Bank24.ru announced at the beginning of August 2008 that they had set up a corporate blog in addition to the bank’s official website. The blog itself had a reference to JetStyle as the product’s developer; however, it was actually operating on the basis of a free Wordpress platform, while the picture gallery was also working with the help of the free Nextgen gallery software.

‘We’ve got our own platform where we can create blogs for our customers, but Wordpress is more convenient and easier to use,’ JetStyle’s director Alexei Kulakov said to UrBC.

‘As for the cost of developing the blog, it remains the same regardless of whether we use our platform or the Wordpress one, as the customer will have to pay for the computer programmer’s work in whichever case. If the blog has to become a complement to the already existing site, the total price comprising the cost of design and programming will come to about 200,000 RUR,’ he explained.

‘Our customers can use the free Wordpress platform themselves if they choose to involve their own computer programmers to do the job, but the blog would normally come out as a rather conventional and not very interesting one,’ Alexei Kulakov noted.

Experts feel the use of such free platforms costs no more than 3,000 RUR (the price of a year-long hosting included), while the average global prices of having a blog installed at Wordpress vary between $200 and $400.

At the time of writing, Bank24.ru’s blog does not bear any reference to using either Wordpress platform or Nextgen gallery software.