Duda Website Builder Review 2024: Real Competition for Wix?

Most website builders are designed for users with little to no web design experience, providing a simple solution for personal or small business websites. Duda, however, aims to cater to both beginners and professionals, including agencies building websites for clients. But can it meet the needs of both groups?

We’ll take a closer look at what Duda offers, whether it delivers for both individuals and agencies, and how its pricing stacks up.

Duda makes building a website fairly straightforward. However, since it’s built for both beginners and more advanced users, the learning curve can be a bit steeper than with platforms designed just for novices.

Creating an account with Duda is quick and easy. You can start with a 14-day free trial without needing to enter any payment information—just sign up with your email or use Google login, and you’re ready to go.

Once logged in, Duda asks a few questions to understand your needs before directing you to the dashboard, where you manage your website projects. However, there’s no guided tutorial or checklist for beginners, which might be due to Duda’s focus on agencies. Other builders tend to be more hands-on at the start.

If you need help or guidance, you should jump over to Duda's support section, but more on that later.

Even without a tutorial, it shouldn’t take long to find your way around Duda’s dashboard. To start your first project, simply click on the “Create a Site” button.

You'll need to choose a template, which sets the general look of your site and can be customized later in the editor.

You can manually browse templates or filter them by categories and features. The template preview shows how each template's website looks on different devices – computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Once you've made your choice, click “Start Building.”

After selecting a template, just name your site, and you’ll be taken to the design editor.

When you first open Duda's editor, a short one-minute tutorial video walks you through the basics. If you've used a website builder before, the layout should feel pretty familiar. The interface is divided into a few sections:

Each page of your website consists of numerous elements and content that need to be arranged coherently in the Duda backend. To ensure everything is in its right place, it's essential to have a clear hierarchy of elements at the page level, and Duda provides exactly that:

Duda's container-based structure strikes a good balance between coding logic and a no-code interface. While it’s not as beginner-friendly as platforms like Jimdo or IONOS, which prioritize simplicity over customization, it offers a lot more flexibility once you get the hang of it.

While it doesn’t allow completely freeform drag-and-drop like Wix, you can use the “Advanced Grid” feature for more complex layouts.

Duda generally performs well, with a fast and responsive editor. Adding new elements and sections is smooth, even on large pages with multiple columns and widgets. However, the editor can slow down at times, especially when undoing changes, and switching between pages could be a bit quicker.

Duda offers a high level of customization, from global design settings to individual page, section, and element adjustments. Your site’s design is based on the template you choose at the start.

At the time of testing, there were 47 design templates available. The selection is solid but could be more diverse. For example, there are only two portfolio templates, both focused on design. However, for most common uses—business websites, online stores, blogs, etc. — there should be several suitable options.

Most templates come pre-filled with elements like images and videos, which you can easily replace with your own content in the editor. Blank templates are also available if you prefer to start from scratch.

You can also customize existing templates to create your own and save them for later use. This is useful for freelancers or agencies, who frequently build websites with similar features and layouts for their clients.

The quality of the templates is consistently high: the designs are modern, elegant, and responsive, meaning they’re optimized for different devices.

Unfortunately, you cannot change the template after the initial selection. If you want to try a different template, you’ll need to start a new website project.

You can further modify your template’s look in the editor, primarily in two areas:

Let’s take a closer look at these options:

You’ll find the global settings in the navigation menu on the left, under “Theme”:

You can customize the following elements:

Duda covers all the essentials here: you can configure the template design in detail, or quickly make targeted changes if you’re mostly satisfied with the default settings.

However, beginners would benefit from more presets. Other builders offer predefined color or font packages that ensure cohesion across the entire website. If you want to deviate from Duda's template presets, you're on your own.

The Design Panel lets you tweak the appearance of individual sections and elements specific to the selected area. It opens on the right side of the screen when you click the button in the top right and select an element.

In the Design Panel, you can adjust various properties depending on the element, such as alignment, layout, spacing, animations, styles, and sizing.

Once you understand Duda’s hierarchy and column-based approach, you should be able to navigate the design settings comfortably. You can extensively modify the layout and position of each element, but doing so is a bit more complex than with drag-and-drop builders.

Once again, less experienced users could need some more guidance. Other builders offer a range of pre-designed layouts for each page, for example. In Duda, if you want to change the standard layout of your template, you’ll have to do it yourself.

Adding new pages is easy: just open the page menu and click “+ Add Page.” You can create a blank page and build it yourself or choose from a (limited) selection of page templates.

In the page menu, you’ll also find the site structure, where you can rearrange pages and create submenus by nesting pages up to three levels deep. You can also hide certain pages from navigation, which is useful for things like landing pages or legal notices.

You can configure your website’s language settings in the page menu as well. Fortunately, creating multilingual websites is straightforward: you can add new languages with a few clicks, and even have your content automatically translated. You can switch between languages at the top of the editor and manually edit the content.

Instead of building your website element by element, you can use pre-made page and section templates.

Duda offers a good selection, covering most standard features, from “About Us” sections and testimonials to pricing widgets and full portfolio pages.

The quality of these templates is consistently high, and there are enough options in most categories for different layouts and designs.

Here's how Duda's page and section template selection compares to the competition:

Elements are the smallest building blocks of your website, such as text and images. Simply click the element icon, choose an element, and drag it into the right column.

Duda offers a rich variety of elements, categorized as follows:

Overall, Duda offers a solid selection of elements that cover most needs for simple websites and business sites. What's missing, for example, is a search feature.

Here's how Duda's element selection stacks up against others:

The media manager allows you to manage your photos and add them to your site. You can upload your own images or use a selection of free stock photos from Pexels, which are perfectly adequate for standard search terms.

If you can’t find the right image in the free section, you can browse the premium images from Shutterstock, which usually cost a one-time fee of $3.

Duda also comes with a built-in photo editor for basic image adjustments:

Adcanced users can switch to developer mode at any time to make design changes directly in HTML or CSS.

Duda offers most of the features you'd expect from a modern website builder, along with some handy tools tailored for agencies to streamline client work.

You can add a blog to your Duda website with just a few clicks, and it will automatically be included in the navigation menu.

The blog section is divided into two modes: Layout Mode and Post Mode. In Layout Mode, you can design your blog similarly to the rest of your site by dragging and dropping elements. Changes made in this mode apply to all blog posts. In Post Mode, you can write individual articles and add text and images.

While the split between layout and content makes sense, Duda’s implementation feels a bit rigid and sometimes confusing. Occasionally, elements appeared in Post Mode that hadn’t been added in Layout Mode, and not being able to remove them is frustrating.

Duda’s blogging capabilities are generally limited. There are no dedicated blog templates, and basic features like categories, backups, or the ability to schedule posts are missing. If your primary focus is blogging, Duda may not be the best choice.

Duda performs better on the SEO front, offering a comprehensive set of tools and settings to help you achieve good search engine rankings.

A standout feature is the SEO overview dashboard, which alerts you to any potential SEO issues, such as missing meta tags, favicons, and other important SEO elements. This makes it easy for even SEO beginners to identify areas that could impact their site’s ranking.

You can set up meta tags and index settings for each page and on a site-wide level. There are also various SEO tools available in the Duda App Store to further enhance your site’s visibility.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to set specific pages to “noindex”; this setting applies only to the entire site. Aside from this limitation, Duda offers all the necessary tools to ensure your site is SEO-ready.

Duda provides several tools that are particularly useful for businesses and agencies managing client projects. The dashboard includes team management features where you can control team member permissions and a client management portal.

You can also use a white-label version of the editor, allowing you to brand the Duda platform with your own logo and custom domains. This is especially beneficial for agencies who want to offer their clients a simplified DIY builder to create their own websites.

Duda provides a robust e-commerce solution that’s easy to implement. To add a store to your site, simply click on the store icon and select “Add Native Store.”

Duda automatically creates a store section with main, product, category, and login pages. You can customize the look and layout of these pages in the corresponding menu.

In the store management area, you’ll find your product catalog, pre-populated with demo products. When adding a new product, you can choose between physical and digital goods, services (e.g., tickets, events, or gift cards), or donations.

The product backend is straightforward and covers all the essentials: you can add product images and descriptions, track inventory, set shipping conditions, upload files for digital products, and create different variants of the same product.

Managing product variants is simple: you just define the options (e.g., “Size,” “Color,” or “Material”) and their choices (e.g., “Small,” “Medium,” “Large”), and all possible product variants are automatically generated.

Duda supports multiple payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, and Square, allowing you to accept all major credit and debit cards, as well as Apple and Google Pay. Additional gateways like Klarna can be integrated through the App Store.

You can also set up different shipping zones and define manual shipping fees and methods. These can be free or paid, flat-rate or weight-based, and take into account delivery times and minimum order values. For automated order processing, you can use the easyship integration if your plan supports it.

Duda offers several other useful e-commerce features to enhance the user experience and boost your store’s performance:

While Duda is well-equipped for e-commerce, it doesn’t offer the same flexibility as specialized platforms like BigCommerce or Shopify. Multi-channel sales are limited, there are no built-in dropshipping options, and the marketing tools are basic. Selling courses is only possible through add-ons like Owwlish.

Discount settings are also somewhat limited: you can only offer discounts in code form and cannot restrict them to specific categories or products. Additionally, Duda isn't fully optimized for the German market, as evidenced by its tax settings.

Duda includes many other features that we haven’t covered yet:

Unfortunately, Duda's marketing options aren't great. It would be nice to have a built-in email newsletter feature to target visitors. For ads, you’ll need to rely on external tools. Other website builders offer much more here.

Here's how Duda's advanced features stack up against the competition:

Duda offers extensive support resources, accessible via the “Help” button in the Duda dashboard.

The Support Portal serves as the primary help center. It features articles and guides covering all of Duda's features. The content is organized into categories, and there's a search bar to quickly find what you're looking for.

The structure of the articles could be improved. While they are detailed, include hyperlinks, and are well-organized with subheadings, they lack visual aids like screenshots and videos, which would make the explanations of the website builder’s features much easier to understand.

If you're more of a visual learner, head to Duda University, which offers video courses for different user groups — from basic courses for beginners to advanced certifications. Unfortunately, these video courses are only available in English, with no German subtitles.

Duda offers various ways to get in touch with support. You can reach the team via chat and email, and even schedule callbacks and screen-sharing sessions. In our test, we connected with a friendly support agent through chat in under a minute, while an email response took around 18 hours.

However, these support options are only available to users on higher-tier plans. The lower-tier plans only include email support — live chat and phone support are reserved for agency-level plans and above. The removal of chat support for lower-tier users, which used to be available to all, has been criticized by customers in online reviews

Duda is relatively expensive, especially considering that its website plans don’t include all necessary costs to run a website. There are four standard plans to choose from:

All plans include AWS hosting, but unlike almost all other builders in our review, do not come with a domain. This means that you'll need to purchase a domain name separately.

Creating an online store is even more costly, as e-commerce features are only available as a paid add-on, in addition to the website plans. There are three e-commerce plans available:

How does Duda compare to other website builders in terms of pricing? Direct comparisons are challenging because each provider’s plans are structured differently. We compared the monthly costs for two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Simple website, ad-free, with a custom domain

Among the website builders we've reviewed, Duda is by far the most expensive platform in this comparison. The Basic plan costs about six times more than the cheapest plan in our test, and even top performers like Wix and Squarespace are priced lower.

Scenario 2: Online store, ad-free, with a custom domain

Duda's standard e-commerce plan is quite affordable. However, if you want to sell more than 100 products, you'll have to pay significantly more.

Duda's subscriptions come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can also try the platform for free for 14 days without providing payment details.

Duda is a flexible no-code builder for websites and online stores, offering an intuitive way to manage complex web design processes. While its editor may not be as simple as those found in beginner-focused builders, it provides much more flexibility and customization once you get the hang of it.

That said, Duda is relatively expensive. Its standard plans, which don’t include a custom domain or e-commerce features, are significantly pricier than all-in-one options from competitors. For individuals looking to create a simple website or small online shop, more affordable and beginner-friendly alternatives are available.

Duda is especially appealing for agencies and businesses building websites for clients. Features like white-label options allow them to brand the Duda platform with their own identity and even offer clients a simplified DIY builder.

We created a simple demo site using the Duda builder, which you can view here: Duda Test Site

For all the website builders in our comparison, we build a test site with the same content: a homepage featuring a hero section, an “About Me” section, services, testimonials, pricing, and FAQ sections, as well as a portfolio page, blog, and contact page. Duda offers section and page templates for all these types of content.

What do Duda’s customers think? We looked through reputable review sites and summed up the main pros and cons:

Duda isn't the right fit for you? Here are some alternatives that might better suit your needs:

Find the best alternatives to Duda here: