CommonSpot is a Web platform that includes a content management system, an application development framework, marketing solutions, and social media features from PaperThin, Inc, a privately held, MA-based company. PaperThin's customers span multiple industries, including: government, healthcare, higher education, and association/non-profit sectors.
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Divi
Score 9.1 out of 10
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More than just a WordPress theme, Divi is a website building platform that replaces the standard WordPress post editor with a new visual editor. The vendor states it can be enjoyed by design professionals and newcomers alike, and is designed to give users the ability to create spectacular designs with ease and efficiency.
Divi has cornered the market on a simple, straightforward WordPress theme that gives some major integrations and functions! Now that I've worked within it for years, I have a much better understanding of how robust a system it is. It takes some practice to get accustomed to but once you "get" it, it is so fun to use. I've shown so many small business owners how to use Divi and I feel that it is much easier to learn than other themes with functions that are controlled by coding or shortcodes. I could play in Divi all day, and some days I do, depending on which projects I am working on at the time
I think CommonSpot's greatest strength is its ease of use. It's relatively intuitive in it's usage, so it therefore makes it easy to train new people to use it.
Within my usage of it, our options were limited, which again added to it's ease of use.
Commonspot needs to improve on its authoring feature. It is impossible to author on more than one page at a time . (One must always click on "View work on all changes") before switching between pages otherwise, the changes will not be saved.
CommonSpot does not support sharing the definition of any custom element or any template layouts. Therefore, one must recreate these in each site.
In Commonspot, a user who has to manage content in multiple sites will have to log in to each site to see and act on any actions.
The load time of the builder could be faster. On some websites it takes a long time to load, and may crash the page. (I believe they've said they're working on this stability issue.)
Warnings on updates if they're difficult for some sites to run. I have one website that has crashed more than once from Divi's theme updates. I always back it up before the update so I restore the site, but this is still a bit of an inconvenience.
Integrated (or more clearly marked) tutorials within the builder. I migrate site maintenance and ownership to clients after the site is complete and some could use refreshers within the builder on what happens where i.e. the difference between a section, row, module.
I had no previous background in content management, and found it very easy to use. If I could figure it out, I am pretty certain that just about anyone else could as well.
Divi price is superior and the infinite sites feature got me. Thrive was good for me at some point, but they got stuck in their layout options. Even i liked the Thrive form builder, in general Divi gave me more options to build my websites and build my landing pages. If they work on their interaction with other apps like Mailchimp or Hubspot, for example, or make the tool even more intuitive, i would give them 10 in everything.
I was working in a religious institution and based upon our usage and audience, there was no ROI to speak of. Our usage was more for providing information than having any type of interaction. In that instance, it worked very well.
Positive - I purchased the lifetime license and have used it on 20+ sites over three years. I purchased it in June 2018 after using it under the one-year license and am so glad that I upgraded. It is a very good deal for my business since I no longer have to think about this cost and it is such a fantastic product.
Positive - I have had prospects specifically ask for Divi because they know it is so user-friendly and reliable. That also speaks to the quality of the product.
Negative - the Divi Marketplace is where I go for some specialty features to download for specific client requests. I'm not for all the "bells and whistles" that some websites have but there are some that I feel should be included in Divi core that simply aren't, like mega menus. Because of that I've had to make a few additional purchases since buying the license.
