Airtel Website Builder Review
by Sadik on 05/01/10 at 3:53 am
Bharti Airtel had entered into the Broadband Internet sector as a logical next step from it’s Mobile services. Airtel has entered into a partnership with a company called Akmin which provides website Building Solutions for PC & Mobile to provide Website Building Solutions targeting the non tech professionals’ market in India. So basically Airtel is providing a 3 step website building solution where a client is required to sign up for the service, choose from predefined templates and upload their own content. They claim to have 15000 predefined templates from which customer’s can choose the look of their website. The service is however limited to their Broadband customers only. When going through Airtel’s offerings the things that struck me as Pros in favor of it were:
PROS
- Your Own Domain Name: Unlike free services like Google Sites or Blogger, Airtel is providing you your own domain name. So your site will not be something.googlesites.com or something.blogspot.com.
- One Stop Solution: You have a one stop place for all your needs, from taking care of Domain Name Registration to hosting to creating the website to tracking traffic on it etc.
However I am hard-pressed to find another Pro in favor of it. Going through their list of features, the Cons are obvious
CONS
- Maximum No. of Pages: WTF?, are we back in stone age or something? There were days about 5 years ago when websites were all made with hard coding and price was decided depending on the number of pages, the client needs. Nowadays any website building co. worth mentioning uses Content Management Systems or Tools where pages are auto-generated. So why would you want to fix your basic pages to 5? It really makes no sense other than the fact that the Standard Pack is simply a marketing Gimmick.
- No Google Adsense for Standard Pack: Again WTF? And why? I can see no technical reason. It’s again a definite strategy for users to upgrade to the Professional or E-Commerce Pack.
- Uptime: I wouldn’t go anywhere near a web host which says this:
Company strives for 99% uptime so that Customers can create & edit anytime. However, the service may be unavailable for short periods of time due to maintenance and upgrading. While the Website Builder service is unavailable, Customers will not be able to use it to create or edit their site, but their site will not otherwise be affected.
- Footer Restriction:
In websites created using Website Builder a text footer with a hyperlink to Website Builder would be set & the customer agrees not to remove it.
- Automatic Billing after Trial Period:
In case of Client taking a trial of the service, the billing would start once the trial period is over, if the user does not cancel the Trial period.
Airtel Website Builder Packages
The following are the features according to the three packages that Airtel is offering:
Airtel Website Builder Packages
Conclusion
Well, in conclusion, Airtel’s website features should be purchased if:
- You have absolutely no knowledge about Websites.
- You are happy with 5 (Standard) or 20 (Professional) pages.
- You are not really serious about Monetizing your website.
If however you don’t qualify according to these points you can think about the E-Commerce pack which is available at Rs 1000 per month. That gives you all the advanced features but at a very expensive price. In my personal opinion, their services are not worthwhile as long as the Number of Pages and Adsense restrictions apply on the Standard pack. You can get a far advanced website for less than half the E-Commerce Pack price using WordPress or Drupal or Joomla, which are all free. All you need is register your domain, purchase hosting and download WordPress. There are countless sites which help you (for free!) on getting your online presence started like CodeitWell.
