Quote Originally Posted by TXAlba View Post
Thinking at the time that 365 was a marketing attempt to provide the company more revenue; and not necessarily to provide a better system, I struggled to commit to the 365 upgrade on its release but decided to take the leap of faith as having low expectations i could always go back to the previous version i had purchased.

I do not agree with 'variants' as a form or responsive design and in a recent customer survey undertaken, my prospective and existing clients said that responsive, interactive design was high on their agenda. Losing 2 existing clients with Xara Web Designer sites in 2016 purely down to this, and then losing a further 4 new contracts because of variants proved for me that assessment of working practices was essential.

Web Designer continues to be a very capable application for anyone wishing to administer their own website and who see it staying within a 70 page limit. I have found that above this I have to use external ftp solutions to cater for the maintenance of sites or split the site. I have developed sites with WordPress as alternatives for clients but I was not so impressed from a development perspective, because although it does provide a capable CMS and whos templates can be responsive, the actual design is in no way as versatile as Xara Web Designer and there is a substantial learning curve for the client. Currently I am training on Joomla to see if the CMS they provide is any better, on first install it would seem to be but time will tell.

In 2017 my decision is not yet made but it is highly unlikely that I will extend my 5 years with Xara Web Designer
This is a good summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the Xara approach.

Acorn