Marg Ceros

Consider this - you'll spend money on licensing, and then on ongoing support. please budget for this. Also, the graphics are not transferrable once you end your license with them - so you don't count on portability.

Interactive graphics without using developer time. We've sold a couple of them, which is good, but again, we have paid through the teeth in support costs from our team reaching out to their support. Looking back it hasn't been great for us.

While the benefits are there, they're hidden very well behind a steep learning curve, a sales team lacking in organization and understanding of the user end of the product, resources that aren't given unless the client asks for them, and many, many more unfortunate issues that arose in my short time working with Ceros. There's a ridiculous amount of potential with this product, but they definitely have a long way to go.

For example, there is no offline editing mode, meaning that, unless you are connected to the internet, you cannot design. As a designer myself, I know that I'll get some of my best ideas quickly and unexpectedly, and Ceros does not (and has admitted that in no time in the near future will they) align for that offline experience.

Ceros never remembers login information. Closing a window means logging you out, refreshing a window after a short period of time means logging out, and closing the browser means logging you out. It's not the worst thing on this list, but it is horrendously inconvenient.

When your design is published, Ceros has admitted that it is impossible for those viewing your project to zoom in or out of your project on mobile or desktop, making it out of the question for those with visual impairments to have even the slightest chance at viewing your creation.

It is impossible to hyperlink - any piece of text you'd like to link to must be done with a "hotspot", an additional element that must be placed like a mask in a layer over the element you'd like users to click through, instead of simply being able to link something as you would, well, anywhere else.

On the page, there are no default templated menu options for people to get to certain sections. Instead, a menu must be created completely from scratch with individual text boxes, rectangular shapes, and hotspots that act as jumplinks to bring users down, all grouped together and pinned to the top of the page.

There is no data visualization tool within Ceros. Ceros suggested I use their Chartblocks integration, which was difficult to use, would not allow me to sign in, and had four font options. Four. Instead, I was told that if I did not want to use their integration, I would have to create everything by hand – incredibly tedious and disappointing.

I could go on, but I'll save readers time by saying that unless the design you're creating is simple, you have an enormous amount of patience, and don't mind constantly switching between Firefox, Chrome, and their desktop app, there just might be a better alternative out there for you.

We used Ceros to create an interactive data visualization page for our readers to better understand and work with the original data we collected for an event. With Ceros, there are quite a few benefits in comparison to stagnant design, such as being able to present more information in a seemingly smaller place.

It depends on your business needs. I would say grab a free website online, use social media, and power your business on a lean diet.

I run a transmedia entertainment company. The Ceros platform test I did is great, but the functionality does not contain enough of what we need as a business to host immense interactive experiences.

For quick deployment cycles and responsive cross platform assets, this may well be the tool you are looking for.

So, we have just started using full canvas builds as a solution to big animation sites. There's no silver bullet for this technology that doesn't require webGL so we have to customize the implementations. If Ceros had parallax 3D, I would encourage the team to use this product. One great selling point was being able to push the build phase of web projects up stream to the designers. This would relieve us of the PSD to HTML phase.

It's very good for one offs.

Getting up a quick slick site.