SimpleScripts Review

SimpleScripts: Against the Competition (Fantastico)

SimpleScripts is a tool for quickly and easily installing programs on your hosted web sites. SimpleScripts is far from the only one-click installer solution, and has many competitors. The most common competitor is often included within cPanel through many web hosts: Fantastico. There is one clear difference between the two, though. Fantastico has to be included in your cPanel or you can’t use it. SimpleScripts can be used no matter where your website is hosted, as long as you have the proper permissions to install programs on that host.

But, what really makes one automated scripting service better than another? The scripts that it can install, which is what this SimpleScripts review will pay the most attention to. Specifically, SimpleScripts will be compared against Fantastico De Luxe, particularly as Fantastico appears within HostGator (see our HostGator review to see if they are a good web host for you). Matt Heaton, CEO of BlueHost (reviewed here) and HostMonster (reviewed here) said he adopted the Simple Scripts auto-installer in 2008 to stay competitive.

As these two script installers are compared, each one will score points. These points will be counted as a running total until the winner is announced at the end!

Blogs

The two solutions come really close on the available blog platforms you can install. Blogging allows you to easily post your own stories online for the world to see, but what good is easy posting if it’s hard to set up correctly initially? Well, as long as you don’t want to use Textpattern, either script installer will do, but SimpleScripts takes the lead on this one.

SimpleScripts: 1

Fantastico: 0

Content Management

Content management is a lot like blogging, except that it can use and manipulate a wider variety of types of content and pages. These are designed to make any kind of website, not just blogs; though several of them are commonly used for blogs and blog platforms have been adapted to do more than just blogging. It’s a big of a grey area, but both script installers support all the popular platforms. Still, Fantastico passes SimpleScripts by a few options.

SimpleScripts: 1

Fantastico: 1

eCommerce

Undoubtedly, you’re familiar with eCommerce, at least from the purchasing side of it. Every time you buy something online, it’s eCommerce, so these platforms are for those who want to sell things. In this area, SimpleScripts destroys Fantastico providing more than twice the number of options. I think this calls for 2 points.

SimpleScripts: 3

Fantastico: 1

Polls and Surveys

Polls and survey sites are used exclusively to collect public opinion. Many other types of platforms have poll and survey options, but these platforms focus on it so that it can provide the most useful polls and surveys out there. In this area, Fantastico comes out a little bit ahead of SimpleScripts.

SimpleScripts: 3

Fantastico: 2

Forums

Forums are everywhere. They are often only part of a website, but they are still generally run on their own platform separate from the other, often on a subdirectory or subdomain. They are a place for people to exchange opinions and ask questions, where other users can respond with their own opinions, answers, or questions. SimpleScripts comes out far ahead of Fantastico, providing more than twice the options of Fantastico, much like the eCommerce style platforms. 2 points!

SimpleScripts: 5

Fantastico: 2

Groupware / Wikis

Groupware refers to a content management system in which users can edit the main content, not just comment on it. A wiki is the same idea, but it is now a more common name, especially since Wikipedia popularized the concept of a wiki. Fantastico falls behind SimpleScripts for wikis by offering only half the options, however, phpWiki is a popular wiki platform that SimpleScripts doesn’t support. That keeps SimpleScripts from scoring 2 points, pushing it down to only 1.

SimpleScripts: 6

Fantastico: 2

Help Center / Customer Relations

Help centers are generally used to answer troubleshooting questions from customers, making it closely related to customer relations focused platforms. Both are trying to provide a customer retaining service to those who encounter problems. Fantastico offers more options here, but there is a lot of variations between the two offerings. In this area, it might make the most sense just to double check that your preference is supported by the script installer you are looking at. Nonetheless, for the sake of consistency, Fantastico gets a point.

SimpleScripts: 6

Fantastico: 3

Mailing Lists

These platforms help you manage your email lists and send out emails to groups of people at a time. Again, SimpleScripts offers considerably more options than Fantastico, triple the amount this time. 2 points for SimpleScripts!

SimpleScripts: 8

Fantastico: 3

Photo Galleries

These platforms are designed to efficiently and easily manage a portfolio of images for safe keeping and browsing. Fantastico, once again, fails to offer even half of the options that SimpleScripts does. 2 more points!

SimpleScripts: 10

Fantastico: 3

Project Management

Do I spy a tie? Yes, SimpleScripts and Fantastico both offer the same number of project management platforms. These platforms are designed to help you manage human resources, including your own time. These will help you get projects done by helping you stay organized. It seems both script installers believe equally in this type of platform, with only a slight variance in exactly which platforms are supported. 1 point to each!

SimpleScripst: 11

Fantastico: 4

Website Builders

SimpleScripts consistently offers more than double what Fantastico offers, it seems. These platforms are very similar to the content management platforms, however, these are designed to be even more flexible. Keep in mind that more flexibility usually means that it’s harder to get it to do exactly what you want it to, though. Flexibility isn’t always a good thing when referring to web development. At any rate, 5 platforms versus 2 means that SimpleScripts scores another 2 points.

SimpleScripts: 13

Fantastico: 4

Utilities/Others

This list for all the randomness that these script installers support. From educational tools to auction platforms, from accounting management to statistics, from social bookmarking to calendars, most everything else that can be supported is listed here. In this area, both SimpleScripts and Fantastico offer a wide range of options with only a little bit of overlap. This is another area where it becomes more important exactly which platform you want to install rather than the number of options available to you. That being said, since SimpleScripts offers more options, you’re statistically more likely to want a script that SimpleScripts offers. How convenient, since SimpleScripts is the only one between the two who offers a statistics platform (Piwik)!

Final Score

SimpleScripts: 14

Fantastico: 4

In practically all areas, SimpleScripts out-offers Fantastico. Since these are arguably the two largest script installer programs in the market, it makes sense to say that the one that outshines the other is certainly a good offering. However, in the world of script installers, what you really need is an installer that supports the exact scripts you’d like to install. So, before jumping on either one, make sure that what you want is available. However, there is no denying that, between what’s offered and the ability to install scripts no matter where your website is hosted, SimpleScripts is the best of the best!