Best website builder for small businesses
Best website builder for small businesses
Best website builder for beginners
Best website builder for beginners
| Zoho Sites standout features | |
| Customization | Full freedom with an intuitive design tool |
| Templates | Over 40 ready-to-use templates |
| Sections | More than 190 pre-built layouts |
| Free trial | 15-day free trial included |
| Hosting | Free Zoho subdomain or connect your own |
| Integrations | Integrates with other Zoho Apps |
| Support | All plans include e-mail support 24 hours a day on weekdays |
What Are the Pros and Cons of Zoho Sites?
Although Zoho Sites offers robust features at a reasonable price, there are some shortcomings regarding its customer support, search engine optimization (SEO) tools, and more. If you’re thinking about choosing Zoho Sites as your website builder, consider the following advantages and disadvantages.
Pros of Zoho Sites
- Affordable: Compared to its competitors, Zoho Sites is one of the cheapest website builders available. Despite its affordability, it has a lot to offer.
- Get a website up in no time: Zoho Sites is an easy-to-use platform that doesn’t require any coding knowledge, allowing you to have a website up and running in minutes.
- Easily customizable: With Zoho Sites’ templates, drag-and-drop blocks, and a simple visual editor, you can easily create a website that fits your brand and looks professional.
- Great integrations: You can seamlessly integrate Zoho Sites with other Zoho products and third-party apps such as Google Analytics and Mailchimp.
Cons of Zoho Sites
- Not much choice regarding available plans: Zoho Sites only offers two plans, which is low compared to some of its competitors.
- Not much storage space: Zoho Sites Starter plan comes with 500MB of storage, and the Pro plan comes with 100GB, which can be a dealbreaker for some people.
- No e-commerce features: If you’re looking to build an e-commerce store, Zoho Sites may not be the right platform; you may want to try Zoho Commerce or an alternative website builder.
Website builder with robust customization features
Both Zoho Sites plans come with the same drag-and-drop editor. I used it to design and customize my website, and it’s handy for those without any coding knowledge who want to create a website.
To make things easier to manage, the Zoho Sites editor is divided into two sections: the Builder and the Visual Editor. The Builder is where you’ll add, delete, or move around website elements called blocks. In the Visual Editor, you can see a real-time preview of your website and make changes to the design, such as adding color or changing fonts.
There are over 190 sections to choose from, which I found more extensive than most other low-cost website builders. Sections include text blocks, images, forms, maps, videos, social media buttons, and much more. I liked this flexibility for customizing the look and feel of my website — you can add, delete, or move around sections to create the layout you want.
You can also change the order of the sections by dragging and dropping them around, which is handy if you want to change the layout of your website. And, if you want to add a new section, simply click the Plus icon and drop it into place.
Accessing the Zoho Sites control panel was effortless. I accessed the control panel within five minutes of starting the sign-up process without even adding my credit card details. In most website builders, settings are located on the left side of the page, but in Zoho Sites editor, it is located on the header.
Ready-to-use templates
Zoho Sites offers over 40 ready-to-use templates that can help get your website up fast. These templates are fully customizable, so I could change them to match my brand. It was easy for me to change the theme while editing and not lose any old content, a somewhat rare – but very useful – feature in a website builder.
Zoho Sites templates are pre-designed and divided into different sections. Some are Single Page templates only available with the Pro Plan.
Zoho apps to help manage other parts of your business
Zoho Sites integrates with its other products, like Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail. In my experience, the benefit is that rather than using expensive third-party apps like many of its competitors, you can use Zoho apps to manage different parts of your website from one platform. The Zoho suite of apps is comprehensive enough to provide real value for those who need more from their website than just the basics.
Zoho Apps are the most cost-effective option on the market: for only $4 per month, you get your own hosted email workspace with 30GB of space. Adding an extra $3 per month gives you 50GB of space and 1TB of shared storage space. The email workspace comes with additional features like Zoho Meeting.
Most of the Zoho App plans come with a free trial. If you want to test all the apps simultaneously, you can sign up for a 30-day trial for Zoho One plan. This gives you access to all Zoho products, including Zoho Sites.
Additional tools to make your site stand out
Zoho Sites offers a wide range of additional website features that can help you take your website to the next level.
Some of these tools include:
- Communication tools to help boost customer engagement: Get your visitors involved with your website using tools including comment boxes, a blog, and different kinds of forms such as a contact form.
- SEO tools to help boost your site visibility in web searches: You can optimize your site by adding meta titles, tags, and robots.txt. But Zoho Sites don’t offer you the SEO depth that other alternatives like WordPress and Wix.com offer. When looking for robust SEO features, it is recommended to go with a proper content management system (CMS) platform.
- Site map to help search engines read your website: This gives search engines a better understanding of your website structure, and Zoho Sites makes it easy to import a site map.
- Traffic analytics to help optimize your website content: Zoho Sites analytics allows you to track, measure, and analyze customer behavior. Also, you can integrate Google Analytics with Zoho Sites to get even more data.
In my experience, these are especially great for small and local businesses. You can use the basic SEO tools to increase your site visibility, connect your website with Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from, and use communication tools to engage with your audience.
Free hosting with advanced security options
Zoho Sites offers a free hosting option with every website plan. This comes with a Zoho subdomain, and you can integrate your domain with Zoho.
On top of hosting the site, Zoho is also responsible for website security.
You get an SSL certificate that encrypts the connection between your website and the visitor’s web browser, which will help to protect your visitors’ information.
In addition to the SSL certificate, you can create data backups, so if something goes wrong, your website will be automatically restored.
Different pages on your website can be password-protected, so only those with the password can access them.
Based on the test we ran with Google PageSpeed Insights, our demo Zoho Sites store got a score of 90/100 for the site performance.
All domains registered to Zoho Sites come with free hosting and unlimited bandwidth.
In my experience and Zoho Sites’ claims, it can handle any traffic your website receives. From a performance standpoint, Zoho Sites can handle the size of any website.
SSL certificates
For all of the available plans, Zoho Sites provides SSL certifications.
Password-protected site download
At any point, you can download your site and move it to another website builder. To protect it, Zoho Sites makes all the files password protected, so only you can access them.
GDPR-Compliant
To make sure your site is GDPR-compliant, Zoho Sites provides you with all the necessary features.
What I realized from Zoho’s support is it offers you self-service help first, and only after that is there individual support. I don’t see this as a problem, as Zoho has one of the most extensive knowledge bases out there. It’s divided into different categories.
If you can’t find help from the knowledge base, contact Zoho support by emailing, calling, chatting, or submitting a request. I tested the phone support and found that it’s great. Its service is divided into different sections, depending on where you need help. I only waited around 30 seconds to get a reply to my call.
The following are some of the new updates that Zoho Sites has got:
- Zoho Survey integration with Zoho Sites: You can integrate Zoho Survey with Zoho Sites to create business-related surveys and add them to your website.
- Rename blog URL: With the new product update, you can change your Zoho Sites blog URL later.
- Mobile header style in the visual editor: When you access your website editor from a mobile device, you can set and change different header styles for your website.
- Import comments: While importing a blog from WordPress was previously possible, you can now import comments too.
Compare Zoho Sites Alternatives
After extensive research, we believe Zoho Sites is a great low-cost website builder, but some notable alternatives are Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, and WordPress.com.
We researched and looked closely at all the top website builders, spent time testing them, and talked to dozens of customers. To help you find the best website builder for your needs, we’ve compiled our findings into this list of the best alternatives for Zoho Sites.
Check out how Zoho Sites compares to other leading website builders:
| Website builder | Starting price | Basic plan features |
| Zoho Sites Overall rating | Free |
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| Hostinger Overall rating Read our full Hostinger review. Consider Hostinger if: You want to use innovative free tools to help build your brand and website. | $2.99 per month |
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| Squarespace Overall rating Read our full Squarespace review. Consider Squarespace if: You prefer modern templates; easy template switching. | $16 per month |
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| Wix Overall rating Read our full Wix review. Consider Wix if: You need more design template options. Wix offers far more (and better) predesigned templates to get you started. | $16 per month |
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Frequently Asked Questions About Zoho Sites
What kind of support does Zoho Sites offer?
Zoho Sites support is available 24 hours a day on weekdays. Apart from weekends, I found the support team quick to respond. It provides support in multiple languages through live chat, phone, email, and a ticketing system.
What are the Zoho integrations?
Zoho Sites is not the only solution offered by Zoho. It offers a whole suite of business applications designed to work together seamlessly. You can easily integrate your Zoho Sites account with all the company products. The benefit is that you can manage everything from one place, and you don’t need to worry about data loss or compatibility issues.
What are the best alternatives to Zoho Sites?
Is Zoho Sites a cheap website builder?
How I Rated Zoho Sites
At Whoishostingthis.com, we know how important it is to test products thoroughly and compare how they measure against the industry leaders. I spent hours familiarizing myself with Zoho Sites’ dashboard, setup process, website builder, and its features. While my definition of “easy to use” may differ, I approached this as though I was new to website builders and compared it to my experience with some of the top site builders we’ve also reviewed.
This comprehensive overview of Zoho Sites can quickly answer whether it’s the right website builder for you. We also drilled down to specific features, so you can have a more detailed look at features or services. I gave more weight to some parameters, including features, security, support, pricing, ease of use, and how Zoho Sites has improved since our last review.
I test website builders based on the following factors:
- Customization options: Can you change the look and feel of a template or add your own code?
- Ease of use: Is the navigation intuitive with built-in tools, such as an in-app photo editor?
- Value: Can you get a free plan or trial to give the builder a test drive? Are there extensive features on paid plans that justify the cost?
- Security: What does the website builder do to keep your site and your customers’ data safe?
- Templates: Are the templates attractive, updated, and generally high quality? Can you find many to choose from?
- Support: Can you get help when needed, whether it’s from a human or support center articles?
- Recent improvements: Has the builder done anything lately to step up its offerings?
Learn more about our review methodology.
