A single page website is one where all content and forms are integrated into a single page, negating the need to navigate through different pages. The format has become popular in recent years as people continue to seek solutions to streamline their sites and make them accessible on all devices and operating systems. Strikingly takes advantage of this one-page trend with a website builder that exclusively creates single page websites.
Founded in 2012 with the promise of helping users create new and optimized websites in just minutes, Strikingly is an enticing platform. But does the software live up to that pledge? We signed up to find out.
A full website in minutes? #Strikingly's claim is put to the test. Click To Tweet
- Pros and Cons
- Getting Started
- Ease of Use
- Template Selection
- Blogging with Strikingly
- eCommerce with Strikingly
- Strikingly Premium
- Conclusion
Pros and Cons
- Pros
- Cons
- Strikingly crams a lot of content into a single page without ever making it feel cramped or bloated. This is an impressive feat and probably beats most other generic website builders in this regard, thereby demonstrating the need for more niche website designer products.
- Strikingly has a very quick setup and website design process. Users can create brand new and fully functional websites with just a few minutes of work. The builder allows you to track changes in real-time, ensuring you always know how your site is looking.
- The eCommerce feature is pretty good for what it is. If you want to sell a few products on your site, it’s sufficient and usable.
- The template selection is very limited. With just 19 choices, users are all but forced to create their own sites if they don’t like any of the selections. Additionally, the templates are not as interesting as those found on more dynamic platforms.
- The content management system (CMS) for blogs is pretty weak, making this a poor choice for blog heavy websites.
Getting Started
New users can sign up directly from Strikingly’s homepage. Creating a new account is simple and you can do so by providing just a name, email address, and password. From there you will be directed to choose your site template and begin building in Strikingly’s simple editor tool. The initial signup process takes less than a minute.
Ease of Use
The Strikingly website builder is dead simple, relying on a drag-and-drop system that is controlled via a panel on the left side of the editor. Strikingly websites are composed of different sections. The process begins with breaking your content up into the sections you require. From there you can get to work adding each section you want to be featured on your page. The process is intuitive and foolproof.
Not every theme will have the sections you may need for your website, however. Some themes include a features or projects section, while others do not. Additionally, there is no way to see what a theme includes before you implement it. While you can change the theme of your website at any time, this is can be a frustrating way to build a website. Furthermore, using templates restricts your ability to customize your website. Even the ‘Make Your Own’ option is limiting as it requires you to add a title and a subtitle. Columns cannot be added, either.
Template Selection
Strikingly offers a total of 19 templates, fewer than the amount offered in the past. The fact that the choice of themes has been reduced is not encouraging. The themes are fresh and modern which makes them ideal for startups and freelancers. They do lack the HTML-driven punch of the most cutting-edge themes, though.
There are many businesses for which a single-page website format is ideal. Unless you upgrade to Pro, however, you are limited in the extent to which you can customize small details such as font colors, font sizes, border color and background images. Another area that presents some difficulty is logo customization. Getting a text logo to sit flush to the page proved to be impossible.
Using an image logo wasn’t much better. In that case, it was difficult to resize the image to fit the space allotted for it. That being said, strikingly themes do look professional on both desktop and mobile displays. We would have hoped for some more animated and interesting themes, considering the small niche that Strikingly is serving, but hopefully, more features will be added in the future.
Blogging with Strikingly
Users can add a blog editor section to your homepage. This lists blog posts with links to individual pages that are not tied to a theme. These individual pages have their own style, but it’s the same style regardless of the template you have chosen. It’s an unusual way to organize a blog, which may not suit some bloggers. You can add comments and integrate with Discus (although Facebook comments are not possible). Another small issue is the fact that you can draft a post, but you cannot schedule it to go out at a specific time.
The blogging platform is very good, otherwise. Blogs can be made more readable using headers, dividers, and images. Users can even use HTML within their work. Strikingly is not a CMS, so we only recommend this blogging feature for companies or individuals who want to be able to write, but don’t require it as a key feature of their site.
eCommerce with Strikingly
With Strikingly you can sell merchandise by setting product variations, shipping options, and creating coupon codes. The coupons can only be set for a percentage discount and not a set amount (such as $10 off), however. You cannot set coupons to apply to a specific product type or category. In fact, there are no product categories, digital products, or a tax system available. And while you can preview the email notifications your customers receive, you cannot edit them in any way.
To say that Strikingly is an eCommerce platform would be silly. The single-page website format does not allow for the dimension needed to operate a robust online store.
Strikingly Premium
A simple Strikingly website can be created for free forever. It even includes the ability to add a single product to the eCommerce section. If, however, you want to be able to further customize your site and add more products, you will have to sign up for a premium account.
Paid accounts start with the Limited plan at $8 per month, billed annually. The Limited plan offers 10x the bandwidth of a free account (50 GB), a free domain, a five product store, and two sites.
The Pro plan costs $16 per month, billed annually. Included is everything from the Limited plan and access to the app store, mobile action buttons, ability to embed HTML/CSS/JS, removal of Strikingly branding, support for collaborators, and a store with 300 products per site.
Clearly Strikingly wants users to spend the $16 per month on their Pro plan by making the Limited plan completely unenticing. The service is very expensive for what you recieve, especially when compared with other, more dynamic services.
Conclusion
Strikingly really did come through on their promise of a new website in minutes! The software offers just enough variety to make it easy for anyone to set up a simple, one-page website. This ease of use of this niche tool comes at the cost of limited customization, but you can get more control by upgrading your package to the expensive Pro plan. If you’re keen to dip your toes into web-designing waters, you may just want to give Strikingly a try.
