Website.com

Website.com offers hundreds of impressive and modern design templates that span over 10 main categories. Once you choose the relevant category, you will be presented with a selection of high quality template options for each sub-category.

Website.com lets you see a full preview of the template before selecting it or even committing. You can play around with the functionality of the template, click on pages and buttons, navigate all over the preview site, and more. This allows you to choose a template with more confidence.

All Website.com's templates are fully-customizable. Although you do not have access to the template's HTML or CSS codes, you can customize the template's color scheme, background image and color, font and text styles. For example, Website.com offers an extensive collection of pre-designed color schemes that you can simply click and apply to your entire website. Each color scheme can be further customized – you can change any color on the palette – allowing you to easily transform a template to match your business' brand.

Font-wise, Website.com offers all the standard web-safe fonts as well as a selection of Google Web Fonts.

When using the Website.com editor, you will notice that there is almost no limitations on where you can drag and drop elements. Another website editor that allows this is Wix. While you are allowed to place elements literally anywhere on your webpage, one shortcoming of this model is when you should decide to switch templates during the design process – any content you have added to your design will not be transferred over.

Another drawback is Website.com's templates are not responsive in the true sense. However, all templates are mobile-ready and fully-compatible with mobile and handheld devices. This means you will have a mobile-version of your website and you can use the built-in mobile editor to customize your mobile website.

If you are subscribed to the Website.com Business or eCommerce plan and are not sure where to begin with your website, there is an add-on Jumpstart Web Design Service , a custom website design service that you can add to your plan for $10. Unfortunately, this offer is only available to the Business or eCommerce plan subscribers. SiteBuilder.com and WebsiteBuilder.com also offers similar custom design service, but they are much more expensive – at $249 and upwards. Website.com's custom design service is definitely much more affordable.

Website.com's interface is very similar to that of Website Builder and Weebly – it's clean and organized. Website.com doesn't overwhelm you with excessive tools and the interface is never cluttered. Everything you need to build your website is right on the left of the editor.

Unlike Wix or Website Builder, Website.com doesn't offer that many bells and whistles when it comes to the customization of elements. But because everything is very straightforward users of all experience- and skill-level will find it very intuitive and easy to use.

Website.com's platform uses "absolute positioning", allowing you to drag and drop elements literally anywhere on your web pages. This gives you a lot of control as well as creative flexibility and freedom. For example, you can freely drag, change and edit elements in the header. The only exception to this is the pre-structured app pages (such as blog, calendar, shopping cart). For these pre-structured app pages, you get a selection of different layouts, but you won't be able to add elements or modules into the content area of these pages.

Website.com's editor comes with a variety of tools and standard features of a website builder, and one thing that differentiates it from the other site builders – Website.com offers multi-language support. While other site builders only support Latin-based characters (for example, English), you can build a website with non-Latin based characters, such as Chinese or Arabic.

When it comes to advanced applications, Website.com falls short of Wix and Weebly – Website.com doesn't offer any app market for third-party widgets and apps. But if you need to add additional plug-ins, you can always do so using the custom HTML option. This way, you can easily add extras such as Google tools, QR codes, Open Table, FourSquare, and much more.

When it comes to adding images to your website, Website.com allows you to add a single image or an image strip. For image/photo galleries, there are four gallery layouts to choose. You can also add a pre-structured photo gallery page, then your gallery will get a few more layout options.

Once you've uploaded your images and photos, Website.com will save them in your account's File Manager so you can easily access them later on. You can further organize your images into custom folders in your File Manager.

Image editing is probably one of the weaker areas of Website.com. It offers the standard functions such as pan and zoom, crop, rotate and add caption. But that's it. If you are looking for special effects and filters, then you're better off to edit the image using Photoshop or other programs prior to uploading them to your editor.

Website.com offers an integrated online store application on their Ecommerce plan.

The online store application, Website.com Store Manager, comes with easy-to-use ecommerce features, including full control over product listings, online payment processors (PayPal and Stripe), customizable tax and shipping settings, mobile-optimized checkout, and Google Analytics tracking. Simply put, Website.com’s Store Manager comes with everything you need to design your website and store, as well as manage your products and orders, all within the same dashboard. Unlike many other ecommerce website builders, Website.com does not charge transaction fees. Note that Website.com does not support digital/downloadable products.

However, if you need a more powerful all-inclusive ecommerce solution, then you might find Website.com’s ecommerce feature lacking. For example, it lacks the integrated FedEx and UPS shipping that some builders include, and it doesn’t boast a 20+ payment gateway support.

Up until now, SEO has been one of Website.com's weaker offerings. Perhaps that's why they have recently beefed up their SEO features. First off, all Website.com premium plans come with a free domain name. They also offer a detailed resource article on tips to optimize your SEO performance. Check out this Easy Search Engine Optimization article!

For those who are already using Google Analytics, Website.com allows you to use your website editor to tag your call to actions as events and thus allow Google Analytics to track their activities. By using events, you can see how each of your call to action is performing through Google Analytics.

You can also use the Website.com editor in conjunction with Google Analytics to perform A/B tests on your landing pages. You can track your events, conversion data and other metrics for each of your landing pages to better conversion optimization.

Website.com offers a free domain name registration with all of its premium plans. While other website builders also give you a free domain name, the offer is only for the first year of the domain registration and if you want to continue to use the domain name, it will be subject to renewal at the then-current rates.

Website.com, on the other hand, your domain name is free to use for the duration of your website builder subscription.

Users on the Business and eCommerce plans can also enjoy custom domain email services. Included in these two plans is the ability to setup personalized email address such as [email protected]. And unlike other website builders where you need to connect your email address to a Gmail or Office365 account, Website.com gives you a webmail interface that you can access right from your account dashboard.

Website.com also has an online knowledgebase that all users can access from within the editor dashboard.

Additional support channels are also available to subscribers on the Website.com premium plans. These include email ticketing system, live chat and phone support.

For additional tips, updates and inspirations, Website.com has a YouTube channel YouTube channel and a website builder and design library that houses an extensive collection of resourceful articles and tutorials.

Website.com's site builder interface is very user-friendly and it offers hundreds of modern, mobile-ready templates. But a few things that truly set Website.com apart from competitors are support system, free for life domain name, and integration of Google Marketing tools.

Areas where Website.com falls weak includes the lack of an integrated advanced image editor and the inability to customize templates at the code level.