Today I’m reviewing a website builder from Gate.com, a company that offers more than just website builders. They offer domain names, email, servers and more. Many of the other website builder companies do this as well, but that takes second place to their builder, which typically is the foundation of their business. Not these guys. It is very hard to do many big product offerings well, so let’s see how Gate.com stacks up compared to the rest.
Industry Specific?
They say they have many industry-specific templates, but they don’t cater to a particular industry from what I can tell. This is standard for most website builder tools. What isn’t standard is the lack of examples of their designs. There’s no visuals showing templates or example sites. Not one.
Pricing
Nothing free here. If you buy their hosting plan, you get their website builder. Their plans can run as little as $4.95/month (or $49.50 if you sign up for a 12-month contract) to $29.95/month ($299.50 for a 12-month contract). Higher than most plans, for sure. Somebody must be awfully proud of their product. They should probably do something to show how awesome it is, like visuals of the tool.
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Mobile?
Yes, for the highest tier. The other two tiers can add that on for an additional fee. It’s good they have it, but, you know, if you’ve been following the other posts you know that most offer this for all plans without an extra fee.
In What Browser Does the Website Builder Work?
It doesn’t say, so I’ll go with the assumption that it works in the most modern browsers, like Chrome, Firefox, and IE 10.
Search Engine Optimization?
They say there’s meta tags for SEO and SEO-friendly URLs. There’s fancier things if you buy the highest tier package. There’s some form of stats, but I don’t see mention of allowing a custom stats tracker of my choosing.
Blog Features?
Yes, they say they do have that.
Ease of Use
Normal verbiage here about super easy. They mention they have pre-populated text, which most don’t brag about. But there’s no pretty pictures of the interface or a video, or ANYTHING to back up those claims.
Use Your Own URL?
These folks don’t specifically say that you can use your own URL, but they sell hosting and domain names and this builder comes with any hosting plan. Hosting plans usually require being tied to a domain name, so I am going with “yes” on this.
My Initial Impression
Just like most providers that offer lots of tools, they haven’t spent a lot of time making this product look super special. It could be, but when all that is provided is a page full of text with no visuals, example sites, example videos, etc., I just don’t care much about the product. It feels like an obligatory afterthought. That’s a shame. It could be an awesome tool, but I’ll never know.
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