Product: BuildYourSite com
Overall Ranking: 80 out of 100 or 4/5stars
Price: $9.95, $16.95 and $24.95 per month
Ease of use: easy – intermediate
Website: https://www.buildyoursite.com
BuildYourSite.com (BYS) is one of the many options available when you are ready to create your own website. While looking at the different site builders I came across this editor and what made me look more deeply into the workings of BYS was the customer reviews. They were all positive!
In this review, we’ll see if all the good reviews are fully justified.
Background
BuildYourSite.com was established in 1997 and is a division of onewebhosting.com. They have 12000 customers in the US and 7 other countries.
What is BuildYourSite.com?
BYS is a website builder that is designed to make it as easy as possible to establish a presence for your company online. It is a platform that is aimed at company websites and not personal blogs.
Who is it for?
BYS is aimed at people who want to create a business website. Designed for people with no knowledge of code or graphic design, this is an easy way to create a site.
Ease of use
I tried the site builder with the test drive and found it to be relatively easy to use. There is, of course, a learning curve, but the BuildYourSite.com’s site builder is quite intuitive.
This website builder isn’t a drag and drop editor, but a point and click editor. Once you find where everything is it’s easy to change the design of your page – number of columns, background, fonts, add an image gallery, etc.
There is no free trial, but they do offer a test drive of the editor. I went back to my test drive site a few times and it was always as I had left it. Consequently, the test drive is like a free trial, but you don’t have to login every time you return to your test site.
BYS goes out of their way to make things straightforward, they offer free help if you need it from professional designers. It’s this type of customer service that makes them so popular with their customers.
You may also like: What is sitebuilder.com?
Templates
There are over 4000 templates to choose from and they are attractive and professional. You can choose by industry, color or design to speed up your selection.
What I didn’t like with the selection of your theme, you don’t get to see it in full operating size. You just get an image of the template and not a fully working demo. Before choosing a template I always like to see how it looks with the different options, nonetheless, the templates are fully customizable.
If you want to change your theme after a while, it is possible without out losing any of your content.
There is one option you are offered when choosing your template, that I find quite exceptional. It is possible to have a custom template specially designed for you and they say this service is free.
Apps
There are only a few apps available as you can see below. Although this seems a little meager, some functionalities that are sometimes included as applications are actually part of the editor.
For example, image gallery, forms, blog, comments or a forum are available directly in the website builder.
Compared to some of the other site builders or WordPress, where there are thousands of plugins available, this could be an area where BYS lose some points
e-Commerce
There is an e-Commerce option that includes the following features:
- easy to add products with images and options like size and color
- a wide range of payment options including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Google Checkout and others
- shipping rates calculated depending on location and possible to choose a preferred shipping company
- tax rates automatically calculated
- create discount codes, coupons, and special offers
- manage your inventory
- manage orders, email promotions to customers
- possible to sell physical goods and digital products such as ebooks
- automatically promote products on Facebook
- free live support provided by phone
The e-Commerce option is quite complete and you get unlimited storage and bandwidth. These two items often have limits with other companies. Nonetheless, as with the Wix and Squarespace e-Commerce platforms, the big drawback is that there is no real training on getting traffic.
Help and support
BuildYourSite offers some very good support, the support is not outsourced, but comes directly from the company headquarters in Sacremento CA. You can get telephone support, submit a ticket, go to the help desk to search for an answer to your question or browse the many tutorials in the learning resource center.
It is possible to get technical support or if you have a graphic design problem they will help you out.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- free domain name
- free graphic design assistance
- logo design feature included
- easy to use site editor
- hosting included
- responsive templates
- a good selection of templates
- live tech support by phone
- money back satisfaction guarantee
- test drive
Cons
- a limited number of apps
- no internet marketing training which would be useful for an e-Commerce site
- with more than one domain this could be expensive
How much does BuildYourSite cost?
Take note the starter subscription only allows you 10 pages and you cannot use the blog feature. In other words, you will need the $16.95 or $24.95 plans in most cases. BYS offer a 100% money back guarantee.
What are their customers saying?
On Trustpilot.com there are 71 positive reviews and 0 negative reviews, meaning they have a score of 9.7 out of 10. BuildYourSite.com are the number 1 ranked site out of 58 in the category of web design. Just for info WIX.com (see review here) are at position 52.
My final opinion
BuildYourSite.com would be a good choice for creating a business website for someone with little or no experience of coding. I didn’t find the site builder extraordinary, however, I think where BYS excel is in their support.
As they are a relatively small company they go further to keep their customers happy and give a personal service. You can get free help with graphic design or any technical problems and having a template designed just for you is pretty awesome.
I found one person who complained to BYS and they went out of their way to solve the problem, although it meant writing a considerable amount of code and took a certain time.
Consequently, for someone wanting to showcase a physical business, this could be a great option, yet I wouldn’t recommend BuildYourSite.com if you are just starting an online business and you hope to receive a great deal of traffic. For that, it’s good to have some training on how to optimize your site and write good content.
Taking the test drive is certainly worth doing and if you have any questions, ask the support, you will see if they live up to expectations.
As with most of the other site builders, the main missing ingredient is internet marketing training. If you are selling products online or looking to bring more traffic to your site this is certainly necessary.
I would recommend the Wealthy Affiliate University, an educational program where you get extensive training on starting an online business. You are also offered 2 free WordPress websites using the SiteRubix platform and step by step lessons in setting up your site. You can try below.
If you have used the BYS platform I would love to hear your views.
Review Summary
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BYS website editor
Summary
Description: BYS is a website builder aimed at businesses. An easy to use editor and great cusomer support.
Price: $9.95, $16.95 and $24.95 per month
My opinion:BuildYourSite.com is another of the many online website builders with an easy to use intuitive web editor. They have managed to distinguish themselves from the competition by giving outstanding customer support. Unfortunately as with many other site builders you don’t obtain any internet marketing training.
Ease of use: easy – intermediate
Website: http://www.buildyoursite.com
Hi Peter,
Really informative review on Build Your Site. I haven’t heard of these guys but it sounds like they have a better rating than say Wix. Customer support can go a long ways for people who are putting up their website for the first time.
You made some excellent points about the lack of training on SEO/Traffic, and the fact that if you have multiple sites, Build Your Site could get to be a bit pricey, but can you keep your domain name if you decide to host your site on another platform – say BlueHost?
It’s also cool that they provide free domain names. Based on your review and what I know about Wix, Build Your Site sounds to be the better platform, but still is limited in functionality compared to the almighty WordPress.
What do you think?
Thanks,
Todd
Hi Todd,
Yes, Build Your Site are a company that seems to really care about their customers, which unfortunately is a little rare these days. All the online site builders seem to lack the training to get traffic and also the prices are for just one domain. This makes having more than one domain expensive.
When I said all, there is one exception the SiteRubix WordPress website builder where you get training and up to 25 premium sites and 25 free sites in the price of your membership.
With Build Your Site if you decide to move to another host you will be able to keep your domain name. Build Your Site and Wix have similar editors and are both solid platforms, however, I prefer WordPress. The two site builders could be good for someone setting up their first website, but a WordPress website is more flexible, has more functionalities and is definitely my recommendation.
Thanks, Todd for your comment.
Peter
Hey Peter,
I have done some research on drag-and-drop website builders, but haven’t encounter any point-and-click editors. I suppose they are not CMS like WordPress either, are they?
On the other hand, the pricing doesn’t appeal to me. I now have close to 80 pages on my WordPress site and I am still paying the same rate as I first started with just one page. And even when I hit over 1000 pages in the near future, I know that my hosting fee will not change.
I just don’t see the point of restricting pages with paid plans. It does nothing more than just upsells.
Hi Cathy,
The point-and-click editors are similar to drag-and-drop editors, but to add something to your page you click on the position where your content is wanted. Very simple, but the drawback is there are only certain areas you are allowed to put your content.
The pricing plans are like many other site builders with similar restrictions until you buy the top plan. This might be OK if you only have one site, but for any more sites, this will become expensive. That’s why I always recommend a WordPress site builder, SiteRubix there are no restrictions on the number of pages and if you are a Premium member of Wealthy Affiliate you can have up to 25 domains. It is really great value plus there is the training and support.
Good luck with the 1000 pages Cathy I am sure you will get there:)
Take care,
Peter