Website Builder Review: Fat Cow

Today I’ll review the FatCow website builder tool.

These folks offer lots of stuff, with their core offering being hosting.

Industry Specific?
They do the standard thing and offer a bunch of templates that are customizable to any industry.

Pricing
Okay, so if you sign up with FatCow, you are signing up for their hosting.  If you sign up for their hosting, you get their website builder as part of their hosting package.  From what I can tell, they don’t offer a free trial of their hosting, which is very normal for hosting companies.  They have an introductory rate of $3.15/month and there are no setup fees.  After your initial term ends, you revert to their normal rates, which range between $9.49/month and $7.49/month, the lowest rate going to those that sign up for a 36-month contract.
Would you like some free help preparing for your site? Cool. Here’s a free download I created just for you.
Mobile?
Okay, so here’s where things get weird. FatCow offers a number of website builder options. If you watch their nifty video on their home page, it walks you through using their drag and drop website builder, which they refer to as a “Weebly website builder tool.” So if that is the case, it might be okay to assume the tool does what the tool at Weebly.com does, but it doesn’t say that for sure. FatCow doesn’t specifically list what the Weebly tool through their service specifically does and doesn’t do.

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. The majority of builders don’t say anything about this; because of this, I’m giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Search Engine Optimization?
Google Webmaster Tools and a web analytics tool are available.

Blog Features?
It doesn’t say.

Ease of Use
FatCow has a great video available from their home page that shows their Weebly website builder tool in action. And while I am unsure as to what I do and don’t get with FatCow’s website builder, I can say that the drag and drop features look very easy to use.

Use Your Own URL?
Yes!

My Initial Impression
Like most hosting/domain/website marketing companies that happen to offer a website building tool, I feel like this feature needs a lot more thought from FatCow. However, they are totally on the right track with their super friendly video on the home page. They just need to spell out exactly what each of their tools has to offer specifically. For instance, if you choose their WordPress option, you will for sure get blogging as an option, but does their Weebly builder do that as well? If I were new to the web world and I had to choose a website builder, I’d be confused with so many builders to choose from in my FatCow account.  Overall, FatCow comes across as a very friendly company and my guess is you could call them and get these questions answered, but with so many companies that are solely website builder tools, I’d probably go with a dedicated website builder company instead of a company that has oodles of products.
Click here to grab my free download to help you get all your ducks in a row before your build your site.
Even though I made it for people who are getting ready to hire a web pro, 80% of it will help you if you are building your site on your own.