Websitebuilder.com has chosen the term website builder as its name. Just as the term suggests, it has positioned itself as a one-stop-shop for even the absolute beginners to get a website up and running.
For some strange reasons, Endurance International Group, the company behind WebsiteBuilder.com also operates SiteBuilder.com, Sitey, and Sitely. These tools are all also website builders aimed at those with little or no web design and development skills with the same offering. SiteBuilder.com and WebsiteBuilder.com have almost the same pricing structure while Sitelio and Sitey have exactly the same prices. Also strange was there is no “About us” or any description of the company to be found on these websites.
In 2014 WebsiteBuilder.com entered the web design space and is one of the faster-growing brands. While reviewing this platform, we asked ourselves if the name was just an SEO strategy — an attempt to use on an often searched term as a name and brand. But, it’s a solid tool.
It features the basics that you need to build a wide range of websites, from ecommerce to blog to portfolio. Perhaps its most distinguishing feature is that at the time of writing it offers more than 10'000 templates, all responsive.
Pros and cons of WebsiteBuilder.com
TL;DR As it is in website creation, the more convenient the tool, the less leeway you have to customise. The tradeoff is always between convenience or control. As a one-stop-shop, WebsiteBuilder.com leans heavily on the convenience side.
Pros
- Easy of use
- Clean and simple editor
- Includes solid marketing tools, especially email marketing that others don’t
- Undo, redo, and history function
- 24/7 chat and email support for all plans, including the free one
- SSL certificate included in all plans
Cons
- Even if there is a 14 days free trial for the premium plans, you still have to enter your credit card details
- The app market provides very limited options to extend your site
- The free tier will show ads and has limited functionality
- WebsiteBuilder.com tacks on a transaction fee on all but the most expensive plan for your store
For whom is WebsiteBuilder.com intended?
Since WebsiteBuilder.com a multipurpose builder, it wants to be an attractive service to a wide range of industries (in their lingo categories). To appeal to many sectors, it offers its huge collection of templates that target consultants, the construction industry, and the travel industry among many.
As a drag-and-drop website builder, it’s a good starting point for may, especially the not-so-technically inclined among us.
How easy is WebsiteBuilder.com to use?
To get started, you first choose which plan you want. If you choose a paid plan, you need to hand in your credit card details right at the start, when you also give your email address and password.
After this step, guides you through the onboarding process where it first asks you about your industry and then lets you customise your site with general options like colours, font, and logo. Once you completed the onboarding, you will be taken to the editor.
The editor will feel familiar to anyone who already used one of the wide-spread website builders and most people will have learned how to use it within minutes.
The interface is clean and simple. The options and controls to edit your site is placed in the sidebar on the left-hand side. More granular control for each section (like changing the background) of your current page is in the right-hand sidebar. The controls to save, redo, and undo or publish are positioned at the top.
You add more content, by adding sections to your page. The sections can be anything from bookings to images to timelines.
WebsiteBuilder.com design and templates
During your onboarding, you got to choose the category, that is the sector you’re in. As mentioned, WebsiteBuilder.com has a humongous collection of templates that are all responsive and free. They range from simple, even austere to cluttered. So much choice — at least to us — is a bit overwhelming.
Once you’ve chosen your template you can then customise your template by changing the layout of each section on the page.
How easy is it to manage your ecommerce store in WebsiteBuilder.com?
If you want to run an online store, you just add it as a section to the page. You will find the tab for managing your store in the left-hand sidebar. You configure the settings of your store in this tab as well as add products.
WebsiteBuilder.com integrations
Even though there is an app market, it’s almost empty.
What marketing and SEO tools does WebsiteBuilder.com have?
SEO
WebsiteBuilder.com provides basic SEO tools. You can add site tags and meta tags for each specific page. For the products, however, you can’t add meta tags. To monitor the traffic to your site, you can add your Google Analytics in the settings.
WebsiteBuilder.com provides a basic statistics tool and shows you how many visitors you when you subscribe to a premium plan.
Blogging
Just like with the store, you add as a section. It will automatically a bad section to your homepage, a new blog page (also into the navigation), and a system for you to write your posts.
The blogging function is well thought through with strong style customisations. You have the choice of a variety of blog templates. WebsiteBuilder.com allows you to edit the permalink, set tags, create cover images, and more. But, you can’t add a comment section to the posts.
Social media
Link your social media profiles in the settings. You can also add sections for “Follow us” or embed Facebook news.
Email campaigns
WebsiteBuilder.com has thoughtfully included an email campaign feature along with customer relationship management (CRM) so you can use it to do send out your email campaigns. The editor looks and behaves like the website builder editor so there is no training phase.
Sign up forms
You can easily add sign up forms to capture email addresses for your email campaigns. You add the highly customisable forms as a section to your page.
Payment options
The integrated payment providers are the usual suspects Paypal and Stripe, but you also have the cost-effective payment gateway Mollie, if you’re located in the Netherlands and Belgium.
WebsiteBuilder.com security
You get a free SSL certificate for your project on all plans, even the free one. The editor of WebsiteBuilder.com comes with undo and redo as well as a history, to help protect you against mishaps.
WebsiteBuilder.com customer support
Even if a tool is easy to use, oftentimes, we’d still have questions. WebsiteBuilder.com provides chat and email support 24/7 for all plans. Confusingly, the description in the pricing says the refer plan also gets phone support but when you scroll down to the features offered in each plan, phone support is not included.
You also find a searchable knowledge base that is well organised. If this doesn’t help, you can opt to share your screen.
Pricing
Including the free one, WebsiteBuilder.com offers 4 plan. They all include SSL, email marketing, form builder. But only the highest tier does not charge a transaction fee which is 3% on all the others.
Is WebsiteBuilder.com the right tool for you?
WebsiteBuilder.com is an easy to use website builder for creating and maintaining a website. Should you start your first project, it’s a good entry point. Knowing this, if you want to grow and evolve, your options are limited. Think of what you need beyond their standard offering
It’s also a good choice if you want to dip your toes into the world of ecommerce. Its store functionality provides all the basics needed to run a store. Just keep in mind that it’s not a fully-edged ecommerce application like Magento for example, but it offers shopping cart, basic inventory management, and payment acceptance. So, it may also lend itself to testing out products and services. Again, if you want to grow or plan for the long-term, it’s not a good fit.
Do you want us to review a tool? Leave a comment below.
Originally published at https://cenny.net on October 26, 2020.
