Site123
Pros
- User-friendly
- Free Account Available
- SEO Tools
- 24/7 Customer Support
- Multi Language
Cons
- E-commerce Has Limitations
Your website is where your customer’s journey often begins. What will they find there? No doubt you want them to find a smart and easy to navigate site with products that meet their needs.
Is SITE123 the website builder that can help you accomplish just that?
This review of the SITE123 web builder will draw attention to various aspects of SITE123, giving you the information necessary to aid you in deciding if it can meet your needs in website building.
Pros of SITE123
First, let’s give attention to where SITE123 excels. It’s ease of use, SITE123 support, and its perk of language availability.
SITE123 is Easy to Use
Imagine a person sitting at their desk, pulling out their hair and preparing to throw their mouse across the room because they don’t understand how to make their website builder do what they want it to. Good news. You never have to imagine that person as you.
Site 123 is not complicated.
You pick a task you want to accomplish like, for example, a text section with a picture. You just start editing it and you can check the result in a preview mode for desktops, tablets and mobile phone.
In addition, as one of the best website builder options, SITE123 templates are automatically fully mobile and tablet responsive. So, you don’t have to worry about it.
Adding to the ease of use is the feature called design assistance.
What is Site 123 design assistance? This function creates a template customized to you and your needs. You can accomplish impressive design without you having to do any technical work.
SITE123 will ask you a couple of questions. For example, the type of website you want and what the name of the website is. Then it creates a template that has all the features you are looking for.
Here as an example of a health & care website about weight loss created in less than 30 seconds. All you have to do now is to customize each field and you are ready to launch you new website.
SITE123 offers a free website builder and domain that is focused on providing you a quick and easy solution to building your website.
SITE123 Additional Languages
An outstanding feature of SITE123 is that up to five languages can be added very quickly. Unfortunately, this is an option available only with a paid plan. Yet, for those who need it, it is a powerful incentive to use SITE123.
All you must do is choose the language you want to add from a menu, and the system will automatically create a translation. It can also be edited manually.
The additional languages feature also works rather well for the eCommerce checkout. The official SITE123 website itself is available in more than 20 languages.
SITE123 Support
If you do encounter a moment of frustration using SITE123, long before you feel the urge to throw your mouse, you can get in touch with SITE123’s support directly via live chat.
Live chat is available 24/7 and is based on the same page as the one you’re editing. So, you can receive fast, accurate and meaningful advice without having to leave the page.
Or, if you prefer, and you have a little time to wait, they have email support also available.
Lastly, their Support Center FAQ page contains information and videos that explain typical functions of the website builder for further guidance. And if you are new and inexperienced at website building, there are SITE123 tutorials in the SITE123 Learning Center to guide you step by step in the process.
All three of these support features, including the 24/7 live chat, are available even to those learning to create a website free of cost. With other free website builders, the live chat support feature is only available with a paid premium plan.
SITE123 Plugins
SITE123 plugins can be attractive and engaging. SITE123 provides several plugins to enhance your site with more captivating and profitable functions.
SITE123 SEO Tools
SITE123 offers valuable fundamental SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools which will ensure your website has the ability to rank as high as possible on search engines such as Google.
The SEO options available will let you edit the meta title and description (the text that appears on Google’s search page), customizable URLs, and adding alt text to images. All these customizations help with ranking better on Google
If this sounds somewhat complicated, you don’t have to worry. SITE123 has guides which explain how to accomplish this.
What SITE123 does not offer is support with which keywords to use or any SEO-specific apps. Therefore, a measure of pre-existing SEO knowledge will be required to get the best out of your site.
SITE123 Domain Name
Additionally, you can connect a domain free for the first year on any of SITE123’s premium plans with the annual renewal cost that is $13 a year. There are more than 130 domain extensions to select from. This means you can tailor your domain name to your industry. If that idea seems a bit daunting to you, don’t worry. SITE123 has a domain search tool to help you find your perfect domain name.
If you already own a domain, you can redirect it to your website upon upgrading to any of SITE123’s premium plans. All you have to do is changing the DNS (Domain Name System) settings of the domain.
This way, the domain will still be hosted by your current host, and you can continue to renew and manage it there, and then it will be directed to your website If you are not clear on how to change the DNS settings, SITE123 can assist you with this task also.
Cons of SITE123
If you are looking to create a blog, SITE123 has excellent and principal features to help you. Social bookmarking, analytics, a search feature and an RSS feed make it a prime choice to be the foundation of your posts.
Categories and Comments
What it does not have is the ability to display categories, archiving, and incorporating a comments section. If these are important to your blog, then Site123 is not for you.
Social Media
How important is social media to you? If it is high on your needs list, then the following will be important.
SITE123 allows you to link out to 25 different social network platforms. However, it can only be displayed as an icon in the footer of your website pages.
For now, it is not possible to embed any live social feeds. If you plan on social media playing a notable role on your site, SITE123 might not be the right fit for you.
SITE123 Review – E-commerce
How versatile and capable is SITE123 for your eCommerce needs?
There are a few factors to consider. SITE123 does allow you to use CTAs (Call To Actions.) These are prompts on a website which are often buttons or hyperlinks that tell the user to take some specific action. Also, it has email marketing capabilities, but not a whole lot more.
SITE123 does have eCommerce functionality on the premium plans. Advanced eCommerce features are offered on the ‘Professional’ and ‘Gold’ plans.
These advanced features allow you to sell digital products and add coupons.
However, after that, it is missing significant financial eCommerce tools, such as automatic invoicing and payment tracking. This, of course, makes it difficult to sell products on a large scale.
SITE123 Pricing
Is SITE123 free? It can be, but it depends on what your needs are.
The system offers a free option or four paid plan options.
The cost of SITE123 differs with respect to the amount of disk space and bandwidth of your desired website, as well as how many products you can sell each month.
And the cost for a SITE123 website is comparable with Weebly pricing and SiteBuilder pricing, as well as other website builder software available.
SITE123 packages are as follows:
- Free Plan: 500MB of disk space, 1GB of bandwidth, and up to 10 product orders per month.
- Basic Plan: ($9.80 per month) 10GB of disk space, 5GB of bandwidth, free domain, no banner, and up to 10 product orders per month.
- Advanced Plan: ($15.80 per month) 30GB of disk space, 15GB of bandwidth, a custom domain, 2 mailboxes, and up to 50 product orders per month.
- Professional Plan: ($21.80 per month) 90GB of disk space, 45GB of bandwidth, a custom domain, 5 mailboxes, and up to 500 product orders per month.
- Gold Plan: ($27.80) 270GB of disk space, 135GB of bandwidth, and unlimited number of product orders per month.
So, there is a free option, but the SITE123 free website builder may not be the ideal choice for you.
When deciding on the best free website builder for you, an element to consider is that all free website builders place an ad on your site. Knowing where on your website and how large the ad placed will be is important when making your decision.
In this respect, SITE123 is troublesome. Ads are placed in a conspicuous area and detract from the style of your webpage.
And, since the free option only has 500MB of disk space, it is too little if you want videos on your site. Moreover, a small amount of bandwidth can limit your content and traffic.
Additionally, the free SITE123 package doesn’t allow you to connect a custom domain name. You receive a free subdomain, but you must change to a paid option to connect your own domain name. This may reduce the professional look of your website.
SITE123 Review Conclusion
The goal of this article was to present you with the genuine advantages that SITE123 offers as well as giving you a clear view of some notable disadvantages.
Clearly, if you need a website quickly, but don’t have any knowledge of coding, or experience in creating a website in general, then SITE123 is a good option.
Its useful design assistance feature is an astonishingly perceptive and time-saving option. This feature simply asks you a couple of questions about what type of website you are looking to create and then produces a template with the pertinent features for your new website.
So, what is the downside of SITE123. As is often the case in life, our strength can be our weakness, and this seems true with SITE123.
Because so much is provided and managed for you, it can be difficult to create or personalize a complex site with lots of specific requirements that you have envisioned.
If you are a medium to large sized company with the goal of scaling up your business soon, however, it will likely be best to continue your search for a website builder.
SITE123 is an excellent fit for either a personal website or a small business that wants a place online to highlight their company information and contact details or to sell a few products online.