SITE123 Review (2024)Creating a Website in Only 3 Steps?

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Robert Brandl

Robert Brandl

Author

Inka Wibowo

Inka Wibowo

Researcher

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SITE123 is an editor that makes creating a website feel as easy as pie. As the name suggests, you can put together a website in three steps: choose a design, add content, and go live.

The designs are divided into general categories like business, online store, or portfolio. They then break down into more specific niches like law firms, hair salons or gardening. There’s no complicated setup process since you can do everything in your browser. Like many other website builders, it also comes with a blog and online store.

Their pricing structure is not really obvious, unfortunately. When you go to their pricing page, you might get the impression that there is only one premium plan available. In fact, there are several plans you can choose from, but you have to create a free account first. It allows you to try out everything as long as you want. In case you like their offering, you can opt for an upgrade. You’ll get a free domain the first year and the ability to create email accounts. For more details, check our pricing and table section beneath.

In our SITE123 review we’ll give you a closer look at all the specific editor details, covering its pros and cons. Let’s start digging!

Videos

  • SITE123 Editor Video
SITE123 Editor Video video

SITE123 offers a free plan. Sign up for it here.

Screenshots

SITE123 Pricing

$0

Free

Good enough to create a small website and to try out the editor.

$10.80

Basic

Shows a little SITE123 footer tag, but comes with ecommerce that can handle 10 orders/month with offline payment methods.

$16.80

Advanced

Doesn’t show any ads. Adds PayPal to ecommerce. Translation in one more language is possible.

$22.80

Professional

Ecommerce includes credit card payments. Up to three languages possible.

$28.80

Gold

Everything is included. 10 Mailboxes, unlimited orders and up to 5 languages.

Paid annual plans contain a free domain the first year and allows you to connect an existing domain. Price might decrease if you opt for a longer term.

Pros and Cons of SITE123

  • Pros
  • Cons

Pros

  • Multilingual

    There are multiple options to translate your website: via subfolder, subdomain or one individual domain per language. Even automatic translations are possible.

  • Free plan

    You can test SITE123’s free plan as long as you want and even use their support.

  • Ease of use

    It’s basically like filling in a form. Everything is predefined. Your content will be displayed correctly.

Rating Details

Ease of use Info popup

It’s not really complicated, although the editor is a little clunky. You pick an element you need, for example, a text section with a picture, and start editing it. You can check the result in a preview mode for desktops, tablets and mobile phones.

Choice and flexibility of design (templates) Info popup

Best alternative: Wix

Their responsive designs look pretty good, but don’t offer a lot of creative freedom. Every section has a predefined structure. This means you can’t move pictures, headlines or videos around as you want. What you can do is move entire sections. One thing we liked is that there are a ton of prebuilt content sections for any type of purpose (events, testimonials, FAQ’s, timelines, etc.). All designs are mobile responsive.

Advertisement-free Info popup

Depending on your plan, you’ll see a floating banner and/ or footer tag. The Professional plan or higher is required to remove any kind of SITE123 ads.

Languages Info popup

Best alternative: Hostinger Website Builder

Definitely a highlight! Up to 5 languages can be added very easily via subfolder, subdomain or individual domain names. For this to work, you’ll need a paid plan, though. Choose the language you want to add from a menu, and the system will automatically create a translation. It can also be edited manually, of course, and t worked also pretty well for the ecommerce checkout. SITE123 itself is available in more than 20 languages.

Your own domain name (e.g. .com or .net) Info popup

The paid plan contains a free domain the first year. If you already have a domain, you can connect it with SITE123 in their paid plans. Additionally, you’ll get up to 10 email accounts if you pick a premium plan.

Depth of navigation Info popup

Even though you can decide whether the links in your menu should open in a new page or scroll down on the same page, you can only add one level. Good enough for very small sites, but not suitable for more complex website structures.

Widgets (small tools to add extra functionality) Info popup

Through the App Market you can add more features to your website. There aren’t too many apps, but you can add custom HTML snippets to your sites and integrate external widgets. Keep in mind that this feature is not available on the free plan.

Mobile App Info popup

  • iOS
  • Android

Site123 doesn’t offer a dedicated mobile app, but the editor works reasonably well on mobile devices. You can edit pretty much all the sections on your website in a mobile-optimized view.

E-Commerce Info popup

The paid plan contains an online store to sell physical and digital goods. Depending on your plan, payment options are credit card, PayPal and offline payment. Also, the higher your plan, the more you can sell (as the number of orders is limited in lower plans). SITE123 doesn’t charge you an additional sales fee. They even feature cart abandonment emails to lure your customers back into your store.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Info popup

Basic stuff like adding an SEO title and description isn’t a problem. For beginners, there’s the SEO Advisor, which scans the site for potential SEO improvements. The URL structure for multilingual websites could be better. They contain unnecessary characters, such as ../t-en-us/ for United States English. We recommend choosing their subdomain option.

Blog

It’s possible to add a blog to your website. There are a few different layouts to choose from and the editor is quite flexible, letting you add elements like custom code and tables easily. You can also enable comments and schedule posts. While you can add headings, unfortunately it’s not possible to add subheadings (H3s, H4s etc.), which is not ideal for SEO.

Visitor statistics Info popup

There is an internal statistics tool, giving you a basic traffic overview including your most popular content. Additionally, you can also connect Google Analytics with your website.

Contact form

SITE123 offers different contact form layouts. It’s also possible to add new fields if you need more customization.

Password protection & member areas Info popup

You can set up a specific password and a members area with personal logins. Pictures or videos aren’t protected if someone has the direct link.

Newsletter tool Info popup

A simple newsletter tool is integrated. You can send up to 10.000 messages per month to your subscribers with the highest plan.

Add HTML code Info popup

It’s possible to add an external code as long as it doesn’t change the structure of the website.

Storage space

500+

A premium plan will give you up to 270 GB of storage.

Backups & Restore Info popup

There is an option to restore to the last published version of the website.

Support

  • FAQ
  • Chat
  • Email
  • Telephone

If you run into an issue, you can get in touch with SITE123’s support directly via live chat. They answered our questions quickly. Their FAQ contains videos that explain typical functions of the website builder. Amazingly, you can use their support also on the free plan.

The support is available 24/7 in multiple different languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and more).

Fun Factor Info popup

If you don’t have a pixel-perfect layout in mind, SITE123 is a website builder that makes putting a website together really easy.

Overall Rating

3.3

SITE123 is a good solution for simple projects like small portfolios and business websites. As long as you don’t need to create a complex website, it’s a decent enough solution. A great plus is the multilingual feature and their live chat support. It is a bit pricey for what it is.

SITE123 Review: Conclusion

It has become quite hard nowadays to come up with a groundbreaking idea that makes creating a website even easier than it already has been. Therefore, we find it quite bold of SITE123 to compete with industry heavyweights like Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy. We also find it interesting that the relatively young company, founded in 2016, is not following the recent trend of so-called AI website builders.

What they offer is a decent classic website builder that is quite similar to GoDaddy’s editor. You won’t face a lot of surprises since everything is pretty much self-explanatory. But if you do have a question, their live chat support can help you.

SITE123’s multi-language management is a nice feature. You’d expect that this is a standard feature, but many website builders really struggle here. SITE123 created a user-friendly solution that will save you a lot of headaches. Our only complaint here is that you have to translate everything. There are cases when you don’t want that behavior.

As long as you don’t have a pixel-perfect layout in mind that needs any fancy features, you’ll be quite happy with the editor. It’s absolutely meant for small websites, because your navigation menu is too limited. It’s not possible to add some subcategories.

Overall, if you’re looking for a straightforward solution, you can’t go wrong by testing their free editor. The different paid plans will unlock further features.

Start a free website with SITE123 here.

SITE123 Example Sites

site123 example chocolate bunny events

Chocolate Bunny Events

This New Orleans-based event planning website is taking advantage of Site123's custom forms and gallery features.

site123 example 1

Better Living Nutrition

This Australia-based nutrition coach offers consultations and trainings via her Site123 website.

site123 example 3

Photography

site123 example 2

Indian Cuisine

FAQ

Banner ads and affiliate links are possible. You can also integrate Google Adsense, for example.

Before signing up, we recommend to start with the free plan. You will find the settings in your dashboard under “Billing & Products”.

SITE123 Alternatives

The authors

Learn more about us

Robert Brandl

Founder and CEO

Hi, my name is Robert Brandl! I used to work in a digital marketing agency where I managed website and email marketing projects. To optimize my client's campaigns, I always had to find the optimal web tools. Tooltester offers this knowledge to you, hopefully saving you endless hours of research.

Inka Wibowo

Content Manager

Hi, I'm Inka! I started using website builders and content management systems over 10 years ago, when I managed websites for clients in my first marketing role. Since then, I've worked on hundreds of web and digital projects. Now, at Tooltester, I'm happy to be able to use my experience to help users like you find the right website builder for your needs.

Learn more about us

We keep our content up to date

02 Sep 2022 - Changes to blog, site backups, and support languages.
25 Aug 2022 - Example added.
17 Dec 2021 - Mobile app rating added.
07 Oct 2021 – General updates, adding HTML code is now possible but requires a paid plan.
04 Sep 2020 – A couple of feature updates for SEO and ecommerce
18 Nov 2019 – Updates in SEO, statistics and password protection
05 Nov 2018 – Initial review of SITE123

THE BEHIND THE SCENES OF THIS REVIEW

This article has been written and researched following a precise methodology.

Our methodology

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