Site123 is a light-weight web builder that offers users the convenience of building an aesthetic, responsive, and mobile-ready website in just minutes. Seemingly optimized for beginners in web development, Site123 kickstarts one’s web building process with a semi-customized template after prompting users with three questions. The room for customization is limited with undue restrictions on the color, font, and even text layout options. However, the builder has an app market with about 75 plugins that can be used to add a decent amount of essential functionalities on a website. Small businesses and individuals looking just to get online fast without the hassle of thinking much about the design and layout of their site will find the Site123 builder ideal; however, fast-growing businesses and expert developers will definitely find better alternatives in the market.
Table of Contents
Site123 Pros and Cons
Pros
- Quick Setup – getting started with the Site123 builder is a fast and straightforward process. In only three steps, the builder finds adequate information about the site to be built and the owner’s details then automatically generates a site with a matched template.
- Simplicity – most customizations are initiated on the left sidebar or using floating buttons on the right end of each section of the site. It is hard to err with the builder’s click-style editor, though it is neither as functional nor as useful as the drag-and-drop editors. In several Site123 reviews, some users seem not to mind the reduced creative freedom given the unmatched speed of setting up a site on the platform.
- Customer support – Site123 offers a chatbox functionality that quickly links users with available support agents in case any form of assistance is required.
- Ecommerce support – Site123 has eCommerce capabilities that come bundled with the premium packages. One can set up a basic online store and take advantage of inbuilt tools such as mail lists and coupons.
- Security – all sites built on Site123, including free plan sites, are secured using SSL.
- Multilanguage support – Site123 has a useful premium feature that allows users to make up to 5 language versions of their site. The platform automatically creates a mirrored version of a site and translates the content to the selected language.
Cons
- Lack of unlimited bandwidth – most builders within and below Site123’s price range offer unlimited bandwidth for the high tier premium plans. Conversely, Site123 has bandwidth caps even on its most expensive premium package, which is quite a letdown for users looking to accommodate many visitors on their sites.
- Limited design features – it does not take long for users to realize that Site123 is painfully restricting in design capabilities. One is stuck with a limited selection of structurally-unmodifiable premade page layouts, color combinations, and font options.
- Vendor lock-in – websites created using Site123 cannot be downloaded or moved to another host. The company vaguely states that it does not allow users to download websites because it only offers a proprietary a web development service.
- Lack of support for HTML code – unlike most other builders, Site123 does not allow external HTML code to be inserted to the site. This limitation can have severe consequences for designers that have to add more functionalities to the site through code snippets.
Is Site123 easy to use?
Setting up a site with Site123 is as easy as 1, 2, 3. The key commendations that the tool gets are mostly based on the following:
Customer service experience
Any time a user needs assistance, it’s almost guaranteed that they will be able to reach the support agents 24/7 through a chat box at the bottom right of the editor. Many customers have rated the tool highly based on the level of assistance that they have received from the support agents.
Sign up process
The signup process for Site123 is simply unmatched. In just three prompts, one’s account is fully set up with the essential personal information and ideal template for the type of business selected.
Billing
Site123 offers 4 paid packages which are billed monthly, or in 3, 6, 12, 24, and 36 months. The following is a comparison of the available plans:
| Basic | Advanced | Professional | Gold | |
| Price ($/month) | $5.80 | $11.80 | $17.80 | $23.80 |
| Storage | 10GB | 30GB | 90GB | 270GB |
| Bandwidth | 5GB | 15GB | 45GB | 135GB |
| Mailing list messages | 100 | 1000 | 2500 | 10000 |
| Mailboxes | 0 | 2 | 5 | 10 |
| Additional languages | 0 | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Ecommerce support | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Website statistics | No | No | Yes | Yes |
FAQs
Site123 is highly secure since all the sites created on it have an SSL certificate. Therefore, all traffic will be encrypted and routed via HTTPS.
You have to click on get started on the Site123 homepage. You will be asked three simple questions whose answers will be used to set up your account and select an ideal template for your website. The builder will automatically redirect to the site editor where you will find a semi-customized website template with pages such as home, about, services, and contact. You can fiddle with the available customizations for the homepage on the left sidebar to improve the look and feel of the landing page.
Yes, Site123 supports PayPal integration as either a payment method or a donation option. One can easily add their PayPal email address via the settings tab on the store page. This feature is only available to premium plans.
According to the company’s LinkedIn page, Site123’s headquarters are in Beersheba, Israel.
Conclusion
Site123 offers a software-assisted web development experience that makes the process of setting up and publishing a website easy. The builder collects sufficient information using three questions about the site niche, name, and login details to automatically generate a website in seconds. However, there are significant trade-offs that come with such levels of assistance since only a few design customizations can be made. Therefore, the verdict of this Site123 review is that the builder is ideal for users looking to build websites fast with only a few modifications; however, other groups of users will definitely have to look elsewhere.