SimpleSite Review | Simple, But Flawed (2023)

1 Ease of Use

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Ease of use is one of the main things to think about when you’re choosing a website builder. It’s important that your builder matches your own technical skills – that way, you can actually enjoy building your website!

Unsurprisingly, this is where SimpleSite really shines. It lives up to its name, giving its users a straightforward and easy way to build basic websites. SimpleSite values pleasure over perfection, which shows in its simple editor.

Just a heads up, though – if you want lots of creative freedom, then you’ll find SimpleSite frustrating rather than easy. It’s not terribly intuitive, either, meaning straying from the set path can cause headaches.

If you want more freedom, builders like Wix or Squarespace are much better suited for your needs. However, for the technically challenged amongst us, SimpleSite’s clear, unfussy editor is a godsend.

When you start out, you choose whether you’re creating a personal or business site – if it’s neither, you can select “other.”

SimpleSite then guides you through the building process – you simply choose your color scheme, add images, a title, and domain name, then create a login. This final step automatically publishes your site, which you can then go back and finish editing.

It’s super simple, and totally beginner friendly. That said, it wasn’t always the most intuitive – at times, its simplicity became extremely restrictive, and made it difficult to work out how to do pretty basic things. In one round of testing, it took us a long time just to work out how to edit text before publishing our site, which should be easy!

SimpleSite claims you can build a site within a matter of minutes. In our testing, we found that in reality, this is likely to turn into two hours (assuming you want a well-rounded website).

2 Theme Design and Customization

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SimpleSite might be simple to build, but how will your website look? The truth is, design is the price you pay for the straightforward editor. SimpleSite’s designs are pretty dated, and offer very limited customization.

While most other builders – like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace – give you a choice of templates to base your site’s structure and design upon, SimpleSite works a little differently. If you choose the “personal/blog” or “other” options, you’re automatically given a pre-set theme to customize, like the one in the image below.

However, if you select the “business” option, you get to choose from a few different themes to edit.

This is a fairly bizarre way of doing things – you can specify which type of business site you’re setting up, for example, but not whether your personal site is a portfolio, blog, or CV.

Because of this, our top tip is to choose the “business” option, no matter what type of site you’re building. This lets you browse all of SimpleSite’s themes to find one that suits your needs.

Once you have your theme, customization is pretty basic. The good news is that despite its rather roundabout way of doing things, SimpleSite does make it very easy to add elements, such as text and images.

However, editing or readjusting them once they’re on your page is a more challenging – and often impossible – task.

It’s easy to switch your site’s layout after publishing, but you can’t go back and choose a totally new theme – you can just change the layout of the theme you picked originally.

Think of SimpleSite like Playmobil – you can easily build a good-looking site, but it’s within the restrictions laid out for you. Wix and Squarespace, for example, are more like Lego – still easy for beginners, but with the potential for more freedom, imagination, and impressive results.

3 Features

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While design is the first thing your visitors will notice, it’s the features that can make a long-term difference to your site, affecting how likely it is to succeed and grow.

Unfortunately, SimpleSite has a pretty limited range of features, making it less than ideal for ambitious websites.

The features it does include, however, provide a good basis for hobby websites and budding projects. The free plan is generous in what it offers, with ecommerce and mobile optimization both coming as standard.

Generous Ecommerce

SimpleSite’s main triumph when it comes to features is the fact it lets you sell up to five products on its free plan. That’s really worth shouting about. Ecommerce capability is usually reserved for paying customers, so offering it free of charge really makes SimpleSite stand out from its competitors.

This is perfect if you want to sell a few items, but we don’t recommend SimpleSite if you’re actually going to start an ecommerce store. It’s not very scalable, and won’t give you the tools you need to manage your store properly.

To unlock unlimited products for your online store, you have to upgrade to the most expensive E-Commerce plan for $30.49 per month. At this price, you might as well use a better ecommerce platform, such as Shopify or BigCommerce – both of which cost under $30 per month, and have incredibly powerful ecommerce features.

Overall, SimpleSite is very generous with its five product ecommerce feature on its free plan, which makes it a great choice for making money from your hobby. It’s a rare offer, and is definitely worth making the most of!

On-the-Go Mobile Optimization

Most website builders offer mobile-optimized templates, so that your site will automatically look great on any screen. SimpleSite is no different, but where it really sets itself apart is with its on-the-go mobile website editor.

You can edit and manage your site straight from your mobile, without downloading an app or fiddling around with plugins – just a few taps on your phone or tablet, and you’re good to go!

Professional Email Addresses

When you buy a domain through SimpleSite, you also get five personal email addresses included. So rather than using your generic email, such as joebloggs@gmail.com, instead you can have joebloggs@ceramicsworld.com. This is a great feature, as it gives you and your site a more professional image.

These are the three main perks that come with using SimpleSite. However, there are some key features that SimpleSite does not include, which you would expect to see from a typical website builder.

Poor SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for getting your website found – without it, your website doesn’t stand a chance of ranking highly in Google’s search results. The best SEO website builders include tons of SEO tools automatically, and make it as easy as possible for you to optimize your site even further.

SimpleSite just doesn’t step up enough when it comes to SEO.

Yes, it gives you mobile-optimized pages, which Google loves, and has guides showing you how to use keywords in your headings. But you’re very limited in what you can do to optimize your site – for starters, you can’t install any apps, insert Google Analytics, or access the code of your pages.

When you compare SimpleSite’s SEO offerings to that of Squarespace or Weebly, you realize how basic it is. If you’re aiming for the first spot, or even first page of Google’s search results, SimpleSite is simply not for you.

Non-Existent App Market

SimpleSite doesn’t have an app market, meaning you’re totally reliant on its built-in features. It’s not the only website builder to do this – Squarespace, for example, doesn’t have an app market, but then again it also has the best quality features around. SimpleSite can’t boast the same!

Outdated Social Media Integration

While you can embed social buttons so that visitors can share your site across platforms like Facebook or Twitter, you can’t insert live social feeds onto your site. This is a real shame – social media is a huge part of modern marketing, and your website is the perfect place to give visitors a chance to keep up to date with your online profiles.

All in all, SimpleSite has a lot less to offer than its competitors when it comes to features. Sure, you’ll get the basics, with a few nice perks thrown in – but overall, the glaring gaps in its features list are hard to ignore, or to justify.

The truth is, if you want to scale up your website, you’ll find yourself struggling.

4 Help and Support

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Help and support is easy to overlook when you’re choosing a website builder, but it’s worth checking out before committing. Nobody wants to spend hours going round in circles with an unhelpful chat bot – so what does SimpleSite have to offer in your hour of need?

The answer is – not much. SimpleSite only offers one type of support: email.

This at least means your issue is dealt with by a human being, but the downside is, they can only work at a human pace. The average response time is two working days, which is less than ideal if you have an urgent issue.

There’s no phone number listed on SimpleSite’s customer support page – only the email, postal address, and list of FAQs. You can head to the blog for more general information, but for specific or technical problems, you’ll need to contact the support team directly.

5 Pricing

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SimpleSite has three plans to choose from: the Basic, Pro, and E-Commerce plans. The Basic plan is totally free; the Pro plan costs $15.49 per month, while the E-Commerce plan comes in at $30.49 per month. If this sounds pricey, you can save money by paying annually rather than monthly.

The Basic plan lets you build up to 15 pages, sell up to five products, and offers a limited choice of design options. On this plan, you’ll have adverts promoting SimpleSite across your website – for this reason, we don’t recommend the free plan for any type of business website. Instead, it’s ideal for hobby websites or personal projects.

The Pro plan removes these adverts, lets you create unlimited pages, unlocks access to all design options, and lets you use unlimited images and video minutes. You also get a free domain and five email addresses. It’s designed for professional websites, whether personal or business. You’re still limited to five products in your store – if you want to sell more, you’ll need the E-Commerce plan.

The E-Commerce plan comes with everything from the Pro plan – the only difference is that you can sell an unlimited number of products through your site. Unsurprisingly, this plan is best for online stores. All paid plans come with a 14-day money back guarantee, so you can try them out without any risk!

The free plan is the one we’d most recommend, despite its many limitations. It’s very generous in allowing you to sell online, ideal for mobile users, and a good option for hobby websites.

Due to the outdated designs and lack of features, the paid plans don’t offer much value for money, especially compared to other builders such as Wix and Weebly. If you’re starting a business site, it’s worth considering either of these alternatives instead.

*Prices shown in this table reflect the monthly cost of annual plans, rather than month-to-month subscriptions.