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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Location
    Atlanta, GA
    Posts
    107

    Is Soholaunch any good?

    Our new server with Fantastico has Soholaunch avalable but we have no experience with it at all.

    Anyone know how it compares to SiteStudio? Is it easy to use? How about trouble issues?

    Any info appreciated.
    TheBuzzard

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2000
    Location
    San Francisco, CA
    Posts
    233

    Thumbs up Soholaunch

    Soholaunch isn't the perfect site builder, but I think it's the best one so far. It's extremely affordable (starts at $9.95/mo), easy to use, and has a fantastic built-in shopping cart module. I don't think it even compares to Site Studio. To me, Site Studio is just a template generator. It doesn't have the ability to create potentially powerful web sites unlike Soholaunch. Give it a try.
    IceStorm.com - Top Provider of Web Hosting, Reseller Hosting, and Cloud VPS Plans.
    Why IceStorm? Two Words: Proven Reliability.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Posts
    30
    I developed a bunch of SohoLaunch tools for a client. I'm not too fond of it-- The fantastico script for it is lacking & buggy. It also will only let you login if you are using IE, a stupid requirement.

  4. #4
    I have it with Fantastico however I am not a big fan of it. It is buggy and annoying to use.

  5. #5
    Alright I'll bite and ruffle a few feathers while I am at it. First of all none of you have Soholaunch except Icestorm. What you have by your comments is a trial usage of Soholaunch through Fantastico so you don't have experience with the full package.

    Some of the so called bugs result from hosts not understanding the application licensing issue. Personally I have not found it buggy. When we worked with it we installed it on a number of servers. Had a permission problem at first and that was all. subsequent Fanstastico installations have all been flawless.

    IE complaints have been fast and furious for almost all sitebuilders with drag and drop until a few months back. My understanding is that Sohaunch is working on that. Sitezen has the same problem so the charge that IE as a requirement is stupid lacks some knowledge by itself.

    The charge that the script is lacking is pure nonsense and I doubt that anyone who has "developed tools for it" (would love to know what that is) would make such a claim. There are no sitebuilders with more features than Soholaunch period unless they are referring to working with the limited trial version (and why would someone develop tools for a trial application?).

    RIght now I like Soholaunch, with nods to Drag& Drop creator and Swsoft's Sitebuilder (but thats with reservation until we actually start working with version 2 released during Hostingcon.) I think right now these are the three contenders

    The only down side I see to Soholaunch besides the IE issue is that the editor is unconventional which is not a problem to newbies but may be a problem for those of us more experieced.

  6. #6
    The full version of Soholaunch Pro allows creating advanced sites with ecommerce, blogs, newsletters etc., which is its greatest advantage. The negative side is that it is not too intuitive/user friendly. Also, as gentooRIT mentioned, it will only work in Internet Explorer. Just check the browser trends:
    http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
    Only in 2005 IE went from ~70% to ~63%. It is not as bad as it looks though since most Firefox users are Windows users and can still run IE if needed.

    I would not recommend offering your clients Soholaunch Pro Base (the cheap $9.95/month version) if you advertize a free "site builder" included with your hosting packages. It is very limited in features and will show non-functional links to features that only exist in the full version - this will for sure confuse your customers. The 'Base' version is only good if you are looking to charge extra for the full version and are using the base version as a sort of a demo/upselling tool.

    The main advantage of Site Studio is that it is extremely user friendly. Remember that clients who are looking for a hosting package with a site builder are usually not very internet/computer savvy and will need support if your site builder is not simple/user-friendly enough.

  7. #7
    The negative side is that it is not too intuitive/user friendly
    Completely and absolutely disagree. We work with a number of hosts that use Soholaunch and they tell us that its user friendliness is its top draw. Soholaunch boards recently had a host that thought the same thing until they used it and made their technically challenged spouse use it.

    Thing is that intuitiveness is based on your experience. A host that has hard coded or used Dreamweaver is going to find a newbie tool unintuitive. I found Photoshop very unintuitive when I first started using it. Now graphic programs without layers annoy me to death.

    Site Studio is a joke. Its a straight jacket with no features but the templates being offered. I think the description of Site Studio as a template placeholder is very accurate. You can do almost nothing with it but add text and some images. All the three I mentioned previously are light years ahead of it. There is no point of having a sitebuilder your customers can do nothing with.

    Many hosts offer Soholaunch Pro base for free. Works out to about 50 cents or less a month for each customer using it.

  8. #8
    Harmolodic, thanks for your insights. I'm now considering SohoLaunch instead of SiteBuilder. I almost paid for SiteBuilder yesterday but was interrupted. Now I'm glad I was.

    LH
    If the web closed at midnight, what would YOU do?

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Zurich, Switzerland
    Posts
    774
    Soholaunch has bugs and problems but it's still the best I've seen this far. I'm licensing the full version for my customers, and it's really worth the price, the shopping cart is not the only special feature. I played around with it a bit and you can actually create things like a bunch of subsites that each have their own news (blog module), dates (calendar module), pics (photo album module) etc. While it doesn't make much sense to someone who can build dynamic sites, my non-tech-savvy customers gave me extremely positive feedback. Previously they've been installing portal, gallery and similar scripts from Fantastico and having problems making them into something like a website (PHP-Nuke e.g. is IMO nearly as difficult to configure and customize as writing something from scratch, and I say this after having written a couple of basic CMS from scratch). Then Soholaunch came around and they were very happy with it.

    Another big advantage is that you can actually create big complex dynamic sites around it and still give the client the same simple interface - you can add any number of website templates to a Soholaunch installation, all it needs is a couple of specific tags in the HTML-code. This gives the client a more powerful and less complex CMS-backend to manage his site.

    On the negative side, there are quite a couple of bugs I've encountered and also there are some over-rigid things like date being preformatted, which is quite annoying if you want to use it for a site outside of the US.

    All in all, I'd give it an 8 out of 10 which means it's recommended to use.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Sep 2000
    Location
    Maryland
    Posts
    537
    The only thing I hate about it so far is the lack of good templates. Other than that I think it gets the job done.
    VERVE Web Solutions, LLC
    http://www.vervesolutions.com
    New Name Same Quality Service since 2000!!
    Now offering SiteBuilder :: Build your site in 5 easy steps

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Zurich, Switzerland
    Posts
    774
    Haven't tried yet but I think you could take a standard TemplateMonster template and make it Soholaunch compatible in maybe half an hour.

  12. #12
    Its ok. the the problem with it is that it is web based and your
    customers can not try it before they sign up.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Apr 2004
    Posts
    32
    Hmmm..I want to love soholaunch..I agree..it is the best thing out there.. However, i think it is better "on-paper" than the reality. I have a love/hate relationship with the software.

    If someone is considering using it for their own site, I would say go ahead if you don't get frustrated easily and are willing to play a bit. The learning curve is not really about how to use the software, but how to work around all of the many "quirks" in the system. I however, lose a lot of sleep over my customers that are currently using it.

    If you are a reseller and are considering using it, I would recommend launching a few beta customers before you offer it widely. Most of my small business clients have absolutely zero experience, so they can't appreciate that it is the best thing out there. It is just frustrating to them.

    Here are a couple of examples of issues we have had:

    - JAPartyforHope.com: I lost this client as a direct result of the bugs in soholaunch. They finally gave up on the text editor becuase it was such a pain. If you just type directly into the editor all of the non-breaking spaces, quotation marks and apostrophe's show up as question marks (you can see a sample of this on my site (studiosoho.net/index.php?pr=Experts). We also had a major problem with the newsletter service. It worked just fine if the list was under 10 people, but as soon as the list grew to over 50, we couldn't send anything. Our host (hostdoggy.com) did a great job trying to make sure that it wasn't a mail server issue, but we never heard back from Soholaunch and ended up using GoDaddy's email marketing system instead. Finally, one day, the shopping cart encryption just stopped working. It was a bug and soholaunch responded very quickly, but by that time, my client had completely had it.

    - FatherHermanFund.org: same issue as above. We have had a terrible time getting them trained on it. They are computer novices, but even the process of adding photos to the site is tough on them. You have to go into one section upload all of the files, then leave that section, go to the page editor. Then drag-n-drop the photo and add it. It certainly isn't difficult once you get the hang of it, but it becomes really time consuming if you are adding multple photos. It takes like 15 clicks to do it.

    - HornRealtyGroup.com: This site just disappeared last week. We can log in, see all the pages we know everything is there, but the site doesn't come up. I have been trying all week to get help. Of course, I have to go through my hosting partner (VARhosting.net) who is the official SohoLaunch partner, but they have been trying to get a response all week to no avail. You can get support directly from Soholaunch for $99/year which I would be happy to pay if I had any confidence that I would get help.

    I do think the software is very buggy and I am happy to roll with the punches with a vendor who is able to do so as well. I would say about 50% of the time, they are responsive and very good. The other 50% - very painful. I would be willing to really stand behind it if I had a better feeling about the company and their development process. Although they are all nice and competent etc. Their tech support/customer service is severely lacking.

    DemoStorm: you seem to have a close personal or business relationship with them, so apparently you are getting better service then the rest of us.

    Just my 2 cents.

    Kelly

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Zurich, Switzerland
    Posts
    774
    The studiosoho.net/index.php?pr=Experts example shows the mentioned question marks when I click on it, but if I set the character encoding in my browser from unicode to western, they disappear (i.e. the page is displayed fine). I've seen this behaviour on some other sites too which maybe used Soholaunch, maybe not.

    The thing with the support being 50/50 is something I can second, at times they respond quickly at times my request seems to disappear somewhere down the line (and I'm a direct licencee).

    While Soholaunch could be a LOT better and easier to use, compared to what I could offer my clients before (auto-installed CMS like PHP-Nuke from Fantastico) it's a huge step forward.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Apr 2004
    Posts
    32
    RambOrc:

    thanks for looking at my page. yes. i create my templates in DreamWeaver and have wondered if there is something in my configuration of Dreamweaver that is causing my issues. I will check my encoding settings and see if it helps.

    Cheers.

  16. #16
    Originally posted by studiosoho
    DemoStorm: you seem to have a close personal or business relationship with them, so apparently you are getting better service then the rest of us.

    Thats not it at all but having been familiar with the company before its Fantastico integration I do understand how hosts have problems with support.

    Hosts are accustomed to ticket systems which to put it mildly is not Soholaunch's strength. I found out early that they favor phone support but ONLY FOR PARTNERS. I'll explain why that is.

    Theres been some discussion of this recently on their boards. I guessed and they confirmed one of the big problems - The free Fantastico trial. Frankly I think its a disaster for support. In this industry you say 6 months free and many hosts will drop it in to their package and never pick it up as paying clients. Meanwhile Soholaunch nicely but misguidedly attempted to give support to everyone - including free clients.

    In the make believe world of hosting clients on a $3 or less a month plans that seems about right but in the real world that spells disaster and overload. They admitted that had to stop so I am hoping for an improvement but until they transition their support atmosphere your host should get on the phone and they have been stellar by phone - long before our relationship had deepened. Others have said the same.

    Bugs? A couple anomalies with IE but I suppose we have been blessed we have almost no problems withthe system. To be fair though we didn't market it to our customers as a jack of all trades - sitebuilding and storefront was our foucus. Sometimes I think Soholaunch has too many features. I have never warmed or even seen the purpose for the blog component and we never used the newsletter system
    Last edited by demostorm; 06-25-2005 at 09:16 AM.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Zurich, Switzerland
    Posts
    774
    Problem is I'm in Switzerland so it's not so easy to just pick up the phone, I have to go with e-mail which sadly doesn't work that well with them.

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    Glendale, Az
    Posts
    34
    I offer my clients the full assortment of the Soholaunch package, at no cost, but the time I have spent supporting the application I could have bought a benz. If you need support, don't count on it via email or the forum because they are pretty much non existant. It always takes a phone call and they only call you back half the time. It took over a month before they replied to my bug.

    Bottom line......

    Two of the local businesses I sold my services to have sought business elswhere. Nothing ever worked right... Two more clients were lost by one of my resellers because of the same.....

    I pay well for the application yet it has never worked properly.....

    I support any program that makes my hosting biz that much better but how much patience is required to continue? A solid support system would really make the difference because it is possibly the best sitebuilder available.

    Thanks

    Donnie Petersen
    =================
    Administrator

  19. #19
    Fair analysis Donnie and as you may know I've raised those issues openly on their boards. They haven't ducked from it but answered that the complaints were legitimate due to the overload of Fantastico integration. They have stated they are working on it so time will tell. You just can't open the flood gates by giving six months free to every hosts (or host wannabe and not overload your system).

    I pretty much hated it when I saw the six month free offer. Led to alot of confusion too. Personally I think they'd be better off offering the web studio totally free with no support than offer a stripped down version of Pro for 6 months free. They only make about $10 per month for unlimited sites on a server. One good support call and profit is wiped out.

    Like I said we have had little problem with the app. ALL the clients we had on it (we are not hosts anymore as of a couple months) were using it as a store solution. Maybe that has something to do with it. At bare minumum it means we didn't have to worry about newsletter, blog, calendar etc.

    So if anyone is having reoccuring problems with those modules it might be a temporary relief to disable those mods in the partner login. The product is more than worth it as a sitebuilder and easy drag and drop cart application.

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    Glendale, Az
    Posts
    34
    In all fairness I think Netenberg wized up because of Soholaunch, it's been so buggy that the new host billing system they offer is beta. Don't take me wrong, despite the bugs it is stilll far superior than anything out there, very user friendly. (Soholaunch) and I still would recommend it to anyone with no web experience. In my opinion Soholaunch should have stayed beta, they jumped the gun. Now I have several clients that base their business's on the program and it makes my services look bad. I'm fortunate they know what is happening, it just takes one bad mouth to destroy all the hard work I've imployed. I really feel bad for them though having to explain the short comings of the system and getting blamed, it's really not their fault. Ultimately I guess it is because of the software they chose.........

    Where do they go now????

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Apr 2004
    Posts
    32
    The good news is that bugs and support issues are very fixable. Every software organization from Microsoft on down has dealt with meltdowns in this area. The question is, how are they going to tackle them and do they even have the resources to do it if they are only making $10/server.

    They do have a lot of users, myself included, that really want them to succeed..and be profitable. I just hope they have a strategy for getting there...soon!

    On a side note, I do think that this is an interesting case study of the pressure that the open source movement has put onto traditional software development. I think it has put a lot of pressure on software companies to offer free versions of their software. We've all gotten a bit spoiled with high expectations.

    IMO soholaunch would do well to take a note from the opensource book and form a usergroup to help them 1) create better documentation 2) build better templates 3) build a decent FAQ database to address the questions that get asked frequently in the forum. 4) most importantly - put in place a comprehensive testing methodology so that buggy software doesn't get out in the first place.

    Do they already have that and I am just unaware?

    KC

  22. #22
    Could you detail the bugs you are talking about?

    So far in this post I have seen a comment on a site just not appearig - the question mark display issue that a resolution has been posted for and a comment on the newsletter.

    Having a newsletter system is not mission critical to a sitebuilder. We have never used it extensively (to be honest only used it when doing demos for it) but if thats a major problem we just wouldn't offer it and its pretty easy to disable a module on soholaunch. Just trying to offer solutions.

    If I have some specifics then I'd be happy to raise it with Soholaunch but so far as I have seen a great many problems already have answers posted in the forums over there.

    Uploading to the application does have an extra step to it but bare in mind that thats probably a product of greater flexibility. Most sitebuilders you can only add images to. Soholaunch has a file system for adding all kinds of files.

    Where else to go? I suppose you can try Swsoft's sitebuilder or sitezen but for features you should know there isn't really much out there. Ecommerce in my opinion is just too important to pass on and I don't know anyhwere else you can get a drag and drop cart.

    Has anyone used the cart in Swsoft's sitebuilder 2?


    I'm not trying to state there aren't problems but there does seem to be a divide. Some people seem to have dealt with issues and use the software to great advantage. In my own experience I couldn't agree that it is beta software.

  23. #23
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Zurich, Switzerland
    Posts
    774
    I think it was a bad idea to give out unlimited free accounts. IMO it'd have been better to offer 3 full-featured licenses for the trial period, there would be way less support requests. Also, instead of the unlimited server base, it'd be IMO better to offer a full 10 for 9.99 (and leave the full 100 at $40 and the full unlimited at $60).

  24. #24
    Join Date
    Mar 2001
    Posts
    1,446
    We tried soho a few months back and found the bugs, lack of support at times, and the lack of decent templates too much to handle. Also, their business model is not sustainable IMNSHO, as they bring little recurring revenue as compared to the support and work that would go into such an application.

    A few bugs/issues I remember are:
    - Problem with image editor and cookies and Internet Explorer
    - Lack of support for Mac/Firefix/Netscape in the builder app.
    - Static page system for better search indexing had some flaws
    - Ecommerce, although nice in a simple kind of way, would generate more questions from clients trying to get just a bit beyond the very basic of systems
    - Fully dynamic sites with multiple database calls uses up a lot of resources
    - Persistent mysql connections being a requirement does not work well in a busy shared environment many times.

    I'm not saying they are the worst, but for us, the problems and concerns outweighed the benefits of their system.

    We decided to work with dedicated individual apps for each task, and make them one click installs from a custom control panel.

    - John C.

  25. #25
    On a side note, I do think that this is an interesting case study of the pressure that the open source movement has put onto traditional software development. I think it has put a lot of pressure on software companies to offer free versions of their software. We've all gotten a bit spoiled with high expectations.
    Great observation. You have no idea how much abuse they took for Netenberg's decision to offer the Sitebuilder within Fantastico - as If Netenberg was unaware before putting it in that it wasn't open source.

    There are many Fantastico users that think that every application within the autoinstaller by right has to be Open source and they have contacted Soholaunch using up Human resources complaining and whining that they have a right for the software to be free since its in Fantastico.

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