GoDaddy vs. Strikingly: Best Business Website Builder Review

Having a website for you small business has become a necessity and helps your company get noticed by potential customers. We looked at GoDaddy vs Strikingly and compared their ease of use, pricing, pros and cons and more so you can choose the right fit for your small business.

GoDaddy

Ease of Use

GoDaddy is an extremely easy-use, drag-and-drop website builder that allows users to build a website quickly without having to learn computer coding. Because this platform uses a straightforward, easy-to-navigate website editor, it is ideal for beginners and those who aren’t interested in investing too much time learning a new program. Adding and removing contents and elements is as easy as the click of a button using this intuitive and responsive editor. You can easily have your GoDaddy website up and running under an hour.

What you see is what you get with GoDaddy. The downside of this is that this simplicity can feel a bit limiting for some users. But, most users will find that GoDaddy offers just enough features to allow them to customize their website to meet their needs.

Pricing

GoDaddy includes four pricing tiers — Basic, Standard, Premium, and Ecommerce — and all new users are given the opportunity to try the platform for free before they commit to a plan. The Basic plan is a highly affordable option, but many small business owners may choose to opt for the Ecommerce plan — particularly if your business includes retail. 

Website Plans – GoDaddy Pricing and Features

Pros

• Simple, drag-and-drop technology
• Allows you to build a website in just minutes
• Highly affordable
• Ecommerce capabilities
• SEO wizard ensures your website is found via search engines

Cons

• Customization can feel limited at times
• Zero apps and plug-ins

Ecommerce

GoDaddy includes an ecommerce plan. With this plan, you will have access to a few basic features that should easily meet the needs of smaller businesses — albeit, they may not be up to par for companies looking for a platform that can scale with their business model. Some of GoDaddy’s ecommerce services include the ability to add and import products, integrations with third-party payment gateways like PayPal, social media marketplace integrations, and the ability to add coupons and discounts.

Templates and Themes

With simplicity in mind, GoDaddy saves you time browsing its 1,500 template industry categories by asking a few questions about your business and automatically selecting and populating a template based on your responses. If you wish to change this automatic selection, you may still manually select another template before you finalize your choice.

If you’re looking to go a bit more in-depth, you can change the theme of your website. Each template includes around 20 themes which allow you to choose between different layouts for your website’s content. This can help fully customize your template so it is consistent with your brand image.

Apps and Plugins

While GoDaddy does not offer any apps or plug-ins at the time this article is being written, it does have a few useful integrations that you can add to your website in their place. These include the ability to embed videos and livestreams from YouTube and Twitch, as well as playlists via SoundCloud, the ability to take reservations through OpenTable, and real estate listing integration via the multiple listings service (MLS).

You can also add online restaurant ordering with ChowNow, as well as embed Google My Business and Facebook Business reviews.

Get started building your business website with GoDaddy. TRUiC readers receive an instant discount to any GoDaddy plan.

Strikingly

Ease of Use

Strikingly promotes itself as a platform where users can create a website in under an hour. While this might sound like an exaggerated claim, it is actually achievable for most small businesses. Strikingly focuses on single-page templates and uses a feature-light editor for customizations. Because of this, the entire platform is very simple and easy to navigate. Additionally, all websites are customized for mobile so your site will display beautifully on any device.

The major downside with this platform is that your website may look “cookie-cutter,” making it a bit difficult to communicate your brand personality. That being said, for those looking to create a digital touchpoint for their small business or a portfolio for their services, this platform can certainly do the trick.

Pricing

Strikingly does offer a free plan, but this includes advertisements and a Strikingly subdomain. For users looking to upgrade their service, Strikingly offers a range of options ranging from ultra-affordable to moderately priced. These include Limited, Pro, and VIP plans, each with features that scale with every tier.

Website Plans – Strikingly Pricing and Features

Pros

• Extremely easy to use
• Templates are beautifully designed
• Affordable pricing
• Free plan available with ads
• Automatically optimized for mobile 

Cons

• Limited template selections
• Single-page templates have many downsides, particularly for SEO
• Limited apps and plug-ins

Ecommerce

Strikingly offers users the ability to create what the platform refers to as a “basic store” using this software. Small business owners can take payments using third-party gateways like Stripe and Apple Pay and can add up to 500 products, complete with images and product descriptions. Beyond that, there isn’t much to work with.

Strikingly encourages users looking for ecommerce functionality to integrate with Ecwid, a third-party ecommerce platform. While you will need an account with Ecwid at an additional cost, Strikingly promises seamless integration with the service.

Templates and Themes

As this article is being written, Strikingly offers 29 templates sorted by industry. The main focus here is on one-page templates. This means that rather than displaying content across multiple webpages, Strikingly templates deliver all of the site’s content on a single page via panels as the visitor scrolls.

This layout is not to everyone’s taste. While some people will appreciate having all of their business’s useful information in one place, retailers will likely find it impossible to conduct business without product pages. Additionally, search engines often register too many keywords on a single page as spam, which has an impact on your search engine optimization (SEO) campaign.

Apps and Plugins

Strikingly offers a few bare-bones widgets through its internal app store. These include social media integrations and calendars, as well as some music and email plugins. Strikingly does discourage users from adding too many widgets to their website, saying that overloading your site with widgets can cause it to run slowly.

GoDaddy not only wins against Strikingly as the better choice for small business owners — it ranks at the top of our website builder rankings overall. Not only does it offer a great balance between features and ease of use, but it is also a highly affordable choice for small business owners looking to save money. Strikingly can help you create a visually attractive website for your business, but you’ll run into a few problems in terms of functionality.

To learn more about GoDaddy, read our in-depth GoDaddy Website Builder Review.