Website Builder Reviews

Pros:

• Limited free account available
• Very high quality templates
• Excellent guidance for website creation
• The ability to accept online payments is included with this plan
• Live chat support available
• Free one-year registration of a .com

Cons:

• Phone support not available without upgrading plan

Conclusion:

Weebly has become one of the most popular website builders on the market, and their Starter product offers a great value for an entry level price. They also include $100 of free credit for Google Adwords advertising. Weebly's free account option gives people a great way to test the product and view the templates before making a purchase.

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Pros:

• Extremely high quality templates
• Offers month-to-month plans in addition to annual plans
• E-commerce functionality is included
• Live chat support available
• Free one-year registration of a .com

Cons:

• Phone support not available
• You can only edit the HTML of the template by enabling "developer mode," which disconnects the template from any future bug fixes or updates

Conclusion:

Squarespace is one of the most well-known website builders on the market, offering excellent design, an easy to use interface, lots of integrations and high quality customer support via chat. Squarespace also offers a "developer" mode that can be enabled for users that want to have virtually unlimited flexibility to edit any aspect of the design. The Personal plan is their entry level product that includes up to 20 pages, the ability to sell products online and a free custom domain with an annual purchase. The biggest drawback to the service is the lack of phone support. Also, if you plan to use Squarespace for e-commerce, you'll have to pay 3% + the cost of the payment processing fee (total of around 6%) with the Personal plan. To eliminate the additional fee, you'll need to switch to one of Squarespace's "online store" plans, which start at $26/ month.

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Pros:

• Low monthly cost
• Offers 24/7 phone customer support
• Live chat support available
• Includes free registration of a .com, .co, .net or .org domain

Cons:

• Can't edit HTML of the website template
• No ability to accept online payments with this plan
• Must upgrade to build a mobile friendly site

Conclusion:

GoDaddy is best known for the domain registration services (and racy commercials), but their website builder is a solid product and offers a very good value. The Personal plan includes an adequate number of good looking templates to chose from and the builder is pretty easy to use. The templates aren't quite as modern as some of their competitors (like Weebly), but, for the price, GoDaddy's website builder is hard to beat. One other thing to consider is that websites built with this plan aren't mobile friendly. You'll need to upgrade to the Business plan ($9.99/ month) to get a mobile friendly site. GoDaddy is unique in that they offer free phone support for all their website plans, including the Personal plan.

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Pros:

• Low monthly cost
• Offers month-to-month plans in addition to annual plans
• Offers 24/7 phone customer support
• Live chat support available
• Large number of templates available
• Free one-year registration of a .com, .org, .net, .info, .biz
• Includes the ability to sell products online through PayPal Minishop

Cons:

• Limited ability to edit HTML of the website template
• Must upgrade to Premium or Online Store package in order to gain full eCommerce functionality

Conclusion:

1&1’s Website Builder Personal plan is a great tool and currently available for $11.88 for the first year (an effective rate of $.99/ month). After the first year, the product renews annually at $6.99/ month rate ($83.88/ year). The builder is easy to use and very flexible, and includes a large number of templates and access to their royalty free image gallery. While we found that content blocks were not able to be manipulated by dragging and dropping, we loved that 1&1’s builder can completely reorganize your site’s information into predetermined layouts with a few simple clicks. They also have great customer support options, including high quality, 24/7, US-based technical phone and live chat support.

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Pros:

• Low monthly cost
• Limited free account available
• Offers month-to-month plans in addition to annual plans
• Large number of templates available

Cons:

• No free trial available to test the service
• Poor/minimal guidance for website creation
• Can't edit HTML of the website template
• No ability to accept online payments with this plan

Conclusion:

Wix’s Connect Domain plan is very easy to use. While a set up wizard is not offered to help guide you along when first setting up your website a variety of tutorials and how-to’s provide much guidance for their already intuitive website builder. Their builder is  more flexible than many competitors, allowing you to edit all sorts of details in a free-form manner. A downside to the the Wix website builder is that domain name services are not provided. If you are looking for an intuitive and easy to use website builder Wix is a great choice as long as you are not looking for a website builder provider that also provides domain names.

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Pros:

• Low monthly cost
• Limited free account available
• Highly customizable website builder
• Large number of templates available

Cons:

• Can't edit HTML of the website template
• No ability to accept online payments with this plan

Conclusion:

Overall, WebStarts Pro is a great website builder that is user-friendly with a lot of valuable features. The Pro builder scored 4 out of 5 stars for Ease of Use and Customer Support primarily because of the lack of a set-up wizard and no phone customer support. Besides those two drawbacks, the service is pretty much perfect. The support team is very knowledgeable and the website builder is extremely flexible, allowing you to build completely customizable and professional-quality websites for a low price.                

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Pros:

• Low monthly cost
• Offers month-to-month plans in addition to annual plans
• Highly customizable website builder
• The ability to accept online payments is included with this plan
• Includes online shop for selling up to 20 products

Cons:

• No free trial available to test the service
• Poor/minimal guidance for website creation
• Can't edit HTML of the website template
• Phone support not available

Conclusion:

Moonfruit offers beautiful templates with a lot of direction to get you acquainted with their software quickly and easily, but their lack of phone or live chat support means that you cannot receive help with their service in real time. Moonfruit’s software is also highly flexible, and editing content blocks is simple. Moonfruit is a great website builder that we would highly recommend, if their customer support options were better.

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Pros:

• Limited free account available
• Offers month-to-month plans in addition to annual plans
• Live chat support available
• Free one-year registration of a .com

Cons:

• Poor/minimal guidance for website creation
• Phone support not available

Conclusion:

Yola Silver has wonderful Customer Support and is incredibly easy to use. The builder scored 5 out of 5 stars in both these categories, making it  the highest ranked builder we reviewed. Yola’s builder has an intuitive layout and detailed guides that allow you to get started extremely quickly. They provide excellent customer service, including 24/7 phone support, which we found to be very knowledgeable. The only problem we found was that it was difficult to edit or resize content blocks within the website builder.

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Pros:

• Large number of templates available
• Free one-year registration of a .com

Cons:

• High monthly cost
• No free trial available to test the service
• Limited flexibility of website builder
• Poor/minimal guidance for website creation
• Can't drag and drop content
• No ability to accept online payments with this plan
• Although the first year of domain registration is free, Web.com charges $38.00/ year to renew the domain, which is excessive

Conclusion:

While Web.com provides decent customer service support, their builder is difficult to edit and their pricing is more expensive than other website builders. Familiarizing yourself with Web.com's website builder is harder than most because their builder possesses an unintuitive interface. These problems do not justify Web.com's promotional price of $1.95 for the first month that increases to $22.95 after that .

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Pros:

• Low monthly cost
• Offers month-to-month plans in addition to annual and biannual plans
• Excellent guidance for website creation
• Easy email set up for your domain
• Large number of templates available
• Free one-year registration of a .com

Cons:

• No free trial available to test the service
• Can't edit HTML of the website template
• Phone and live chat support not available

Conclusion:

Webs.com's Starter package charges a low monthly cost with month-to month payment options.  You also have the ability to test out the website builder tool for free and host your website under a subdomain of Webs.com. Webs.com website builder is not as easy to use or as intuitive as some of the other website builders reviewed on this site. It lacks several features that make it easy to use such as the ability to drag and drop content blocks, and customizing your site is difficult.  A setup wizard to help you get started is not provided,  so if you need  a lot of guidance this may not be your best option. Customer service is also lacking with no phone or live chat support offered. Overall, Webs.com website builder is not a great builder for someone who is a novice or wants to easily customize their website.

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Pros:

• Low monthly cost
• Offers month-to-month plans in addition to annual plans
• Excellent guidance for website creation
• Live chat support available
• Large number of templates available
• Huge number of royalty free images (over 1 million) available

Cons:

• Limited flexibility of website builder
• Can't edit HTML of the website template

Conclusion:

Homestead's Starter Plan (formerly Intuit’s Personal Plan) is an excellent choice for those seeking an easy-to-use website builder with a professional appearance. Homestead provides users with a setup wizard that guides you seamlessly through the process of developing your website in order to get your site live quickly. They also provide customers with a wide variety of customer support options, as well as phone support seven days a week. Homestead is also one of the few companies to provide live chat support as you edit your site. While they don’t offer a free account like some website builders, they do provide a 30-day free trial so you can try out their services.

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Pros:

• Offers month-to-month plans, 6-month plans and annual plans
• Highly customizable website builder
• Excellent guidance for website creation
• The ability to accept online payments is included with this plan
• Live chat support available
• Free one-year registration of a .com

Cons:

• At the time of this review, there are no notable cons

Conclusion:

The OnlyBusiness Bronze Website Builder is full of features that you can add to your website to make it rich and robust, but their builder’s lack of direct editing, guidance, and flexibility makes creating your site more difficult than with other website builders. While their builder does lack in those areas. We found their phone  support to be of high quality as they were able to answer all of our questions correctly.

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