I last reviewed SnackWebsites builder three years ago. I’m excited to dive in and share what things are like now compared to then. Let’s get started, shall we?
My initial impression of SnackWebsites builder.
In the old days (2013), I put my initial impression at the bottom of the post. But you want this first, right? Okay, so in 2013 I wasn’t in love with SnackWebsites builder at all. Now, in 2016, the SnackWebsites builder appears to be a bit more thought out. I think you can get a very simple website online quickly with SnackWebsites, but I think you’ll outgrow the features SnackWebsites builder has to offer quickly if you regularly use your website and want to do things you see other websites doing. SnackTools, offered by the same company, looks way more interesting to me than the SnackWebsites builder does. And that’s the thing; I think SnackTools are more of a focus for this company over the SnackWebsites builder.
Would you like some free help preparing for your site? Cool. Here’s a free download I created just for you.
Is this an industry-specific website builder?
Back in 2013 SnackWebsites’ intro page emphasized musician websites. Now, they still bring up “musicians” in their main menu, but SnackWebsites clearly serves all industries.
SnackWebsites builder pricing made simple.
Geez, guys. It’s been three years since I last tried to figure out their pricing and they are still cryptic as all get out about their pricing. Boo. But after creating an account and digging around, here’s what I figured out:
SnackWebsites has a free account. SnackWebsites also has a Pro account.
The biggest difference between free and Pro is you get a free domain with a paid account, their branding can be removed from your website, and you can do more customization with a paid SnackWebsites account than a free account.
If you use a free account, you will likely still have to pay for something. They have lots of premium features that you’ll probably want. You can get premium features for points or you can just go up to the SnackWebsites builder Pro account. Premium features include slideshows, presentations, redirects, and HTML pages. You can have a points account for $19 a year for 10 points (or one feature). You can pay for more points upfront, and this will reduce your per point cost. The points calculation gets a bit involved; so if you are drawn towards any of the premium features, I’d recommend just upgrading to the Pro account, which gives you access to all the SnackTools apps.
A SnackWebsites builder Pro account is $8.00 a month or $96 a year.
For $24 a month or $288 a year, you can have a Snack VIP account.
What is this, you ask? Well, SnackWebsites builder is associated with SnackTools. SnackTools gives you things like Flipsnack for online flipbooks, Bannersnack for creating animated banner ads, and widgets for your website such as slideshows, polls, and media players. A Snack VIP account gives you access to all those tools in addition to having a website through SnackWebsites.
For $48 a month or $576 yearly you can have a Snack Business account.
As far as I can tell, the biggest difference between Snack Business and Snack VIP is the number of views your site gets. If you get over 25,000 views a day, you’ll want to switch to Snack Business.
In 2013, SnackWebsites’ pricing was actually less clear. While I was able to find out much more this time around, I had to go through the effort of creating an account to get all of this pricing information and that is really silly and time consuming. They do have a pricing page now that gives some idea about what you get; the problem on the pricing page is there are no actual prices. Really? Yep. http://blog.snackwebsites.com/snackwebsites-pricing-plans.html
Is SnackWebsites builder mobile friendly?
Based on the examples I see, yes. They are mobile-friendly. Based on their Features page… Wait, they don’t have a features page telling you the nuts and bolts of their service. Again, frustrating. But I did find a lovely example of one site built on Snack Websites: http://www.paularad.com/
Does SnackWebsites offer search engine optimization features?
According to their pricing page SnackWebsites offers search engine optimization in their sites, including meta tags. This is a big improvement over 2013! I had no idea what the answer to this was back then. Nice improvement! Also, on their home page, they say they are “Google friendly.” However, when I went into my SnackWebsites account and created my first web page, I couldn’t find where to enter search engine optimization information like meta titles or meta descriptions for each page and those are two very important features I look for in any website builder. I did find where you can put in your Google Analytics ID, so perhaps that’s the “Google friendly” part, and this is a step in the right direction.
What blog features does SnackWebsites offer?
At first, I had no idea. I could tell from the example sites that it has some form of blogging features. So I went in and started to create a free website to find out what those features were, exactly. SnackWebsites doesn’t have an actual “blog” section to their website builder. Instead, you create a page and give it a publish date and opt to show the published date or not. So you’d probably create a navigation item entitled “blog” and then place all “blog pages” within that navigation section. You can create categories, like a standard blog. And you can enable comments and social sharing options. So while not as robust and direct as many blogging features, it can be done within SnackWebsites.
Is SnackWebsites easy to use?
So far it looks easy to get going but is very limited in functionality in comparison to others. So if you wanted to just get a really minimal website built quickly, I think you could. I suspect, if you worked with your website as an online marketing tool, that you’d quickly outgrow what SnackWebsites builder has to offer. But fast? Yeah, you can probably get a site online quickly with SnackWebsites.
Can you use your own URL with SnackWebsites builder?
They say you can, even with the free account.
Final thoughts about SnackWebsites builder.
If you are looking for a quick, super simple website to get you started, you might like SnackWebsites builder. I’d encourage you to take an afternoon and try SnackWebsites builder and then try a couple others so you can see which one makes the most sense to you intuitively. For me, the features are limiting. However, I did find it easy to understand what all my options were for the page I was working on within the SnackWebsites interface. This might be a really good tool for someone just starting out with their first website.
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.
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