Do you want to create websites and web apps but feel restricted with traditional website builders? Or do you think although it’s great to have a website builder to speed up web development it’s still cumbersome because it can get quite repetitive? Meet Quarkly, a no-code or low code builder for you to create websites and web apps.
At first glance, you’d think Quarkly is just like any other website builder that lets you create a site without coding. But, it’s an entirely different beast. It’s aimed at teams, agencies, software companies – in short anybody who wants to get a great product out of the door as fast as possible but without compromising on quality.
Having this as its mission, Quarkly wants to ease and speed up the work of developers and designers. This means you can click, drag and drop to design. You also get full access to the source code so that you can edit, customise and manage the generated code.
So, like your run of the mill website editor, Quarkly allows you to create websites without coding but with drag and drop. It combines the website builder with a graphic editor (think Figma or Sketch) and complements it with a typical IDE development environment so that you can also integrate with external resources for design assets and Javascript libraries.
The team behind Quarkly is well-versed in the world of website builders as they worked on Ukit. The team is located in Rostov-on-Don, Russia.
Pros and cons of Quarkly
Quarkly is an online service that allows you to build websites or web apps from scratch with its website builder come graphic editor come typical IDE development environment. This means you get responsive editing tools with full access to the source code and you can integrate your project with external resources for design assets and Javascript libraries.
Mind though, Quarkly is more like a static code generator, something like Slides5 or Mobirise. Hence, you can’t expect to realise a fully-functional project with a database and dynamic content with Quarkly alone. But don’t worry. You can integrate it with some nifty services such as Directual or Airtable.
Pros
- Forever free plan
- Gives you full control over the generated code
- You can create websites and web apps using the mouse as well as typing the code and everything syncs on the fly
- Collaborate in a team – both designers and developers can work together
- You can export the code
Cons
- Limited integrations
- May have a learning curve for beginners
Who is Quarkly for?
At the moment, Quarkly doesn’t target a specific niche or industry but rather professional web and graphic designers, front-end and web developers, and coders in general. Web agencies and software companies may also find it appealing since it closely emulates the web development process.
A typical web development cycle now is based on a designer and developer team. It usually starts with the designer creating the design, mockup, or design specs in a graphic editor like Figma. The developer then takes the design, sets up their environment for development, creates the components and codes. The programmer then shows the results so that the designer can approve them. And at the end, the project gets published. Ok, that was grossly simplified but you get the steps:
- design
- set up development environment
- coding
- approval
- publish (or in jargon deploy)
And with Quarkly, the designer creates the design and layouts, and the developer codes and adds logic.
The good thing is that Quarkly is flexible and module-based, you don’t need to repeat the same actions in every new project. So, you can use it also for prototyping. In short, you can use it for all stages of the development process from prototyping with detailed project specifications to designing, building, deployment, and testing. All that without the need to hunt and use separate services.
How easy is Quarkly to use?
You may think since Quarkly targets professional developers and designers that it comes with a learning curve. Even if you’re a complete novice, it’s a breeze to use it.
Don’t let the words “professional”, “IDE”, or “development environment” deter you. Quarkly has a self-explanatory interface and easy to use building tools. You can use the mouse to design your website or web app using pre-designed components and blocks.
If you know graphic editors such as Figma or Sketch, you’ll feel at home right away. The website editor gives you a lot of flexibility and control so that you can design to your heart’s content.
So, the only question is, should you still use it as a beginner? And the answer is a resounding yes. First of all, it has a generous forever free plan. So, while you get to grips with it, you also pick up valuable web design and development skills. And, you can experiment with your design and business ideas.
Design and templates
You don’t need to start with a blank page. Quarkly comes with a template for a multi-page website and a few templates for one-pagers.
It also has pre-built blocks and components for you to insert into your pages. As you’d expect nowadays, especially from a tool aimed at professional designers and developers, all pages built with Quarkly are responsive (they look good on all kinds of devices from mobiles to desktops).
How easy is managing your ecommerce store with Quarkly?
Quarkly itself is not designed and built for you to run and manage an online store. But, it comes with an integration with Shopify.
What marketing tools does Quarkly provide?
Quarkly falls more into the static website generator category and so doesn’t offer tools for you to publish a blog.
It comes with excellent SEO tools such as semantic and meta tags. Since you have full access to the generated code, you can add necessary attributes. It also creates the sitemap.xml and robots.txt automatically.
Payment options
You can integrate your projects with Paypal so that you can accept payments, should you not be already connected with Shopify.
Security
All websites created with and hosted on Quarkly are encrypted with an SSL certificate.
Customer support
If you’re working on a project and hit a wall, you can contact the support team with the chat button located in the lower right corner. You can also join Quarkly’s community or browse its extensive and searchable knowledge base.
Pricing
The cool thing is that you can experience Quarkly for free. And, when you sign up, you don’t need to hand in your credit cards. Quarkly offers in total 3 plans that all have the same features. Just know that projects published with the plan are branded.
The only difference between the plans are
- Components
- Pages
- Projects
- Hosting
Is Quarkly the right solution for you?
If you read until here and are still not sure, ask yourself the following questions
- Do you like to experiment?
- Do you feel restricted by the common website builders?
- Do you like full control?
- Do you want to get to grips with web design and development?
- Do you want to streamline your work and not repeat the same actions in every new project?
If you answered 2 or more questions with a yes, go ahead and try Quarkly. Especially, since it has a forever-free plan, you can do it without risk to you.
Quarkly is still quite new. It went out of beta this year. This means it will get more features down the road.
Quarkly was created to be easy to use. As it’s still quite new, its feature set is still somewhat limited, particularly regarding what elements, widgets, and sections you can add to your site. This means, as long as your web project is small, Quarkly can cover your needs. But it’s not ready for larger web projects and growing companies.
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Original post here: Quarkly review
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