Websitebuilder.com

Author: Jenna Vasquez

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The Good

• Membership plans
• Affordable
• Free features

There are four different membership plans offered on websitebuilder, which allows the customer to control the type of experience they have. Each plan builds upon the previous and adds more features for the customer. The lowest plan, personal, offers free domain name, free hosting and free ad credits. The highest plan, eCommerce, offers those features plus SEO/marketing help, mobile sites, email assist, priority support, and ecommerce features. This wide range of plans makes it easy for customers to find exactly what they are looking for. The most popular plan is the Premium plan, which is the middle-ground plan that offers most features but not the most exclusive. All of their prices are incredibly affordable, but this package is an especially good price for the features that are offered with it. The entire list of services and products offered on websitebuilder are very affordable for a small business' budget. The main aspect of their services that stand out (in regards to prices) compared to other companies out there is the free design services. It costs the customer nothing to build a website using one of the 10,000 pre-designed templates. They then can customize that template to their business' needs without any added cost. The only fee the customer is responsible to pay is the monthly maintenance fee. Even with the highest package, that monthly fee is less than $20. Contrast these prices with other sites aimed to offer similar services and these prices are extremely low. These prices are especially helpful for those starting blogs and hobby websites since they don't have a major budget dedicated to improving their online presence. Along with free design elements, websitebuilder also offers their customers several other free features. One of those very important features is a free domain name. Many other companies charge to secure a domain name that will generate a lot of traffic and accurately describe the business. This feature combined with free professional email help, free hosting, and others make websitebuilder stand out.

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The Bad

• Hands off approach
• No analytics or reporting

This company has created a system that is very do-it-yourself and easy to use. But for those customers who might need a little more help and guidance there are not many ways for them to get that help. There are no design specialists who can build an entirely original, custom design for the client's site. While the thousands of templates that are available to chose from offer some customizing abilities, they do have limitations. While they do have a FAQ page that can answer many of the technical questions that would pop up during the building process, the design questions are somewhat limited and basic. There are no tutorials on how to take advantage of certain features or how to have more success in the business ventures connected to the website. The specialists might have plenty of knowledge on these subjects but it is not readily available to the client. If the customer has any questions (design related or not) that are not answered on the FAQ page, their only option to contact a support team member is to send an email. The do-it-yourself experience that is created through the website building process on website builder lends itself to fit better with smaller business and hobby websites rather than major commerce entities. The commerce features that are offered to the highest paying members are not as complete compared to other website building companies. For example, there are no analytics and reporting features available to keep track of trends to see what is working and what is not. For some package members there are basic SEO tools available to use, but these tools may not be as in-depth as there are not dedicated account managers available to help make sure these marketing tools are as effective as possible.

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The Bottom Line

A customer with a limited budget will find websitebuilder to be an ideal fit for their needs. Their low prices combined with the services offered allow customers to build an attractive, functioning website to fit their business' needs.