The internet is exploding with website building services. Who knew there were so many alternatives to WordPress and Drupal? Here’s my list of notable ones.

Hosted DIY – no html or css required but it can help

• http://orbs.com/  No blogging or galleries
• http://sidengo.com/  Good integration with Facebook. Might be flash
• http://flavors.me/  Integrates all your media channels
• http://www.pageyourself.com/ Makes facebook tab pages
• http://www.webblox.com/
• http://www.intuit.com (Homestead) Drag and drop design, ecommerce
• http://www.livebooks.com/ Photography websites. Livebooks Scaler – 90 responsive designs
• http://mywebsite.1and1.com Static brochure site only. No dynamic functions.
• http://wordpress.com Blogging community with great SEO.
• http://www.weebly.com/  Drag and drop design. Have education version and designer version with auto-billing to clients.
• http://www.wix.com/ Used to be just Flash. Now includes HTML5 websites
• https://www.yola.com/ Premium includes shopping cart for extra $19/mo
• http://www.wopop.com Websites and Stores but free sites have ads
• http://www.jimdo.com/ Websites and stores. Free version has ads. Funky domain name transfer though and not very flexible for custom designs.
• http://www.webs.com/ part of vistaprint. Lots of apps from third parties including calendars and seo
• http://imcreator.com/ Designer friendly… can start with blank site. Not many widgets.
• http://bandzoogle.com/ Band and musician websites with audio downloads, album downloads, calendars, email
• http://www.letseat.at/ Restaurants and bars – menu & facebook integration, edit css
• http://www.happytables.com/ Restaurants- wordpress based but hosted, fully mobile responsive, complete with menus, online food ordering, events, social, and email integration.
• http://www.snappages.com/ Nice widgets including calendar and widgets inside blog articles. Ugly sample websites though.
• http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/website-builder.aspx Yikes! One thing… I’ve gotten a few clients when they realized they couldn’t make a decent website themselves with this application.
• http://muse.adobe.com/ Image based static sites.
• http://www.moonfruit.com/ Another Flash nightmare
• http://bellstrike.com/ free websites for nonprofits with wepay donations
• http://leeflets.com/ brand new service not yet launched

Hosted Designer-Friendly CMS Services – DIY’ers would struggle

• http://breezi.com/ html5
• http://www.lightcms.com/ eCommerce, event calendar, image galleries, ftp access, make your own theme with html/css, good seo, donation buttons.
• http://www.webpop.com/ For designers/developers. Write html and add tags.
• http://www.webvanta.com/ Use your own html and add tags to create templates with editable regions. Differentiation is custom databases. Define your fields and how you would like them displayed
• http://www.squarespace.com/ New version 6 is just like many other CMS apps. They no longer have anything special. Easy drag design interface. Blog and galleries but no event calendar.
• http://vaeplatform.com/ (previously Verb) Their website doesn’t work in IE 9.
• http://www.drupalgardens.com/ Full drupal in a hosted environment. You can export to self-host at any time.
• http://home.mawebcenters.com/ Design from scratch.
• http://www.dotnetnuke.com/ Possibly belongs under Enterprise.

Hosted/Hybrid For Web Designers Only – html and css knowledge required

• http://www.cushycms.com/en Add a hosted CMS admin to a self-hosted static website. Add classes to tags to make editable areas, images, headings. Then give Cushy ftp access to your server. Limits you to number of websites.
• http://www.pagelime.com/ Same concept as CushyCMS above, but with the added feature of editing your server pages live to insert pagelime classes. Also handy way to manage images and photo galleries with resizing.
• https://www.freecms.com/ Same concept as CushyCMS above but limits your to 5 editable pages per website without paying a monthly fee. Unlimited number of websites.
• http://expressionengine.com/ A commercial product built on an Open Source foundation. Start with your own html and css code. You give EE ftp access to your server.
• http://osmek.com/ Store and edit content types online on Osmek servers. Osmek then uses an API to write the content to pages on your self-hosted web pages. Content includes blogs, galleries, events, shows, banners, podcasts, listings, contacts, emailer. A general understanding of php is helpful to implement.
• https://grabaperch.com/ Perch. Cool add-on to existing self-hosted sites. Add editable regions. Insert add-ons such as blogs, galleries, calendars. License is a one-time charge.
• http://selectorapp.net/ Make a static site. Then the app automatically makes editable regions.
• www.backstageyoursite.com Event calendars, email marketing, blogs, memberships (hosted or self-hosted)

Hosted Enterprise (large business) – For Front End Developers or Host-Preferred Designers

• http://businesscatalyst.com/ Built-in customer database and email marketing. Write your own html, add tags to it, have it wrapped in BC’s wrapper with logo & nav. There is a one-time partner fee for designers to start.
• http://www.crownpeak.com/
• http://www.ektron.com/
• http://www.bridgelinedigital.com/
• http://www.compasswebpublisher.com/

Self-Hosted Open Source

• http://wordpress.org/
• http://radiantcms.org/
• http://modx.com/ Use your own html/css and inject modx tags.
• http://textpattern.com/
• http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/ Can create blogs, but it is not their strong point.
• http://koken.me/ for designers and photographers. Download to your own host.
• http://drupal.org/
• http://www.joomla.org/
• http://typo3.com/
• http://www.alfresco.com/ Has online community version plus self-hosted enterprise version with support subscription.
• http://www.onehippo.com/ Geared toward education, finance, and manufacturing industries. For experienced developers.
• http://umbraco.com/ Built on .net
• http://www.madebyfrog.com/ open source
• http://www.concrete5.org/ open source