Webstarts Review 2016 - Free Website Builder Webstarts
Of course, advantages are never the full story, and there are areas for improvement in WebStarts as well. In our review we’re going to discuss both the pros and cons.
#1 Ease of Use
WebStarts has a look and feel of Weebly. The toolbar icons, layout and color palette are very similar.
WebStarts editor
#2 Feature Set and Flexibility
When it comes down to the basic features, WebStarts is like most of its competition – you pick a pre-designed template and customize it using inbuilt editing tools and widgets. Speaking about advanced capabilities, the builder provides a Blogging system, eCommerce and Membership options.
The eCommerce system lets you accept PayPal and credit card payments, sell both digital and tangible goods, manage your customer data and create mailing lists among other commerce-specific features.
You can create members-only areas on your website and ask your visitors to sign up/log in to be able to view these areas. As an administrator, you can approve new members and manage their profiles (change the login, email and password).
Here are some other features:
free advertising credits from Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Amazon.com;
custom forms;
built-in photo editor (filters, cropping, rotation, opacity etc.);
audio players;
forum;
guestbook;
SEO wizard.
You don’t have to know how to code to use any of these features, but if you want to tweak your site’s code – simply use the ‘Edit HTML code’ or ‘Insert Code’ feature. The custom HTML feature makes it easy to add any kind of embeddable widget to your site. Simply paste the code into the window provided, save it, and then drag the widget to where you want it to appear on the page. Note that both features are available within paid plans only.
#4 Customer Support
There’s an extensive knowledge base comprised of video tutorials and FAQs, email support and also phone support. See their video on how to use the WebStarts SEO Wizard:
#5 Pricing Policy
WebStarts has a free ad-supported version that never expires and three paid plans: Pro, Pro Plus, and Business ranging from $4.89 to $19.99/mo. Be aware that Webstart’s ecommerce is only included in the $19.99 plan.
Disadvantages
I think their homepage and dashboard requires a redesign. I would also add the ability to add multiple contributors so that you can add several authors to your blog for instance.
WebStarts Review: Conclusion
WebStarts is a great destination for a non-coder who wants to create a website independently, from start to finish, and be able to maintain it without having to rely on developers. It’s completely code-free unless you decide to use the Edit HTML code feature.
WebStarts supports blogging, eCommerce and even allows you to create password-protected pages. Its reasonable pricing makes it highly competitive.
