Jimdo

General Overview

This Jimdo website builder review is going to find out what makes Jimdo better or worse than other brands on the market. Jimdo is a German-based website builder platform that has been helping people like you to create websites since 2007. More than 20 million websites have been created on the platform by users across the world. However, most Jimdo users reside in Germany or the USA. Jimdo has offices in Hamburg, San Francisco, and Tokyo, and can be used in eight different languages.

  • Beginner Friendly
    8.9
  • Design Capabilities
    6.9
  • Variety of Features
    6.8
  • Value for Money
    7.5

The platform claims to be perfect for small businesses and to be great for beginner web developers. There’s no need for any coding skills and you can create websites easily and fast. Sounds great, right? We put the platform through a thorough test to see if it lived up to its claims. We find out if it can compete with the most popular brands on the market like Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify in terms of features and usability.

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if Jimdo is the right platform for you. 

Who is it for?

Jimdo is an AI-based website builder that creates websites by gathering information from a series of questions that you are asked to answer when you first set up your account. Jimdo will also take a peek at your Google and Facebook accounts (if synced) to find any relevant images it can include in your website. All of this combined means that by the time you’ve finished answering the onboarding questions, you’ll have a professionally designed website that has specific elements relevant to you or your business. So, Jimdo is best for anyone looking to create a website really fast and for people without any coding or web design skills. 

However, there is an option to opt for pro mode where you can edit the code to have complete control over the designs, and of course, there is plenty that you can do on the editing page to create the look and feel you want.

  • Small businesses
  • Self-employed
  • Artists
  • Bloggers
  • Online stores
  • Musicians
Jimdo Platform Screenshots

Beginner Friendly

In this section, we interrogate Jimdo’s claims about being a beginner-friendly website builder. You can indeed have the framework of your website complete with images and stock content without having to touch a piece of code or barely lift a finger. While that’s a good start, we’re going to take a closer look at beginner-friendly editing features and the onboarding process to find out if it really is a beginner-friendly website builder.

Drag & Drop Editing

Instead of a drag & drop editor, Jimdo uses a point-and-click style editor. This means that the platform isn’t as intuitive as drag & drop website builders and feels clunkier when editing your website. However, the benefits of point-and-click editors are that they are really simple to use and they help beginner users to edit easily without creating a mess of the design. While drag and drop editors are fantastic for speedy editing, it can be easy to get move elements around too much and lose the quality of the original template design. 

When you click on an element that you would like to edit like a text box or an image, a small editing menu will float above the chosen element. That menu will have all the editing options available to you for that particular element. When you click on a content block that you would like to edit, a floating menu will appear to the left of your screen which has all the content block editing options available to you. For example, there are arrows that allow you to move the block up or down the page.

  • The point-and-click editor makes adapting your website very simple.
  • The lack of a drag & drop feature makes editing on Jimdo feel clunky.

Video Tutorials & Onboarding Animations

When you first load the editing page your Jimdo assistant will pop up. The assistant will suggest that you complete a few tasks to get your website up and running. This includes tasks like listing your first product, picking your font, changing block layouts, editing your navigation menu, and how to make your website live. Depending on the task you’ll either be shown a short video or the appropriate section will be highlighted so you know exactly where to go. It’s pretty basic, but it will help you do everything you need to do to set up and make your website live.

  • The assistant provides new users with an easy-to-follow checklist to get their website set up with simple instructions and brief videos.
  • It just about covers the basics of the editor, users wanting to learn how to do more complex tasks on the platform will need to dive into the content within the help center.

Design Capabilities

The Editor

The Jimdo editor caters to the beginner user so it is pretty basic. There are not many bells and whistles that allow you to do fancy stuff to your website. However, all of the basic editing features that you need to make simple changes to your website are present, and they’re easy to use. Beginners users will love the simplicity, whereas more advanced users will quickly become frustrated by the lack of options.

Jimdo users will have 13 varieties of content blocks, each with several style options. So, you’ll be able to find something that there or thereabouts matches the look and feel you desire. The types of content blocks include covers, about sections, text boxes, images, slideshows, banners, booking forms, menus, and more. Something that stands out as great for a particular type of user is the music content blocks. I think the designs of the music content blocks are a little underwhelming but what’s cool is that you can embed an album via Spotify or Apple Music that can play directly from your web page. So, if you’re an up-and-coming artist this is a great way to allow your visitors to listen to your music without having to leave your site. 

The text editor allows you to bold, italicize, and change the alignment of your text. You can also change the format of your text to a large heading, medium heading, small heading, or normal, which represents H1, H2, & H3 HTML headings and paragraph text.

You can upload a video background for banners and other content blocks via a Youtube or Vimeo link. There is also a basic image editor that can apply filters to your images to change the look. However, to be honest, the quality of the filters is terrible and you’d be better off using an off-platform image editor and re-uploading your images unless you are in a rush.

Overall, the editor is pretty clunky and is definitely not going to win any awards for the designs it can produce. However, there is some beauty in its simplicity. The lack of options will also make sure that you create a website in no time!

  • All basic editing features are covered and the music content blocks that allow you to embed music from Spotify or Apple Music is a stand-out feature.
  • While the template designs are professional, the lack of options means that it’s not possible to create world-class designs using the Jimdo editor.
  • Video backgrounds
  • Basic image editor
  • Simple text editor
  • 13 variety of content blocks
  • 20 font pairings
  • Color themes
  • Animations
  • Button designs
  • HTML headings

Jimdo Example Websites

Jimdo Example Websites

Links to Example Websites Built With Jimdo:

www.craftmans.nl
www.curio-styles.net
www.heary.nl
www.tamiramusic.com
www.combatladies.com

Main Features & Tools

So, we’ve got to know the Jimdo website editor a little bit but an all-in-one website builder is so much more than just the editor. Let’s take a look at what else the platform has to offer.

When making your website live you will probably want a custom domain name. You do get a free Jimdo subdomain with every account, however, it adds a less than desirable .jimdosite.com onto the end of your URL. You can purchase and renew custom domains straight from your Jimdo dashboard. This makes the process a lot easier but also more expensive as Jimdo charges a premium for its simplicity. It costs $80 to renew custom domains via Jimdo which is expensive compared to buying your own from somewhere like 123Reg and compared with purchasing it on other website builder platforms. It is possible to connect domains purchased off the platform which is recommended considering the cost.

The Jimdo platform offers basic SEO features like the ability to edit meta titles and descriptions, create custom URLs, edit image alt text and customize HTML headings. Your website will automatically come with an SSL certificate that protects your visitor’s data and will give a little extra boost to your SEO. 

You can integrate your Google Workspace with Jimdo so you can manage emails, calendars, etc. from your dashboard. This is great for simplifying your workstreams. Another neat simplification tool is the legal text generator that’s available with all paid accounts. This will help you to create custom legal pages that are fully compliant with the rule and regulations within your jurisdiction.

  • Basic SEO tools provide a way for beginners to improve the viability of their website in search engine ranking pages.
  • Expensive custom domains and limited third-party apps.
  • Custom domain names
  • Logo maker
  • Automatic SEO
  • Easy-to-track analytics
  • Template designs for every industry
  • SSL security certification
  • Multilingual customer support
  • Legal text generator
  • Google workspace integration
  • Business listings

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store Options

Just like everything else of the Jimdo platform the main highlight of its online store is its simplicity to set up and manage. This again does mean that there are fewer advanced options when compared to a platform like Shopify. However, for small business owners that only want to sell a handful of products, Jimdo ecommerce can provide a quick, hassle-free setup. 

Two standout features are that Jimdo doesn’t charge any transaction fees, even on entry-level payment plans. Therefore, you get to keep all the money you make from sales. So, small businesses that can’t afford the more expensive payment plans can still sell without being penalized with transaction fees. The second is the ability to integrate your online store with Facebook and Instagram. This allows you to list products on their market places and considerably expand your audience. You can also transfer your followers into leads by getting them to migrate from your social channels to your website.

  • No transaction fees and a speedy store setup.
  • The platform lacks advanced ecommerce features that larger businesses might need to optimize their online store.
  • Mobile-friendly online stores
  • No transaction fees
  • Order management
  • Automatic customer emails
  • Facebook & Instagram integrations
  • Flexible discount options

Bookings & Reservations

While there are booking content blocks there isn’t a built-in booking feature. You will be required to link to a third-party solution where you will manage your customer bookings off the platform. You can use whatever you want, however, Jimdo suggests that you use Calendly which is a well-respected and very robust booking system. It has a free option for those just starting, with enough features and depth to allow you to scale as your business grows.

  • Ability to link with powerful third-party tools.
  • No built-in booking features.

Payment Options

There are a variety of payment options available on Jimdo. You can offer invoice payments, payment in advance, local delivery, local pickup, and collect-on-delivery payment options. You can collect payment via all major debit and credit cards via Stripe and use Paypal.

Something really neat is that you can connect and take payments via PayPal even on a free account. So, you can start selling your products without having to pay a cent to Jimdo. This is a fantastic option for anyone just starting out and testing the waters with their products or for small businesses just selling one or two products.

  • All major payment methods are available (credit & debit cards and PayPal) and free accounts can take payments via PayPal.
  • Limited payment gateway providers when compared with other website builders. However, this is only an issue for niche businesses who are looking to use the less popular payment gateways.

Value For Money & Support

Free Trial & Features

The PLAY plan is a completely free trial account that anyone can sign up for and keep using for as long as they want to. It gives users the chance to use all the basic features on the Jimdo platform to see if they like it and if it works for their needs. You will be assigned a Jimdo subdomain that will look something like this: [webistename].jimdosite.com. You’ll be given 2GB of bandwidth, 500MB of storage, and access to features like contact forms and image libraries. You’ll be able to create up to five web pages before you need to look at upgrading. So, you won’t be able to run a professional website from the free plan, but it is certainly enough to allow you to learn how to use Jimdo without any time pressure.

Pricing Plans

There are three premium website plans and three ecommerce plans to choose from. The entry-level website plan starts at $9 per month and is billed annually ($108 per year). This gives you a free domain, 10GB of bandwidth, 5GB of storage, and the ability to connect a business email address so that you can manage emails from your Jimdo dashboard. Your website will be free from Jimdo adverts and you’ll get access to advanced features like SEO tools, fast indexing on Google, advances analytics, and more.

The entry-level ecommerce plan starts from $15 per month and is also billed annually ($180 per year). This gets you 10 GB of storage and bandwidth, a free domain, the ability to create 10 pages and connect with all payment methods. However, you won’t get access to advanced ecommerce features like discount codes, social selling, product variants, etc.

  • Flexible pricing options that start at very affordable prices.
  • The entry-level ecommerce plan is very basic and will only cater to very small online businesses. You’ll quickly need to upgrade as your business scales.

Support 

Jimdo urges you to check out the Dolphin help pages and browse the FAQs to see if you can find the answers to resolve your issues there. However, if you need to speak to someone to resolve your issue you can use the help widget which is located in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. You can then create a support ticket and strike up an email communication with the customer support team. Unfortunately, this is the only form of direct support that the platform offers, and how quickly you get a response depends on which plan you are signed up to. The response time can range from 1-2 business days if you’re on the entry-level plan to within 1 hour if you’re signed up to the most premium plan.

  • There’s a lot of information within the help pages that will help to resolve the most basic queries.
  • Jimdo only offers email support and has slow response times for users on the cheaper subscription plans. Rather elitist if you ask me!
Kartra

General Overview

Kartra is an online marketing platform that has everything you need to run an online business, including the building and hosting of your website. It was founded in 2018 by a company called Genesis Digital who is also behind Webinarjam which is an all-in-one webinar platform. The Kartra platform has helped more than 17,000 businesses to launch their website. As the platform spreads around the globe, the company is beginning to make a name for itself. Our Kartra review finds out what all the hype is about.

  • Beginner Friendly
    7.9
  • Design Capabilities
    7.5
  • Variety of Features
    9.5
  • Value for Money
    8.5

You might be thinking, don’t all website builders claim to be an ‘all-in-one’ platform? And, it’s a valid question as lots of website builders make this claim. However, it’s often the case that website builders rely on app marketplaces to add functionality that the platform doesn’t support. This can lead to a complex web of applications and several monthly subscriptions you didn’t plan for. What makes Kartra different is that they have everything you need already built into the platform. So, theoretically, everything from your email lists to checkout pages should work seamlessly together without any hidden costs.

It sounds like a good thing, right? Well, we tested the platform to find out if the Kartra claims are true. We also wanted to find out if the website builder tools on offer can compete with the industry’s top-rated brands. There’s no point in having everything in one place if you can’t make a decent website…

If you don’t feel like reading the full Kartra review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if Kartra is the right platform for you. 

Who is it for? 

Kartra works best for people that already have a website set up on WordPress or another platform and who are looking for a tool that can build landing pages, checkout pages, sales funnels, etc. It’s aimed at business owners that are frustrated with managing multiple tools and plugins and want to save some cash by having everything catered for by one platform.

However, you can build a full website as well and it’s a great platform for beginner developers that don’t have any coding skills thanks to the drag and drop interface and ready-to-go web templates.

Kartra also has a respectable set of ecommerce features that allows you to sell a variety of products, services, and training courses. The platform started out as an eCommerce cart solution (hence the name) so it really can compete with Wix and Shopify in terms of ecommerce features. 

  • Online stores
  • Portfolios
  • Fitness & Health businesses
  • Blogs
  • Restaurants
  • Musicians
  • Consulting services
  • Marketing agencies
  • Local businesses
  • Photographers
Kartra customer testimonials from Facebook

Beginner Friendly

Drag & Drop Editing

The Kartra page builder tool does have drag & drop capabilities. To use them, you have to click on the content block that you would like to move and click on the crosshair symbol that appears above the block. As you start to move the block you will see a bunch of orange lines appear on your screen. This highlights where you can move the content block to. When you hover your cursor over the orange lines it will go green to signal that the block will snap into place when you let go of the cursor. So, it operates with a snap-to-grid function to ensure proper alignment. While this feature is great for keeping the designs nicely aligned, it does make the whole designing process pretty rigid as you are limited to a set number of possibilities. 

  • Drag and drop feature is easy to use and the snap-to-grid function makes aligning elements simple.
  • You can only rearrange the layout of content blocks rather than creating a new layout when using a template.
Katra's drag & drop website builder in action

Video Tutorials & Onboarding Animations

You’ll find out as you go through this review that you gain access to a huge platform with a Kartra account. There’s a lot to learn if you’re going to get the most out of the platform and that’s why they suggest that you go through the Kartranaught training program when you first create your account. You have two options, the first is to work your way through the whole onboarding course, or you can select specific modules to learn skills that you know you will need. The benefit of being able to pick and choose modules is that you could task team members to complete specific courses to help with their role within your business. For example, your customer service team could take the ‘Helpdesk Helm’ course or your commerce team could take the ‘Product Pioneer’ and ‘Integration Instructor’ courses. There are 12 modules in total and each module is broken down into multiple lessons. Each lesson has a video and a step-by-step article with screenshots that walk you through specific areas of the platform. 

Once you log in to your account, you will be greeted with an onboarding video that gives you a guided tour of your dashboard. It’s a great way to quickly understand where everything is and how to use it. There is also an onboarding checklist that guides you through a complete setup from completing your profile, generating a leads list, integrating payment gateways, listing your first product, and more!

If that’s still not enough information to get you started or if you have a specific issue that the training material doesn’t cover, Kartra also offers a live Q&A session twice a week. You’ll get to speak to a Kartra team member to ask your questions. Other members will also be asking questions which is a great way to learn solutions to problems before they arise and to get a deeper understanding of the platform. The Q&A sessions are run on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific Standard Time (PST).

Design Capabilities

The Editor

The Karta page builder is a point-and-click style editor with drag and drop capabilities. There are a bunch of templates that help you to create different types of pages such as video sales pages, coming soon pages, product launch pages, checkout pages, and much more. This style of template offering is different from other website builders that provide a template for the whole website rather than individual pages. The benefit is that you can find specific templates that are designed to convert. The downside is that building your website in this manner feels a bit fragmented and it’s more difficult to maintain a consistent design across all your pages when you’re going through them one at a time. If you’re using Kartra to build an entire website I would recommend choosing the start from scratch option so you can populate your own template. You can still use the block templates to have a good-looking framework within minutes that you can build upon.

There are 19 different content block categories and each category has various style options so you can pick the look that’s right for your business. The block categories include things like pricing tables, footers, contact forms, hero sections, and call-to-actions. There are also 20 different components that you can add to your Kartra web pages that include things like calendars, social share buttons, images, carousels, buttons, and more.

Usually installing pop-ups on your website requires a third-party application but you have the functionality built-in to your website builder on Karta. You can activate landing pop-ups and exit popups and choose from dozens of templates. Similarly, you can include an alert bar on your website to highlight special offers or to host a countdown sales timer to encourage visitors to buy now before it’s too late. Again, there are a bunch of templates and once you have configured the settings you can simply drop it into place.

You can edit basic SEO parameters like page titles, meta descriptions, HTML headings, and image alt tags to improve the visibility of your site. There’s also an image editor that allows you to apply effects, edit the border margin and style, change the opacity and create image blur. 

  • The Kartra page builder allows you to create advanced features like pop-ups and alert bars that would normally require third-party apps.
  • Individual page templates make building a website using templates on Karta feel disjointed.
  • 20 content blocks
  • Content block templates
  • Dozens of page templates
  • Basic image editor
  • SEO tools
  • Pop-up creator
  • Alert bars
  • RGB color editing
  • Custom CSS classes
  • 100+ custom fonts

Kartra Example Websites

Websites made with Kartra

Links to Example Websites Built With Kartra:

meganminns.com
traderoomplus.com
tythedogguy.com
www.chatmatic.com
beatcancer.org

Main Features & Tools

The extensive list of features and tools is the main selling point of Kartra. It genuinely does have everything you need to run an online business and will certainly simplify how you manage the flow between your website and the tools as they are already built-in to your dashboard. It’s also likely to save you some money. However, you do have to be prepared not to have access to best-in-class software as you have to use the Kartra version of email marketing tools or lead capture forms, etc. For example, the Kartra email marketing tool is good but it doesn’t have the depth of features like Mailchimp or Constant Contact does. However, the Kartra version is already installed and won’t cost you any extra money.

For an in-depth look at all the features on offer head over to the Kartra homepage and read the description of the features that will be helpful to your business. We are going to focus on the features that we were most impressed by.

The Kartra Helpdesk system has got to be one of the most impressive additional features. It allows you to create a live chat and email ticket system to manage your customer queries quickly and efficiently. You can create template answers to respond to frequently asked questions with the click of a mouse.  You can even invite other customer support agents into the call to help out when dealing with unusual queries. Finally, it even provides analytics that shows your busiest times so that you can plan the appropriate resources to deal with customer complaints quickly.

The second feature that’s worth calling out is the Kartra Video editing software. It’s well known that including video content on your website will improve engagement and drive sales. So, having the ability to upload videos directly to your site, edit them, and include CTAs throughout is a big help. You can include watermark branding, embed popups to direct viewers to specific pages on your site, customize the look and feel of the video player, and much more.

  • Drag & drop website builder
  • CMS (Kartra leads)
  • Custom checkout pages
  • Create funnels & campaigns
  • Email marketing
  • Membership site builder
  • Video marketing tools
  • Integrated customer support 
  • Bookings & reservations
  • Lead capture forms
  • Affiliate programs
  • Agency accounts
  • Kartra marketplace
  • Intergrations & API

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store Options

The biggest benefit to running an online store with Kartra is that the ecommerce features work seamlessly with all other Kartra tools which makes managing your online store more streamlined. For example, the email addresses of your customers will automatically be synced to your lead database so that you can remarket to them in the future with exclusive discounts or product suggestions. Sometimes to automate that process you would need two or three apps, whereas Kartra has everything ready to go.

Having flexible price points is a great way to increase your online store conversion rates. Being able to offer pay-by-installments means customers can spread the cost over multiple payments. 4 x $100 payments across 2 months is easier to swallow than one $400 payment, right? Shopify is set to release an installments feature later this year, but Kartra already has it. So, that shows you the depth of the ecommerce features on this platform. You can also collect recurring payments for products that need replenishing like coffee, toothpaste, etc.

  • Huge array of ecommerce features that gives you everything you need to run an online store without the need for additional plugins.
  • There are no store templates available.
  • Sell physical & digital products, services, memberships, and training courses
  • One-time payments, recurring payments, or installments
  • Custom checkout pages
  • One-click transaction for returning customers
  • Automatic customer segmentation
  • Upsells, downsells & order bumps
  • Multiple payment gateway integrations
  • Coupons & discounts
  • Automatic tax & VAT calculations
  • 12 language translations for checkout page
  • Abandoned cart recovery

Bookings & Reservations

Guess what? Kartra has a tool for that. Their calendar tool allows customers to book, check, and self-manage the appointments they schedule with your business. It’s a real-time booking service which means you don’t run the risk of double booking any clients. It also has a dynamic time-zome feature where Kartra will convert your available appointment times into the customer’s local time zone. Customizing the calendar form to match your brand can be done with just a few clicks. You can upload your logo and update it with your brand colors to make sure things stay consistent. It’s great for restaurants, personal trainers, yoga studios, hairdressers, and more!

Payment Options

Your customers can pay with any major debit or credit card as well as PayPal. This facilitates most of your transactions, although it is disappointing that Kartra doesn’t support some of the smaller e-wallets like Stripe or Square.

The Kartra platform also hosts features that are great for service-led businesses or online education businesses. You can offer a free trial, or a discounted first month, followed by a full payment. Or, you can charge a setup fee and collect a recurring monthly payment for maintenance services. 

  • You can offer free trials, discounted monthly subscriptions, and more with the flexible payment options from Kartra.
  • Kartra doesn’t support a wide array of payment gateways, only major credit cards, debit cards, and Paypal.

Value For Money & Support

Free Trial & Features

While there is not a free trial, you can get access to the platform for 14 days for just $1, There is also a 30-day money-back guarantee on the first full payment. So, you can effectively have risk-free access to the Kartra platform for 44 days and you’ll get access to all of the features available.

If you’re looking for even more free time before you commit any money, here’s a little tip. Keep the signup tab open but move your cursor towards the top of your browser. This will trigger an exit pop-up that will offer you the chance to double your trial period. So, you can get a 30 day trial for $1 and still have a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’ve not already done the calculation, that’s 60 days access to all the  Kartra features for just $1. This offer was active at the time of writing (March 2021).

Pricing Plans

There are four pricing plans to choose from with Kartra. Starter, Silver, Gold, and Platnum. The Starter plan costs $99 per month and you will be able to create 1 website with a custom domain name with 50GB of bandwidth. You’ll be able to sell up to 20 products, build 2 membership sites, and host up to 100 web pages. Not only do you get access to the website builder, but you get access to all of the Kartra tools except for the agency account setting. 

Yes, it seems expensive compared to other website builder starting prices. However, you’re getting more than just the website builder. If you added up a normal website builder subscription cost plus the extra monthly fees for all of the additional tools that you will inevitably need as your business grows, it’s likely to cost more than that. The downside is that if you’re at the very beginning of your business journey, you might be paying a premium for tools that you may not use for a few months. However, the big plus is that you have everything in one place covered by one monthly fee.

  • One monthly fee to cover the cost of your website builder, hosting, and online business tools.
  • $99/mo is a large investment for small businesses taking the first step into the online world.

Support 

The main form of customer support is via email. You’ll be asked to fill out some basic information about your account and to select a department that you would like to speak to before writing your query down in an email. The support team will do their best to get back to you within 24 hours of your email.

We’ve already talked about the Kartranaut training program which is available to you at any time. So, if you skipped it when you first joined or you want to go over a particular module you can access the course material from within the support tab.

Finally, if you spot a bug, if something is lacking on the platform, or you need an additional feature to help your business run better, you can share your ideas with the Kartra developers. Platform update ideas will be shared with the community via a forum where other members can upvote new feature requests. If Kartra notices that a significant number of people are asking for a particular feature, it’s more likely to get worked on.

  • The detailed Kartra training course is available at all times through the support tab.
  • There is no live chat or phone support for an instant response to user queries.
Webflow

General Overview

Webflow launched in 2013 and as of February 2021 powers nearly 200,000 live sites all around the world. The company is based in San Francisco and was founded by three technophile entrepreneurs named Vlad Magdalin, Sergie Magdalin and Bryant Chou. The Webflow platform caters for website building and hosting, so you have everything you need to create and launch your website in one place.

  • Beginner Friendly
    8.5
  • Design Capabilities
    10.0
  • Variety of Features
    9.5
  • Value for Money
    9.6

Big brands like Zendesk, Dell, Upwork, Getaround and Petal use the Webflow platform to power their websites. That leaves little doubt that the hosting services pack a punch and can support high volumes of traffic. 

The magic of silicon valley must have rubbed off on the creators of Webflow as their online visual editor that allows you to design, build and launch websites seems to be far superior to anything else out there. However, the editor is just one aspect of an all-in-one platform. So, we explored Webflow in detail to find out if it could take the spot of our top-rated website builder. Sure, it might be suitable for techy nerds and large companies, but can it also be used effectively by the everyday user?

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if Webflow is the right platform for you. 

Who is it for? 

If you decide to give Webflow a try for yourself, you’ll immediately notice that it’s a grade or two above what would be considered beginner-friendly. And, that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. Webflow was designed to cater for web developers that want all the flexibility of platforms like WordPress or Drupal but at the same time want the efficiency that comes from all-in-one website builders like Wix or Shopify. The result is Wix on steroids. 

It’s too complex for complete beginners but it provides an advanced integrated tool kit for intermediate to expert web creators. It bridges the gap between simplistic site builders and advanced open-source CMS’, targeting a niche of users that want industry-leading results for a reduced upfront cost and with a faster setup time.

  • Blogs
  • Agencies
  • Photographers
  • Portfolios
  • Designers
  • One pagers
  • Online stores
  • Sports sites
  • Food & Drink companies
  • Beauty & Wellness businesses

Beginner Friendly

We’ve already touched on the fact that Webflow is not the most beginner-friendly platform. Especially when compared with other brands. However, the user interface has been designed in such a way that everything is easy, and I’d even go as far as to say a pleasure to use. It’s the sheer amount of options available to developers that would overwhelm beginners rather than the platform necessarily being hard to use. It is, after all, a no-coding-needed platform. 

Drag & Drop Editing

Webflow does indeed have drag and drop editing enabled on its platform. And as far as drag and drop editors go, it’s up there with the best of them. There’s very little lag and you can simply move things anywhere you want.

It also combines with a snap-to-grid function to help with aligning your elements perfectly. Not only does this help novice users create professional-looking designs but it also speeds up the process for more advanced developers as well. There’s no need to fiddle around (although you can if you want) to find the perfect alignment, just drop it to a rough position on the page and Webflow will do the rest.

Although the snap-to-grid function has limitations in terms of where you can place stuff on your web pages. The main benefit is that this keeps the code beneath the changes you make to the CSS grid more concise and efficient than if it were a free for all. 

  • Webflow combines drag & drop editing with a snap to grid function that creates one of the best visual website builders on the market.
  • There are some limitations to where you can place elements on the page.

Video Tutorials & Onboarding Animations

The positivity continues into the next section as onboarding tutorials is another area where Webflow shines compared to its competition. When you first load the editor you will be given a guided tour. Along the way, you will be asked to perform certain tasks like adding titles, changing font size, optimizing for different screen sizes and a bunch of other stuff. 

I was impressed with how detailed the tour was and at the end of it, I actually felt like I had a basic grasp of how to use Webflow. So, a job very well done, and trust me, it’s not how you feel after every website builder onboarding tutorial.

If you feel like you still need a bit more help with getting to grips with the platform after the initial tutorial you can head over to the Webflow University and take the Webflow 101 crash course. It’s roughly two hours long and covers most if not all of the elements most beginner to intermediate users will use on the platform. There’s also a bunch more stuff to get you operating at a more advanced level as well.

And, if you still want additional help to understand how to use specific features within the platform, there are dozens of video tutorials. They cover everything from web structure to basic elements and from responsive designs to CMS collection fields. To find them, hit the camera icon in the bottom left of your screen whilst on the editing page. 

  • The onboarding guided tour is very detailed and covers the basic functions of the visual editor.
  • There are none!

Design Capabilities

The Editor

It’s possible to start with a completely blank canvas but for those of you who want a little head start, you can use one of the 30 free or 100 premium web templates. Some of them even come with an SEO-friendly site structure already built-in. So, you can just dive straight into the designing and you will automatically have a high-performing website. 

In the left menu bar, there is a tab that has everything you need to add new elements and layouts to your site. You can search for specific elements or pre-designed layouts like galleries, call-to-action, contact forms and more that you can simply drag and drop onto your screen. 

If you want to edit an element you just need to double click on it and cast your eyes over to the right menu bar. You have ultimate control over the CSS files without having to even look at or type a single piece of code. You’re able to edit the layout, spacing, size, position, typography, background, borders and effects of each content block. This level of control is something that you normally only get with advanced CMS platforms.

The second tab on the right menu bar is the element setting menu. This is where you can edit handy things like heading types (H1, H2, H3, etc.), image alt text, and add custom attributes for unique design properties. 

The third tab houses all of your classes. Classes on Webflow can be used to automate the styling and design for certain ‘classes’ of elements. For example, you can create a class for buttons. You’ll input information about the padding, colour, font and shape of your buttons before saving it as a class. Then, every time you add a new button you can assign it to the class and it will automatically match the others on the site. No need to make all the changes again. It also gives you the flexibility to have various classes for the same element if you plan to use them differently across your site.

The fourth and final tab in the editing panel is the most exciting. It’s the interaction panel which enables you to add animations and effects to your website elements. Usually, adding these sort of effects to your website requires expert knowledge and are therefore going to be expensive or simply not possible. However, on Webflow they’re made easy. So, you can look like a pro with little effort required. You can create interactions to trigger on mouse hovers, mouse moves over element, while scrolling in view, and more. You can create more advanced effects with Adobe After Effects, but more on that later. 

  • Webflow users have ultimate control over their designs with a huge variety of editing options that make it possible to make truly world-class web designs.
  • A steep learning curve for beginner web developers.
  • 30 free web template
  • 100 premium web templates
  • Complete CSS file control
  • Scroll and element effects
  • Edit SEO features
  • Design classes
  • Drag and drop
  • Snap-to-grid
  • Hex colour editing
  • 28 system fonts plus custom fonts

Webflow Example Websites

Webflow example websites

Links to Example Websites Built With Webflow:

www.petalcard.com
www.freshly.com
www.getaround.com
www.helloheco.com – This one is a MUST SEE!
www.rakutensl.com

Main Features & Tools

We’ve already talked about the industry-leading visual editor that allows users to make changes directly on the page without having to code, but what else does Webflow offer in terms of features and tools. 

Something you’ll hear in all of the Webflow video advertisements is “Webflow, where CMS meets visual design”. It’s probably the highlight feature of the platform. It’s been made in a way where designers, editors, content strategists and developers can all work from the same page without getting in the way of each other. 

The Webflow CMS allows a lot of flexibility when it comes to designing custom content types like blog posts, forms, web pages, etc. You also have the ability to create customizable fields that can be linked with real data from your CMS which makes it easier for bigger and more complex projects. For example, let’s say you want to create a team members page where a picture and other basic info about your team is presented. You can create a CMS collection which is basically a specific content type. You can design it with custom fields like name, DOB, biography, etc and populate the data by syncing with your CMS or from a CSV file. If you have 100 plus team members it can really save some time and ensure a consistent design.

Webflow uses Amazon Web Sevices for hosting which claims to provide a 99.9% uptime. It’s the same service that Netflix, Airbnb, Slack and Adobe use. So, you can rest assured that it will be able to handle any traffic spikes that you might get. 

You’ll also have access to built-in SEO tools that allow you to edit metadata controls like author, date created/modified, and image alt-tags. You can edit HTML headings, create 301 redirects, and canonical tags easily, while the site automatically creates XML sitemaps. 

Adobe After Effects is often regarded as the most advanced web animation software. Usually, it’s reserved for experts and requires some coding to integrate designs with your website. However, Airbnb developed Lottie which is a piece of software that allows you to use animations as easily as regular images on any native app. So, you can make animations on Adobe After Effects, export it to a Lottie JSON file and upload that to your Webflow site. You can then use Webflow interactions to control that animation as visitors move through your site. 

  • Ability to use Adobe After Effects to create amazing web animations without having to code.
  • No integrated multilanguage feature for global sites.
  • Industry-leading visual editor
  • Custom domain names
  • 100+ web templates
  • SEO tools
  • Third-party integrations
  • Amazon Web Services
  • Advanced CMS
  • Webflow University
  • Adobe After Effects
  • Ecommerce ready

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store Options

Webflow’s advanced design features and integrated CMS was out of bounds for online store owners until 2019 when the company launched its ecommerce features after nearly 6 months of beta testing. 

The highlight of Webflow ecommerce vs other ecommerce platforms is that users can create pixel-perfect advanced web designs for their online store to a level of detail that would need advanced coding skills on other platforms. I know from personal experience of using Shopify that it can be frustrating when you can’t present your products the way you want to or make simple changes to the theme without the need for coding. On Webflow, it’s easy to make those changes.

You can sell both digital and physical products, easily add-in product variants, and create a custom checkout process that’s suited to your business. You can set custom shipping rates, automate order tracking, offer takeout, and give your customers the option for local pickup. 

Like any ecommerce website builder worth its salt, you also have the chance to link your site to native integrations or third-party applications. This will help boost the functionality of your store and allow you to work with the tools you need to simplify your business. 

  • Complete control over ecommerce designs including product pages, checkouts, and landing pages.
  • Webflow’s ecommerce features are still in development mode and doesn’t have quite as much depth as platforms like Shopify when it comes to ecommerce features.
  • Advanced ecommerce designs
  • Custom checkouts
  • Sell digital & physical products
  • Automated taxes & shipping
  • Third-party ecommerce apps
  • Custom delivery options
  • Order management dashboard
  • Multiple product variants
  • Abandoned cart recovery
  • Facebook/Instagram integrations

Bookings & Reservations

There is no built-in bookings or reservation feature on Webflow. However, there are several third-party applications available through Zapier that you can install to give your website a way to take bookings. Some of the apps, like Zeal Schedule, even have a free plan so you can start taking bookings for free. However, if your business takes 100+ bookings a month you will have to commit to a paid plan which adds another hidden cost to your Webflow website. 

Payment Options

Webflow store owners can accept payments from more than 200+ countries via credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Paypal and Stripe. On top of that Webflow will automatically calculate sales tax and VAT when you sell to customers in the US, Canada, EU, and Australia.

If you sign up for the entry-level ecommerce plan you will be charged a 2% transaction fee on every sale. However, that goes down to 0% when you sign up for the premium ecommerce packages.

Value For Money & Support

Free Trial & Features

Webflow offers a free trial with no time limit. You can use all of the design features on the platform and create two projects so you can really understand how to use the platform and what’s possible before you commit any money. You can even publish your creations to a Webflow subdomain and access the 100+ hours of video tutorials. There are some limitations like a certain number of pages and you can’t sell products. However, you don’t have to switch to a paid plan until you are ready.

Pricing Plans

There are four site plans to choose from including a Basic, CMS, Business, and Enterprise plan. The Basic plan starts from $15 a month when paid monthly or $12 a month when paid annually. For that, you can create up to 100 pages, have up to 25,000 monthly visitors and 50GB of bandwidth.

The eCommerce plans start from $42 a month when billed monthly. This will allow you to list 500 products and generate an annual revenue of $50,000 before you need to upgrade. You’ll get access to all of the features available on the CMS site plan as well as the basic ecommerce features.

Webflow Pricing Plans

Support 

The Webflow customer support team work Monday to Friday and communicate via email only. They aim to get back to your request within 24-48 hours of you submitting a request. There is a live chatbot, however, all it really does it classify your request to make it easier for the support team to manage.

There are more than 100 hours of video tutorials within the Webflow university page that will help you get up to speed on most of the basic to advanced functions available on the platform. For anything it doesn’t cover, there is a community forum where you can submit questions to other Webflow users to get their help.

  • Webflow University provides more than 100 hours of video tutorials to help you become effective on the platform.
  • Limited contact hours for the support team and no human live chat system for instant responses.
Constant Contact

General Overview

You might already have been familiar with Constant Contact before you heard about their website builder. They launched in 1995 as an email marketing service based out of Waltham, Massachusetts. To this day they are widely regarded as one of the top email marketing platforms.

Fast forward a couple of decades and Constant Contact claims to have built one of the best and most easy-to-use website builders. They also have tools such as a logo maker, a social media ad creator, a Google ads tool, and social media post monitoring software. Soon they will be an all in one platform that has everything you need to run an online business. From building a website to growing an audience.

  • Beginner Friendly
    8.5
  • Design Capabilities
    6.0
  • Variety of Features
    6.2
  • Value for Money
    7.2

However, this review is going to concentrate on the website builder and put it to the test. The question is, can Constant Contact, an email marketing specialist, really produce a top-rated website builder that challenges the likes of Wix and Squarespace? We know that it will have great email marketing tools integrated into the platform, they claim the website builder is great, and the platform even has eCommerce features. So, they’re off to a good start!

Read the rest of our Constant Contact website builder review to find out what we thought about the features and functionalities of the platform after a thorough test. 

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if Constant Contact is the right platform for you.

Fast forward a couple of decades and Constant Contact claims to have built one of the best and most easy-to-use website builders. They also have tools such as a logo maker, a social media ad creator, a Google ads tool, and social media post monitoring software. Soon they will be an all in one platform that has everything you need to run an online business. From building a website to growing an audience.

However, this review is going to concentrate on the website builder and put it to the test. The question is, can Constant Contact, an email marketing specialist, really produce a top-rated website builder that challenges the likes of Wix and Squarespace? We know that it will have great email marketing tools integrated into the platform, they claim the website builder is great, and the platform even has eCommerce features. So, they’re off to a good start!

Read the rest of our Constant Contact website builder review to find out what we thought about the features and functionalities of the platform after a thorough test. 

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if Constant Contact is the right platform for you.

Who is it for? 

Constant Contact is aimed at anyone looking to build a website quickly. Whether you’re looking to build an online store, a website for your restaurant, or a portfolio for your professional work, Constant Contact provides the functionality you need.

If you’re a beginner web developer, it’s a great platform for you to use. They have an AI website builder that will help you to create a custom website in minutes. The website that you will see in screenshots throughout this review took me 5 minutes and all I had to do was press a few buttons. It was that easy!

It’s possible that someone looking for top of the range web designs and complete design freedom won’t be satisfied with the Constant Contact platform. You won’t be able to create a complex website that has unique functionality and looks like a bespoke WordPress site. However, it allows you to create a great basic site that will cater to the majority of small business owners’ needs.

Of course, it’s a great platform for those already thinking about using the Constant Contact email marketing services. It will allow you to streamline the applications and platforms used to run your online business by having everything in one place.

  • Online stores
  • Restaurants
  • Portfolios
  • Professional services
  • Weddings & Events
  • Photography
  • Blogs
  • Small business owners
  • Travel and tourism
  • Boutique hotels
a website design with olive and rosemary on a black table

Beginner Friendly

Constant Contact is off the scale when it comes to beginner friendliness. Within five minutes the AI website builder will help you to build a custom website that has relevant images and the outline of text content that you can quickly adapt to match your business.

Hosting, technical SEO, and mobile optimization are already taken care of. So, all you need to do is populate your website with your images and text.  Adding additional functionality that your website needs is made easy with the ready to go content blocks. The best thing is that it doesn’t require you to know any coding language, you can simply build and edit your website with the click of a mouse.

Drag & Drop Editing

Although Constant Contact advertises a drag and drop editing feature, the website builder doesn’t have one. The benefit of drag and drop editing is that the beginner web developer has more design freedom and can move content blocks, text elements, and images freely around the page to create the look they want. However, the danger of this is that it’s easy to create a messy design that doesn’t follow basic web design fundamentals.

So, the fact Constant Contact hasn’t enabled a drag and drop feature benefits most novice web developers because it is harder to stray from the original designs that were made by experts. All you need to do is replace images, add relevant text and you will have a good looking website that works perfectly.

The downside is that if you want to adapt a content block or create a unique layout for your header, your options are limited. You can edit content blocks within the sidebar. It allows you to add or remove set elements like a title, subtitle, description, buttons, etc. You can also adapt the size of the content block and change the alignment of the elements to left, right, or center. 

In summary, even someone with no experience with building and editing a website will be able to use the simple editor. However, more advanced users looking for some design freedom may get frustrated with the limited design options. If you know your website only needs a simple design, you won’t have any problems. However, if you know you will need more complex designs, other platforms like Wix might be better.

  • The point-and-click editor makes it the ideal platform for beginner developers and those looking for a quick build.
  • The absence of a drag and drop feature limits the design potential of the platform.

Video Tutorials & Onboarding Animations

When you first load the website editor page you will be given a guided tour of all of its features. It’s great to quickly understand where everything is and what each button will do. It will show you how to add sections, how to edit them, how to add new pages, change the theme of your website, and much more.

If you find yourself needing more detailed information you can find it easily by clicking on the three dots in the top right-hand corner of your screen. That will allow you to pull up the support center where you can chat to an agent over the live chat service or browse through step-by-step articles that help you perform nearly any task on the platform. It uses screenshots at each step to show you exactly what you should be looking at which is a nice touch.

While there is no video content, there is enough information available to help you find the answer to your problem. The live chat support available will also provide accurate feedback to your problems that can’t be solved by the FAQ content. Which in our opinion is better than a generic video!

  • The highlight of the support has got to be the detailed step-by-step guides found in the knowledge center.
  • There are no onboarding videos to provide a friendly and informative welcome to the platform.
Constant Contact website builder guided tour

Design Capabilities

The Editor

Editing your Constant Contact website begins the moment you hit sign up. You’ll be taken through a step-by-step process that takes around 5 minutes. During that process, you’ll be asked what the category of the website you want to build is, you will decide on the color scheme, choose a font pairing, decide on a header image, upload a logo and input your business contact details. The AI web designer will then use this information to build you a custom web template that you can use as a starting point. 

This process replaces the usual 100+ web templates that website builder platforms tend to offer. You’ll have much more control over what your template looks like which makes it more likely that you’ll have a unique design. If you find yourself wanting to change anything to do with your template after the initial sign up, just hit the theme button on the left menu bar within the editor and everything you need will be there.

Once in the editor, you can start adapting your template to your needs. The Constant Contact editor is a point-and-click editor. So, for example, if you want to change the text. You simply point and click at the text you want to edit and the text editor will appear. It allows you to add effects, change the size, edit the color and add hyperlinks. 

The free image software from Unsplash is integrated onto the platform which gives you access to over half a million professional images to include on your site. You can also upload your own images, add alt text, and add hyperlinks. There is also a very basic image editor that allows you to show a zoomed-in perspective of the image. However, if you want to add filters, crop, or add effects, you will need to do that somewhere else and upload the edited image. 

There are more than 30 content block categories that have a variety of style options. You have basic blocks like media with text, video, gallery, and call to action. As well as more advanced blocks like booking widgets, countdown timers, food & drinks menus, and newsletter blocks.

Your template will come with some relevant pages already built-in. However, if you would like to add a new page you simply hit the pages button on the left menu bar and click ‘new page’. This will bring up a blank page that you can add content blocks to. Again, it’s another simple process that anyone can do.

Finally, You can easily switch between desktop and mobile views which will enable you to create designs that look great for both types of visitors.

  • The artificial intelligence designer will help you to create a custom web template for your website within 5 minutes.
  • Overall the editor lacks a depth of features. For example, the image editor only allows you to zoom in and out.
  • Build your own custom template
  • Unsplash integration
  • Mobile preview
  • Basic image editor
  • 30+ content block categories
  • Video headers
  • Point-and-click editor
  • 6 font pairings
  • Basic scroll animations
  • Text editor

Main Features & Tools

Constant Contact has several tools and features that aim to make managing your online business easier, more efficient, or more secure. All Constant Contact accounts come with free hosting and a free SSL certificate which will help prevent your visitors’ data from getting stolen by hackers. 

Constant contact claims to have fast loading times thanks to a content delivery network (CDN) that stores cached versions of your website across various geographical locations. The faster loading time paired with the built-in SEO features should make your site more visible on search engines if you follow best practices.

There is also an analytics dashboard that allows you to take a look at your unique visitors, traffic sources, returning vs new visitors, devices, browsers, and more. It’s good and is great for taking a quick look at your visitor data. However, you’ll probably still want to connect with Google Analytics for a more detailed view of what’s going on across your site. 

You can connect with all your social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linked In, Pinterest, YouTube, and Open Table. They will be linked from the footer of your website so your visitors can quickly and easily become followers.

You have several integrations to boost your functionality and make life easier. Two of the most notable integrations are the Google My Business listing and Unsplash. However, when compared with other website builder platforms with App stores and large numbers of integrations, your options are limited on the Constant Contact platform.

  • Constant Contact has covered most of the basic features and tools required to build a website. The Unsplash integration provides users with a ton of visual assets to make their site look great.
  • Without an app store, Constant Contact users won’t be able to add additional functionality to their website beyond what CC provided.
  • Custom domain names
  • Built-in-SEO
  • Free SSL certificates
  • CDN for faster loading times
  • Free hosting
  • Web analytics
  • Mobile optimization
  • Social media sharing
  • Scroll effects
  • Blogging tools

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store Options

You can add a store to any Constant Contact site with the click of a button. It has everything you need to sell products online but there are limited ecommerce features compared with dedicated ecommerce sites like Shopify or BigCommerce.

The highlights are that you can sell physical and digital products, auto-generate customer notifications, and include real-time shipping rates from popular providers. You can also manage all of your orders from the store dashboard and check store analytics to monitor customer behavior.

  • You can sell an unlimited amount of digital and physical products.
  • Product display content blocks look below average.
  • Customizable ecommerce web layouts
  • Store management
  • Store analytics
  • Integrated shipping & taxes
  • Real-time shipping rates
  • Sell physical and digital products
  • Create coupons and discounts
  • Auto-generated customer notifications
  • Online payments
  • Product filtering

Bookings & Reservations

The platform has a built-in booking system which makes setting up and taking bookings for your business an easy process. You can take bookings for up to 2 instructors and set up a schedule with all of your regular classes or appointment slots.

There is an automatic email and reminders feature that allows you to take a hands-off approach when reminding clients about their appointments. Finally, you can also add a booking policy where you can explain the rules for booking and cancellations. 

  • Automatic emails and reminders will make contacting your clients about their appointment a walk in the park.
  • You can only take bookings for up to 2 instructors. Therefore, businesses with more than two instructors will need to use another system.

Payment Options

You can take payments from all major debit and credit cards as well as from e-wallets like PayPal, Stripe, and Mollie. You’ll be asked to connect to your preferred payment gateway when you set up your online store.

A downside to running an ecommerce store with Constant Contact is that they charge a 1.5% transaction fee on all purchases. There is no getting around this because it is applied to all of the payment plans.

  • You can accept payment from all major credit and debit cards as well as the most popular e-wallets.
  • There is a 1.5% transaction fee on all product sales.

Value For Money & Support

Free Trial & Features

Constant Contact offers a limitless free trial that will give you a subdomain as well as a small amount of storage and bandwidth. You’ll get access to most of the premium features on the platform that you can use to create your website. However, if you want to use advanced analytics, connect a custom domain, or sell products you will need to sign up for a paid plan.

Pricing Plans

There are three pricing plans that include website builder, email, and email plus. The website builder plan is the cheapest and costs just $10 per month. This gives you unlimited access to the website builder features and the ability to sell products.

The email and email plus plans are the usual Constant Contact email marketing plans that have the website builder features attached to them. So, if you were already planning to use the Constant Contact email service, you effectively get the chance to build your website for free. These pricing plans start at $20 and $45. 

Support 

Constant Contact offers three ways to get in touch with their support team if you experience any problems while using their website builder. You contact them via email, phone, or message them via the live chat service. If you make a support request and choose to be contacted via email or phone, you can usually expect to be contacted within 48 hours. The live chat service can provide quick answers. However, from our experience, it’s hard to call it an instant response as it took us a while to connect to an agent. That said, they were helpful and friendly when we did get in touch. 

To find the contact details while in the editor you just need to hit the three dots in the top left corner and the support center pop-up will appear. Everything you need will be in there. 

They also provide a knowledge base filled with step-by-step guides, a blog that features small business marketing advice, and a community forum where fellow users can discuss their experiences with the platform.

  • Constant Contact offers a variety of ways to get in touch including email, phone, and live chat.
  • It can take a while to connect with agents on the live chat system from our experience.
WordPress

WordPress started life as a free, open-sourced, content management system that was first released in 2003. It’s still all of those things with some additional variations, one of which we will be reviewing in this article. It’s estimated that over 455 million websites use the WordPress platform, which is around 20% of all websites on the internet! Yes, that’s right, 1 in 5 websites that you open will be a WordPress site, which shows you how popular this piece of software is. 

  • Beginner Friendly
    7.5
  • Design Capabilities
    8.9
  • Variety of Features
    9.8
  • Value for Money
    9.4

WordPress is loved because of the power and flexibility it offers to professional (and talented amateur) web developers. Regular website builders will never be able to compete with the level of features on offer, but it does come with a level of complexity that makes it extremely difficult for beginners to use it. 

So, instead of the traditional CMS WordPress, this article will review WordPress.com which is a pre-installed version of WordPress that lets you run multiple sites. It also takes care of hosting your website for you as well. Of course, by making it easier for beginners to use, it removes some of what makes WordPress great because the site owner has less flexibility and control over the technical aspects of their site. However, WordPress.com is more in line with what you would call a ‘website builder’ and is therefore a fairer comparison to the rest of the brands reviewed on Website Builder Ninja. Comparing the traditional WordPress with other website builders would be like comparing apples and oranges! 

Anyway, WordPress.com launched in 2005 and was known back then to be the best place to start up a free blog. It has developed alongside the WordPress CMS and therefore has a similar ability to build pretty much any website you want. Anything from a small portfolio site, right through to an ecommerce site with millions of product listings. The rest of the review will go into detail on the most important features to help you decide if the extra complexity that inevitably comes with a WordPress site is worth it, or if you should stick with an easier-to-use website builder.

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if WordPress.com is the right platform for you. 

How to get started

Unlike with the traditional WordPress, getting started with WordPress.com is a breeze. It follows a similar but more in-depth process that you will also see on normal website builders like Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly. See below for the simple step-by-step onboarding process.

Video Tutorials & Onboarding

  • Choose your website name
  • Select a custom domain name (fees covered with any premium plan)
  • Pick a WordPress theme (otherwise known as a website template)
  • Decide on a font pairing 
  • List your required features
  • Sign up for the appropriate monthly subscription plan

Once you’ve worked your way through these steps, your site will be loaded and you’ll be ready to start editing and adding content. Before you get onto the editor, there will be a pop-up tutorial box that appears on your screen. It will describe how to carry out basic tasks on the platform like adding content blocks, previewing your site in mobile/desktop view, and how to make your site live. 

If you’re like me, once you get to this point you’ll dive straight in, start hitting buttons and work things out by trial and error. However, if you would like some more guidance before you start to edit your site then you can hit the help button in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. It will pull up a search bar that you can use to pull up relevant information from the help center. It’s got heaps of useful information and you can either choose to just read the short snippet that’s shown in the box or click on read more to go through to the full article if you need more detail.

Overall, I was impressed at how simple and quick it was to set up a website, and with the level of help on offer to beginner users. Anyone who can move a mouse cursor can follow the step-by-step onboarding process and the comprehensive help center will have answers for almost any query you could think of.

  • Quick and easy onboarding process with lots of information about how to perform basic and more advanced tasks on the platform to be found in the easily accessible help box.
  • There is no onboarding video content which is great for visual learners. Also, the just text approach makes it feel less personal than other platforms.

WordPress Themes

WordPress.com has over 250 WordPress themes for you to choose from which are the same as website templates that are offered on other platforms. There are templates for a long list of website types such as portfolio, magazine, blog, business, wedding, travel, food, and music.

What sets the WordPress.com theme page apart from standard website builders is that you can search through the list of themes by selecting specific features, layouts, columns, subjects, and styles. For example, you can filter the themes so that you only see templates with testimonial features that add ‘graphic and typographic touches’ to highlight the experiences of your happy clients or customers. Or, you can look at responsive themes that automatically change their layouts to become easier to read and navigate as screen sizes reduce. This is a powerful feature that makes it easy to select a theme that works for your needs, and it’s something that you won’t get anywhere else.

A lot of the themes that you can install are free of charge, however, some of the themes require you to pay an additional cost which can range from about $50 to $100+. However, if you require one of the more advanced themes you probably have the budget for it as most of the free themes will work well for simple websites.

  • There are over 250 themes with lots of advanced features already built-in & the advanced filtering systems lets you search for themes using criteria specific to your needs.There are over 250 themes with lots of advanced features already built-in & the advanced filtering systems lets you search for themes using criteria specific to your needs.
  • Some of the themes are expensive.

Design Capabilities

The Content Editor

The WordPress.com website builder editor blends what the full WordPress can offer with the features of a more common website builder. As a result, the editor has a steeper learning curve when compared with a normal website builder. However, it has much more powerful features that will help you to build a more advanced website that wouldn’t be possible anywhere else. 

WordPress.com has opted for a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)  block editor with a point-and-click style interface. This means that you are making on-page edits to blocks of content, rather than typing away in the backend. This is great for beginners because you can see directly how edits change the look and feel of your website. There will be no shocks when you hit the update button and load your live site. The point-and-click style editor is intuitive and simple to use. Users are required to click on the content block they want to edit and then use the editing toolbar to change the formatting of any image or text content.

The array of content blocks on offer is truly impressive and mimics the huge choice on offer with regular WordPress. There are over 120 types of content blocks that you can add to your website and include options for text, media, layout & design, widgets, third-party software embeds, ecommerce widgets, marketing blocks to help you grow your audience, and much more.

Drag & Drop Editing on WordPress.com

Any website builder trying to be beginner-friendly will have a drag and drop feature enabled to make it easy to rearrange content on the page, and WordPress.com is no different. To use it, you will need to click on the content block that you would like to use and then hover over the icon with six dots in the editing toolbar until you see the open hand cursor icon. Then just click and drag the content block to its new location. 

With WordPress.com, you can move content blocks freely around the page to wherever you want, however, there are some limitations with the movement of elements within a content block. This is a good thing because beginners have to stick to the expertly designed content blocks, making it more likely that they will end up with a good looking website, rather than a messy one. If you feel like you can make the content blocks better, you can always dive into the code or use the shortcode or HTML code content blocks to design your own.

Theme Customizer

The WordPress themes certainly give you a headstart in the design of your website and save you a lot of time when you first start creating your website. The downside to themes is that anyone can use them and you run the risk of a competitor having a very similar website. However, with WordPress.com you can use the theme editor to make your theme unique to you. You can customize your site identity by uploading a logo, a tagline, and a favicon. It’s also possible to create a custom color palette, menu layout, add additional widgets, customize the CSS, and much more.

  • The huge amount of content blocks on offer and the ability to customize your WordPress theme allows you to make a unique design while still getting the benefits of using a web template.
  • It will take beginners some time to learn how to use the editor to its full potential and the freedom of choice may be overwhelming for some if they’ve never built a website before.

WordPress Example Websites

Links to Example Websites Built With WordPress:

www.sonymusic.com
www.starwars.com/news
usainbolt.com
thewaltdisneycompany.com
www.newyorker.com

Main Features & Tools

WordPress.com offers a mixture of built-in tools like Jetpack with lots more features and tools available through the plugin directory. This gives you the flexibility to add additional features and install tools to help you manage your website as and when you need them. You don’t need to rely on the platform to have everything you need, instead, you’re in charge. 

Jetpack

Jetpack is a plugin that comes pre-installed on every WordPress.com website. It’s an all-in-one application created by Automattic (the people behind WordPress) that helps with design, security, and growing your audience. There are several core features that come free. However, if you want access to advanced features like daily backups, SEO tools, and spam protection, you will need to sign up for a paid plan. If you want access to everything Jetpack has to offer, you’re looking at $100 per month. However, the free features listed below might be enough for most people:

  • Advanced site analytics
  • Automatic social media posts
  • Downtime monitoring
  • Protection from brute force attacks
  • Activity log
  • CDN (content delivery network)

WordPress.com Plugin Directory

To have the ability to install plugins from the WordPress directory you will need to be signed up to one of the premium plans. There are 1000’s of plugins available across four main categories; engagement, security, appearance, and writing.  So, you’ll be able to find tools to help you with SEO, protect you from hackers, create advanced ecommerce features, and much more. The plugin directory is part of what makes WordPress so good. You have access to almost any tool that you can imagine to boost your website’s performance and you don’t have to rely on the platform itself giving you access to the functionality you need. Of course, there are some downsides as well. For example, it’s easy to install too many plugins that will make managing them all tricky and time-consuming. Also, lots of plugins come at a cost. So, while the WordPress.com monthly fees are affordable, additional plugins costs can start to add up quickly and leave you with a sizable monthly bill.

To give you an idea of what a WordPress.com website can support, here’s a quick list of the most popular plugins across the most important features:

  • Yoast & Jetpack for SEO
  • Woocommerce for ecommerce
  • Google analytics
  • Mailchimp for WordPress (email marketing)
  • Elementor website builder (advanced website builder)

Marketing

In terms of marketing, there are lots of plugins to help you out in the directory but the WordPress.com dashboard comes with some preloaded tools to help you with your website’s marketing. For example, there are built-in SEO tools to help you to start ranking on the search engine ranking pages to grow organic traffic to your site. What’s already there is basic, but will get you started. You can automatically generate a sitemap to help search engines index your pages, edit HTML headings (H1-H6) and create meta-descriptions for your pages.

You can connect your site to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tumblr so that you can automatically share your new blog posts and other content on your social media pages. Additionally, you can connect with third-party services like Mailchimp and Google Photos to help with your email marketing and design of your site. The benefit of connecting these third-party services is that you will be able to manage everything from one dashboard, rather than having lots of tabs open at once, which we all know can get confusing.

  • One-click connection with social media channels makes it simple to share your content with your wider audience.
  • There is not a huge amount already built-in to the platform and therefore most people will have to rely on the plugin directory for marketing capabilities.

Ecommerce

You will need to upgrade your plan if you want access to the ecommerce features available on WordPress.com. They offer a range of ready-to-go ecommerce features and you can install popular plugins if you’re looking for more advanced features.

Adding a store page to your site is as easy as adding any other page. It’s possible to sell physical and digital products as well as subscriptions on a WordPress.com site. There is a ‘Pay with Paypal’ button which allows you to start taking payments immediately. This is already built-in to the platform and can be found among the other content blocks. It’s also possible to connect with other ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Ecwid so that you can sell your products across multiple sites.

If you’re setting up a dedicated ecommerce site then it will be worth installing a popular ecommerce plugin like Woocommerce. Woocommerce allows you to design stunning storefronts, list your products using modular product blocks, connect with over 100 payment gateways, set up shipping options, and much more.

  • Powerful plugins allow you to set up a professional-looking online store within minutes.
  • There are a limited amount of built-in ecommerce features so users will have to rely on plugins which can add additional costs.

Value For Money & Support

Free Trial & Features

One of the great things about this platform is that it offers a pretty decent forever free plan where users can create a website with a custom subdomain name without having to part with any cash. This is great for small personal sites like portfolios and CVs, or for anyone looking to get to know the platform before signing up for a paid plan.

With a free plan, you will get access to Jetpack essential features, a free SSL certificate, dozens of free WordPress themes, and 3GB of storage.

Pricing Plans

In addition to the paid plan, there are four premium plans which include, Personal, Premium, Business, and eCommerce. The Personal plan starts from only $4 a month and gets you everything in the free plan plus a free custom domain name, email & live chat support, the ability to accept payments from content subscribers, 6GB of storage, and WordPress.com will remove their ads from your site.

If you’re looking to sell products you will need to sign up for the ecommerce plan which costs $46 per month. This is the most premium subscription so you will get access to all of the advanced features and unlock ecommerce capabilities.

Support 

If you are signed up for a paid plan you will get access to the email and live chat support. Business and ecommerce subscribers get access to 24/7 priority live chat support as well. There is also a useful help center that has lots of how-to guides and articles to help users to learn how to use the platform and optimize their site. Finally, there is also a community forum where you can connect with other users and get access to direct advice from people that are going through the same problems as you. The forum and support are available in many languages so you should be able to get help in a language that you’re comfortable with.

  • Anyone with a paid plan gets access to live chat & email support, the support center, and the community forum.
  • 24/7 support is reserved for the most expensive subscription plans. It’s also not very easy to find the support features.
DreamHost

General Overview

Dreamhost originally launched in 1997 and is most famous for its web hosting services that power over 1.5 million websites worldwide. In 2017 they launched a drag and drop website builder platform that is paired with the world’s most popular customer management system (CMS), WordPress. It’s called DreamPress and it claims to be a ‘powerful yet simple-to-use interface’ that enables users to create a strong online presence for themselves or their businesses.

  • Beginner Friendly
    6.8
  • Design Capabilities
    8.0
  • Variety of Features
    10.0
  • Value for Money
    9.0

Its main selling point is that it combines the power of WordPress with the simplicity of a drag-and-drop builder. It simplifies getting started on WordPress by providing a suite of tools and plugins that are available to use with 200+ industry-specific, responsive, and fully customizable design templates.

This all sounds great, right? We decided to test out these claims and find out if DreamPress can really make creating a WordPress website easy for beginners.

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if DreamPress is the right platform for you.

Who is it for?

DreamPress is for anyone wanting to launch a site on WordPress but doesn’t have the technical abilities to do so. It takes away the need for the technical or advanced knowledge that is needed to get a WordPress site up and running successfully. 

You can choose from over 200 professionally designed themes that have been made for a wide range of industries and you can edit them with an easy-to-use drag and drop interface

  • Blogging
  • Photographers
  • Portfolios & CVs
  • Real estate sites
  • Restaurants
  • Musicians
  • Fitness
  • Art and design
  • Clothing and fashion
  • Food & drink brands
Bold Grid website builder template examples

Beginner Friendly

DreamPress has made creating a WordPress site accessible for beginners by leveraging a drag and drop block builder that’s easy to use. They’ve pulled together some of the best and most useful plugins to create a dashboard with everything you need to build and manage your website.

Drag-and-drop editing

From within the BoldGrid editor, you can drag and drop elements around the page by clicking on the arrow cross symbol and moving that element to its news location.

Compared with other drag and drop interfaces it definitely feels clunky, a little bit like moving an unformatted image around a word document. 

The drag and drop capabilities are quite limited too, you can only move elements to another set column within the content block. This is good for beginners who don’t really want to mess with the design too much but the lack of creative freedom might frustrate more advanced users.

  • The drag and drop interface makes it simple to rearrange content on the editor page.
  • The BoldGrid drag and drop solution is clunky and doesn’t provide the level of creative freedom you get from other brands.

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

Once you’ve signed up for and installed DreamPress onto your DreamHost web panel you can go through to the WordPress dashboard and begin building and editing your site.

To get started you’ll want to find the BoldGrid inspiration button and follow the steps.

  1. Choose a theme design
  2. Choose page options
  3. Enter essential business info
  4. Click to install

There are no video tutorials or animations during the onboarding process, however, when you first land on the editor and once you have chosen your preferences, you will be given a link to go to the BoldGrid support site and community page which are full of tips and tricks to help get you started.

  • The simple 4 step process gets you to the editing screen quickly.
  • There’s no onboarding guide within the editor.

Design Capabilities

The editor

If you choose to use DreamPress then you will be using the BoldGrid WordPress plugin to build and edit your pages.

For a complete beginner, the editor is probably going to look very overwhelming. However, making basic changes is straightforward and you can ignore the more advanced stuff until you get comfortable on the platform.

It’s really easy to add in new content blocks, just hit the orange ‘add block’ button in the top left corner of your screen and browse through your options. There are 13 categories of content blocks, each with a number of style options. You can choose from simple text boxes and gallery blocks to more advanced audio, video, and portfolio blocks. 

Whichever type of content block you choose you just simply drag it onto the page using the arrow cross and click done. From there you will go back to the editing page where you can make changes.

Once the content block is on the page you can add further components and widgets to get the exact look and functionality you need. Click the plus button which sits at the divide between two content blocks and you will see a menu pop up with additional elements you can add. These will include things like block quotes, buttons, dividers, lists, content sliders, and much more.

The level of customization you can achieve is really high and you can dial into the details to get the exact look you want. For example, you can edit text or background colors using hex codes and there are dozens of style options for buttons and images.

You can edit your page either in desktop, tablet, or mobile preview so you can check how your designs will look across different screen sizes as you go along. 

Overall, the editor allows you to really get creative and despite the clunky drag and drop interface, users will be able to create some stunning and truly unique designs. It is, however, not the most user-friendly builder interface which might overwhelm beginners and leave some users spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a particular edit. But don’t worry, there’s an undo button, so if you make a mess you can just go back to where you started and try again!

  • Ready to go content blocks and detailed customization capabilities make it simple to create stunning pages with a unique look and feel.
  • The editor isn’t very user friendly and will take beginners some time to get used to it.
  • 200+ page themes
  • Drag and drop interface
  • Precise color editing
  • Ready-to-go content block
  • Advanced widgets
  • Resize images
  • Detailed customization

Main Features & Tools

DreamPress is a collection of some of the best and most effective tools and plugins that work on the WordPress platform. They’ve pulled together everything you need to run a great website, so you don’t have to waste any time finding and installing these features.

Jetpack is a plugin from the makers of WordPress that helps you design your site, grow your audience, and keep everything safe and secure. Firstly, Jetpack will protect you from hackers and bots that try and force their way into your site as well as keeping real-time backups so you can restore your site to a specific date, time, or event with just a few clicks.

It also helps the performance of your site by providing you with a content delivery network (CDN) that automatically optimizes your images and videos and delivers them to your visitors at the best resolution and fastest speed possible. 

The list of Jetpack features goes on but the last thing we will mention here is that it also provides users with site analytics. You can track and analyze the traffic coming into your site, the performance of successful posts, and much more.

Dreampress has created a simple staging solution so that you can test out new plugins and edit your pages without making edits to the live site. It creates a copy of your site where you can test things out and then when you’re happy that everything works you can go live with just one click.

The BoldGrid plugin offers premium website themes and a drag and drop interface to add content and edit your web pages.

Another plugin that comes as standard is OptinMonster which is a popup plugin that helps you to grow your email list and promote sales with a variety of different popup styles across your site and emails.

The great thing is that with DreamPress, you get access to all of the WordPress plugins and themes so you can add much more to your site if you need to which gives you a lot of flexibility and scalability as you and your business grow.

  • Powerful WordPress plugins give you advanced features.
  • Setting up and being able to use the plugins to their full capabilities will be beyond some beginners.
  • Free custom domain name
  • One-click staging
  • Automated backups
  • Built-in caching
  • Jetpack professional plugin
  • High-performance cloud hosting
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Automated WordPress migrations
  • OptinMonster API
  • BoldGrid website builder

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

SEO is vital for the long term success of any online business so it’s important to understand how well a website builder will allow you to perform in terms of SEO. That’s why we carry out our own SEO audit on every builder platform we review so that you can understand if it has everything you need to start climbing up the search engine ranking pages (SERPs).

DreamPress is a pre-installed WordPress that allows you to use premium plugins like Jetpack and BoldGrid which will take care of some of the technical SEO for you. Unfortunately, these plugins don’t take care of everything. So, beginner users will be left with average page speed, no site map, insufficient caching, and no way to perform redirects as well as lots of other crucial SEO functions. 

This will make it very difficult for someone who doesn’t have the technical skills to fix these issues to rank well on the SERPs and build organic traffic.

For the more advanced users, you have all of the capabilities you would normally have on WordPress so you can work on fixing some of the issues for better SEO performance. A good place to start would be replacing bold grid SEO with the Yoast SEO plugin. 

So, the standard SEO capabilities of DreamPress are limited and will leave users who can’t make changes struggling to perform well. However, for those with a bit more experience or with the budget to hire an SEO expert, the flexibility of WordPress will allow you to overcome these problems.

  • WordPress platform allows you to install better SEO plugins and upload and edit files via FTP to improve SEO.
  • For beginners, SEO functionality is not good enough to rank well.

eCommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

To add an online store onto your DreamPress site you will need to install an eCommerce plugin to create the features and functionality you need. WooCommerce is the most used WordPress eCommerce plugin but there are lots of options to choose from such as:

  • WooCommerce
  • Easy Digital Downloads
  • Shopify
  • EcWid
  • BigCommerce
  • Give
  • MemberPress

Make sure you do your research on each plugin before installing it to make sure it allows the functionality that you need. For example, do you want to sell physical products, digital products, or subscription-based products and services? Also, do you need shipping and inventory management built-in as well?

If you decide to go for Woocommerce, here are a couple of helpful articles to help you with the installation.

This is quite an involved process that could be challenging for anyone who has never installed a WordPress plugin before. Complete beginners who need an eCommerce solution might be better off using the Shopify or BigCommerce platforms.

  • DreamPress users have lots of options and can explore different ecommerce solutions in the WordPress plugin directory.
  • Installing WordPress plugins will be difficult for beginners.

Booking & reservations

Just like with an eCommerce solution, if you want to create bookings and reservation functionality on your DreamPress site, you will have to head to the WordPress plugin directory.

WooCommerce offers a bookings addon which you might want to choose if you’ve already installed WooCommerce to build an online store.
However, at $249 per year, it’s not exactly cheap, so you might want to explore some other options. Here’s a few for you to take a closer look at:

  • StartBooking
  • BirchPress
  • Booking Calendar
  • WP Simple Booking Calendar
  • Easy Appointments

Payment options

If you choose to use WooCommerce as an eCommerce solution you will have to set up with a payment provider as part of the installation process.
WooCommerce gives you two options, Stripe or Paypal for online payments and you can also set up offline payment to accept checks, bank transfers, and cash on delivery/collection.
If you choose a different eCommerce solution then payment providers may vary.

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

There is no free trial for DreamPress however, there is a 30-day refund policy. So, if you sign up and for some reason hate it, you can get your money back and try a different service.

Pricing plans

There are three pricing plans to choose from if you want to sign up for the DreamPress service. These include DreamPress, DreamPress Plus, and Dream Press Pro.

The entry-level DreamPress plan starts off at $10/mo which gets you unlimited bandwidth, 30GB of storage, and access to Jetpack premium which normally costs $299 per year.

If you sign up for the yearly subscription you will also get a free custom domain.

Support

With every paid plan you will get access to 24/7 ticket support, live chat support, and callback phone support. Priority support is reserved for DreamPress pro customers only.

We tested out the live chat support and can confirm that every time we used it, we got a fast and friendly response and the operators made sure that we were happy before ending the conversation.

There is also a knowledge base and a community forum where you can browse through articles and discussion threads to learn more about the platform and pick up tips and tricks.

Domain.com

General Overview

You might have guessed it from the name but Domain.com is most famous as a domain name directory and for their website hosting services. They originally launched in 1998 and since then have provided hosting services to more than 1.2 million websites run by individuals, entrepreneurs and small-to-medium businesses world-wide.

In 2019 the company decided to launch a DIY website builder that aims to fast-track the process of building an online presence for you and your business. As well as providing mobile-responsive designs, Domain.com’s website builder also supports lots of advanced features to make it easy to manage and grow your business all from one place.

  • Beginner Friendly
    7.8
  • Design Capabilities
    7.3
  • Variety of Features
    7.0
  • Value for Money
    8.9

We’ve spent hours putting the platform to the test to provide you with an in-depth review to help you decide if Domain.com could be the right website builder to help you grow your business.

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if Domain.com is the right platform for you. 

Who is it for?

Domain.com is for anyone looking for a DIY website builder that makes the process of creating a website simple. If you’re someone that starts to sweat when they hear the word coding, then this platform could be a good option. Domain.com provides you with an opportunity to build a website without having to look at a single piece of code. 

The platform would work great for individuals looking to build personal sites or small-to-medium businesses looking to build an online presence for the first time. Domain.com is ecommerce ready, so if you have products to sell it will work for you too.

There are hundreds of ready-to-go templates for a whole range of industries, so whatever your niche you will be able to find a design to help get you started.

  • Portfolios & CVs
  • Restaurants
  • Photographers
  • Artists and designers
  • Service businesses
  • Food & drink
  • Health & beauty
  • Sports & Fitness

Beginner Friendly

Overall the platform tries to make building a website accessible for beginners who might not have any experience in coding or web design. Your web template will be created using artificial intelligence after answering a few simple questions. This saves a lot of time and makes getting started very easy. 

The editor itself, despite offering a lot of design capabilities, isn’t the most intuitive so it will probably take some time to get used to it, especially if it’s your first time using a website builder.

Drag-and-drop editing

There is no drag and drop functionality within the editor, instead Domain.com has developed a click-to-edit interface that is relatively easy to use. You can point and click onto elements that you would like to edit and then use the editing sidebar to add different types of content such as titles, CTA buttons, subtitles, arrows, and much more.

While the point and click editor is easy to use once you get the hang of it, the big downside is that there isn’t much creative freedom. You are stuck with the elements and hierarchy that have been programmed for each content block and you can’t edit at free will to get the exact look you’re going for.

  • The click-to-edit interface is simple to use once you get used to it.
  • Without a drag and drop tool you don’t have any creative freedom to move content around at will.

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

The onboarding process takes longer than lots of other website builders because there isn’t a free trial on offer. 

It’s important to know exactly what you want before you sign up to Domain.com because you’ll have to create and pay for a custom domain, decide on a subscription package, and pick the level of hosting and security service you want to purchase for your site before getting to trial the editor and its features.

I think this is okay if you know what you’re doing but this process might be overwhelming if you’re just starting out.

Once you’ve created an account and paid up-front you will be taken to your dashboard where you can start to build your website. You will have to answer a few questions about the type of website you require and then the artificial intelligence designer will populate a template with a relevant design and features.

When you get to the editing screen there is a really helpful guided tour of the editor which shows you what you can do and where to find everything.

  • You will be taken through a guided tour of the editor to help you get started.
  • A long-winded sign up process that asks you to commit to a lot before getting to trial the website.

Design Capabilities

The editor

With Domain.com you just have to answer a few quick questions and then the artificial intelligence designer simplifies the process of deciding on a template and chooses the features, elements, and pages you are likely to need. Of course, you can customize it to suit your needs afterward, but it gives you a good base to work from.

Something that’s really neat about the Domain.com editor is the page overview feature that allows you to view all of your web pages from a zoomed-out perspective and make edits to the title and rearrange the order that they appear on the navigation menu. If you want to make more detailed edits on a particular page you just need to double-click and you will zoom into that page.

There is an editor sidebar that appears when you click on a content block. From there you can select and deselect particular types of content that you may or may not want to appear in that block such as titles, descriptions, subtitles, CTA buttons, and much more. You can also make edits to the background from the sidebar which allows you to change the color and add an image or a video.

If you want to add a new section just simply click on the ‘Add section’ button that sits between every set of content blocks. You have 33 different types of content blocks to choose from which range from very simple text and image blocks right the way through to more advanced features like ecommerce stores, testimonials, videos, price lists, and much more. 

For each category of content block, you will also be presented with a number of style choices so you can get the look you want. This is great because it provides more options so that you have a better chance of creating a unique website that doesn’t look the same as every other Domain.com site.

There is a basic image editor that allows you to change the brightness, contrast, hue, and intensity of your images. It also allows you to resize your images to different set sizes such as square, portrait, 3:2, 16:9, etc. Additionally, you can add a color overlay and effects to your images from the sidebar editor to bring them to life even further.

While there is lots that you can do, the lack of drag and drop capabilities leaves the editor feeling clunky and stops you from having the creative freedom that you might have on other platforms. You can still create stunning websites but you might have to settle on a design that isn’t exactly what you imagined.

  • 33 different content blocks to choose from ranging from basic to advanced content features.
  • Click-to-edit interface limits design potential when compared with drag & drop.
  • Artificial intelligence designer
  • Click-to-edit interface
  • Page overview
  • Editor sidebar
  • Advanced content blocks
  • Basic image editor

Main Features & Tools

Overall the Domain.com platform supports all the features you need to run a successful website. As standard, they offer a free SSL certificate to make your site secure so that you can protect any data that you collect from your visitors. Also, Domain.com users get unlimited storage with any of the paid plans which is something you normally pay a premium for with other builders.

They have teamed up with Unsplash to provide millions of free to use stock images and videos so that you can bring your site to life with high-resolution visuals at no extra cost.

The save history feature could literally be a lifesaver. Every time you hit the save button or end an editing session this feature will create a time and date stamped record of what your website looked like. You can go back and restore your website to any one of those points at any time. So, if you play around too much or accidentally delete something you can go back to a point where you know everything worked and start again.

We also noticed if you log out or your browser crashes before you can save your changes, Domain.com will autosave and ask you when you log back in if you want to return to the latest version.

Despite having everything you need to run a website there is no code editor or third-party integrations available on the platform so you are stuck with the functionality on offer and won’t be able to add anything else on.

  • The save history feature creates time and date stamped versions of your website that you can restore at any time.
  • There is no code editor or third-party integration available to add additional functionality to your website.
  • SSL security
  • Blog
  • Advanced analytics
  • Lead capture forms
  • Unlimited storage
  • Contact management
  • Access to Unsplash
  • Social media sharing
  • Save history
  • Mobile optimized

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

Here at Website Builder Ninja we understand the value of SEO and know that it is an important foundation to any online business. That’s why we conduct our own SEO audits to give you a very honest analysis of how well your website could potentially perform on the search engine ranking pages (SERP) when using a website builder.

So, how did Domain.com do on our tests? Let’s start with the positives…

The platform automatically creates a sitemap that Google uses to index your web pages, it has the ability to automatically optimize your images, and users can edit image alt tags to provide image context for visually impaired visitors.

Every customer gets a free SSL certificate to support secure web browsing (HTTPS) so any data you collect from your site will be protected from hackers.

Domain.com scored pretty well on our Google page speed test which is good for SEO because Google considers page speed as a direct ranking factor.

Now let’s get onto the not so good stuff…

Despite ticking the above SEO boxes there is also a lot missing which will make it very difficult for a site built with Domain.com to rank well. For example, there is no way to control and edit HTML headings, there is no schema and there is no minifield code that is used to reduce the amount of code and the overall page size. 

Furthermore, there are no canonical tags present which is used to protect you from someone stealing your content and ranking better with it from their site. Finally, they also lack efficient caching which is something that is used to save files to a local server for faster loading times the next time the user refreshes the site.

  • Domain.com sites have a decent page speed.
  • A lack of schema, canonical tags and inefficient caching will make it difficult for domain.com sites to rank well.

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

Domain.com has made setting up an online store really easy, you just need to make sure to highlight that you need ecommerce features as you go through the onboarding process and the AI designer will load these features onto your design template.

Alternatively, you can add a store page to any template once you’re in the editor by creating a new page and then adding product listing content blocks the same way you would add in a text box, it’s really simple.

You can link your store with Facebook to sell across multiple platforms and create coupons to offer discounts to your customers and even offer free shipping if you want to with just a few clicks.

As well as the ability to sell physical products Domain.com supports the sale of digital or downloadable products like ebooks or online courses too. 

Although the ecommerce features available might be sufficient for small ecommerce companies or someone just selling one or two products, if you’re a larger company the lack of advanced features might hold you back. For example, you can’t create staff accounts, you can’t include ‘buy now’ buttons on other platforms, and there is no advanced store analytics in place.

  • Sell digital and downloadable products.
  • Limited advanced ecommerce features.
  • Facebook store integration
  • Inventory tracking
  • Coupons and discounting
  • Shipping integration
  • Sell digital & physical products
  • Secure online payments
  • Tracking emails

Booking & reservations

There is no advertised bookings and reservation system on Domain.com however there is a workaround if you want. If you run a busy restaurant or a successful Yoga studio, and booking and reservations are integral to your business, you might want to look at another platform that has an in-built or a third-party booking system.

The workaround for Domain.com is to add in the Google Calendar content block and then set up appointment slots on your Google Calendar settings.

Payment options

You can accept all major credit cards and debit cards by setting up with one of the third-party payment providers that are supported by the platform. These include PayPal, Stripe, and Mollie.

The good news is that Domain.com won’t charge you any transaction fees so you’ll only have to deal with the fees of the payment provider that you choose.

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

There is no free trial on offer from Domain.com so if you want to test out any of the features yourself, you will need to sign up for a paid subscription. However, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee which gives you the chance to get your money back if you really don’t like it after spending a couple of weeks on the platform.

Please note: you will need to purchase a domain name during the sign up process which is not refundable if you choose to request your money back.

  • 30-day money-back guarantee.
  • No free trial on offer, instead users have to pay upfront and request their money back if the platform is not for them.

Pricing plans

Domain.com offers three payment plans with very competitive pricing. They include the Starter plan, Business plan, and eCommerce plan.
The entry-level Starter plan costs $1.99 per month. It will give you unlimited storage, free SSL security, 24/7 chat, email support, and the ability to create a blog and lead capture forms.
However, you will be limited to only 6 pages and you won’t have access to analytics or the save history feature that allows you to back up and restore your website.

  • Domain.com offers really competitive pricing.
  • No restore feature for the entry-level plan.

Support

The first line of support from Domain.com comes in the form of a knowledge base that hosts lots of articles on useful topics such as domains, security, websites, email, etc. There is a search function so you can type keywords into the search bar to quickly find the articles you need.

If you don’t find the answer you’re looking for in the knowledge base or you just need to speak to someone, then you can get in touch with the support team over the phone, by email or by the live chat service. All of these services are operational 24/7, 365 days a year so whenever you have an issue there will be someone to help you overcome the problem.

Simvoly

General Overview

In 2016 Simvoly launched its own beginner-friendly website builder platform to challenge the more established brands like Wix and Squarespace. Knowing that they were a late arrival, Simvoly had to prove their worth if customers were going to take any notice of them and choose to deviate from the more well-known alternatives. It turns out they have been pretty successful and have generated a community of small-to-medium businesses who have chosen to use their platform.

  • Beginner Friendly
    8.7
  • Design Capabilities
    9.1
  • Variety of Features
    8.8
  • Value for Money
    7.9

It seems the success has been down to a friendly and easy-to-use drag and drop interface that makes designing and building a website feel like a breeze. Paired with an ecommerce solution that makes it simple for businesses to manage and promote their online sales.

We’ve taken a closer look at the platform and spent some time testing out the design capabilities within the editor. Read on to find out if Simvoly supports enough advanced features to create websites that can run as good as sites built from more reputable platforms.
If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if Simvoly is the right platform for you. 

Who is it for? 

Simvoly is targeted at small-to-medium businesses looking to create an online presence without the need for any coding or advanced design skills. They claim they have the “easiest drag and drop builder” making this great for anyone looking for a stress-free and fast website launch. 
They have website and eCommerce templates for a whole range of industries with stock features already built into the designs to speed up the overall process of creating your website. 

There are ready-made landing pages and traffic funnel templates specifically designed to convert traffic into actual leads and customers. This stands out as a unique selling point and could explain why so many businesses are choosing to adopt this platform.

  • Artists
  • Business
  • Consulting
  • Fashion
  • Portfolios and CV’s
  • Photography
  • Real estate
  • Restaurants
  • Membership sites
  • Online stores
seren example website

Screenshots

Screenshot of a template example
Screenshot of a template example
Screenshot of a template example

Beginner Friendly

Simvoly, like lots of other website builder platforms, position themselves as beginner-friendly. They have created an easy-to-use drag and drop editor and a variety of ready-made website templates so that anyone, regardless of their technical ability, can create a fully functioning website very quickly. 

Drag-and-drop editing

Compared with other drag and drop editors, Simvoly is definitely one of the better ones. It’s intuitive and you can move things to where you want them with no surprises.

There is also a good level of creative freedom. You can drag elements around within the content blocks to create a new hierarchy or move a title or an image to a completely new location. There is also a really neat feature where you can drag the content spacers to become bigger or smaller to really dial in the look you want from a particular content block.
This flexibility will mean that even if lots of other users choose the same template as you, you can still put your own stamp on it and make it unique.
However, there is a danger for beginners to become muddled if they move too much around. It’s very easy to change and move things, but not so easy to get them back to where they were. There is no undo button, so, you’re stuck with the choice of discarding all of your changes or spending what could be a considerable amount of time trying to get things back to how they were.

Despite being enjoyable to use, the lack of undo button stops it from being one of the best drag and drop editors on the market. Nevertheless, there are lots of positives and has the potential to enable lots of novice designers to create beautiful websites.

  • High levels of creative freedom, users can move and reposition any element they want.
  • No undo button can make it difficult to get things back to how they were without deleting all changes made in that session.
intial photography template example

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

You’ll be signed up and staring at the editor screen before you know it with the fast onboarding process from Simvoly.

  1. Create a free account
  2. Choose a template
  3. Upload or create a text logo

And that’s it! After these three simple steps you will be welcomed with an onboarding video that takes you through how to do most of the basic functions on the site and where to find things that you might need.
After that it’s down to you to start testing out the editor and creating your website.

Simvoly building website process
Simvoly building website process
Simvoly building website process

Design Capabilities

The editor

The Simvoly platform offers 200+ template pages for a variety of business niches as well as 200+ custom content blocks that you can add to your web pages with a few simple clicks. The easy-to-use drag and drop editor that we’ve already discussed above makes this platform accessible to anyone, even a complete beginner.

Ready-made content blocks include options for hero banners, call-to-action, image and text, videos, testimonials, menus, and much more. The designers have provided a number of style options for each type of content block which extends the design capabilities within the platform and makes it easier to create a unique site.

There is a basic image editor (and I mean, REALLY basic) that allows you to stretch an image and add in one of three shadow effects and that’s it. This is definitely an area for improvement.

You can customize the color pallet by changing primary, secondary, and background colors. All of which can be changed using RGBA color values or a Hex code to get precise color matching. This is great if you want to match one of the colors in your logo or other branding elements across your website.

Users are able to add up to 8 fonts on your Simvoly website with access to over 990 options with Google Fonts. Plus if you still can’t find the right one, it’s as easy as dragging and dropping a custom font file into the editor sidebar to upload a new one. The text styling section of the editor makes it straightforward to have custom fonts for each of the text elements throughout your site.

Every template comes with the option to be full-width or boxed-width, depending on your design preferences. This gives you the option to choose a more modern and contemporary design or go for a more traditional looking style if it’s right for your business.

Finally, Simvoly has made it simple to add in a variety of different widgets, just simply drag and drop the widget you need into a space on your webpage and it’s done. There are basic text, spacer, and image widgets as well as some for lead generation, sales, media, and other advanced features.

  • The content blocks come in a variety of styles so you can make your site unique and stand out from the crowd.
  • Very basic image editor.
  • 200+ templates
  • 200+ content blocks
  • Access to Google Fonts
  • RBGA color values
  • Full-width / Boxed-width
  • Drag and drop interface
  • Shape dividers
  • Add up to 8 fonts
  • Embed video and audio
simovly site editor

Simvoly example websites

example website
example website
example website
example website
example website

Links to example websites built with Simvoly:

https://papersizzle.com
https://shop.kanzaro.com
https://nolaschoolofmusic.com
https://acareplus.com
https://forexinnercircle.com

Main Features & Tools

There are lots of exciting features packed into the Simvoly platform; one that really stands out is the funnel builder that allows you to increase your conversion rates and optimize sales. With the funnel builder you can add in an upsell feature at the checkout page. This presents customers with an upsell product right at the end of their journey and they can complete the upsell purchase without having to enter their billing info again. 

The platform also makes it easy to carry out split A/B tests on the funnel pages. Just simply click on the ‘Start A/B split test’ button at the top of the funnel page editor and you will then be able to create a ‘B’ version of your funnel page and compare feedback from the conversion rate data the platform gives you.

The Simvoly platform also offers a customer relationship management (CRM) solution so that you can manage all your leads and members in one place. You can create detailed profiles for all of your members and create custom signup forms to gain more members.

A neat feature that’s found within the editor is the ability to add a favicon icon. A favicon is a tiny icon or logo present on a web browser tab or in the search address bar. It’s an extra space for you to showcase your branding and it’s as simple as dragging and dropping a file into the editor to get it done. 

There are a few third-party integrations such as Mailchimp, Mailer, and Moosend that you can add to your site, however, there is a very limited number. You do have the option to add in thousands more apps with Zapier, but it costs $19.99 a month for premium apps. Compared to other sites that offer thousands of additional applications at no extra cost, this is definitely a downside to the platform.

  • The funnel builder allows you to create amazing sales funnels to optimize ecommerce performance with just a few clicks.
  • The platform offers very limited third-party integrations as standard.
  • Custom domain names
  • Split A/B tests
  • Fully mobile responsive
  • Create funnels
  • CRM
  • Custom checkouts
  • Membership areas
  • Booking & appointments
  • Add favicons
  • Third-party integrations
main features
different building blocks
purchase funnel definition
ecommerce option

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

Here at Website Builder Ninja we know how important SEO is to the long-term strategy and performance of online businesses. That’s why we carry out our own SEO audit on every platform that we review so you understand how well the platform has been set up for SEO performance.
Overall Simvoly performs well and scores highly on a number of important SEO tests, however, there may be a few areas of concern for eCommerce businesses.

Page speed is really important for SEO performance as Google considers it a direct ranking factor and will place faster websites higher in the rankings than websites that take longer to load. Simvoly scored highly on the page speed test, in fact it was in the third fastest out of all the website builders we have tested.

The platform supports other basic SEO functions such as the ability to edit HTML headings (H1-H6) and create image alt tags for visually impaired users. It also automatically creates a sitemap, friendly URLs, and canonicals.

However, there are a few features missing that make life easier for larger ecommerce sites. For example, there is no support for bulk editing SEO features like titles, descriptions, focus keywords, etc. This can become a very time-consuming process if you have a large inventory and upload new products to your site all the time.

  • The platform has great page speed and supports a number of SEO fundamentals.
  • No support for bulk editing SEO features.

eCommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

Simvoly offers an all in one eCommerce solution that allows you to sell physical products, digital products, services, and members-only content. 
There are lots of ready-made eCommerce templates that have all the features you need already built-in or it’s as simple as adding in one of the sales widgets to any other template. Just drag and drop a store widget and list your products with a few clicks.

You can create custom checkout pages with a space for bump offers to upsell before the final checkout. There is also a fully customizable pitching area next to the checkout for you to sell and advertise other products and services that your business offers.

  • Product variations
  • Recurring payments
  • Discount codes
  • Custom checkout pages
  • Order management
  • Shipping rules
  • Tax rules
  • Customer profiles
  • One-click up-sell / down-sell
ecommerce site builder

Booking & reservations

Simvoly has a built-in booking and reservations system to help you quickly create events, set your availability, and start taking bookings with just a few clicks.

To get started all you need to do is drag and drop the bookings widget onto your page. You can customize the bookings calendar and sign-up form to exactly how you want it. Also you can create an event, set up multiple operators or services, and finally, make changes to the style by editing the color and call-to-action button.
You can also connect to your Google calendar or CRM so you can manage everything from one place.
Enable the appointment buffer feature to avoid back-to-back meetings so you can make sure you have time to breathe in between a packed schedule.

To find out more head over to the Simvoly bookings and reservations feature page.

Payment options

Simvoly doesn’t provide a payment processing service themselves, instead, they leave it up to third-party providers. This means that Simvoly charges a 0% transaction fee on all ecommerce sales on the platform so you will only have to deal with the transaction fees of the third-party provider you choose to work with.
There are 12 leading payment providers supported on the platform including PayPal, Stripe, Afterpay, and Authorize.net.

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

Simvoly offer a no-commitment 14-day free trial where you can test out all of the features on the platform, get to know the editor, and find out what’s possible before committing any money.

Pricing plans

After the 14-day free trial, you will need to sign up for a paid plan to keep the website you’ve created and to unlock the paid-for features. 
There are four subscriptions to choose from which include Personal, Business, Growth, and Pro. 
All of the plans come with free hosting, unlimited pop-ups, SSL certificates, a blog, third-party integrations, custom code, and real-time analytics.

The entry-level Personal plan starts off at $18 a month and is limited to 1 website with 20 pages, 1 sales funnel, 2 website admins, 10GB of bandwidth, and you can sell up to 5 products.

If you’re looking to connect a custom domain you will need to sign up for the business plan. Most other platforms offer custom domain connections with the entry-level plan so that fact Simvoly forces you into a more expensive plan for a custom domain is a big downside.

  • Every website comes with an SSL certificate.
  • Custom domains are not supported on the personal plan.
simolvy pricing plans

Support 

If you are just looking for some general tips and advice on how to get the most out of the platform then you can head over to the blog or sign up for the weekly newsletter for some guides on how to grow your business online using Simvoly.

There is also a ‘Learn’ tab that you will find in the main navigation that has a bank of useful how-to videos that teach you the basics about the platform and much more.

You might however, want some more direct feedback and support. In that case, you have two options, either fill out the contact form and a member of the support team will get back to you via email or you can use the live chat support for a quicker response.

The opening hours of the live chat support are not advertised and it is not 24/7.

  • Useful blogs and how-to videos help users get the most out of the website builder software.
  • No round-the-clock support.

Zyro

General Overview

The demand from beginners and small-to-medium businesses looking for an easy and quick solution to create a website and build an online presence is growing day-by-day. It’s no surprise then that new website builder platforms are entering the market trying to offer something exciting and different to challenge the well-established brands like Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify. Zyro is one of the new kids on the block, and despite only launching in 2019, it has already gained a following of thousands of small businesses and individuals who have built a website using their platform.

  • Beginner Friendly
    9.0
  • Design Capabilities
    7.1
  • Variety of Features
    7.0
  • Value For Money
    8.5

Like other website builders, Zyro claims that their solution is the easiest and best way to build a website. They think they’ve achieved this with an easy to use drag and drop editor and with fast loading times. We wanted to find out if these claims were true and if Zyro can really compete against some of the other brands on the market. We spent some time testing the design capabilities, SEO abilities, support features and much more to give you a detailed low down on Zyro.

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if Zyro is the right platform for you. 

Who is it for? 

Zyro is great for anyone looking to build a beautifully designed website really quickly without the need for any coding or advanced design skills. The platform has a drag and drop editor so anyone with basic computer skills will be able to craft a stunning website either for a business or a personal website.

  • Portfolios & CVs
  • Restaurants
  • Photographers
  • Designers
  • Fashion & jewelry
  • Musicians
  • Health & beauty
  • Sports & outdoors
  • Education & publishing
  • Weddings and events
zyro example website

Screenshots

zyro screenshot of a website built by them #1
zyro screenshot of a website built by them #2
zyro screenshot of a website built by them #3

Beginner Friendly

Zyro, like many other website builders, is set up for beginners. The fact that you can build a website without any design or coding skills and have everything you need to manage and grow your business all in one place, makes it ideal for anyone building a website for the first time. It also makes the process much quicker, more streamlined, and less stressful for more experienced web developers too. 

Drag-and-drop editing

The Zyro drag and drop editor is one of the best out there and is really nice to use. Lots of other website builders offer clunky and unresponsive drag and drop features which make it all too easy to destroy a design. Whereas the Zyro editor is smooth and allows you to move elements exactly where you want them.

Something else that makes it stand out is the grid function that appears when you are moving a piece of content to a new location. As you move an element to a new location the snap-to-grid function makes sure everything is lined up perfectly. This is great for beginners as it simplifies the process of aligning content and keeps the spacing consistent, ensuring perfection.

Each content block is professionally designed, however, users have the creative freedom to move elements within the content block to wherever they want. This means that you can edit the site to your exact requirements and really make it unique.

  • Snap-to-grid function makes it really simple to align content and to keep the spacing consistent.
  • None available in regards to the drag and drop feature!
zyro dra and drop interface

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

Getting started with Zyro is really simple and will have you staring at the editor screen before you know it.

  1. Create an account by entering your email and business name 
  2. Choose a template
  3. Start editing

It’s really that easy to get started, there’s no wasted time or pointless question, it’s just straight into editing.

While it’s great to get things moving quickly, there is very little support during the onboarding process about how to use the platform. This might be fine if you’ve used a website builder before, but, if it’s your first time building a website you might feel like you’re not sure what to do next. There is some support in the resource section of the website but you have to go looking for it.

  • Really fast onboarding process.
  • No onboarding videos or animations to help users to understand how to use the platform.
zyro site builder interface
zyro site builder interface #2
zyro site builder interface #3

Design Capabilities

The editor

We’ve already covered it but the highlight of the Zyro editor has got to be the drag and drop editor with the snap-to-grid function. It makes everything easy to use and makes the learning curve on getting up to speed really fast. Within a few minutes, you’ll be able to edit effectively.

Adding a new content block is simple, just hit the add section button that sits between each content block and choose from either the pre-designed or blank content blocks. If you choose to go for a blank content block you populate it with content from the ‘add elements’ menu at the top of your screen. You will have a choice of text, button, image, video, map, contact form, subscribe, and social icons. 
While these options may be enough for personal websites and maybe some small businesses, it is a very limited offer. If you require any advanced content features, Zyro might not be the best platform for you.
However, the ability to populate your own blank content block is something unique to Zyro and allows you to create some truly unique designs. You will have a blank canvas and an innovative, easy to use drag and drop feature to build the exact look you want.

The text editor allows you to create HTML headings H1-H6, only they are labeled as an XXL heading down to an XS heading, so beware of what is what as you optimize your titles for SEO.
There isn’t really an image editor as such, however, you can crop your image, add alt text and link images to another page, a URL, phone number or email address.

You can do some basic edits to the call-to-action buttons by changing the text, choosing either the primary or secondary theme color, and altering the alignment.

In summary, the editor can be summed up as having a truly awesome drag and drop interface. However, it’s let down by otherwise basic features. Hopefully, this will be improved with future versions of the platform so that the drag and drop editor can be supported by other great features.

  • Drag and drop interface supported by an innovative snap-to-grid functionality.
  • Basic content blocks and a lack of advanced content features.
  • Drag and drop editor
  • Snap-to-grid functionality
  • Complete customization
  • HTML headings
  • Basic image editor
  • Ready-to-go content blocks
zyro available blocks in site builder

Zyro example websites

Zyro Example Website 1
Zyro Example Website 2

Links to example websites built with Zyro:

https://www.lapsa.lt
https://ramlahram.com

Main Features & Tools

Zyro has tried to stand out from the crowd and create a point of difference by hosting a variety of unique & innovative features on its platform. 
Before we get into the advanced features it’s worth mentioning that the Zyro platform has over 50 professionally designed templates that give their users the chance to create beautiful websites without the hard work and coding that is necessary if you choose to build a website on your own.
To help you make those templates come to life, Zyro has partnered with Unsplash, a vast image library with over 1 million free images. To use it, all you need to do is add an image content block onto your pages and click ‘replace image’. Then type in a keyword into the search bar and you’ll see thousands of relevant images for you to browse and select for your web page.

Something we have never seen before that will be something to watch out for in the future (especially if you’re a writer!) is AI writing tools. Zyro has its very own which is simple to use and will create relevant content within seconds. You have to select the topic, a category, and the type of text you want before clicking create. From there, the AI writing tool will produce a number of options for you to choose from. This will certainly speed up the content creation process.
It doesn’t stop there with the AI, Zyro also has an AI slogan creator, business name generator, and heatmaps. If you wanted to, you could sit back and relax while you leave it up to robots to create everything you need for your website.

Zyro also offers a free custom domain name and free hosting service that updates automatically to meet higher traffic demands, so don’t need to worry about your website crashing when you need it most.

You can also add third-party integrations to add further functionality to your website. However, there is a very limited number which includes: Google Analytics, Hotjar, Facebook Pixel, Facebook Messenger, and Google Tag Manager. These are only available to premium members.

  • AI business tools make it easy to create everything you need for your website.
  • Limited third-party integrations.
  • Custom domain names
  • Free hosting
  • DIY logo maker
  • AI business tools
  • AI writer
  • 1 million free stock images
  • 50+ templates
  • Powerful grid tool
  • Third-party integrations
  • SEO tools
zyro building blocks
zyro building features #1
zyro building features #2
zyro building features #3

Zyro Logo Maker

Zyro’s free logo maker is just one of many professional business tools that you gain access to when you become a member of Zyro’s platform. It’s 100% free, easy-to-use, and super fast! You can create a logo within minutes by following four easy steps: 

  1. Enter your brand name 
  2. Choose a template 
  3. Customize your logo
  4. Download and publish. 

The editor allows you to make basic edits to your logo design such as adding an icon, changing the color, selecting a new font, and creating a new layout. You won’t be able to create industry-leading logo designs with the Zyro logo maker tool, however, if you’re looking for a fast and free solution, then it’s a great option.

logo maker screenshot
logo maker screenshot
logo maker screenshot

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

We understand the importance of SEO to every business’ long term strategy and that’s why we conduct our own SEO audit on every platform we review to give you an honest description of what you can expect from each builder in terms of search engine optimization.

The first thing we had to check out was the claim on the homepage about Zyro creating super-fast websites. This is important because Google considers page speed as a direct ranking factor and they are much more likely to rank your website highly if you have a fast loading time. It turns out they were telling the truth and they scored really well on our page speed test, not too far behind the industry-leading Webnode who have scored the highest so far on our page speed tests.

Some other basics that the platform supports are the ability to create image alt tags, edit URL tags, and the platform will automatically create a site map for premium sites that Google will use for faster indexing.
However, there are a few missing SEO fundamentals that will make it hard for sites with lots of content and multiple pages to rank well. Firstly, there is no schema present which is a form of microdata that creates rich snippets and creates the stars you see on google listings for eCommerce sites. 

The platform does not support auto-image optimization so you will have to do a lot of work manually which could be tricky and very time consuming for larger sites.

Finally, there is no code editor to allow you to create external code to improve your SEO and other areas of your website. So even if you wanted to, you couldn’t get the help from an SEO expert to help your Zyro site rank better.
Overall Zyro has scored some mixed results in terms of SEO. Despite having a great page speed, the missing elements will make it difficult to rank well on the search engine ranking pages.

  • The platform scored really well on our page speed test.
  • A lack of schema, auto-image optimization, and canonical tags will make it difficult to rank well.

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

With Zyro you can create an online store within minutes by simply adding in the product listing content block and connecting to a third-party payment processor.
You can sell across multiple platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon with the ability to promote your products with powerful built-in business tools.

The platform makes things easy by allowing you to manage everything from inventory and shipping to marketing all from the main eCommerce dashboard.
For eCommerce+ customers, you will unlock advanced features such as abandoned cart recovery and language translations so you can make your business global.

  • You can sell your products across multiple platforms and manage them from one central place.
  • Ecommerce features are only available with the most expensive subscriptions.
  • 100% commission-free
  • Sell unlimited products
  • Create discount coupons
  • Gift cards
  • Multiple payment options
  • Abandoned cart recovery
  • Multiple languages
  • Sell on multiple platforms
  • Custom shipping & tax
  • Complete order tracking
zyro ecommerce website example

Booking & reservations

The Zyro platform doesn’t currently have a booking and reservation solution. It is possible to include a contact us form which would allow you to take bookings but this is not a complete solution and would be very labor-intensive if you have a business that takes hundreds or thousands of bookings each week.

Payment options

Zyro doesn’t charge any transaction fees because they leave it all up to third-party providers.
You can choose from over 70 payment providers including big brands such as Paypal, Stripe, Square, Authorize.net, and many more.

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

Zyro does have a free trial where users can test the site to see if they like it before committing any money. 
You will be able to use all of the AI business tools. However, you will be limited to 500mb bandwidth and 500mb of storage.
If you want to test the premium features you will have to sign up for a paid plan.

Pricing plans

So, what are your options?
There are four pricing plans, all of which are pretty competitive including a really cheap entry-level plan. These include Basic, Unleashed, eCommerce, and Ecommerce+.
The entry-level Basic plan starts off at a really low $2.99 per month and gives you access to 3bg of bandwidth, 1GB of storage, and the ability to connect your own custom domain name. 
The Zyro ads will also be removed which is a big plus for such a cheap price.

  • Really cheap starting price.
  • The ability to sell on other platforms is reserved for the most expensive plan.
zyro pricing plans

Support 

The Zyro platform does offer 24/7 support, however, this is only in the form of email communication so it might take some time to get a response, especially when you compare it to live chat and phone support.
We did test it out and got a response within an hour of sending the query, so you won’t have to wait around too long. The customer support team were also really helpful and friendly.

  • 24/7 round-the-clock support.
  • No live chat or phone support.

GoDaddy

General Overview

GoDaddy is certainly a big name amongst internet companies. Their main business is selling domain names and providing hosting services and now they have recently launched their second attempt at a website builder platform, GoDaddy version 7. The first edition didn’t exactly get the best reviews, however, at a glance, the rebrand looks good and this made us want to find out more.

  • Beginner Friendly
    9.3
  • Design Capabilities
    8.1
  • Variety of Features
    8.5
  • Value for Money
    9.1

GoDaddy is a beginner-friendly website builder that offers mobile-optimized designs, 24/7 support, website hosting, and ecommerce templates. They also offer a 30-day free trial so you can test the platform before spending any money.

We’re going to take a detailed look at the GoDaddy platform and it’s features to find out if it can compare to competition from platforms like Wix and Squarespace. Read on to find out more.

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if GoDaddy is the right platform for you.

Who is it for? 

GoDaddy is for anyone looking to create an online presence, which could be for a personal portfolio site or a site for your business. Users can choose from a list of ready-made templates and have a professionally designed website with advanced features go live without ever having to look at a piece of code or understand what HTML, CSS, or Javascript is. 

The templates cover everything from personal one-pager portfolios right through to full operational ecommerce stores.

Head over to the GoDaddy template page to have a look at the award-winning designs or we’ve listed a few of the popular ones below:

  • Fashion & beauty
  • Home services
  • Health & fitness
  • Online store
  • Photography
  • Art & design
  • Restaurants & food
  • Professional services
  • Community & non-profit
  • Personal & blog
godaddy template screenshot
godaddy editor screenshot
godaddy template screenshot
godaddy template screenshot

Beginner Friendly

GoDaddy scores highly for beginner friendliness because of its easy-to-use editor and well-designed templates that allow even non-technical website builders to create a sleek, professional-looking website, much faster and more importantly, cheaper than other more advanced platforms.

Drag-and-drop editing

The GoDaddy editor is certainly easy to use but it can’t be called a drag and drop editor. The editor works by selecting and adding in a large variety of content blocks which you can then move around by hitting the ‘move section arrows’ which are located on every content block.

Within the blocks, the elements are fixed and cannot be moved to a different hierarchy but you can edit text by simply clicking on the desired text box and then editing like you would on a word document.

  • Very easy for beginners to use.
  • Lacks creative freedom as there is not much personalization within the content blocks.
godaddy drag and drop interface screenshot

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

You will get from the home page to editing your site within minutes with the GoDaddy onboarding process. Simply select the type of site you want to build, for example, a blog, online store, etc. and then type in the name of your business or website, and then within 30 seconds, GoDaddy will load you a template that you can start editing.

  • Really fast onboarding getting you straight to the editor within minutes.
  • No helpful guides or onboarding videos within the editor.

Design Capabilities

The editor

The GoDaddy editor is perfectly suited for beginners who want to create their own website without having to gain knowledge of website design and coding. You can change between 20+ customizable themes with different layouts, fonts, and colors which are all mobile responsive, so they will look good on whatever device your audience is viewing your website from.

Although there is no drag and drop functionality, it really isn’t that much of a big deal for the beginner builder. Actually it simplifies things further, making it easier to stick to the professional design skills that have gone into each element of the platform. Having tested lots of different platforms we can safely say that the GoDaddy editor is one of the easiest to use and takes no time at all to figure out how it works. However, if you’re a more experienced web developer or someone who likes to customize everything, you will get frustrated with the lack of freedom.

There is a pretty basic but effective image editor that was a pleasure to use (which is not something you can say about some of the image editors on other platforms). Once you have selected an image, the image editor will appear in the right sidebar. From there you can zoom in and out, rotate, change image, delete, add a black & white filter and add in alt text and a caption. Again, if you’re looking for more advanced image editing capabilities you will probably get bored with the editor quickly, however, it works great for standard editing needs. Although a cropping tool would have been nice.

There are 30+ content block categories each with multiple options. These include basic categories like text content, calendar, video, audio, menu/price list, and social buttons as well as more advanced features like reservations, reviews, promo banners, drop-down menus, HTML blocks, online ordering and many more.

Finally, there are over 50 different font pairings for you to choose from, and if you don’t find one you like them you can make your own within the advanced font settings.

  • Easy to use editor that’s great for beginners with customizable templates and a large variety of content blocks.
  • No drag and drop and basic editing capabilities that will frustrate the more advanced web developer.
  • 20+ customizable themes
  • Image editor
  • Variety of content blocks
  • 50+ font pairings
  • Designer made templates
  • Mobile responsive
  • Single image library 
  • Drop-down menus
  • Mobile preview
  • On-page editing
a screenshot of the GoDaddy website builder editor

GoDaddy example websites

godaddy example website screenshot #1
godaddy example website screenshot #2
godaddy example website screenshot #3
godaddy example website screenshot #4

Links to example websites built with GoDaddy

Main Features & Tools

There’s a reason why 19 million business owners and professionals use GoDaddy and that’s because of the amazing features and tools available on the platform to help you and your business thrive online.

For example, with every GoDaddy site, you get access to GoDaddy InSight™ which they call ‘your silent business partner’. You’ll get data-driven recommendations made into an InSight action plan that gives you continuous suggestions on what to do next to improve your online presence. It also gives you something called an InSight score which enables you to compare your online marketing activity with businesses and websites like yours.

There is also a fully integrated email marketing system where you can collect email addresses from one of the newsletter forms and begin to build an email database. Once you have a list then you can create customized email campaigns from the GoDaddy platform to increase traffic and sales. 

There’s so much more to the platform and if you want to find out some more why not head over to the features page and find out what else is on offer.

  • Mobile editor app allows you to make edits to your site on the go, from any location.
  • Limited built-in integrations and no app market for additional plugins.
  • Mobile editor app
  • Website hosting
  • GoDaddy InSight
  • Back up and restore
  • Members-only pages
  • Social media connect
  • SEO
  • Email marketing
  • Review widget
  • Link to existing blogs
godaddy email marketing tool screenshot

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

We conduct our own SEO audit on every website builder we review because we understand how important SEO is to the long term success of a website. What the team at Website Builder Ninja found when looking at SEO features for GoDaddy was disappointing but, it wasn’t all bad.

The Google page speed test measures how quickly a website will load and is important because Google considers page speed as a direct ranking factor. We found that GoDaddy web pages had an average page speed. It scored higher than the likes of Wix and Squarespace but was a long way from competing with faster platforms like Bookmark.com and Webnode.

Some of the basic requirements were met, for example, GoDaddy optimizes images to reduce the weight and scale for faster loading times. You can edit titles and descriptions and you can edit image alt tags. The platform also automatically creates a sitemap which helps Google to index your pages.

You can create H1 and H2 headings within a blog post, however, this function is not supported on other pages. This is disappointing because HTML headings are a basic SEO function that should be standard on every builder.

GoDaddy is lacking a few important SEO features, for example, there are no canonical tags across the site which are used to protect your content from someone stealing it and ranking better with it than you. 

Overall we found that the GoDaddy platform performed below average in terms of SEO which will make it hard for GoDaddy sites to rank well on the search engine ranking pages (SERPs), limiting the potential of organic search traffic coming into your site.

  • Automatic sitemaps and image optimization.
  • GoDaddy has an average page speed and canonical tags and schema do not exist.

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

Setting up an online store is simple with GoDaddy, you can choose from a variety of store designs to sell your products and you can choose to sell directly from the website or link up with third-party selling sites like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, and Facebook. A great feature is that if you choose to sell across multiple platforms you can sync your inventory across all locations so it’s easy to keep track of orders and stock levels.

You can easily list your business on Google business listings and manage and respond to comments from within the GoDaddy platform. You can also promote and sell products on your Facebook business page by automatically sharing new content and products from your site.

  • Easy to link up with multiple seller platforms.
  • You have to sign up to the most expensive subscription for ecommerce features.
  • Accept credit cards
  • Sync to third party stores like Amazon, Etsy & eBay
  • Custom Shipping & taxes
  • Discount codes
  • Abandoned cart recovery
  • Digital downloads
  • Product reviews
  • Text notifications
  • In-person pick-up
  • Linked up with Google business listings
godaddy ecommerce store example screenshot

Booking & reservations

If you’re a service provider like a personal trainer, yoga instructor, or dog walker then GoDaddy have you covered with their 24/7 integrated bookings and appointment system. You simply need to add in the appointment & services content blocks that are right for you, just like you would add a text box or image to your site, easy!

You can set up calendars with recurring classes and events, and keep track of everything with the built-in client management tools that let you retain contact information, appointment history, and payment history.

When it comes to collecting payment for your appointments you can charge deposits, cancellation fees, or collect full payments upfront, whatever suits you best.

Finally, you can also set up logins for your staff members so that they can manage your schedule and availability.

  • You can schedule one-time or recurring appointments.
  • Limited third party bookings provider options.

Payment options

GoDaddy has leveraged the services of third-party providers to give you multiple payment options. This hands-off approach also means that you won’t be charged any transaction fees from GoDaddy, just whatever the payment provider you choose charges. 

You can process payments for your online store with Square, Stripe (which includes apple pay), and PayPal. If you prefer to stay away from the online payment giants you can create offline payment methods such as pay on arrival or with checks. 

  • Zero commission fees from GoDaddy.
  • You have to sign up to the most expensive plan to accept payments.

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

GoDaddy offers a 30-day free trial where you can create a website and test out all of the features before committing any money.

Pricing plans

To get the most out of your personal or business site and to start building a real online presence you will want to unlock some of the premium features and will, therefore, have to sign up for a paid subscription.

GoDaddy offers you four different plans which include Basic, Standard, Premium, and Ecommerce. The entry-level plan, Basic, starts off at $15 when billed monthly which will give you an SSL certificate, a custom domain, a mobile editor app, 24/7 support, free business email for 1 year, and a few more features. Unfortunately, if you want SEO support you need to sign up for one of the more expensive plans.

If you want any ecommerce features then you will have to sign up for the ecommerce plan which is the most expensive.

  • Relatively low-cost entry-level plan compared with competitors.
  • No SEO support for basic subscription and you have to sign up to the most expensive plan for ecommerce features.
godaddy pricing plans

Support 

GoDaddy has an impressive support system that includes a Help center,  a how-to page, a community forum, and a blog, as well as 24/7 phone and live chat support… I don’t think it can get much better than that.

The phone support offers help in over 50 languages with the US support available 24/7 so if you’re pulling an all-nighter and get stuck with a technical issue there will be someone to call and help you get back on track.

We tested out the 24/7 chat function with a couple of questions and were told that we had a maximum wait time of 14 minutes before getting a response. It actually took over 2 hours to get a response so it’s a bit of a stretch to call that a ‘live response.’

  • 24/7 phone and live chat support with a help center full of useful guides.
  • The live chat can sometimes have long wait times before getting a response.