It’s often the case that your business needs more than one website. Sometimes, you need a new website for a product launch or you’re running a social media campaign and one of the steps needs a landing page. Even if you only need one website, a website builder can speed up the process of development.
The all-in-one website builder Vev is catering specifically to creative professionals, be it designers or developers and even marketers. Its drag-and-drop builder is slightly different from the usual crowd, so as to better satisfy the needs of a creative professional.
The company was founded in 2017 by Fredrik Evjen Ekli, Tine Karlsen, Nicolay Thafvelin. It’s based in Oslo, Norway. It counts well-known brands such as Netflix and The Economist as clients.
Pros and cons of Vev
As an all-in-one service, you get to create websites with Vev and the hosting is also taken care of. You can access the service on your browser and should you opt for a paid plan, pay a monthly subscription fee.
Pros
- Forever free plan, albeit your sites will have a Vev watermark
- Powerful editors (if you know your way around professional design software like Figma)
- Reasonable pricing
- The designs made are automatically responsive (that is they resize to the screen sizes of desktop, tablet, and mobile)
- You can export the files and host them on your own servers
- You can collaborate across teams and functions without disrupting the work of your coworkers
Cons
- Only works on Chrome and Chrome-based browsers
Who is Vev for?
If you’re a freelancing creative professional and working with other freelancers or with your client, you’ll appreciate Vev. You can also use Vev to work across teams or departments in larger organisations or agencies all within its interface.
The entire process of building a website, that is designing, developing, and copywriting can be done with Vev. It comes with a Design Editor so that designers can create complex layouts without coding. For developers, there’s the code editor that lets them create their own React Components. With the Content Editor, content creators can work alongside.
How easy is Vev to use?
The sign-up process is straightforward. You can create an account with Google, Facebook, Azure AD, or your plain old simple email. You also don’t need to have your credit card ready. During the sign-up process, you’ll be asked what your role is. This can be
- Designer
- Developer
- Content editor
- Marketer
- Project manager
- Freelancer
For this review, I’m going to pick designer (even if I’m a programmer). This is because I want to see how easy it is to build an attractive site without a line of code in the Design Editor.
To help you along the way, Vev will ask if you want to start on a blank or the demo project. If you’ve just signed up, I recommend you start with the demo project because this is how you learn how to use its interface with a practical example.
If you’re working with professional design software such as Figma or Adobe Illustrator, Vev will feel familiar to you. It’s built with the same design logic.
If you want to go beyond what you can do in the Design editor, you can develop your React Components in the Code Editor. And even if the layout is not quite complete, if you want to start working on the content, you can do so in the Content Editor without disturbing the work of the designer. Working in the three editors is a breeze.
Vev design and themes
Vev is not your typical website builder in that it doesn’t offer a range of templates that you can choose from. But you do get 7 example projects from which you can draw inspiration or adapt to your needs.
In my view, not having templates in Vev is not a bad thing at all since you can let your imagination run free and it’s a walk in the park to build what you thought off in the editors. If you’ve subscribed to a paid plan, you can build your own templates that you can then share with your coworkers.
How to manage your ecommerce store in Vev?
Vev is not the best option if you want to run an online store.
Vev integrations
If you choose to let Vev host your website for you, you can add plugins so that you can add tracking pixels and custom code. Should you opt for self-hosting, you can add webhooks to your project.
Since it’s quite a young company, more plugins and integration options will be available in the future.
What marketing and SEO tools does Vev have?
Vev is a static website generator. So, it’s not the best option for sites that are dynamic or very dependent on a database. Thus, it’s not ideal for blogs, news sites, or online stores.
SEO
Once you’re ready to publish your site, you can add plugins with which you can add and edit metadata.
Vev security
All projects including those built in the free forever plan are secured with an SSL certificate when hosted by Vev. Of course, if you self-host, you’re responsible for security and maintenance yourself. For backups, you can download the files as ZIP.
Vev customer support
If you don’t find an answer in the searchable help centre or the help chat takes too long to answer, you can get help via Discord, a modern take on communicating with a company. If you prefer video tutorials, hop over to its YouTube channel.
Pricing
You can always start with the free plan and upgrade later to a paid subscription. If you just want to go live without a Vev watermark on your free plan, you can also choose the Single Project for $5 a month.
Is Vev the right tool for you?
If you need to build many websites, accelerating the process is always a boon. With its three powerful editors, you can build unique and attractive static websites, especially in a multi-disciplinary team. It’s a robust option for creatives working as a freelancer as well as agencies and larger businesses.
Vev is not a general-purpose website builder. So, if you want a dynamic website relying heavily on a database – this would be news or ecommerce site, take a look at Squarespace or Wix.
If you enjoyed reading about Vev, please feel free to share it with someone who finds it useful.
Original post here: Collaborative website building with Vev
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