SITE123 is a robust, feature-rich website builder designed for small and medium-sized businesses as well as for private users like bloggers and individual content creators.
The web-based platform specifically caters to users with no website design and development experience or coding knowledge, enabling non-technical users to create their own website in as easy as, well, 1-2-3.
SITE123 features a wide variety of ready-made templates and layouts for you to choose from through its advanced wizard. The platform will assist you throughout the design and setup process of your very own website.
Boasting a user-friendly system for building websites, SITE123 surprisingly does not come with a drag-and-drop function, which is rather common in most software solutions in its category.
The cloud-based website builder instead focuses on allowing users to upload their own content immediately and giving them the ability to choose from various mock-ups for each individual tool.
SITE123 helps to set up not only attractive professional-looking websites but also websites that are SEO-friendly as well.
This means search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! can efficiently index your pages without any additional coding or advanced optimization techniques on your part.
Websites created with SITE123 are very responsive, automatically adjusting to any device or any screen size, whether your pages are viewed on a desktop computer or on a smartphone and tablet.
Additionally, SITE123 also features an online store builder designed for those who wish to transform their standard website into an e-commerce site so they can start selling products and services and processing payments and other sales transactions.
SITE123 Features
SITE123 is a website builder that puts special emphasis on the fundamentals of web design and development.
This means you don’t get a myriad of fancy components and features, you’re instead provided with the basic tools and capabilities you need to easily build a fully functioning, well-optimized and professional-looking website.
The features of using SITE123 include:
Blogging platform
This SITE123 feature allows you to create an SEO-friendly professional-looking personal blog site. The cloud-based software solution provides an excellent blog hosting platform for all sorts of bloggers and online influencers.
You will be given the tools and resources you require in order to create more engaging and appealing blogs.
For instance, if you are a professional travel blogger, SITE123’s blogging platform has a variety of travel blog templates you can readily use.
Responsive website layouts
If your goal is to have a professional website, be it a personal blog or an e-commerce site, one of the most crucial aspects of a good, well-designed website is its responsiveness.
In addition to its beautiful layout and overall design, it has to be responsive and adaptable to a wide variety of platforms, devices and screen sizes.
The responsive web design templates will help make sure your pages appear clean and easy to navigate using smartphones and other mobile devices.
SEO tools
Search engine optimization or SEO is a crucial part of web design and development. The process is important because it helps to make your website more readable by search engines and bring in more traffic.
With SITE123, you will have access to their free SEO tools so you can design and set up a search engine optimized personal blog or e-commerce website.
SITE123’s SEO features include meta tags, sitemap, a 301 redirect tool and webmaster tools. Meta tags are a vital component of your website SEO as they provide defining characteristics that make it easier for search engines like Google to identify your pages and your website as a whole.
The sitemap is a file that is embedded or stored with your web page in SITE123’s web hosts.
When search engines crawl the web for specific content, your sitemap file provides these search engines the data they need concerning your website content.
E-commerce solution
SITE123’s e-commerce solution allows you to manage your own online store with relative ease and efficiency.
The platform’s e-commerce feature gives users the ability to sell their products and/or services online with the appropriate tools to help them set up the right e-commerce website with versatile functionalities and attractive designs.
Integration with various payment gateways
SITE123’s payment gateway integration feature supports three main credit card processors: 2Checkout, Braintree and Stripe, all of which are major industry standards.
When setting up your online business website, you will have the option to integrate any of the three available payment gateway options so you can start accepting credit and debit card payments for your products and/or services.
SITE123 Benefits
While SITE123 features a user-friendly website builder, it’s not the only thing that is beneficial for the majority of its users.
When it comes to web design and setting up a personal blog or e-commerce website, the cloud-based solution offers quite a few benefits besides ease-of-use. These include:
Total web support
SITE123 provides complete website support by offering free hosting and a free website domain to premium plan subscribers. With a premium plan, you will receive a free domain registration among other useful perks of course.
The website builder’s free hosting service is housed on a secure Content Distribution Network (CDN), which ensures speed and functionality for your website.
The service also utilizes free built-in SSL/HTTPS encryption to protect your personal blog or e-commerce website from cyber attacks and other online threats.
Responsive website design
As mentioned many times in this review, SITE123 boasts a highly responsive website design, which greatly enhances the viewing and browsing experience of website visitors, regardless of what kind of device they are using to access your website.
Part of its optimization process is making sure the pages adjust seamlessly to fit any screen size or resolution for optimal viewing experience.
When you’re in the process of designing your website, SITE123’s website builder has a preview button available, which shows you exactly how your pages would appear on different screens, be it on a desktop/laptop computer, a tablet or a smartphone.
A diverse range of tools
SITE123 offers a widely diverse set of tools for you to use when you’re designing and setting up your website.
The cloud-based solution has various SEO tools that allow you to set 301 redirects and meta tags for your pages, see your sitemap and leverage website connections.
SITE123 also features a multi-lingual platform to address the needs of global businesses and organizations in dealing with local languages.
Moreover, the various website design tools offered by SITE123 are complemented by extensive image galleries, custom form builder, free image and icons library and a built-in logo resize.
Third-party plugins and integration
SITE123 has an impressive app market that is filled with an assortment of applications and systems you are able to integrate with seamlessly.
For example, its social media integration allows you to connect your business website or personal blog to various social media networks.
The website builder also supports third-party plugins like analytics, marketing, live chat and webmaster tools.
Its Google Map integration, for example, allows you to embed the tool into your homepage so visitors will have a visual representation of your business’ geographical location.
SITE123 Pricing
SITE123 offers a free version and a premium package for interested parties. The free version comes with up to 500 MB of storage capacity, 1 GB of bandwidth and a sub-domain.
The premium plan starts at $5.80 per month. For that price, you get a free domain that’s good for one year, up to 10 GB of storage, 5 GB of bandwidth, no more SITE123 floating tag, e-commerce option and the ability to connect your domain.
The premium plan also comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Conclusion
SITE123, as the name suggests, is a basic user-friendly website builder that’s packed with more features and tools than you would normally expect from a cloud-based solution marketed as a simplistic platform.
It easily fulfills its main mission, providing non-technical users the ability to create a responsive, SEO-driven and professional-looking website without dealing with the hassles and difficulties of coding.