bravenet.com

Advantages: Free, jazz your website up in minutes, Easy to use
Disadvantages: some adverts but no real disadvantages

What Is It? Bravenet.com has been around a long time (1997 to be exact) I have been using some of their services for a few years now. There aim was/is to provide the average Joe with the best free web tools going. On their site they state they are one of the top 50 visited websites worldwide and have 7 million registered users. Their whole website was upgraded this year which has been a huge improvement as the layout is clean, non fussy and has ...
...services you may have a bravenet.com advert showing on your page for some of the services.This ranges from a text links to them on a guestbook or a small button next to hit your counter for example. Have to have a different account for each website you use there services on. It would be really handy if you could say have more than one guestbook for each of your sites so you can check them all at the same time rather than having to log in for each ... Read review

Advantages: SUperb choice of tools, They are totally free and VERY easy to set up
Disadvantages: NONE

UPDATED 9th October 2001 Hi, just thought I'd like to let you know the latest, Bravenet are still offering the vast majority of these free "Webmaster Tools", actually they are still offering them all, apart from Human-Click, to use this now you are required to upgrade to the proffessional version, which will put you back a massive $249.00! As, you can imagine, I won't be doing that...Update Ended. ------------------------------------------------------------- ...
...so, do you want to know where to get the BEST and easiest to manage web-master add-ons and extras available? Well pop along to “Bravenet.com”, and you’ll see. What I mean by add-ons, I mean Web Page utilities i.e. Guest-books, Chat rooms, Message boards, FFA links, etc. They have the lot and they are absolutely simple to manage and copy over to your Web Page. What is Bravenet.com? Well, to put it simply, Bravenet is a site that ... Read review

Advantages: Good range of highly customisable tools all available for free
Disadvantages: Haven't found one yet

The main problem with writing an opinion on this site is how not to bore everyone with all the intimate details of what the site has to offer, because it offers a lot and all of it is pretty good. The only way I can think of to do this is to limit my opinion to some of the services on offer to web site owners. This is not to say that the unlisted tools are any worse or less useful so to get a full list go to www.bravenet.com for yourself. The first ...
...that they can see who is viewing there site. The instructions on how to install the a counter is very straight forward and the number of different appearances and options is very good. You can even have differnet counters for different areas of the site if you really want to. The counter can also be altered once it is running and information on visiters can be protected or available to anyone. The bravenet logo is pretty small on your page and you ... Read review

Advantages: Loads of tools
Disadvantages: in the past servers have been unreliable

Bravenet offer a fantastic range of free website extras to enhance your site. Given the number of services they offer I will apologise in advance for the length of this opinion, I've split it up with headers to allow you to pinpoint the areas of interest. ~~~~ What is Bravenet ~~~~ Basically its a site offering free tools and services for webmasters. They say they are the number one rated site. In their own words - " What sets Bravenet apart from ...
...Site tools you could possibly need - all from one place! Whether for a personal or a commercial page, if you've got the Web Site, we've got the tools. Each service is designed for all users, from novice to advanced. Easy to set up, yet full of cool features for that "professional look"." ~~~~ Front Page ~~~~ The front page is well laid out and lists all of the available tools. There are options to join, visit the help centre, take the tour or view ... Read review

Advantages: Some great looking hit counters and an excellent level of support and help both from Bravenet and Bravenet users. Impressive range of services for the sake of taking 90secs to register with them.
Disadvantages: Limited customisation across the services - there is so much more that can be customised.

Bravenet are one of the best remote host services around, not least because everything they do is free and all you do is sign up for an account, choose which services you want to use, put the supplied HTML code on your page, upload it and there we go. Extrememly easy. One user name and password grants you a guestbook, forum, greeting cards, mailing list, email form (for things like "Contact Me"), an FAQ database, mini-poll, votecaster and loads ...
...services are all run externally at Bravenet and there is no need to have CGI access on your webspace because everything happens at Bravenet. This is much better than downloading loads of scripts to run locally because its easier for novice users to copy and paste some HTML into a web page (though some total newbies have problems even doing this, but let's not knock them, we were all new once). Because this is a free service, there are adverts all ... Read review