In recent years there have been an abundance of companies offering website builders and free or low cost websites, often where you the business owner, builds them yourself using their website builder, but are they really any good?. While it may be tempting, what we should not forget is that quality matters over price.
Think of this as an example, if your potential users go on to your website to discover that you as a professional company have gone on to one of those online web maker sites to create your website, what image would they portrait of you in their minds?
Definitely, I for one would instantly come to a conclusion that you are not willing to spend enough money to create a high quality website from professionals in this field, rather you have gone on to those free website to save on few extra pounds.
We will look at some of the negative impacts of doing your website on one of those free sites.
Third party branding and Advertisement
Your website will probably have a branding and advertisement unless you pay a premium price. Let’s get this clear, why would anyone give you a free website when they have to pay the wages and hosting cost of their own? Obviously, their branding means they get to advertise their website to more people using your website.
Limited design and development
Your website will be limited in design. You would probably be limited to 8 out of 10 features unless you start paying for premium features. The more features you want, the more you have to pay. You may not even get any support to help get these new features.
FREE Doesnt necessarily mean FREE
You’ve probably noticed I’ve consistently put “free” in quotation marks. That’s because most “free” websites are not free at all. Keep in mind – they run a business; you’ll have to start paying eventually in some shape or form. Yes, there’s typically a free trial, but most users find that they need to quickly ‘upgrade’ their account (the goal of the platform) for certain services; they suddenly find the need to pay for an app integrator, then some tool, more storage, a scheduler, tax calculator, ftp access, image hosting, email accounts, and on and on.
As a rule of thumb – If you’re not paying for it, then you are the product. They need to make money from you somehow, and they’re protected by the terms/conditions to do as they wish with your info, so selling your information (email address, etc.) is a common practice.
No domain name
Free plans often do not allow you to use your own URL. They will assign you a free URL to use which consists of your business name plus their own URL. For example, instead of sarahsbakery.com, you’ll be stuck with sarahsbakery.wix.com. All in all, not very professional.
Your content, data under third party control
You may be excited to have a website for only few quid’s but to be honest, one of the most important thing’s, “your data” will be on their website. Though you will have access to it, it will be subject to their control. Imagine one day waking up to see most of the terms and conditions have changed.
You will be paying more over time, you can’t move one day and your data under their control!
You will be paying more over time
Now this is one of the most important aspect as to why people to go third party online website makers. They want to spend less! Well, while no matter how tempting it might be that you would only pay couple of quid’s a month, have you thought of the fact that for how long you will be paying that? Here comes the trick. Your website will only be live (without any branding) as long as you pay the monthly cost. You would probably end up paying it all your life!
What if you wanted to move someday?
Another cons of using these sites are that even if you wanted to move one day, with some, there is no way to do it and with others it’s so much of a hassle that you wouldn’t even go down that path. I have checked with one of leading online website maker that there is no way to export your data if you wanted to move your website someday. It’s like having all the furniture in your house bolted to your house. Imagine this, one day you wanted to move but you couldn’t bring all the furniture with you!
…At Northern Monkey we do things right!
We will never use a free web builder such as Wix to build any website for our clients and always recommend WordPress.
WordPress is the most popular CMS on the market, powering 65.2% of websites whose CMS we know. That translates to 42.4% of all websites – nearly half of the internet. With that being said it is our first choice of CMS system that we use at Northern monkey as the basis for any CMS or Ecommerce web shop.
At Northern Monkey we pride ourselves on being a full digital agency.
Our ability to take you on a journey from discussing your initial ideas right through to the design, development and marketing is inimitable. We work together with you to create the best possible impression for your business, as we know how important this is for both you and your clients.
You wont ghet that level of service and commitment from any FREE web builder.
Click here to contact us to see how we can help you.
