Website.com Review

Detailed Reviews

Pros

• Unlimited free Plan: The free plan comes with a lifetime validity but displays ads on your site.
• Ease of UI: The web builder was relatively easier to use and required less learning curve.
• Fast response of editor: while making any changes to the site, the preview of that change loaded fast.
• Healthy collection of templates: There are a variety of templates for users to stumble upon.
• Better customization: Changing the colors and fonts of the elements as well as the pages was much simpler and better than other builders.
• Reasonable Pricing: Given the features, they have provided; the pricing is very cheap compared to other equivalent products.
• Restaurant widget: Website.com has restaurant feature that offers more custom tweaks than other builders.
• Good E-Commerce features: The E-commerce set up has decent functionalities along with a simplistic store manager.
• Separate File Manager: The file manager is given a separate interface, and so, it is easier to upload and manage files.
• Distinct Blog Manager: Blog Manager in this site builder too has its own interface and is easier to use.

Cons

• Greater learning curve: The builder has tones of customization which may make it somewhat difficult for inexperienced users to understand its working fully.
• Lack of proper help and guides: The help and guide section is clustered across various pages, and it becomes difficult to find the required help.
• Mediocre Customer Support: The customer support needs more of revamp and also, they should be providing live chat to all users, regardless of their subscriptions.
• Very few plugins and Integrations:com lacks in assembling external plugins and integration.
• No white label support: The builder does not have a white label feature for personal branding.
• No SSL support: SSL support is not given for sites without a personal
• No Security and Performance analyzer tools: Website security and performance tools are missing from the builder.
• No inherent analytics setup: The analytics of your site can only be done via Google analytics, and that too is premium only feature.
• Lack of broader E-commerce app market: E-commerce app markets like eBay, Yahoo, etc. are missing from it.
• Mediocre SEO support: SEO feature is only limited to meta tags and some resource articles.

Wanna create a fantastic website?

In our day to day life, each and everyone in this modern society is equipped with smart devices. With each intelligent device, we have access to the digital ocean of information, which we all call the Internet.

The Internet is a vast ocean of digital data, that contains information from social profiles to academics, from food to clothing stores and many more things. Most of these contents are hosted by what we generally call Websites.

Website or simply Sites are the major lifelines of the Internet. They are milestones for every data on the internet. Seeing all these clusters of sites, many of you might think to develop your own website.

Now how do you create a wonderful website that not only helps you in accomplishing the task of advertising your content but also lets you earn your bread and butter from it?

Most of us ordinary folks have a zilch idea on how to build a site, let alone go on and learn some coding languages. For this reason, there exist the website builders, who can help you create a website, without doing any coding part.

No need to worry my friends, Website.com is one of such tools to help you make a great website. Based in Burnaby, Canada, this site builder tool still has a lot of reputation to earn.

They started mainly in the web-hosting industry in 2005. Later on, they concluded the need to build a website making tool for the common public who have limited access to creating their own page.

Being still new in website making industry, they have managed to grab proper attention of creators, given to their simple to use and adequate functionality in their site builder tool.

Boasting of over 200+ templates and more than 500k+ customers, Website.com has risen to the top quite remarkably. They have a responsive site editor that automatically adjusts to both mobile and desktop sites.

As we will go through all functionalities of this site builder, we will conclude whether this new fish can shake the giants in the industry of website builders.

How do I start on a new site?

To begin with creating your own website, one of the crucial steps is to form an idea behind the creation of that site. This idea is what will drive the wheels of your sites’ caravan.

It could be anything, be it selling some products online, gaming websites, clothing and accessories, travel blogs, health and wellness, and whatever your mind can discover. So, once the idea is evident in your mind, what you need to do is get some stationary material and formulate a rough design of your website.

This initial sketch will aid you in the selection of a correct template for your site. Selecting an exact template is vital footstep and involves certain caution since some editors will not allow you to change the template without creating a new website, rather than changing the current one.

In the case of Website.com, the users need first to get their account created via sign up form. Once you have logged in, the users will be prompted a help tutorial on the main dashboard. The main panel has limited functions and only displays the current user info and subscription status, along with options to edit/view your site.

From this dashboard, you need to click on the edit site button. This will take you to the primary editor. The editor is very basic and will again prompt you to choose a website type, viz. e-commerce or general. We went with an e-commerce option for our fictional gaming store.

From there, the editor will provide you the primary template for the e-store website, or you will need to choose a template for a general category. From here, all you need to do is go to each page, change the default items with your own content and try to create a sample page first.

The editor has a control bar on the top left and contains usual options like element addition, store manager, blog, design tab, file manager, and restaurant function. This is part of the editor and includes all significant functionality of the builder.

The individual elements on the page can be edited by just hovering the mouse over them and choosing the design button. From here, you can change the fonts, color, size of text, size of element, background, etc.

There is also a menu over the top head of the editor. It contains some general settings functions like site setting, file manager settings, webforms manager, staff manager, and with the option to preview or reset the template.

On the same menu bar at the top, you can navigate in the rightmost end and see a similar feature in document editing like undo, redo, copy, paste, delete, and change layers. There is also the option to preview and publish the website here. Make sure that you have thoroughly checked the adaptive view of your site, before finally posting the site, to customize/adapt it for mobile devices.

Going through all these functions, you can say it confidently that the UI is really made for novice users and offers good editing without causing too much hassle. However, like many other site builders, we wished that they should have provided better color and font pairing features.

In the present format, it may be quite problematic for beginner users to decide on the color choices, and so along with standard color and font picking, predefined color and fonts set will help novice folks in not cluttering their webpages with all mixed-up colors and fonts. Also, we would like to see suggestion prompts when inserting new elements, which can guide users to put some aspects like cart button, find us, social widget, etc. on the correct part of the page. Other than that, the feature is one of the most simplistic UI among the site builders that anyone can master in a few days.

Templates-body of a website

Templates are the living body of the soul of a website. To create an incredible site along with proper user experience, one needs to put the web elements in correct places and give the viewers a smooth browsing experience.

For this, the first step is to plan a correct template according to your site goals. Once done, you need to choose a proper template. Once again, it should be appropriate and not fancy!

Website.com boasts of having around 250+ separate templates under several categories for its user base to ponder upon. These templates are under many sections like business and organizations, hotels and restaurant, music and art, photography, NGOs, personal sites like blogs, wedding, public page, etc.

Selecting any of the above templates will land you on the editor page. From there, you can customize the templates as you like. Beware and do not forget to customize the page to be user-friendly on mobile devices too.

For pro-users, there are templates with blank pages and single content. These advanced users can keep adding any essential elements they like and get started on their website.

You can customize these templates on a base level, i.e., changing the color schemes and fonts and background. Any coding level changes are not allowed. As we mentioned earlier, the color schemes are provided here, and you can select any given predefined color schemes for your site or customize it with a new one.

The elements available for templates are drag and drop compatible. Using this feature, you can even change the home page and its header design. The template editor has absolute positioning system, which allows users to independently place the page elements across any part of the page. However, they have implemented a warning display just in case the users put too many items beyond the traditional viewer space.

The template once chosen cannot be reverted, so do take care while selecting one. Our advice is to always create an illustration page/site before advancing to make the commercial one.

Features

The Page builder is one of the most crucial features to edit any website. This function includes all the primary editing options like adding elements, fonts, and colors, etc.

There are many functions within this page builder that we are going to explore one by one.

Adding Widgets

Can you make a website without adding any kind of widget or element to it? Probably not!

The widgets are elements in the website that are carriers of specific functions like carts, products list, cards, images, buttons, store, etc.

Website.com is armed with many such widgets. All these are quite nicely categorized, and all you need to do is drag and drop them in the desired location on the page.

The add element/widgets section can be accessed by the plus sign over the left side button. On clicking it will display all the available elements to be added.

There are some common additions like adding texts, images, shapes, etc. The add text button has listed all the format in which text element can be added to the page, be it in the form of a title, header, or a paragraph.

Similarly, the Image Adder lets you choose any shape of the frame or choose from the recommended theme tab. Once added, the image element can be used to access the image picker function. The image picker function is an image file manager, in which the owners can upload their own images, or choose from the stock images or utilize the premium images.

Another latest feature that has been added to the widgets is cards. Using this function, the users can add a specific type of cards like gift cards, discount coupons, exclusive invitations, or RSVP cards. The users can customize these cards further by customize pop up button and change the colors, fonts, default images, link them to a product page, etc.

They also have provided options to add various decorative items like buttons, strips, shapes, and icons. These items can be utilized for any pop-up messages or to enhance the left-over portion of the pages.

The users can add any kind of interactive media like videos, sounds, maps, etc. from the widgets section. If you need to add your contact or social media links, Website.com allows you to insert these elements in your page.

There is also a Restaurant widget which we will describe in detail in the latter part of this article since it has its own setup and dashboard and also is one of the unique features of Website.com.

Finally, you can also add google drive uploads, FAQ, google search, custom HTML, etc. to the page.

Overall, most of the features in the widgets are common among most site builders except the extra restaurant function. In our testing of these functionalities, we had to put minimal efforts in placing any element to the site, and the additional changes were clearly displayed in the edit menu.

However, we still felt that they lack more advanced widgets like personalization widget, pop up widgets, countdown timers, etc., and we hope they add more such widgets in the future.

Design Tab

Most of the website builders have implemented a separate section to edit the page design. This is separate from modifying the current elements on pages and deals with overall looks of the page like its header, footers, background, page transition, etc.

Website.com also has provided a similar attribute for its advanced and novice users. This can be accessed by pressing the paintbrush button, just below the plus sign on the editor menu. The main customizable things in this are color schemes, font styles, site edit, and menu editing.

Starting with the color schemes, as the name suggests, they are combination or pair of certain colors. These color pairs are pre-defined based on aesthetics and can also be customized as per user needs. However, this feature is not available while changing the colors in the elements inside the page.

Font pairs are similar to this. Sometimes, we as users can make the page looks messier with using too many font types and create a lousy visual experience. For this reason, many website builders do not even allow the fonts and colors in the elements to be changed.

Another primary editing function in the design tab is a change in the site’s looks and a menu of the page. Site settings are used to change some of the site’s looks like the background, page transition animation, and page width.

The Menu Change option in the design tab lets you customize the main menu over the top of any website that contains links viz — home, about us, contact, products, etc. Users can change the background of the menu bar, the text, and its font and color along with the size. Also, the users can add/edit the pages to be added in the website using it. The change design button will let you choose the design of this top menu bar of a website.

Although there is good customization given in the design tab, it still lacks custom header and footer, template switch, making our own custom menu, etc. But again, it is quite impressive for a new product like this to deliver a good customization feature in page design.

File manager

Another exciting feature Website.com has provided, is its File Manager. It is not rare for a website builder to have its own file manager. However, Website.com goes a step beyond and has furnished the users with an amazing file manager.

This file manager has its own interface and can accommodate up to 1 GB data for free users whereas it is unlimited for premium clients. The makers can add any type of file to this space, be it images, videos, documents, etc. You can also add separate folders for extra stuff.

There are two distinct folders by the name Store Media and other as Restaurant. Both these folders are accessible by team management staff, and any of them can access the content of these folders. However, the right to edit or delete only lies with the site owners, thereby restraining the staff access and need for extra settings in the team management section.

To group the content in the sections like images, video, etc., you can click Add folder under the tagged sections. Users can add any number of internal groups and make sure the content is arranged correctly, eventually easing the work of staff members.

E-Commerce Store Manager

How do I manage so many products in my catalog? How am I supposed to handle different tax rates, shipping details or discount for so many sales items?

All these questions and difficulties can be solved by having a dedicated store manager in your site builder. Website.com comes equipped with one such store manager. This can be accessed by the left side menu bar on the main editor page.

Once you enter this option, you will see a store manager dashboard which contains items like a list of all products, the orders, coupons, and store settings.

The most fun part is adding items to the store. There is so much customization given here that it makes even an inexperienced users’ life much comfortable. The main dashboard on this manager will guide you in settings up the store from scratch.

Product Catalogue is the primary option needed for any store manager. In this, you can add several products and also group them via collection. Click on the add new product above the list of products displayed. There are many options given here to make a complete product description like Name, URL, price, sale info, SKU, taxes, product details, weight, and its image.

The ribbon function here allows the users to add any unique tag to a product like New arrivals, most bought, rising, etc. There is also an inventory tracking function, which can count the number of products and automatically display its status to the customers and alert the owner in case of finished stocks.

Apart from that, you can control the visibility of a product for the viewers. You can add individual notes to the items and also add product choices like their availability in diverse colors, sizes, materials, etc.

The Collections option lets the users add the products into certain categories like All products, On sale, New arrivals, etc. You will need to link each class to a separate page so that the respective products can be listed differently from the main product lists.

Next comes the All Orders section that deals with managing all product orders, their rejections, cart status, etc. In this section, the Orders tab will show the status of all requests made till date and displays the information like their payment status, delivery status, refund status, etc.

In this section, Abandoned Cart is used to track the potential customers who left their cart before checkout and guides in following these customers eventually making a successful purchase from them. Same is the case with the Reject cart Orders function. However, the only difference between abandoned and rejected cart here is, that former is customer or viewer induced whereas the latter is due to restriction employed in the website builders’ subscription.

Another premium only functions in the store manager is Coupons. Using the coupons function, you can generate any type of coupons for the customers like a discount, sales, new user offer, etc.

Finally, the last option in the store manager is Store Set-up. This contains all the general settings in the store, along with payments, shipping, etc.

The Store info is used to change the info related to your stores like Name, address, E-mail, and store icon. The Payments tab lets you set up the payment option like PayPal, Stripe, Instore pickup, cash on delivery and wire transfer. Similarly, the Shipping and Taxes tab has the ability to set up a custom rule for transportation and any extra charges, or taxes involved in an intercontinental transfer.

The last tab in the store manager deals with general modification rules of the store. Store settings have options like currency and weight unit setup, custom messages like a checkout message, order successful messages, T&C, and refund policies. You can also enable Google Analytics to track the E-commerce sites and collect more detailed info about the customer base.

When accessing the Store tab on the main editor page, there are other options like Store Page Design and Add Store Elements. The Store page design can revamp the entire look of the specific product page that viewers will access to get full details of it, whereas the Add store elements can be used to add some common store elements on the current page like a product slider, individual product element, collection element, and cart.

Restaurant Manager (not the human one!)

One more useful widget that we do not see in many site builders is the Restaurant widget. What exactly is this widget? Are we opening an online restaurant? Too many questions in minds but do not fear, because as the name itself suggests, you can now add your own restaurant menu using this function.

Restaurant widget when accessed asks you to set up the menu items. The online restaurant is going into trend nowadays since everyone wants their meal to be ready as soon as they sit on the table. This function helps such fast-paced folks. The owners can add any number of food items in the list, add their respective price, quantity, and availability.

There is a separate dashboard allotted for this widget and has the most important options like Menus, Dishes, Menu Settings, and edit the layout. The good thing is that most builders who support the restaurant feature do not allot a separate section for it and so the editing of all the meals and menu becomes a bit complicated.

Menu and dishes deal with food items listing and their customization. You can add the food items in the dishes section first and then put on a menu from that items’ list. The dish section allows you to add all the description of the dish, their available size, toppings choices, server status, etc.

There is a Restaurant settings choice that lets you add the information about the owner like the Name, E-mail, address, currency format of the restaurant.

Visitors can book their table seats, order their menu, quantity, serving standards, and additional instructions online. You can also complete the payment online and get better offers than offline payments. You can also add the size of the meals like pizza, etc. in the edit menu dashboard. This feature is coordinated with the OpenTable website.

Other than that, you can also modify the entire page design to get a much better view of dishes and menus. Add more elements like menu list, menu collections from the same tab.

Make sure you also optimize the above functions for mobile devices too. Most probably the description part will have to be shortened. You can optimize the elements like menu, dishes, etc. either as a vertical scroll or a slider and improve the user experience. Overall, the feature works nicely, and we had no issue using it.

One of the suggestions we would add is to include features like the pop-up buzz when the site detects the viewers in close proximity to your restaurant. Also, a map feature which geolocates and directs the customers to the correct place will be useful too.

Want a Blog for your website?

Many websites like to run their own blog, to keep the users updated about new releases, information sharing, tricks and tips of the product, etc. apart from that; we may also need a blog for other purposes like to make a travel diary, political opinion blog, technology blog, etc.

Website.com is equipped with one such feature to quench your inner blogger, that is by using the Blog function. Accessible on the main editors’ menu bar on the left, it is given as a separate functionality rather than integrating it into the pages section.

When you go the blog manager, you will come across options like adding a blog entry, managing the entries and comments, general settings, and adding different blog elements.

The blog entry function has a typical blog post like UI, in which you can add the title of your blog, the URL address of it, body of the post, additional excerpt and can also use the tagging feature. The content in the body can be formatted like any other document making software. Additionally, you can also add an image in the current blog entry.

The Blog Settings includes all the standard options to manage the blog like managing the number of posts per page, comments section management, social media connection, adding custom labels to your blog, background, and font of your blog, etc.

The Add Blog Elements tab has limited functionality. However, you can also add RSS feeds and also add Instagram feeds using the Feeds button in the widget menu. Other than that, there is nothing extraordinary this feature offers us. Many of the high-end functionalities of blog structure are missing like widgets for popular/latest feeds, the about me widget, snippets function, and many more.

Overall, the blog function is decent enough to make a good web-blog for your businesses. Adding latest blog features similar to top products like Wix, Site123, etc. and custom staff management feature for blog management would make the service much better.

Staff Management

As a site owner, sometimes you need to give access to other members of the design staff to change certain items on the website. These staff members may have different qualifications, and depending on the task they are assigned, they may need limited allowance or certain level access to the site, to complete their jobs.

To use this feature, go to the main editor page and in its top menu bar, under the Site Tab, click the Staff Manager. This will open the main staff manager session. Here, you can add staff members, set permissions, site access, etc.

To add Staff members to the site, press the add staff button on the main panel of the Manage Staff interface. Now, enter the details of the staff member, viz. Name, Email ID, password to access his account.

After this, set the account permission. These permissions contain general access settings like full admin level access, design only access, webforms access, file manager access, etc. The toggle switches are given as reading/write or no access. Once done, save the changes, and an Email will be sent to the staff member along with his login URL and credentials.

Also, you can either revoke the permissions or delete the staff identity from the editor at any time. To access the respective page for editing, the staffs are assigned a unique URL based on their name. Once they log in to this page, they will have access to the required elements and can start their work.

Another useful feature in the staff manager system is Members Only Pages. Using this feature, owners can lock a page using password, and then whenever someone opens that page, they will be prompted a login page. Owners can also set specific permissions for a member. You may also add new associates from the top menu bar of the editor.

Web forms Manager

Contact forms are a critical part of customer management and data collections. These forms are handy to get feedback from the customers and also to get their contact info, to provide better services and offers.

Website.com is also armed with one such form manager system, accessible via the main editors’ menu bar.

The entire data filled by the viewers in the form field on the website can be seen here on the main panel of the web form manager. The data contains all critical details about the submitter like his Name, Email-ID, written messages, remarks, and his IP address.

You can edit any of this form data by clicking on that field. The general form manager settings can aid the owner to tweak descriptions, redirection URL after submission, security steps like enforcing single submission for a user or using captcha codes to avoid bots. The owners can receive Email notification of the submitted user data or can switch off these notifications.

SEO Tools

How do I promote the content of my website? How to attract more page views and interaction of viewers with my products? All these questions are frequent in the minds of many site owners, and they go door to door and would listen to any website.

SEO or say Search Engine Optimization is a form of online marketing where the owner of a site indulges in specific tactics to make his website more visible at the top of search engine results. By doing this, he will eventually attract more audience to his page, thereby getting success in his marketing attempts.

Website builders usually have lots of resources on improving the SEO rankings of a site, and many provided dedicated panel to engage in SEO for their clients.

Website.com also has some of the basic SEO functionalities. To utilize all these options, users need to go to page settings accessible in the Pages drop-down menu of the main editor.

In the SEO settings, users will find out the same options as other sites and can input the data in Page Titles, Page description, and Page Keywords. As Google has already stated that Meta Tags are now not so much relevant in SEO rankings, we should not be worrying about this as much. However, having tags for your pages can undoubtedly improve the user experience and avoid them from getting lost amidst many links of a site.

Nevertheless, all these functions are still needed for a good UI experience of the viewers. Most SEO features are much dependent on the way the owners indulge in marketing their product apart from the type of user experience the site builders and owners make for a product.

Website.com has added some useful guides in the SEO section of their knowledge base, and these measures combined are enough as a contribution from a website builder tool.

Site Analytics

Now, most of the site owners are indulged in promoting their site across numerous platforms. For this to be successful, one needs to have some data/information regarding the viewers like their location, type of device used, number of clicks, bounce rate, etc.

All these data can be found by using site analytics software. A site analytics application basically yields all the data of a site’s usage from its viewer's info to the financial capacities of a website, based on traffic assessment.

Unlike many top website builders like Site123, WordPress, Wix, etc., Website.com does not have a dedicated site analytics tool in their site builder. The users need to have a Google Analytics account and a premium subscription to get any form of analytics data of their website.

To access the google analytics, you need to open the site settings and access the SEO & Analytics option from there. Enter the google analytics tracking ID in the field, and you will be able to link your site data with it.

One more thing that they have added is A/B site testing. A/B site testing is used to check the performance and viewer statistics of two version of the same site or a page. It is used as a parameter and discloses the things that your viewer like and what they do not.

You make a clone page via Clone Option in the page settings. Then edit the other page as per viewer point of view. Publish each page one by one with a sufficient interval between two. Check the statistics of both page using the analytics feature and compare the results.

The page with more clicks, visits, ratings will be what customers prefer, and similarly, you can experiment for other site pages to find out the perfect look for your website that the viewer can sync with.

Other than this, there is no way to do site analytics from this site builder. This was a bit of disappointing since they missed such a crucial functionality. We would certainly want them to improve their data analytics section and have a separate dashboard in the builder itself to give correct information on site analytics.

Speed and security

The integrity of a site also depends on its safety and speed. When we talk about site security, most of us get cold feet. All those major hacking incidents and security experts fueling the flames, many owners do everything to make their site as much secure as possible.

Website builders can help you provide the required base level security by installing some firewalls on their side and employing the latest coding methods to prevent any malicious access to their clients’ website.

Not much can be anticipated from these builders, in providing full security since the clients need to engage in much detailed analysis of their site’s code to make it more secure.

 

In this case, Website.com has not provided any separate module to tweak the security settings of the website we make. When we scanned the headers of the website using the popular Netsparker Tool, we found several headers missing in the website like content security policy, XSS protection, X frame options, etc.

Another thing we found was that there was no separate HTTPS tag facility for trial or premium users. The owners have to buy a separate domain name and integrate the SSL certificate by themselves. This is not good as a security perspective, and they still need more steps and most possibly a separate dashboard to indulge in the security features of the site.

Next step was to the assessment of the loading speed of the website which we made. Usually, the load speed depends upon multiple factors like the content size of the site, the scripts running on a single page, plugins used, etc. Most probably, site content and script are deciding factors in it.

The site we built had D score via Gtmetrix website. We consulted the support team and got some suggestion to improve the loading speeds. This can be rectified even by amateur users easily. Both site security and loading speed were decent here.

Integrations and plugins

Do you need some extra features for your website? Or do you want to integrate some special plugins and application to make better changes in the site?

As we all know, a website builder cannot have all the required features to make a thorough website. For this cause, we need some sort of plugins and integration in the primary builder and get some more functionality with it.

There are some common plugins and external integrations available in the Website.com builder. There are social media plugins like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn Cards.

One can just drag and drop these plugins from the editor menu and change the settings to accommodate the individual’s social media accounts. This can be later used as promotion of the site across various platforms. The users can also add Instagram feeds on their website via the same social media widgets.

Other popular plugins that the users can install in their site are media plugins like YouTube, SoundCloud, Dropbox, etc., along with utilities-based plugins like Google Maps, Translate, search button, and custom HTML.

To enhance the restaurant feature, they have given the OpenTable integration that can be used to book some seats at a restaurant nearby. Similar to this, more online scheduling element can be added to the website to book an appointment as per the availability.

Few more like Skype, eBay and eBay search, and MailChimp can also be added. For e-commerce and payments, PayPal and Stripe can be set up.

Overall, the builder still lacks many good integrations like Vimeo, Live chat plugins, SendPulse, EcWid, etc. They also need to integrate the analytics and mail management into the main builder. Till then, you can use the coding feature to add any extra integrations to your site.

Adaptive view

In modern days, most people are using mobile devices and have access to the internet mostly via these devices. For this reason, the website builders need to optimize their pages as per these devices.

To do so, most site builders come with an adaptive view. This adaptive view can switch the site editing to either desktop or mobile devices.

To access the editor, click the mobile icon on the left over the top menu in the editor. Using this option, the users can modify the looks of their site over mobile devices. If there are some elements too big for a page, you can hide those elements. This will not delete those elements from the desktop page.

The other option the users have is Smart Layout feature. Using this function, the website auto adjusts the elements over the mobile page. However, this feature is not so worth the trouble since many elements like feeds, ads, banner links that make up a desktop site will not be detected and hidden automatically. The users need to use the manual editing tool for optimizing the website.

The Mobile Menu too has nominal choices and is only restricted to general page settings like changing site menu for mobile, its font and colors and size. Unlike top products, there are only a few tweaks available to edit the mobile site. There is no optimization for in between devices like tabs, iPads, or consoles.

Customer services and support

Sometimes it may happen that we are having some issues while using the services and need some help. To organize this, we need the help of customer support and their guidance.

Website.com has been equipped with basic customer support features like ticket submission, live chat, and feedback mode.

However, live chat was a premium only feature. The ticket submission was complicated too. We could not connect to the phone support so cannot give a proper verdict on that. The ticket we submitted had some usual questions, and we got some decent replies.

The knowledge base is accessible in the main website as wells as editor. You can click on any element and the “?” icon on its top right to get some information about that element. The knowledge base still needs more detailed articles with more screenshots and explanations.

The resources section looked like it was not updated for a long time. Only five articles are published as of now. The FAQ section was too shallow and needed more questionnaires and their precise answers.

The entire guide and help documentations were cluttered across several pages and lacked search. Inexperienced users may find difficulty in finding the correct guides. They need to bring all help and guide material on a single page and then categorize it in a user-friendly way.

This field disappointed us a bit, and the fact that live chat was part of premium only support was such a bummer. No point being deficient in customer service to free users since they the potential customers. Even though YouTube resources are decent, but not everyone can access it more often. This is also a field they need to shift their focus on and do a renovation for better customer support and help section.

Our Experience

Since Website.com has been a recent addition to the list of site builders, it is still making its way among the big contenders like Wix, WordPress, Site123, etc. In our experience, we wanted to test out all the features and user interface before making some assumptions about any recent builder in the market.

For this, we went with an E-commerce website that deals with selling video games and its accessories at cheaper rates. In the beginning, the user interface was too simple just to drag and drop some elements and customize the elements as you want. But as we proceeded further, to check the high-end capabilities of the builder, we were a bit disappointed.

The template selection was not so smooth as we had to manually go for changing the template rather than directly selecting from the list of all templates. But once we came on the main editor page, things were much more comfortable afterward.

The editor was made from the perspective of novice users and had easy instruction to add elements. The UI had lots of customization options. But the color and font pair was only available for entire page setting and not for individual element/widget.

The image editor provided was decent enough. The image picker inside the editor had minimal stock of images and was not accurate in the search results. The image editing options like crop and rotate were not working while we tested out the website.

There were no usual image filters like brightness, contrast or others. This showed that the image picker was decent enough to use but lacked many essential features. Also, the image database for its stock images needs to be increased or have some search engine like algorithm to search any pictures.

The widgets section even though being usable for novice users, needed more detailed instructions. There were many essential plugins and integrations not available as we discussed earlier. However, the customization in the individual widget was good enough to be utilized nicely by any individual.

The staff management also needs some additional functionalities like a grouping of the staff, more options to define user access, etc. They can also integrate any Auto-CRM application for this. Unfortunately, this feature was only accessible to premium users along with members-only page system.

The pricing was quite cheaper than other website builders. The premium plans also had custom Email options, using which you can set your own mail ID for the company. A/b testing was also accessible only in the premium plans. The server space along with premium plans was limited too. Overall, there was some thorough difference between free and paid plans which justifies the pricing they fixed.

Conclusion

Concluding to our review, and as we have pointed out our user experience as above, there are many areas Website.com needs to rectify in order to compete with the top shots like Wix, WordPress, etc.

So, if you are a new user to the world of website creation, or a small business organization or some school/ colleges wanting to make a simplistic site, you can choose to use the Website.com. The free plan has lifetime validity but limited features. The premium plans had some unique perks that you can rely on when you purchase it.

So, before making a premium subscription, we would highly advise you to use free version first, use it to make some demo sites and then decide if the features are worth a paid subscription.