App Maker Software Reviews

App Maker Software Reviews
Why Use App Maker Software?

The top performers in our review are Como, the Gold Award winner; AppMachine, the Silver Award winner; and BuildFire, the Bronze Award winner. Here's more on choosing a service to meet your needs, along with detail on how we arrived at our ranking of 10 app makers.
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Apps are essential for many industries and extremely useful for most others. Apps bring convenience for customers and inspire loyalty and repeat customers. Using an app creator, you have the ability to streamline your website and fit what's necessary and relevant to your apps' users.

In these reviews, we discuss how we tested each program by creating an app with it. Specifically, we created an account and built a business landing page, complete with an industry-themed template and icons, each with corresponding links. In addition to creating a static page, we tested the responsiveness of each app service to match any updates that happen on a desktop URL or mobile site.

By creating your own app, you save money and have complete control of how your finished product looks. For those business owners who don't have time to create an app, we also list the services with the option to have professional teams build the app for you. However, the price for third-party app design companies is greater than one you make yourself. If you want to use an app creation service to build an app for you, we also offer information on these services.
Similar Products to Mobile App Builders

In order to compete and be found online, your business needs a website. Whether you offer a product sold in a brick-and-mortar store or not, a purpose of your site should be to find monetization. Another purpose is to provide information for your customers. Our website builder reviews can get you started on the path of establishing that crucial online presence.

If your business has a standard desktop URL but no mobile-friendly version of your site, we've also tested multiple mobile site creators. The look and feel of mobile websites have much in common with a business app but don’t require a download. Even if you don't have time to create an app, a mobile site is an absolute must.

Our sister site, Business News Daily, recently put together a comprehensive list of 18 of the best app makers. This list highlights each software's unique features and defines the intended audience for each app maker.
Tips on Choosing the Best App Maker Software

Beyond the app-design testing we performed, we found that there were essential features that these companies provide. Often, the respective sites didn't boast about certain features, but we found them once we evaluated each app builder. In order to determine which programs ranked well, we gathered the results and compared the building tools with a business app in mind.

Content Creation
The first thing you interact with is the software’s interface. The "best" interface is a matter of personal preference – the layouts you respond most positively to help determine which app software you choose. Some interfaces are clean and simple, while others are packed with features. Most are drag-and-drop, but some are not. It is important to pick an interface that feels right to you so that you don’t get overwhelmed by extraneous information or frustrated at a lack of immediately available tools.

Another consideration is the level of customization. Most app generators pride themselves on being usable by everyone, even if you don’t have any programming experience whatsoever. This means that the programs are all pretty easy to understand. However, if you do have programming experience or specific imaging needs, you may want to look out for a more advanced builder that allows for code input.

OS Compatibility
Making sure that the app creator you choose has the ability to generate cross-platform iterations is key. This means that you design the app, and the software translates it into iOS, Android, Blackberry or Windows-compatible software, depending on what the user selects. Now that app culture has become a little more mainstream, app-building programs recognize that it’s far easier to design one app and translate it into many operating systems rather than writing a different app for each type of operating system. However, you should still verify compatibility when you’re selecting an app builder.

We found that most of the app creator are compatible with iPhones and Android phones but may not offer responsiveness for Windows or Blackberry devices. Based on the most recent report from the International Data Corporation, Android and Apple devices make up a combined 96.3 percent of the smartphone market. Windows Phones only make up 2.7 percent of the market, so it's not crucial for an app builder to be compatible with that particular store; although, it's best to leave out as few potential customers as possible.

Engaging Your App Visitors
The end goal of creating an app is to get it into the hands of someone who has downloaded it and will consistently use it. That difficult job is still the responsibility of the app creator to keep the app relevant and make it a permanent fixture on someone's phone or tablet. If you utilize more than a landing page, an RSS feed will be your best friend. Content that you publish on your desktop site is transferred directed to your app. Push notifications should be expected, so these app-designing programs have focused on more efficient means of reaching an audience. Push notifications are now geo-targeting marketing tools. Based on your app analytics, you can send notifications to people in a certain region or to a particular operating system. The market has advanced so quickly that geo-targeting is a staple in the app industry. It is all part of helping you find the most receptive audience and improving your efficiency as a business owner.
App Maker Software: What We Tested, What We Found

As part of our testing, we evaluated each app maker's set of tools in the advanced plans. Our goal was to find the packages that provided a similar feature set. For example, a few of the app building companies offer basic plans for very low cost, but the features don't allow you to market the app once it's created. In that case, we tested the next most expensive plan so that we received access to standard tools that allowed us to create, distribute and market our apps. We then tested each software, without input from the businesses or based on a company-given methodology.

In order to reach a fair score for each app builder, we considered what each builder did best. Every app design program has its own unique traits that caters to certain industries. Throughout our reviews, we describe our experience for each app builder and what consumers can expect to experience.
The Apps We Created

Our main testing involved creating a home screen for a small business. We tested customization by finding industry-specific themes. We also tested to see whether you could add an image to create a theme or logo. Not every software we tested provides this level of customization; of the 10 programs on our lineup, seven app makers allow you to upload your own icon.

Once we chose the visuals, we created an application version of the mobile site with more emphasis on quick links for contact information, social media pages and coupons.

The first test relied more on creating an app that was largely static. For the second test, we delved into tools that added new content to the app without ever having to personally access the app dashboard and manually insert the information.

One specific button, typically named website, allows the person building the app to input a site they own by placing the URL into a hyperlink box while creating the app. We applied this domain to each program. Once inputted, it allows the app consumer to click the website button and access your mobile site without ever having to leave the app. What we found is that most, but not all apps, automatically update the content as you change the content on the actual domain. We were very impressed with the lack of constant maintenance needed with one product on our lineup; AppyPie allows you to add the corresponding website icon that automatically updates immediately after the desktop URL updates.
What You See Is What You Get in App Design

One of the scariest things about designing an app is the perception about coding and needing a professional company to actually design it for you. With app-making software, the process is relatively simple. While coding is allowed on most of the products listed on our lineup, the only mobile app maker that requires some coding experience is Appery.io. We didn't see the higher level of learning as a bad thing; instead, it's a service meant for prospective app builders who have some experience and want a few more capabilities.

Instead of coding, most app making software provides you with a WYSIWYG approach. This means that every change you make to the dashboard, whether it's through adding an image or uploading content, shows up in real time on the respective app preview on the side of the screen. The HTML coding happens behind the scenes. These companies don't want to confuse any introductory app creators by forcing them to add widgets through specific lines of code. Instead, the process of building each page typically consists of dragging and dropping icons from the dashboard into the app preview page.

To find the appearance usability, we left behind the subjective nature of the experience and focused on the tools that made it possible to create an app quickly.

Our results were based on tools that should be standard, yet are missing from some big players. In terms of customization, we tested the number of available layouts and what you can make from scratch. Most notably, we uploaded themes, logos and icons. Upon signing up for an app builder, we looked for a walkthrough or an app creation wizard that would guide a new user.

There are many tools to worry about in terms of design; we wanted the software to do much of the behind the scenes work for us, especially with creating a store page automatically for the App Store and Google Play. After creating an app, you will become entrenched in reading the analytics on the dashboard. That's a great feature, but it can change for every service. To supplement the first-party reports, we tested the ability to add code for Google Analytics.

The lowest usability scores sit at 70 percent. The programs listed are all very solid. Even some of the companies that offer fewer marketing features, like GoodBarber, attained 90 percent when it came to the ease of creating the app.

Our Verdict & Recommendations on the Best App Maker Software

When looking for the best app makers, we recommend that you read the reviews to see how each app maker ranked and what each software is best known for. Even if an app designer ranks higher, it may not be the best fit for your business. Restaurants will have a far different app design than a game app, for example.

Creating a game app will require far more creativity and coding than a blog-type app, for example. For the majority of the reviews, we focus more on the retail aspects of app builders. However, the app building software that provides the tools for more than just retail receive higher scores in the app creation category.

We found Como to be easy to use, and it excelled in marketing. For example, it allows for the icon addition of loyalty programs, reservations, app commerce and consumer photo uploads, via LiveAlbum. AppMachine, on the other hand, is fun to use. Its block builder lets you tap into your inner child while creating a dynamic design. Also, it's one of the few app makers to work with new Windows phones. If price is the only thing holding you back, AppMakr is your best option. Even the advanced plan is under 10 dollars, and that plan provides a number of features that allow you to monetize your app immediately.

Creating an app should be the third step of establishing your brand online. We recommend having a desktop URL and a mobile site, followed by the corresponding application. The right app builder can help you be seen across several channels and raise customer retention.

Online Stock Trading Reviews

Why Choose Online Stock Trading?

The top performers in our review are OptionsHouse, the Gold Award winner; Fidelity, the Silver Award winner; and TradeKing, the Bronze Award winner. Here’s more on choosing a system to meet your needs, along with details on how we arrived at our ranking of 12 companies.

In the past, floor trading and phone trading, via communication with a broker who ordered and completed your trades, were the only choices for trading equity shares and other investment vehicles in the stock market. In the past few decades, online stock trading has replaced those dated means of buying and selling stocks. Online discount brokers provide platforms from where anyone from a first-time trader to experienced day traders can research, monitor and order trades.

A number of well-established online brokers provide their clients with access to stock markets. The best online stock trading services offer a solid platform with powerful researching and trading tools. All platforms differ, including their customizability and their design, and each service offers different levels of education and support. All brokers differ in their fees, so there is a range that you can expect to see. However, with some services, you pay more for the name and reputation, while lesser-known brands may charge less for trades. In our online stock trading reviews, you can learn about the features each platform includes and doesn't include, the fees you can expect to pay for stock and options trading, and support services offered.

What Every Online Investor Should Know

When you're involved with trading in the stock market, you should understand as much as you can about how to trade stocks online and about the investments vehicles you choose to trade, as there are many choices and those choices comes with varying degrees of risk. As is the case in most situations, the higher the risk, the higher the potential loss but, conversely, the higher the potential payoff. Outside forces affect the performance of stocks, including natural disasters, weather, world events and even civil unrest in foreign countries. Read our articles on online stock investing to learn even more.

Risks vs. Reward
Risk versus reward is a common phrase in the stock market because their correlation affects every investment. Where there is little risk of loss, there is also smaller potential for reward. And the opposite is true, that the higher the risk, the higher potential payoff. Just like in Vegas, if you win when the odds are stacked against you, your payoff can be enormous.

The decision to play it safe or play the odds depends on your trading strategy, your portfolio goals and the amount of money you choose to invest. Many investors choose to stay with simple stock trading, in which case you buy and sell stocks online at face value. Their value may increase and you'll see capital so you sell, or their value may decrease, so you sell before your loss becomes substantial. Or you may sit on a stock for years, taking a risk that the stock will make an upswing, increasing in value over time. Investment vehicles have varying levels of risk, from low-risk bonds and mutual funds to high-risk futures and Forex trading, which not all services on our online brokerage comparison offer. Read our guide on investment vehicles to learn the differences in investment choices.

Factors Affecting the Stock Market
The stock market is always shifting, but certain factors can create immediate changes or crashes, whether large or small. Many factors can contribute to market volatility, including internal and external events and forces. World events play a factor in market outlook and on supply and demand, among other facets of the market as well. Natural disasters, war and civil unrest can have negative impacts on the market and stock prices.

One of the greatest factors that affects the market is the outlook on the market itself. When the outlook of the market is more bearish and investors expect a downward move in the market's general trend, investors expect widespread losses that cause low sales and actualized losses, which creates a downward spiral. On the other hand, in a bullish market, investors expect prices to rise, which increases buying and optimism in the stock market.

Economics are a huge driving force of the market, and supply and demand has an obvious effect on market prices. Droughts can affect crops, driving up the prices of the commodity while an abundance of another commodity as the result of a favorable growing season can lower prices. Supply and demand may also be artificially manipulated to either increase or decrease the price of specific commodities.

What to Look for in a Good Online Brokerage

With all online brokers, you should expect certain features. These include tools to research and monitor stocks, features to manage your portfolio and assess the risk of your positions, and powerful reporting and charting choices. The best online trading platforms – whether online, desktop or mobile – offer many powerful tools and reporting options.

Research & Monitoring Tools
Research features are standard, including real-time quotes providing the current buying and selling points of a stock. Screeners allow you to set parameters and specific metrics to filter by elements, including price, P/E ratio, volume, ROI and yield, among other options. These advanced filtering options allow you to watch only the stocks that meet the criteria you set for your trading strategy.

For those stocks, you also can create watchlists, showing multiple buying and selling points for a particular stock. Option chains show multiple bid, ask and strike prices for call and put options for a stock so you can find contracts that fit the parameters you're hoping for in an option contract.

Reporting & Charting
Streaming charts provide visual representations of watchlists and screeners for quick views of stocks and their performances. Many of these charts monitor down to the minute. Bar graphs and candlestick charts are common, complete with red and green color-coding to indicate a rise or fall in the performance and opening, closing and actual trade costs for a particular stock or trading pair. TD Ameritrade's thinkorswim platform offers more analytic charts and technical studies than any other platform we reviewed, with hundreds of interactive choices.

The ability to add technical indicators is a useful customization option that advanced traders find invaluable when monitoring stocks and Forex trends. optionsXpress offers 39 technical indicators, including momentum, trend and volume indicators. It also offers drawing tools to create trend and resistance lines and to access the Fibonacci retracement, fans, arcs and time series.

What We Evaluated; What We Found
When choosing the best stock trading site for you, you want to find one that offers the features and options that match your trading strategy. Some of those considerations are the trading platform's ease of use and the functionality of the mobile platform. The cost of investing with a specific broker may be a consideration, and if you're new to the market or just to the platform, the support and education a broker offers can be of the utmost importance.

Platform
We tested each of the platforms on our lineup to evaluate the ease of use and functionality. We set up watchlists and alerts, created option chains, filled out the trade ticket, and played around with customization. We performed research using the available analytic tools and charting options. We also downloaded the mobile trading app for each service, connecting to the online account, performing research and looking at funding options. For each service, we created a proprietary score for both the trading platform and the mobile app.

The scores for Platform Ease of Use reflect our experience using the online or desktop platforms. Overall, we found the online OptionsHouse to be an all-around solid choice. The online platform is simple to navigate and intuitive. TD Ameritrade's thinkorswim desktop platform is also a great choice, albeit a more advanced platform. It can be less intuitive than many online platforms, but it offers more options for charting analysis than any other service on our lineup.

All of the best online brokerages offer mobile trading. Mobile platforms across the board allow you to research and trade stocks, but some are not as easy to use or are not offered on all mobile devices. When evaluating and creating our Mobile App Functionality score, we looked at the ability to create and edit watchlists, perform research, and fund accounts from the app.

Fees
The benefit of a discount online broker is that you can perform your own trades at lower cost than directly paying a stock broker. Most services have set trading fees, but some offer tiered trading costs. The benefit of tiered commission schedules is that the more you trade, the cheaper each individual trade costs. TradeStation is one such broker. However, if you order fewer than 10 trades per month, most tiered pricing models don't benefit you.

Services such as OptionsHouse and TradeKing with low set prices are a cheaper option for the casual and average stock trader. With both of these services, each trade is a fixed $4.95 fee. Other services we reviewed charge more than that, but none on our review charges over $10. These costs are for processing your own trades within the platform, but trades over the phone or with the assistance of a broker will likely require additional costs.

If you choose to trade options, you pay the base fee – generally the same cost as the stock trading fee – plus a per-contract fee. These fees range as little as $0.40 up to $1.50 per contract. If an options contract is fulfilled, there will be an additional fee for the contract exercise or assignment. optionsXpress is the only broker that does not charge those two fees.

Education & Training
Educational resources can help you learn not only about a specific platform but also about the market. Every person has his or her own way of learning: some prefer to read while others prefer videos or self-paced courses with assessments to determine comprehension. All services we reviewed offer some complementary and supplementary learning material.

The knowledgebase TradeKing offers is impressive. Its educational options are organized by the topic, by your skill level and by the market outlook. If you are a rookie, you can read material that speaks your beginner language without being inundated with jargon and market terms that are foreign to you. If you find yourself facing an overly volatile market outlook, you can look up strategies to help you maximize your gain.

If training courses are your preferred means of learning, E-Trade provides access to the Morningstar Classroom. These courses walk you through a curriculum covering stock trading basics, building your portfolio and understanding the risks of investing in the stock market. Each course has a quiz at the end so you can test your knowledge.

Some online stock trading platforms offer simulated trading where you can test drive the market before you dive in with real money. optionsXpress, for example, offers its Virtual Trade, which gives you a free $25,000 virtual trading brokerage account, where you can practice trading stocks, options, futures and other investment vehicles. TD Ameritrade's thinkorswim platform offers a virtual trading platform as well: paperMoney. Similar to optionsXpress, paperMoney allows you to test drive the platform. The results are real, but the money is not so you will not lose or gain anything.

Our Verdict & Recommendation

When it comes to choosing a stock trading platform, "best" can be subjective. The best for you depends on your particular trading style, your strategies, your goals and your preferences. We have provided our top picks for best online stock brokers, and each has features and facets that make it a solid choice.

If your focus is strictly the bottom line and low fees are the deciding factor for you, OptionsHouse or TradeKing are a couple of your best choices. They both have low trade fees for basic stocks and for options. Their other fees and rates are competitive. They do have flat-rate fees, which benefit lower-volume traders. If you plan to order a high volume of trades, a tiered commission schedule from TradeStation may be better choices, though some of its other fees are comparatively higher.

For powerful platforms, you have the choice between online and desktop. OptionsHouse is a solid choice in online platforms. It is intuitive, customizable and offers powerful research and trading tools. If you're looking for a more powerful and versatile platform, thinkorswim is a good choice, though the learning curve may be steeper than with other platforms.

When reading through our reviews and considering which platform best suits your trading preferences, keep in mind that all platforms offer access to the stock market, so you can be in control of researching, monitoring, buying, selling and managing your portfolio. Have a look at our reviews and benefit from our research to find the best online stock trading service for you.

Online Stock Trading Reviews

Why Choose Online Stock Trading?

The top performers in our review are OptionsHouse, the Gold Award winner; Fidelity, the Silver Award winner; and TradeKing, the Bronze Award winner. Here’s more on choosing a system to meet your needs, along with details on how we arrived at our ranking of 12 companies.

In the past, floor trading and phone trading, via communication with a broker who ordered and completed your trades, were the only choices for trading equity shares and other investment vehicles in the stock market. In the past few decades, online stock trading has replaced those dated means of buying and selling stocks. Online discount brokers provide platforms from where anyone from a first-time trader to experienced day traders can research, monitor and order trades.

A number of well-established online brokers provide their clients with access to stock markets. The best online stock trading services offer a solid platform with powerful researching and trading tools. All platforms differ, including their customizability and their design, and each service offers different levels of education and support. All brokers differ in their fees, so there is a range that you can expect to see. However, with some services, you pay more for the name and reputation, while lesser-known brands may charge less for trades. In our online stock trading reviews, you can learn about the features each platform includes and doesn't include, the fees you can expect to pay for stock and options trading, and support services offered.

What Every Online Investor Should Know

When you're involved with trading in the stock market, you should understand as much as you can about how to trade stocks online and about the investments vehicles you choose to trade, as there are many choices and those choices comes with varying degrees of risk. As is the case in most situations, the higher the risk, the higher the potential loss but, conversely, the higher the potential payoff. Outside forces affect the performance of stocks, including natural disasters, weather, world events and even civil unrest in foreign countries. Read our articles on online stock investing to learn even more.

Risks vs. Reward
Risk versus reward is a common phrase in the stock market because their correlation affects every investment. Where there is little risk of loss, there is also smaller potential for reward. And the opposite is true, that the higher the risk, the higher potential payoff. Just like in Vegas, if you win when the odds are stacked against you, your payoff can be enormous.

The decision to play it safe or play the odds depends on your trading strategy, your portfolio goals and the amount of money you choose to invest. Many investors choose to stay with simple stock trading, in which case you buy and sell stocks online at face value. Their value may increase and you'll see capital so you sell, or their value may decrease, so you sell before your loss becomes substantial. Or you may sit on a stock for years, taking a risk that the stock will make an upswing, increasing in value over time. Investment vehicles have varying levels of risk, from low-risk bonds and mutual funds to high-risk futures and Forex trading, which not all services on our online brokerage comparison offer. Read our guide on investment vehicles to learn the differences in investment choices.

Factors Affecting the Stock Market
The stock market is always shifting, but certain factors can create immediate changes or crashes, whether large or small. Many factors can contribute to market volatility, including internal and external events and forces. World events play a factor in market outlook and on supply and demand, among other facets of the market as well. Natural disasters, war and civil unrest can have negative impacts on the market and stock prices.

One of the greatest factors that affects the market is the outlook on the market itself. When the outlook of the market is more bearish and investors expect a downward move in the market's general trend, investors expect widespread losses that cause low sales and actualized losses, which creates a downward spiral. On the other hand, in a bullish market, investors expect prices to rise, which increases buying and optimism in the stock market.

Economics are a huge driving force of the market, and supply and demand has an obvious effect on market prices. Droughts can affect crops, driving up the prices of the commodity while an abundance of another commodity as the result of a favorable growing season can lower prices. Supply and demand may also be artificially manipulated to either increase or decrease the price of specific commodities.

What to Look for in a Good Online Brokerage

With all online brokers, you should expect certain features. These include tools to research and monitor stocks, features to manage your portfolio and assess the risk of your positions, and powerful reporting and charting choices. The best online trading platforms – whether online, desktop or mobile – offer many powerful tools and reporting options.

Research & Monitoring Tools
Research features are standard, including real-time quotes providing the current buying and selling points of a stock. Screeners allow you to set parameters and specific metrics to filter by elements, including price, P/E ratio, volume, ROI and yield, among other options. These advanced filtering options allow you to watch only the stocks that meet the criteria you set for your trading strategy.

For those stocks, you also can create watchlists, showing multiple buying and selling points for a particular stock. Option chains show multiple bid, ask and strike prices for call and put options for a stock so you can find contracts that fit the parameters you're hoping for in an option contract.

Reporting & Charting
Streaming charts provide visual representations of watchlists and screeners for quick views of stocks and their performances. Many of these charts monitor down to the minute. Bar graphs and candlestick charts are common, complete with red and green color-coding to indicate a rise or fall in the performance and opening, closing and actual trade costs for a particular stock or trading pair. TD Ameritrade's thinkorswim platform offers more analytic charts and technical studies than any other platform we reviewed, with hundreds of interactive choices.

The ability to add technical indicators is a useful customization option that advanced traders find invaluable when monitoring stocks and Forex trends. optionsXpress offers 39 technical indicators, including momentum, trend and volume indicators. It also offers drawing tools to create trend and resistance lines and to access the Fibonacci retracement, fans, arcs and time series.

What We Evaluated; What We Found
When choosing the best stock trading site for you, you want to find one that offers the features and options that match your trading strategy. Some of those considerations are the trading platform's ease of use and the functionality of the mobile platform. The cost of investing with a specific broker may be a consideration, and if you're new to the market or just to the platform, the support and education a broker offers can be of the utmost importance.

Platform
We tested each of the platforms on our lineup to evaluate the ease of use and functionality. We set up watchlists and alerts, created option chains, filled out the trade ticket, and played around with customization. We performed research using the available analytic tools and charting options. We also downloaded the mobile trading app for each service, connecting to the online account, performing research and looking at funding options. For each service, we created a proprietary score for both the trading platform and the mobile app.

The scores for Platform Ease of Use reflect our experience using the online or desktop platforms. Overall, we found the online OptionsHouse to be an all-around solid choice. The online platform is simple to navigate and intuitive. TD Ameritrade's thinkorswim desktop platform is also a great choice, albeit a more advanced platform. It can be less intuitive than many online platforms, but it offers more options for charting analysis than any other service on our lineup.

All of the best online brokerages offer mobile trading. Mobile platforms across the board allow you to research and trade stocks, but some are not as easy to use or are not offered on all mobile devices. When evaluating and creating our Mobile App Functionality score, we looked at the ability to create and edit watchlists, perform research, and fund accounts from the app.

Fees
The benefit of a discount online broker is that you can perform your own trades at lower cost than directly paying a stock broker. Most services have set trading fees, but some offer tiered trading costs. The benefit of tiered commission schedules is that the more you trade, the cheaper each individual trade costs. TradeStation is one such broker. However, if you order fewer than 10 trades per month, most tiered pricing models don't benefit you.

Services such as OptionsHouse and TradeKing with low set prices are a cheaper option for the casual and average stock trader. With both of these services, each trade is a fixed $4.95 fee. Other services we reviewed charge more than that, but none on our review charges over $10. These costs are for processing your own trades within the platform, but trades over the phone or with the assistance of a broker will likely require additional costs.

If you choose to trade options, you pay the base fee – generally the same cost as the stock trading fee – plus a per-contract fee. These fees range as little as $0.40 up to $1.50 per contract. If an options contract is fulfilled, there will be an additional fee for the contract exercise or assignment. optionsXpress is the only broker that does not charge those two fees.

Education & Training
Educational resources can help you learn not only about a specific platform but also about the market. Every person has his or her own way of learning: some prefer to read while others prefer videos or self-paced courses with assessments to determine comprehension. All services we reviewed offer some complementary and supplementary learning material.

The knowledgebase TradeKing offers is impressive. Its educational options are organized by the topic, by your skill level and by the market outlook. If you are a rookie, you can read material that speaks your beginner language without being inundated with jargon and market terms that are foreign to you. If you find yourself facing an overly volatile market outlook, you can look up strategies to help you maximize your gain.

If training courses are your preferred means of learning, E-Trade provides access to the Morningstar Classroom. These courses walk you through a curriculum covering stock trading basics, building your portfolio and understanding the risks of investing in the stock market. Each course has a quiz at the end so you can test your knowledge.

Some online stock trading platforms offer simulated trading where you can test drive the market before you dive in with real money. optionsXpress, for example, offers its Virtual Trade, which gives you a free $25,000 virtual trading brokerage account, where you can practice trading stocks, options, futures and other investment vehicles. TD Ameritrade's thinkorswim platform offers a virtual trading platform as well: paperMoney. Similar to optionsXpress, paperMoney allows you to test drive the platform. The results are real, but the money is not so you will not lose or gain anything.

Our Verdict & Recommendation

When it comes to choosing a stock trading platform, "best" can be subjective. The best for you depends on your particular trading style, your strategies, your goals and your preferences. We have provided our top picks for best online stock brokers, and each has features and facets that make it a solid choice.

If your focus is strictly the bottom line and low fees are the deciding factor for you, OptionsHouse or TradeKing are a couple of your best choices. They both have low trade fees for basic stocks and for options. Their other fees and rates are competitive. They do have flat-rate fees, which benefit lower-volume traders. If you plan to order a high volume of trades, a tiered commission schedule from TradeStation may be better choices, though some of its other fees are comparatively higher.

For powerful platforms, you have the choice between online and desktop. OptionsHouse is a solid choice in online platforms. It is intuitive, customizable and offers powerful research and trading tools. If you're looking for a more powerful and versatile platform, thinkorswim is a good choice, though the learning curve may be steeper than with other platforms.

When reading through our reviews and considering which platform best suits your trading preferences, keep in mind that all platforms offer access to the stock market, so you can be in control of researching, monitoring, buying, selling and managing your portfolio. Have a look at our reviews and benefit from our research to find the best online stock trading service for you.

Web Hosting Reviews

How to Choose a Web Hosting Service

The top performers in our review are InMotion Hosting, the Gold Award winner; Arvixe, the Silver Award winner; and Just Host, the Bronze Award winner. Here's more on choosing a service to meet your needs, along with detail on how we arrived at our ranking of the best web hosts.

If you are considering owning any online real estate beyond a simple blog, it comes with a price. Thankfully, the price is minimal. Many people think that owning their own sites only has to do with owning the names themselves; however, a large part of having a site is hosting the data and information displayed on it. Before you sign up for a domain name, take some time to consider your options. We recommend that, before you ever plan your unique site name, you analyze the focus of your online business and how much storage you need.

In our experience, standard landing page sites only require the most basic shared hosting package. If you want to make an active site complete with images, blog posts and video content, you need a service that provides unlimited disk space. If you are planning to have an exorbitant number of viewers, then you should also look to find a package with unlimited bandwidth. Having sufficient bandwidth keeps your site from throttling if many readers flock to your site at once.
Annual & Monthly Payments of Web Hosts

The second step to take is to create the right domain name. The top web hosting plans typically include a free domain for one year. A domain often requires an annual payment, but Arvixe actually includes a domain for the life of the service. Popular services like Go Daddy are known for being go-to spots if you are looking to purchase a domain name.

When first signing up for website hosting services, you are offered promotional rates on several hosting plans, depending on the storage and bandwidth your site requires. Look past the promotional prices that each host offers. We noticed that several hosting services baited us with affordable plans, only to triple the monthly price and charge nearly $30 for a domain when renewal comes around.
Related Articles

Our sister site, Business News Daily, describes the pros and cons of web hosting. In this article, it describes that the purpose of website hosting is to help small business owners. Even novices can build something once and let the website take care of itself. These shared hosting services are easy enough for anyone to create something unique.

The web hosting industry is inundated with competition. In our extensive comparison, we researched, tested and ranked each service to find the one that best fits your business or personal website. For more information about this industry, take a look at our articles about web hosts.
Web Hosting for All Business Sizes

No one could be blamed for any confusion felt when shopping for a new host. Typically, any one of the top hosting companies offers a complex list of products with different features available. There are typically three tiers of price ranges coinciding with three tiers of feature sets.

Shared Hosting
For these hosting company reviews, we've chosen to cover shared hosting. Shared hosting provides the least expensive plans. If you see a low price advertised on the front page of a site, it is most likely referring to the lowest-grade shared plan.

The low cost does not equate to low value. If you are a small business owner who only needs a site to boost your business's online status and you plan for moderate site visitors, this is probably the best option. Every client on a shared server has to share hosting space. Most companies can initially promise reliability because they're planning on your site getting an average amount of traffic.

VPS Hosting
VPS, or Virtual Private Server, is a step above shared and cheap web hosting and packs in a bit more power on the CPU side. Companies that expect a decent traffic increase in the short term should consider these plans. The server spaced is still shared; however, you have more opportunity to customize your space management and benefit more from added security in comparison to shared hosting.

Dedicated Hosting
Rather than renting server space as you do in shared or VPS, dedicated means that one server is allotted for one purpose or site. The benefit of this type of hosting is that your site won't crash due to external websites spiking suddenly. This is the most independent way to go but should probably not be considered by personal bloggers or small business owners. The downside of this enterprise-level hosting type is the very high price tag.

Dedicated hosting is a case of experts need only apply. It allows you to customize your server with any type of software or file formats. Typically, any maintenance needed on the server is done by the owner.

Cloud Hosting
Outside of the three major offerings provided by each hosting service are the exceptions. One such exception is cloud hosting, which is your information and bandwidth spread of multiple servers to improve redundancy.

Web Hosting: How We Tested, What We Found

To test our web hosting lineup, we purchased month-to-month hosting subscriptions. These plans auto-renew as long as you let them and, in most instances, come with a free domain name for a year. For each provider, we used the basic shared hosting package, and the numbers we gathered for the disk space and bandwidth are all based on the introductory plans for each service.

Plan Offerings
Shared hosting should be flexible. As your business grows, your online presence should have the ability to grow with you. We measured that flexibility by how many plans a service offered and by asking its support staff how easy it is to upgrade in the middle of a contract.

Three is the standard number of hosting plans under a company’s shared hosting umbrella. Three different options give you room to grow if you're feeling unsure about initially investing in a higher-priced plan. Still, many web hosts offer only one shared server plan. In our testing, we found that those with a single plan often do not provide enough bandwidth, storage and domain capability for the value. Upgrading from one of these single-offering shared plans requires paying significantly more with a VPS or dedicated server.

Control Panel Usability
With each service, we built a landing page for a business using images and content. A number of reviewers at Top Ten Reviews tested each cPanel and downloaded apps, like WordPress, to test compatibility. While each version of cPanel is similar, the best web hosts provide more features, simplifying the creation process. We arrived at the usability mark by testing the hosting interface and scoring the cPanel and proprietary website builder.

We first tested usability through our experience creating an account. If a service used a one-step process, which entails easy account verification through email and approval of the domain and host package at the same time, we gave it points for immediate usability. Half of the products we purchased didn't let us create an account without a copy of an identification card and a credit card statement. If a service is difficult to sign up for, most people would move on to the next available host.

Once we accessed our accounts, we test each dashboard. The standard interface is called cPanel, while some services, like iPage, use their own control panel, which allows for more customization. We evaluated which tools are available in the basic shared hosting plans, taking into account features like simple email creation, a disk usage meter and access to create cron jobs. Many services in our lineup don't have the option to back up a site manually or utilize a one-click install section.

The majority of the hosts on our lineup use a standard cPanel and for good reason. It is the industry standard. While the dashboard isn’t much to look at, it provides most of the useful tools you need to create a site, manage the hosting and market it to the online world.

Support Quality
Customer support is an important factor when searching for the best hosting services. As site owners, we rely on each service to have solid uptime. When a server inevitably fails temporarily, services should have a support team available 24/7 by both phone and live chat.

We called multiple times at all hours of the day and night, testing the quality of the support given. We reached a percentage score by ranking five criteria. A representative needed sufficient product knowledge without sending us links to the FAQs page. In support calls, we wanted a problem solved and subtracted points when the service tried to upsell us instead of solving the issue at hand. Personability, in both chat and phone support situations, was a major factor. Also, we took into account the initial wait time and the wait time between responses.

We also brought up live chat during busy business hours and after normal business hours. To get a representative number of how long it took to reach each support team, we took an average of our attempts. The service with the fastest response time is WebHostingPad.

The average wait time overall was just over 10 minutes. The longest we waited to reach a live chat representative was 45 minutes. Testing the support staff of each service was essential to the process because it sets most of them apart. Often, a company boasted about its live chat support, but the team was consistently offline or unavailable. Other times, the staff could only help you with sales and upgrades but not technical support.

Additional Considerations: Picking the Right Web Host for Your Business

Web hosting is a very competitive field, and the best companies perform the same task with a similar range of site management tools. Each company offers promotions to get you to sign on with it, but we looked at few features that are important to consider in the long run.

What Does Unlimited Really Mean?
Web hosting companies throw around the term “unlimited” as if it's their slogan. As a consumer, it is important to know that unlimited does not mean infinite. Instead, the term technically means, “not exceeding regular use.” While the companies claim that 99.5 percent of their customers will never have a throttling problem, if you store large amounts of media on your site, you still may get a warning from the hosting provider informing that you will be slowed down or temporarily shut off. It is a shared server, which means you are at risk of taking other customer's allotted unlimited space.

Hosting Package Offerings
Most hosts boast about the unlimited data transfer and disk space they offer, but it's important to find each service's definition of that word. Every host provides different allotments for domains, subdomains and parked domains despite many calling that allotment "unlimited." There are services like iPage that don't have expandable shared hosting plans but don't truly need to provide the option because they offer unlimited boundaries in their basic plans. Each of these plans comes with the option to create email accounts with your URL attachment; although, the number you are allowed varies.

All of the web hosts we tested offer limited money back guarantees. Even further, a handful of companies allow you to cancel at any time without penalty.

Downtime Responsiveness
Each company claims to have 99 percent uptime. In the event of a failure, meaning your site is inaccessible, a service can usually get it back up in no more than 20 minutes, but that time could mean lost income or traffic if your site is built for those purposes. Technical problems can happen at any time – and there's not much you can do on your end, especially when you're running off a server in a remote location. Responsive tech support is critical.

Compatibility
Investing in a reliable web host is a big decision because it impacts how your site runs for the next year or two. If you find a concern with a host, there is no reason to stick with it just because you have a bundle. We looked for services that not only made it easy to migrate information but also to export site content. One service that makes domain registration and content migration easy is InMotion Hosting.

Security
Security is always lighter when using a shared server, but that doesn't mean your site should be left vulnerable. The best hosts use shared SSL and SSH. Many of these hosts back up and restore your site without incurring an additional fee. Some of the web hosts also protect your email account from spammers free, while others offer advanced anti-spam protection at a cost.

If you plan to sell products or services online, there are several shared web hosts that also offer eCommerce solutions, such as shopping cart systems and the ability to accept credit cards. Nearly every web host we tested offers advertising credits to help jump-start your marketing effort for your website or business online.

Our Verdict & Recommendations on the Best Web Hosting Plans

Finding the right website hosting service suited to your site is important, especially with so many competitive companies looking for your business. In our tests of the basic plans of each web hosting service, we were surprised at the level of control and site creation capabilities available for a low monthly cost. InMotion Hosting provided superior features in a starter plan, something that business owners should consider when weighing value. Also, their support staff was prompt and helpful. Arvixe takes small perks, like giving a free domain for the life of the contract, and provides them as part of its shared hosting plans. Just Host, one of the bigger names on the lineup, may be associated with dozens of other hosts in our comparison but still has the edge in terms of features and a functional control panel. Each of these companies provides great ongoing support, intuitive interfaces and extra security features.

Web Hosting Reviews

How to Choose a Web Hosting Service

The top performers in our review are InMotion Hosting, the Gold Award winner; Arvixe, the Silver Award winner; and Just Host, the Bronze Award winner. Here's more on choosing a service to meet your needs, along with detail on how we arrived at our ranking of the best web hosts.

If you are considering owning any online real estate beyond a simple blog, it comes with a price. Thankfully, the price is minimal. Many people think that owning their own sites only has to do with owning the names themselves; however, a large part of having a site is hosting the data and information displayed on it. Before you sign up for a domain name, take some time to consider your options. We recommend that, before you ever plan your unique site name, you analyze the focus of your online business and how much storage you need.

In our experience, standard landing page sites only require the most basic shared hosting package. If you want to make an active site complete with images, blog posts and video content, you need a service that provides unlimited disk space. If you are planning to have an exorbitant number of viewers, then you should also look to find a package with unlimited bandwidth. Having sufficient bandwidth keeps your site from throttling if many readers flock to your site at once.
Annual & Monthly Payments of Web Hosts

The second step to take is to create the right domain name. The top web hosting plans typically include a free domain for one year. A domain often requires an annual payment, but Arvixe actually includes a domain for the life of the service. Popular services like Go Daddy are known for being go-to spots if you are looking to purchase a domain name.

When first signing up for website hosting services, you are offered promotional rates on several hosting plans, depending on the storage and bandwidth your site requires. Look past the promotional prices that each host offers. We noticed that several hosting services baited us with affordable plans, only to triple the monthly price and charge nearly $30 for a domain when renewal comes around.
Related Articles

Our sister site, Business News Daily, describes the pros and cons of web hosting. In this article, it describes that the purpose of website hosting is to help small business owners. Even novices can build something once and let the website take care of itself. These shared hosting services are easy enough for anyone to create something unique.

The web hosting industry is inundated with competition. In our extensive comparison, we researched, tested and ranked each service to find the one that best fits your business or personal website. For more information about this industry, take a look at our articles about web hosts.
Web Hosting for All Business Sizes

No one could be blamed for any confusion felt when shopping for a new host. Typically, any one of the top hosting companies offers a complex list of products with different features available. There are typically three tiers of price ranges coinciding with three tiers of feature sets.

Shared Hosting
For these hosting company reviews, we've chosen to cover shared hosting. Shared hosting provides the least expensive plans. If you see a low price advertised on the front page of a site, it is most likely referring to the lowest-grade shared plan.

The low cost does not equate to low value. If you are a small business owner who only needs a site to boost your business's online status and you plan for moderate site visitors, this is probably the best option. Every client on a shared server has to share hosting space. Most companies can initially promise reliability because they're planning on your site getting an average amount of traffic.

VPS Hosting
VPS, or Virtual Private Server, is a step above shared and cheap web hosting and packs in a bit more power on the CPU side. Companies that expect a decent traffic increase in the short term should consider these plans. The server spaced is still shared; however, you have more opportunity to customize your space management and benefit more from added security in comparison to shared hosting.

Dedicated Hosting
Rather than renting server space as you do in shared or VPS, dedicated means that one server is allotted for one purpose or site. The benefit of this type of hosting is that your site won't crash due to external websites spiking suddenly. This is the most independent way to go but should probably not be considered by personal bloggers or small business owners. The downside of this enterprise-level hosting type is the very high price tag.

Dedicated hosting is a case of experts need only apply. It allows you to customize your server with any type of software or file formats. Typically, any maintenance needed on the server is done by the owner.

Cloud Hosting
Outside of the three major offerings provided by each hosting service are the exceptions. One such exception is cloud hosting, which is your information and bandwidth spread of multiple servers to improve redundancy.

Web Hosting: How We Tested, What We Found

To test our web hosting lineup, we purchased month-to-month hosting subscriptions. These plans auto-renew as long as you let them and, in most instances, come with a free domain name for a year. For each provider, we used the basic shared hosting package, and the numbers we gathered for the disk space and bandwidth are all based on the introductory plans for each service.

Plan Offerings
Shared hosting should be flexible. As your business grows, your online presence should have the ability to grow with you. We measured that flexibility by how many plans a service offered and by asking its support staff how easy it is to upgrade in the middle of a contract.

Three is the standard number of hosting plans under a company’s shared hosting umbrella. Three different options give you room to grow if you're feeling unsure about initially investing in a higher-priced plan. Still, many web hosts offer only one shared server plan. In our testing, we found that those with a single plan often do not provide enough bandwidth, storage and domain capability for the value. Upgrading from one of these single-offering shared plans requires paying significantly more with a VPS or dedicated server.

Control Panel Usability
With each service, we built a landing page for a business using images and content. A number of reviewers at Top Ten Reviews tested each cPanel and downloaded apps, like WordPress, to test compatibility. While each version of cPanel is similar, the best web hosts provide more features, simplifying the creation process. We arrived at the usability mark by testing the hosting interface and scoring the cPanel and proprietary website builder.

We first tested usability through our experience creating an account. If a service used a one-step process, which entails easy account verification through email and approval of the domain and host package at the same time, we gave it points for immediate usability. Half of the products we purchased didn't let us create an account without a copy of an identification card and a credit card statement. If a service is difficult to sign up for, most people would move on to the next available host.

Once we accessed our accounts, we test each dashboard. The standard interface is called cPanel, while some services, like iPage, use their own control panel, which allows for more customization. We evaluated which tools are available in the basic shared hosting plans, taking into account features like simple email creation, a disk usage meter and access to create cron jobs. Many services in our lineup don't have the option to back up a site manually or utilize a one-click install section.

The majority of the hosts on our lineup use a standard cPanel and for good reason. It is the industry standard. While the dashboard isn’t much to look at, it provides most of the useful tools you need to create a site, manage the hosting and market it to the online world.

Support Quality
Customer support is an important factor when searching for the best hosting services. As site owners, we rely on each service to have solid uptime. When a server inevitably fails temporarily, services should have a support team available 24/7 by both phone and live chat.

We called multiple times at all hours of the day and night, testing the quality of the support given. We reached a percentage score by ranking five criteria. A representative needed sufficient product knowledge without sending us links to the FAQs page. In support calls, we wanted a problem solved and subtracted points when the service tried to upsell us instead of solving the issue at hand. Personability, in both chat and phone support situations, was a major factor. Also, we took into account the initial wait time and the wait time between responses.

We also brought up live chat during busy business hours and after normal business hours. To get a representative number of how long it took to reach each support team, we took an average of our attempts. The service with the fastest response time is WebHostingPad.

The average wait time overall was just over 10 minutes. The longest we waited to reach a live chat representative was 45 minutes. Testing the support staff of each service was essential to the process because it sets most of them apart. Often, a company boasted about its live chat support, but the team was consistently offline or unavailable. Other times, the staff could only help you with sales and upgrades but not technical support.

Additional Considerations: Picking the Right Web Host for Your Business

Web hosting is a very competitive field, and the best companies perform the same task with a similar range of site management tools. Each company offers promotions to get you to sign on with it, but we looked at few features that are important to consider in the long run.

What Does Unlimited Really Mean?
Web hosting companies throw around the term “unlimited” as if it's their slogan. As a consumer, it is important to know that unlimited does not mean infinite. Instead, the term technically means, “not exceeding regular use.” While the companies claim that 99.5 percent of their customers will never have a throttling problem, if you store large amounts of media on your site, you still may get a warning from the hosting provider informing that you will be slowed down or temporarily shut off. It is a shared server, which means you are at risk of taking other customer's allotted unlimited space.

Hosting Package Offerings
Most hosts boast about the unlimited data transfer and disk space they offer, but it's important to find each service's definition of that word. Every host provides different allotments for domains, subdomains and parked domains despite many calling that allotment "unlimited." There are services like iPage that don't have expandable shared hosting plans but don't truly need to provide the option because they offer unlimited boundaries in their basic plans. Each of these plans comes with the option to create email accounts with your URL attachment; although, the number you are allowed varies.

All of the web hosts we tested offer limited money back guarantees. Even further, a handful of companies allow you to cancel at any time without penalty.

Downtime Responsiveness
Each company claims to have 99 percent uptime. In the event of a failure, meaning your site is inaccessible, a service can usually get it back up in no more than 20 minutes, but that time could mean lost income or traffic if your site is built for those purposes. Technical problems can happen at any time – and there's not much you can do on your end, especially when you're running off a server in a remote location. Responsive tech support is critical.

Compatibility
Investing in a reliable web host is a big decision because it impacts how your site runs for the next year or two. If you find a concern with a host, there is no reason to stick with it just because you have a bundle. We looked for services that not only made it easy to migrate information but also to export site content. One service that makes domain registration and content migration easy is InMotion Hosting.

Security
Security is always lighter when using a shared server, but that doesn't mean your site should be left vulnerable. The best hosts use shared SSL and SSH. Many of these hosts back up and restore your site without incurring an additional fee. Some of the web hosts also protect your email account from spammers free, while others offer advanced anti-spam protection at a cost.

If you plan to sell products or services online, there are several shared web hosts that also offer eCommerce solutions, such as shopping cart systems and the ability to accept credit cards. Nearly every web host we tested offers advertising credits to help jump-start your marketing effort for your website or business online.

Our Verdict & Recommendations on the Best Web Hosting Plans

Finding the right website hosting service suited to your site is important, especially with so many competitive companies looking for your business. In our tests of the basic plans of each web hosting service, we were surprised at the level of control and site creation capabilities available for a low monthly cost. InMotion Hosting provided superior features in a starter plan, something that business owners should consider when weighing value. Also, their support staff was prompt and helpful. Arvixe takes small perks, like giving a free domain for the life of the contract, and provides them as part of its shared hosting plans. Just Host, one of the bigger names on the lineup, may be associated with dozens of other hosts in our comparison but still has the edge in terms of features and a functional control panel. Each of these companies provides great ongoing support, intuitive interfaces and extra security features.

Mac Antivirus Software Reviews

Mac Antivirus Software Review

Why Use Mac Antivirus Software?

- See more at: http://mac-antivirus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/#sthash.Ic5fgZxH.dpuf

Why Use Mac Antivirus Software?

Mac Antivirus Software Reviews
Mac Antivirus Software: What to Look For

The process of discovering the best virus protection for Mac is not difficult if you focus on protection, features, and help and support. Let’s zoom in on each of these categories.

Effectiveness
Antimalware attempts to detect and prevent viruses, spyware, rootkits, keyloggers and Trojan horses from infiltrating Macintosh operating systems. However since no security software will always prevent infiltration, it must also be able to seek and destroy any malware that successfully infiltrates and establishes itself. Please note that viruses are not the only threat. Therefore the best antivirus applications for Mac also protect against phishing attempts that trick you into dangerous behavior. Fortunately, most of the Mac antivirus software in our review includes antiphishing. In the process of ranking the protection abilities of the best Mac antivirus products, we have confidence in the performance test results from independent software lab AV-Test. AV-Test measured Mac security software in August, 2014, and published results on how well they detected Mac malware samples and whether they slowed system performance in the process.

Protections
Each Mac virus protection product in our review can scan for viruses during times when you do not need to use the computer. Furthermore, each can scan single files or folders and automatically check external drives when you attach them. Only a few of the entry-level products include parental controls, a feature much more likely to be included when you step up from antivirus software to internet security software. Read our reviews for an accurate picture of each product’s capabilities because the feature lists that vendors provide online sometimes miss included features that we discover as we install and test the products.

Help & Support
In addition to good performance and useful features, the best virus protection software for Macs include help and support. We suggest you evaluate help and support by asking questions such as: How good is the in-context help while you navigate the product? What do you think of the online knowledgebase and tutorials that the vendor hosts on its website? Do product managers ever visit the community forums where users discuss issues? The best products let you chat online with technical support as well as calling or emailing representatives. You may also want to consider whether the company offers 24/7 support. By researching up front how and when vendors intend to support you, you minimize unpleasant surprises.

In the course of our reviews we looked at ease of installation, ease of navigating between modules, ease of accessing help from within the application and ease of uninstalling. What we found is that ease of use is not an issue for any of these products because they conform to the generally accepted practices of the Macintosh applications development community.

Although they are not infected quite as often as Windows PCs, Macs are certainly exposed and vulnerable now that there are enough of them to divert criminal attentions from the Windows user base. You will make the best Mac antivirus purchase decision if you focus on protection, features, and help and support. We hope that our Mac antivirus software reviews help you pick one.