On the surface, Sitelio appears to be a great place to grab a professional looking website for your small business or blog. However, upon further investigation, there are several questionable things about this company you should be aware of before deciding to host your first site with them.
What is Sitelio?
Sitelio is a website builder and hosting platform that offers tons of customizable templates. Unlike traditional hosting platforms, Sitelio provides their own unique drag and drop editor, which I have to admit is pretty cool. It is similar to services provided by companies like Wix and Weebly – which are more well known and trusted.
The templates are great, the editor is relatively intuitive (at least much more so than platforms like WordPress) so where’s the problem?
Sitelio isn’t just Sitelio…
This company goes by tons of different names – Sitebuilder, Website Builder, Sitey, and SiteBlog.
As you can see from the email signatures this is Owen, their account manager:
Each of these companies offers pretty identical services with slightly different pricing. Having personally signed up to each one, I can tell you that their drag and drop website builder, the features and their customer support are all the same.
Why would this company go by so many different identities?
One of their aliases – SiteBlog – ran some very shady advertising campaigns claiming if you signed up for their services, you could easily start earning $10,000+ per month without a job. They also went so far as to advertise themselves as a “free” service but made it extremely difficult to even find a free option. This misled a lot of customers and they ended up paying for services they didn’t even want.
It’s true you can make money with a website, but SiteBlog (and the others) are not training platforms for this. They are simply a drag and drop website builder and hosting service. If you want to make money with a website, you need more than this.
Want better hosting? Check out my full comparison between Siteground and Bluehost – the two most popular hosting platforms for new bloggers and website owners.
Reviews
Honestly there’s hardly any information out there on this particular company. Aside from their reviews on top10websitebuilders.com (which is obviously owned or at least affiliated with Sitelio and the others) I haven’t been able to dig up much else. Their Facebook page only has 61 likes, and there’s only one comment on any of their posts, which is actually accusing them of being a fraudulent company.
All of these “top” sites are really the same company, offering nearly identical services:
However, there are plenty of reviews on their aliases, so we can address those here. If you read the reviews over at Trust Pilot, there are nearly 60 on SiteBuilder…
Every single review addresses their horrendous customer support, hidden or unauthorized credit card charges and very poor hosting service. in my opinion, it appears that they are nothing more than an attractive front to stealing money from people’s credit cards.
Pricing
While you can sign up and create a free account with Sitelio, you’ll need to upgrade if you want to use your own domain and want access to any real features.
Sitelio offers 3 service packs – Simple, Captivating and Outstanding. While it appears relatively inexpensive at first glance, a closer look reveals this is actually the price for signing up for a 2-year service contract.
Notice the price jumps up to $9/month if you sign up for just the first month of service:
The $168 for 2 years, which is what you’d be spending up front, is a pretty big commitment to make if you are totally unfamiliar with the company. They want to lock you in so they can squeeze as much money out of you as possible. I haven’t met a single person that was actually satisfied with any of their services, though, and many complain they don’t always honor refunds. Be careful!
Final words
While Sitelio may appear like an excellent pick for a website builder and hosting platform – it definitely isn’t. They have horrible customer service, offer an inferior hosting service and don’t seem to care about their customers. There are much more legitimate options out there, so there’s no need to involve yourself with them.
Alternative hosting options for you…
If you’re looking for another company that offers just web hosting, I recommend you check out Siteground or Bluehost. Both of these platforms offer drag and drop editors with their hosting if that is something you are interested in using. You can check out my full side by side comparison between the two platforms here.e.
If you want to check out an all-in-one platform for learning how to make money with a blog, Wealthy Affiliate is my #1 all-in-one platform for that.
I have been charged $323 by Sitelio.com. I did not use them, but unfortunately, I didn’t notice the charge until I had paid the bill. I had never heard of Sitelio. This company is a fraudulent enterprise!
Don’t know how they got my email, but they keep sending me a bill for $216. WFT Some kind of scam.
I have no idea how they got my CC number but they did and tried to charge me $198.00 Luckily for me my banks fraud department caught it and verified with me before letting the charge go through. Needless to say they will not be getting my money and I am getting a new card issued.
Omg this same thing just happened to me!!! Somehow they got my cc info and tried charging $198 but my bank stopped the charge and put fraud alert on my card. I have never even heard of this company, and I certainly haven’t been looking for website building companies!!! This company is a total fraud and scammers.
Sitelio is apparently still at it. I started with them in 2016, but cancelled after 1 month and never did get the site up. I fortunately went with a different provider. I just received an email from them that they were automatically renewing my service for 3 years, even though it was cancelled 3 years ago. Fortunately the credit card they have on file expired in 2017. I went on the website, and there is no way to cancel the “service”, although I did take it off of automatic renewal.
Fraudulent company!
That’s awful. Thank you so much for sharing your experience – hopefully, this serves as a warning to others. There are definitely more reputable companies to host with.
they straight up robbed me…. I was with Ehost for 2 years had minor issues. Then Ehost changed to sitelio so i cancelled my renewal. a month later i see a someone has taken $119.76 from my account so i call the bank to find out it was sitelio that took the funds. so i got on chat with them. the first person was great had a refund issued out in less then 25 mins. I thought this was great until i woke up the next day to find they have taken $119.76 again. long story short they took $119.76 3 times and now my banks fraud department is going after them. not to mention they took the money from my rent. They asked me to provide a bunch of numbers and a print screen of my bank statement for them. so i did and they still told me to go pound salt. They have no intentions of paying me back. funny thing is a month before all this i cancelled and removed my form of payment off their site and they must have kept the info as i kept getting charges from them. They are FRAUDULENT and will just take your money whenever they feel the need to. please do not get a website from them learn from my mistake. on top of that their service is crap its not worth the price or the headache its a simple drag and drop page nothing special and the load times on my page were horrible.its simple they will take your money without permission treat you like crap and send you on a wild goose chase for a crap service. if you are already are having problems with them just go to your bank or credit card company fraud department and stop wasting you time talking to them as you won’t get anywhere.
wow so sorry Brian. Thanks for sharing!
These people are crooks. Stay clear of them
I have had a very bad experience with these guys. I would not recommend them to anyone!
Long story short, I’ve been a customer for a year now, they would take their monthly payment with no issues, I liked the interface, they have cool templates. But when I went to check my bank account today I noticed that they took out $300.11 from my account. Immediately I went online to the chat and find out what is going on. WHat I was told by Raymond is my account was up for renewal so they changed my payment from monthly to yearly??!!! Seriously?? Who told them they could do that? Who said they could take 300 from my account? It certainly was not me!! So after over an hour with Raymond he told me that he put me on high priority refund. I asked numerous times that the time frame was for that and he has no idea. Then guess what, he stopped talking to me. I then got on the phone with my bank, who said all SItelio had to do was fax them a letter on company letterhead with some information and my bank would automatically put the funds back into my acocunt. So back on “chat” with sitelio, who said no to the fax, they refused to help, and that i had to wait 7-10 days.. FOR THEIR MISTAKE I HAVE TO SUFFER. Bils cant get paid, I have no money now either, because of their mistake. Any normal company would bend over backwards to help customers but not Sitelio. Oh and did i tell you that the next representative I talked to did the same thing, just ignored me and then disconencted the chat.
Oh but hey they have cool templates!
STAY AWAY from these people, they are unethical.
Ugh so sorry to hear they did that to you, that is NOT ok! They are definitely not ethical in any way. Hopefully others here will read your story and be further convinced to not use Sitelio.
I started with Sitelio- it’s was super easy to get started but the costs when up and up by the time all was said and done. They did honour a quick refund.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Sherri!
Thanks for a truthful review of sitelio. Luckily before paying them, I thought of doing a bit online search about them and found your great review.