Want to build a robust website with a small budget? Try website builders. They are a great way to create a website for free or low cost and within only a few minutes to hours, depending on your chosen platform.
One of the best things about using a website builder is that you can make any changes anytime without relying on the developer.
When choosing a website builder, you must consider its ease of use, customization options, mobile responsiveness, and customer support. Hands-down customer support is critical when deciding which site-building tool you should pick. If your website faces a problem in the future, you will need immediate help to maintain traffic retention.
With numerous options on the internet, it can be confusing to determine which website builder to go for. To simplify your decision-making process, we’ve reviewed one of the popular website builders, Strikingly. Below we will discuss its features, pros, cons, and if it’s better than WordPress to help you determine whether it will be a good fit for you.
An Overview of Strikingly
Strikingly is a website builder that allows you to create a responsive website using its editable templates. Strikingly offers more than 200 ready-to-use templates, which you can edit either in mobile mode, to ensure your site’s responsive design, or in desktop mode.
What about the different kinds of websites? Do they have templates for each category? Yes. Even though all the templates can be used to create any type of website by adding or removing sections, there are templates dedicated to a specific category. For example, the Sleek template is best for freelancers or anyone wanting to build their portfolio website. And the Pawfect Food template is excellent for startups because it already has store, contact, and shopping cart sections.
Moreover, you can change your website’s template at any time. Even if you’ve already launched your website, you can swap its template without losing previous content.
If you don’t want to use the premade templates, you can go for a blank page and design your website using custom and ready-to-use sections.
Major Features of Strikingly
A great website builder offers features to help you easily build a website that markets itself. Let’s see if Strikingly features match that criteria.
1. Robust Website Editor
Strikingly offers a robust yet intuitive website editor. Many site builders’ editors appear intimidating with all the complex controls and features, but that isn’t the case with Strikingly. Its site editor offers outstanding customization options that are ridiculously easy to use. For instance, adding an essential section, such as a blog, to your site only needs two steps. Or replacing the background is a child’s play. You just have to click the “Background” button on the right corner of any section and upload the pictures or videos.
2. E-commerce Store
Strikingly offers numerous useful features for its e-commerce store users. Before we dig into those features, let’s see how you can add the Simple Store to your Strikingly website.
- Sign up and go to the Dashboard.
- Click on the “Create new site button.”
- You will be redirected to the templates section, where you can choose a template that you like.
- Once you’ve selected the template and are in the site editor, tap “Add a new section.”
- Click Simple Store, and you’re done.
One of the benefits of the Strikingly store is that you can manage your online shop orders from your phone wherever you are.
Now let’s dive into the list of Simple Store features.
- You can display and sell more than 500 products.
- Accept payments through different gateways creating a good customer experience.
- Add product filters.
- Categorize products.
- Accept payments in over 135 currencies.
- Set different prices for different regions of China, the USA, and Canada.
- Custom checkout forms.
- Store coupons.
- Import products to your store from a CSV file. It will ease the process of uploading or making changes to your online shop.
One of the most critical Simple Store features is product reviews. Strikingly allows you to showcase your customer reviews in your Simple Store. Consumer feedback can be great for displaying your brand’s authenticity, earning your potential users’ trust, and learning about your customers’ needs.
3. Simple Blog
Strikingly offers a Simple Blog with extensive features. Like the Simple Store, you can add the blog as a section to your website. Apart from the excellent content, there are a few things you need to add to your blog to get reader retention. Let’s see what Strikingly has in store to make your blog stand out to your target audience.
- Accelerated Mobile Pages to let specific pages load super quickly on mobile devices.
- RSS feed.
- Blog post categorization.
- Custom code for header and footers.
- Allows you to enable blog post comments to engage with your readers.
- Blog email subscription. It allows you to send an email to your readers to notify them about your latest posts.
Strikingly also allows you to set up Google Analytics for your blog to study how readers interact with your website. This will also tell you what kind of content is popular amongst your readers, helping you create blog posts on in-demand topics.
4. Social Media Integration
Strikingly offers multiple ways to integrate social media into your website.
- Social Media Icons in Footer
You can add social media links to your site’s footer. You get two options: “Share” and “Links.” If you go to share, you can display social media platforms’ icons where your visitors can share your website. And if you choose links, you can embed your social media page links to your website.
- Social Feed
Let’s look at another way of integrating social media into your website: a social feed. It is an excellent way of adding dynamic content to your website without working much. The social feed displays your latest Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter posts on your website.
5. SEO Options
Strikingly has multiple options to optimize your website for search engines and a whole bunch of articles guiding beginners to SEO. Those SEO options include:
- Writing meta descriptions for your web pages. It is a short description of what users will find on your web page.
- Adding alt text for your web page images. An alt text appears when the picture fails to load for some reason. It’s also useful for screen readers. You can add relevant keywords into your image’s alt text wherever possible.
- Customizing blog post URL. You can add relevant keywords to your URL to attract a larger audience.
6. Email Marketing Service
Sending a welcome email to your new subscribers will initially enable you to build a connection and encourage the reader to complete the call-to-action task.
Strikingly email marketing services allow its VIP and Audience plan users to send emails to up to 2000 contacts per month. And if you need to send emails to more people, you can contact Strikingly. If you’re not on any of those plans, you can send the newsletter to up to 100 contacts per month.
The contacts that will receive newsletters from you can either be uploaded manually or collected from email sign-up bars, online store checkout forms, contact forms, etc. When sending emails, you can filter the recipients based on the site that collected the contacts and sources (sign-up bars, contact forms, etc.).
7. Custom Domain
Strikingly offers two ways to get a custom domain for your website.
a. Register a new one with Strikingly starting from $24.95 per year.
b. Transfer the domain to your Strikingly website purchased from the third-party website.
If you haven’t yet purchased a domain, we recommend registering one with Strikingly because they’re giving it free for one year on buying any of their paid plans.
Pros of Strikingly
You need a reason to invest your time and effort in building a website with Strikingly.
If you’re thinking, “what benefits do I get using Strikingly?”
Here is the answer to your question.
1. Ridiculously Easy-to-use
Strikingly is known for its ease of use. That means everything about it, such as designing your site and adding features, only takes a few clicks. From what we found, it is effortless to use.
Strikingly is so easy to use that even a blind man can build a website with it. We’re not exaggerating. Walter a blind marketing executive, built his site with Strikingly using his iPad’s voice feature.
The intuitive site editor and its controls are straightforward, allowing beginners to edit their websites with little to no assistance. And to add features, the ones discussed above and more, you only have to tick some checkboxes or press a few buttons. Well, that’s the case with almost every feature.
2. Free Hosting
While many platforms may charge for their hosting web service, with Strikingly it is entirely free.
3. Free SSL Certificate
Strikingly acknowledges the sheer importance of an SSL certificate; that’s why all its websites (free and premium) come with a pre-installed SSL certificate without an additional cost.
4. Numerous Marketing Tools on One Platform
You can send newsletters through the email marketing service and market your site on social media by embedding the sharable icons in your website’s footer, connecting a custom domain, and implementing multiple strategies to optimize your website for search engines.
Moreover, Strikingly lets you display a customized pop-up on your website that is excellent for marketing. You can announce an event, collect email addresses to send newsletters to, advertise coupons, and much more using website pop-ups.
Strikingly also allows you to create a custom email address. A personalized email address like, “name@yourdomain.com” will make your newsletters look more professional and elevate your email marketing campaign.
5. Free Forever Plan
Strikingly offers a free forever plan to create unlimited free websites. This free website plan is perfect for you if you want to test Strikingly products or your business is on a tight budget. Later, if you need premium features, you can upgrade to paid plans anytime.
6. Manage Your Store Orders from Your Phone
Every time you want to manage your online store orders, you can do it on the go using Strikingly mobile application.
7. Cost-effective for Creating Multiple Websites
Other website builders’ pricing may look less expensive than Strikingly, but they’re not. Strikingly plans cover more than one website, while other platforms charge separately for each website. For example, Strikingly Pro plan lets you create 3 Pro sites for only $192 per year.
Cons of Strikingly
We have noticed some gaps in Strikingly that need work. We’ve listed those to help you figure out if Strikingly will suit your needs.
1. Not the Best Choice to Build a Free Online Store
Strikingly allows its free users to sell only one product in their online store, and with the Limited plan (costs $12/month when billed monthly), users can only sell five. Therefore, if you want to display more than one product, you must purchase a premium plan.
2. Fewer Options for Making a Mobile Site
While it is true that all the Strikingly templates are mobile responsive, you may want a completely different layout for the mobile version of your website. But Strikingly doesn’t offer more than a few mobile-action buttons for that.
Therefore, if you want a different design or layout for your mobile website, you can either create two websites, one for desktop and the other for mobile, or switch to code or any other website builder.
WordPress Vs. Strikingly
While WordPress is known for its unique features and plugins for creating stunning websites, Strikingly is famous for its ease of use and exceptional customer support.
WordPress can be a great choice if you’re looking for countless features for your website. You can get those and other unique features through WordPress plugins. Strikingly may not offer as many features as WordPress, but it is beginner-friendly. WordPress plugins can be complex to use if you’re a beginner.
Let’s talk about the Dashboard. WordPress’s Dashboard has numerous options that may scare away beginners. But Strikingly Dashboard is set up keeping beginners in mind.
Again WordPress may offer more dashboard features than Strikingly, but its countless options can leave beginners confused at the very beginning.
Now, let’s take a glance at the prices. Both Strikingly and WordPress offer free plans with limited features.
WordPress Plans Pricing
- Personal – $9
- Premium – $18
- Business – $40
- E-commerce – $70
Strikingly Plans Pricing
- Limited – $12
- Pro – $20
- VIP – $59
The prices for both platforms are mentioned on monthly billing bases. And for both platforms, prices go down as you extend the period of your plans.
In conclusion, Strikingly is the better option if you’re a beginner and don’t want to get tangled in the tech-stuff. And WordPress will be your ideal platform if you want extensive customization options and are good at handling complicated plugins and themes.
Customer Support
One of the reasons why its users love Strikingly is because of the excellent customer support. Strikingly offers 24/7 customer support through email, live chat, and a knowledge base.
The maximum response time for email is 15 minutes, and 20 seconds for live chat. Whenever you’re stuck in trouble, you can hit up Strikingly happiness officers or go to their Knowledge base, which is packed with articles dedicated to the website-building process.
Conclusion
Strikingly is excellent for everyone wanting to build a website without shedding blood, sweat, and tears and spending thousands of dollars for a coded website. Its free range of more than 200 mobile responsive templates makes it easy for users to design their websites.
Strikingly significant features are the intuitive website editor, custom domain, email marketing service, Search engine optimization options, social media integration, Simple Blog, and a Simple Store.
The benefits of Strikingly will answer your question about why you should use it. You will get free hosting, an SSL certificate, and multiple marketing tools on one platform. Moreover, you can manage your store orders from your phone on the go and build unlimited free websites using Strikingly Free Forever Plan.
We have shared everything you need to know about Strikingly before using it. Now the ball is in your court. Before hopping on to this platform, see if it fulfills your requirements. If it does, begin with your website-building process today; break a leg!