E-commerce
Even on the free for life plan you can build your own store,but given the storage limit of the free plan 500MB,you will not be able to fill it with as many products as purchasing a package.You will also not have a pay by PayPal option with the free plan,which for me was important,as it offers buyers protection,and you cannot sell products,which also for me was central to my site without purchasing at least the professional package.
A paid package also removes all advertising banners promoting the web builder,and also gives you a variety of other features.
Please don't misunderstand,although 500MB of storage on the free package is not huge,it really allows you to gain a very
good understanding of the web builder.
What I actually done was to build my site first using the free for life plan,then purchased the professional package at the finish when I needed to add other features such as PayPal.
Other features
I am a great believer in not having to pay for anything more than you actually require.
For example where is the
sense in a gentleman paying for a medical insurance policy that includes X amount of dollars of maternity cover,which although he is paying for will never receive the benefit of?
So although this web builder has many paid features,a lot of them were of no use to me,so I have only subscribed to a package with features that I require.
You can read all about the various plans and features in the link below.
Domain name
The free plan includes a sub domain name which consists of a series of jumbled up letters, numbers and forward slashes.Imagine telling someone your sub domain web address and expecting them to remember it?
So without a doubt you are much better off purchasing your own domain,but with this and other web builders cannot be done without purchasing a subscription to a package.
With any paid package you get your first years personal domain name of your choice(subject to availability)included free of charge,then it is charged at just $15 per year thereafter,but also includes up to 25 personal e-mail addresses depending upon your chosen package, and is a feature that is extra on some other domain plans.
Also as earlier stated having your own domain and personalised e-mail address(es) give your site a far more professional look and feel.
If you're happy to have a free for life site without the added features, using just a sub domain,that's also fine,it's always there and available for you but upgradable,should you decide to do so in the future.
Hosting
The Hosting of your site is included with the Free plan and all paid packages.
S.S.L
Again free plans and all subscriptions include S.S.L(Secured socket layer)
To anyone who is not familiar with this,look for the little padlock icon on the left at the top of each page,and when clicked upon states...
"Connection is secure
Your information (for example passwords or credit card numbers)is private when it is sent to this site"
This was important for me as it inspires confidence in potential customers and could prove the difference between a sale or no sale.
This is also another feature that some other domain providers charge extra for.
Whois Privacy
Yet again another free feature included in purchasing your domain name with this web builder and again another feature that is sometimes extra with other domain providers.
Whois is a database that holds the names and addresses of every domain name holder,and when a domain name is searched on the whois database then without whois privacy protection your name and address is revealed,this feature was essential to me in order to protect my anonymity.
Live support
Whether you have a free plan or a paid subscription,if a problem should arise or you need advice on a particular issue, just turn to this web builders excellent support team which is at hand 24/7 via way of live chat to provide answers and solutions.I have personally tested this out,but to be honest I have only needed to enlist their help on approximately five occasions,but their response was lightning fast and problems were resolved within minutes.Absolute phenomenal live chat support,highly recommended.
Summary
I have to say that after the initial
frustrations of experimenting with other website builders and not being able to get along with them,this website builder for me has unlocked the solution and provided the answers I sought, and I am pleased and fulfilled at the whole overall experience of creating this "giant jigsaw puzzle". Patience and perseverance is the key to gain confidence.
I am happy to say I am now able to build a basic website using this website builder. Infact after the experience of building this, my very first site for my wifes business,I started to enjoy building websites. So I built another one using this website builder,which although isn't overly complicated,can be a touch frustrating at times.
Before you go,if you would like to build a website for yourself,please click on the blue highlighted link found at the very bottom of this review to create your free forever website and should you decide to purchase a package,we at HerbalandGenerics.com will receive a small commission at no extra charge to yourself.If you find any difficulty using the builder,please email us enquiries@herbalandgenerics.com and request a link to 111 bite sized step by step tutorial videos totally free, to aid you building your site with this excellent website builder,which I praise so highly that we purchased a ten year package.
The best part of it all was that I managed to build our site using just a smartphone.No computer was necessary whatsoever.
A website builder that fulfilled all of my criteria.What's not to like?
And the website builder that I used to build this site and put above the well known others that I tried out for a variety of aspects but above all,ease of use is this
Website builder.