Go anywhere else and the price will be in the magnitude of 5-10x more expensive. JLC makes money on an automated process, so anything that is outside of default order specs costs them money, which is then reflected on you.

Well the next cheapest is about 5% more expensive actually.  There was somewhere cheaper than JLC at the end of last year but they raised their prices on 1/1/19.  I suspect JLC will as well shortly. But my point was on misleading advertising.  They used to show a green board which is what you get for the price quoted.

Your first post is a little hard to read for me I guess. I'm not sure where you are seeing that the blue solder mask/gold plating is being shown when the actual base quote will always be the green/hasl. You're also getting the "convenience" of not having to spend time generating gerber files, making drawings for panelization, etc for one of the cheapest prices out there. I don't know of any manufacturer that doesn't up-charge for non green-mask, even at volume pricing. When I click the gerber button I always get a green/hasl image with the $2 advertised price.  From here I can change the settings, and it updates to show the price for those options.

@cjohnson Yes that's what I used to get, but since the latest release I get a picture of a blue board with gold plated holes.  Looks much nicer of course, but is seriously more expensive.

Interesting. I'm using the desktop client for windows and don't experience that issue. Are you using it in a browser?

@cjohnson No I use the desktop as well.   I find the browser one a bit clunky. But if most people are seeing the green that's good.  Just wouldn't want some newbie thinking they'll get a plated blue board for $2.

Very good point. I'm going to do some playing around to see if I can duplicate the issue, then at least the devs have something to go on.

@cjohnson Here's a screenshot of a protoboard I had made. 

That is definitely misleading, for sure. I just tried changing my board color to blue using the photo view, but the settings don't stick in the generate gerber menu. Does it do it on all of your designs?

@cjohnson Yes - just didn't want to give screenshots of real products so used a prototype.

Just tried setting it to all sorts of colours and the Gerber generate remains in blue/gold

Interesting, that's definitely something for the devs.

@cjohnson Unfortunately that's a rather long list.  It's a good tool and you can't beat the price but it still needs a lot of work, especially for specialist applications.

Gotta weigh in what it has versus what you would get if you paid for other software for sure. We switched from PADS VX Professional and Multisim/Ultiboard to EasyEDA. Worlds better in my opinion. PADS just sucked, we usually spent 1-2 days creating parts for a project, then another week or two doing the actual schematic and layout. Multisim/Ultiboard's library system is just as confusing as PADS, but is easier to create parts. EasyEDA blows those two products out of the water in those two categories. We can typically start a project and have a layout ready the next day, depending on the complexity. This greatly improves our response time to our customers.

Totally agree on the products you mention.  Also add DesignSpark to the avoid list.   I used Cadstar which is still well above EasyEDA, especially for analogue and r.f. work, but couldn't justify the 'maintenance' fee anymore.

Honestly, I can't stand Eagle either. The library manager, like most products in my list, is awful. I'll keep that in mind to never use DesignSpark either haha. The tough thing is, the maintenance fees are way out of control on any of the products out there. Even if EasyEDA started charging $20/month ($240/yr) for their software, they are miles cheaper than everyone else.

Yes it's the maintenance that kills.  Not that they seem to do any but the dongle makes sure you don't use it for more than 365 days without paying it.   I think EasyEDA could be worth $20 a month in a while, but not at the moment.   For me things like track impedance and reflection measurement, 3D component visualisation and so on are needed before then.   Fortunately I've got a friend I can send the Gerber to for a final check. For my current design I've had to use the ground plane software to make all the critical power tracks fill the available board - I think I've got about 30 different 'ground' planes :-)    That would be a simple improvement but I doubt it will appear any time soon. Maybe they could open up an API so people could write macros or something and then contribute them to the product if it works well.

Guess who is now experiencing your issue as well. I'm actually having a lot of issues with the newest version right now, but I am seeing the advertising issue you were having with all new designs. 

Yes PCBs look SO much nicer in blue and gold, don't they ?   :-)

I can't go back now, I've been shown luxury.

@cjohnson Yeah.  We used gold at HP but never blue.  That IS one upmanship !