleyes:) and Site Studio. Both of them are rather popular in the industry, and are very easy to use.

Some control panels (I can't think of any right off-the-top of my head), have site builder modules of some sort built right into them - which are similar to "one-click-installs" to some degree. Take a look around the forums here and see what you can find.

All online site builders is not suitable for you needs.
dreamweaver or frontpage will be solution

I am using Sitezen, it has plugins for Directadmin and Plesk which makes it easier to integrate, relatively easy to use even for non techies.

I would think DreamWeaver and FrontPage would be pretty complex for newbies just wanting to start a small quick website. I am looking for an easy to use online solution.

We evaluated www.rvsitebuilder.com and www.sitezen.com.

RVSiteBuilder

It "won" for being idiot-proof. It is very simple to use and allowed our test customers to create their own website within a few minutes.

It "lost" for having very ugly templates. Yes, the customer was able to build a website, but all those flourescent colors are an eyesore. They need to hire a good web designer instead of producing all those crappy templates.

SiteZen

It "won" for being a very good online editor that allows some very advanced design work to be done. The system is intuitive for anyone who already knows how websites work, how web design works, etc.. It also has some very nice looking templates.

It "lost" for being over-complicated and too complex for "idiot" customers who did not know anything about websites or web design. Most of these customers gave up after about 10 minutes of trying to "fix" the template they had chosen to make it look what they wanted, and then they ended up breaking things.

Summary

We chose rvsitebuilder as the solution for our needs, because the target market for this system is idiot users who just need something that is idiot-proof. Having a nice looking website is secondary priority.

If your target market is more interested in producing a nice looking website, and is willing to spend the time to learn sitezen, then I think it would be a better solution.

Personally, I think sitezen is the "better" product... but it was just too complicated for our target market.

Hope that helps with your decision.

We evaluated www.rvsitebuilder.com and www.sitezen.com.

RVSiteBuilder

It "won" for being idiot-proof. It is very simple to use and allowed our test customers to create their own website within a few minutes.

It "lost" for having very ugly templates. Yes, the customer was able to build a website, but all those flourescent colors are an eyesore. They need to hire a good web designer instead of producing all those crappy templates.

SiteZen

It "won" for being a very good online editor that allows some very advanced design work to be done. The system is intuitive for anyone who already knows how websites work, how web design works, etc.. It also has some very nice looking templates.

It "lost" for being over-complicated and too complex for "idiot" customers who did not know anything about websites or web design. Most of these customers gave up after about 10 minutes of trying to "fix" the template they had chosen to make it look what they wanted, and then they ended up breaking things.

Summary

We chose rvsitebuilder as the solution for our needs, because the target market for this system is idiot users who just need something that is idiot-proof. Having a nice looking website is secondary priority.

If your target market is more interested in producing a nice looking website, and is willing to spend the time to learn sitezen, then I think it would be a better solution.

Personally, I think sitezen is the "better" product... but it was just too complicated for our target market.

Hope that helps with your decision.


Thanks a very informative review.

I'm looking for one too as ONE of my customer request it. And the price of the RV are not bad too. Maybe I don't make money from this customer, but maybe others will find these useful or may attract new client because of it.

I like the "try out module" with RV...

Are there any site builders where you aren't restricted by pre-set templates? Ones similar to Geocities, for example (but obviously not hosted by them) where it is very easy to use, seems very intuitive and yet you can place your items absolutely anywhere you like without just filling in blank spaces in a template?

The ones mentioned above like RVSite Builder sound like you have to go according to the templates provided. Same with Site Reptile. As nice as templates might be, they just might not be the look you want for your particular website. I would want my own original design. You can do that with Geocities, but of course there are other limitations and you can only get a virtual domain name, not a proper one with them.

i think one good option is the sitebuilder from sw soft. it is not as clunky as it used to be, and the templates are the most attractive that i have seen so far. to the novice customer, this is the most impressive part. and there is a lot of variety.

Is there anything similar to the builder that HomeStead and GeoCities provide?

RVsitebuilder is great for "noobs" it handles forms easily and, better than anything else about it no matter how much a customer plays around with it -- It's very hard for a user to break it.

Swsoft's SiteBuilder is definitely a great product and has some of the best templates I've ever seen when it comes to the online site builders. Their new version 3 is definitely heading in the right direction but can be a bit tricky for the end users to setup on their end when it comes to the publishing settings. It also requires special PHP modules on each server it publishes to regardless of the modules used in the template so be prepared to recompile Apache + PHP on each server you wish to have it publish to.