SITE123 Website Builder Review 2025: Quickly Create Your Own Website?

Have your website by the count of three: That's the idea behind SITE123's website builder. Things don't go that quickly, but by intentionally limiting design freedom, SITE123's website-building platform is much easier to use than many other providers.

So, just how fast can you actually create a website with SITE123 – and does it achieve a good balance of simplicity and flexibility? You'll find out in our review.

SITE123 focuses on intuitive use rather than unlimited design options: Its editor provides pre-made components that you can modify to varying extents. This limits creativity but makes the platform very easy to use. Still, some settings are more complicated in SITE123 than they need to be.

It doesn't take long to register and get started with SITE123's editor. Payment details aren't required when registering either thanks to SITE123's free plan (more on costs later).

During the sign-up process, you need to decide what type of website you're going to create and name your project. After this, you'll be taken straight to the editor's dashboard.

Your template's initial look depends on the type of website you choose. The default template options are mostly plain and boring. Overall, we were confused by SITE123's template situation.

SITE123's editor, which you'll use to design your website page by page, is straightforward even by website builder standards. Its features are clearly divided in the interface:

SITE123's editor isn't very complex and should be quickly mastered by beginners, mainly due to its strict frames and limited options. The editor performs impressively though: everything works smoothly and quickly, with virtually no delays or long loading times.

SITE123 doesn't have the intuitive drag-and-drop mechanics that many other website builders offer. In its editor, you're only able to work within the template's guidelines and can't freely move or place elements.

A SITE123 multi-page website consists of several pages, which in turn are made up of numerous sections or blocks (SITE123 also calls these pages because the same rules and templates apply).

There are several templates for blocks and pages, which we'll cover in more detail in the next chapter. For now, it's important to know that each block's structure is predefined. In the toolbar on the left of each section, you can change a block's layout, edit its content, adjust its background color, and generate text using AI.

If you head to Settings > Website Type, you can decide whether your website is a one-pager or a multi-page site. However, SITE123 makes the latter option – just like choosing a template – a bit more complicated than it needs to be.

If you create a multi-page website and set up a new page based on templates, you can't add more sections, at least initially. This is because the “page” is displayed both on its own and as a corresponding section on your homepage. For example, changes you make to an “About Us” page are also applied to your homepage's “About Us” section.

To add new sections, you need to convert the page into a “multi-section page” in the page settings menu – or simply add a “multi-section page” from the dropdown menu when creating the page.

We don't quite understand the purpose of this – and again, users might overlook one of the builder's important features since the logic behind it isn't explained well enough.

Overall, we didn't have much trouble with SITE123's editor: Its interface is clean, fast, and logically structured, even if it shows its age in places. However, we don't understand why SITE123 hides its templates and limits the initial selection to a handful of standard options.

SITE123 doesn't impress with particularly stunning templates, and you won't be able to extensively customize them. The designs and tools that are available are functional – nothing more, nothing less.

As we mentioned above, when it comes to templates, SITE123 could be clearer. There are two ways to choose a design template as the basis for your website, each with different template options:

Whichever method you choose, don't get your hopes up for a spectacular template: SITE123's templates are simple, clean, and functional, but very generic. There are hardly any interactive elements, animations, or ways to dynamically present content.

The templates are practical and suitable for small business websites, hobby projects, or blogs. If you want to create a visually impressive website, steer clear of SITE123.

You can access global design settings by clicking "Design" in the main menu. Changes you make here are automatically applied across your entire website.

Here, you can adjust five categories: colors, fonts, header, footer, and website structure.

Overall, SITE123's global design options are quite limited. There aren't any detailed settings for buttons, animations, transitions, or other aspects. However, the color and font options are fairly extensive compared to similarly limited quick-start builders like IONOS or Jimdo.

You get a few more options to adjust designs directly in the section settings. This includes the ability to choose different layouts for each section.

Sometimes, you can override certain global settings, like changing the font for a specific text. For other settings, like background color, you have to stick with the default options.

Due to the limited design options and the lack of drag-and-drop, your website's look is mostly determined by the template you choose, predefined layouts, and the section/page templates. Let's take a closer look at the latter.

When it comes to page and section templates, SITE123 is pretty well-equipped. There are templates for most standard features that you just need to fill with your content.

These templates are neatly organized into categories, and there are several options and layouts available for every section.

Here's a comparison of SITE123's page and section templates:

As mentioned, SITE123's builder isn't very flexible at the element level. Since page creation happens in sections you can't individually place elements like images or text.

For our element comparison, we only considered elements that had a corresponding section template:

SITE123 generally impresses with a wide range of features that include solid blogging and ecommerce tools, although many of the most useful are hidden behind paywalls.

Since it offers such an extensive blogging platform, bloggers shouldn't sleep on SITE123. To get started, you need to add a blog page to your website, where you can choose different layouts for displaying your blog posts:

To manage your blog, click the "Edit" button on one of its pages. You'll now be able to create new posts, publish them, and schedule them for later.

SITE123's blog editor doesn't offer complete drag-and-drop freedom, but its formatting options are enough for simple blogs. You can add images, text, headings, videos, tables, dividers, lists, and code snippets. Custom HTML is also supported.

SITE123 supports both categories and tags, making it easier to manage established blogs with large archives: SITE123 provides an internal feature for this, but you can also integrate comments via Facebook or Disqus. In addition, SITE123 compiles some visitor statistics for your blog.

The blog platform's AI feature is relatively new: The TextAI tool automatically generates blog posts based on prompts and keywords. It charges AI credits per word, the number of which you have depends on your subscription. The results are typical of current AI standards. However, if you're serious about writing with AI help, you might prefer an external solution with more features.

SITE123's SEO settings allow you to edit each page's title and description and add keyword and image meta tags. You can also hide individual pages from search engines using the nodinex meta tag—a feature not offered by every website builder we examined. 301 redirects are also supported.

SITE123 automatically generates URLs based on your pages' names, which isn't ideal. This means that you'll need to adjust a page's name to change its URL.

Some advanced features are also missing. For example, you can't edit server-based assets, which prevents you from changing your website's robots.txt file. The same goes for adding structured data.

The SEO advisor is a nice touch, which you can find by clicking on the main menu's "Settings" option. Use it to quickly access important SEO features and perform a site audit to learn more about any potential SEO issues your website might have.

Here's a comparison of SITE123's SEO features:

SITE123 handles multilingual support pretty well, but it's behind a paywall. Starting with a PROFESSIONAL subscription, you can add a new language with just a few clicks by heading to Settings > Website Languages. Your website's content is automatically translated, but you can make changes to the text.

Visitors can switch languages using a language menu. You don't have much say in how the menu looks, but at least multilingual sites are possible without any detours, which isn't standard among website builders.

SITE123's ecommerce platform is also impressive. Again, you need to add the store as a separate page first; Actually managing your store then takes place in a separate sub-area.

Product management is intuitive and flexible. You can offer physical and digital products (the latter only with a GOLD subscription) and organize them into categories and subcategories.

Access advanced product features and settings in the tabs above product info. Click on the "Options" tab to add product variants, like different sizes and colors.

Product options can be displayed in different ways: for example, as a list, button, or checkbox. Templates for common options are also available. Overall, SITE123 makes managing product variants straightforward and user-friendly. However, many features, like manual option management, are accessible only with more expensive subscriptions.

SITE123 has plenty more ecommerce features:

SITE123 is flexible and feature-rich enough for small and medium-sized online stores. However, your store's content will be displayed according to the presets of the template you select. You can choose from pre-made layouts for your store page and specify which sections should appear where in the "Homepage" menu.

It's unfortunate that quite a few useful features are only available to higher subscriber tiers. Making matters worse, advanced product and service categories – like courses or memberships – aren't supported either.

Here you can see SITE123's ecommerce features compared to other website builders:

Of course, SITE123 offers lots more features, such as:

Here's an overview of SITE123's advanced features:

In SITE123's Support Center, you'll find a wide range of help articles and guides. Most are quite short but illustrate important features and settings with screenshots and GIFs. Of course, content can be filtered using the search tool. We were able to quickly find answers to many of the questions we had in the Support Center.

Direct support was also good in our experience. While other providers hide direct contact options, SITE123's chat button is always easy to find, making it possible to reach out to support with nothing more than two clicks.

Our messages were usually answered within a few minutes—not by a bot, but by an actual person. Beginners, who are the builder's target audience, will surely appreciate that kind of support. As an added bonus, you don't even need to navigate away from what you're working on.

SITE123's pricing structure is a bit unclear. When you look for prices on the website, you only see two options at first: Free and Premium. Even if you try to upgrade from the dashboard, all of the available plans aren't going to be listed, and the details provided in support articles can be inconsistent.

So let's set the record straight. There are five premium plans: Basic, Advanced, Professional, Gold, and Platinum.

Subscriptions differ in the amount of storage (3, 10, 35, 50, 100 GB) and bandwidth (3, 10, 35, 50, 100 GB). The range of features also depends heavily on the plan: Ecommerce features and multilingual support are available starting with a Professional subscription, while advanced shop features like multi-currency, discounts, or reviews are available starting from Gold.

All paid plans, which can be purchased for 3, 12, 24, 36, 60, or 120 months at decreasing monthly prices, also include a free domain for one year.

Here's an overview of SITE123's current plans:

How does SITE123 compare price-wise to other providers? A direct comparison is tough because the plans differ too much. So, let's look at the yearly practical costs for two specific scenarios:

Price comparison 1: Simple website, ad-free, own domain possible

SITE123's cheapest Basic plan is priced in the middle range:

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

SITE123 is relatively expensive if you're in the market for an ecommerce plan. The Professional plan is one of the priciest out there.

There's no free trial for SITE123's premium plans, but you can thoroughly test the platform's basic features with its free version. If you're not satisfied after purchase, you can get a refund within 14 days.

Like many website builders for beginners, SITE123 intentionally skips extensive design options to make creating simple websites as easy as possible.

In some ways, it succeeds: Its editor is intuitive and lets you create functional websites with little more than a few clicks. The selection of page and section templates is solid, and the same goes for its blog and ecommerce features. SITE123 supports many different types of websites.

The downsides of the beginner-friendly approach are obvious: Truly custom websites aren't possible with SITE123 because the given templates and layouts are hard to edit. This wouldn't be so bad if the templates were more visually appealing. Also in the negatives column: the builder feels a bit outdated and has made processes like creating multi-page websites, unnecessarily complicated.

SITE123 is worth a look if you want a simple builder with good support for basic website projects that don't need to win design awards. However, even in this area, you can get better value for money elsewhere: At the end of the day, SITE123 is relatively expensive and ties many important features, especially for ecommerce projects, to its higher-priced plans.

We created a demo website with SITE123's website builder, which you can check out here: SITE123-Demo Page

We create a demo website with every platform that features in our comparison consisting of the same content: A homepage with Hero, About Me, Services, Testimonial, Pricing, and FAQ sections, a portfolio page, a blog, and a contact page.

Fortunately, SITE123 had suitable section templates for all our sample content, so we didn't have to improvise. The result is a bit dull, but we're satisfied considering how little time we had to invest.

What do SITE123's customers think of the website builder? We checked out review sites and gathered recurring feedback:

SITE123 might not be the best website builder for your project. Here are some alternatives worth checking out:

Find the best alternatives to SITE123 here: