TechRadar Verdict
Basekit’s Go Sitebuilder is easy to use and avoids overwhelming users by generating a personalized template. Although it’s not the cheapest or fanciest site builder out there, it’s simple to build a site and add an online store.
Pros
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Personalized template generator
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Easy drag-and-drop website creation
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Domain and unlimited storage included
Cons
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Support is more limited than competitors
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Fewer add-ons and integrations
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A great website is essential to any business. Nowadays, it’s not necessary to employ a designer or a development team to craft your site. Once you’ve picked out a website builder suited to your needs, you can get started straight away.
Basekit focuses on small e-commerce businesses, and has worked with over nine million since it began. Its Go Sitebuilder software helps business owners quickly and easily create the site they want. It also provides its website builder on a commercial basis for telecoms companies who want to offer this valuable service to their clients.
- Want to try Basekit? Check out the website here
Plans and pricing
As a UK-based company, Basekit’s site builder comes in one monthly subscription package priced in GBP. It’s currently on offer at £4.50/month (approximately $6.24) at the time of writing.
With this plan, you get a domain name of your choice, up to five email addresses, unlimited bandwidth and storage, and the full site builder functionality, amongst other perks. You can try out the Go Sitebuilder with a 14-day free trial.
Features
Basekit’s features are geared towards small e-commerce business owners who want to set up their websites quickly and easily. The Go Sitebuilder is the main draw.
The Go Sitebuilder software comes with a library of templates, pre-designed sections, fonts, and colors. This makes it easy to customize your site to fit your brand theme or desired tone, and although the range of templates is not enormous, it’s not too hard to tweak the design for your needs.
You can add site and page-level SEO, and add a blog to your website to drive traffic. Being able to register your domain and get unlimited cloud storage through Basekit is a bonus, meaning you won’t need to switch services to arrange domain registration or web hosting.
Basekit comes with a suite of tools for you to create an online store. Inventory alerts let you know when you need to order more stock; store analytics give you an overview of how your business is performing. And you can add unlimited product variations with individual stock tracking. A number of integrated payment processing options are available, including Paypal and Stripe.
Included in your Basekit package, you’ll get a personalized domain name and up to five email addresses. If you already have a domain, you can easily connect it to any site you build through Go Sitebuilder.
Interface and in use
Getting started with building your site just takes a few minutes. The handy wizard leads you through a series of quick questions to generate a personalized template. This feature makes it less overwhelming to get started. Once you’re in the editor, individual features and sections can be customized and moved around to suit your needs. And it’s easy to check on and edit your site’s settings, such as SEO and privacy options.
Perhaps the most useful feature of Basekit’s Go Sitebuilder is the ability to edit your sites from your mobile. This needs to be done from a web browser; while there are references to mobile apps buried in the FAQ, these are currently not linked from the main site or available for download from app stores. However, Go Sitebuilder is optimized well for the small screen, so using it in your phone’s browser is not difficult.
Support
Basekit’s support page has a short general FAQ (which is very limited) and another FAQ just for Go Sitebuilder, with a series of articles covering different aspects of the platform. Confusingly, there is another general FAQ linked from the Go Sitebuilder main landing page. This makes it a bit hard to find the most relevant help on the website.
However, you can submit a support request by email if needed, although there’s no live chat or phone line. Furthermore, the support page links to a YouTube channel with an introductory video in different languages, and Basekit’s blog also contains lots of useful advice.
The competition
With a range of website builders out there, it’s important to think about which might be best for your business. Among the best-known is Wix. As with Basekit, you can easily create an online store with Wix. You can also use the Wix Owner mobile app to manage your site.
Wix comes with various pricing options, from $14–39/month for simple website plans to $23–49 for business plans. This makes it a much more expensive option than Basekit, especially for unlimited storage, but for this price you’ll get some more sophisticated e-commerce tools, like subscriptions and a loyalty program.
For a cheaper alternative, HostGator’s website builder starts at an introductory price of $3.84/month, rising to $9.22/month for an unlimited product store and built-in email campaigns. The email marketing feature makes this a strong choice if you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for marketing as well as site creation. Support is stronger than Basekit, with live chat and a phone line available.
Final verdict
Basekit’s Go Sitebuilder is easy to use, and the personalized template generation makes site creation feel less overwhelming. It doesn’t have the most bells and whistles, but if you’re looking for a fairly simple creation, domain, and hosting solution with a decent e-commerce option, Basekit could be a good place to start.
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