StickiWidgets

JS-Kit, a provider of lightweight widgets and services, announced $1.2 million in seed funding and a new member to the board of directors. Kim Miller, VP of Marketing for HP.com, will be joining the board. With already over 5000 registered sites and gaining 1000 publishers per month, the new additions will only serve to propel JS-Kit even further.

We’ve used their system in the past and like what they have to offer. Check them out if you haven’t before. While they may not solve your problems, it’s worth a look.

Service Highlights (from js-kit.com):

• Services can be deployed in minutes with just a few lines of HTML
• No coding or other technical expertise required
• Modular, integrated services are a la carte but work together seamlessly
• Free or highly affordable. No contract.
• Customizable to fit seamlessly within your site
• Flexible administrative controls and full reporting

The official press release is here.

We received the pre-release email a few weeks ago as with many others (thanks Khris Loux for including us) regarding the updated widgets and services from JS-Kit. Their current portfolio of services includes Comments, Ratings, Ratings + Comments and Polls. Ratings were of particular interest for one of our existing sites, so we decided to hold off on the review and see how it really works.

The basic setup for all 4 services and widgets is relatively straight forward. Just copy and paste a couple lines of code into your existing HTML or template. All data storage and processing is hosted by JS-Kit so there’s no need to worry about any of that. If you would like to have a more custom look and feel, they do provide methods and instructions on how to customize each component. While most average users will just go with the default, it’s nice to have that ability.

As for the real world test, we were happy with the Ratings widget and service. Their press release boasts over 2,500 sites using various JS-Kit services as of mid April. Our Ajax driven test site receives a decent amount of traffic and JS-Kit had no problems keeping up. Integrating with our Ajax site only required one additional line of code (3 total). It doesn’t get much easier that that. While this review is primarily on the Ratings widget, the other components in the JS-Kit portfolio are just as easy to use.

If you have a need for one of the widgets and services from JS-Kit, we would highly recommend them. Performance is good, installation is simple, it’s a completely hosted solution and best of all it’s free. There are things that we would like to see out of them in the future and we hope that they continue to develop the system further.

Since it is a hosted service, you do not have access to the data and you are relying in good faith on a free service. For small businesses, this may be a good way to get a jump start. However, as with any business decision you should consider all options and risks when choosing services that drive your business. For the regular user, blogger or hobby site this is a great solution.

For additional coverage and information, you can check out TechCrunch and Widgets Lab.

Sample Ratings Widget (Rate This Post):