Nowadays, it’s obvious that a business needs to have an online presence. Especially after the pandemic, having a website is a must – not only for businesses but also if you want to quickly validate your ideas.
Olitt wants to be your go-to tool if you don’t know how to code and have no budget for a web designer or developer. Olitt is a no-code, freemium website builder. It comes with a large collection of pre-built templates for all kinds of use cases. This means, that if you want more features or live chat support, you need to sign up for a paid account.
Olitt is a relatively late entrant into the website builder space. It was launched in 2020 by David Murimi and William Mway. It’s based in the US with headquarters in the Greater Philadelphia Area. But as you may have gathered from the names of the founders, it’s the brainchild of 2 Kenyans.
Pros and cons of Olitt
With a free account and a paid subscription, Olitt is a freemium website builder. When you subscribe to the paid plan, you get access to more features such as
- SEO marketing tools
- Integrations
- Online shop
At a very reasonable price. It makes going online hassle-free and you don’t have to worry about your purse strings.
Pros
- Forever free plan
- Even the free plan allows you to connect your custom domain
- No learning curve makes it very easy to use
- Budget-friendly pricing
Cons
- Limited integrations
- Limited SEO options
- Will not grow with you (at least not yet)
Who is Olitt for?
Olitt is a really good choice if you want to quickly launch and validate a new idea without much fuss and overhead. As a general-purpose website builder, you can build any kind of website, from one-pagers to online stores.
It’s a good choice for SMEs, micro business, and not so tech-savvy business owners. It comes with all the essentials such as SSL and custom domains for your marketing.
How easy is Olitt to use?
Creating an account is very simple. No long faffing around with endless questions and you don’t need your credit card. You can either go with Apple’s or Google’s one-click method or use the traditional email and password method.
Following industry standards, you first select a template and with the help of the drag-and-drop editor, you customise it and add your content.
Just selecting a template publishes your new website immediately. If you don’t connect it with your custom domain, your website gets an auto-generated URL. You can use that in all your communication and social media pages.
You can either drag the universal section where you want and then choose which block you want or drag it directly to the spot you want. You get the hang of the editor in a jiffy and complete your website in the blink of an eye – without cursing and hairpulling.
This is because the interface is well-thought-out and simple. Everything is clearly labelled and it comes with handy tools like redo and undo buttons. You can even autosave your progress – although that might not be advisable if your website is already live.
Design and templates
The over 200 templates are organised according to business use cases. As it should be standard nowadays, the templates are mobile-ready and work with different device sizes.
How to manage your ecommerce store in Olitt?
You first need to create an online store before and for that, you need a paid account. The online store is still quite basic. On the one hand, it makes running a store easy. But, you can’t go very far and can’t build a large complex store a la Amazon.
Integrations
When you look in the right toolbar of the editor, you’ll see the integrations for social, Google, Mailchimp, and uncategorised integrations.
What marketing tools does Olitt provide?
If you need marketing tools and integration to services such as Google Analytics or Hotjar, you need to subscribe to Olitt’s paid plan.
At the time of writing, Olitt doesn’t have a blogging tool.
To optimise your site for search engines, you can add a site title and meta description.
Payment options
The available payment options are also listed in the right menu when you’re editing your site. You can add Paypal and Stripe. The last option labelled Bank, Card, Mobile Money you can accept payment with services such as M-Pesa.
Security
As a hosted service, Olitt takes care of the security and maintenance. Your websites are secured with an SSL, even on the free plan.
Customer support
On each page of the website, even if you’re not logged in at the moment, you’ll see the chat icon in the lower left-hand corner. However, if you need ticket and live support, you have to be subscribed to a paid account. You can also scour its well-organised knowledge base.
Pricing
Olitt is built for an international audience. See it in its prices: You get to choose in which currency you want to subscribe to a paid account.
It has a simple 2 tier structure. When you subscribe to the paid plan, you unlock features such as unlimited storage and your website doesn’t show Olitt’s branding.
Is Olitt the right solution for you?
Even with a paid account, you can experiment and launch new ideas with Olitt, as it has very reasonable, budget-friendly pricing. It comes with a well-rounded set of features for SMEs and does’t weigh on your pockets. That’s is, if you can live without a blogging tool.
Mind, if you need to scale quickly, or need advanced features for your online store, you may reach its limit. For heavy-duty online stores, you may want to look at a service like Bigcommerce. You got choice for an easy-to-use, all-purpose website builder that grows with you: you may want to look at Ucraft or Zyro.
Original post here: Olitt review – free, no-code website builder
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