SITE123 Review: Comprehensive Guide to Building Your Website

SITE123’s website editor may seem straightforward at first glance, but it lacks intuitive features like drag-and-drop functionality. Additionally, you’re limited to the designs provided by SITE123, with little room for customization. Despite these limitations, I managed to build a complete website in under an hour using SITE123’s platform.

If you’re looking for a hassle-free website builder that doesn’t demand design skills, read SITE123 review, that could be a suitable option. Wondering if SITE123 is right for you? Small businesses and beginners will appreciate its affordable plans and ready-made templates.

SITE123 Pros and Cons

If you’re not keen on designing your own website, SITE123 could be the perfect solution for you. Its main advantage lies in its ready-to-use templates and section layouts, saving you the trouble of deciding what looks best. However, it’s important to note that SITE123 does come with some limitations, and understanding its pricing structure can be a bit tricky.

Pros

• Quick and Effortless: SITE123 has been my fastest website creation experience yet. With the app doing most of the work for you, you can have a website up and running in minutes, no exaggeration needed, as long as you have your content prepared.
• Handy Tools: I was pleasantly surprised by the thoughtful and powerful tools SITE123 offers. The built-in photo finder and editor are particularly helpful, saving a lot of time, and the section layouts are well-crafted.
• SEO-Friendly: SITE123 lets you optimize your website for search engines effortlessly. You can easily add meta tags, titles, descriptions, and alt text to images for all your pages and blog posts.
• Exceptional Onboarding: SITE123’s support and onboarding exceeded my expectations. Each tool or feature comes with clear explanations in the site editor or helpful articles in the support center. Thanks to this, I found it easy to learn how to use SITE123.
• Mobile-Friendly Themes: All templates offered by SITE123 are designed to be mobile-responsive, ensuring a seamless experience across different devices.

Cons

• Branding: SITE123 displays its logo on all plans, even the basic one. To remove it, you need to upgrade to at least the Advanced plan.
• Ease of Use: While SITE123’s editor isn’t too complicated, it lacks drag-and-drop functionality, which might make it less intuitive for some users. Most editing happens through forms, and customization options are somewhat limited to pre-built layouts.
• Features Behind Paywall: Some essential features like custom colors, fonts, plugins, and insights are only available to paying users.
• Customization: Unfortunately, you can’t do much beyond deleting or adjusting small elements in your chosen layout. There’s no option to reorder or re-center sections.

SITE123 Review

Consider SITE123 for your website needs due to its modular templates and pre-designed layouts. Although the pricing is reasonable, the transparency of plan costs is lacking, and some features are restricted to higher-tier plans.

However, the site and photo editor could make it worthwhile. According to users, SITE123 is a quick, easy, and free website builder that doesn’t require coding experience.

It offers a wide selection of templates and tools for language and regional settings customization, along with responsive customer service. Overall, SITE123 is ideal for those looking to create a basic website without complexity.

Plans and Pricing

SITE123’s pricing may not be the clearest initially, as only two plans are visible on the site. To access other pricing options, you’ll need to create an account and upgrade. However, despite this initial confusion, the prices offered are fair. Keep in mind that several tools and features are only available with the upgraded plans.

Free

• Good for: testing the platform, temporary sites, hobbyists

Premium

• $12.80 per month
• Good for: small business websites

Features Of SITE123

SITE123 provides an impressive array of pre-built templates, totaling 189, ensuring plenty of options for users. Moreover, its site editor incorporates numerous powerful tools, simplifying the website creation process. However, it’s important to note some notable absentees, such as the lack of a SITE123 mobile app.

1. Templates

At first glance, SITE123 impresses with its vast selection of templates, offering over 180 options, all boasting clean and modern designs. However, upon closer inspection, you’ll notice a lack of variety. While initially appearing minimalistic, further scrutiny reveals that the templates are essentially identical in structure.

Remove the images, and you’re left with a basic layout comprising a navigational menu, a hero image, and some text. The only distinctions lie in the arrangement, colors, and fonts. While SITE123’s templates are sufficient for most needs, customization options are limited.

Once you’ve selected a template, switching isn’t an option without losing your content, so it’s crucial to be content with the minimalist design.

2. Management Dashboard

When you first sign up with SITE123, you’ll be directed straight to the site editor to kickstart your website creation process, bypassing the dashboard. However, if you navigate to your dashboard, you’ll find various options and information waiting for you.

On the left-hand side of the dashboard, you’ll see a running tally of your storage and bandwidth allocation, alongside your business and domain name. Additionally, there are numerous opportunities for upselling featured prominently. Expect at least five calls to action urging you to upgrade your plan.

Within the Settings section, you have the ability to configure your website as password-protected or even set it up as a membership site. This is also where you can integrate plugins and custom codes, depending on your subscription level.

If you need to collaborate with others on your site, head to the Contributors section. Here, you can add users to your site, which proves helpful if you have someone else managing the site or adding content on your behalf.

3. Domain Name

Like many website builders, SITE123 serves as a domain registrar. Upon signing up, you receive a complimentary subdomain, though it may not lend a professional touch to your site. However, SITE123 presents ample opportunities to upgrade to a paid plan, enticing you further by covering the cost of your domain name for the initial year.

Accessible via both your dashboard and the website itself, a domain name search bar facilitates your quest for the perfect URL. SITE123 even suggests potential URLs based on your business or site name. It’s worth noting that purchasing a domain name independently isn’t an option; you must first select a paid plan.

SITE123 offers a wide selection of top-level domain extensions (TLDs) to choose from, ranging in price from $16 to $65 per year. With hundreds of options available, you’re sure to find one that suits your needs and budget.

4. Site Editor

As someone who spends a significant amount of time working on websites, the site editor’s usability is crucial. Upon using SITE123’s editor, I immediately noticed the absence of a left-hand menu, which I’m accustomed to. Unfortunately, the editor’s intuitiveness falls short.

To its credit, editing text is straightforward – simply click where you want to edit and start typing. However, this simplicity doesn’t extend to every element. For instance, changing the background image requires clicking on the background, which is easy enough but lacks the efficiency of other website editors that allow for direct editing with a single mouse click.

One standout feature of SITE123’s editor is its images tool. Whether you’re using your own photos or relying on free stock imagery, SITE123’s gallery stands out as one of the best. Unlike some platforms that restrict you to Unsplash or Pixabay photos, SITE123’s search tool offers a wide range of free-use images.

For instance, you can quickly transform a full-color image into black and white using the built-in filter tool. SITE123 also allows for further image editing through its image editor. You can crop, apply filters, adjust brightness or contrast, blur or sharpen, and even add symbols to enhance your images.

While the photo editor isn’t flawless (lacking keyboard shortcuts for undoing actions, and the eraser function can be inconsistent), it still outperforms editing in external programs, providing a convenient and versatile tool directly within the SITE123 platform.

SITE123 can best be described as a modular website builder. Instead of piecing together individual elements, you select pre-designed layouts to incorporate into your site. This approach allows you to create a visually appealing website without requiring any design skills. However, the trade-off is limited customization options, as you’re unable to modify much beyond the selected layouts.

When adding a pricing table to my page, I anticipated being able to click on it and directly edit the information. However, I encountered a form pop-up instead, where I could make the necessary adjustments. While I would have preferred a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor, or the ability to drag and drop elements onto the page for customization, this method still gets the job done.

What bothered me was that I couldn’t move things around on the page. For instance, I wanted to adjust the layout of the sections, like the FAQ part, but I couldn’t just drag and drop them to rearrange. I had to settle for how it was or pick a different layout.

Adding a new page might seem like a solution, but it’s not quite that. It just adds another section to your one-page website. Clicking on menu options won’t take you to a new page; it’ll only scroll you to a different section.

If you want multiple pages, you’ll have to change your website type because by default, it’s just one page. You can do this in the editor under Settings > Website Type. I did this, and now I have separate pages, which is good, but they’re still all linked from the home page.

SITE123’s site editor has its strengths. It offers handy tools and ready-made layouts to speed up website design. However, it’s also limiting because you don’t have total control over how your site looks.

5. SEO

I found it surprising that SITE123 offers a lot of control over SEO, especially considering the limited options for managing the site editor yourself. However, it’s not like the SEO features are flawless. To begin with, you can handle SEO elements from your dashboard by navigating to Settings > SEO Advisor.

You can run audits on your pages to identify areas for improvement, but with the basic package, you’ll only get limited results. To unlock more insights, you’ll need to upgrade to the Gold package. Still, even without the upgrade, the audit can offer guidance on what to adjust across your pages. For example, my audit revealed that I needed to update meta tags and descriptions.

Setting up a meta title and description for your homepage is straightforward through settings. However, for other pages, you’ll need to edit each page individually and adjust the settings. What’s neat about SITE123 is that it displays how your site appears on Google and Facebook search results.

If your site includes a blog, you can customize meta tags, descriptions for each post, and alternative text for images. However, you’re unable to change image names unless you’re uploading new images.

6. Integrations

When I discovered that SITE123 offers integrations, I thought it would enhance its feature set, as plugins often do. However, I found that SITE123’s plugin marketplace is quite limited. They list the same app in multiple categories, seemingly to inflate their app count.

For instance, there are over 20 apps listed in the analytics plugin category, including Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel. Live support plugins include Intercom, Tidio Chat, Zendesk Chat, and others, but some apps are repeated in different categories.

Interestingly, webmaster tools may not have a dedicated category because they offer similar functionalities found in other categories. It’s important to note that some popular plugins like Yoast, Mailchimp, or Zapier are missing from the list.

While SITE123 allows custom code, which can add additional functions to your site, it undermines the simplicity that SITE123 aims to offer. In summary, while SITE123 does offer integrations, the selection is limited and lacks some key plugins.

SITE123 offers the option to create webhooks for free, also known as a push Application Programming Interface (API). A webhook allows you to push data from one web application to another, triggering a response.

For example, let’s say someone signs up for your Alpaca 5K on your website, and you want that data to be automatically transferred to your customer relationship management (CRM) software. With a webhook, this process can be seamless, requiring no manual entry on your part.

However, the concept of webhooks doesn’t align perfectly with SITE123’s goal of helping you create a website without needing coding or design skills. While webhooks offer powerful functionality, they may require a bit more technical understanding to set up and manage effectively.

E-Commerce Features

While SITE123 may not compete with the top e-commerce website builders, it does offer the ability to transform your website into an online store. To add a shopping cart feature, you’ll need to subscribe to the Professional plan. However, SITE123 restricts you to 500 orders per month.

Upgrading to the Gold plan removes this order limit, allowing for more growth opportunities. At this level, you unlock additional e-commerce features such as wish lists, abandoned cart reminders, and the ability to create coupons.

SITE123 provides guides to assist you in linking your preferred payment processor to your website. You can choose from a variety of popular options including Authorize.Net, Stripe, Square, PayPal, Braintree, Worldpay, and CardCom, among others.

1. Marketing

When it comes to marketing tools, comparing SITE123 to other website builders might not be fair. SITE123 does offer a feature to send marketing emails to customers, but it’s quite limited. To access this feature, you need to subscribe to the SITE123 Advanced plan.

The email tool provided is quite basic, but it includes essential features for creating a simple email marketing campaign. However, there are some notable limitations. You can’t import a list of subscribers, and there are no options to segment your mailing list.

For a very small operation, this email tool could suffice. However, if email marketing plays a significant role in your plans, I wouldn’t recommend investing in SITE123.

2. Multiple Languages

With SITE123, you have the option to offer your website in multiple languages. To access this feature, you need to subscribe to the Advanced paid plan or higher. The higher the tier plan you choose, the more languages you can publish your site in.

SITE123 simplifies the translation process by automatically translating your content using services like Google Translate and Bing Translator. Alternatively, you can choose to translate the content manually. This tool can also configure your content and site layout for right-to-left languages.

3. Reporting and Analytics

With SITE123’s free plan, you won’t have access to site statistics. To track analytics, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Professional plan. With this upgrade, you can view a variety of statistics, including:

• Site traffic
• Popular pages
• Visitor location
• Devices used
• Average time on site

While all these statistics are easily accessible by integrating Google Analytics with your SITE123 site, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to use any plugins. However, you can use plugins even with the lowest-paid plan, allowing you to integrate Google Analytics for your statistics needs.

SITE123 also offers more specific statistics, particularly for e-commerce activities. Through its mailing service, you can track insights on emails sent and opened. Additionally, you can monitor statistics related to event tickets, income from restaurant reservations, and donation activity.

These detailed statistics are only available on higher-paid plans due to their relevance to e-commerce businesses.

4. Security

SITE123 includes an SSL certificate with every website, even those using the free subdomain. While there aren’t automatic backups in the traditional sense, you can restore pages or your entire site if needed. However, it appears that SITE123 might not prioritize security as much as some other platforms. Information regarding how SITE123 protects against fraud or data loss is not readily available.

While you can restore pages in case of issues like accidental deletion or the need to revert to an older version, there doesn’t seem to be much else in terms of security features beyond the SSL certificate.

5. Support

SITE123 receives a lot of praise for its customer support, and my own experience confirmed it. Contrary to my expectations, I didn’t encounter long wait times or have to deal with artificial intelligence (AI) responses.

Here’s a breakdown of the support options I found:

• Live Chat: I appreciated the live chat support option, especially when it turned out not to be just an AI bot. It took around five minutes for an agent to respond, and they were genuinely helpful.
• Email: While not as immediate as live chat, email support is still efficient, with responses typically arriving within 24 hours.
• Support Center: The support center impressed me the most. It’s packed with articles containing helpful GIFs demonstrating how to use various features and tools.
• Phone Support: Surprisingly, SITE123 also offers phone support, although it’s not prominently advertised. You can either book a call in advance or directly call them, though the numbers provided are not toll-free.

The option for phone support was unexpected but appreciated. Being able to schedule a call with support or an account manager at your convenience is a fantastic feature.

Overall, I found that live chat and the support center were sufficient for my needs. The chat agents were always pleasant and helpful, and I never had to wait longer than five minutes for assistance.

Compare SITE123 Alternatives

SITE123 is a decent option for building websites, but it may not suit everyone’s needs. Other all-in-one website builders offer more design flexibility, a wider range of apps, or fewer restrictions. On the other hand, you could opt for a fully customized website by starting with a top web hosting provider and utilizing WordPress.

Website Builder	Pricing + Basic Plan Features
SITE123	Free Free domain for first year 10GB storage 5GB bandwidth E-commerce features Remove SITE123 ads
Hostinger	Starts at $2.99 per month Free domain and SSL AI-assisted tools Unlimited storage and bandwidth Blog Consider Hostinger if: Innovative free tools to help you build your brand and website.
SquareSpace	Starts at $16 per month Award-winning design templates Mailchimp integration Access to raw code Marketing tools 0% to 3% transaction fee Consider Squarespace if: You want a better website builder and are willing to pay extra for it.
WIX	Starts at $16 per month Free domain for one year 2GB storage Stream up to 30 minutes of video 800+ templates Consider Wix if: You need more design template options. Wix offers far more (and better) predesigned templates to get you started.

How We Reviewed SITE123?

we understand the importance of thoroughly testing products and comparing them against industry leaders. I dedicated hours to exploring SITE123’s dashboard, setup process, website builder, and features. While everyone’s idea of “easy to use” may differ, I approached this review as if I were new to website builders, comparing it to my experiences with other top site builders we’ve reviewed.

Our comprehensive overview of SITE123 aims to quickly determine if it’s the right website builder for you. We delved into specific features to provide a detailed examination, giving more weight to parameters such as features, security, support, pricing, ease of use, and improvements since our last review.

I evaluate website builders based on the following factors:

• Customization options: Can you modify the appearance of templates or add your own code?
• Ease of use: Is navigation intuitive, with built-in tools like an in-app photo editor?
• Value: Does the builder offer a free plan or trial for testing? Are the features on paid plans worth the cost?
• Security: What measures does the builder take to safeguard your site and customers’ data?
• Templates: Are the templates attractive, up-to-date, and of high quality? Are there plenty to choose from?
• Support: Is assistance readily available, whether from human agents or support center articles?
• Recent improvements: Has the builder made any recent enhancements to its offerings?