General Overview

The Weebly website builder is famous for its easy-to-use drag and drop website editor that allows even the most beginner, non-technical person to get a website up and running quickly. Everything on the platform is simple and intuitive, allowing you to spend less time thinking and figuring out how to work things, and more time creating.

There is a general sense online that the designs are not as good as Squarespace and not as flexible as Wix, so you might ask, why bother? However, over 50 million users have signed up to create their websites with Weebly and there must be a good reason why right? Have a read of our in-depth review as we take a look at the Weebly platform and answer the question, can Weebly compete with Wix and Squarespace?

Beginner Friendly

9.2
Design Capabilities

7.5
Variety of Features

8.4
Value for Money

8.5

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 Weebly is the right platform for you.

Who is it for?

The Weebly platform has been built to accommodate anyone and everyone who would like to create a professional website for themselves or their business. The home page states ‘whether you’re a store owner, event planner, fitness instructor, musician or realtor’ that you will find a template to get you started with the chance to make it your own with the drag and drop editor.

From our perspective at Website Builder Ninja, we would recommend Weebly for anyone who would describe themselves as ‘not technical’ on computers. The simple features and editor are best suited for someone looking for a no-fuss, easy-to-use platform from which to manage their online presence.

A perfect platform for the non-technical beginner who wants to get a website up and running quickly.
If this is not your first time building a website you might get frustrated with the lack of features compared to other builders.

Online Stores
Local Businesses
Portfolios
Personal sites
Events
Bloggers
Health & Fitness
Musicians
Restaurants
Photographers

a preview of a Weebly website theme called Vivien

Beginner Friendly

We have given the Weebly platform a high rating for beginner friendliness. The simplicity of the platform makes it accessible and fun for everyone, including more experienced web developers looking for a no-stress set up.

Drag-and-drop editing

I might start to sound like a broken record in this review, but simplicity is the main benefit to the drag and drop editor. You can add in, delete and reposition every feature on the page from the left sidebar really easily. Editing text is done on the page which creates live editing abilities so you’ll always know exactly how the page will look to a real viewer, so you won’t ever get any surprises when you save and publish.

However, simplicity is not always best and there is definitely a limit to the number of features you can add to your Weebly page. It has the basics and will meet the needs of most people, especially when you’re just starting out, but it lacks scalability compared to its competitors. You might become a bit frustrated with the limited features once you become comfortable on the platform and want to make your website stand out.

Easy-to-use, intuitive editor that’s perfect for beginners.
Limited content features and not much creative freedom.

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

Setting up your Weebly site for the first time is a walk in the park with their tailored step step-by-step guidance.

Decide if you need a website or website with a store
Answer a few questions so Weebly can tailor your template
Work your way through the 7 onboarding stages

There’s not much more to it after you’ve followed all of the steps, you’ll have a website ready to show the world.

Really simple to work through the stages and the ADI (artificial design intelligence) does all the hard work for you for ecommerce templates.
You can only change a few details like the main color and the font so the set up lacks personalization.

weebly step by step go through screenshot #1

weebly step by step go through screenshot #2

weebly step by step go through screenshot #3

Design Capabilities

The editor

A must-have for any beginner-friendly website builder is a drag and drop editor and Weebly ticks this box. You can drag any element or feature to reposition it on your page in the left sidebar which makes it really quick and simple when designing and redesigning your site to make changes.

There are over 40 themes for you to choose from that are all mobile-ready, so you don’t have to stress about optimizing your content for mobile browsing. Compared to some of its competitors there are a limited number of themes but who actually looks through 500 themes anyway? The design team has done a great job at creating professional looking themes that would appeal to the needs of almost every industry. You can also change the theme anytime you want, even after the site is live, this is a great way to quickly give your site a makeover with little effort.
Making your website stand out from the crowd is sometimes difficult but Weebly has given you a helping hand with the animations and scroll effects (like parallax & reveal) available in the editor

Finally, the Weebly platform also has an app center home to a selection of Weebly’s own apps and some third-party app as well, allowing you to tailor your pages to your needs.

If you’re looking for some more information then head over to the design help page for some in-depth guides on the editor’s features.

Drag & Drop builder
Custom fonts
Animation effects
Photo studio
Video backgrounds
Site search
Video & audio
Custom HTML/CSS & Javascript
App center

weebly template design options screenshot

Packed full of features; Mobile-ready, app center, 40+ well-designed templates, drag & drop editing, animation and scroll effects.
There is not much creative freedom within the templates and content blocks.

Weebly example websites

Take a look at what others have managed to achieve with the Weebly platform.

Links to example websites built with Weebly

www.douksnow.com
www.theboxbros.com
raquelorozco.com
thereadydesk.com
www.thewhiskeyball.com
www.thebikeseat.com

Main Features & Tools

While Weebly is not known for having the most features and is sometimes criticized for its limitations compared to other website builder platforms there are still plenty of features to get excited about.

For example, the automated email feature allows you to create custom emails that are automatically sent out to your readers or customers when they fill out a pop-up form or purchase an item from your store. You can send a welcome email or say thank you for contacting us without having to do anything. This allows you to build a relationship with your audience without having to manually send 100’s of emails.

The platform also has a built-in analytics tool that allows you to see all types of interesting data about your site. You can look at unique visits, page views, avg. pages per unique visitor and find out exactly where the traffic is coming from. Finding out what is responsible for an increase in traffic is easy and you can select different date ranges to find out what days, weeks, or months have been best for your overall traffic.

Custom domain names
Unlimited storage
App center
Advanced analytics
Online stores
SEO
Lead Capture
Add Instagram feed
Advanced ecommerce insights
Automated emails

Weebly has everything you need for a beginner website, including online marketing features such as email campaigns and advanced analytics.
A lot of the third party apps in the app center require a monthly subscription which will add to the monthly cost of running your site.

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

It’s important to know the SEO capabilities of your website and that’s why we conduct our own SEO audit on every platform we review for the Website Builder Ninja comparison site. We want you to know the strengths and weaknesses of SEO features for every website builder. The Weebly platform has some of the basics you need but it is also missing some vital features.

Starting off with the positives, Weebly optimizes images by reducing the weight and scale for fasting loading times. You can also edit image alt tags and Weebly automatically creates a sitemap that helps Google index your web pages. Canonical tags are also present which stops others from stealing your content and ranking higher than you with it. Friendly URLs are created automatically as well, however, unlike other sites you won’t be able to edit these yourself and you’re stuck with what they come up with.

Unfortunately, when we tested the page speed it scored badly, even though the page we tested was pretty much empty. This means a busy page full of content will score even worse. This is an issue because Google considers page speed as a direct ranking factor and slower pages will find it difficult to rank well.
Weebly has also missed a really basic function that everybody offers as standard which is the ability to create HTML headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.).

So, the Weebly platform does have some of the basic SEO requirements needed, however, the main concern is the slow page speed as this will make it difficult to rank well on search engine ranking pages (SERPs).

Weebly creates sitemaps automatically and canonical tags are present.
Slow page speed will affect rankings and you can’t create HTML headings.

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

You will be asked at the very beginning of your onboarding process if you need a website with a store, simply click yes and Weebly will make sure your template has everything you need to run an online store, complete with product pages, a checkout page and an ecommerce dashboard to keep track of sales and views. From a beginners perspective, this is ideal, everything is done automatically so you can start selling straight away with no technical skills needed.

You can take full advantage of the Weebly ecommerce integrated system by using the below features.

Manage store from a mobile app
Ecommerce templates
Free ecommerce hosting
Advanced product display and merchandise options
Mobile store & checkout
Custom international payments, shipping & taxes
Process and manage orders
Integrate store from Etsy or Shopify
Coupon discount
Automated abandoned cart emails

Weebly offers a complete ecommerce package with everything you need to start selling immediately.
No ecommerce themes to choose from & no access to apps with ecommerce builder.

Booking & reservations

If you want to add in a bookings and reservations feature to your website then you will need to rely on the app center because Weebly doesn’t have its own bookings feature. There are around 8-10 apps on the platform that you could use, most of which require a monthly fee.

Once you decide on which app you would like to use, simply click add which will take you back to your editor where you can decide where to place the bookings feature just like any other content block.

You have lots of options to choose from.
Most booking and reservation solutions require a monthly fee.

Payment options

Payments processing on Weebly is managed by Square, Stripe, authorize.net, or PayPal, and depending on which one you choose will affect the commission charges you will face for each sale on the platform.
For example, if you choose to use Square, you will need to pay between 2.6-2.9% plus $0.30 for every transaction. You get a slightly lower commission rate with Square if you pay for a premium Weebly plan.

You can use well-known payment providers like Paypal and Stripe.
There is no commission free option.

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

With Weebly, you can sign up for a free account and get access to the website builder without spending any money. This is great for someone just starting out because you can play around with the builder and figure out if you will be able to make something that can make you or your business look like a professional.
However, you will be limited to a subdomain name, 100mb of storage, 100mb file upload limit and you will have the Weebly branding at the footer of every page.

You can get started for free without paying any money.
A free subscription has very limited features and has weebly branding at the bottom of your sites pages.

Pricing plans

Let’s say you like Weebly and after the free trial want to stick around and launch your website on the platform, what are your options?
You have 3 options, Professional, Performance, and Premium.

The pricing plans start at $16 a month which will get you a free domain name, unlimited storage, remove Weebly advertising, plus a long list of standard and ecommerce features.
Please note there are some small savings to be made if you pay annually for your subscription. It brings the starting price plan down from $16 to $12 a month.

You can save money by signing up for an annual subscription.
The starting price is relatively high at 16 bucks and the premium account at $72 per month seems extortionately priced.

Support

If you have a problem and need some help, the first place to head would be to the Weebly support center where you will find a bank of articles covering almost every topic you could need such as ecommerce, domains and email, email marketing and building your website.

There is also a Weebly blog, inspiration center, and community page where you can collaborate with other Weebly users and get inspired by what experts have done with the platform.

They also have email and telephone support if you need a human to help resolve the issue which is great because sometimes the blogs and community pages just don’t cover it. Emails are monitored 24/7 and someone should get back to you as soon as possible or you can access the live chat and speak to someone directly. Finally, you can speak with an agent over the phone 7 days a week within weebly’s business operating hours which are:

Monday – Friday 6am – 6pm Pacific Time (9am – 9pm Eastern Time)
Saturday – Sunday 8am – 5pm Pacific Time (11am – 8pm Eastern Time)

General Overview

Bookmark is a free cloud-based website builder that is a little bit different from some of the others on the market. It’s 100% powered by their AiDA (Artificial intelligence design assistant) which claims to be able to create fully functioning, professional-looking websites in 2 minutes.

There are 20 templates and 650 business types to choose from so Bookmark offers solutions for a wide range of potential business and personal websites, from fully operational online stores, right through to one-page portfolios.

Beginner Friendly

9.4
Design Capabilities

7.1
Variety of Features

8.4
Value for Money

8.2

In this in-depth review, we find out if some of the claims Bookmark makes are true and take a look at its features, pricing, and the overall experience of using the platform.
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 Bookmark is the right platform for you.

Who is it for?

Bookmark is aimed at small businesses and non-technical people who are looking for a simple drag-and-drop editor that makes building a website easy, fun, and most importantly, fast. The AiDa removes the need for any coding, technical knowledge, or design skills, allowing you to get a website up and running quickly. This makes the platform ideal if you are just starting to build an online presence for you or your business and should be easy to use even if it’s your first ever website.

The platform has focused on creating templates for a wide variety of business and personal niches, so whatever your background, you’re likely to find a template to suit you. For example, you can find business types such as acupuncture, air conditioning, archery, and aquariums… and that’s just some of the options beginning with A.

The most popular business templates on the platform are:

Restaurants
Accommodations
Social media marketing
Coffee shops
Artists
Photographers
Personal brands
Wedding events
Personal trainers
Construction contractors

Beginner Friendly

Bookmark is targeted at the beginner website builder and has created a platform centered around ease of use. The fact that you can answer just a few questions and have AiDA do all the hard work for you takes a lot of the stress out of building a website. The bookmark platform requires no coding or design skills and has built-in SEO functions so you really only have to think about making the content right for your business.

Drag-and-drop editing

When it comes to a beginner-friendly website builder, drag-and-drop editing is essential. Bookmark’s drag-and-drop editor is impressive, it’s simple to use, intuitive, and gives the user the freedom to move elements around freely across the whole site.

It really is as simple as clicking to edit text and dragging things around to where you want them and there are even visual guides to help you align your content. If you want to move an element closer to the top of the page you just go into the ‘focus’ section of the sidebar and drag the content module into the position you want it. Beginners will be able to get to grips with it in minutes.

After spending some time on the Bookmark editor, it’s easy to compare to the Wix drag-and-drop editor. Both are really simple to use and offer really great creative freedom because you can move and reposition elements and text to wherever you want them. I think this is really important for the Bookmark platform as users get some creative freedom back after being very limited with the AiDA process.

Easy to use drag-and-drop editor that allows for lots of creative freedom.
Limited and basic website ‘styles’ to choose from

squarespace drag and drop template example screenshot

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

The onboarding process with Bookmark is really simple. You will be taken straight to their Artificial intelligence design assistant (AiDA) where you will be asked to answer a few questions about you and your business.

Once you have answered all the questions it takes about 30 seconds to work its magic and then you should have a well-designed website with all the functionality you need for you or your business. From there it’s down to you to start editing and Bookmark has tried to make this easy for you too.

When you first open up your site there will be a pop-up guide to help you get started. It tells you how to do things like change fonts, customize pages, add and delete modules, and connect domain names. There’s even a ‘show me how’ button which will walk you through how to do each function or you can click through to the ‘how to videos’ where you’ll find lots of step-by-step guides to get you started.

AiDa does the hard work for you and will create a functioning website within minutes. Lots of useful tutorials and ‘how to videos’ to help you understand how to use the platform
Trusting artificial intelligence to select the best template is not alway best and there is no option to choose the template yourself.

squarespace step by step onboarding screenshot #3

squarespace step by step onboarding screenshot #2

squarespace step by step onboarding screenshot #1

Design Capabilities

The editor

Using the AiDA made setting up a website really easy, however, the final design definitely felt underwhelming and didn’t have much of a ‘wow’ factor. The AiDA was able to input the correct features that I was looking for but the images and fonts felt basic and flat. If Bookmark spent some time creating some better-looking templates I think this would improve, however, for now, expect a below average overall design.

But looks are not everything and there are definitely some positives to the Bookmark editor. Firstly, even with a free account, you can add a large variety of content modules such as the basic text, title, image, gallery, spacer, and video content blocks, as well as more advanced options, like Facebook comments & reviews, event registration, and a countdown timer. All of these elements can be added to your site by dragging and dropping, making it really easy for a beginner to create a website with advanced features.

There is also an image editor where you can do some basic editing to images such as cropping, flipping, and rotating. You can also add shapes and texts to the image although this looks quite basic rather than professional.

If you don’t like the way your site is looking, you can get AiDA to change the style and fonts at the click of a button. Just find the ‘do it for me’ button and the artificial intelligence will get to work for you and presents you with another design option within 30 seconds. If you make a mistake or prefer what you had before, there is an undo feature that will take you back to the point you were happy with.

Furthermore, all of the Bookmark templates are mobile and tablet optimized as well as being fully responsive to different screen sizes. If you want to take a look at how it looks on a different screen type you can view desktop, tablet, and mobile options in the preview section.

If you want to find out more about the editor, Bookmark offers free online training and a community forum where you can pick up tips and tricks to get the most out of the editor. Head over to the home page to find out more.

Easy to use drag and drop editor with lots of content modules
Template designs are very basic and there is no autosave feature.

Drag & drop editing
Mobile ready
Artificial intelligence design assistant
20 design templates
Image editor
1.5 million free stock images & videos
Embed your own code.
72+ fonts
Video backgrounds
Content modules

Main Features & Tools

Bookmark is a complete website builder platform with everything you need to build and run your website. It offers all the essential features you would need, plus some additional unique features that you won’t find anywhere else.

Something Bookmark takes advantage of is the Amazon cloud hosting service which provides multiple layers of operational and physical security to your website. Whether you’re an online store or a blogger, taking data protection seriously is very important and Amazon web services claim to be one of the best in data protection.
Even with the entry-level paid plan, you get access to unlimited storage and bandwidth, which is perfect if you know you’ll end up with a site full of content or if you’re expecting huge traffic spikes. Having unlimited bandwidth is great because you know nothing will crash when you need it the most.

Unlimited storage and bandwidth with added data protection & security from Amazon cloud
No app market to add third-party elements

Other professional features include:

Custom domain names
Unlimited storage & bandwidth
E-learning courses
Analytics
SEO optimized
Daily website back up
Amazon cloud hosting
Ecommerce templates
Facebook integration
‘Ask an expert’ support

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

It’s vital to understand how well your website can perform in terms of SEO and that’s why here at Website Builder Ninja we conduct our own SEO audit on every website builder we review. Bookmark was impressive across lots of SEO criteria, however, there were still a few issues that prevented it from getting a perfect rating.

You can format HTML headings appropriately and edit titles and meta descriptions to optimize your on-page content for SEO. This is very basic but fundamental to rank well in the search engine ranking pages (SERPs).
Bookmark will create friendly URLs automatically and you have the ability to edit these as well if you want to.
Other basic SEO requirements such as a sitemap is automatically created which helps Google to index your pages and you can input image alt tags to provide context for visually impaired users.

Google will rank faster websites higher than slower sites so, scoring well on the Google page speed test is important if your site is going to rank well. Bookmark scored very highly on this test, with a page speed much faster than competitors like Wix and Squarespace.

However, something that was missing was the schema which is a type of microdata used to create rich snippets. Websites with rich snippets tend to rank higher on average so it’s disappointing this function is not supported.

In summary, Bookmark performs well in terms of SEO, especially compared to some of its website builder competitors. Despite the lack of schema, the fast page speed and the ability to customize important SEO features will allow most basic sites to rank well. However, the lack of schema will make it difficult for complex sites like ecommerce websites to rank highly.

Fast page speed, friendly URLs, and automatic site maps.
Lack of schema will make it difficult for ecommerce sites to rank well.

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

Bookmark can create a ready-made ecommerce template with the artificial intelligence design assistant or you can simply add in an ecommerce content module just like you would add a text box.
With a Bookmark ecommerce store, you can sell your products across multiple channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Google shopping, Amazon, eBay, and more. This allows you to expand your audience and make more sales from the same product listing.

Also, all of the product listing pages and storefront designs are optimized to look good on any device and can be translated into 45 different languages.

Sell unlimited products
Sell on Facebook & Instagram
No transaction fee
Customizable email notifications
Sell digital products
Discount coupons
Store management mobile app
Integrated shopping cart
Store statistics
Define shipping options

bookmark.com ecommerce template example screenshot

Booking & reservations

It’s possible to create a bookings and reservations feature by adding in an event registration block, just like any other content module.
This allows you to collect the name, email address, and phone number of people wanting to attend your event and it will create a list that you can view by going into event settings.

This is fine if you’re creating a one-off event but there isn’t any calendar feature that would allow you to list multiple events, and if you’re thinking about setting up a restaurant bookings feature it seems you would probably need a third party plugin.

Drag and drop event registration block makes it simple to advertise and collect bookings for one-off events.
No calendar feature to list multiple events.

Payment options

Bookmark supports over 50 payment providers that you can choose to process your payments for your online store, but they recommend Square, WePay, and Paypal for U.S merchants.
They take a hands-off approach to processing payments, leaving it entirely up to third party providers which means you won’t be charged any transaction fees from Bookmark. However, it’s always important to check how much the third-party platform will charge you as rates can vary.

The different ways your customers can pay will also depend on the payment provider so make sure to check out the different offers and decide what’s best for your customers.

You can also offer offline payments that don’t require a third-party platform like cash on arrival, phone orders, or bank transfers. You can read more about offline payments on Bookmark here.

Lots of payment options with 0% commission from Bookmark.
Some of the payment guides on the support pages are incomplete or missing.

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

Bookmark offers a free trial with the usual limits and restrictions. You’ll only be given a subdomain name and you’ll be limited to 10 pages for your website. Also, you’ll be limited to 1gb of bandwidth, 500mb of storage and you’ll have the company branding on your site.

Despite the limitations, this is a great free option that gives customers like you the chance to trial the site and its features for free. You’ll be able to understand if this is a platform that you would like to use before you commit any money.

Pricing plans

Some of you will already know that you’ll need to use some of the premium features, so what are your options?
Bookmark keeps it really simple, maybe too simple, and only offers two payment plans. The first is the Professional subscription which starts at $15 per month which gets you a custom domain name, unlimited storage & bandwidth, one free professional email, an SSL certificate, and access to online courses worth $497.
This is followed by the Business plan which is around double the price. You will get everything you get with the professional subscription plus a long list of ecommerce features.

The free trial gives you access to the site so you can trial the features before paying money. The entry-level plan has unlimited storage and bandwidth.
There is no entry-level or ‘cheap’ ecommerce subscription, anyone looking for ecommerce features has to pay the most expensive plan.

Support

You can get in touch and access support on the Bookmark website in a number of different ways. Firstly there is an F.A.Q’s section and a help center that has a list of information and articles to help you with some common problems you might face. I found that it wasn’t the easiest help center to use and the search function doesn’t pull up the most relevant answers, however, the information is there, it might just take some digging to reach it.

There is also an ‘Ask an Expert’ page which acts like a community forum where you can read through what other users have asked and see the responses from Bookmark experts.

If you still need some further assistance after going through these avenues you can always reach out to someone via the chat service which is in the bottom right of your screen on the website. It’s marketed as a Live chat service, however, when I used it I got back a message saying that ‘Bookmark typically replies in a few hours’.

Finally, the last form of contact you can try is via email. The email address you need to contact with queries is [email protected].

Multiple ways to access support including a community forum where you can speak to other users
No phone service available at the moment

General Overview

Webnode is a free online website builder that enables anyone to create an amazing website within a few minutes without the need for any design or coding skills. The editor allows you to create a website with advanced features in just a few clicks and there are over 100 professionally designed templates for you to choose from. For all of the online entrepreneurs reading this, Webnode is ecommerce ready so you can start selling almost immediately.

Beginner Friendly

8.6
Design Capabilities

8.9
Variety of Features

8.0
Value for Money

9.1

The platform has been steadily growing since 2008 and now has over 40 million users. With numbers like that Webnode must be doing something right, so we decided to test the platform ourselves and write a detailed review outlining the pros and cons of the website builder.

Can Webnode compete against the likes of Wix and Squarespace? Read on to find out.
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 Webnode is the right platform for you.

Who is it for?

The Webnode homepage claims that their platform is ‘the easiest way to make your own website’ which suggests they are targeting beginner web developers, small to medium businesses and individuals looking to create an online presence for the first time.
The platform has ready-made templates for a variety of business and personal needs ranging from portfolio & CVs right through to professional business pages.

The powerful ecommerce features that let you set up and create an online store within minutes make it an ideal platform for anyone wanting to sell products online.

If you want to have a look at some of the template designs for your particular niche, head over to the Webnode template page and have a browse.

Businesses
Ecommerce
Personal websites
Bloggers
Restaurants and food
Musicians
Portfolio & CVs
Weddings

Beginner Friendly

The Webnode platform aims to take the complexity out of building a website to make it possible for anyone, regardless of their web development experience and skills, to build a website from scratch. The platform has all the features needed to run a successful online business and the designs to make you look professional. Instead of writing code to get everything up and running, you just need to point and click.

Drag-and-drop editing

The editor combines elements from point-and-click and drag-and-drop editors which gives users a decent amount of creative freedom while making it easy to add, delete, and rearrange different elements and features.

The drag-and-drop editor is a little bit clunky and when testing we found that it wasn’t easy to move content to exactly where you wanted without messing up other features. It felt a bit like moving an unformatted image around a word document (we’ve all been there…). However, there is an undo button so it’s easy to go back to where you started and try again.

Webnode combines point-and-click with drag-and-drop to create an editor that’s easy to use with a decent amount of creative freedom within the template.
Drag-and-drop editor felt clunky and it was hard to line up content in a new position.

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

Getting started with Webnode is really straightforward and is completed within 4 simple steps.

Enter the name of your website and enter the registration details
Choose between a website or ecommerce store
Pick your template
Enter the contact details for your store (ecommerce only)

It’s really as easy as that! From there you’ll have to wait a couple of minutes for Webnode to work its magic and then you’ll have a fully functioning website ready for you to start editing.

Before you start there is a short one-minute onboarding video, it doesn’t really tell you much but it might be worth watching if you have never used a website builder before. The links to suggested videos at the end will tell you about various aspects of the platform in more detail.

Design Capabilities

The editor

Our Website Builder Ninjas were impressed by the level of design that has gone into each of the ready-made templates, it beats a lot of its competitors and rivals the best. There are over 100 to choose from and because of the freedom that comes with the drag-and-drop editor, you will be able to create a truly unique website that can stand out from the crowd. Being able to put your own stamp on something is important when lots of other people will be using the same templates.

Adding in new content blocks is done by clicking on one of the plus icon buttons you will see as you move your cursor around the screen. After you’ve clicked on it you will see a menu with all the different types of content blocks which include text boxes, heading boxes, product lists, order forms, photo galleries, and much more.
What’s great about content blocks on Webnode is that they are fully customizable. You can add, delete, and rearrange whatever you want to suit your needs. This is a big plus because it gives users more creative freedom compared with other platforms and is similar to what you experience with the Wix editor.

The Webnode editor comes with a bank of professional images and videos that you can use to bring your site to life or you can upload your own. There’s no search function on the image store so it can take some time to find the image you need, but hey, it’s free!

There is also a simple image editor where you can apply filters, color overlays, and animations as well as a cropping tool that makes it easy to resize your images.

There’s lots more to learn about the Webnode editor and if you want to find out more, head over to the Webnode knowledge base and explore the ‘how to edit your website guides’?

100+ professional templates
Font pairings
Mobile editor app
Variety of content blocks
Complementary colors
Drag-and-drop editing
Image & video library
Image editor
Scroll effects
Video background

webnode design capabilities in their templates screenshot

Webnode example websites

Links to example websites built with Webnode

hann-river-roadhouse.webnode.com
www.artinworkroma.it
www.beyouth.co.uk
www.utaty.de
www.fortune-shading.com
www.kurointeriores.com

Main Features & Tools

Webnode is a website builder platform with all the features you would need to run a successful online business or personal page. There are also a number of standout features on the Webnode platform.
For example, there is a multi language feature that makes it easy to translate your home page and entire website content into multiple languages. This means you and your business can go global with just a few clicks. However, this feature is only available if you have a premium subscription. Follow the link for the how-to guide.

For some of you, the ability to customize will be really important and Webnode has thought of this by allowing you to embed HTML codes into your website. This will allow you to add additional functions you may need that Webnode doesn’t offer. Unfortunately, Webnode doesn’t have an app market to add in third-party elements to your site but finding third-party HTML code and adding it yourself will work out to about the same thing, it will just take a little longer.

Multi language feature allows you to translate your page into multiple languages so you can go global.
No app market to add third-party plugins.

Custom domain
SEO tools
Language translation tool
Embed HTML code
Mobile responsive
Ecommerce ready
Online backup and recovery
Local support in multiple languages
Email marketing tools
Mobile editor app

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

It’s vital to understand how your site will perform in terms of SEO, so here at Website Builder Ninja we conduct our own SEO audit on every platform we review so that you know what you’re getting yourself into.
So, what’s our verdict for Webnode? Overall, it’s pretty good, however, like most website builders they haven’t got everything to do with SEO running perfectly.

Starting with the positives we can see Webnode has got basic SEO functions like the ability to input HTML headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.), edit titles, and meta-descriptions. Sitemaps are automatically made to help google index your pages and you can write image alt tags to give context to an image for the visually impaired.

Webnode also scored the highest on the google page speed test when compared with every other builder we have audited so far. This is a critical point because Google considers page speed as a direct ranking factor and will choose to rank faster websites above others.

So far so good, however, we did notice a few problems with the platforms SEO functions. For example, our test highlighted crawl errors that showed there are inner redirects for no reason. While this doesn’t affect the functionality of your site, Google’s search bots will consider this as bad practice which will make it more challenging to rank well.
Unfortunately, there was no schema present which is a form of microdata that creates rich snippets. Sites with rich snippets on average rank higher so it’s a shame Webnode has not supported this functionality.

To finish on a high note, the platform does offer a great custom code editor that will allow you or an SEO expert to fix any issues that Webnode may have missed.

Overall then, despite the great page speed, there are a few issues that could make it difficult to compete in a competitive SEO environment. However, for most users, this won’t be too much of an issue and you can always dive into the code if you need to improve it to keep up with competitors.

Great page speed, automatic sitemaps, and Webnode have provided a code editor.
Random internal redirects and no schema.

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

Setting up an ecommerce website is really easy with Webnode, you can either select that you want an online store during the onboarding process or you can add in an ecommerce page to any other design template in the same way you would add any new page. It will only take a couple of clicks whichever way you do it.
Did we mention that you can list up to 10,000 products on Webnode online stores?

Like most ecommerce builders you’ll be able to do everything yourself from listing products, uploading images, managing inventories, and looking into store analytics without needing any outside help and without needing to add any third party features to your website.
All Webnode ecommerce stores are designed to be mobile responsive so your customers can browse and purchase straight from their mobiles.

Ecommerce ready templates with the ability to sell up to 10,000 products.
No shipping cost tool or label printing tool.

Mobile responsive store designs
PayPal integration
Sell up to 10,000 products
Upload product images
Manage orders
Track inventories
Get customer insights
Analyze store data
Connect Google analytics
Fast & easy setup

Booking & reservations

Webnode doesn’t have its own bookings and reservation functions, however, you can add in a third-party solution like Reservio by adding a reservations button which is programmed with the third-party HTML code.
If reading ‘HTML code’ has made you nervous, don’t worry, it’s not as difficult as it sounds. Webnode has made a simple step-by-step guide that most people will have no difficulty with.

Payment options

Webnode keeps it simple with payment options giving you the choice to integrate Paypal, stripe, or accept cash-on-arrival.
Although you won’t get charged any commission from Webnode, Paypal and Stripe will charge a % per transaction for all sales on your website.

Paypal & stripe integration and no commission from Webnode.
Webnode doesn’t support a large variety of payment providers.

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

Webnode does offer a 15-day free trial which enables you to create a website with a subdomain and test out some of the features that the platform has to offer. Free sites will be limited to 100mb of storage and 1GB of bandwidth so, if you’re serious about your online presence you will want to upgrade ASAP once you’re happy you know how to use the basic features of the platform.

Pricing plans

Webnode offers 4 pricing plans that include limited, mini, standard and profi.

The limited plan is basically just a paid free trial and the mini plan is also very limited and still includes Webnode branding so you probably won’t want to bother with them. So the real entry-level plan is the standard plan which starts at $11.95 a month. This includes 2GB of storage, 10GB of bandwidth, access to ecommerce features, google analytics, up to 2 languages, and 5 backups.

The main difference between the standard plan and the profi plan is with the profi plan you get unlimited access to the features described above.

Great value for money with a below-average entry-level price.
Limited and mini plans are pretty useless, except maybe for one-pagers.

Support

Overall the support is pretty disappointing when compared with other website builder platforms on the market due to the lack of phone and live chat support.
There is a FAQ section and knowledge base that are filled with useful tips and information to overcome common problems. In particular, the knowledge base is really helpful and should guide you through most of the basic elements of the platform.

However, if you need direct feedback you will need to email Webnode or fill out a contact form and wait for a response. They say there will be a maximum wait of 24 hours and when we tested the system we got a response after around 2 ½ hours.
Once you’ve submitted a contact form and have received a ticket ID, you can reach out on Facebook messenger for a faster response.

For general inquiries email: [email protected]
For support email: [email protected]

General Overview

SITE123 is one of many drag & drop website builders on the market that aims to make website building easy and accessible to everyone, even those without any design or coding skills. They claim that they have created ‘the most intuitive and easy to use builder on the market’. This bold claim got our attention here at Website Builder Ninja and we wanted to find out more.

Beginner Friendly

9.5
Design Capabilities

7.2
Variety of Features

8.8
Value for Money

7.9

SITE123 offers an intuitive website editor that’s mobile-friendly, has free hosting, advanced SEO tools, custom domain names, and the ability to set up an online store. We’ve spent some time testing out the platform to provide you with an in-depth review to help you decide if SITE123 is the platform to help you and your business grow.

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 SITE123 is the right platform for you.

Who is it for?

SITE123 is marketed at individuals or small to medium businesses who have little to no design and web developing skills and are looking to grow their online presence.
If you take a look at their homepage you will see that this message is confirmed with lots of description about the easy to use editor. There are also a number of positive reviews you can see from SITE123 customers that are really happy with the builder because of how simple it is to use and how great the designs are.

A quick look at the templates shows that SITE123 have ready-made designs for everything from professional business pages, to photography pages, to online CV’s. Head over to the templates page to have a look at some more, we’ve listed a few below to get you started.

Business
Blog
Photography
Music
Events
Restaurant
Creative arts
CV
Landing pages
Online store

Beginner Friendly

SITE123 claims to be the ‘the most intuitive and easy to use builder on the market’ with an easy to use editor as well as everything you would need to run a successful website already built into the templates and platform.

Drag-and-drop editing

The SITE123 editor is not a drag and drop editor. Instead, they have created an editing sidebar that pops up when you click on a content block on your webpage.
The editing sidebar is straightforward and easy to understand. When editing a text box, for example, each section of text has its own editing box and you can customize it with various preset layouts and positions.

The editor is definitely built for ease-of-use and speed which is great if you’re a beginner. However, not having a drag and drop interface limits the creative freedom available on the platform. This is not necessarily a bad thing for first-timers but it might frustrate the more experienced web developers or those with an eye for design.

Easy to use and edits can be made very quickly.
No drag and drop interface which limits creative freedom.

site123 drag and drop interface screenshot

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

The onboarding process with SITE123 is simple and really fast. From the moment you click ‘start a website’, you’ll be ready to start editing a fully functioning website within 2 minutes.

Select which type of website you want
Enter the name of your business
Input your name and email address

It’s really that simple and you will be surprised at how accurate the template that appears will be to the needs of you and your business. However, there isn’t much support and guidance throughout the onboarding process. So, if you’re like me and you landed on the editor not really sure what to do next, you can always click the ‘need help’ button and fire a few questions at the 24/7 chat support to help get you started.

Really fast onboarding process with no unnecessary questions to answer.
Lacks guidance and support to help get you started.

site123 step by step site builder screenshot #3

site123 step by step site builder screenshot #2

site123 step by step site builder screenshot #1

Design Capabilities

The editor

SITE123 has created an editor that is designed for speed and ease of use, making it an ideal platform for the beginner web developer that is looking to create an online presence fast. There are definitely some drawbacks as the focus on speed and simplicity has left the overall design capabilities weak compared to its competitors.

The editor includes 180 templates that are all fully responsive, so they’ll look good on mobiles, desktops, and tablets without you needing to do anything. There are three main types of templates that are split up by the menu placement. You can choose a top menu, side menu or bottom menu and they all come with parallax scrolling as default. You can customize the templates slightly by changing the shape divider.
Although all of the templates look great they do have a very similar theme to all of them, it’s either a large hero image with centralized text or a split heading with text one side and an image the other. This will be fine for most websites, however, there is a danger of all SITE123 websites looking very similar because of the limited options.

From the editing sidebar, you can adapt and edit the templates to make them right for you and your business. You can add, delete, and rearrange the order of pages with just a few clicks. There are lots of different content blocks you can add to your pages such as blogs, booking forms, testimonials, galleries, ecommerce, music players, and much more.

From the design section, you can try out one of the pre-set themes or select your own fonts and color schemes to make your site unique and match the style of your business.

Finally, there is a sizeable bank of free stock images that you can use to make your website stand out. You can either explore the categories or use the search bar to find exactly what you’re looking for. There is a very basic image editor attached to this feature where you can change the background color, select a filter, edit the opacity, and edit the image height.

Easy to use editor with a large variety of content blocks.
Limited design capabilities and lots of the templates are similar.

180 website templates
Parallax scrolling
Image editor
Large variety of content blocks
Free stock images
Desktop / Tablet / Mobile preview
Responsive designs
Professionally matched color pallets
Ecommerce blocks
Call-to-action buttons

SITE123 example websites

Links to example websites built with SITE123:

www.wilax-art-studio.com
www.invest-in-albania.com
www.soundcreativedesign.co.uk
www.glorifyhimproductions.org
www.mikeshouse.org
www.sardinestatus.com

Main Features & Tools

From our perspective here at Website Builder Ninja SITE123 has done a good job in terms of including all of the basic features you will need to run a successful website as well as having a couple of standout features too.

The ones we always expect to see are there, such as free hosting, blogging pages, custom domains, ecommerce stores, 24/7 support, booking & reservations, design tools, professional fonts, and so on. The basics are important to give SITE123 users a chance to compete with websites built on other platforms and we can confirm you’ll have everything you need with SITE123.

But what about the additional features that make the SITE123 platform stand out from the crowd?
Well, the first that got our attention is the website translator that makes it easy for you to create a multilingual site. You can automatically translate your content using Google or Bing translate or upload a translation file from a professional translator. The SITE123 translator tool also has the ability to tailor translations to different dialects and claims to ‘perfectly translate’ your website for right-to-left languages.

The logo tool allows you to crop, resize, and adjust the dimensions of your logo to fit in with the overall design of your site or simply use one of the free icons as your logo. It can be tricky to match logo specifications with website builder designs, especially if you don’t have any design or photoshop skills, so this is a useful feature for beginners.

Finally, this may not apply to you all, but, the musician’s tool is an interesting point of difference. The musician’s tool allows you to upload and download music files and even integrate your Soundcloud account. As well as adding events, tour dates, and the ability to sell your music and merchandise.

For a full list of features and tools head over to the SITE123 features page and explore what is on offer across the platform. There are detailed articles about each tool so you can get to know about the features that you will need to use.

Easy to translate content into multiple languages to maximize your potential audience.
A lot of editing features and all third-party plugins are premium features.

Custom domain names
SEO tools
Ecommerce features
Professional email
Multilingual site
Free image & icon library
Logo tools
Third-party plugins
Musicians tool
24/7 website support

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

Here at Website Builder Ninja, we run our own SEO audit on every site we review to give you an idea of how well the platform performs on a technical level, so you can understand how well your site will rank on search engine ranking pages (SERPs) if you use the platform. Overall SITE123 has decent SEO features to their platform however, there are a few areas for improvement.

Starting with the basics you will have the ability to edit titles, headings and meta descriptions to optimize your content for SEO. A big plus is that you can edit the URL tags to make it friendly for SEO and the hreflang tag, which tells Google that there is a link between translated pages, is also present. Finally, the SITE123 platform will automatically create a sitemap which is essential for google to index your pages.

Now for some of the downsides…

When we tested SITE123’s page speed we found that it was pretty slow (although faster than rivals Wix and Squarespace). This is important to consider because page speed is a direct ranking factor and Google will choose to rank faster websites above slower sites.
The platform is also missing the ability to create image alt tags which gives the context of an image to visually impaired users and there is no code editor for you or an SEO professional to change the code of your site to improve SEO performance.
Finally, the schema is missing, which is a form of microdata used to create rich snippets. This is not critical to SEO performance but sites with rich snippets tend to rank higher on average so it’s important to think about.

While there are a number of things missing from an SEO perspective they are common problems across all website builders, so whether you choose SITE123 or another builder you will come across the same issues.

Most SEO fundamentals are covered.
Slow page speed, missing schema, and no code editor.

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

SITE123 offers an ecommerce solution with features that allow you to sell physical and digital products, customize your storefront, list products in an inventory, and much more. To get started you simply need to select an ecommerce template or add in an ecommerce page or content block to any SITE123 website.
You will be able to track orders, get paid in 80 different currencies, set custom shipping and tax rates, create coupons, display customer reviews, send emails directly to your subscriber list, and much more.

If you want to unlock these features you will have to pay for one of the two most expensive subscriptions, however, this is not unusual (most website builder platforms charge a premium for ecommerce features) and if you’re planning to sell products online, it’s a necessary evil.

If you want to learn more about SITE123’s ecommerce capabilities head over to their ecommerce page.

Easy to set up ecommerce page with ready-made designs and lots of features.
Ecommerce features are only available on the most premium plans.

Ecommerce design
80 different currency options
Paypal integration
Product SKUs
Coupons
Offline payments
Custom shipping and tax
Sell digital products
Store inventory
Display related products

site123 ecommerce site builder screenshot

Booking & reservations

SITE123 has its very own built-in bookings and scheduling tool that lets you add in many types of services. You can customize each service so that they each have their own settings which is great if your company offers a variety of services.
You can also set up personal or group services. Personal services would include one-on-one tutoring services and with the group services, you can take bookings for up to 99 people.

There are bookings and scheduling content blocks that you can add to your page with just a few clicks. The blocks are fully customizable so you can tweak them to fit your specific needs to make sure you get the correct information from your clients.

Add multiple services
Manage bookings schedule
Personal or group bookings
Set service location
Custom registration forms

Payment options

SITE123 don’t charge any commission for payments made on their site and simply rely on third-party services to provide payment options to their customers. You’ll find that most third-party services charge around 3% per transaction but make sure you look at the fine print before signing up.

The platform supports 12 different payment providers including Paypal, Stripe, Braintree, and 2Checkout. These are all big players that will enable you to accept all major credit and debit cards and some even allow your customers to complete payments with Apple Pay.

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

SITE123 does offer a free trial which includes a subdomain name, 500mb storage, and 1GB bandwidth to get you started. It’s important to note that a free subscription is very limited on SITE123 and most of the more interesting editing abilities are withheld for premium accounts and all ecommerce features are premium only.

Pricing plans

SITE123 offers four pricing plans which are basic, advanced, professional, and gold. The entry-level plan that offers a custom domain and templates free from SITE123 branding starts at $19 per month.
There is no pay monthly option, instead, users are required to pay for a minimum of three months in one hit or choose to pay 12 months, 18 months, or 36 months upfront.

If you’re looking for an ecommerce plan you will have to sign up for the professional or gold subscription.

There are a variety of payment plans to choose from.
SITE123 is an expensive option compared to other builders and there is no pay monthly option.

Support

If you’re stuck with how to do something or come across some technical difficulties you can find support on SITE123 in a number of different ways.

Firstly the learning center is a space that is full of articles sharing tips and ideas on how to get the most out of your SITE123 website and how to build a successful online presence. You can search for your query or browse topics such as website builder, ecommerce, design, marketing & SEO, or how to’s.

If you don’t find what you need there you can head over to the support center where you will find more detail specifically on different areas of the SITE123 platform like the editor, pages, SEO, billing, events, domains, and much more.

Sometimes you just need to speak to a human to sort something out. SITE123 offers 24/7 live chat support which you can access by clicking on the help button that is present on the bottom right of your screen wherever you are on the site. When we tested the chat system we got a helpful response to our query within 2 minutes.

If you prefer to get your support via email you have that option as well. However, at the moment there is no phone support from SITE123.

24/7 live chat support plus lots of helpful articles and guides.
No phone support.

General Overview

Squarespace is one of the big names in the website building industry. They have marketed themselves really well over the last few years with great success.
The Squarespace platform targets people looking to set up online stores, portfolio sites, blogs, and professional websites for their business.
There are currently around 1.8 million websites using the Squarespace platform with over 1.4 million of these coming from the USA (even Uber have used it for a landing page!). It’s not hard to see why so many people choose to use this platform, just a quick glance at the industry-leading drag and drop templates will have you feeling like your website needs to look something like this.

Beginner Friendly

8.9
Design Capabilities

9.6
Variety of Features

9.2
Value for Money

9.3

Just a heads up, the award-winning designs don’t come cheap, with Squarespace being one of the more expensive options on the market (but don’t worry there is a 14-day free trial so you can still try before you buy). We are going to take an in-depth look at the platform and help you to decide if the slightly higher per month costs are worth it for you and 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 Squarespace is the right platform for you.

Who is it for?

Squarespace is a website builder perfect for beginners, with enough features and tools to tempt the more experienced web designer into using the platform as well. With stunning templates and a drag and drop editor, you will be able to create a professional and beautiful looking website very fast. Even if you have zero experience with creating websites, the platform makes it easy for you with a simple step by step process.

Squarespace is best for those that prioritize design before anything else and the platform has enough templates to cater to a wide range of personal and business niches. Head over to the Squarespace template page to find out more and see below for some of the main template categories:

Portfolios
Photography
Online stores
Blogs & Podcasts
Professional services
Local businesses
Weddings & events
Musicians & bands
Restaurants
Launch pages

squarespace analytics section screenshot

Beginner Friendly

Squarespace is good for beginner website builders because hosting, technical SEO, analytics, and mobile optimization are already taken care of, so you can get on with running your business and don’t have to waste any time with the ‘boring’ parts of web design. You’ll also have access to award-winning designs so you’ll be able to set up a sleek, full-functioning website without even having to look at a piece of code.

Drag-and-drop editing

The Squarespace platform is one of a growing number of website builders that offer drag and drop design. Although Squarespace is more click and add than drag and drop it is the same principle and still really simple to use.

Once you have a template loaded, to edit you can delete ‘sections’ or ‘content blocks’ you don’t want and add in new ones by clicking an insert point and then choosing from a list of sections like text boxes, newsletters, galleries, FAQ’s, reservations, product listings and much more. Its simplicity is what makes it so great, a few clicks and you can have any element you would want, live on your website.

When comparing with other drag and drop editors like Wix for example, the downside is that you don’t get as much creative freedom within the template sections. In Squarespace, you have to stick with how the content block is set up and replace the images and text content with your own. This might frustrate some of the more experienced designers who want to tweak the preset designs. However, for most people, this is a great feature as it limits how far you can stray from the award-winning designs already created for you.

Easy to use drag and drop editor with a large variety of ‘content blocks’
Less creative freedom within a content block compared to a competitor like Wix

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

The onboarding process with Squarespace is simple and they have successfully taken the stress out of starting up with a simple step by step process.

Answer a few questions so Squarespace can load templates appropriate to you
Select one of over 60 templates
Read through the beginner guidelines for useful starter tips
And that’s it. By this point, you’ll have the outline of your website and it’s now down to you to edit it for your needs.

If you’re still looking for a bit more help when you first go into your template there is a virtual assistant pop up that will guide you through the basic set up and editing tasks like; site title & logo, add and delete pages, change fonts and colors, add images, connect and update domains, optimize for search and launching your site. Each section has an in-depth guide for you to read and you’ll get a tick next to each section once you’ve completed it so you can keep track of where you are.

Simple and fast setup which walks you through a step by step guide
There are no onboarding videos during the initial set up, just text help. You have to go looking elsewhere for helpful videos, but they do exist.

Design Capabilities

The editor

After spending some time playing around with the Squarespace editor it’s hard to find many faults with it. To start with you have over 60 templates to choose from which range across many industries from restaurants to musicians & bands. While 60 templates might not seem a lot compared to some of the platform’s competitors, all 60 are beautiful designs with enough flexibility within the editor to put your own unique stamp on it. Squarespace has gone for quality over quantity and we think it paid off.

Once in the editor, you can add and delete sections and pages at the click of a button. You simply need to find an insert point, which is highlighted with a grey bar or a blue + icon, and from there simply select the type of content block you need… and that’s it, you’re done.

There are lots of content blocks to choose from such as the basics like text, quote, image, and video blocks, right through to more advanced content like newsletters, maps, calendars, charts, and code boxes.
When editing an image you can click the pencil icon which will take you through to a pop up where you can edit the height, width, alignment, and colors as well as adding in animations to bring the image to life (such as fade-in, reveal, collide, custom and much more).

Being mobile-ready is essential for a new business or personal website because more and more people are surfing the web on their phones. You don’t even need to think about it with Squarespace, every design is already mobile optimized. If you want to take a look simply click the mobile preview button in the top right-hand corner when in the editor and you’ll be able to preview what it looks like on a phone.

Just a quick note on fonts, there are 37 sans-serif, serif, and mixed fonts to choose from and if that’s not enough you can add your own custom fonts too.

If you want to find out more about the Squarespace editor and its capabilities the Squarespace blog, help center, and webinars are a good place to find out more information.

60+ award-winning templates
Drag-and-drop editing
Mobile optimized designs
37 stock fonts + custom fonts
Image editor
Filters & cropping tools
Animations & scroll effects
Logo creator
Ready-to-go content blocks
Image galleries

squarespace template design editor screenshot

The Squarespace editor is simple and intuitive with lots of ability to customize your template with content blocks. There is a sophisticated image editor which includes filters and you can bring you site to life with animations and scroll effects.
There is limited customization within a content block and a limited number of stock fonts.

Squarespace example websites

squarespace website screenshot example #1

squarespace website screenshot example #2

squarespace website screenshot example #3

squarespace website screenshot example #4

squarespace website screenshot example #5

Links to example websites built with Squarespace

Main Features & Tools

Squarespace is an all in one website builder platform and includes everything you need to run a successful website from SEO support to analytics. Some of the marketing tools are really great to use and allow you to start growing your audience straight away.

For example, the Squarespace email campaigns is an email marketing solution that you can get up and running in seconds. Once you have a newsletter submission form on your website, anyone who signs up will be added to your email database. You can then create custom email campaigns to promote products or let your readers know about a new blog post with a few simple steps. It’s possible to link other email marketing platforms like Gsuite and Mailchimp if you have a premium account but sometimes its easier to have everything in one place.

The connected accounts feature is great for pushing out content automatically to your social channels, speeding up and simplifying how you promote your new content or products. It works the other way too, you can showcase your social media content straight onto your Squarespace site which is great for influencers, youtube stars, and anyone with a good social media presence.

Other professional features include:

Custom domain names
Squarespace extensions
Music & video connections
Website analytics
Email campaigns
Ecommerce templates & app
Commerce analytics
Unfold: create custom social content
Hire an expert
Schedule appointments

squarespace professional features screenshot

Squarespace has all the features you need to run a successful website, custom domains, 3rd party extensions, email campaigns, ecommerce templates and much more
Some features such as connecting Mailchimp are blocked for personal accounts and only become available when you subscribe to the more premium accounts.

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

Overall Squarespace offers a pretty good SEO package and ticks most of the boxes needed for your site to be viewed positively by the google search bots. If you’re a beginner you won’t have to think about coding as most of the hard work has been done for you and built into the templates.

Starting with the most basic, all Squarespace pages have configuration boxes where you can input titles, meta descriptions, and change headings to optimize your content for SEO. You can also look at the keywords your site is ranking for and where you are in the search engine ranking pages (SERPs) from within the analytics section on the dashboard.
However, while we were conducting an SEO audit on the Squarespace platform, we discovered not everything was perfect with the technical SEO going on behind the beautiful Squarespace designs.

Firstly, when we tested the google page speed ranking, which measures how long it takes to fully load content on a web page, we found Squarespace scored relatively low (although faster than rival competitor Wix). This is important because Google considers this a direct ranking factor, so a low score will make it harder for your content to rank.
We also found some issues with the site’s schema which is a type of microdata that is used to create rich snippets. This is not a critical issue, however, pages with rich snippets often rank higher so it’s important to have it working if you can.

Fortunately, Squarespace has a code editor where you can fix some of the issues we’ve talked about and add in more advanced SEO features too. For most beginner web developers this will be too much, however you can hire an SEO expert to help you overcome some of the problems if you are finding it hard to rank well.

The bottom line on Squarespace SEO is that despite issues with page speed and schema data the overall SEO product works well. Most of the work has been done for you and is already built into the templates, so you just have to worry about crafting good content for your site. If you want flawless SEO, the code editor gives you the opportunity to fix the issues that Squarespace missed to help you compete for the #1 spot on search engine ranking pages.

Configuration boxes make it easy to optimize titles, meta-descriptions & headings
Issues with page speed and schema data will make it difficult to rank well on SERPs

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

If you’re thinking about using Squarespace to build an ecommerce business, then great, Squarespace makes it pretty straight forward. You can select a commerce template or simply add on another page to any site and add in the appropriate content blocks. They’ve even made an ‘introducing commerce’ page with helpful information and videos to guide you through the process.
You’ll also be able to integrate and import products from third party ecommerce platforms such as Big Cartel, Etsy, and Shopify.

Customizable ecommerce templates
Product management
Track orders & fulfillment
Custom shipping & taxes
Third-party ecommerce integration
Sell digital, physical & subscription products
Gift cards, sales & discounts
Ecommerce email notifications
Abandoned cart recovery
Product waitlists

Simple store set up with everything you need to start selling already on the Squarespace platform. Commission free selling when signed up to a commerce account. Customizable ecommerce templates.
You have to sign up to one of the Squarespace business plans to get access to any store functionality

Booking & reservations

You have a number of options when setting up booking and reservations with Squarespace and like everything else, it’s just a few clicks away. The most straightforward way is to simply add a Squarespace appointment scheduling content block. It’s as easy as adding in a regular text box and you can show available appointments and filter to show only certain types of appointments and classes.

You also have the option to link to a third party booking page if you already have one set up. Just create a ‘book now’ button and set the navigation link to your third party site, again just a few clicks and you’re up and running.

Finally, the third option is to embed a third-party calendar or widget which you can do by embedding the widget code into a code block on your bookings page. Just remember that a code block is a premium feature so you might want to think about one of the other options if you’re on a basic plan.

You have the option to use Squarespace scheduling or integrate a 3rd party booking system
Including 3rd party widgets or calendars requires a code box which is a premium feature not available on the personal plan.

Payment options

One of the first things you have to do when setting up an online store with Squarespace is to connect a payment processor such as Stripe or Paypal, both will come with their own processing fee.
On top of this, there might be a Squarespace transaction fee depending on your subscription. If you’re signed up to the business plan you’ll be charged a 3% transaction fee from Squarespace. However, if you have a commerce basic or commerce advanced subscription, you won’t have to pay any commission to Squarespace.
It’s important you do the math and work out if you should sign up for a premium plan. The chances are if you make enough sales it will be worth it.

Finally, there will be an option for customers to pay with Apple Pay, giving more flexibility to people buying from your store. This will be set up automatically for anyone who is using Stripe as their payment processor.

Commission free selling available with premium plans
3% transaction charge for business accounts

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial where you will get access to all of the basic features and beautifully designed templates, so you can test out what your idea or business will look like on a Squarespace site. You’ll be given a subdomain name and will need to upgrade to one of the pricing plans if you want to go live and keep your site after the 14 days.

Pricing plans

So, what are your options after 14 days if you love the Squarespace platform and want to stick around?
The platform offers 4 simple pricing plans starting at $16 per month for a basic plan with a custom domain, unlimited bandwidth, access to 24/7 support, and much more.

The plans are Personal, Business, Commerce basic, and Commerce advanced. As you move up the payscale you unlock premium features like coding blocks, unlimited contributors, and advanced commerce features like abandon cart recovery and ecommerce analytics.
You can make up to 30% savings on subscriptions if you pay annually which is an option if your 100% sure you will stick with Squarespace for the long run.

While $16 a month might seem an expensive starting point you’ll get access to a lot of features, like unlimited bandwidth, which other platforms reserve for their premium subscriptions anyway. You won’t be surprised with any additional fees, what you see is what you get with Squarespace.

No-hidden fees payment structure with unlimited bandwidth for every plan.
Squarespace only offers a 14 days free trial. There is no ‘cheap’ option to get you started, you’re straight in for $16 bucks if you want to continue using Squarespace after 14 days free.

Support

The Squarespace platform has industry-leading support features for its customers. If you head over to the Squarespace Help page you’ll see lots of different ways you can access support.
You’ll have access to guides and in-depth articles for every feature on the site, as well as workshop videos that show you how to do things on the platform. On top of this, there is a forum where a Squarespace expert or another user can answer a question you post or you can browse what others have asked to find an answer for your query.

A really cool feature for when you’re starting out on the platform is the webinars, you can sign up for an interactive session with a Squarespace expert who will walk you through the basics of the platform.

If you’re still looking for help and want to speak to a human, then you can select contact us and answer a few questions to qualify your query. From there you can send an email with a team responding 24/7 or access the live chat where you will speak to an expert who will help you resolve your query.

Live chat times are:

Monday: 4am to 6pm EDT
Tuesday: 8am to 6pm EDT
Wednesday: 8am to 6pm EDT
Thursday: 8am to 6pm EDT
Friday-Sunday: Closed

Comprehensive support features with live chat, webinars, in-depth guides, and a community forum
No phone support and no live chat from Friday to Sunday.

General Overview

When you think of a website builder, Wix is likely to be one of the first names that enters your mind, and rightly so. Over 160 million people worldwide chose to use Wix to build their websites that include everything from ecommerce businesses to personal portfolios. Wix positions itself as a website builder that offers the whole package. It’s a drag & drop website builder that will also provide you with reliable web hosting, top security, great SEO and a support team to help you with any issues. Wix also has over 500 themes for you to choose from giving you plenty of design options.

Beginner Friendly

8.7
Design Capabilities

9.9
Variety of Features

9.7
Value for Money

9.5

Sounds great, right? We take an in-depth look into the Wix website builder and find out if it really is the best platform to design, develop, and manage your online presence. Is it just a good-priced option for beginners or can it also offer advanced tools for professional websites and top-notch results?

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 Wix is the right platform for you.

Who is it for?

Wix markets itself as a website builder for ‘anyone’ and due to the fact that it has a drag and drop design feature with lots of ready-made templates and an option for a free subscription, we agree with this statement.
The barrier to entry to start creating a Wix website is low (you can’t get better than free!) and therefore anyone with the most basic computer skills and a website idea could create something. They even have an ADI (artificial design intelligence) that they claim can create a website in just 10 minutes.

While it is possible to create amazing, professional websites without even having to think about coding, the Corvid feature provides an option for anyone who wants to add in any of their own code for further customization.

There are templates for almost everything, just head over to the Wix template page and I can almost guarantee that there will be a template for your niche. Here are a few to get you started:

Fashion
Business consulting
Portfolio & CV’s
Personal training
Hotels & event services
Food & drink
Beauty
Arts & crafts
Books & publishers
& much more!

wix template example of a model agency screenshot

wix template example of ecommerce screenshot

wix template of a beauty saloon booking example screenshot

Beginner Friendly

We’ve scored Wix highly for beginner friendliness for a reason. The chance to trial with a free website, the easy-to-use drag and drop feature and over 500 ready to go templates for a whole range of industries makes Wix a good choice for beginners looking to build their own website.

Drag-and-drop editing

The Wix drag and drop editor is super easy to use and changes website building from something that can be fiddly and frustrating into something that’s easy and fun. Something that makes Wix stand out from the crowd is their unstructured editor. This means that you are free to move elements around to wherever you want them.

If you’re someone that has made a few websites before, the freedom of this drag-and-drop builder will blow you away. It provides you with amazing flexibility to tailor your Wix site to your exact needs.

However, for a complete beginner, this freedom can become overwhelming and if you haven’t got much of an eye for design, it’s easy to create something cluttered and messy. If this is you, we recommend spending some time finding the perfect template and then sticking to simply replacing the elements with your own images and copy and make use of the design skills of the person that made the template.

Visual guides appear as you drag & drop items to help you align them
No snap to grid function

Video tutorials and onboarding animations

The onboarding process with Wix is best described as easy, efficient and enjoyable.

You’ll be asked to answer a few questions which will help Wix find out what you are looking for.
Then you’ll be given the choice to let the ADI do the work for you or go through to choose your own template.
Finally, you’ll be shown a 2 minute onboarding video and then it’s time to start editing.
It’s really that simple!

If you’re looking for useful tips on how to get the most out of Wix then the Wix blog has a lot of information that should have everything you need to get you started.

Since this is the largest builder in the world, there’s tons of information, tutorials and guides for anything you’ll ever need.
The platform updates a lot and you will most likely encounter out-dated tutorials

Design Capabilities

The editor

The Wix editor is definitely a highlight of the platform with over 500 templates to choose from and complete freedom to move, adapt and customize every feature within those templates. This will allow you to create some really innovative and unique designs. With some website builders, there is a risk that your website could look very similar to someone else, however, with Wix, there are enough options to create something really unique to you and your business.

The platform comes with over 100 ready loaded fonts and if that’s not enough you can upload your own. Wix also has the option to display your images, videos and text in a gallery layout which is a pretty standard feature but important to have.
You can take your web designing to the next level and bring your site to life with advanced design features like animations, video backgrounds and scroll effects (such as parallax, reveal, zoom-in or fade-in).

If it’s been a few years since you’ve used the Wix platform you will notice some new features to the editor which add in even more design capabilities. There is a Crop tool that you can use to re-size, focus or magnify your images to get the look you want. Wix have also taken inspiration from Instagram and added filters to their image editor so you can quickly edit your images with preset styles or do it yourself with the image sharpening tool.
This has become a standard requirement for any website builder but it’s important to note that any design you create will be mobile optimised automatically, so you don’t have to worry about it. If you want to check out how it looks on mobile simply hit the ‘switch to mobile’ button at the top left of the editor.

There’s lots more to the editor and if you’re new to Wix you might want to head over to the Wix web design blog to find out how to get the most out of the editor.

Complex and comprehensive enough for almost anything you’d like to do without any coding at all
Some features cannot be adapted or personalized, which can be quite annoying

Over 500 templates
100+ fonts already loaded
Innovative drag and drop
Complete design freedom
Animations & video backgrounds
Scroll effects
Media galleries
Cropping tool
Image filters & sharpening tool
Mobile optimized designs

Wix example websites

It’s always good to see what others have been able to do to know what is possible and to gain some inspiration. Take a look at the website designs on Wix’s inspiration page to take a closer look at the screenshots below and lots more well-designed websites.

Links to example websites built with Wix

Main Features & Tools

Wix is packed full of features and has some unique and interesting elements that you won’t find anywhere else. The first of which is the ADI (artificial design intelligence) which claims to create a functioning website in minutes. I tried it out and it works! After 8 simple steps, you have a professionally designed website that has features that you or your business will need to use. You will still need to tweak it and make some edits but it certainly does cut out a lot of the hard work, I was impressed.

The second stand out feature that is important to note is Corvid. Wix describes Corvid as ‘an open development platform for building advanced web applications’ and it will also enable you to have a greater level of design freedom by adding in your own code to adapt your website to your own needs.

Artificial design intelligence or ADI can do all the hard work for you by creating a template with all the features you require.
There is only so much AI can understand you and your business so there will still be some editing time required.

Other professional features include:

Custom domain names
Professional mailbox
Free hosting
Analytics
Contact management
Industry leading SEO
App center
Mobile optimized designing
Wix chat
Social tools

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – search engine optimization

Wix have followed their methodology of making things easy and applied it to SEO as well. You’ll be pleased to know that there is no coding required to use Wix SEO features and it’s already built into your site. They even have the option of a personalised SEO plan that will guide you through what you need to do, step-by-step. It gives you simple ticks and crosses next to a list of actions so you know what you have and haven’t done.
From the dashboard you will get keyword recommendations and you can track your search engine ranking position (SERP). However, for google analytics, you will need to have a premium account.

But what about the technical stuff going on behind the scenes, is that good enough to get your site ranking on google?
Our Website Builder Ninjas ran an SEO audit on the Wix platform and found that overall it ticked most of the SEO boxes, such as basics like adding titles, meta descriptions, and headlines, but there are a few areas for improvement. For example, Wix scored low on google page speed rankings which measures the time it takes to fully display content on a specific page. This is important to know because page speed is a direct ranking factor and Wix’s slow loading time will affect how well your content is ranked on google.

There are also some issues with the schema which is a form of microdata that creates enhanced descriptions or ‘rich snippets’ which appear in search results. The Schema for ecommerce pages appears to be working fine, however, there is none present for blog pages or home pages. This has no direct impact on SEO rankings but pages with rich snippets often appear more prominently and higher up the rankings which can improve click-through-rate and overall traffic, so it’s important to consider.

To sum it up, Wix is known for having difficulties indexing with google because of the poor loading times and with the additional problems with the schema, sites using Wix will have a hard time ranking well in the search engines. However, Wix offers the most code editing flexibility (with their Corvid editor), so if you have technical SEO skills or hire someone that does, you can fix some of the issues we’ve discussed.

You can get help with a personalized SEO plan and track SERPs from the dashboard.
Wix scores low on google page speed rankings and has issues with the schema which will make it difficult to rank well on search engine pages.

Ecommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store options

Setting up a store with Wix is just as easy as adding in any other feature, just a couple of clicks and boom… you’re ready to start listing and selling your products. There’s a couple of options to get you started. You can either select an online store template that will have everything set up and ready to go, or you can simply add a new store page and plugin one of the online store apps from the app store.

Whichever method you choose you can have a store up and running within minutes and then it’s up to you to input your listings via the store dashboard. You can list physical or digital products, promote sales with coupons and discounts, and set customized shipping and tax rules for every destination you sell to.

Professional storefront
Easy product listing
Track orders
Manage inventory
Product page templates
Coupons and discounts
Multiple payment methods
Worldwide shipping & tax
Store dashboard
Physical & digital products

Booking & reservations

Setting up a booking and reservation element to your Wix site is similar to setting up a store. Either pick a template with a bookings feature already included or add a bookings page and find a plugin from the Wix app store. You’ll be able to get booked for your services 24/7, get paid online straight into your bank account, all commission-free. The Wix booking app allows you to offer appointments, classes, courses and workshops so you should find everything you need.

24/7 bookings
Get paid online
Appointments, classes, courses and workshops
Sync to google calendar
Manage bookings from your mobile
Auto-email reminders

Payment options

Okay so do you want the good news or… the good news?
Firstly, Wix has versatile payment options, you can accept credit cards, PayPal, and offline payments which make it appropriate for all sorts of business from online stores to yoga studios that might want to accept cash on arrival.

Secondly, any sales via a Wix site are commission-free, yes that’s right commission-free. Most ecommerce solutions will charge 2-3% commission on every transaction so this is a big plus. The only caveat is that you have to sign up for one of the paid plans to accept payments.

Zero ecommerce commission fees from Wix.
You need a paid plan to accept payments.

Creating a Restaurant Website With Wix

If you’re looking to use the Wix website builder to create a website for your restaurant, then you have plenty of options in terms of template designs and there are a number of great built-in tools and features to help run your business. There are 45 restaurant and food website templates to choose from. They range from templates for fast food delivery businesses to high-end catering companies and from ice cream parlors to poke bowl delivery websites. The templates cover a lot of different niches and even if your niche isn’t listed the templates are easily adapted to suit your requirements.

There are also a variety of menu designs you can choose from that allow you to present your menu and your food in a style that suits you. All you need to do is upload your images and list your menu items. Wix has also integrated with Facebook Business and Foursquare so that you can share the menu that you created on Wix with your customers in just a few clicks.

Something that’s really neat is the inbuilt online ordering system that allows your customers to order and pay from any device, 24/7. You’ll need to decide if you’re offering a pickup or delivery service or both and then set your delivery area. As soon as you’ve finished those few steps you’re ready to go live and to start taking orders.

Finally, there’s a pretty sophisticated bookings system in place on all the restaurant templates that allows you to take bookings around the clock with a simple and easy to use bookings form.

Here’s a look at some example restaurant and food websites made using the Wix website builder:

www.murakamimelrose.com/main.html
www.shortbreadnyc.com
modcongroup.wixsite.com/ottb
www.komewaza.com

Value for Money & Support

Free trial and features

Something you’ll notice when landing on the Wix website is that they shout about being a free website builder, and it’s true. You can gain access to over 500 templates and lots of other cool features without having to put any money down, which is great if you’re just starting out. You just have to bear in mind that there will be bandwidth and storage limitations, you will have a Wix subdomain name and the Wix branding will be visible at the bottom of your site. However, this is a great option to play around and trial the Wix platform for free and if you like it you can always upgrade later.

You can have a free subscription for as long as you want.
Free subscriptions have very limited storage and bandwidth allowances.

Pricing plans

If you already know that you will want your own domain name and access to some of the premium features, then great, prices start from $13 per month for a custom domain name without Wix branding. Wix has more options and offers 8 different premium plans to suit your needs all with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
These include 4 website plans; combo, unlimited, pro and VIP, and 4 business & eCommerce plans; business basic, business unlimited, business VIP and enterprise.

The main differences between each tier or the pricing plan are bandwidth, storage and additional premium features (such as visitor analytics app worth $60 or professional logo design worth $50).

There are lots of options giving flexibility to those on a budget
Some of the cheaper plans lack features that you will need as your business progresses

Support

Wix has a support center where you will find a comprehensive bank of knowledge and articles covering a lot of topics from getting started, the editor, domains, mailboxes, corvid, SEO, and much more. You can dive into each section and find the answers you need or use the search function at the top of the support center page to find what you need.

At the moment Wix doesn’t offer any support via a human chat service which lets it down compared to some of its competitors. However, there is a chatbot service where you can submit a support ticket and get a reply by email within 48 hours. It’s difficult to find so here’s a link to the chatbot if you need it.
If you can’t find what you need in the support centre or from the chatbot you can access support via a phone call as Wix run a call back service. You will be asked a few questions to categorize your needs and then you’ll wait for a Wix expert to call you.

The Wix callback operating hours vary depending on what language you speak and are as follows:

English 24/7
French Monday-Friday 9am-6pm GM+2
Italian Monday-Friday 8am-5pm GM+1
Portuguese Monday-Friday 3am-8pm EST
Russian Monday-Friday 8am-5pm GMT
Spanish Monday-Friday 3am-8pm EST

24/7 phone service for english speakers
There is no live chat service