Homestead Review: Value (3 stars)

Too Many Package Options, Some Better Value Than Others

It’s hard to decide how Homestead ranks in terms of value.  There are so many package options, it takes a real time commitment to sort through them all. It’s so hard to figure out that they even encourage you to call them for advice when picking a package. It’s a good thing they have a 30-day free trial to help you decide.

The prices range from $9.99-$49.99 for a SiteBuilder website and $6.99-$59.99 for a Storefront site. And if you want to combine the communications and Web tools of SiteBuilder and the e-commerce of Storefront, you'll have to buy one of each.

If you don’t need all the options it may be better value for you to go with a more basic package, however they are not the best value for what you get. We tend to favor all-inclusive website builders; they take out the guess work and give you room to grow. This is important because your needs may change as your business grows. Though you can always upgrade to a different package with Homestead.

Unlimited Websites for Certain Packages

Homestead does have one value advantage over many other builders.  With the Gold and Platinum SiteBuilder packages, you can build as many sites as you like within the storage capacity available. This can be an advantage if you need to expand your business into other areas.

Extra Fees Are Within Reason

Homestead has no hidden fees or contracts, but they do charge a $20 set-up fee for standard website packages.  Extra email addresses are $2.00/ month each and extra disk space is $2.00/ month for an extra 50 MB. Extra bandwidth (data transfer) costs an extra $4.00/ month for 1 GB.

Related Links

• HomeStead.com