Robert_Charlton - 7:15 am on Jan 4, 2013 (gmt 0)

Thanks, ergo.

Aside from having your own URL, they're free to try...

Drupal Gardens evokes the image of weeping willows, and it sounded much more promising than the rest. From a quick browsing around the site it appears that you may not even need a domain... you could just build on a subdomain, but I'm not sure what their requirements are for subdomain names.

The free version of Drupal Gardens, though, very quickly runs into limitations with SEO. Basic head tag functionality (can't easily tell from the website how limited, but from the blurbs I'm guessing it's mostly just the title and the robots meta) puts one at the Professional level, at $149/year... an OK price, I suppose, considering that hosting is included. You can't touch the back end at any price level, though.

...so the best way to see is to try one.

I used to think that about software, but over the years I've come to feel otherwise. Trying out software is a big investment of time. I'd much rather have a well-written introductory help document, carefully describing functionality. No CMS I've seen appears to offer that.

This is particularly problematic with SEO considerations, as none of them seem to get SEO. I will give it to Drupal that they did add a parenthetical note that Google ignores the keywords meta tag. Interesting that their emphasis is mostly on Facebook's Open Graph meta tags. Their screen shot is too small to read.

And, even though the Drupal content is portable, you apparently can't 301 inbound links. So (grumble), it ends up that finding a low rent option for people who can't afford professional site maintenance is elusive.