BannerZest: Flash at an Even Lower Cost!

Very recently on MacApper, I reviewed BannerZest Pro from Aquafadas. BannerZest Pro is an application that allows you to create professional-looking flash banners without having to know a thing about flash. Today, I am going to be looking at BannerZest Pro’s little brother BannerZest, and how their features compare.

The first thing that you will notice about BannerZest as compared to BannerZest Pro is the price. BannerZest costs $80 less than BannerZest Pro, sitting pretty at $49. The 80-dollar question is though, does BannerZest Pro have enough features over BannerZest to justify the cost?

This post is going to be mainly discussing the differences between the two applications, so if you haven’t read my post on BannerZest Pro yet, it will help you understand this post a lot more if you read it now.

The startup windows of each application look almost identical, except for the absence of an icon in the bottom right of BannerZest’s window. This icon is the Media Browser in BannerZest Pro. Since BannerZest does not have a media browser, you must locate the files you want to add in the Finder before dragging them onto the window. The Media Browser is quite convenient, as it integrates with iPhoto and Aperture.

The next major graphical difference between BennerZest and BannerZest Pro is the absence of a “Publish” tab in BannerZest. Instead of having the “Publish” tab, BannerZest has a very user friendly step-by-step wizard for you to follow to publish your banner. You have all of the same publishing options in BannerZest, except you cannot choose a target URL, or have the banner display in Lightbox or Shadowbox.

BannerZest has all of the same themes as BannerZest Pro except for two. One called Accordion which you can see at the bottom of my review of BannerZest Pro, and the other called Falling Stripes. Accordion is also a navigation theme, which means you can use the banner as navigation within your site. You can adjust all of the same settings in each theme, except you cannot choose a custom loading screen, though you can still use the three that come with BannerZest.

BannerZest does not allow you to associate a URL with your images, which means that you cannot have an image in one of your banners open a new window.

Finally, BannerZest still generates the code for you to paste your banner like BannerZest Pro, except the options are much simpler. You have the option to “Show Banner” which takes you to the online preview, copy the code, which is an iFrame instead of javascript and other HTML, or copy the URL of the online preview.

In the end, BannerZest is still has quite a bit of functionality unless you absolutely need one of the features that the Pro version has. You can pick up the standard version of BannerZest, which just came out of beta like the pro version, for $49 USD from Aquafadas.