Webnode is a versatile website builder that empowers users to create professional websites with ease, offering robust features and intuitive design tools. Launched in 2008, Webnode has established itself as a reliable platform for individuals and businesses looking to establish an online presence quickly and efficiently. This detailed review covers everything you need to know about Webnode, including its features, pricing options, customization capabilities, user experience, and customer support, to help you determine if it's the right choice for building your website.
What is Webnode?
Webnode is a versatile and user-friendly website builder designed to help individuals, small businesses, and enterprises create professional websites without the need for technical expertise. Established in 2008, Webnode has grown significantly, supporting over 40 million users globally. The platform is known for its robust multilingual capabilities, making it an ideal choice for users targeting international audiences. Whether you need a personal blog, a business website, or an online store, Webnode provides the necessary tools to create fully functional websites quickly and efficiently. It offers a range of templates and a simple drag-and-drop editor, making website creation accessible to everyone.
How Webnode Works
Webnode operates on a template-based system that simplifies the process of building websites. Users start by signing up and selecting a template that best suits their needs. These templates are pre-designed for various industries and purposes, ensuring that users can find a suitable design for their projects. Once a template is chosen, users can customize their websites using Webnode's intuitive drag-and-drop editor. This editor allows users to add, remove, and rearrange elements such as text, images, videos, and widgets without any coding knowledge. Webnode also provides robust multilingual support, enabling users to create and manage multiple language versions of their websites from a single account. This feature is particularly beneficial for businesses targeting international markets.
Webnode Core Features
Multilingual Support: Webnode excels in providing tools to create multilingual websites. Users can easily add new language versions to their sites, manage translations, and ensure that content is accessible to a global audience. This feature is especially beneficial for businesses aiming to expand their reach internationally.
- Template Selection: Webnode offers a wide range of responsive templates designed for various industries, including business, e-commerce, portfolio, personal blog, and more. These templates are visually appealing and optimized for performance, ensuring that websites look professional and function well across different devices.
- Drag-and-Drop Editor: The intuitive drag-and-drop editor allows users to customize their websites easily by dragging and dropping elements into place. Users can add text, images, videos, galleries, forms, and widgets without any technical skills, making the website building process straightforward and enjoyable.
- E-commerce Capabilities: Webnode supports comprehensive e-commerce functionality, allowing users to create online stores, list products, manage inventory, process orders, and accept payments through various payment gateways. This makes Webnode suitable for small to medium-sized businesses looking to sell products or services online.
- SEO Tools: Built-in SEO tools help optimize websites for search engines. Users can customize meta titles, descriptions, URLs, and alt texts to improve their site's visibility and ranking in search engine results. These tools are essential for attracting organic traffic and growing an online presence.
What Sets Webnode Apart
Webnode distinguishes itself with its strong multilingual capabilities and ease of use. Unlike many other website builders, Webnode allows users to create and manage multiple language versions of their websites from a single account. This feature is particularly advantageous for businesses targeting international audiences or operating in diverse linguistic regions. The platform’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor simplifies the customization process, making it accessible to users of all skill levels. Additionally, Webnode offers robust e-commerce tools, enabling users to set up and manage online stores with ease. The combination of these features makes Webnode a versatile and accessible platform for a wide range of users.
Webnode Setup
Setting up a website with Webnode involves a few straightforward steps:
- Sign Up: Create an account on Webnode’s website using an email address and password. The sign-up process is quick and straightforward, allowing users to get started immediately.
- Choose a Template: Select a template from Webnode’s extensive library that fits your industry or personal style. The templates are categorized by type, making it easy to find one that suits your needs.
- Customize Your Site: Use the drag-and-drop editor to add content, images, videos, and other elements to your site. Customize the layout, colors, fonts, and other design aspects to match your brand or personal preferences.
- Publish: Once you’re satisfied with your design, publish your website with a few clicks. Webnode handles the hosting, ensuring your site is live and accessible to visitors.
Webnode Ease of Use
Webnode is designed to be user-friendly, with an intuitive interface that makes website building accessible to users of all skill levels. The drag-and-drop editor simplifies the customization process, allowing users to modify templates without any coding knowledge. Webnode also provides helpful guides, tutorials, and a comprehensive knowledge base to assist users in navigating and utilizing its features effectively. The platform’s clean and organized interface ensures that users can focus on creating and managing their websites without getting bogged down by technical details.
Webnode Security
Webnode takes security seriously and implements several measures to protect user data and ensure website security:
- SSL Certificates: All Webnode websites come with SSL encryption, which protects data transmitted between the user’s browser and the website. This encryption ensures that sensitive information, such as payment details and personal data, is secure.
- Data Protection: Webnode adheres to data protection regulations, including GDPR, and employs robust security protocols to safeguard user information. These measures include regular security audits and updates to protect against potential vulnerabilities.
- Regular Backups: Webnode performs automatic backups to ensure that website data is safe and can be restored in case of accidental loss or technical issues. This feature provides peace of mind, knowing that your website can be recovered if something goes wrong.
Webnode Customer Service and Support
Webnode provides customer support through various channels:
- Email Support: Users can contact the support team via email for assistance with technical issues and inquiries. The response times are generally quick, and the support team is knowledgeable and helpful.
- Knowledge Base: A comprehensive knowledge base offers tutorials, guides, and FAQs to help users troubleshoot and learn about platform features. The knowledge base is well-organized and covers a wide range of topics, making it a valuable resource for users.
- Priority Support: Higher-tier plans, such as the Profi plan, include priority support, ensuring faster response times for urgent issues. This feature is beneficial for businesses and users who require immediate assistance with critical problems.
Webnode Additional Features Worth Noting
Blogging Platform: Webnode includes integrated blogging capabilities, allowing users to create and manage blog content effectively. This feature is beneficial for enhancing SEO and engaging with audiences through regular updates and posts.
- Form Builder: The form builder tool enables users to create custom forms for collecting visitor information, making it useful for lead generation and customer feedback. Users can create contact forms, survey forms, and more with ease.
- Social Media Integration: Webnode supports integration with various social media platforms, helping users enhance their online presence and engagement. Users can add social media buttons, feeds, and sharing options to their websites.
Webnode Alternatives and How They Compare
Several alternatives to Webnode offer similar features:
- Wix: Known for its extensive customization options and large template library, Wix is suitable for users seeking creative freedom. Wix offers a more flexible drag-and-drop editor and a wide range of apps and integrations, making it a powerful platform for users with advanced needs.
- Weebly: Focuses on ease of use and robust e-commerce capabilities, making it ideal for small businesses looking to sell products online. Weebly provides a straightforward website building experience and comprehensive e-commerce tools, including inventory management and payment processing.
- Squarespace: Offers sleek, designer-quality templates and powerful blogging tools, appealing to users prioritizing aesthetics and content management. Squarespace is known for its polished design and user-friendly interface, making it a popular choice for creative professionals and bloggers.
Each alternative has its strengths, and the best choice depends on the specific needs and preferences of the user.
Who Is Webnode Best For?
Webnode is ideal for:
- Small to Medium-Sized Businesses: Needing a user-friendly platform to create professional websites with e-commerce capabilities. Webnode provides the tools and features necessary to build and manage business websites effectively.
- International Businesses: Looking to create multilingual websites to reach a global audience. Webnode’s robust multilingual support makes it easy to manage multiple language versions of a website, ensuring content is accessible to international visitors.
- Individuals and Bloggers: Seeking an easy-to-use website builder with integrated blogging tools. Webnode offers a range of templates and customization options, making it suitable for personal websites, portfolios, and blogs.
Webnode Pricing:
Webnode offers several pricing tiers to accommodate different needs and budgets:
- Limited Free Plan: Includes basic features with Webnode branding and a subdomain (e.g., yoursite.webnode.com). This plan is suitable for users who want to try out the platform before committing to a paid plan.
- Mini Plan: Starts at $3.95 per month, includes custom domain support, removes Webnode ads, and provides basic website features. This plan is ideal for individuals or small businesses needing a simple yet professional website.
- Standard Plan: Priced at $7.95 per month, offers more features such as increased storage, form builder, and multilingual support. This plan is suitable for growing businesses and users needing more advanced functionality.
- Profi Plan: Starts at $19.95 per month, includes advanced features like e-commerce capabilities, priority support, and extensive customization options. This plan is designed for businesses and users requiring comprehensive tools and premium support.
Refunds
When you order a Premium Plan for the first time, you have a 15-day money-back guarantee period, no questions asked. For any renewal or for an order paid with a voucher, refunds are not possible. The 15-day refund period is not applicable for domain registrations.
Webnode Hosting:
Being an all-in-one website builder, Webnode provides hosting for all sites created using its tools. However, there are no options to upgrade the level of hosting provided. Also, they do not provide stand-alone hosting services for a website that you have built elsewhere. Hosting is free, regardless of the plan selected. Domain names are also included with plans, but designers also have the option to use independently purchased domain names if desired.
All websites created with Webnode have SSL enabled and are using HTTPS for safe browsing.
- Reliable hosting- All Webnode websites are hosted on safe and secure servers. As your presence grows, you can get more space for content and higher bandwidth for an increasing number of visitors
- Restore previous versions of your website- The backup feature remembers everything. Keep your content safe, create regular backups and restore previous versions of your website any time you need
- Fast and smooth loading- Webnode makes sure your website will always load fast and smooth.
- Domain name:
All websites come with a Webnode subdomain. However, premium plans also offer a free custom domain name for the first year. A free domain is inluded for the first year with plans like Mini and higher. SSL encryption is included in all plans so your site will run on https.
Perfect domain for your brand
- Get a new domain with us or connect your existing one
- Choose from wide selection of local and special domains or use the domain you already own
- Free domain name for 1 year - With the first purchase of a Mini or higher Premium Plan get a voucher for free domain registration for one year.
- Free website on the Webnode subdomain-
- Private registrations- Prevent spam and hide your details from the public records through anonymous domain registration
Professional email accounts:
You can create up to 100 different accounts, each with 1GB of space. This way, you will be able to create accounts for different roles within your company.
- Email on your own domain- A mailbox is created on your domain.
- Set your mailbox with any client your like- Set your Webnode mailbox with Outlook, Gmail or other email clients.
- Create multiple email accounts
- Customization- choice and fleixibilty of design:
Webnode offers hundreds of templates to choose from when it comes to pre-designed website themes, design and customisation, all offering full CSS access. In theme's gallery, there are some fully responsive designs. However, you won't be able to tweak their HTML or CSS.
You can customize by adding your content, altering colors and elements to suit your taste. You can use typical tools like text boxes, social media widgets, web forms, image galleries, or embed YouTube videos and add these sections and pages with a click. The templates are modern in look and function and provide numerous layouts in various standard and creative formats. Blank templates are not an option, enforcing designers to choose among the available options. Modifying templates is easy and intuitive. You can give a unique look to each section by changing their background color.
Free professional photos/ videos:
Audio, video, and photo galleries are all available and can be added to any site. You can use the slideshow or lightbox options while creating a photo gallery. The lightbox option enlarges photos when you click on them, showing close-up photos of products (that customers intend to buy).
- Extensive image gallery- All pictures are royalty-free and ready to be used on your website.
- Make your images stand out- Choose from different photo gallery layouts to present your images. Add them as a background to your website or place them anywhere you need.
Form builder:
- One click to contact, reservation and newsletter forms- The most common types of forms are ready in the editor. Select and add it to your website with just one click.
- Manage form entries with ease- Get an email notification every time a visitor fills in a form on your website. All form entries are collected in the detail of your project.
- Create your own forms- You can collect information with even more specific forms. Use dropdown lists, multiple-choice questions or let your visitors upload their files. Make them your own.
- GDPR friendly- Allow your users to give consent to collecting their data by adding the data consent field to your forms.
Online store:
Webnode has an integrated ecommerce solution. All online store plans have ecommerce capabilities, and come with great support, like form builders and backup and recovery. Simply list products and/or add images, product descriptions, and more. Webnode also offers other helpful features like credit card processing and contact forms. Webnode can help you accomplish all your goals be it few items to sell or a large ecommerce catalogue and that too at an affordable rate.
- Add new products in few minutes- Setting up your store is fast and easy. Describe your products, upload images, set prices, press publish and you are all set to sell.
- Intuitive store management- Get notified about every order in your store. You can change the status, notify users about dispatching orders and archive fulfilled orders in the order management.
- Local payment methods- Offer your customers a variety of payment options - wire transfer, PayPal, payment upon pickup or credit card payment via Stripe.
- Shipping methods- You can deliver your products via DHL and FedEx. Set in-store pickup or other delivery methods. Allow your customers to track the delivery of their orders.
- Create discounts to promote sales- Offer customers discounts or free shipping and boost sales in your store. Set discounts for all offers or for orders exceeding a certain value.
- Offer promo codes- Create promo codes to limit the use of discounts. The discount will be applied only when the user enters the code in the review of his order.
- Store statistics- Check your store's traffic: the most popular products and the most profitable customers.
- Product variants- Offer products in different sizes, colors or flavors. Set a different price, product number or availability for each variant.
- Quick and simple checkout- The store checkout contains a few simple steps with the order overview always in sight.
- Customizable product pages- Change pictures, add video manuals, or provide additional information.
- Important products in bulk- Import the products in bulk in the CSV format, no need to add or update products one by one.
- Export to price comparison sites- Use Webnodes product feed and export your products to price comparison sites.
- Beautiful and responsive store templates- Comes with prepared products and texts to help you open your store even faster. Every template can be easily customized to suit your business needs.
- Manage your orders with ease- Efficient and straightforward order management system. See at a glance which orders have been paid and how many products you need to send out.
- See the performance of your store- Easily connect Google Analytics to get detailed insights. Check how much traffic your store brings in, the most popular products and the most profitable customers.
Blogs:
The blog function is quite basic (with feature such as comments and categories) with no support for RSS or commenting. It allows you to publish optimized content that will increase rankings in organic search results. The editor is quite flexible. If you wish to improve your search engine rankings with blogging, Webnode provides a simple platform that allows for unlimited posts on your schedule. Posts can be as long or short, making it convenient for you to manage your content marketing or creative process.
- Manage your blog as any other page- Add pictures, videos, maps or any other type of content.
- Add recent blog posts anywhere on your website- You can add multiple blog pages to create various categories of your posts. Select whether you want to show just one category or all of them (in the recent post list).
- Blog templates- Beautiful templates helps you showcase and manage your articles. Choose from ten blog-specific templates or add the blog feature to your existing website.
- Mobile-ready blogging- readers will have no trouble reading your post on their mobiles and tablets due to the responsive design. You can also edit your blog on the go.
- Display your posts in different styles- Choose from eight different styles to display recent articles. Set a different style for each of your blog categories or pick the one that suits you.
- Schedule publishing- No need to publish your posts all at once as you can postpone publication as per your schedule.
- Social plugins for your posts- Let your readers share, tweet and comment on your posts with the social network buttons.
- Intuitive online editor- Add, move or personalize content instantly. Just click and start typing wherever you want.
- Blog specific content- Add photos and videos to your content, arrange posts into categories and decide when you want to publish them.
- Share and promote- Share your blog with your followers on social networks.
- Get behind the scene data- Connect your blog with Google Analytics to find out reader's likings and behaivour.
- Easy widget integration- Add a calendar, forum or weather forecasts, by embeding html codes and implement any extra function you need.
The user interface is quite decent, easy to use, navigate and understand. Creating your first website and getting it online is really easy with Webnode. You can even create a free account. You just need to sign up for the service, and the registration wizard will direct you further
With the drag and drop page builder customize your site, edit your site to your liking and add elements such as videos, text, images and more. The preview bar enables you to see the end result (as you edit). Webnode offers a wide selection of colors, free images, and videos that let you easily style your website as per your requirement.
There is no coding experience required unless, you want to modify the CSS code yourself. Plus, with their walkthrough wizard, there is no need to worry about missing any steps of the setup process.
Devices Supported:
- Web-Based, Cloud, SaaS
- iPhone / iPad
- Android
Language Supported:
Available in more than 20 languages. Multilingual feature supports different language versions of your website.
- Multilingual Support: Excellent tools for creating and managing multilingual websites. Webnode makes it easy to add and manage multiple language versions, catering to a global audience.
- User-Friendly: Intuitive drag-and-drop editor and easy setup process. The platform’s simplicity ensures that users of all skill levels can create and manage websites without technical difficulties.
- Affordable Pricing: Competitive pricing plans suitable for various budgets. Webnode’s pricing structure offers good value for the features provided, making it accessible to a wide range of users.
- E-commerce Features: Robust features for small to medium-sized online stores. Webnode’s e-commerce tools include product listings, inventory management, and payment processing, making it a viable option for businesses looking to sell products online.
Cons:
- Limited Customization: Less flexibility in design customization compared to platforms like Wix. While Webnode offers a range of templates and customization options, advanced users may find it lacking in flexibility for highly specialized designs.
- Basic SEO Tools: SEO capabilities are adequate but not as advanced as some competitors. Webnode provides essential SEO tools, but users with extensive SEO needs may require additional tools or platforms.
- Support Limitations: Live support options are limited, especially on lower-tier plans. Users on basic plans may experience slower response times and limited access to immediate assistance.
Is Webnode the right website builder tool?
Recommended if:
- You are looking for a feature to backup and restore or save different versions of your website. That's one unique feature. If you make changes to your website and want to go back to restore them, everything gets saved.
- You are looking for a free version as Webnode allows you to create a free website with one of their domains
- You want to create an online store.
- You are looking for an easy to use email builder. With the point and click, drag and drop website builder you can add all types of content in just a few clicks, move it around or change it up anytime.
- You do not have a budget to hire a web-developer. If you want to develop an impressive and professional website without the budget to hire a professional, consider Webnode. It is quite affordable and the basic Limited plan costs only $3.95 per month and offers 100 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth to subscribers.
Not recommended if:
- You are looking for third-party integration. Currently, there aren't much third-party integrations, but you can embed both YouTube and Vimeo videos into your site
- You are looking for an option for a newsletter.
Webnode is a versatile and user-friendly website builder that caters to a wide range of users, from individuals and bloggers to small businesses and international companies. Its strong multilingual support, intuitive interface, and comprehensive e-commerce capabilities make it a valuable tool for creating professional websites quickly and efficiently. While it may have some limitations in customization and advanced SEO features, its affordability and ease of use make it a compelling choice for those looking to establish an online presence with minimal hassle. Whether you're starting a blog, launching a business website, or creating an online store, Webnode provides the essential tools and features needed to succeed online.
Webnode’s commitment to user experience and accessibility ensures that anyone can create a functional and visually appealing website without extensive technical knowledge. The platform’s robust feature set, combined with its competitive pricing, makes it an attractive option for users seeking a reliable and efficient website builder. If you’re looking for a straightforward and effective way to build a website, Webnode is worth considering.
