SITE123

 SITE123 is focused on simplicity above all. It manages to put a solid website builder, eCommerce, SEO, and marketing tools in one simple package that takes virtually no time to master.

But of course, that's what every website builder in the world would have you believe. No one's selling a "complicated website builder", right? So, is there anything that makes SITE123's claims actually legit?

Oh, absolutely.

SITE123 offers a website builder system that entirely removes the human failure factor. Instead of dragging and dropping various elements, SITE123 gives you a preselected list of options you can choose from to customize your website.

And while that removes a lot of the freedom of choice, it also makes building an extensive website incredibly simple.

The real question is: is that too far? Is it really worth sacrificing choice for the sake of simplicity?

To find that out, for this SITE123 review, I signed up for the platform and made my own website (stick around, and I'll show it!). And overall, I think that certain people will actually quite appreciate the platform's approach.

I enjoyed how simple was it to build my SITE123 website, and manage everything around it. At times, the editing options might feel a little limiting. But if you're a beginner, this is a price worth paying.

Limited customization options

What website to use SITE123 for?

SITE123 is a decent option for building a wide variety of websites. Here are the main features of the most popular types of sites that you might be curious about:

Website type Website benefits Website limitations

Blog Good SEO and marketing tools, great for optimization Could have more content-based tools

Portfolio site Visual-focused templates and content blocks Limited amount of customization

Business site Tools for selling online, email marketing, solid plugin library The tools offered are pretty basic – they get the job done but leave a lot to be desired

eCommerce site Offers good simple sales features for beginners and solid SEO and marketing tools The Professional, Gold, and Platinum plans offer a decent eCommerce experience – they let users accept more payment gateways

SITE123 for blogs

SITE123 is an affordable solution to creating a beautiful and fully functional blog. There are enough server resources to go around, and you can always scale it up if necessary. It may not be the best blogging platform, but it gets very close.

It’s super easy to use, your blog can go live in just a few minutes, and you have the possibility of monetizing your blog.

SITE123 for portfolio websites

SITE123 is a good option for people looking to build a portfolio website and that are looking to craft basic websites and aren’t too concerned about building something truly unique.

It’s very easy to use and it also offers extremely good optimization performance. SITE123 also options a variety of templates that could elevate your portfolio – read the full template section here.

SITE123 for business websites

SITE123 offers email marketing, as well as a solid array of plugins, which add a ton of functionality to your business site. While some of the tools that SITE123 offers aren’t too fleshed out, they get the job done and give you all the basic features that you might need for business.

The tools offered are explained in detail in the business feature section, which you can read here.

SITE123 for online shops

The features for online shops that SITE123 offers are pretty decent. They’re simple and accessible – you can utilize SEO and marketing tools to optimize your online selling experience, and the eCommerce editor offers a simple interface users won't waste time mastering. Read more about the eCommerce editor here.

However, to have a pleasant ordeal with eCommerce, you have to purchase the more expensive plans – either the Professional, Gold, or Platinum. These plans offer multiple gateways and allow to add more products to your site than their cheaper counterparts. Read the full pricing section here.

SITE123 video review

SITE123 video review

SITE123 pricing

SITE123 offers one free plan, and 5 premium plans, ranging from $11.88 to $45.00 a month. On first sight, this appears to be a bit more expensive than most other website builders.

Let's see at these options in detail.

Plan Features Price

Free Plan for testing the platform $0.00

Basic Good basic business package: SITE123 coupon 40% OFF! $12.80/mo

Advanced Multilanguage and email capabilities for a more efficient business $11.88/mo

Professional Accepting credit cards and offering more multilanguage and email options $17.28/mo

Gold All eCommerce, and marketing tools, as well as 270 GB of storage $20.88/mo

Platinum All eCommerce, and marketing tools, as well as 1000GB of storage, 25 mailboxes, and unlimited languages $45.00/mo

Right from the start, there's one thing I want to note. If you just went to the SITE123 website, and looked at the plans, however, you'd see an entirely different look. With one free, and one premium plans.

site123 pricing

But all the plans I mentioned are available – you just have to be already registered with the platform. An unusual approach, but it makes sense for the company to try and sell you other plans, only after you had an opportunity to use the platform, right?

And then, there's another interesting thing to note about these plans:

All the prices here are displayed for a 12-month period. If purchased for 3 months, the $12.80 plan will cost $19.00/mo. Same way, if you purchase the plan for a whopping 10 years, its price will drop to $5.00/mo.

So yes – the plans do appear expensive, but there are ways to get them for cheaper.

Let's have a look at all of these plans and their features in detail.

Free plan

Free plans are often just meant for messing around: the same is very much true with SITE123.

First of all, the storage and bandwidth are rather limiting: at 250MB each, it doesn't take many visitors for your website to hit the limit and close down.

Secondly, when you publish the site, you'll be given the most unmemorable subdomain in recent memory. Some other builders may let you pick a subdomain, but I was just assigned one: 60793897c4af8.site123.me (just rolls off the tongue, that one).

Also, at the bottom of my site, there was also a massive SITE123 ribbon. It looked pretty distracting.

site123 free site

Long story short – don't plan your business around this free plan. Just like with most things in life, if you want the good stuff, you have to pay.

Basic plan

Basic plan (also known as Premium if you're not logged in) costs $12.80 a month and unlocks most of the classic website-building features we want and love.

Storage and bandwidth are increased significantly (10GB and 5GB respectively), so you can have run a pretty big and popular page here. You can also connect your own domain, and even get a free one for the first year. The massive ribbon at the bottom of your page is gone, too.

There's also a feature allowing you to do 100 mail messages to your email list, opening some, even if very small, email marketing capabilities.

And oh, there's eCommerce, too! But...I suggest against using it.

The Basic plan includes eCommerce – but it's only for up to 10 orders per month, and only via PayPal. In fact, this feature is so limited, SITE123 doesn't even talk about it on their own plan list.

But if you're a personal user, looking to make a portfolio, or a similar small website, this is an option to go with.

Advanced plan

If you are running a small business, the Advanced plan for $11.88/month might be an even better pick. It gives even more storage and bandwidth (30GB and 15GB respectively), and also adds mailboxes, allowing you to send and receive emails. There are also tools to make your website multilanguage.

Mailing list messages increase to a respectable 1,000. The eCommerce is still done via PayPal. The monthly order limit is increased to 50.

Professional plan

Now we're reaching the territory of plans you should pick, if you want to use SITE123 for business.

The Professional plan costs $17.28/month and gives 90GB of storage as well as 45GB of bandwidth. You'll also get website statistics, the mailbox limit will be increased to 5, you'll be able to add 3 additional website languages, and increase eCommerce orders to a respectable 500 a month.

Plus, payment gateways will let you accept credit cards, not just PayPal.

Gold plan

The Gold plan, well...as the name implies, is the gold standard of everything SITE123 can bring. At $20.88 a month, it's the second most expensive one out there.

But you'll also get a massive 270GB of storage and 135GB of bandwidth, up to 10,000 mail messages, 10 mailboxes, and 5 additional languages.

eCommerce features will also be pretty broad. You'll get unlimited eCommerce ordering, advanced statistics, a chance to implement a wish list, reviews, and even abandoned cart recovery.

The last one is extremely interesting: it will let you to try and bring back the visitors who added an item to the cart, but left without purchasing.

Platinum plan

Now if you wish to run a large business site or a traffic-heavy eCommerce website, Premium is the best option out of all. At $45.00/mo, this plan tops the list as the most expensive option.

For such price, you will be getting 1000GB of storage and bandwidth, up to 50,000 mail messages, 25 mailboxes, and unlimited additional languages.

However, apart from noticeably larger server resources, the rest of the features like unlimited eCommerce ordering, advanced statistics, and many more are exactly the same as with the Gold plan.

So which one would I recommend for you to buy? Well, it depends:

For personal users, the Basic plan will offer the best value for money. On the other hand, a long-term deal for a Platinum package might be a great value for many small businesses, who want to pay once and forget about it.

And if you're looking for a cheap website builder, while SITE123 prices may seem to be on the bigger side, it's important to remember that the $11.88-$45.00 range isn't final. The longer you sign up for, the better deal you'll get. So, there's still money to be saved.

Tip

A longer buying term isn't the only way you can get SITE123's Personal and Gold packages at a lower price. We also do our best, finding the best special deals by acquiring the best coupons and discount codes. See, if there's a discount for you.

Check SITE123 price NOW

Is SITE123 easy to use?

Getting started – The beginning of the SITE123 journey was straightforward. One registration, a couple of questions, and I was good to go.

Designing the website – As you answer the questions, you get a base theme picked for you, and then, you can change themes and styles from the dashboard.

Managing the website – The dashboard minimizes the amount of work you have to put in. A lot of the stuff is already premade and set up for your convenience.

While researching for this SITE123 review, this part impressed me the most. Everything from top to bottom is meant to be as simple as possible, and is as good or even better than many other website builders I tested.

No exaggeration – you can comfortably build and publish a website in less than half an hour. With a coffee break included.

In fact, I made my own website. Here it is: you can click the image to go and see everything in action.

site123 test site

Let's have a look at how did I do with making my very own website for this SITE123 review.

Getting started with SITE123

The gig here is simple. I followed the link to the SITE123 website, and clicked on a massive button to get started