Review: Template Monster

For most start-ups and small businesses, having a custom designed website is not practical. With designers and coders charging $50 or more per hour, a basic website can easily cost $1,000 and up. An alternative for these companies would be to purchase a a pre-designed website template. Many companies on the net provide these templates, with prices ranging from dirt cheap to pricey (depending on your needs).

Template Monster is the leading website template provider on the web. They have the largest selection of templates on the market, with over 20,000 designs in their library and they claim to add about 500 new templates per month. Because of its popularity, the sit has expanded into offering music and corporate identity packages as well.

The templates offered come in many formats, including html, xml, flash, css and php. The websites can be customized to your needs and installed on any compatible server.

Navigating the site itself can be unwieldy, because of the wide range of designs to choose from. A wide range of categories on the right side of the page can guide you depending on what kind of website you have. You can also do a search (easily found near the top of the page) by entering  categories, styles, authors and even a price range. When you get the results, mousing over the choices gives you a larger preview of the available templates.  Clicking on a template brings up further information on the design (such as requirements, formats available). They also tell you how many times a certain template has been, so you can determine how popular a design is. If you have e-commerce needs, there are also templates available with built-in shopping carts and payments systems.

Aside from templates, other useful products such as turnkey websites and corporate design packages are available. The turnkey websites offer more than just eh templates – they also have domains, hosting, emails and even website support (up to 3 hours per months). This package is for people who would like some extra help, and do not want to worry about finding their own host and domain. Their latest offering is corporate design products, such as logo templates, powerpoint templates, as well as complete identity packages that include logo, letterhead, business cards and envelopes.

Over-all the site delivers some great design at a good price. The prices range from $50 to $150, although exclusive rights to any website template can cost up to $3000. Even at the most basic level, they offer some good extras like access to a stock image and clipart library, fonts and even a merchant account from PayQuake. With all these, plus great customer support and a 100% guarantee, it’s easy to see why Template Monster is one of the most popular template sites on the Internet.