Nowadays, not having a website makes it hard for a business to survive. According to a survey done by Weebly, if your business doesn’t have a website, 56% of consumers won’t trust it. This survey was conducted in 2013, so it’s safe to assume that this number has risen in the meantime.
Website builders allow everyone to have their online presence. So, there’s no excuse (or if you prefer, reason) not to create your website. Gone are the days where you’d need substantial funding and or a development team to create your online presence. With its drag-and-drop editor, Pagecloud lets you build your website with coding skills.
So far, it sounds like any other Wix or Weebly. What makes Pagecloud stand out is that it strives to give you editing tools and options to customise your site while keeping things simple and straightforward so that beginners won’t get overwhelmed.
- Pros and cons of Pagecloud
- Who is Pagecloud for?
- How easy is Pagecloud to use?
- Pagecloud design and templates
- How to manage your ecommerce store in Pagecloud?
- Pagecloud integrations
- What marketing and SEO tools does Pagecloud have?
- Payment options
- Pagecloud security
- Pagecloud customer support
- Pagecloud pricing
- Is Pagecloud the right tool for you?
Pros and cons of Pagecloud
As a cloud-based website builder, you access Pagecloud via your browser. It comes with the typical drag-and-drop editor so that you can build your site without the need for coding skills. If you’re more tech-savvy, you can also edit the code directly and so have more customisation. Following industry standards, Pagecloud provides its service on a monthly subscription.
Pros
- Sleek, modern templates (all included in the plans)
- Easy to use
- High level of customisation so that you can get the look and feel you want
Cons
- More pricey than competitors
Who is Pagecloud for?
As a small business owner, you want to focus on your daily operations, leaving you no or little time to create a website, and most sky few resources to hire a designer or developer. The same if you’re just starting out.
This means you want a tool or a service with which you can build a functional website in hours and sure not weeks. Queue in Pagecloud. It particularly, is appealing, if you’re both business-savvy and attach importance to good design. That is, you want more customisation so that you get exactly right how your website looks and feels.
How easy is Pagecloud to use?
It’s always a boon if you can sign up for a service without having to hand over your credit card details. You can test out all the features and then decide if you like the service to start subscribing.
As with many site builders, you’ll start building your site by choosing a template. With its drag-and-drop editor, you can pick up any element you see and move it to where you want it on your page. To help you create your website, you can add pre-designed sections to your pages. Elements that make up a form or a page header are grouped together into a section. If you made a mistake, there is the redo and undo button.
The interface is intuitive, certainly easy enough for anyone to get the hang of it within minutes. Pagecloud strikes a balance between simplicity and design leeway (customisability). You can style any element on your page with a custom color, border, shadow, and opacity. And if you want to go deeper, you can add CSS and Javascript to each element.
The design leeway is a two-edged sword. Even if Pagecloud offers some useful guidelines to help with spacing, keeping the layout clean and consistent may prove a challenge for beginners.
Pagecloud design and templates
The mobile-ready templates are grouped into categories such as art & design or restaurant & food. They’re all modern with a clean design and free.
How to manage your ecommerce store in Pagecloud?
You need to first create a store in the tab E-commerce in the left sidebar. Everything that has to do with running your store can be found in the dashboard within the tab E-commerce. You’ll find all the tools you need to run and manage your store:
- The Dashboard shows you your store’s high-level reports
- Manage and track your sales in Sales
- In Catalog, you manage your inventory and create gift cards
- Marketing gives you tools to promote your online store including newsletters and automated mails
- Drill down how your store’s performing in Reports
Pagecloud integrations
Pagecloud provides integration with hundred and more services. It claims it integrates with everything. If you don’t find your service, you can try pasting the embed code in your page or using its generic embed app.
What marketing and SEO tools does Pagecloud have?
If you’ve subscribed to Pagecloud’s advanced or unlimited ecommerce plans, you’ll get automated email marketing and abandoned cart.
SEO
Regardless of your plan, you can improve each page’s SEO by adding a page title and language, description, and keywords. Everything else is handled by Pagecloud.
Blogging
Although the blogging tool currently can’t compare with WordPress, you can add categories to your posts and tag them. You can also schedule your posts.
Payment options
You can accept payment with the leading payment gateways Stripe and Paypal. You can also add manual payment methods to accept cash, bank wires, invoices, and checks. Pagecloud doesn’t slap on a transaction fee but you still need to factor in the fees of your chosen payment gateway.
Pagecloud security
Each site is secured with an SSL certificate. If you use Stripe or Paypal as your payment gateway, all personal and financial data is stored with them.
Pagecloud customer support
All plans include chat support. The team usually answers within hours. If you’re impatient, you can query the searchable knowledge base.
Pagecloud pricing
Pagecloud has 2 main pricing categories. If you only need a website, you’ll choose one of its website plans. If you’re planning on selling online, you can choose one of its E-commerce plans.
Its pricing is above the average of what you see with other site builders. If you look at its small business plan, it’s more expensive than Squarespace’s personal plan.
Is Pagecloud the right tool for you?
If you’re both business-minded and artistic, you’ll like the clean templates of Pagecloud that also have a high level of customisability. That being said, Squarespace caters to the same group of people while offering better value. Though it’s worth noting that you have a higher degree of customisation with Pagecloud.
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Original post here: Pagecloud review
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