From the point of view of an intermediate level webdeveloper, Firespring has proven to be one of most ridiculous platforms upon which I have ever developed a site.
Our organization chose Firespring with our intentions of allowing various interns, volunteers, and staff who do not have much programming experience to be able to update the site without much difficultly. Firespring will allow that . . . as long as all they are expected to do is replace basic text. Anything beyone that, you're looking at hours of tinkering.
* It lacks any toolbar to format text, thus the user is subjected to writing HTML code for everything. Image placement and aligning with text is an absolute nightmare. Even the most basic HTML editors these days have a simple toolbar for editing, how Firespring hasn't picked up on this yet is rather mindboggling.
* There is no image editing (including a simple means of re-sizing) once it is uploaded. Again, intermediate-level HTML coding experience is needed.
* The amount of steps one must go through to do a simple operation is overwhelming. Sub-menus upon sub-menus must be clicked through whereas on most, a simple paste with a click and drag will do the same function within seconds.
* Some of the templates have mastheads that they place random, generic images on. In order to update the image with one from your own organization, it is a $300 charge.
* Customer service has been adequate, which is where the $150/month and $3,500 setup fee is needed, because once someone is assigned to updating their site through Firespring, their customer service rep certainly begins earning their keep w/ the amount of calls they receive.
With the amount of free services out there (e.g. Wordpress) that requires the same amount of a learning curve to begin but will save hundreds of hours of labor over the course of a year, it is a wonder how one such as Firepring continues to exist. read more
