[REVIEW] SiteZen Sitebuilder

[iceuk626]

SiteZen Sitebuilder Review

www.sitemagix.com


First of all I’d like to point out that I’m not connected with the development of sitezen in any way, shape or form, I only hold a license for there product as a hosting provider.

I purchased my license for SiteZen just over a year ago and have seen it develop into what I see as the ideal sitebuilder for a serious webhost.

Some of the features I’d like to point out:

SiteZen gives you the chance to offer your users two different versions of SiteZen, Instant Zen or Zen Pro.
Instant Zen is designed for novice users who just want to upload pictures, change text and add pages.
Zen Pro has more advanced features such as multi-site support, full css editing and page masters support.

SiteZen has a good selection of templates and a great looking user interface, and is now fully compatible with firefox!

Installation

SiteZen installs seamlessly on a CentOS 4 and CentOS 5 box running Directadmin.

All that’s needed to install SiteZen is there installation script downloaded direct from there website and a simple bash command to start the installation.

User / Admin login

siteMagix have developed there own Directadmin plugin for SiteZen. Users can login direct from the DA control panel without entering there username or password to access SiteZen . To access the admin panel of SiteZen all you need to do is login to your DA admin account and click on the Zenadmin button in the control panel.

Licensing

I don’t really want to go into much detail on this subject, due to the fact that there website explains it in better detail than I can here. They have a license plan to suit everybody’s circumstances and budget.

I’ve always thought there pricing was fair and the grandfathering scheme is an excellent feature.

Admin features

In the admin interface you can setup demo accounts, activate licenses, edit branding, setup users, update SiteZen, setup resellers, create packages, setup servers, setup free trials and check SiteZen logs.

There are two ways of activating a sitebuilder account for a user, either manual or automatic. Manual activation is as simple as logging in as an admin and selecting the instant or pro version you want them to use. Automatic activation is done by creating a package in SiteZen that matches a package in your directadmin control panel.

Branding SiteZen to your own hosting company is as easy as changing a few logos and lines of text.

SiteZen lets you setup a demo account so users can give it a whirl before they make the decision to use it or not. Free trial accounts can also be setup and if the users decide to host with you, any sites they created with the free trial can be imported to there new account.

User Features

SiteZen give the user access to a fully featured WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface which is fast to say the least, great image handling, SEO, Paypal shopping cart integration, javascript & PHP support plus many more handy features, too many to mention, you really need to see there demo to get the full picture.

Basically I think SiteZen is a great product, backed with fast customer support and regular updates SiteZen is great value for money and I will continue to use it on all my servers.

 

[rldev]

With all due respect,this sounds more like a promo then an actual review.

 

[iceuk626]

With all due respect,this sounds more like a promo then an actual review.

I can understand what you are saying, maybe it does read like a promo, it must be the fact that i think this is a fantastic product.

 

[rldev]

Yes but you really haven't explained why it is. Last time I check the product had some serious limitations concerning Firefox. It does not have adequate functionality in terms of an advanced website(real shopping cart and blogs, etc like SohoLaunch does. I wish it did. Paypal shopping cart is simply not enough for a pro version.

 

[Zoner]

Hi,

my option too We are using this product our servers too.

Here developmet about this product:

http://support.sitemagix.com/index.php?topic=253.0

They promised new version os say publish beta on may, now this "same" beta still is septemper, almoust "6" month, and still waiting this (Then coming support for firefox and safari)

Other thing we are in scandinavian, then they contact form on sitezen product, i complained 5 times, when using form email/contact form, they not mime encode form emails/headers missing, so ä ö å not working, and our customer complains lot off this.

So still waiting when fix this bugs, only got answer, use google email (little bit difficult to say to our customers)

it not too difficult to get this work, ex. all email to UTF-8

But overall, its good product, license options are good too.

Think this is only one software, which support DA panels ...

 

[magixman]

Just a quick note ragarding UTF-8 in form-mails and support for Firefox/Safari. Both issues are resolved in the current release that went stable this week.

 

[inferencia]

Can this program be translated into spanish ? Surprised it isn't yet.

 

[magixman]

siteZen is not at this time available in other languages and does have the ability for end-user translations.

 

[inferencia]

Will it ever be ?

 

[magixman]

The answer is yes but I can't give a specific time frame. We had started this effort some time back and determined that it would require that significant portions of the code base would have to be re-factored and ended up putting that on the side. I don't want to make promises on a time frame.

 

[inferencia]

Any ETA year for this ?