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Top 10 Best Office Apps that Make You More Productive

Take pride in working hard and have a humble enough heart and mind to accept that you don’t know it all; and take the time to learn from those who have gone before you.

That’s what brings about success, or at least that’s what we’re told to do to attain that success. But as we bring more innovation and tech tools into the game, we can easily get bogged down by all the little organizational things involved in the day-to-day running of the business; and that prevents us from learning, creating and being successful.

In comes the smartphone right? This will make our lives more efficient, and give us more time to learn and enjoy, right?

True. Smartphones allow us to communicate and perform business activities while on the go, but still there is something missing. Without the right office apps you are not as efficient as you would like to be on your phone. That’s where the right office apps can help. The following are 10 top best office apps to use on any smartphone.

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1. Google Drive

Google Drive offers all of the features of Microsoft office in the cloud. Added benefits include collaborative tools, sharing and editing options.

2. Quickoffice

This is a free app that allows you easy access to Microsoft Office documents on any android or iOS phone or tablet.

3. CamScanner

Did you always want to scan documents into your phone? Now you can with this Phone PDF Creator. It is  a little more advanced than the document scanner in Google Docs. Import office documents into android, convert them into PDF format and save or print.

4. Microsoft Office Mobile

Create, edit and save MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on mobiles and tablets. Need of Microsoft email account to get started, but the app is free.

5. OpenOffice

This offers support for open office documents, allowing users to view documents on the android phone. It is effective for reading ODT and ODS files.

6. SwiftKey X

A better alternative for the android keyboard as the app learns from your typing habits. It memorizes the words you most frequently write, so if you begin to type a sentence, SwiftKey will eventually learn to finish your sentences.

7. Chrome Remote Desktop

When you go off and leave important documents on your desktop, the nuclear chrome Remote Desktop can help. It allows you to sync and access documents from your desktop and view them on your smartphone.

8.  ThinkFree

This is one of the biggest office compatible apps for android. In some cases it comes preloaded on the phone. Free versions only offer document reading, while full editing is only available on the paid version.

9.  Cloud Print

With this app you no longer need to own a printer. The Google Cloud Print app lets you send documents to any printer that’s linked to the cloud service.

10. Docs to Go

This app offers some advanced word processing features such as embedding graphics, creating tables and managing footnotes. It also supports hundreds of functions on spreadsheets. Documents can then be stored in the cloud.

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The Top 10 Best Language Learning Apps to Use When Traveling

Everyone wants, or dreams of, learning a new language, but it is difficult. You have to find a teacher, go to class and that can be difficult if you have a busy lifestyle. Besides, it may even be difficult to find a teacher in your area that instructs the language you are interested in. But with cool language apps you can learn from home. Language apps make it is so much easier to learn a new language. However, finding the right language apps that can teach you effectively can be a “Shot in the Dark” process, just because there are so many apps available. So we took a look at some of these language learning apps and put together 10 of the best language learning apps to help you along with your goal.

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  1. Anki

Anki is Japanese for memorization. This is a flashcard app that has been around for a while but is still very popular. It focuses on vocabulary memorization. The app displays a word, phrase or image and you need to repeat it, and commit it to memory.  Anki works well for Japanese but also works with equations, names, faces and diagrams. Anki is free and cross platform.

  1. Memrise

This language learning app offers more than just vocabulary and new words. It also refers to history and science. It uses flashcards, memory tricks and images to help you remember the new language vocabulary.

  1. Duolingo

This is an interesting approach to learning a new language. It allows you to learn as you translate information from websites. The app also comes with lessons and activities. You learn to read and speak the language you’re interested in by hearing how native speakers read and analyzing the way they write.

  1. Pimsleur Method

This is an audio app that focuses on participation in speaking and sound. It uses memorization and flashcards. The method also uses reading and vocabulary but primarily focuses on speaking and learning to speak the language.  Livemocha.

  1. Babbel

Babbel has several apps that let you learn different languages including German, French, Italian, Spanish and many more. The program uses a combination of repetition and phrase completion. Set custom learning goals and stay on track. Your progress is synched between all of your devices, and at $11 a month, the value can’t be beat.

  1. Living Language

Living Language, made by Random House is an app that covers many different languages. The interface is easy-to-use, and the language focuses on completing sentences and vocabulary acquisition.

  1. Chinese by BrainScape

Need to learn Chinese? Then this is the option for you. A beautifully designed app that makes it easy to learn to draw the symbols that helps you draw easily and teaches you the different stroke patterns.

  1. Busuu

A relatively new app that lets you practice speaking with native speakers, an activity that can be fun and offers a real learning opportunity.

  1. Google Translate

This is not really meant as a learning tool but many users feel this helps them learn their language of choice.

  1. iHandy Translator

This is an app that translates phrases or sentences into 52 different languages. Track your searches and history when you need to find a certain phrase.

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Top 6 Reasons to Use Hosted email business solutions

If you are anything like me when you first started your business, you had one email account, a website and a desire to succeed. Now, you probably have 3 to 4 email accounts; two or three with Google, your website email and maybe another two or three with Yahoo. It could take a long time just to wade through  your email, follow-up and contact customers. This juggling of email accounts can lead to lost time, and may even result in lost communications, emails and inefficient security measures.

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If that’s your case, it’s time to stop now, look at different email options, and choose a better hosted email business solution. Here are top six reasons you should be using hosted Microsoft exchange as your email business coordinating system, instead of the hodgepodge mix of free and web mail options you are now using.

  1. Better Communication

Microsoft Email Exchange helps you keep in touch in a variety of forms, including through desktop clients, web-based clients, in-house contacts and more. It even allows you to access email on all of your mobile devices from any location. This includes accessing email information that has long been stored on the server. Essentially MS exchange automates everything, making your communications faster and more efficient, yet keeping all email as safe as is possible.

  1. Better Productivity

By allowing you to access your account from any location, whether it be home or another customers workplace or a remote location, you are always close to your email, contacts, calendars tasks – and best of all you can access it immediately. This allows you to be more productive and remain connected even when not at work.

  1. Professional

Simply put, Microsoft Exchange is professional and it offers professional looking email and collaboration solutions. It provides all the features you need for a business setting, at a price that you can afford opening (just the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks).

  1. Collaboration

Microsoft Exchange offers more than just email, it allows you to share documents, calendars, tasks and items with members of your team; making you and your team more efficient and better prepared to answer customer questions and doubts.

  1. Better Customer Relationships

Exchange helps you stay on top of your email, your tasks, calendar and contacts. This gives you more productive time to remain in good contact with your customers.

  1. More Focus

Exchange streamlines your productivity and helps you focus on your communications in your collaborations. This frees up your time allowing it to spend more of your day doing other things.

 Why Hosted Email Business Solutions Offers the Best Option?

There are several reasons why you want to choose a hosted exchange, primarily because it’s cost and work efficient. But less than $10 a month you get professionalism, efficiency and security, whereas if you wanted to buy MS exchange outright, you would need to use it on a business server, which would result in large business expenses. This would mean your needing to buy a server and hire an administrator to implement and run it.

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The 10 Most Beautifully Designed Apps of 2014

It’s time to think again of what we did right and what we did wrong in 2014. It’s time to scour the web and look at all the apps, compare them and decide which make for beautiful design and which don’t. What’s the point? Well, it helps us determine what the design trends are, and how an app should look. So here’s our list of the 10 most impressively designed APPS – for desktop, mobile and web. Some of these are new, many are not and just new updates but they are still eye candy worth looking at. We’re sure you’ll find something here worth downloading on your smartphone or gadget.

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  1. Wire

This is a visual messenger that has just recently launched but has drawn attention for its crisp graphics in the traditional messaging world. What draws the viewers’ attention here is the crisp graphics, bold colors and easy to access controls.

  1. Yahoo News Digest

It’s strange to say that Yahoo is attractive, but this one received the Apple design award and it’s really too good to miss. It is an app that puts the news front and center, allowing readers to access the topics that most interest them.

  1. Monument Valley

Yes. This is a game and not technically an app, but the design colors and styles are beautiful. It is available in the apples App Store. It’s also available on android and Amazon about $3.99.

  1. Acorns

Need to simplify finances? Then use Acorns, an app that is made to simplify investing by allowing you to invest spare change automatically from everyday purchases into a diversified portfolio. It works sort of like the “keep the change” programs except you’re doing it with your own money for your own benefit.

  1. Overcast

This may just be a podcast player, but it sure is pretty.

  1. Airbnb

With a new overhaul, Airbnb has changed the look of its new app. Now it’s beautifully organized, allowing users to immediately see accomodations.

  1. Paper

An app that works with Facebook and beautifully organizes your newsfeed and photos that come in, allowing you to better assimilate the information.

8.        Miranda

A beautiful and free app that lets you look at the different time zones which is especially important if you work with teams that are distributed throughout the world.

9.      Umano

With all of the content on the Internet it can be hard to read these days. Yet we all want to be literate and know what’s going on the world, so this beautiful Umano app lets you pick a topic and have it read to you

  1. Yummly

A gorgeous food app that makes the food look more appetizing. This app puts together beautiful pictures and recipes that are easy to read and navigate.  This app offers enticing food pics, grocery lists, recipe recommendations and more.

These are not the only beautifully designed apps we found for 2014, but they are well designed and functional, giving users exactly what they want either for free or at a very affordable price. These are the apps for 2014 that inspire designers to do more, to work more efficiently and bring more beauty and simplicity into every design

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6 Top Apps for Visual Note Taking

How long do I have to attract the attention of the person I am addressing? How can I make information more attractive? These are questions we ask ourselves when trying to decide an approach or solution to a problem. We often take notes to try and guide ourselves through the issue,  explaining the notes to the onlooker, but often these fly by the other person’s head as he doesn’t understand our thought process. The solution is to add visual doodles, arrows and bullets that guide the onlooker through our thought process. This is known as visual note taking.

Visual note taking is the trend of the future. It is a combination of drawing, sketching and notes to give a better visual understanding of the content discussed in a speech, class or boardroom.

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Visual note taking is the art of visually recording your ideas using a multimodal set of tools. But unlike traditional note taking, it is a visual medium with caricatures, drawings and images that highlighted connections between your notes. I like to think of it as an advanced form of doodling with a purpose. It’s a great tool for artists, storytellers, writers and students. There are several different that allow you to do this visual note taking on an iPad. To help you along we’ve listed five top iPad apps help you with visual notetaking projects.

  1. Flipink

This cool app allows you to sketch, share and organize your ideas easily you can quickly jot down your memos and notes and insert images, different types of type and graphics that you want. Flipink helps you stay organized and increases your productivity as it allows you to capture your ideas immediately.

  1. Paper 53

An app offers the simplest way to jot down your ideas, and you don’t even need to know how to draw. You can sketch out a product design, draft your new decoration idea or outlining the next student paper. There are no strange settings or distractions here, and Paper 53 offers 5 tools to help you write, draw, sketch, color or outline your idea.

  1. Brushes

An app that was designed specifically for the iPad, iPod and iPhone it allows you to sketch and write what you need and you can move doodles from one device to another and continue working wherever you go.

  1. Adobe Ideas

This is an easy to use app that lets you draw free-form vector illustrations wherever you are located. It replaces your pen and paper with a canvas and lots of customizable brushes and stylus pens.

  1. Sketchbook Pro

A professional potent drawing application that offers several sketching and painting tools through an Internet interface that is designed specifically for the iPad.

  1. Air Sketch

A wonderful app for presentations that you make for the classroom or for the boardroom. You can create anything while on the go, all you have to do is start up Air Sketch on your iPad and start working.

Doodle apps are a lot of fun, but they can also be great tools to sketch out ideas or images. Often, artists, entertainers, students and travelers find these types of apps very interesting and thought provoking, using them to create blogs, paintings, or even new products.

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How to Host MS Exchange

When you’re relatively new business and to the use of high-powered tech tools, you may be confused by MS exchange. Most entrepreneurs faced with Exchange, turn away, thinking better email functionality is not really something they need. But let me ask you this;

  • How often have you dropped a client because of communication issues?
  • How often have you lost a client’s contact details?
  • Forgotten to answer a question?

All of these are email management issues and they happen when you don’t have business email management software in place.

 If you’ve heard of Microsoft Exchange, then you know that it is considered the best email organizational system for businesses and organizations. This is a collaborative email and messaging service, one of the most popular in the world, and used by organizations around the world, especially those that rely on Microsoft infrastructures. Basically MS exchange is the software that powers Outlook, only offers many more business productivity tools such as email synchronization on all devices, collaborative sharing and editing of tasks, meeting scheduling, calendars and documents, all while offering the same intuitive use as Outlook.

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There is only one issue with using MS exchange. This is a large program with extremely large database needs, and so requires the use of a business server. This may be fine for a large corporation that already has a server installed in the organization, but is not a viable solution for small to medium-sized businesses that neither have the space nor the man-power to run a server.

The Advantages of Microsoft   Exchange

Exchange offers powerful email solutions and collaborative functions but can be expensive because of the server requirements. By using a hosting solution, where you and other businesses share a server, you only pay a small monthly fee and get access to all of the best features of Microsoft exchange, including the most important, that of keeping all of your contact information and emails extremely safe, away from hackers, spam and virus attacks. These features include:

  • Increase the business productivity
  • The integration with other Microsoft products
  • Support of all mail protocols such as IMAP, SMTP, MAPI, HTTPS and POP3.

What Next?

After evaluating Microsoft exchange, you’ve seen the value such a program offers. But just how do you host MS exchange without spending a fortune? Actually, you can make use of MS exchange at about the cost of a  gallon of gas.

The integration of cloud computing has brought many changes to the tech world, and one of these involves the hosting of MS exchange. There are hosting services that offer Microsoft exchange users access the Microsoft exchange system files on their server, giving clients access to their email hosted accounts.

The Cost of Such Services

Microsoft exchange offers collaborative access to contact information, email, tasks and calendars through Outlook, but stores all of the relevant information on a server with unlimited space, in this case the hosted server. Hosting services of this nature generally run about $10 per month, a very affordable price compared to all the business

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Become a Champion by Learning How Managed Hosting Works

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It hangs heavy on your shoulders.

You’ve finally got traffic coming to your website. You’ve built an audience and are no longer sitting out there in obscurity.

The number of links pointing to your site is growing, social shares are rising, and you’ve started creating products and services that your audience loves.

It’s fair to say you’ve reach that hockey stick moment and are finally making money with your website. You are the “impresario” and  can finally allow you to quit your job.

But now what?

You are enslaved by your new job, that of worrying about your site, making sure it’s always functional and working effectively. Now you get to deal with tech issues like bandwidth, traffic flow, up-times and more.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to deal with these issues either?

Actually you don’t, not if you use managed web hosting services.

“How does managed web hosting services work?” I know you are just itching to ask this question, so let me clarify it for you.

Managed hosting is just as the title describes – a service where you get someone else to manage your hosting issues, to keep the site working optimally and to prevent viruses and other issues from causing havoc. These are those issues you’ve spent many a night burning the mid night oil trying to figure out, only to have some tech guru come along and fix the problem in just a few minutes.

Managed hosting  is an affordable service that takes over the management of the hosting of your website. It is where a team of professional tech gurus handle everything that deals with hosting your website, so you don’t have to worry about these problems.

Managed web hosting is a solution to get your website hosting managed by someone else. It means someone else has to worry about having enough bandwidth for your traffic; about your website being up all the time, about the amount of emails you have, the speed of your site, and you know all the other rigmarole. It removes the need for you to have a server and the manager to administrate that server. Here you get to delegate the task to a technically efficient team who can handle these issues quickly and efficiently, allowing you to focus on the core substance of your business.

Managed web hosting offers:

  • Reliability
  • Constant Monitoring and Support
  • Higher Security
  • Increase Productivity

How Do I Get a Manage Web Hosting Service?

It’s just a matter of finding one of the top service providers of managed hosting solutions, contracting the package that best fits your needs and then leaving it all up to them. It’s time to enjoy your success, take time off for the things that are important to you, and when you do focus on your business, concentrate on the aspects that brought you that success. No more long nights sitting at that computer trying to figure out how the hosting is affecting the website.  Leave the rest up to the pros.

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Top 10 technology gadgets for the modern hotel room

Have you ever noticed all of the tech gadgets in a hotel room? There are about 10 different types of technology gadget that every hotel room should have. These range from the very usual to the very different. .

  1. HD TV

A high definition TV is the focal point of a hotel room and there are an innumerable number of brands and sizes to choose from. There is one for every budget and every room size.

  1. High Speed Internet

A hotel is no longer a hotel room but a boarding house (and even that is questionable) without high speed Internet. In many cases a hotel should offer both wireless and wired options in rooms, as this covers most usage needs.

  1. An MP3 Docking Stations

Most people now travel with an iPod or some other type of MP3 device. Hotels that offer an MP3 docking station with speakers offer better service as guests can listen to their favorite tunes, use it as an alarm clock and even watch movies.

  1. Additional Power Sources

Now this may not be an actual gadget but can be when you have to use an adapter or a surge protector to give these power sources. People need access to connections to charge their smart phones, MP3s, video recorders, cameras and laptops.

  1. Mirror TV

A really high tech gadget for the bathroom, sauna and swimming pool area, these TVs are equipped with high definition, digital tuners and touch screens.

  1. Automatic Lighting and Climate Control

While this may not seem like advanced technology it really is. This is a remote device that allows guests to place settings according to their mood;; bright lights for work, low lights for romance etc.

  1. Radio Frequency Identification

We all know this one as keyless entry systems for hotel rooms and other areas of the hotel. But developed technology of this same system now allows guests to use their mobile phone to gain access to their hotel room.

  1. Automatic Detection of Guest Habitation

While this system may not affect guests directly it certainly helps lower costs of hotel energy costs. These systems detect when guests are in a room and when they are not, thus adjusting the temperature when the room is detected as being empty. This can reduce the hotel’s carbon footprint by as much as 70%.

  1. Infrared lights

Infrared signals monitor when a guest enters and leaves so housekeeping can tell if a room is ready to be made up.

  1. Building Rotation

Although not a common technology, and not used in any hotel but one, this is being developed. It is the ability to rotate a building once a day so guests can get an ocean view during their stay.

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Top 10 technnology gadgets for the modern home

Technology is a part of our lives. Even though we may assume that it’s not. We use different types of machines that accomplish many different tasks at home – and all of these use the latest in technology. Let’s look at the top 10 coolest gadgets for the home.

  1. The high-powered cordless vacuum cleaner

Okay, I gotta say vacuum cleaners are not a new technology, they have been around since the 1940s and 50s. But now there are these new cool cordless vacuum cleaners that have no wires and are much more effective, lighter than their bulky, noisy and will take vacuum cleaner cousins.

  1. Ion  Air Purifier

These new air purifiers allow you to keep your home environment clean and free of allergens.

  1. Sensor LED Light and Lamp Controller

These allow you to control the lights in your home automatically, even when you’re away from home. This gives you added security and lighting.

  1. Rechargeable Laptop Battery

This is an external rechargeable laptop battery that will take you anywhere you need. So when the power cuts out at home, this rechargeable laptop battery can give your laptop a charge.

  1. Countertop Water Filtration System

We all need to drink more water as it be that my metabolism and removes toxins from our body. However, tap water can be full of minerals and other toxins. So you want to filter the water before you drink it, and the easiest way of doing this is through countertop water filtration system.

  1. Motion-Activated Candy Dispense

While this may not be a needed a home tech gadget, is sure is cool. Just put your hand under the dispenser and you’ll get just the right amount of nuts, seeds, or candy.

                                        

  1. The Bluetooth Speaker

I don’t care what anybody says, you just that I have a Bluetooth speaker in the house. These may look small but carry powerful sound, and best of all, they can be connected to your cell phone, your laptop, your computer, and sometimes even your TV.

  1. The Dog Exerciser

as someone with dogs, I’d say that this is a pretty needed home gadget. It’s a treadmill for dogs. Yes, your dog can get is needed exercise on a regular basis without your having to take three-hour long walks and time out of your day.

  1. The Bluetooth Shower Speaker

This really is nothing like listening to music as you bathe. A bluetooth shower Speaker just makes shower time more interesting.

  1. Automatic Door Locker

Don’t worry, if you forgot to lock the door or misplaced your door keys. Now you can lock your front door from anywhere in the world using your smartphone and an automatic door locker.

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Which free website builder is right for you?

It used to take a lot of knowledge (or considerable amount of cash) to create your own website, but not anymore. Thankfully, it is possible to create a basic website without ever having to delve into any HTML code or to spend a cent. For really professional results, it is still best to know your way around the inner workings of CSS and PHP, but free website builders give even complete amateurs a chance to design something great. There are a few options available on the market, but before you get started, it is best to compare the different services in order to see which one will suit you best. This allows you to make the best choice right of the bat instead of running into limitations half-way through your project.

The advantages of using a free website builder are numerous, especially if you are an individual or small business without a budget to hire a professional. First, there is no need to install anything on your computer as all you need is a browser. This also means that you can work on your site from any computer. You typically don’t have to worry about having to update software, access FTP servers or figure out hosting either. Let’s take a look at some of the well known names when it comes to website builders to see which one can provide you with all the tools you need.

Wix

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Wix offers you the freedom to create your website using an intuitive drag and drop interface. This means that you can design your site layout by simply arranging where you want items to appear. Because what you see is what you get there are no surprises when viewing your site live after creating it.

Wix also offers a range of professional templates that you can use to make your site look even more eye-catching. With these pre-made templates, the layouts are all set and you simple start adding your own information and pictures.

In case you are wondering how Wix is able to offer the service for free, the answer is advertising. When using the free website builder to create your own site you will find that Wix automatically displays advertising logos quite prominently on your pages. This is a practice used by most free website builders, but the adverts are especially noticeable in Wix.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of using Wix is that once you commit to a certain template there is no going back. Some other site builders allow you to chance the theme without losing any information, which is useful if you find a new theme that better suits your content. Wix however does not support this which means you have to start from scratch should you ever become tired of your current template. Depending on the size of your site, this could range from a nuisance to a disaster.

Weebly

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Weebly is another popular free website builder that allows you to quickly design your site using a drag and drop interface. Weebly also has a large range of free templates available, but goes one step further than Wix by allowing you access to the HTML and CSS of the template. This means that you have far greater flexibility when it comes to customizing your site and even if you are using the same theme as someone else you can make changes to the code to make yours look unique.

Another area where Weebly has the upper hand over Wix is that you are free to switch themes at any time without losing any of your content. Unfortunately, unless you opt for a pad premium account, Weebly also features some prominent advertising logos on your site and withholds certain customization options until you hand over your credit card details.

Weebly is useful and easy to use for smaller websites, but the way that it handles blogs leaves a lot to be desired and for larger sites it can become difficult to manage.

Squarespace

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Last up is Squarespace, which once again offers an intuitive drag and drop interface for designing your website. Everything you create is mobile ready, which is a huge boon in the connected world of today. Knowing that your site will look as good on mobile as it does on a computer screen is great and can help to drive more traffic to your site.

With brands such as HBO, Shutterstock, Wired and even Sony all making use of Squarespace there can be no denying that it is possible to create a professional looking site. Squarespace also takes the hassle out of customizing your site without having to delve into the code. This means that you have the flexibility to make alterations, but don’t have to know any code to do so.

As for downsides, what you see while editing the site might end up looking different once published which can lead to more time spent tweaking the site exactly how you want it. Also, while you don’t have to worry about obtrusive ads plastered on your site, Squarespace is only free for two weeks after which you have to pay for a subscription.

Conclusion

Which free website builder is right for you ultimately comes down to how involved you want to be in the coding of your site, how much content you have and how much you are ultimately willing to spent. The great things is that all three of these website builders can be tried out for free to give you some hands on experience which will help you to decide which one is the perfect match.