2020's Best Web Design Service Guide: Wix; Squarespace, and Webflow

There has been an increase in automated web design services or ecommerce services (shopify, woocommerce, magento) in the past decade. While more are on the rise, we will be comparing the top platforms in 2020.

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Squarespace

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The Design

The Squarespace site has a clean, unique, appealing design layouts. They are basic and very simple compared to the other services. The overall layouts provide minimal text and large ratio photos. It allows the user to be less confused when navigating your website.

However, it is important to include more text to be more SEO compatible. By this meaning, it will be more easier to find on Google, Bing, or Yahoo search results.

Upon browsing for Squarespace templates, you can preview or immediately start with one. In the preview mode it shows the responsiveness of the webpage via desktop, tablet and phone. Once your happy with your style, you are allowed to start.

Squarespace Features

This is the dashboard that the services offer. The landing page is on the right and the options are on the left side. The square sidebar contains all the options you will need to edit the website. Each option has more options, and then more options.

Moreover, it is super easy to create a page, edit pages and settings. As well integrate some important features.

Easy editing include changing:

• colors
• images
• pages and a blog
• link colors
• call to action buttons
• items
• checkout page
• the shop
• payments (stripe & paypal only)
• taxes & shipping information
• discounts
• search engine optimization
• tag title and description
• 404 redirects
• custom css

Integrations included only with Business Plan or Ecommerce Plans:

• paypal payment
• facebook Pixels (adding items to your facebook page)
• email campaigns
• pop-up engagement builder & announcement bar

You can view the following features with the basic plan:

• engagement activity
• google search console (to find the keywords you rank for)
• visitor analytics
• google ads

Above all, these are most likely all the features you will need when using a website. It is great for beginners who are starting to learn web design and it is quite a fast process.

In addition, editing a page gives the options to “add blocks”. This menu contains all the tools to edit your page. Once done editing, don’t forget to click save.

Plans

After starting your layout you get an immediate 14 day trial. You will have to pay monthly for your sites storage space. It can range between 12-40$ / a month billed annually or 16-46$ a month billed monthly.

Let’s go more in depth!

Website Plans

In detail, this category has a Personal or Business plan.

The personal plan is 12$ a month billed annually or 16$ a month-to-month. The features include:

• Unlimited Bandwidth and Storage
• Mobile-Optimized Website
• Website Metrics
• Free Custom Domain*with annual purchase
• SSL Security Included
• 24/7 Customer Support
• Limited to 2 Contributors

It is a decent plan, but a very limited. Lets see the other plans for now for a comparison.

The business plan is 18$ a month billed annually or 26$ month-to-month. The features include the Simple Plan plus the following:

• Unlimited Contributors
• Professional email from Google*$100 Google Ads Credit
• Promotional Pop-Ups
• Fully Integrated E-Commerce
• Sell Unlimited Products & Accept Donations
• 3% Transaction Fee
• Mobile Information Bar
• Complete Customization Through CSS and JavaScript
• Premium Blocks and Integrations
• Announcement Bar

From this information, in order to sell online with this platform you will need to get the business plan. You then also get the extra features with these upcoming selling plans.

Commerce Plans

Besides the website plans, ecommerce plans are also offered. The Basic and Advanced.

Interesting enough, these plans include the business website plan features.

The Ecommerce Basic is 26$ a month billed annually or 30$ month-to-month. The features are more dedicated to valuing customer experience and additions to making shopping a lot easier.

• Powerful Commerce Metrics
• Inventory, Orders, Tax, Coupons
• Label Printing via ShipStation
• Integrated Accounting Via Xero
• Checkout on Your Domain
• Customer Accounts
• Products on Instagram

The last plan being offered is the Advanced. The Advanced is 46$ a month billed annually or 40$ month-to-month. The extra features include:

• Subscriptions
• Abandoned Cart Autorecovery
• Advanced Shipping
• Flexible Discounts
• Gift Cards
• Orders API

The advanced plan is quite powerful because of the subscription feature. Having subscription is important to allow your customers to sign up and to potentially come back to your site.

Wait, how much?

Although, it is not very convincing if the price is well worth the features. You need to pay more for the best ecommerce features. You will have to spend around 144-480$+ tax annually or 192-552$+ tax monthly. You will see yourself paying more if you want all the best e-commerce features compared to just having a simple and informative website.

Pros & Cons

Some benefits while using square space include the following:

• you will not need to update constantly
• less exposed to attackers
• you have support 24/7
• unlimited SSL (secured website) is always good.

The cons are that that you need to pay more for the best features. Which can be quite expensive in the long run. Another is that it is not intended for intermediate web designers.

Recommendations for Users

To wrap this platform up, it is most likely recommended to get the basic plan if you are not wanting to sell online. Followed by the Business plan if you are just wanting to sell products online. If you want more in features that will help your selling then the others are strongly recommended.

The Square Space interface is probably recommended for intermediate to advanced users. The dashboard is not as easy to navigate and there are not that much instructions. Informative instructions are definitely needed for beginners.

However, don't stay satisfied yet. There are more options that beat this platform in pricing and features.

Up next is the following two other platforms. Continue reading to follow through the comparisons.

Rating: 2.5/5

Wix

After navigating and researching this platform. It is officially much like microsoft word but on steroids.

Wix is packed and loaded with a ton of features, but is the price reasonable? That is the true question.

Lets talk about it more!

Wix Themes

What kind of website do you want to create? To make a lot easier you have two options. To let the ADI create a website for you based on questions or if you would rather choose a template yourself.

In addition, the themes are created in categories and very easy to navigate. The majority are also free. These templates are basic but informative. They have medium level of text, with colors, pictures, have a location of the business close to the bottom of the page, and are definitely a starter for businesses.

Furthermore, once you have chosen your template. You can proceed to editing your site. Also, you may add a store or a blog to your site. Don't worry about if the template has a store or not.

Wix Features

Moreover, wix offers tons of applications add ons. They can be added to your site such as a blog or a store on the left toolbar.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of add ons that you can't use or remove unless you have a subscription. These include:

• unable to get paid on checkout
• connect to a custom domain name
• wix ads

Other resources that are offered include the following:

• search engine optimization
• accept payments (wix payments, paypal, alipay, manual (cash or check) and square)
• store shipping
• store tax
• social sharing to facebook on website
• social posts (facebook and instagram)
• notifications (about visitors, tasks, inbox, social posts, reminders)
• assigning roles and permissions
• tracking and analytics (google analytics, google tag manager, facebook pixel, yandex metrica, and custom codes)
• chat
• wix email, your own email, business email with Google suite
• create invoices, coupons, discounts
• digital products available to send to customers email
• shipping confirmation notifications
• ready to pick up notifications
• video maker
• email marketing
• submission forms
• customer automations
• workflows (sales and leads)
• site members and reminders

To enumerate, all these features are what thrives stores to success. These are simple and easy to integrate to your site via the dashboard. Some might not be available due to having a subscription.

Now, let's talk about prices and subscriptions.

Wix Pricing

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They similar categorize their plans like Square Space. They have a 14 day money back guaranteed once buying a subscription and offer discounts for first time buyers. Plans include upgradable specifications.

Website Plan

Combo is 13$ a month, includes the following:

• 2GB Bandwidth
• 3GB Storage
• Connect Your Domain
• Remove Wix Ads
• 30 Video Minutes
• Free Domain for 1 Year

Unlimited is 17.99$ a month, includes the following:

• UNLIMITED Bandwidth
• 10GB Storage
• Connect Your Domain
• Remove Wix Ads
• 1 Video Hour
• Free Domain for 1 Year
• $300 Ad Vouchers
• Site Booster App a $60 Value
• Visitor Analytics App a $60 Value

Pro is 22$ a month, includes the following:

• Connect Your Domain
• Remove Wix Ads
• 2 Video Hours
• Free Domain for 1 Year
• $300 Ad Vouchers
• Site Booster App – $60 Value
• Visitor Analytics App – $60 Value
• Events Calendar – $48 Value
• Professional Logo – $50 Value
• Social Media Logo files

VIP is 39.99$ a month, includes the following:

• UNLIMITED Bandwidth
• 20GB Storage
• Connect Your Domain
• Remove Wix Ads
• 2 Video Hours
• Free Domain for 1 Year
• $300 Ad Vouchers
• Site Booster App a $60 Value
• Visitor Analytics App a $60 Value
• Events Calendar a $48 Value
• Professional Logo a $50 Value
• Social Media Logo files
• Priority Response
• VIP Support

To sum these plans, you are paying for more application usage or media files. Such as professional logo, social media logo files, calendar, analytics and site booster. The ad voucher, you can easily get 100$ free on Google Ads when first signing up. Get your 100$ in Ads here.

Depending on the storage you need, depends which plan is right for you. Also, if you want those extra features then go for it.

Integrating an analytics is highly recommended. This integration is definitely one that should be used constantly to check your page visits, users visited, and their geographical location. The ecommerce plans described further down also have the analytics features plus you are allowed to accept payments.

Letss go over the ecommerce plans now.

Business & Ecommerce Plans

These consists of four individual plans. These plans are substitutes for the website plans. These are specific to sell accept payments online. See you can integrate payments, but you can't get paid until you upgrade to any of these plans.

Business Basic is 23$ a month, includes the following:

• Accept Online Payments
• 100% Commission FREE
• UNLIMITED Bandwidth
• 20GB Storage
• Connect Your Domain
• Remove Wix Ads
• 5 Video Hours
• Google Analytics
• Free Domain for 1 Year
• $300 Ad Vouchers
• Site Booster App – $60 Value
• Visitor Analytics App – $60 Valu

Business Unlimited is 27$ a month, includes the following:

• Accept Online Payments
• 100% Commission FREE
• UNLIMITED Bandwidth
• 35GB Storage
• Connect Your Domain
• Remove Wix Ads
• 10 Video Hours
• Google Analytics
• Free Domain for 1 Year
• $300 Ad Vouchers
• Site Booster App – $60 Value
• Visitor Analytics App – $60 Value
• Professional Logo – $50 Value
• Social Media Logo files

Business VIP is 49$ a month, includes the following:

• Accept Online Payments
• 100% Commission FREE
• UNLIMITED Bandwidth
• 50GB Storage
• Connect Your Domain
• Remove Wix Ads
• Unlimited Video Hours
• Google Analytics
• Free Domain for 1 Year
• $300 Ad Vouchers
• Site Booster App – $60 Value
• Visitor Analytics App – $60 Value
• Professional Logo – $50 Value
• Social Media Logo files
• Priority Response
• VIP Support

Enterprise is 500$ a month, includes the following:

• Onboarding & Scaleup: Plan, develop and launch your project, or scaleup an existing one, with the support of Wix Professionals.
• Maintenance & Infrastructure: Track performance, optimize functionality and scale quickly with continual monitoring of your project.
• Professional Services: Consult with industry-leading experts to target specific needs and challenges related to your project.
• Security: Safeguard your website with annual security audits and advanced web protection features.
• Support: Communicate directly with an expert solutions partner dedicated to your account.
• Business Integration: Enjoy the benefits of our VIP Business Plan.

It is important to realize that these ecommerce plans can substitute the website plans. You only need onesubscription plan for your website.

The ecommerce plans differ to the website plans in that the ecommerce plans have the Google Analytics while the website plans have a specific Analytical app that the platform uses.

In addition, you get the Analytical App + Google Analytics on the Ecommerce Plans. The notable difference between these plans are that they offer more storage space, more video hours, social media files and support.

You can find integrations of Google Analytics and others from here: Dashboard > Marketing Tools > Marketing Integrations > Google Analytics. You then get specific instructions on how to set up. It is quite an easy process.

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So, is it expensive or cheap? Which one now?

The website plans range from 13$- 39$ a month, this can total from 156-468$ a year. This is somewhat cheaper than Square Space by a couple bucks.

Both platforms go head to head. Their plans are indeed very similar, in that you need to get an ecommerce plan to sell and the prices are almost matching. The only difference are their features.

This service definitely beats the other one discussed previously. Their features are at a whole different level. You can also get away with an e-commerce subscription plan at 23$ a month and have almost the same features as the Square Space Commerce Advanced Plan.

Pros & Cons

This platform features and tools are useful to grow an online business. You don't need to upgrade to the highest tier to get the best benefits. Easy to understand, navigate, and edit your website. You are constantly guided with informative pop ups and more for your buck.

In addition, you also can stay with a free account. Your domain will be custom with a custom wix domain name (yourbusinessname.wixsite.com/mysite). You will also have wix advertisement on your page. The ads aren't as bothersome, such as a sticky header on the top of the page. Heck, this is incredible. You can also buy a domain name (www.yourbusinessname.com) and have the free version running.

However, the very few tools offered don't seem sufficient for strong web developers or designers. Very limited in a way. Another con is that you can't test your website in tablet mode. Tablets usage are significantly decreasing this past couple years but it doesn't mean your website shouldn't be tablet compatible.

Recommendations for Users

If you are a beginner in web design and no so much tech-savvy, then this is strongly recommended for you.

If you are a intermediate-advanced user in web design, then this will not likely satisfy your needs. If you are a programmer or advanced web designer then it is more complicated to edit. There is a code editor section that allows the user to edit API's, internal or external development tools, serverless node.js, and production grade applications.

Now for the final comparison. Hopefully you are enjoying this article as much as we are. Don't forget to like, comment or share this article.

Rating: 3.5/5

Webflow

This platform is sure something else. The previous platform was very much like WordPress, but this platform is very much like Adobe Creative Suite. It has a resemblance of Adobe XD, but more advanced. It is a must use for every web designer who is well experienced.

Furthermore, this platform is a CMS, meaning a content management system. A built in application on a website that is able to manage digital web designs. This is unlike no ordinary CMS, all you need to do is design. While, the coding is all done for you.

Pretty cool, right?

Webflow Templates

Blank Site? Why would you want a blank site?

This platform is the only platform from the rest to offer a blank site. This is perfect for allowing you to design anything and putting you in full control. After managing the platform, it can get complicated and you do need to learn their CMS. You may learn more through their 100+ hours of tutorials here.

While their designs are indeed professional looking. They also offer free and paid designs.

Unfortunately, most you will need to pay for and the paid ones look more appealing. They have limited selection, but having a blank site template makes up for it.

Lets talk about what other useful features this platform offers.

Webflow Design Features (hosting, web designing course, unlimited plan)

Truly, this service is perfect for designing a website, animating it, and structuring it. You won't feel limited to what you can do. You can make a blog, a store, and any page you would like to make.

Moreover, the editor mode in the webflow cms takes time to learn. If you are familiar with coding and structuring websites (using div, grids, containers, blocks) then it should make it a lot easier. This CMS mainly uses HTML and CSS, and as well some JavaScript.

In addition, you can test this in four different devices. These include a desktop, tablet, mobile (landscape) and mobile (portrait). This is a plus because no other platform offers mobile landscape mode.

Other great additions, are that you can import a CSV file and edit your own design on the CMS. SEO is integrated in blog posts. You can change the URLs, titles and meta descriptions. You can also invite other members to join, edit your site, and track changes for an additional cost that will be described more thoroughly below.

Other features include:

• global content distribution network Fastly & Amazon Cloudfront (to load your content faster)
• automatic updates
• update content with REST API
• customize your cart and checkout pages
• social media integration (Facebook, Instagram & Google)
• google analytics
• SSL
• email integration with Mailchimp
• accept payments (Stripe, & Paypal)
• ecommerce
• abandoned cart recovery
• sell products with variants
• custom product fields
• list sale prices
• shipping regions and rules
• automatic taxes in U.S, Canada, European Union, and Australia
• print shipping labels via Zapier
• order management dashboard
• send order details to QuickBooks
• track with ShipStation
• customizable product pages, checkout pages
• issue refunds
• create coupons, promotions, customer account, order history, and (digital products coming soon)

Micah Ryan-

"The Webflow CMS has been so seamless, and enjoyable for the client. Page edits as easy as a Squarespace sites for the client, but complete design control for me."

Joe Dakroub:

"The marriage between the CMS and Designer tools in Webflow is what sets it apart. This is the future of digital design/development."

In fact, this platform can potentially be the next for our future. It takes the ease in designing websites without the coding.

However, this platform does not provide all the features that the others do. Most of the important features are coming soon. If you are willing to start here, then you will most likely have to wait a while until they come out. Since really no date is specified.

Now lets speak about pricing. It seems expensive, right?

Webflow Pricing (sign up for free, free account)

They offer two types of plans. A Site plan (blue) and an Account plans(green).

Detailed comparison of website plans: Basic, CMS and Business.

The Site plans (blue) is divided into two, the website plans and the ecommerce plans. The website plans range from the following:

• Basic 12$ monthly billed, features:
• hosting
• domain
• SSL
• CDN
• 25,000 monthly visits
• 500 form submission
• CMS 16$ monthly billed annually or 20$ billed monthly
• Basic+
• 100,000 monthly visits
• 1,000 form submissions
• 2,000 CMS items
• Limited CMS API
• 3 Content editors
• Site search
• Business 36$ monthly billed annually or $45 billed monthly
• CMS+
• Advanced Global CDN
• Monthly Visits 1,000,000
• Unlimited Form Submissions
• 10,000 CMS items
• Full CSM API
• 10 Content Editors
• Form File Upload

Delivers your content from the server closest to your site visitor, ensuring even faster page loads.

CDN

Collect form submissions, customize notification emails, and download submissions as a CSV.

Form Submissions

The maximum number of records you can have in your CMS database. Ex: 50 projects in a portfolio.

CMS Items

Connect with our REST API to programmatically add, update, or delete CMS items, or connect an external database with the Webflow CMS.

API

On the other hand, the ecommerce plans that are offered are from standard, plus to advanced.

These plans are divided into 4 categories: Design, Payment, Marketing, & Management. They also have website plan features.

Standard 42$/month or 29$ monthly billed annually, features include:

• All features from CMS plan
• Design
• Custom Checkout
• Custom Shopping Cart
• Custom Products Field
• Email Customization
• Integrated CMS for Blogs
• Payments
• 2% Transaction Fee
• Stripe Powered Payments
• Automatic Tax Calculations
• Apple Pay & Web Payments
• Marketing
• Facebook & Instagram Integration
• Google shopping integration
• Google analytics integration
• Mailchimp integration
• Custom code
• Management
• Configure manual shipping rules
• 3 Staff accounts
• 50k yearly sales volume

Plus 84$/month or 74$ monthly billed annually, features include:

• All features from business plan
• Design
• Unbranded Emails (Remove Webflow references from transaction email footers)
• Payments
• 0% transaction fee
• Management
• 10 Staff Accounts
• $200k Yearly Sales Volume

Advanced 235$/month or 212$ monthly billed annually, features include:

• All features from Business Plan
• Management
• 15 Staff Accounts
• Unlimited Yearly Sales Volume

• All site plans offer the following:
• automatic backups and restore points
• password protection
• 301 redirects
• fast page loads via a CDN
• enhanced security

With these plans you are able to integrate a lot of useful features simply with the Standard Plan such as checkout, payment, social media integrations, google analytics, and mailchimp integration.

The noticeable difference between the higher options are the 0% transaction fee, the available staff account, unbranded emails, and the yearly sales. If your company is doing really well, avoiding this transaction fee would sure be beneficial.

Lets discuss this further after talking about the other plans they offer.

Now that we covered the website plan, what exactly is the account plans?

Account plans is needed to start designing your website and creating projects through their CMS.

While the Account plans (green) is divided into individual and team plans. The individual has free, lite and pro. While the other team plans have team and enterprise. In the free account, you may sign up for free with no credit card required, and no trial period.

• Free, 0$/ Month, features:
• 2 Projects
• Client Billing (Bill your clients for hosting and other recurring charges right from Webflow each month — and tack on extra to make a profit or cover ongoing fees.)
• Free Staging: 2 Static Pages (Publish unhosted projects to a webflow.io subdomain.)
• Lite, 24$/month or 16$ monthly billed annually, features:
• 10 Projects
• Enhanced Staging
• Code Export (Export clean and semantic HTML & CSS files to hand off to your dev team. Note: dynamic content (CMS items and pages) cannot be exported.)
• Unlimited Project Transfers
• Pro, 42$/month or 35$ monthly billed annually, features:
• Unlimited Projects
• White Labeling (Add your own logo to the CMS and Client Billing payment forms, and remove Webflow branding from form emails and staging sites.)
• Site password protection

• All account plans include:
• Unlimited hosted projects
• Interactions and animations
• 100+ responsive designs
• 3D transforms
• Global swatches (define key colors as variables, so every instance of that color updates whenever you change it)
• Custom fonts (upload your own fonts or use Google fonts)
• Flexbox
• Reusable symbols (turn any recurring element into a reusable symbol that you can update across your site in one edit)
  

First thing to remember from these plans is that you can start off with the Free one. With this plan you can try out their CMS and see if you enjoy using it. If you enjoy using it and find it good, then you should definitely proceed with it. This platform offers the most advanced features out of the three. You are in control.

The extra features include removing their brand from your content completely, password protection and exporting. These are definitely useful if you want to do hosting with a different hosting company.

You can definitely find a cheaper value if you do decide to do hosting with a different company after exporting your design. Although their CMS items needs to be exported as a CSV. This reason is that dynamic content can’t be exported and the only way is through a CSV file.

Also, if you decide to host somewhere else you need to know the basics of coding to implement forms and other features. The reason is because their form collections also can't be exported. This includes:

• form submissions
• submit buttons
• input
• recaptcha
• checkbox
• file upload
• label

The only way to get these features is to get web hosting through their website plans.

You can definitely find a cheaper value if you do decide to do hosting with a different company after exporting your design. Although their CMS items needs to be exported as a CSV. This reason is that dynamic content can't be exported and the only way is through a CSV file.

In simpler terms, the content management system that isn't static need to be exported to a special file that is not included with the HTML and CSS.

You can definitely find a cheaper value if you do decide to do hosting with a different company after exporting your design. Although their CMS items needs to be exported as a CSV. This reason is that dynamic content can't be exported and the only way is through a CSV file.

The Lite and Pro Plans are great for businesses that do web design for their clients. This allows many useful features for clients to get the website they are asking for.

The team plans offer the same as the Pro, but with an addition of a team dashboard and more users for your team.

Can it be expensive?

If you start with the free account plan, then if you enjoy the features you can go three routes.

First route, you can go with their CMS website plans, which is there hosting plans. This is the second simplest plan and you get a lot of features that you will need. These include the CMS items to include extra useful features to your site.

This plan is perfect for starters and costs 20$ per month, at the cost of $240/year. This plan is 16$ a month if you buy it for a year, so it will cost you around $192/year. You can save around 40$ plus.

Second route, if you need to sell items then go with an ecommerce plan. Definitely go with the Standard Plan at the cost of 42$ per month, at the cost of 504$/year. This plan is 29$ a month if you buy it for a year, so it will cost you around $348/year. You can save over 150$. This is perfect for starters with an ecommerce website.

Second route, you can with an alternative hosting website. Try Hostinger, they offer great services at a very good price. You will spend way less with hosting your service there. It can be less than 100$ a year. Although the downfall of it is that it will be a lot more difficult to integrate certain features.

If you are not that advanced in website design and coding, then you should go with their website or ecommerce services and ignore the third route.

However, you can go to Udesly to convert your Webflow design into WordPress or WooCommerce. Just to let you know, this is more complicated than just clicking a convert button.

Pros & Cons

They allow their users to get access to their content management system (CMS) without no credit card or debit card required. Even better, they give you access to two projects.

In addition, this platform offers unlimited projects at an affordable price. There website plans and ecommerce plans don't differ much, in that you need to spend the most to get the best features. They greatly differ in quantity of "X", such as number of visitors and yearly volume sales for example.

It's perfect and affordable for starters. All website plans and ecommerce plans offer password protection, 301 redirects, automatic backups and restore points, fast page loads via a CDN, and enhanced security.

While, all their account plans offer unlimited hosted projects, interactions and animations, 100+ responsive designs, 3D transforms, global swatches, custom fonts, flexbox and reusable symbols.

A con is definitely that you can't export the form features. Another one is that it can be complicated to export to WordPress, Shopify, and Woocommerce.

Paypal and Stripe have been integrated as the e-commerce payment options. These are naturally built in with Webflow and don't require any integration. Apple Pay & Google Pay are hopefully coming soon.

Recommendation for Users

This platform is strongly recommended for intermediate-advanced users. If you have are intermediate in WordPress and designed with other platforms, then this is just for you.

If you are willing to learn and watch the tutorials offered through their website, then it can be pretty simple and easy. Go to their University page here. Their CMS seems complicated to use at first sight, but once you know the usability of the tools you got this.

In money wise, this platform will save you the most money. If you are on budget then I would strongly recommend to learn this platform.

This platform is new, and can be the future of web design. This platform definitely competes with WordPress and Shopify.

Rating: 4/5

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