How to Add Facebook Pixel to Your WordPress Website

New users often find it difficult to add a Facebook pixel to their WordPress website mainly because they don’t know where to start. Facebook pixel helps you optimize your Facebook ad campaigns by gathering information about your visitors and then generating an audience that is more relevant to your business.

In simpler words, Facebook Pixel helps you target your ads better and get better click-through rates and conversion rates.

There are two ways you can add Facebook Pixel to your WordPress website, manually and through a Facebook pixel plugin.

In this article, I will take you through both the methods and show you how you can add a Facebook pixel to your WordPress website.

How to Add Facebook Plugin Manually

When you add a Facebook Pixel manually, you just copy the pixel code and paste it on the header of your WordPress website.

To get started with this method, you need to create a Facebook Pixel ID first. If you haven’t created one, you can do that from here.

Once you’re on this page, click on the Get Started button.

You will be asked to enter your name and website.

Click Continue and then click Manually add pixel code to your website 

Once you move forward, you will see the Pixel code that you will have to copy and paste on your WordPress website’s header.

If you scroll down this page, you will see some more options to help you collect more information about your visitors.

There is also an option to test your code to see if it’s working properly or not.

Adding Facebook Pixel Plugin to Your WordPress Website Via a Plugin

Facebook pixel plugins give you more than just the ability to add the pixel code to your website; they also let you create custom audiences.

For this tutorial we will be using Pixel Caffeine, a popular Facebook pixel plugin, to add a pixel to your WordPress website.

Start by installing the plugin on your WordPress website.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you will see this page.

You can either start by entering your pixel ID or you can connect your Facebook account, in which case it will be easier to install the Pixel and you will get all the advanced features as well.

For this tutorial, we will use Facebook Connect. Once you allow the plugin to connect with your Facebook account, you will have to choose the ad account that you want to connect to.

Once you have selected the ad account, click on Apply to set up your Pixel.

Pretty simple, isn’t it?

Now that you have installed the pixel, click on the Dashboard tab to track the activity on your Pixel.

You can also set up Custom Audiences and Conversion Events directly from your WordPress dashboard.

Final Words

Now that you know how to set up Facebook Pixel to your WordPress website, you will be able to filter out your audiences and better optimize your Facebook ads. Your ads will now be more targeted and will reach the right people which will improve their click-through and conversion rates.

If you think the plugin I used in this article is not the right one for you, you can also check out this list of the best WordPress Facebook pixel plugins to choose from.

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WordPress Helpdesk and Support Ticketing Plugins to Enhance Customer Experience

Setting up an efficient helpdesk system is a crucial aspect to success when running an eCommerce business. If you have a WordPress-WooCommerce online store, there are several options to help you integrate a helpdesk. When it comes to a helpdesk or support ticket plugin, the choice that you make is dependent on a lot of specific business requirements. In this article, we will discuss some of the important features to look for in WordPress helpdesk and support ticket plugins that will help improve customer experience. We will also explore the features of some of the best solutions.

Characteristics of a good WordPress Helpdesk solution

A good helpdesk solution should essentially help in better customer experience. You need to ensure that it offers a comprehensive set of features to help you provide exceptional customer experience. First, let us try and understand some of the advanced features of a superior WordPress helpdesk solution:

No restrictions in number of agents and tickets

When you check out some of the popular helpdesk solutions, you may see many of them have restrictions when it comes to the number of agents who can use it. This may not be a great feature when your business is going through a rapid  growth phase. Paying additional charges every time a new agent is added to the team may not be a great outcome for a small business. So, look for WordPress helpdesk and support solutions with no restrictions in terms of number of agents and tickets that can be handled at a time.

Simple interface to manage tickets

The support agents will be mostly accessing the helpdesk system through the admin backend. This interface needs to be smooth and user friendly for agents to help them respond quickly to customer queries. An Ajax-based interface will quickly load tickets without reloading the page. Agents should also be able to view tickets in custom order and to sort them quickly using varied filters. Basically, if support agents are able to handle the ticket dashboard smoothly, they will be able to respond to customers quicker as well.

eCommerce integration

If you are running an eCommerce store, you have to integrate the helpdesk system to your store to make the customer support process streamlined. With the help of a support system integrated with eCommerce, your customers will be able to raise queries by associating them with specific products. Similarly, the agents will be able to see the purchase history and other details of the customers they are interacting with. The customer experience on your web store will be much superior if you have a helpdesk system that smoothly integrates with the eCommerce platform.

Workflow automation

If you have a big store and a considerably large number of products, your customer support process too will be complex. There will be a set of actions that happens before a customer query is replied to and resolved. A good helpdesk system will help you automate such routine actions in your customer support workflow to make the process faster. Sending notifications, assigning to an agent or department, adding priority tags, etc.can be easily automated.

Self service and canned responses

Not all customers will have the patience and time to wait for a support agent to answer to their queries. A lot of your customers will be willing to find answers on their own. By integrating with a knowledge base, you will be able to provide a good self service option through your helpdesk. In fact, this will help reduce the number of queries and make the system more efficient. Similarly, predefined answer templates or canned responses can help agents respond faster to repetitive queries. You may have to look for knowledge base integration and canned responses feature before zeroing in on a WordPress helpdesk solution.

Analytics tools

Good analytics insights are key to improving any digital solution. Obviously a good analytics dashboard can help your customer support system be much more efficient. On the analytics dashboard, you should get a good view on the resolution rate, response times, individual agent performance, queries related to a specific product, etc. The WordPress helpdesk solution that you choose should have a good analytics dashboard to help you measure performance without hassles.

Best WordPress Helpdesk and Support Ticket plugins

Now, let us explore the features of some of the popular WordPress helpdesk and support ticket plugins.

WSDesk

WSDesk is one of the most popular WordPress helpdesk and support solutions that you can choose to enhance customer experience. It integrates well with eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. Even the basic version of WSDesk is feature rich with options to convert emails to tickets and unlimited agent profiles. Compared to other Saas-based solutions, WSDesk gives better control to store owners as it does not data in the cloud. The data related to your store and customers will be saved on your server itself and you need not depend on the service provider to access it.

Feature highlights

Here is a quick look at some of the standout features of WSDesk.

• Easy to manage support agent profiles
• Ajax-based interface for fast loading and sorting of tickets.
• Customize the contact forms.
• Triggers and automation to optimize your support workflow.
• Integration with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
• Canned responses for faster issue resolution.
• Back and restore settings and ticket data.
• Advanced shortcodes to customize certain functionality.
• GDPR compliant.

A single site subscription of WSDesk will cost you $89.

WooCommerce Help Scout

This plugin helps you integrate your WooCommerce store to Help Scout customer support solution. That means you will have to subscribe to a Help Scout subscription plan as well to make full use of this one. With the help of a shortcode, you will be able to place a Help Scout support form anywhere on your website. Moreover, it lets you initiate a conversation with any customer right from the order details page. This is a comprehensive solution that will help you manage your customer support much more efficiently than relying on multiple tools.

Feature highlights

Here are some of the exceptional features of Help Scout:

• Multichannel support through email and chat.
• Initiate targeted conversation with customers.
• Better collaboration of support agents with features like private notes, tagging, saved replies and collision detection.
• Automate actions to optimize workflow.
• Intuitive reporting features.

The single site subscription of the plugin has a price tag of $79. This is in addition to the Help Scout subscription.

Zendesk for WordPress

With the help of a free WordPress plugin, you will be able to integrate Zendesk support system to your blog or website. On your website or blog, you can display a Zendesk feedback tab that will let users search the knowledge base, chat with an agent or submit a ticket. Users registered to your website will be automatically signed in to Zendesk as well. You will be able to turn blog comments to tickets to respond to users promptly. Please note, you will have to subscribe to a plan of Zendesk to be able to use it.

Feature highlights

• Zendesk offers a range of advanced features to make your helpdesk system extremely robust.
• Multichannel support through email, mobile, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Multilingual admin interface with support for over 40 languages.
• Custom contact forms with conditional logic.
• Automation and triggered workflow to make your support system more efficient.
• Canned responses for quicker response to customers.
• Extensive analytics insights to improve customer experience.

WPHelpdesk

This plugin will help you focus on enhancing the customer experience on your site with an organized approach to customer support. WPHelpDesk has a robust filtering system that will help you prioritize support queries. Depending on the size of your team, you will be able to customize it to get absolute control over your support workflow. With the help of add-ons, you can easily integrate it with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.

Feature highlights

Let us take a look at some of the features of WP Helpdesk that will help you improve your support process.

• Easy to configure
• Extensive customization options to mould the user interaction pattern.
• View ticket history of each customer to prioritize requests.
• Integration with eCommerce platforms.
• Collaboration between support agents.
• Suitable for businesses of all sizes.

The single site subscription of the basic version without add-ons will cost you $99.

WP Support Plus Responsive Ticket System

This is another WordPress plugin that will help you set up a customer support system for your business. It will let you set up a customer support system with unlimited tickets and agents. It even allows guest users to submit a ticket. The plugin is Ajax based and helps to make your customer support system extremely fast. It comes with a set of add-ons that allows you to extend the functionality and features. You can opt for the free version or one of the paid options that comes with dedicated support and multiple add- ons.

Feature highlights

Here are some of the notable features of this plugin.

• Import emails directly to your ticket system
• Notifications to different users on your helpdesk system.
• Set up rules to assign incoming tickets to specific agents.
• Integration with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads
• Enhanced customer experience with knowledge base and canned replies.

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6 Steps to Create an Amazing Customer Experience Strategy

You may offer high-end products with the lowest price on the web, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee conversions or customer loyalty. There is a lot of competition out there, not just from Amazon but also smaller boutique sites that offer similar products.

Customer experience is what sets you apart. It is the sum of all interactions that a customer has with your business, including interactions before and after a sale. It can include how they research products on your site, how they complete their transaction, what happens when they receive their product, and so on.

Customer experience is one of the main factors that determine whether or not consumers will buy from your brand and become loyal customers.

In fact, a PwC survey found that 17% of U.S. consumers will walk away after just one bad experience. And 59% of U.S. consumers will walk away after several bad experiences even if they love the company or product.

This makes it crucial to set up a game plan to ensure that you deliver a positive and meaningful experience for your customers across every interaction. That’s why you need to have an effective strategy in place so you can take a more structured approach to enhancing customer experience.

In this post, you’ll discover six useful steps to create an amazing customer experience strategy. Let’s get started.

1: Have a Clear Understanding of Your Customers

Unless you thoroughly understand who your customers are, you’ll have a hard time figuring out how to deliver experiences that appeal to them. Without understanding the situations that your customers face, you won’t be able to empathize with them and provide them with viable solutions.

At the same time, it’s important to note that not all of your customers will experience the same issues or have the same pain points. So you need to start by creating accurate buyer personas, which are profiles that represent a common group of people.

You can include demographics data like age, interests, buying behaviors, job profile, etc. to clearly define the characteristics of each persona.

For an even more accurate picture of each persona, make sure you conduct surveys to understand your different types of customers. Use this data to build a customer experience strategy that effectively addresses the needs of all of your customers.

Make sure you maintain a record of all surveys and personas so every department can easily refer to them when needed. HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool simplifies this process. You can name the persona, choose an avatar, and fill out all the details relevant to it to create an attractive buyer persona. You can easily store surveys in a shared Google folder or Dropbox.

2: Map Out the Customer Journey

Customer journey mapping is essential to get a visual overview of the customer’s interactions with your brand from start to finish. This helps you get an even better picture of the customer experience at every touch point, so you can identify their needs and perceptions.

Create an accurate customer journey map for each buyer persona to outline the key steps of their journey. How do they begin the journey and how do they normally interact with your brand? You can then outline their pain points, values, and motivations to better understand how you can enhance their experience at every touch point.

3: Collect Competitive Insights

Competitor research can help you discover what kind of customer experience your competitors are delivering. What can you learn from them and what can you do better? There are plenty of ways to collect competitive insights to enhance your customer experience strategy.

You can start by finding out where and how your competitors are getting their customers using tools like SpyFu. This gives you a detailed look at the organic and paid clicks your competitors are getting as well as their top keywords. These insights will help you understand user intent by identifying the top search terms people are using to find your competitors.

Additionally, the backlink data provides you with information about which websites are sending traffic to your competitors. You can try to replicate this strategy to attract your audience where they’re most likely to be.

You can further research your competitors’ customer experience strategy by going through the various channels where customers interact with their brand. This includes their website, social media, app (if they have one), and so on.

Get a feel for what it’s like to interact with the brand and make a note of any mistakes they might be making. See if there’s anything you can replicate or improve for your own strategy.

In addition, you can also conduct social media listening to see what people are saying about your competitors and the brand sentiment around their companies. What are the biggest complaints people seem to have about their products? What are they praising them for?

Tools like Mention and Sprout Social can help you with this aspect of competitor research.

4: Make Reachability and Customer Service a Priority

Communication is a major factor that influences the overall customer experience. You have to be available to your customers no matter what channel they choose to be on. Otherwise, you could miss valuable opportunities to engage with them.

For this, you have to find out which channels your customers are most active on and ensure that your brand is reachable on those channels.

The best way to get a clear and accurate picture of the performance of different channels is by using UTM parameters. Tag all of the links you share on different channels with unique UTM parameters and find out how those links are performing.

You can simplify the UTM creation and management processes by using tools like UTM.io. This tool lets you create UTM templates that you can easily reuse and customize for each channel. So you can maintain a uniform naming convention that’s much easier to keep track of.

Once you identify the top channels that your customers are active on, you can come up with a strategy to enhance customer experience on those channels. This will involve improving service convenience on those channels in addition to being reachable.

Get familiar with each of the top channels and understand how people are using them to communicate with your brand. What kind of improvements can you make to enhance the customer experience? What other channels do they want you to be present on?

Maybe you already have live chat support on your website, for instance. But people also expect chat support through social media. Or maybe you have people who expect 24/7 chat support, which may not always be a viable option for most businesses. In this case, you can also provide support through chatbots during non-working hours.

You can study customer behavior, reviews, and engagement to look for opportunities to make improvements. You can even ask them directly through surveys.

Cuyana provides convenient customer service by enabling customers to reach them through Facebook Messenger. They even provide customers with predefined questions to choose from, minimizing the need to type everything out.

5: Improve Purchase Convenience

The purchase experience is another major factor that influences the overall customer experience. Factors like how easy it is to find what they’re looking for, how seamless it is to navigate your site, how simple it is to complete their purchase, etc. will all play a role.

So it’s crucial to keep looking for opportunities to optimize your site or app to improve purchase convenience. Make it as easy as possible for people to complete their purchases.

The basic steps include:

1. Optimizing your search bar so it’s easy to find and use
2. Neatly sorting out your products into relevant categories
3. Improving page load speed
4. Providing secure and seamless checkout
5. Optimizing fonts, colors, and images to improve aesthetics

You can further include useful and clever tools, videos, or images to guide their purchases. Bellyroy does a great job of this by showing what kind of items you can fit inside their wallets.

6: Connect Emotionally with the Audience

How customers feel about your brand also influences their experiences. An emotionally connected customer is more likely to enjoy their interactions with your brand and therefore, have a better overall experience.

In fact, fully connected customers are 52% more valuable than customers who are just satisfied. They also have a high lifetime value and are more likely to advocate for the brand.

This makes it crucial to develop an emotional connection with your customers if you want to create an effective customer experience strategy. You need to come up with a plan to enhance their emotional connections at every touch point – right from marketing and sales to post-sales service.

Aside from better employee training and advocacy, you can also make improvements in the marketing aspect of your business. Switch from bland and pushy ads to more intimate and humanized marketing tactics such as micro-influencer marketing.

Micro-influencers are social media users who have some authority in their areas of interest. They are relatable to the audience because they are just like everyday consumers. As a result, they also have significant and highly-engaged following.

Influence.co even found that micro-influencers drive much better engagement than macro-influencers. The average engagement rate could range anywhere from 2.5% to 6% for influencers with 2000 to 100,000 followers. This rate drops gradually as the following size increases.

In other words, micro-influencers can drive relevant conversations around your brand and your products. So they can help you establish strong emotional connections between your brand and your target audience.

Have them present your product or services in a way that will resonate with their followers. They could share their experience using it, demonstrate how it solved a problem in their life, etc.

One of the most challenging steps is in identifying the best influencers to work with. You can simplify this process by using platforms like iFluenz. All you need to do is create your campaign and wait for the best-matching influencers to apply. So instead of conducting a grueling influencer search, you’ll have the most relevant influencers come to you.

Final Thoughts

These are the basic steps involved in creating an amazing customer experience strategy. But it doesn’t just end here. You also have to keep making improvements to your strategy based on analytics insights and customer feedback.

Listen to your customers, actively collect feedback, and look for opportunities to adapt your strategy according to the changing needs of your customers.

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Best Free Website Builders

Building a website has never been easier.

The days of developers and web designers being the only people who can create a website are long behind us. Anyone can create a website in minutes without writing a single line of code. All you need to do is find a website building platform.

But if you’re creating a website for the first time, you’re probably looking for the most cost-effective solution. You might want to test out different options to see what you like the best.

If this sounds like your situation, then I’m sure you’re looking for a free website builder.

Dozens and dozens of platforms out there will tell you that you can build a website for free. Unfortunately, building a legitimate website for free is actually not very realistic.

Most free website builders will be extremely limited or have some contingencies that require you to pay. It might start out as free, but you’ll quickly learn that it’s not truly free.

This shouldn’t discourage you from trying different website builders. Free website building plans are a great way to get your feet wet with web creation. A free plan will also help you pick a platform that you ultimately want to pay for down the road.

In this guide, I’ll show you the best free website builders on the market today. I’ll explain what you actually get for free, and what features require a premium membership.

The Top 12 Free Website Builders

All website builders offer free features. You’ll be able to get a free trial with nearly every website builder on the market today. But these 12 website builders have free plans that go beyond a trial period:

WordPress

34% of the entire Internet is powered by WordPress. It’s the most popular CMS in the world and a top choice for building a website.

With WordPress, you can create a website and get it live on the web without paying anything. Free plans include hosting, themes, and a WordPress.com subdomain.

Don’t expect high-level performance from the free hosting plan. The WordPress subdomain won’t be very professional either.

We use WordPress here at Quick Sprout, but we have a premium plan. If we stuck with the free option, our domain would look like this: https://ift.tt/32Y5dgj, which is obviously no good.

You do not need a credit card to create a free WordPress site. So you won’t have to worry about an expiring trial or being charged for hidden fees.

The free WordPress plan is best for getting started with something small, like a personal blog. It comes with Jetpack essential features, which has SEO tools and automation functionality. You’ll get a pre-installed SSL certificate, free templates, and 3 GB of storage.

It’s worth noting that WordPress is not a traditional website builder. You should have a basic understanding of writing HTML code and how it works to use WordPress.

When you’re ready to upgrade to a paid version of WordPress, these are your options:

• Personal — $4 per month
• Premium — $8 per month
• Business — $25 per month
• Ecommerce — $45 per month

WordPress users rely on plugins to add features and functionality to their sites. Many of these plugins require payment as well, which will add to your costs.

Wix

Wix lets you create a website for free without writing any code. It has a drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy for anyone to build something beautiful, regardless of their technical experience.

All you need to do is choose a template and customize it with your own content.

Here’s what you get with a free Wix plan:

• Hundreds of templates
• Stock images, icons, and clip art
• Free web hosting
• SEO assistance
• Mobile optimization
• Access to free apps in the Wix App Market
• 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth
• Free Wix domain

The free Wix domain is even weirder than the WordPress one. It’s yourwixusername.wixsite.com/yoursiteaddress; which would look like this for us here at Quick Sprout — quicksproutadmin.wixsite.com/quicksprout.

Obviously, this type of domain is not reasonable or realistic to use if you’re serious about creating a legitimate website. But it’s fine for the beginning while you’re evaluating the Wix platform.

The free plan will also have Wix ads appear on every page of your website.

Using Wix for free will give you an introduction to their platform, but you’ll quickly learn that it’s very limited if you’re not paying. You’ll take an action or try to do something and be prompted to upgrade your plan, which can be a bit annoying.

Wix has premium plans starting at $13 per month for blogs, portfolios, and personal sites. Business and ecommerce rates start at $23 per month.

Weebly

Weebly is powered by Square, making it a website builder that’s geared toward ecommerce websites. So for those of you who are looking to create an online store from scratch, Weebly would be a top choice to consider.

Unfortunately, the free Weebly plan doesn’t come with any ecommerce functionality. You’ll need to upgrade for selling capabilities.

Here’s what you get with Weebly for free:

• SSL certificate
• 500 MB of storage
• Free hosting
• Domain name with Weebly branding
• SEO tools
• Lead capture and contact forms
• Access to community forums
• Live chat and email support

Compared to other free plans we’ve seen, this one is actually pretty good. It’s still extremely limited and I wouldn’t recommend it for the long-term, but it’s a viable option for starting out.

You can begin to collect customer information before your online store officially launches.

For $5 per month, you can connect your own domain to eliminate the Weebly branding. Aside from that, Weebly has premium plans starting at $12, $25, and $38 per month.

Webnode

Webnode is website building made easy. In minutes, you can create and publish your site on the web. It’s a great option for personal sites, businesses, and ecommerce shops.

More than 30 million people have built a website using this platform. Webnode has stunning templates that you can easily customize with your own content.

Unlike other free website builders, you can create an unlimited number of pages with the free plan from Webnode.

You’ll also get reliable hosting and access to customer service representatives.

The biggest catch is that your site will have a Webnode subdomain with your free plan. But this is pretty much the industry standard if you’re not willing to pay.

I’d only use the free plan for something simple like a blog. You can create your site, publish content, and then share your work on social media. But once you’re ready to take things to the next level, you’ll need to consider one of the following paid plans:

• Limited — $3.95 per month
• Mini — $5.95 per month
• Standard — $11.95 per month
• Prof — $19.95 per month

Webnode does require an annual subscription with all plans. So this won’t be the best choice for those of you who prefer month-to-month contracts.

Ucraft

Ucraft is a bit unique compared to some of the other platforms we’ve seen so far. It’s advertised as a landing page creator, as opposed to a website builder.

The free plan can be used to create simple single-page websites.

If you already have a domain name, you can connect it for free. This means your free site won’t be forced to use a ucraft.net subdomain, which is a big bonus since most free website builders won’t give you this luxury. However, your website will have Ucrafted branding on the page itself.

Here are some of the other features and benefits you’ll get for free with Ucraft:

• SSL certificate
• Drag and drop builder
• Visibility settings
• SEO tools
• Google analytics
• 24/7 support
• Password protected pages
• Free hosting
• Unlimited bandwidth

For a free plan, this is actually pretty good. Again, the only catch is that you’ll be limited to building just one page. To create more than that, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the following paid plans:

• Pro — $10 per month
• Pro Shop — $21 per month
• BigCommerce — $39 per month

All premium plans come with a 14-day free trial. No credit card required.

Onepager

Onepager is a website builder marketed toward small business owners. It’s intended for people without much technical ability who want to create a site with ease.

Onepager offers a “free forever” plan, which is extremely limited. Here’s a quick overview of what you get (and don’t get) for free:

• Onepager branded domain
• No web analytics
• No email
• Onepager ads on your pages
• No ecommerce capability
• No custom forms
• No custom CSS

You’ll still get hosting and 24/7 support, but overall, I wouldn’t recommend the free site for any serious websites. Use this plan if you’re interested in trying Onepager as an extended trial.

To remove Onepager ads, use your custom domain, and activate ecommerce functionality, paid plans start at $8 per month with an annual contract.

Cindr

Building a website with Cindr is about as easy as it gets. They eliminated lots of the complex features and distractions for users who prefer simplicity.

You’ll be able to quickly add and publish photos, videos, music, text, and other content on your site in minutes. Designs are mobile-friendly and highly responsive.

You can create a site with Cindr without providing any credit card information. In fact, Cindr has just two plans; Free and Premium.

The free plan comes with:

• Custom design capability
• MyCindr.com domain
• Live chat and email support
• Unlimited pages
• Free hosting
• 1 GB of bandwidth
• Unlimited storage

Your free Cindr site will have Cindr ads displayed on your pages. To remove those ads, connect your own domain, and build multiple sites, you’ll need to upgrade your plan.

The Premium plan is $9 per month with no long term contracts. It also comes with unlimited bandwidth and storage.

Site123

Similar to our previous review, Site123 also has just two plans; Free and Premium. Compared to other website builders, the free plan is actually packed with quality features.

You’ll get everything included with the Premium plan, except you won’t be able to use your own custom domain. You’ll also be limited to just 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth.

Aside from that, here are some of the features that come standard for free with Site123:

• Intuitive page editor
• Mobile-friendly designs
• Free hosting
• SEO tools
• 24/7 support

This website builder is a bit different from a traditional drag-and-drop editor. But it’s still easy to use and doesn’t require any code.

To get the most out of your Site123 website, upgrade to a Premium plan starting at $12.80 per month. This comes with ecommerce capabilities.

Strikingly

Millions of users have used Strikingly to create a website. It stands out from the other platforms on our list because it has ecommerce capability built-in, including the free version.

That’s right. For free, you can build an online store with Strikingly.

There’s just one catch. You can only have one product on display per website.

However, Strikingly lets you create an unlimited number of websites with the free plan. This is definitely better than some of the other options we’ve seen that restrict you to just one website or limited pages.

The free plan from Strikingly also offers 5 GB of bandwidth, which is more than we’ve seen from its competition.

As expected, you’ll be stuck with a Strikingly subdomain if you sign up for the free plan. To use your own domain and benefit from premium features, these are your upgrade options:

• Limited — $8 per month
• Pro — $16 per month
• VIP — $49 per month

These prices are based on annual contracts. To save money, Strikingly offers long-term contracts for up to five years. All premium plans come with a 14-day free trial.

Webstarts

Webstarts is another popular free website builder. It’s reliable, versatile, and extremely easy to use.

You can create a website with an unlimited number of pages, but Webstarts pretty limited beyond that.

The free plan doesn’t allow you to use a custom domain. There’s no social integration, emails, SEO tools, contact forms, or slideshows either.

Your free Webstarts site won’t be mobile-friendly and won’t give you HTML access or ecommerce capabilities. All free sites will have ads on every page.

Overall, you can’t really build a legitimate site unless you upgrade to a premium plan. There are two paid options, priced at $7.16 and $19.99 per month, respectively.

Yola

With Yola, you can create and publish a website online in less than 30 minutes. Unlike other free website builders, Yola won’t put ads on your pages, although you will have a Yola domain.

Yola’s drag-and-drop site builder is simple and easy to use. It doesn’t require any technical experience, making it a top choice for beginners.

With that said, advanced users can edit using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

The Yola free plan has 1 GB of bandwidth and 1 GB of storage. You’ll also benefit from features like:

• SEO tools
• Email support
• Web hosting with 99.9% uptime
• Social sharing
• Ability to embed YouTube videos
• Google Maps integration
• Video backgrounds
• Contact forms
• Tumblr blog integration
• Site statistics

However, there is one major contingency here. You can only build three web pages.

Obviously, that’s not reasonable for those of you who want to create a full website. The three pages are only enough to test out Yola’s platform to see if you like it enough to upgrade to:

• Bronze — $4.95 per month
• Silver — $9.95 per month
• Gold — $19.95 per month

All of these plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can add ecommerce capabilities to any premium plan for an extra $10 per month.

Jimdo

Jimdo was born back in 2007. Since then, more than 20 million websites have been built using this platform.

You can build a website for free using Jimdo, although your options will be extremely limited.

All free websites will have a .jimdosite.com subdomain. You’ll get 500 MB of storage, 2 GB of bandwidth, and HTTPS security. That’s pretty much it.

Jimdo will only let you build five web pages with the free plan. That’s obviously not enough to build a full website. But you’ll still be able to get your site live and see if you like the software before you upgrade.

I’d treat this free website builder as a trial that never expires. If you’re happy with the platform, then you can upgrade to one of the following paid plans:

• Start — $9 per month
• Grow — $15 per month
• Grow Business — $19 per month
• Grow Legal — $20 per month
• Unlimited — $39 per month

To get the most out of Jimdo, the Unlimited plan will be your best bet. It doesn’t have any restrictions and gives you better access to customer support. Jimdo also has ecommerce plans starting at $15 per month.

Hidden Costs of Free Website Builders

Lots of website builders say they are free, but they fail to mention any hidden costs. In reality, the majority of website builders are not truly free if you want to create and publish a legitimate website. These are some of the top hidden costs you need to keep an eye out for.

Custom Domain

Every free website builder on the market will give you a free branded domain with their name somewhere in the URL. But if you’re serious about publishing your site on the web, you’ll need to buy your own domain name.

There are a couple of site builders that let you connect your custom domain with a free plan, but you’ll still be paying for that elsewhere.

I do not recommend buying a domain from your website builder. Check out my list of the best domain registrars for more guidance with this process.

Web Hosting

Most free website builders will also offer free web hosting. But to be blunt—free web hosting stinks.

If you plan to have site visitors at any point after your site goes live, you’ll definitely need to take web hosting more seriously. Don’t worry, web hosting isn’t that expensive. These are my top recommendations for the best cheap web hosting plans.

Page Limitations

There are plenty of website builders out there that let you build a site for free with an unlimited number of pages. Some will even let you create an unlimited number of sites with a free plan.

However, there are other free website builders that restrict how many pages you can create before you’re forced to upgrade.

These page limitations can be as low as one or three pages. Obviously, you can’t build a full website with those types of restrictions. Adding pages will cost you money.

How to Choose the Best Website Builder For You

With so many free website builders on the market, choosing just one can be difficult. Here is the process that you should use when narrowing down the best option for your website.

Upgrades

If you want to start with a free website builder for now, that’s fine. But eventually, you’ll need to upgrade. You can’t really make a legitimate and high-quality website for free.

So choose a website builder that has plenty of upgrade options to meet your needs.

You don’t want to switch to a different platform when you’re ready to start paying. That’s too much of a hassle, and you’ll probably need to rebuild the majority of your site.

Ease of Use

You shouldn’t be struggling to create a website. Look for platforms with drag-and-drop builders and lots of templates that you can easily customize.

If you don’t have a technical background, this will make your life much easier.

Basic functions like adding text, images, videos, and creating new pages shouldn’t require too much effort. Managing your site, publishing blog posts, and everything else must be simple.

Some website builders, like WordPress, are extremely popular. However, WordPress doesn’t have a traditional drag-and-drop builder. So if you don’t have certain technical skills, avoid website builders that require coding knowledge.

Type of Website

What kind of website are you building?

Blogs, portfolios, ecommerce shops, and small business websites are all very different. You have to make sure that the website builder you choose has the ability to accommodate your needs.

Just because a website builder makes it easy for you to publish blog posts, it doesn’t mean it’s a great option for your online store. If you refer to the list above, you’ll see that some builders are definitely made for creating certain types of websites.

Conclusion

Creating a website for free is easy. All of the website builders on our list allow you to create a website for free.

But with that said, even the best free website builders are limited in some capacity. Some of these platforms will have more restrictions than others.

If you’re serious about creating a website, I would not recommend building it for free.

Instead, use these free builders to try different options. Think of these as extended free trials that won’t expire. Once you find a platform that you like, take a look at their paid options and upgrade to a suitable plan that meets your needs.

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