Freeway Express - 3.5.15

I don't know one thing about HTML code, and I'm not a professional web site designer or developer - just a guy who wanted to completely overhaul his web site. I downloaded the trial version of Freeway Express 5.4.2, watched the video tutorials, then started working on my web site.

Initially, I was overwhelmed. The manual is more than 400 pages long and tough to read. The video tutorials are moderately helpful, but they omit a lot of details. My first 3 or 4 days of working with this product went pretty slowly.

But - here's the bright point - the tech support is excellent. Honestly, it's probably the best I've ever encountered. They take time to read and understand your questions, and they provide detailed answers with good explanations. And they add more information (beyond your question) - anticipating other things that might confuse you, such as explaining why to use a particular image format in a particular situation.

After a few emails with the Softpress tech support, I felt much more comfortable using Freeway, and work on the web site went much more smoothly.

I didn't try the Pro version - but the Express version has everything (and probably more) that an amateur web site developer would need. And once I got the hang of using the program, I found it very easy to use.

The tech support people could probably reduce their workload a lot by either improving the manual or by posting more (and better) video tutorials on their web site. If the manuals or video tutorials were better, I would probably give 5 stars. On the other hand, if tech support had not come to my rescue so well (and if I had to rely on the manual and the existing tutorials) I would probably give 3 stars. As is, this product earns a solid 4 star rating.

BTW, a few other people have complained about lack of multiple Undos. I haven't found a need for multiple undos. Occasionally I use a single undo. If a really screw something up, I just delete the screwed up item and recreate it. The software is so easy to use, that it's pretty painless to have to do that.

Note: I almost never write software reviews, but the tech support was so stellar that I felt compelled to post this.

I cannot express my level of happiness to find Freeway Express. I am a past Dreamweaver user, and while I can't write HTML, I learned How to use it in order to build my site years ago. I needed to do an update recently, and realized that the version of Dreamweaver I had was 5 years old, and the new version was prohibitively expensive at $399.

I searched for WYSIWYG apps and settled with the Freeway Pro demo. Even that was cheaper, at $249.

Keep in Mind that every WYSIWYG editor acts differently, and as the developer points out many times, the site files from one, dreamweaver for example, are not compatible with another (freeway). So After completing the 3 tutorials, I realized that this program did exactly what I wanted to, and in a smart, intuitive way. I recreated my site in 2 days from scratch, and it is now so easily editable with the Master pages that Freeway taught me to create. Not only that, but I realized that the "Express" version did everything I needed, at only $79!!

Freeway Express is highly recommended.

As with any new program of this sophistication, don't expect to be able to use it without reading the manual or completing the tutorials.

As with a previous review, the only con for me is the lack of multiple undos. But now that I know that it does make me more careful.