Strikingly is famous for helping people who aren't good with technology to create beautiful and useful websites quickly. But does it truly deliver on these promises, and is it the right platform for everyone's needs? Our Strikingly review is here to answer.
As this Strikingly website builder review goes on, we will explore the following aspects of Strikingly:
- Pricing;
- Ease of use;
- Website designing tools;
- eCommerce features;
- Apps & integrations;
- Blogging features;
- SEO features;
- Marketing tools;
- Mobile app;
- Security;
- Customer support.
Let’s get started with this Strikingly review!
What is Strikingly?
Launched in 2012, Strikingly has quickly gained traction in the website builder market. Right now, it's powering over 34,000 websites and growing, with a significant presence in America.
You don’t need any coding skills to get started with Strikingly. This is a huge advantage if you're diving into building a website for the first time. The platform offers a straightforward, drag-and-drop interface that lets you put everything together intuitively.
Strikingly Pros & Cons
Below, we've outlined the pros and cons of using Strikingly. This comparison will provide a clear snapshot of what to expect, helping you make an informed decision about whether it's the right platform for your online store.
Strikingly pros | Strikingly cons |
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Who Should Consider Using Strikingly?
If you're on the lookout for a user-friendly way to get your website up and running, Strikingly might just be what you need. It's particularly good for those who want a no-hassle, quick setup.
Here’s a closer look at who can benefit most from using Strikingly:
- Personal portfolios: Perfect for showcasing your work or projects in a simple, one-page layout — think graphic designers, writers, or students building a resume site.
- Small business websites: Great for getting your business online quickly with all the essentials — whether you run a café, a photography studio, or a local boutique.
- Starter online stores: Ideal for selling a few products without dealing with complex tools — like handmade jewelry, digital downloads, or a small merch line.
- Bloggers: Handy for launching a blog with built-in templates and sharing features — perfect if you’re starting a travel blog, personal journal, or niche hobby site.
“Within an hour, we probably had our best landing page yet, and for a fraction of the price. It's amazing. Since then, I've built about 15 sites on Strikingly – it's currently my favorite startup tech tool.” – Ben, Founder of Tribewanted
Through our testing for this Strikingly review, we've found that it may not be suitable for everyone, especially as your business grows. If you're planning to develop a large, dynamic website or manage a bustling online store with a wide array of products, Strikingly's features might feel restrictive.
To ensure it's the right fit for you, we have included a detailed Strikingly review on all features in the following section. Keep reading for more!
Strikingly Review: A Detailed Breakdown of Features
In preparing this Strikingly review, our research team, consisting of five members, employed a comprehensive methodology to evaluate the platform's capabilities. We assessed Strikingly across various criteria, including ease of use, feature set, performance, customer support, etc. Each category was rated on a scale from 1 to 5, and these scores were then averaged to provide an overall rating.
This structured approach ensures that our review is thorough and balanced, reflecting the platform's strengths and weaknesses from multiple perspectives.
Pricing
Our scoring: 3.2/5
Strikingly used to offer 4 plans, but they’ve recently updated it to just 3 (1 forever-free plan and 2 paid plans). This makes things simpler and easier to choose from:
- Free Plan: Perfect for beginners, this plan lets you start building your site at no cost under a Strikingly domain. You can create unlimited free sites under a Strikingly.com domain and includes 5GB of monthly bandwidth.
- Pro Plan ($20/mo): Strikingly's most popular plan offers unlimited bandwidth, gets rid of Strikingly’s own branding on your site, and lets you add as many pages as you need. It supports the creation of up to 3 sites.
- VIP Plan ($59/mo): Designed for advanced users, this plan provides powerful features suited for businesses and membership sites. It includes enhanced support and allows for managing up to 5 sites, making it ideal for larger projects or enterprises.
The mentioned pricing range is monthly billing, but here’s a tip – if you commit to a longer plan, you’ll save more. They even offer a 5-year plan, which gives you the biggest discount. So, if you're planning to stick around, it might be worth going long-term to save some cash.
Besides the main pricing plans, Strikingly also offers a couple of helpful add-ons:
- Custom Domain: For $24.95/year, you can get a custom domain name to make your site look more professional and boost SEO.
- Custom Email: For $25/year, you can create a custom email address (like [email protected]). This makes your communication look more professional. Note: You’ll need a domain name first to use this feature.
Compared to other platforms like Wix and Squarespace, its pricing plans might not seem as flashy, especially if your business plans to grow quickly. This Strikingly review shows that the platform is fantastic for beginners since its free plan is pretty generous, and the features are basic enough to start your business.
Ease of use
Our scoring: 4/5
First off, getting started with Strikingly is a breeze. All you need to enter is your email, name, and password, and you're ready to create a free site right away. This quick setup is ideal for anyone eager to get online without fuss.
Strikingly also offers an AI-powered site generator that can whip up your site in seconds. Just describe your store in a sentence or two, pick the tone of voice, choose the site format, select a language, and upload your logo. In no time, you'll have a basic layout ready. From there, you can further customize to suit your style even more.
In my experience, the aesthetic quality of the sites generated by Strikingly’s AI doesn't quite measure up to those created with Wix or Squarespace. It's handy for getting a basic site up quickly, but it may not meet the needs of those looking for more sophisticated, visually appealing outcomes.
If you prefer more control from the start, you can choose one of Strikingly’s templates. Each template comes with placeholder content and images, which helps you visualize what your finished site will look like. Customizing is straightforward: click on any element—text, photos, buttons—to edit it.
Website designing tools
Our scoring: 3.5/5
Templates
Strikingly has over 200 templates that balance classic looks with modern flair. You can filter through to find the perfect fit for anything you need, whether it's an online store, a blog, or even an event page. Personally, I find these Strikingly templates to be highly suitable for one-page websites or engaging landing pages.
Strikingly's templates are expertly designed to be fully responsive, ensuring that your site looks great and functions smoothly across all devices. Plus, you can switch up your template anytime without having to start from scratch. This is particularly beneficial as it contrasts with platforms like Wix, where changing your template after the initial setup requires you to start over, potentially losing your content in the process.
Design control
Continuing this Strikingly review with the customization tools, the platform doesn't really live up to our expectations. It is described as a drag-and-drop editor, yet you can’t actually move elements freely across the page.
Instead, Strikingly restricts you to modifying elements within predefined sections, offering a few layout choices for text, buttons, and icons. This setup restricts customization to just reordering sections and selecting from a few preset layouts for each section's content.
For example, in the Portfolio section of your site, all items you add will follow a consistent format defined by the section. This format typically includes a combination of images and text. Some sections include a “Change Layout” button that lets you toggle between a few design options, such as alternating photos and text from left to right.
While this structure simplifies the design process and can be ideal for those who need a straightforward, low-cost website, it does limit customization. Compared to the extensive customization options offered by platforms like Wix or Squarespace, Strikingly’s tools are simpler and may not suit those who need highly customized site designs.
eCommerce features
This Strikingly review wouldn’t be complete without diving into the eCommerce features that the platform offers. After all, many of you are seeking a platform that does more than just create an aesthetically pleasing website; you need one that also helps you sell products effectively.
Here are the eCommerce features you can find when running your online store on Strikingly:
Features | Details |
Product management | Sell physical products, services, and digital goods. Categorize products and enable filters to enhance customer navigation. |
Order management | Track your orders in real time with a simple yet effective management tool. |
Shipping method | Set up various shipping rates (flat rate, by weight). Basic for starters’ needs. |
Custom checkout | Customize the checkout process, decide what information to collect, and direct customers to specific pages post-purchase. |
Taxes | Charge appropriate taxes based on product type and customer location, with options for how taxes are displayed at checkout. |
Memberships | Enable customer accounts for faster checkouts and access to premium content. |
Product reviews | Facilitate the collection of customer feedback, enhancing product credibility and encouraging new purchases. |
Our research into Strikingly's eCommerce capabilities shows that while the platform offers a range of features, it falls short in certain key areas. Strikingly may not be the best fit for those looking to operate eCommerce models like dropshipping, restaurants, POS, or print-on-demand.
Apps & integrations
Our scoring: 3.2/5
Strikingly features an app store with some basic apps covering the essentials – social media, payment processors, email, marketing, etc. The biggest downside is that its app store is tucked away in a small section called “App Store & HTML”, which is less accessible than the separated app stores found on other eCommerce platforms.
Integrating apps to your Strikingly website is also complicated. If most platforms let you add an app with just a couple of clicks, Strikingly involves a manual process where you must paste code snippets into your site. These snippets, provided by the apps themselves, allow your website to interact with various services.
Overall, the integration process and app store accessibility on Strikingly could be improved. It’s functional but might be a bit daunting for those not comfortable with manual configurations.
Blogging features
Our scoring: 3.5/5
From our point of view, Strikingly offers a solid range of blogging features that, while not the most advanced, are more than adequate for covering the essentials.
The blog editor is straightforward. You can add text, pictures, videos, and even buttons easily. Before publishing your posts, you can either save them as drafts or schedule posting times. Additionally, you can preview how your posts will look on various devices, ensuring a responsive and consistent appearance across all platforms.
Organizing your blog is also easy with Strikingly. You can sort your posts into up to five categories. This helps visitors find what they're interested in and keeps them on your site longer. You can manage comments, adjust post order, and set up blog subscriptions and RSS feeds. These features make your blog more interactive.
However, customization options for the blog's appearance are limited to the choices provided by your site's theme. You can adjust certain aspects, like background images and text formatting, but the overall design is dictated by the theme you select.
SEO features
Our scoring: 3/5
The next step is making sure as many people as possible can find your website. This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes into play. Unfortunately, our findings for the Strikingly review indicate that this might not be the strongest platform for SEO.
Strikingly does include a feature known as the SEO Checklist. This tool lists basic SEO tasks you should complete to help optimize your site. As you complete each item, the checklist marks it off with a checkmark and a strikethrough. This sounds helpful, but the tool is quite basic and may not significantly impact your site's visibility in organic search results.
For example, when it comes to blog posts, the only SEO settings you can adjust are the meta descriptions and custom URLs. Although these are important, they're just a small part of what can be done for SEO.
You can also set image alt texts for all images, which helps with image search visibility. For your homepage and other pages, it's possible to set SEO titles and choose social or featured images, but these latter options are restricted to the homepage.
Marketing tools
Our scoring: 3.1/5
In terms of marketing in this Strikingly review, the platform offers a basic suite that could be sufficient for new or small businesses, but it doesn't quite match the range of options provided by other website builders. Here's a breakdown of what you can expect:
Features | Details |
Email marketing |
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Forms and contact pages |
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Coupons |
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Social media integration |
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Mobile app
Our scoring: 4/5
One feature that truly stood out in this Strikingly review is its mobile app. The platform has developed a comprehensive mobile app available on both iOS and Android platforms. This app is remarkably flexible, allowing you to handle virtually all the tasks you'd typically perform on the desktop version of Strikingly. From your mobile device, you can effortlessly create a new website from the ground up, manage incoming orders, and view site analytics.
Moreover, the app enables you to edit and publish pages or blog posts directly from your mobile device, ensuring that you can keep your site updated no matter where you are. This level of integration makes managing an online presence through Strikingly both effective and convenient for busy entrepreneurs on the move.
Security
Our scoring: 4.2/5
If you're wondering, “Is Strikingly secure?” the answer is yes! Strikingly ensures that all sites with custom domains have Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, making it tough for hackers to steal personal information like credit card details and email addresses. This security measure is automatically configured, regardless of whether you purchase your domain through Strikingly or transfer it from another provider.
Furthermore, Strikingly protects your site with regular backups and a team of security experts who monitor and respond to threats. This robust security setup helps safeguard your site’s data against cyber threats, providing a secure platform for your online presence.
Customer support
Our scoring: 4.5/5
Strikingly's customer support framework is designed to provide comprehensive assistance through various channels, ensuring you can always find the help you need. The platform boasts an extensive knowledge base, where you can find articles with videos and screenshots for a clear guide.
If you require more direct assistance, Strikingly offers 24/7 live chat support called “Happiness Officers”. Even free accounts have access—just click the question mark in the corner of your screen. If your problem needs more detail, you can email them directly with screenshots at [email protected]. Keep in mind that phone support is only for VIP users, unlike Wix, which offers phone help to all users.
Strikingly Website Builder Review: FAQs
Is Strikingly a Chinese company?
Yes, Strikingly is a Chinese company headquartered in Shanghai. It also has deep roots in Silicon Valley and has received backing from investors, including Y Combinator.
Is Strikingly really free?
Yes, Strikingly offers a forever-free plan that allows users to create websites using Strikingly's domain (yourname.strikingly.com). The free plan includes all basic features, but advanced features and a custom domain require upgrading to a paid plan.
Which is better, Wix or Strikingly?
Wix offers more customization options and a wider range of features, making it better suited for creating both basic and complex websites. Its extensive design flexibility allows users to build highly detailed and feature-rich sites.
On the other hand, Strikingly is known for its simplicity and ease of use, making it ideal for those who need to quickly set up simpler, stylish single-page websites.
How do you use Strikingly.com?
Here are the steps to use Strikingly:
- Sign up for an account on Strikingly.com.
- Choose a template that suits your site’s purpose.
- Customize the template by adding your own text, images, and other elements through the site editor.
- Utilize the drag-and-drop interface to arrange content and customize the design.
- Once your site looks as you desire, publish it with a click. If you're on a free plan, your site will be hosted under the Strikingly domain, but you can purchase a custom domain if you prefer.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, we hope this Strikingly review has helped you understand what this platform brings to the table. It's great for beginners and small businesses who want to get online quickly without much fuss. However, if you need more complex features or deep customization, you might need to look at other options.
For more insights and reviews on other eCommerce platforms, be sure to check out our collection of eCommerce blog posts and join our community group.
