iRun Review: Tools & Features (4.5 stars)
A Good Combination of Form and Function
iRun has many of the basic features found on most website builders, such as photo albums, online forms, etc. But also has a few more that most others don’t have that are great tools for business, like the newsletter. It also has a couple of tools that require no set-up like the search box and sitemap.
Here is a list of its features:
- Photo Album
- Online Forms
- Newsletter
- Property Listing
- Press Releases
- Site Statistics
- Event Calendar
- Downloads
- Mortgage Calculator
- FAQ page
- Web Mail
- Password Protected Pages
- Search Box
- Sitemap
- Hours of Operation
- Print Page/Email Page Icons
Newsletter Good for Business Use
The newsletter is well developed for business purposes. It allows you to upload your contact list using a spreadsheet. It also gives you the choice to send newsletters either to your contact list, the subscribers off your website or both. There is a limit of 4 newsletters per month, but most businesses wouldn’t send more than 1.
Newsletter feature is a useful business tool.
Handy Pre-Formatted Text-Based Pages
iRun also provides a few text-based pre-formatted pages that are useful for business owners, including an FAQ page, press release page, and hours of operation. The press release page gives you the choice of featuring press releases that are image files (say, of a newspaper clipping), links to where the article is featured, or simply putting up your on content. It was suprising that they left out a links page since it's such a common feature on a business website.
No Set-Up Required for Some Features
Some require no extra effort to set up on the part of the website owner. We particularly like the search box that is automatically added to every page, a handy little feature with undeniable usefulness.
Slick Search Box with No Extra Effort
There is also a sitemap automatically generated on every page, a nice addition, as well as a statistics page that tells you basic information about your visitors. The only minor problem with the elements that are automatically added is that you’re stuck with them unless you want to pay iRun’s design team to take them out, which costs $75/ hour. The statistics system isn’t very robust, only giving numbers of visitors within given time periods, unique visitors, and visitors by IP address, i.e. nothing to help your marketing efforts to any great extent, but it’s better than nothing.
A little sparse, but nice to have.
Professional Webmail Included
Another great perk with iRun is that you can set up professional-looking business email accounts (i.e. john@yourcompany.com) and access them directly through the builder. This gives the convenience of being able to check your email from anywhere you can access the Internet and still have the professional image you can’t get from using Hotmail or Gmail.
Typical Tools Made Better
In addition to the unique feature offerings, iRun also has a few standard features with above standard usability. The gallery page for featuring photos allows you to enter descriptions that appear next to the thumbnails on the main page. The downloads page has a nifty system that makes it super easy to put up downloads of all types.
Simple and Useful – The Way Websites Should Be
Easy Peasy Download Page
Sub-Pages Simple to Add
When you add a page to your website, you’re given the option to add it as a sub-page to main page. This means that when you click to that main page, you’ll see the available sub-pages on the left. This is pretty good, but it would have been even better to see the sub-pages as drop-down selections of the main menu button. But then no website builder has managed to make this an easy thing to do.
Real Good For Real Estate (if not for a few bugs)
There are also a number of features that stand out among the crowd. With just a few clicks, a website owner can add icons that allow visitors to email or print a page. We also give top marks to their high quality property listing system. You are also supposed to be able to link the site to the popular real estate listing website mls.com but unfortunately, they haven’t finished the feature yet. Perhaps iRun should not have put it up if it wasn’t working yet, but the listing page is still pretty cool.
There is also a really slick mortgage calculator providing the ideal combination for people who intend to feature real estate on their websites.
You'll love these tools if you're selling property!
Pop-Up Calendar a Handy Feature
One ease-of-use factor that is worthy of note is the date entry system on the event calendar and press release pages. Rather than having to enter specific numbers, a handy calendar pops up and lets you choose a date by clicking on it. It’s little ideas like this that make the website builder experience a smoother ride. However, we would have liked to see iRun apply this convenience to the event calendar on a larger scale by showing the event names on a large calendar rather than the visually confusing list form that they chose.
One Click to Add Dates
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