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Is Simbla a good website builder? Read our full Simbla review with pros & cons, complaints, recommended use, FAQs, & more to find out!
Simbla Features
| eCommerce compatible: | No |
| Mobile-friendly: | Yes |
| Free trial: | Yes |
| Drag & drop: | Yes |
| # of templates: | 85 |
| SEO Friendly: | Yes |
| Money-Back Guarantee: | 14 days |
A Quick Overview:
Simbla is a simple drag-and-drop website builder that makes it easy for anyone to build a beautiful website. It was built for small and medium sized business who want an attractive, yet easy-to-create, all-in-one website building solution. With Simbla, you can create beautiful websites, mange your own cloud based database, and create web applications, among other impressive capabilities. Simbla was created in 2013, so it is fairly new compared to other big name website builders, but it is also making significant strides in a short space of time.
This company also places a big emphasis on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which is an area that most website builders tend to perform poorly in. Simbla also uses Bootstrap 3 technology, which allows all websites to be responsive. One notable drawback is that at the moment, there are no eCommerce features available. Simbla does label eCommerce as “coming soon” which means it’s still something that users can look out for and look forward to. As one of the newer website builders on the market, Simbla still has a few areas to improve, but it also has a lot to offer.
Why choose Simbla:
- Easy to use, with intuitive drag and drop functionality
- Offers unique database and web application building capabilities
- SEO friendly for ranking well on search engines like Google
- All websites are fully responsive/mobile-friendly
- Helpful guide and onboarding process to get you started
- Beginner friendly with no coding knowledge required
- Great blogging system
- Uses Bootstrap 3
What are the disadvantages:
- No eCommerce capabilities currently available (huge setback for those trying to sell online)
- Incomplete App Market with features like email marketing and site analytics still not available
- Plans are not billed monthly (only annually) which may be too expensive upfront for some
- Credit cards are not accepted. Only Paypal is accepted as a payment method
The bottom line:
Simbla represents a user-friendly website builder that allows users to create professional looking websites in a short time. This is especially attractive for small business owners and solopreneurs who are looking for high quality at a lower cost than hiring a professional web designer. Not only can you build beautiful websites, but you can also create and manage your own database and web applications. This is a competitive advantage that may be attractive to professionals in the web development industry.
On the other hand, Simbla is still fairly new in comparison to its competitors and has a few improvements to make, such as introducing eCommerce capabilities and site analytics among other necessary features. They recently launched their blogging system, catalogue app, and added some new features so customers can expect other additions and improvements soon. Simbla may be a good choice for those who want to try something new as well as manage their own database.
Simbla lets you signup for free so you can start building your own website fast. Try it Now
Expert Opinion – Our In-Depth Review of Simbla
Simbla was founded in 2013 by Ilan Zrien and Shlomi Stein Zrien in Tel Aviv, Israel. They created the platform after attempting to create a website for their own business. They realized that there was a gap in the market for simple but excellent website building tools, so they teamed up and created Simbla. Users can also use Simbla to create and manage their own database and web applications. This is a unique capability that sets this platform apart from other competitors.
Their main mission is to make it accessible and easy for anyone, with no knowledge of coding, to create a stunning website in 20 minutes or less. They also use Bootstrap 3, a cutting edge frontend framework, which allows all websites to automatically be responsive/mobile-friendly. Simbla is yet to introduce its eCommerce application and some other features in their App Market but they recently launched their Blog and Catalogue applications which are quite impressive. More additions are expected in the near future.
Plans & Features – Which One is Right For Me?
Simbla offers a free plan and four premium plans – namely Starter, Basic, Advanced, and Pro. The free plans are of course branded with Simbla but unlike some other website builders, Simbla’s free plan is not a limited time trial. It is free for life and users can also get a 60-day trial on premium features. The cheapest premium plan is Starter and it costs $72/year while the most expensive plan is Pro at $576/year.
Even though Simbla’s pricing page will quote the plans at a per month rate, all plans are billed annually. These plans may be a bit pricey but Simbla tends to offer deep discounts often up to 75% off. The free plan offers users 300MB storage and bandwidth, a Simbla Domain, and a 60-day trial on most of the premium features.
| Premium Plans: | Yearly Subscription: | Monthly Subscription: | Compare: |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/yr | N/A | View Details |
| Starter | $72/yr | N/A | View Details |
| Basic | $144/yr | N/A | View Details |
| Advanced | $288/yr | N/A | View Details |
| Pro | $576/yr | N/A | View Details |
Starter: This plan will give you 1GB of storage and bandwidth, the ability to connect your own domain and 1,000 database records and database requests. Other features that come with every premium plan include: customized apps, the blog app, news app, product catalog app and SSL (beta). This plan is suitable for those who want to access the advanced features but don’t require much storage or bandwidth.
Basic: The Basic plan has everything that the Starter plan has and more. Storage and bandwidth has increased to 3GB. You will also have 5,000 database records and 10,00 database requests. For new customers, this is the plan recommended by Simbla.
Advanced: The main improvements in this plan are in the areas of storage, bandwidth, database requests and database records. This plan comes with 10GB storage and bandwidth, 20,000 records and 40,000 requests. The Advanced plan is suitable for bigger websites or professionals who intend to use their database to store a lot of information.
Pro: This is Simbla’s most expensive plan and it comes with 20GB of storage and bandwidth, 50,000 database records and 100,000 database requests. This plan could be improved by making the storage and bandwidth unlimited as many other website builders do. Unless you have a need for a larger database, this plan might not justify the higher price.
Account Management – Tools, Features, & Editor
Simbla offer three main products for their users – the website builder, the application builder, and the database builder. When you sign into your Simbla account, you will see the website section of your Dashboard. The three builders are categorized and visible on the left-hand side of your dashboard so that you easily interchange between them.
The Website Builder
When you first create your account, a pop up will ask you if you want to select a template for your website or if you want to use the website wizard.
The website wizard can be helpful if you’re new to Simbla. It provides a mini tour of the website buildre to show you where everything is. If you’re fairly good at figuring things out and just want to start building right away, then we recommend selecting a template. The website builder is very user-friendly and easy to understand.
It is a drag-and-drop interface. Everything is intuitive and you can easily change your background, text, and the layout of your website, regardless of what template you choose.
On the note of templates, Simbla offers a great selection of free templates. There are around 85 templates in total. Most of them are free but some can only be accessed once you upgrade to a premium plan.
The Application Builder
The Application section of the dashboard is where you can go to add available applications to your website and you can also build your own applications. Simbla currently has the Blog, News, and Catalogue Apps available but they also have eCommerce, Site Analytics, Lead generation and other impressive apps coming soon.
The Database Builder
Another product that Simbla offers, which sets them apart is their database builder. Creating your database is as easy as creating your own website and it is included in the yearly subscription cost.
The database is cloud-based and requires no coding knowledge to set it up. You can use it to create web apps for your website and easily connect other content to your website. Creating your own database is as easy as clicking “Database” from the sidebar menu and then selecting “Create Database”.
From there you can manage: Users, Roles, and Tables. “Users” will allow to create and manage each user’s permissions and functions. “Roles” will allow you to set specific permissions to specific groups such as site admins, users, and editors. “Tables” is where you will be able to create, edit, and delete tables and set permissions and roles to all of them separately. Your database can be created from your database dashboard or from within the website editor and it is where all web apps created using Javascript or tables will be found.
Disadvantages Explained – Things Simbla Could Improve
Simbla is a pretty impressive platform but they still have a few areas of improvement that you will need to consider before you sign up.
No Monthly Subscriptions: Another disadvantage which is an easy fix that would make a huge difference is that at the moment, Simbla only allows users to pay annually. Given that the highest plan costs $576 per year, the yearly cost might be too expensive for some persons to pay up front. Most other website builders offer monthly subscriptions, so it’s a bit strange for Simbla not to follow suit. Another issue with the subscription cost is that on the Pricing page, the cost of each plan is advertised as a monthly amount. You may miss the small text that says “billed annually” and sign up based on the monthly figure so be aware of this.
Incomplete App Market: The App Market currently has the Blog, News, and Product Catalogue applications available. Some other important applications such eCommerce, Site Analytics, and Email Marketing are labelled as coming soon. These are important features that you will have to do without for a while until they are launched so it’s important to consider that as well.
Additional Features Worth Mentioning
Simbla is considered as a pioneer in the next generation of website building systems. They definitely have some great features that are worth highlighting and that customers will enjoy.
Automatically Responsive websites: In this era where mobile is everything, it’s very important that all your websites are responsive and it looks great on a desktop, tablet, and mobile device. None of these can be overlooked. Because Simbla uses Bootstrap 3 on the backend, everything on your website will perfectly adjust to the device it is been viewed on, making the experience excellent for everyone.
Database and web application builders: These are two features that really set Simbla apart from its competitors. You will be able to create and manage your own cloud-based database with no coding knowledge required. You can also create your own web applications to customize your website. This is a feature that advanced web designers and web developers will really appreciate.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Simbla places an emphasis on great SEO which is an important area that a lot of other website builders have overlooked. All of Simbla’s websites are HTML5-based which means that the content is represented as text that search engines will recognize. Simbla also offers advanced SEO tools such as site maps, 301 references, metadata (description, title and keywords), friendly URLs and, Google Analytics integration.
Conclusion – To Build or Not to Build?
As we reach the conclusion of our Simbla review, it’s important to keep in mind that every website builder has different strength and weaknesses. If you’re considering Simbla, you’ll need to determine if this website builder offers the right features, pricing, and services to best suit your needs. For further information about Simbla, visit their website at www.simbla.com. If you found this review helpful, please like and share it!
Let Us Know Your Thoughts
Have you used Simbla before? Have any positive or negative experience you’d like to share with us? Simply leave a comment! Thank you.
FAQs About Simbla
Simbla only allows customers to pay through PayPal which is a bit unfortunate since many people prefer to use their credit card or simply, don’t have a PayPal account.
Yes, if you select that option. By default, Simbla websites will show up on a mobile device in the same way that it shows up on a desktop, but there is the option in the Wix Editor to make your website mobile friendly and edit the layout of your mobile site.
Yes. Simbla recently launch their blog web application that you can add to your website. The blog set up is quite intuitive and user-friendly. Because Simbla, has placed such a strong emphasis on SEO, you will notice that on the backend of each page there is a section dedicated to keywords and SEO. This is very commendable, especially for a drap-and-drop website builder.
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