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Site123 ranks on our listing of the best free website builders and for good purpose. The platform is as simple as – properly, 123 – making it splendid for people who wish to get on-line rapidly reminiscent of small companies or affiliate entrepreneurs that wish to begin driving visitors immediately.
Nevertheless, these in search of extra superior instruments might discover the platform a bit limiting. On this assessment, we get palms on with Site123, serving to you collect all of the perception and data you want to determine whether or not it’s the best website builder for you.
Click on on the service’s welcome web page’s ‘Begin right here’ to seize your self 250MB of storage, 250MB of bandwidth a month and your first design resolution: what sort of web site do you wish to create? You must select from one in all sixteen choices, from Enterprise, to On-line Retailer, Weblog, Music, and Creativity, amongst others.
Interface
Once your site is created, you’ll be graced with a large preview of the template Site123 has designed for you. As you’d expect, it’s fully customisable, and you can even delete those pages and start afresh.
Click on some placeholder text to change it. The selection box has a couple of white squares which are used to resize your text, Some basic formatting tools appear above, while more detailed options are presented to the left of the screen. You could for instance select to animate your selection, browse through a list of various styles, or choose from one of hundreds of available fonts.
That part is easy. Others can be frustrating. Click on the ‘gear’ icon for instance. This reveals the various Background Settings of your selected page. You’ll be graced with 25 tiny preview thumbnails of the same image altered in some minor way. It’s impossible to see clearly what each of them offers, and it’s really best to click on them in turn, to see what they look like as they’re implemented in the main preview section of the interface.
Building pages
Expanding your site is a simple matter of clicking on the Pages menu and choosing to add additional ones. You’ll find a long list of categories, with various templates within each. These include Music, Testimonials, Articles, Events and Blog. Click on the style you’re interested in, and it’ll be automatically added at the bottom of your site.
One thing to bear in mind though: pages aren’t technically pages; they’re more like sections, each added under the other. This means your site is actually one giant scrolling page, and the more sections you add to it, the longer it becomes.
You’re also not limited to a single type of the above pages: you could have multiple blogs, galleries and e-commerce pages within the same website should you so choose. As long as you give them different names, it won’t get too confusing in the navigation menu.
That menu, locked at the top of the page, just takes you straight to these various sections, but you can also scroll up or down to get to where you want to go. Reordering sections is a simple matter of dragging their handle from the sidebar and repositioning them elsewhere.
However the more you populate your site, the more confusing it can get, especially as you add more posts to your blogs or additional photos in your galleries. Although the customisation invites complexity and numerous sections, we wouldn’t recommend you go too crazy, and limit your design to just a handful of them.
Site123 features
Looking at the blog options, the design will feel familiar to anyone who’s used a word processor. Click on on the weblog part’s ‘Edit’ button to see all posts already created. You’ll see that a number of are already there – examples to point out you the way the weblog appears to be like like and works. Click on on them to edit them, or simply get rid and begin anew. You may add pictures and movies, embrace tags and a featured picture. It’s all fairly simple and simple, enabling you to get began very quickly in any respect.
What stands out probably the most about Site123 is its ecommerce talents. Whereas there’s loads of net builders on the market with the power to create your individual retailer (like Jimdo, Fasthosts, and SimpleSite), not many net hosts have ecommerce choices which can be so versatile and straightforward to customize.
You may add new gadgets, create new classes, spotlight the very fact some merchandise are new or on the market, and many others. The free model of the service solely permits your prospects to pay by financial institution switch, money on supply, examine, cash order, in individual, or by telephone. The extra important options for an internet enterprise, like PayPal, AmazonPay, or Stripe, amongst others, can solely be accessed if you happen to improve to the ‘Premium’ plan.
Web site 123 provides you a free ‘momentary subdomain’ to publish your website to, but it surely’s as removed from memorable as you may get – only a sequence of random letter and numbers, adopted by ‘.site123.me’. If you’d like a extra catchy URL, or if you have already got one and want to hyperlink your website to it, you must pay for the privilege.
Plans and pricing
Site123 pricing and plans
|
Plan |
Price |
|---|---|
|
Free |
$0/month |
|
Premium |
$12.80/month |
Site123 has two main web hosting plans on their website. They also offer a 14 day money-back guarantee, so you can easily test Site123 to see if it’s right for you. Here’s a quick overview of both of them:
As its name implies, ’Free‘ comes with no cost. This feature grants you 250MB of storage, 250MB of bandwidth, and one subdomain. Greatest if all, there’s no bank card required to join it. This plan works greatest for these simply beginning on their on-line journey.
‘Premium’ is $12.80 per thirty days. It consists of your individual domain name (for the primary 12 months), 10GB of space for storing, 5GB of bandwidth, grants you extra superior ecommerce capabilities, and removes ‘Site123’ branding. This plan is nice for small enterprise, entrepreneurs, and freelancers who need extra space for storing and luxuriate in having their very own area.
Site123 review: Final verdict
Overall, Site123 is easy to use. Although somewhat limited, your customisation options are clear and easy to implement. The main preview of your website as you create it and experiment works great, but the layout options don’t favour a complex site with too many sections. If your needs are simple, and want something that looks good with little effort, Site123 is worth checking out.