IONOS Website Builder Review: A Good Choice 2025?

IONOS doesn't just offer web space and domains, but also its own website builder. Powered by AI, it helps beginners without web design skills to quickly and almost automatically create an attractive website. So, how good is IONOS's AI builder?

We took a closer look at IONOS' MyWebsite builder to let you know how it compares to other platforms.

IONOS has greatly simplified its website builder in recent years. With a stronger focus on beginners, MyWebsite is primarily for those who prefer ease over advanced features and customization. With that said, IONOS' account management and registration processes are outdated and a bit cumbersome.

The first thing you need is an IONOS account with a MyWebsite subscription. Unfortunately, there's no way around paying since IONOS doesn't offer a free trial or demo version.

Even though you need to sign up for a paid subscription, you can get your money back thanks to the provider's 30-day cancellation policy. Just pick a plan and follow the instructions. Then click “Start Now” to begin creating your website.

Overall, registering with IONOS takes too long, is outdated, and focuses too much on upselling. Other builders make this process much faster and not as pushy.

You now have two options: You can use the built-in AI generator, which creates a website based on your answers to selected questions, or go the traditional route with pre-designed templates.

Don't worry: You can return to this step anytime, so feel free to try both options first.

We weren't too thrilled with the selection and quality of the available designs—more on that in the next chapter—but the user experience is top-notch: In minutes, you can create a first draft of your website with either method and then customize it further in IONOS' editor.

Once you've generated your website with AI or selected a template, you'll be taken to the IONOS management dashboard. This is where you handle all of your website's operational and technical aspects.

The dashboard is divided into several sections:

All management features are logically arranged in the dashboard, which should help new users quickly find their way around. The first thing you'll probably want to do is jump into the editor and work on your website, so let's take a closer look at that.

IONOS doesn't offer a tutorial that introduces its editor and features. We don't hold it against them: The interface is almost self-explanatory.

It's divided into five areas:

It's very easy to make adjustments to your website's visual design or content with IONOS' editor. But that's mainly because the options are quite limited.

IONOS' editor is primarily section-based. You won't place individual content elements like text or images but add entire sections to your website that include them. These can then be slightly adjusted in terms of layout and design.

While other website builders let you build with Legos, IONOS uses the bigger and chunkier Duplo blocks. Arranging them—and creating a functional website—is easy and doesn't require much finesse. However, it's difficult to make a truly unique page or design that shows off your personal touch.

IONOS emphasizes simplicity over flexibility, which makes its website builder ideal for beginners. However, it doesn't offer much for tinkerers and designers who want to create a unique website.

IONOS' design and customization options are very limited. This includes its template selection, as well as the editor's features and settings.

The first glimpse of your website is either AI-generated or determined by the template you selected. Unfortunately, neither option currently offered by IONOS seems fully developed:

AI-generated websites are plain and not particularly impressive—the WOW factor that generative AI delivers in many other areas is nowhere to be found. In our trials, the results looked outdated too:

For now, we prefer to stick with templates, but the selection of these is tiny compared to IONOS' competitors: At the time of testing, IONOS MyWebsite only offered 29 design templates. Other providers often provide hundreds of options that can be filtered by industry or features.

IONOS' templates are nice, but that's about it. There aren't any eye-catchers like on Squarespace. The small number also means that there isn't much variety: If you're creating a website for a café and don't like the café template, you'll have to repurpose a less fitting option.

You also can't switch templates later and keep any content you've added. This means you'll need to start from scratch if you want your website to have a different template.

Of course, you can edit the design of your template or AI-generated website. There are two places for doing this:

Let's take a closer look at IONOS' design options:

You can access global design settings through the design menu in the sidebar:

Here, you can change these settings:

As you can see, IONOS' global customization options are limited. Everything is designed to achieve a cohesive result with just a few clicks. This means that you'll often have to compromise on individual choices, such as fonts.

For many other elements – like images – IONOS doesn't offer global design settings. As a result, you'll need to make adjustments on a local level.

You can also adjust some design settings directly in the content area. When you click on an element like text or an image, a toolbar opens where you can adjust its color or font (global settings are used by default).

We got occasionally frustrated when our changes weren't applied: IONOS didn't accept some of our color adjustments for texts, or let us know why. So, even the limited customization options that it offers aren't always easy to implement.

Design settings can also be changed at the section level. In the design tab, you can adjust the color and width of a section, as well as the shape of images. There are also predefined layouts for each section.

Again, IONOS' customization options are limited and only make it possible to slightly change how the preset design looks.

You manage your website's pages in the menu area of the same name. Here, you can adjust page order by dragging and dropping them. It's also possible to create subpages: Simply drag one page onto another.

Click "Add Page" to create a new page. Unfortunately, you have to make do without page templates: New pages are always empty and must be built with sections.

IONOS' page options are limited: Apart from the ability to hide pages, you can adjust some SEO settings (more on that later), and add an image for social media.

MyWebsite approaches website design a bit differently than other platforms. Instead of arranging individual content elements like text, images, or buttons by dragging and dropping them around a page, you'll add entire sections to your website that only need slight tweaking.

Sections are divided into categories like "Gallery," "Contact," or "Text." Most categories have multiple section templates, many of which have different layout options.

Once again, your choices are limited: IONOS only covers the most basic website elements, supplemented by a booking form from the third-party provider BookingPress, which can be used for things like restaurant reservations.

There are no additional industry-specific sections, and many standard sections—like feature lists, events, social media feeds, promotions, or audio integrations—are missing.

Even the existing elements often offer little flexibility. For testimonials, there's only one section template with six different layouts. Unfortunately, even these look very similar to one another.

Since you're limited to predefined sections, how much customization you can achieve is closely tied to their selection and variety. There's plenty of room for IONOS to improve here.

The following table shows the section templates IONOS offers:

IONOS has added a flexible mode to its builder, which allows users to move some elements around within sections. You'll find it (slightly hidden) in the Elements tab under section options.

Here, you can add selected content elements like headings, images, buttons, and social media widgets to your section and move them around in a grid. Right-click on individual elements to bring them forward or backward, or quickly copy and paste them.

More customization is possible in flexible mode, but the selection of elements and editing options remains limited.

Here you can see a comparison of the available elements:

IONOS MyWebsite includes an image gallery with some stock photos. However, neither their quality nor variety is impressive, and there's no integration with stock photo providers like Shutterstock.

On the plus side, there is an integrated AI image generator from OpenAI that you can use to create images from prompts.

You can crop and resize photos afterward, but there aren't any advanced editing options (like effects, transparency, and frames). The AI integration is a nice extra, but other builders offer much more when it comes to image management.

IONOS limits its website builder's features to the essentials in almost every way and currently doesn't even support blogging. The exception is its powerful ecommerce system, which seems to be a leftover from the earlier IONOS website builder.

Let's start with its store-building features:

Every IONOS MyWebsite plan can be booked with or without a shop. The shop builder's features are extensive compared to the rest of the MyWebsite platform. This is because the ecommerce platform hasn't (yet) been overhauled like the regular website builder.

When you choose an ecommerce plan, an online store is automatically added to your website. You then manage it in the "Shop" menu, either directly in the editor or in the IONOS dashboard.

The main menu includes an overview of your products and sales channels, along with payment and delivery details. Initially, some placeholder products are included which you can edit or delete.

Product management is intuitive. On each product's page, you'll find different tabs where you can adjust all important settings. In the "General" tab, you'll add images, descriptions, and details about availability, stock, and weight. In the "Files" tab, you can upload files to sell digital products.

Don't overlook the "Options" tab: There, you can create variants of the same product (e.g., different sizes or colors). These are then managed in the Variants tab, where you can assign them unique images, prices, item numbers, etc. Keep in mind that this feature is only offered in the Pro plan.

It's possible to import products from CSV files or other ecommerce systems.

You can group products into categories and subcategories (and even sub-subcategories) and include an image and description for each category. This helps organize larger product catalogs and makes it easier for visitors to browse your store.

However, the amount of shop content displayed on your website is limited: Shop sections can be customized even less than regular sections. You have to stick with the preset layout options and can only present your products and categories in the way that IONOS allows.

We also missed some tools, like a search feature that helps guests quickly find the right products.

Manage payment and shipping in the "Configuration" section. All major payment providers, like Stripe and PayPal, are supported. You can also set up manual payment methods, along with phone orders, checks, cash on delivery, and cash payments.

IONOS is also well-equipped for shipping. You can manually set local deliveries or easily integrate carriers like FedEx, UPS, and DHL. Shipping can be limited by country, state, region, and even zip code, or custom shipping zones you specify in Google Maps.

There are many options for shipping costs too: you can offer free shipping under certain conditions, charge a flat fee, or link costs to weight or order price.

It's possible to have IONOS automatically calculate taxes based on your shop's location and that of your customers, or configure them manually. These options are found under "Settings".

IONOS is proactive when it comes to marketing. You can launch ad campaigns on Google, Facebook, or TikTok directly from the platform's dashboard to promote your products there.

Ad campaigns work especially well with discounts, and IONOS has covered all the important aspects here. You can use both discount codes and automatic discounts.

IONOS offers many more ecommerce features:

IONOS provides a powerful ecommerce solution that surpasses its website builder's capabilities: Product management is intuitive, payment, shipping, and tax settings are comprehensive, and marketing options are diverse.

Here's a comparison of IONOS MyWebsite's ecommerce features:

IONOS MyWebsite supports some basic SEO settings. You can specify page titles and SEO descriptions and either automatically generate URLs or adjust them manually.

You can also connect the Search Console by HTML code, by adjusting the "Head Code" in settings. Additionally, IONOS automatically creates a sitemap for your website.

Unfortunately, many advanced settings are missing. For example, you can't block pages from being included in Google's search index using "noindex." Editing the robots.txt and 301 redirects is also not possible.

Here's an overview of IONOS MyWebsite's SEO features:

IONOS supports multilingual websites with its "Website Translator" widget, which you can find in the settings menu. Simply select the languages you want to translate your website into and customize the widget's appearance.

The catch: Content is always automatically translated in real-time. It isn't possible to manually adjust translations and perform thorough localizations.

MyWebsite doesn't offer much more. In the dashboard, you'll find some marketing tools, including "Competitor Analysis", for researching your rivalss. IONOS also offers an email marketing solution, but it costs extra.

There's no real app store. Under "My Apps" in the IONOS dashboard, you'll only find links to a few third-party integrations, like the BookingPress app and the website translator.

IONOS has integrated its AI assistant in some areas, allowing you to automatically generate text. However, it uses the somewhat outdated GPT Turbo 3.5 API. While you shouldn't expect great text, the AI can help with basic text and SEO descriptions.

What's completely missing is a blogging feature, making IONOS MyWebsite a non-starter for bloggers.

Here's an overview of IONOS' advanced features:

Clicking the question mark icon at the top right of the IONOS dashboard takes you to the support area. Here, you'll find an AI assistant that can answer questions about IONOS features. It works pretty well, and we got some answers from the AI assistant that we couldn't find on our own.

Of course, there's also a traditional help section with support articles for various IONOS products. The new MyWebsite editor has a category with explanations and step-by-step guides.

More articles would be better, as would a greater focus on the editor's features and limitations compared to previous versions. However, the existing articles are good and include screenshots and hyperlinks. A search feature is also integrated.

IONOS offers direct contact via chat and phone. In the chat, IONOS staff usually got in touch within less than a minute and answered most of our questions. However, the chat option wasn't always available, likely because the support team had a heavier workload.

On the phone, we were also connected to a friendly representative fairly quickly (in less than 5 minutes), who patiently answered our questions.

IONOS offers seven MyWebsite plans, divided between options for regular websites and online stores. All subscriptions include a free domain for the first year.

Here's an overview of all IONOS plans:

How does IONOS' website builder compare in price to other options? Since plans vary from provider to provider, it's difficult to put them side by side. That's why we assess annual costs for two scenarios:

Price comparison 1: Basic website, ad-free, own domain

An IONOS Starter plan runs near our provider average with costs that are comparable to Squarespace or Webador. There are much cheaper website builders (e.g., from GoDaddy), but also much more expensive ones (e.g., Duda):

Price comparison 2: Online store, ad-free, own domain

Even when comparing ecommerce plans, IONOS is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive builder:

All IONOS products, including MyWebsite, come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Unfortunately, IONOS does not offer a free trial version.

Website builders try to make creating professional websites as easy as possible, and by this standard, IONOS MyWebsite is a complete success. Users can piece together a website section by section in its beginner-friendly design and content editor. Compared to the competition, it makes designing a website much easier.

The downside of this focus on beginners is that IONOS MyWebsite limits design options more than its rivals. It's hard to break away from the templates and AI-generated sites, which is even more problematic due to the lack of templates. Additionally, some standard features, like blogging, are missing.

IONOS MyWebsite is really only for beginners who want to spend as little time as possible designing their website. With it, they'll be able to make a cohesive website that covers basic features.

We created a simple demo page using the IONOS MyWebsite builder, which you can view here: IONOS Demo Page

For all builders in our comparison, we create a demo page with the same content: A homepage with Hero, About Me, Services, Testimonial, Price, and FAQ sections, a portfolio page, a blog, and a contact page.

Unfortunately, not all of these content sections had suitable templates. For example, IONOS doesn't support blogs, and we had to repurpose other standard text templates to make FAQ or pricing pages. The result isn't as harmonious as those we achieved with other builders.

What do IONOS customers say about it and MyWebsite Builder? We checked review sites and compiled recurring feedback for you.

Is IONOS MyWebsite not versatile enough or the right choice for you? Maybe one of these alternatives will work:

Find more great alternatives to IONOS MyWebsite here: