SITE123 Detailed Review – The Best Website Builder For Non-Techies
Create A Small Business Website Without Learning To Code
SITE123 Detailed Review – The Best Website Builder For Non-Techies
Unsurprisingly, SITE123 is built for individuals and businesses needing a basic website that runs lightning-fast with minimal fuss.
SITE123 asks you a couple of questions — like the type of website you want and what the name of the site is — before creating a bespoke template that has all the features you need. Neat, right?
It may not be the best for complex or powerful websites, but you'll struggle to find a better website builder for site speed.
SITE123 Overview
The ways we create websites are constantly evolving. You needed to code your entire website from scratch a few years back.
Then came the birth of website builders, giving everyday folk access to website creation through drag-and-drop tools. Thanks to a few clever questions, you can even use ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) platforms to build your website.
Our research found that Site123 scores the highest in the value-for-money category! The first thing to note when looking at Site123's pricing plans is that the amount you pay differs depending on how long you sign up with them.
Site123 Pros
- Helpful live chat feature.
- Templates are fully mobile & tablet responsive.
- Fantastic site speed capabilities.
Site123 Cons
- Some features lack depth and real quality.
- Lacks e-commerce tools.
- Restrictive creative flexibility & lowest design score.
Who Should Use SITE123?
SITE123 Detailed Review – The Best Website Builder For Non-Techies
Blogging
Site123 has some essential features to help you create a blog. Analytics, social bookmarking, a search feature, and an RSS feed make it a solid choice to be the home of your posts.
It doesn't have everything, though.
- If displaying categories, archiving, and incorporating a comments section are important to your blog, then Site123 won't be able to help you.
- WordPress is your answer if you want a website just to blog—it's designed for that.
- If blogging is something you'd like your website to be able to do and Site123 doesn't have the features you need, your best bet is to check out either Squarespace or Wix.
Business
How good Site123 is for business and/or e-commerce depends on your needs.
It's easy to build a simple, clean-looking business site that shows what your company is all about. Beyond that, you'll struggle to create something more substantial.
You can use CTAs (Calls to Action), and Site123 has email marketing capabilities, but that's about as far as it goes. Site123 has also seen a 12% decrease in overall score performance over the past 24 months, showing little improvement to the platform.
While Site123 may suit a small business purely promoting online, we don't recommend it for selling. This is because it lacks real financial e-commerce tools — such as automatic invoicing and payment tracking — making it difficult to sell products on a large scale.
Site123 is a good option for basic business sites and even those wanting to sell a few products. If you want something more substantial, you'll want a more powerful solution like Shopify or BigCommerce.
Personal
This is where Site123 comes into its own. It's good value for money, easy to use, and has great support (but we'll get into that more in the next section).
If you lack confidence in your technical abilities and need help, Site123 is a great choice.
If your website is for an online CV, Site123 is a good builder for advertising your skills. Its templates come with useful features based on what your website is for.
Scalability
Site123 has blogging features, mobile responsive templates, and great help and support features to help you grow. It has the best site speed of any other builder we've tested, which is important when getting more visitors to your site. The less it lags, the more chance browsers will stay on your website.
However, many of its features have limited capabilities, meaning it's not the website builder to choose if you're a business aiming to become a big player.
Personal sites — great. Small business — not bad. Medium to big businesses looking for a powerful website builder to scale up with — not the best choice.
If you want a website that grows with your business, Shopify or BigCommerce are two platforms designed solely for selling online. They will help you outperform your competitors!
How to Create a Website with SITE123
Create A Small Business Website Without Learning To Code
SITE123 makes it easy for you to build a website. No coding or design skills are needed.
This tutorial will show you how to start your website quickly and easily.
Tools and Features
SITE123 Detailed Review – The Best Website Builder For Non-Techies
Ease of Use
SITE123 asks you a couple of questions and then generates a template with relevant features based on the information you provide.
Site123's main strength is its website editor, which is easy enough for anyone to use, yet it includes all the functionality most small business owners want. Your Site123 website will never significantly break the mold, but the template designs, layouts, and color schemes are well-chosen, and there's a surprising amount of power in the tools and plugins that you can use.
You can choose between a single-page and a multi-page website. You can add, edit, remove sections, create submenus, and preview how it looks on tablet and mobile devices.
Help & Support
If building a website was like learning to ride a bike, Site123 would support you until your site is ready to go live.
Site123 offers help via email, social media, and its knowledge base. What shines through, though, is its live chat support.
Live chat is available 24/7 and based on the same page as the one you're editing on, so you can receive fast, insightful responses without leaving the page.
Social Media Integration
Site123 allows you to link out to 25 different social media platforms.
If you plan on social media playing a big role in your site, Site123 isn't right.
Something like Wix is far better for integrating social media and your website.
Analytics
Analytics is an important aspect of any site. Whether you want to track a user's time on one of your pages or just how many views your latest blog post has, it's a great way to stay on top of things.
Some website builders offer analytics, but Site123 supplies this via Google Analytics.
The upside is that Google Analytics is a tried and trusted software that shows accurate, immediate results.
SEO & Marketing
Site123 offers some core SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools to make sure your website has the chance to rank as high as possible on search engines such as Google.
Things like editing the meta title and description (the text that appears on Google's search page), customizable URLs, and adding alt text to images so search engines can identify what they are all help.
Don't worry if that sounds complicated; Site123 has guides on how to do it all.
Site123 doesn't offer support with which keywords to use or any SEO-specific apps. So, to get the most out of your site, you will need some form of pre-existing SEO knowledge.
Domains
You can connect a domain free for the first year on any of Site123's premium plans, with the annual renewal cost billed at $13 afterward.
There are over 130 domain extensions to choose from, meaning you can tailor your domain to your industry — for example, you could pick the domain extension .store instead of .com.
Site123 has a domain search tool to make finding your perfect domain quick and easy.
If you own a domain, you can direct it to your website after upgrading to Site123's premium plans by changing the domain's DNS (Domain Name System) settings.
This way, the domain will still be hosted by your current host, so you can continue to renew and manage it there, and it will simply be directed to your website.
If you are unsure how to change the DNS settings, Site123 can also help you.
Security
SITE123 protects your website free of charge through a secure SSL (Site Socket Layer) encryption protocol.
That sounds like a load of techie jargon, right? Essentially, it's a technology that makes your website confidential. Your data is protected by the most modern security procedures.
This is all done by Site123 for you in real-time, 24 hours a day, so you never have to worry about the security of your Site123 website.
Backups & Restores
No one wants their website to crash, but knowing that everything you have is backed up is always reassuring.
Site123's handy autosave feature ensures you'll never need to worry about losing all your site's content.
All your content can be restored to the last autosave in a matter of clicks, ensuring your website performs at a high level and your heart rate stays low.
SITE123 Plans & Pricing
Create A Small Business Website Without Learning To Code
Our research found that Site123 scores the highest in the value-for-money category! The first thing to note when looking at Site123's pricing plans is that the amount you pay differs depending on how long you sign up with them.
There are four time periods: 3 months, yearly, monthly, and a 10-year price plan:
- Free plan — $0
- Basic plan — $12.80/ month (paid yearly) or $19/month (minimum 3 months)
- Advanced plan — $19.80/ month (paid yearly) or $28/month (minimum 3 months)
- Professional plan — $28.80/ month (paid yearly) or $39/month (minimum 3 months)
- 10-Year plan — $5/month
As expected, the longer you sign up, the cheaper your monthly bill is. Think of it as a loyalty discount.
What do you get for your money?
Well, for starters, Site123 offers a free plan. This allows you to build and publish as many websites as you want, with 500MB storage and 1GB bandwidth. Not bad.
The problems with this are that 500MB is too small if you want videos on your site, and the small bandwidth can limit your content and traffic.
In addition, your website will be stamped with Site123 branding, both in your subdomain and in the footer of all its pages.
Investing in a premium plan is smart if you want your website to be taken seriously. Which plan you choose depends on your needs.
Each plan allows for more storage space and bandwidth. This means the higher plans are better suited if you have a lot of media to put on your site (if you are a photographer, for example) or expect a lot of traffic.
The same goes for e-commerce. It would be great to sell a couple of items a month on the side. But if you're serious about selling online, you'll get better value for money with Wix or Square Online.
FAQs about SITE123
SITE123 Detailed Review – The Best Website Builder For Non-Techies
You'll discover some frequently asked questions about the SITE123 builder below.
What's the best thing about Site123?
The help and support are good, but hands down, the website speed you'll get is the best thing about Site123. You'll never get stuck doing anything for more than a few minutes with Site123's friendly and useful live chat, which is available 24/7. The response time is quick, and the answers you receive are always clear and concise.
Plus, you'll have fast site speeds, leading to visitors seeing your website without glitches and giving the Google algorithm a nice thumbs-up!
Why should I pick Site123 over another website builder?
If you need a website up fast but don't have any coding knowledge or how to create a website in general, then Site123 is a great choice.
Its use of design assistance — where Site123 asks you a couple of questions about what type of website you're after and then generates a template with the relevant features — is an incredibly intuitive and time-saving option.
What does the future look like for Site123?
In a phrase, pretty good! Site123 is slowly improving (although that's halted in the last 24 months). While it is gradually enhancing its product, don't expect to have your socks blown off by Site123.
If you sign up for one of Site123's plans, you'll receive regular emails about all the new features it's developing and their improvements to old ones—so watch this space.
Site123 is a website builder that will get the job done, and you can be confident in the platform moving forward if you opt to use it. But if you want our opinion on the top choices for the best website builder, then look at our research.
Quick Links
SITE123 Detailed Review – The Best Website Builder For Non-Techies
We hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, you might want to check out these other resources:
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SITE123 Detailed Review Summary
In short, SITE123 is all about simplicity!
The website builder is easy to use thanks to its design-assisted approach, making creating a website a breeze. The templates are mobile responsive and offer both blogging and e-commerce functionality.
Because so much is taken care of for you, it can be difficult to customize or build a complex site with many specific requirements.
SITE123's other shortcoming lies in the quality of its features.
They provide some good help and support services, scoring 3.8/5. Their live chat is the absolute best we've used. We also received glowing references from those we tested it with.
However, if you're a medium—to large company hoping to scale up your business quickly, it's best to look elsewhere.
SITE123 is best suited to personal websites or small businesses that want a place online to showcase their company info and contact details.
