Homestead Sitebuilder Review: Remember This One? We Find Out If It’s Still Up To Scratch.
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Our overview of Homestead…
Expert Opinion
Hear from our web hosting expert, WhoIsHostingThis Team.
Best Reviews
See what 23 Homestead customers have to say.
Hosting Plans
Compare the best Homestead hosting plans and their prices.
FAQs
Most asked Questions about Homestead – answered!
Homestead Introduction
Not every host offers site building features. Not every site building company offers great hosting. Homestead offers both. Founded in 1996, the company specializes in pre-built websites with features like hundreds of customizable templates, e-commerce features, professional stock images, and marketing tools.Support
Homestead offers premium level assistance with all accounts. Support can be reached via toll-free number, Monday through Friday, 6 AM to 5:30 PM PST. Live chat support is available during the same hours, and on weekends from 7 AM to 4 PM.Features
The three tiers of Homestead pricing packages are suited for various sizes of websites.- Website statistics
- SiteBuilder; build websites without coding
- Hundreds of customizable templates
- More than 1 million royalty-free images
- 30-day free trial
- All three support options
Starter
This very affordable plan is perfect for freelancers and individuals.- 25 MB storage
- 5 GB monthly bandwidth
- Five Web pages
- One site
- Domain name for an extra fee
- Email address also extra
Business
This plan includes a few more features than Starter. It’s great for businesses who need more than one site and just a few pages.- 5 GB storage
- 100 GB monthly bandwidth
- 100 web pages
- Three sites
- One domain name
- Five email addresses
- Optional SimpleStore; eCommerce site builder, listing up to 100 products
Business Plus
This robust plan is perfect for medium businesses and eCommerce sites who must accommodate more traffic than the Business plan.- 10 GB storage
- 500 GB monthly bandwidth
- Unlimited* Web pages
- Unlimited* sites
- Three domain names
- 50 email addresses
- Optional SimpleStore; eCommerce site builder, listing up to 100 products
- WebListings included; your business included in Homestead’s directory, plus submitted regularly to more than 150 Web directories, such as Google Maps.
- Design consultation
- Free setup
Additional Features
In order to offer you services you may need to get noticed on the Web, Homestead offers a few optional add-on services for an additional monthly fee.- Search engine optimization (SEO) services; includes an expert consultation, plan, and reporting
- Paid search ads; includes a consultation, targeted ad campaign, unique ad creation
- Pay only for click throughs
- Web listings; adds your business to more than 150 directories, custom Business Directory profile, update all your info in one easy place
- Traffic booster; uses Homestead Business Directory to create an optimized, custom footer
Homestead Reviews by Our Community
Overall Rating from 23 Reviews by Homestead Customers
| Support | |
|---|---|
| Quality | |
| Features | |
| Value |
Most Helpful Reviews
Frank Peters ocfruit.com
Sep 11, 2018
I wanted to get our club away from Homestead. Some other people in the club were resistant to change. They were resistant to change in itself.
So I had homestead itself help me. I asked the people against the change to go to our site hosted by homestead and copy some text and email it back to me. I said I would stop requesting the change if they did this little task.
After attempting this, they now fully supported my change to new host. Many now wanted to help me as they saw one of the many issues with the host pages. After we changed to a new host we were able to do many things to decrease the workload of people.
The reason I was supported::>? On the homestead pages, when you highlight text sections – the order highlighted is the order added regardless of position on the page. I have never saw any other site do this.
It was so bad It was easier to retype a paragraph than attempt to copy and paste the content. ( I would highlight a paragraph in the middle of a page and then title and navigation links would also highlight. I am not making this up. Also, I noticed one person had two 5 star posts supporting homestead.
I think He works for homestead. I cannot understand anyone who has used anything else cane think homestead is a good option. How was he able to post 2 reviews??
Dwight Okita dwightokita.com
Aug 07, 2018
I am a self taught webdesigner. I proudly dont know html or flash and don’t want to. I create great sites that my clients can update themselves.
I have used: Weebly, Homestead, Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, etc. By far Homestead is my favorite. While you can start with a template, the ability to customize and go free form are great.
Caveat: the more talented a designer is, the more fully they can use the full range of Homestead’s tools. I love the slideshow option which is eye catching. I love that am not bound by any limitations of templates.
I like that it has a powerful sitebuilder tool for customizing and is pretty intuitive. Though updating is a bit more involved than updating Weebly. I have seen the low reviews of Homestead here.
I suspect part of it is that the designers may not take full advantage of Homestead. I like Weebly best for simpler websites. The limitations of Weebly software that is influenced so much by templates is that you have little gadgets you move around – for pictures, text, videos, etc – but they need to be inserted into pre-designed templates.
I am very creative guy and free form appeals to me. I also write novels and am a pro cuddler. Here is my Homestead site: www.DwightOkita.com
Thomas Evert gozips.uakron.edu
May 18, 2018
Since Windows 10 came out, Homestead‘s Site Builder hasn’t been fully fixed to be compatible. They have a BS work around where you have to reinstall Microsoft’s J# software to get Site Builder to work. They don’t seem to care enough to fix the problem. Been waiting for almost Three years for them to fix it!
Pros
- Free trial
- Premium support included with all accounts
- Value-added features
Cons
- Limited bandwidth
- No domain included with Starter pack
- Minimal storage
The Verdict
This host offers three, direct service plans. All three are competitively priced and include basic Web hosting services. However, Homestead is not a full service hosting company. They specialize in website building and design, with some e-commerce and SEO features.It is smart to plan ahead for the possibility of moving to a bigger host in the future, so keep in mind exporting websites from a service like Homestead can be complicated. They own the templates you use to design your site, plus the stock images they provide. That said, small businesses and freelancers may find Homestead’s services a good fit when creating a Web presence and building traffic.Most Popular Homestead Hosting Plans
| Starter | Business | Business Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disk Space | 25MB | 5GB | 10GB |
| Bandwidth | 5GB | 100GB | 500GB |
| Price | $4.99 / mo (Billed as $4.99 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate. Usual price: – Get % off! | $19.99 / mo (Billed as $4.99 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate. Usual price: – Get % off! | $59.99 / mo (Billed as $4.99 Per Month) ⓘPrices in are approximate, based on current exchange rates. The host will likely charge you in USD, or at a different exchange rate. Usual price: – Get % off! |
| Visit Homestead Now | Visit Homestead Now | Visit Homestead Now |
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Patrick Crosby
September 13, 2019
I started with Homestead over 10 years ago and although I have tried other website builders and hosting providers along side of Homestead. I am happy to stay with Homestead because of their reliability, quality sites, and user friendly controls for the “sitebuilder”. Now 11 years ago I knew absolutely nothing about computers, smart phones, or tablets, let alone anything to do with building a website or a business for that matter. Hey the rates are very affordable too!
I show up well in SERP’s, unlike my other two websites designed by another platform. They won’t even rank in first 100 pages on Google. I am on page ( 1 ) with Homestead site. 100% built by me. It shows to but that’s okay. I’m learning. I’ve done my own SEO and am proud to be the webmaster of my Homestead site ranking in the top 5 websites of my competition on Google’s page one.
#ThanksHomestead