My ride with a free web site builder called moonfruit has been a joyful one. After testing various free web site builders back in 2009 I picked Moonfruit to be the best one for my needs. Over the last 7 years I created multiple web sites without spending a dime. Their web site builder is easy to use and allows you to customize your site just the way you want it. Moonfruit advertisement on free plan sites was very subtle in the footer of the page. They didn't have annoying advertisements on the top of the page and I thought my site looked pretty professional considering it was done with a click and drag editor and using moonfruit's free plan. Another thing that I really loved was ability to connect your outside purchased domain even if you are on free plan. That was unmatched in the industry and to my knowledge none of the other free builders lets you do that. All of them I tested ask you to upgrade to a paid plan before you can connect your domain.
So for 7 years I had a great looking site with custom domain name and very limited small print moonfruit ad on the very bottom of my page. All I had to pay was 15 dollars per year for my custom domain name (I purchased it on 1 and 1 hosting). If I didn't care to have a custom domain everything would have been completely free.
Unfortunately in August of 2016 this sweet ride with Monnfruit abruptly ended. About a week before I was going to take off on a 3 week long vacation I noticed a message from Moonfruit.com announcing that they are discontinuing free plan and that all users have until September 1st to upgrade to a paid plan or lose their sites. In back of my mind I expected this deal that sounded too good to be true to end one day but I was really disappointed that Moonfruit gave us such a short notice . We only had 3 weeks to figure out what to do with our sites.
I scrambled to back up most important data from the sites that I didn't intend to keep. For the time being I kept two most important web sites that I couldn't go without at this time and purchased their paid plan. To be fair they did give us a 50% discount for the first 12 months so I paid about 40 dollars per site for 12 months.
I love the way my sites look like but in the next 12 months I will be seriously looking at other web builders. Once the initial 50% promotion is over moonfruit pricing might not be the best fit for me.
Aside from testing Wix I haven't tried any other free web builders out there in a while. I was pretty content with Moonfruit builder for the past 7 years but it's definitely time to shop around.
I uderstand that this company had to try to bring in more money from the free users but I was surprised they went away with free sites all together rather then just limiting them . Almost all other click and drag web site builders still offer a free version. Yes, it's more limiting in some aspects and has more prominent advertisement then old moonfruit but they still let you test their builder and have a free site. Strangely enough when you google moonfruit it still comes up as a free web site builder which seems to be falls advertising.
Other things that went downhill with moonfruit over the years are forum and some businesses block their site. I work at a large corporation that has 30000 employees and you get a blue screen when you try to open moonfruit.com . Moonfruit user forum was huge back in 2009, it helped me so much as I was learning how to use this builder. People were visiting it often and leaving questions and answers. Right now it's limited to two categories and it doesn't look like many people are commenting any longer.
Anyhow, I will be looking at other free builders or maybe at some more economical paid options.
My site was built for a tennis league that has 10 years worth of past scores and standings. All of this info is now in google sheets stored in my google drive so it can be easily moved to any site maker I choose. I have been using google docs to embed all the scores and standings in my sites using HTML snipet. It worked well and this way I don't risk my info being lost when these companies decide to change plans.
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