Program: Webydo
Website: www.webydo.com
Price: 7 Day Free Trial – $90/month to $480/month
Rank: 85/100
INTRO – WHAT IS WEBYDO?
Webydo launched in 2013 with the goal of helping designers and agencies create, manage, and host websites without the hassle and frustration that comes along with these activities. You may be wondering (if you’ve seen the steep price) is Webydo is worth it for your needs.
It’s quite similar to other site builders you may have checked out in the past – it allows designers to easily design websites by using simple click and drag features. The best part? You don’t have to know or write any code.
The site differentiates itself from typical website builders by providing a more professional platform with more elegant themes and designs (rather than the generic and simplistic templates you’re likely to find on other websites).
As far as the nature of the service – it’s quite similar to Adobe Photoshop. In fact, it’s basically the same setup and comes armed with the same tools – the one exception being with Webydo you can design directly on the browser. This service has proven to be a great hit with designers, evident by the 236,399 designers who have signed up thus far.
If you’ve recently stumbled across Webydo and you’re in need of a simple yet effective website builder – this article will provide you with everything you need to know about the service, allowing you to make a better informed decision regarding whether or not it’s right for you.
WHAT TYPES OF FEATURES DO YOU GET AT WEBYDO?
One of the great things about Webydo is they offer a bunch of features to make your designing process a lot easier and enjoyable. Take a look at the screenshot below to see all the features you get after signing up.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Using the service can be pretty easy or quite difficult, depending on your experience level. If you’re a skilled designer with past experience using Adobe products – learning the ins and outs of Webydo will be a breeze for you.
On the other hand, Webydo can prove to be quite challenging for the average beginner – there’s a steep learning curve you have to overcome.
Although the videos on the site make it appear as if it’s all drag and drop – creating a high-quality website is actually a lot more difficult than it appears.
The process is illustrated below:
The first thing you need is a design. When it comes to design, you ultimately have three options available: ready theme, layout, or blank canvas.
These themes are exactly what they sound like. With the ready theme, you get a theme that’s all done and ready for design. With layout, you get the bare skeletons of a theme and it’s up to you to design the rest. And with the blank canvas – you get to put your inner designer to the test and create a theme out of nothing. This is quite cool since the three themes cater to a wide audience of designers. Whether you’re needing a readymade design or you want to experiment and create your own – the site has you covered.
After you pick your theme – it’s time to use the drop and drag feature to bring any web design to life. You simply design your website on the browser by using drag and drop. You can add pages, blogs, photos, and everything else you need to bring your site to life.
If you’re worried about pixel distortion – don’t be! You simply design your website using the tools available and Webydo will do the “hard work” and convert your design into HTML code – it’s quite effective and efficient at meeting your everyday designing needs.
This ultimately allows you to design professional looking websites without using a lick of code. The pixel by pixel accuracy of the site is actually quite remarkable – you can easily bring any of your design visions to life.
Take a look at some of the websites designed by Webydo users below:
PRICING
One of the drawbacks of Webydo is they’ve been increasing their prices like crazy! The packages you’d find a year or two ago are long gone and have been replaced with much higher prices.
Although this is the case, Webydo does give you a free 7-day trial – allowing you to test out the website alongside the features and tools available, before deciding whether or not the service is worth your time and investment.
If you fall in love with the service and you’re interested in signing up after the 7-day grace period – you will be asked to upgrade to one of the three packages: Pro, Team, or Agency.
The package you choose ultimately depends on your unique design needs and desires. It makes sense to upgrade plans as you build more websites using the site.
The prices alongside the features for each plan are listed below.
Yearly pricing:
Monthly pricing:
Note: If you’re going to be a long time member of Webydo, it makes sense to sign up for the annual membership, since it saves you money. You can see for yourself in the price comparison chart below.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF USING WEBYDO?
There are quite a few reasons why designers and agencies should use Webydo. The most important and beneficial of which are discussed below:
It’s built for experienced designers who value convenience – If you’re an experienced designer, you’ll easily and effectively create websites. What used to take you days or weeks will now be accomplished much sooner because Webydo provides one of the best intuitive drag and drop editors. What’s more is the site has created a very convenient and hassle free designing experience. What this ultimately means for you is you can accomplish your projects faster – saving you time and energy.
More efficiency – Webydo is built to make the designing process more efficient. For example, you don’t have to navigate through various dashboards to manage your site on different devices. Instead, you can manage all versions of your site and how it’ll appear on different devices from one single dashboard.
Custom design options available – A lot of website builders don’t let you upload custom fonts – this can prove to be quite annoying, considering it takes away from the design and style of your website. Fortunately, Webydo overcomes this problem and allows users to easily upload custom fonts.
THE MAIN ISSUES WITH WEBYDO…
Despite the positives discussed above, there are a few shortcomings associated with Webydo…
Steep Learning Curve – If you’re familiar with Adobe’s ecosystem of products, you’ll have no problems using Webydo. On the other hand, if you’re not up to speed with these programs – you’ll be facing quite a steep learning curve.
Not very good at building complex sites – If you’re desiring fancy widgets and plugins – you won’t find any on Webydo. This can be quite frustrating for designers of all types. What’s worst is Webydo isn’t the best tool to design complex pages and websites. As you can see from the images earlier – the service is used mostly to design simple web pages.
EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE – The service is quite costly to use – if you’re not going to be designing websites for high-paying clients – it probably doesn’t make much sense for you to use Webydo.
WHO’S IT FOR?
The site was built by designers and it’s for designers. Whether you’re a freelance designer or the owner of a designing agency – Webydo is tailored to fulfill your needs.
However if you’re not into web design, the site can be very complicated to use. If this is the case, I would recommend staying clear of the service (there’s much better and easier alternatives out there if all you need is a simple website builder).
USER REVIEWS
To give you a better indicator of whether or not the service will be a good fit for you – read user reviews from past and current Webydo users below:
CONCLUSION – IS THE SERVICE RIGHT FOR YOU?
The bottom line is the service is quite exceptional at what it does. The steep monthly price, however, raises a bunch of questions. You may still be questioning if the site is really worth the price tag.
Well after carefully considering all the pros and cons associated with the service – you should consider using Webydo if you’re going to be designing simple websites that don’t require complicated design. Agencies with a lot of basic website design projects will benefit tremendously by using the service.
Ultimately, the site acts as a time saver. If you can save more time, design more effectively, and land more clients – it makes sense to use the service.
If, however, you’re seeking to build complex websites for yourself or clients – Webydo is not the right choice for you. What’s more is if you’re a beginner designer with no past experience using Adobe programs – you probably want to find an easier website builder, considering Webydo is quite confusing for the average beginner.
Looking for a less expensive option?
If you just need a place for your own simple business or blog, check out a great alternative at SiteRubix. You can grab 2 entirely free websites to start, and host 25 of your own domains with the premium package. Read about the full program behind the Siterubix web builder here.
If you’ve ever used Webydo, please feel free to share your experience down below. 🙂
Hey Wendy. Thanks for the review. It is a bit expensive but I agree with you, that if one will be designing for clients and all they need is something simple, it makes sense to go for it. I didn’t know if its just me who didn’t understand, but what do you mean by complicated website? Are you referring to the amount of content, that if it is too much, then it might not be a good idea to go with Webydo? And how does Webydo compare with wordpress? Thanks in advance.
Complicated as in more than just a pretty interface. Webydo can create attractive websites but you can’t do a lot of complex coding like if you were to build your own website. This isn’t related to the amount of content or pages, but more so the functionality of your site.
If you want to build an attractive site that you can customize to your liking, but you don’t know much about coding and are more of a designer, than a template like Webydo would be an option. WordPress is great and i totally recommend it, but it can be more difficult to design a site exactly as you want without knowing the behind the scenes coding.
Sounds interesting… and expensive. I have used a platform called bluevoda in the past, but since then I used dreamweaver and was coding sites until I discovered wordpress. Now, wordpress is all I use. I’m always looking to stay ontop of new develpments, especially because clients tend to bring these products up and I like to know ahead of them. Thanks for the rundown.
WordPress is all I use as well! Glad I could keep you up to date – always good to be informed when you have clients asking questions 🙂
Hi there Wendy,
This sounds like the program I was looking for a year ago! I didn’t know how to code (still don’t lol), and I thought that was the only way to build websites.
After searching for months, and even trying to “learn as I go” by using Codecademy’s website building training, I got so frustrated. Sounds like Webydo would have solved all my problems.
I guess it doesn’t matter now though, because I finally stumbled on SiteRubix which you mentioned. Can’t believe I didn’t find it before…it’s been a life-saver! I’ve now built multiple sites without having to deal with code, and they all look great. 🙂
Anyway, just thought I’d share my experiences because as I was reading this review I remembered my frustrations a while back.
Ian
Yeah, I’m glad you found SiteRubix because Webydo is way overpriced for what they offer in my opinion. The websites are cool but I much prefer WordPress and it’s way cheaper to use. I know it is very frustrating when you don’t know anything about websites but need one!
HI there Wendy,
Great and very comprehensive review. Thanks for creating and sharing it with us. It is really appreciated. Thanks.
With this software what can I do with it other than web design, I mean can I make my own custom website templates and themes for wordpress?
Also, how easy it to use and does it come with the usual WYSIWYG feature if you know what I mean?
Webydo is not WordPress, it’s its own unique drag and drop website builder program however you are able to connect it to a blog created with WordPress via a subdomain.
The ease of use would depend on your experience in design as it is meant for design professionals. There may be a bit of a learning curve to using the software but overall would be easier than learning code.
I think it’s a what you see is what you get type design so basically yes, you’d be visually seeing how the site looks while you are designing it, unlike creating websites from code.
Webydo looks like a great platform if you are an agency who designs websites for clients, or if you are a professional designer who whats a bit more out of his or her website.
For the majority of us, however, there are easier and cheaper ways.
If designing a site on Webydo, can you transfer it elsewhere if you cancel the service?
Yes, after you finish designing sites you can download the website code and transfer it to be hosted anywhere else if you don’t want them hosted with Webydo.
Greetings Wendy,
I would like to express my gratitude for the differences you gave on both Adobe and Webydo. I know quite a bit on the former but never heard of Webydo. Well, I like my site to be simple, nothing fancy. Hence, it does suit me but perhaps not now. Pricing is the stumbling block as for now but I’ll consider strongly in the future. And yes, Siterubix seems to be the best of the bunch to me as it hold the competitive advantage being free of charge. As for now….
Hi Wendy,
The very terms “Drag and Drop” or “No coding required” in website builder platforms makes me think of those cheesy “free website builders” that all look alike. You see the same worn out “templates” everywhere!
Having coded my own websites the old fashioned way, I do say this a little smugly 😉
I’ll concur that modern website building and content management tools have become much better and offer lots of customization. But some of these platforms are expensive!
Personally I’m sold on WordPress! It is a great platform you can set up easily. Customization is limitless. Additionally you can get dedicated WordPress hosting for very cheap.
Thanks for sharing this info!
– Oren
Haha yeah I agree about all the worn out cheesy drag and drop templates. But to be fair, I think Webydo is a bit more advanced than the rest and lets designers produce exceptionally nice looking websites.
I love WordPress too… I think it’s great especially for those who are designing sites for themselves. I can understand those who don’t know code and looking to design professional sites for clients being interested in Webydo’s service… but for the average person it is probably too expensive and unnecessary.
RIP OFF HOSTING !!! One thing about a design team from Israel, they know how to design blockages and rip-offs.
Great design and product WebyDo, but these operators are gouging hosting fees.
HOSTING:
GODADDY – 25 websites = $199
vs.
WEBYDO 25 websites at $60 each = $1500
Why the GROSS DISPARITY?
Is Israel not paying the same as the USA for bandwidth ?? What is your mark-up here Webydo?
Joshua, in the screenshot review above says: “The $60 per site unlimited hosting for 1 year was a good deal”. I’m thinking this is madness from a troll: “per site” and “unlimited” is an oxymoron here.
I signed up for Webydo one year ago. I paid for the platform service in the TEAM PLAN up to 50 sites. As a designer I was happy.
But, to use an analogy, I don’t think anyone who books 50 hotel rooms is happy if, on top of that, the hotel charges an outlandish KEY CHARGE for each room’s access.
You see, after the WebyDo trial period I discovered that a $60 fee per site (meaning $3000 if you use 50 sites) was to be charged per year for HOST/PUBLISHING ! It should have been disclosed as I was corresponding with Sales and many others at Webydo at my time of purchase. And the way it’s advertised is hidden and misleading.
btw, I see the screenshot of the $150 per mo TEAM pricing above which includes 30 hosted sites – I’ve never seen the package with hosting included til now, Twelve months ago I was only introduced to the advertised TEAM plan that was less than $400 per year including 50 sites. But apparently “50 sites” did not mean access to publishing 50 sites!!
I was coming from GODADDY hosting : it’s $119 per year – GODADDY has great service and support, far better than WebyDo -I have grown to like them- anyway, the rep tells me that my hosting fee provides “unlimited” website publications, but make clear that it’s based on a bandwidth limit – even so, at my current usage they say I could have 25 or even 30 websites.
I looked into continuing my hosting with GoDaddy and building the site on Webydo, the exporting the code – guess what ? Webydo limits exporting to 50 times per year per account – ridiculous!!! One change to an export and you have to go through the process again; 50 exports can be eaten away after one client update assignment..
I paid for the platform design service – I don’t mind paying, but I expect to get the code for the charge – not just my pretty picture on my screen and in Webydo cloud.
Webydo has designed a road block at every intersection forcing you into $60 per site per year host fee.
Rip-OFF hosting
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences using Webydo hosting. I totally agree it is ridiculously expensive and you can find cheaper hosting elsewhere. It seems like they care more about taking money from you then anything. The only advantage would be for those who don’t want to work with coding or WP sites and want something easier for them to design websites that “look good” at the least… but you have to wonder if it’s worth it at such a high cost.