SimpleSite Review

SimpleSite offers free and premium website builder options for people with limited technical proficiency or prior website building experience. SimpleSite is not designed for professional web developers; it’s intended for use by anyone who wants to set up a website or a blog quickly and easily. The web building services provided by SimpleSite allow a fully customized website to be built within minutes. One of the notable features of SimpleSite is its mobile-friendly editing. Users can easily edit all aspects of their website on PC, Mac, Android or iOS devices – with no app required.

 

From a user perspective, SimpleSite facilitates the creation of a business website, a personal website/blog, or other options personalized to your specifications. Among the many features available through SimpleSite are multimedia options such as photo albums with unique layouts, themes, and photo transitions, video options which support Vimeo, YouTube and your own uploads, and a unique combination of different templates, backgrounds, and color configurations.

 

A smorgasbord of themes is available to users with this free website builder, including the option to customize the available themes. For example, users can pick from contemporary business themes to food blogs, family photography, fashion blogs and more. The themed website options are neatly structured, with user-friendly navigation, and quick-click functionality. All themes are tailored to providing optimal service on mobile devices too. Getting started is a breeze at SimpleSite; as its namesake suggests – everything is kept simple so that anyone with any level of know-how can design a beautiful website.

Templates

SimpleSite templates are listed under the ‘Themes’ category. It is entirely possible to pick a beautiful template and customize it with the options that are provided to you. A carousel of themed templates is provided, each of which can be tailored to specs. For example, there are templates for writers & authors, company templates, home care services templates, and many others available. You simply need to pick a template based on the type of website or blog that is going to be built with this website builder.

 

It all begins by picking the type of website or blog that you are looking to create:

Once you have an idea in mind, it’s a simple matter of selecting the type of themed website from a wide range of options including:

 

CV	Cafe	Pink Blog	Food Blog
Crafty Blog	Fashion Blog	Blank Company	Italian Restaurant
Author/Bookstore	Family Photography	Contemporary Business	Senior Home Care Services

The boutique variety of themes allows for maximum customization to meet your specific needs. Each themed template can be previewed for a full-screen viewing on PC, Mac, or mobile devices. It is currently not possible to make your own templates for SimpleSite, but there are plans to allow for this in the future.

 

Even though there is fixed content on each template, this can be easily changed to accommodate the needs of a personal or business website, blog or other option. Users can easily add their own text, or delete all content on screen and start afresh. If at any time new content needs to be added, this can be done by selecting the ‘Add Content’ button. The menu bar on each template also features additional pages which can be tailored to your specs.

 

For example, the pre-populated template options include pages for the following:

• Front page
• About
• Menu
• Contact

Note: SimpleSite does not post a large number of templates for you to choose from – but that shouldn’t deter you from creating a website. The templates can easily be changed at any time, regardless of how far you have progressed in your website creation. You won’t lose any of the content you have entered either.

 

The Editor

It takes less than a minute to get up and running with the ‘Editor’ option at SimpleSite. This website builder is designed especially for novice users. The fact is, you don’t need any prior knowledge of website builders to get started here. Once you start working with the editor, you will quickly see how easy it is to use – inputting text, titles, images, colors, etc. The editor allows you to create a website to look precisely how you want it to look, plus you can share it with others, and optimize it for search engines.

 

The process begins by selecting from the following three options for your new website:

• A personal site/blog
• A business site
• Other (designed according to your preferences)

The free website builder allows you to add your title, username, and then register an account to get up and running. At each step along the way, you will see a progress meter on the top right of the screen. You can easily monitor your progress as you complete each step. Once the green line reaches 100%, your website is ready to be published.

 

Many unique features are available in the editor, including the following:

• Built-in video player for creating captivating content
• Hundreds of unique designs, colors, and backgrounds to choose from
• Website visitors to your site can easily send messages via the contact page
• Unique domain names, social media sharing options, and multi-device compatibility
• An online photo album with multiple layouts, photo transitions, and slideshow themes
• You can also upload an image from your PC, or the Cloud, or search for images which are provided by Pixabay.

As well as controlling the main settings of your site, the feature-rich options available to you with SimpleSite allow for the following insights into your website’s activity:

• Visitors
• Social media accounts
• Account settings
• Contact information
• Emails
• Subscription – type of service
• Terms and conditions

The editor also allows you to edit all aspects of the design process such as the logo, photo, header, background, website fonts, website colors. As for pages, there are typically 4 pages for each template, as listed above. These can be edited to highlight your specific page categories and requirements. You can change any of the options to whatever you want them to be. Content editing is easily done too.

 

By simply clicking on each element, you will see how easy it is to add text, images, create slideshows, and video, and so forth.

Adding images is as easy as clicking on the ‘+ Add Image’ button. You have the option to search the free library on-site, or upload your own image with a maximum upload size of 5 MB. Several image formats are supported, including BMP, PNG, GIF, and JPG. When you choose an image to upload, you can add a caption and save your selection, or simply delete it and choose a different image. Once the image has been uploaded, you can further edit the image by clicking on the paint icon.

Once you’re happy with the final version, simply click the blue and white check mark and hit the save button.

It’s always a good idea to preview your website to see what it looks like on mobile and PC. To do so, simply click on the ‘eye’.

If you are looking to set up a business website, that’s easily done with SimpleSite. The editor lists 5 unique types of businesses, but you can list yours as ‘other’ just as easily. Once you’ve chosen the type of business site are looking to create, you will see a listing of different templates that are available for use. With dozens of templates available, it shouldn’t be an issue to find something which you can customize to your needs.

When creating a business website, you have two options – build it yourself or have SimpleSite’s artificial intelligence bot Alex guide and build it for you. If you choose to build the site yourself, you will have access to SimpleSite’s website builder as explained above. If you choose to use Alex’s help  – you will have to input some basic information about your business and answer the bot’s questions to enable is to generate a layout for your website.

Some of the steps you can complete to have your site built for you include:

• Select a logo (choose from SimpleSite’s library or upload your own)
• Enter your website’s headline title and introductory text for the homepage
• Select an image for your homepage
• Enter contact information
• Select a layout (from 5 options)

Once you have selected your layout, your site is ready to go live, but you can still edit it further by adding more pages and more content.

 

Support

Support is available to users in multiple languages. We counted 18 languages, including English, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, German, Russian, Indonesian, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese and others. You can choose your language by clicking on the globe icon on the top right of your screen.

 

When editing your website, your will notice a circle with a question mark (?) in the bottom right corner of your screen. When clicking this button, SimpleSite’s in-editor help center opens. You can select from a range of topics including ‘ádd new page’,  ‘ádd content’ and more. After selecting a topic, the help center explains and offers a guided tour of the chosen feature within the editor.

Although there is no live chat function and no telephone support, SimpleSite’s customer service can be reached via email at customerservice@simplesite.com. All inquiries are answered in 24 hours or less.

 

Another useful support option available to users is the SimpleSite Blog which currently features many useful posts about all aspects of a website, for personal and business use, blogs, and optimization of your site with SEO and SEM. Topics include web design, trends & tips, product features, promote your site blog post writing, business website tips, creative content, and product features.

 

Hosting/Domain

Websites built on a free SimpleSite plan are hosted for free, but will sit on a SimpleSite branded domain such as https://yourdomain.simplesite.com/. To have your website go live with a custom domain, you will need to upgrade your website to a premium plan.

 

All premium plans offer the following benefits:

• Free hosting
• Free custom domain (valued at $15/year)
• Unlimited video storage
• No adverts on site
• Unlimited photo storage
• Unlimited pages
• 5 email addresses

All websites built with SimpleSite use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption to ensure the integrity of user information.

 

Pricing and Plans

SimpleSite offers three attractive plans ranging in price from Free to $30.49 per month for eCommerce plans.

Below are the specs of each of SimpleSite’s plans:

 

	Basic	Pro	eCommerce
Cost	Free	$15.49/m $11.25/m billed yearly	$30.49/m $26.25/m billed yearly
Ads	Yes	No	No
Pages	15 pages	Unlimited Pages	Unlimited Pages
Design Options	Limited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Online Store Products	5	5	Unlimited
Mobile Optimized	Yes	Yes	Yes
Email Addresses	No	5	5
Hosting Included	No	Yes	Yes
Images	Limited	Unlimited	Unlimited

 

Additionally, SimpleSite offers a 14-day cancellation period with a money-back guarantee.

Integrations

 

Integration	Yes/No	Details
Google Analytics	No
Social Media	Yes	Link to social media profiles
Mailbox	Yes, with PRO	5 email addresses
CRM	No
MailChimp	No
Chat	No
3rd Party Reviews	Yes	Trust Pilot
Music	No
Video	Yes	Vimeo, YouTube
Payment Integrations	Yes	PayPal