If you are a small business owner and do it yourselfer like us, you have probably tried many different platforms for building the perfect website for your business. Some seem easy when you start to explore them until you figure out that they are lacking what you really need. We set out on a journey to find the right platform to launch Next Level Gurus and kissed many frogs along the way until we found just the right platform. Here's our journey with an honest critique of what is currently out there and why we love Strikingly so much. Here are 6 Must Have Reasons Why We Love Strikingly. If your current provider is not doing any or all of these, maybe it is time to make the switch. Here are three sites that we tried to use before discovering Strikingly.

Weebly.com

Weebly is a drag and drop interface that allows you to use their system by dropping in text and images to build your pages. Here's what we liked about it and what we didn't like.

Pros:

• Fairly easy to use system if you understand how drag and drop works.
• Gives you a free to use option, so you can try it out before making a commitment. No credit card needed. We loved this aspect a lot!
• Good value for your money because you can get a pretty decent site for not paying too much each month

Cons

• That same drag and drop system can be limiting at times, not allowing you to customize your site how you want it sometimes.
• Templates are limiting and options are not always consistent with your vision
• Mobile look was not always consistent depending on what device you were using.
• Membership capabilities were lacking. It just wasn't simple enough to create the membership site that we needed.

Wix.com

Compared to Weebly, Wix had even more challenges for us. Their site builder was a bit more designer friendly than Weebly but also a drag and drop interface.

Pros

• Free trial options- allowing you to try before committing to a plan. No credit card needed. Again, we loved this aspect.
• Lots of template options and prettier to look at over what Weebly had to offer- the templates gave us a professional look for sure.
• Free hosting- which we liked

Cons

• The switch from template to another was not really allowed. So once we chose a template, we felt we had to stick to it.
• The pricing was not ideal based on what we were getting. We needed to pay more to have an ad free option
• Overall, it was not the right fit for us. We couldn't accomplish our goals with Wix

Learnworlds

Learnworlds is an online course creator platform. We looked at them because we planned on offering courses to our members and wanted something that specialized in doing that.

Pros

• Free trial without having to use a credit card- which was very important to us. We didn't want to give out this info if we were not happy with the platform
• They had a lot of functionality that allowed you to build courses with user interaction in mind. For example, quizzes and surveys

Cons

• The pricing options were way too much. As a start-up, this was a major concern. The tiers were too far apart in pricing. They jump from $24 to $249 per month.
• Their interface and putting the courses together and building your course website was not always easy. Although they had a lot of options when building your website or course, it was more on the complex side.

Okay, so why did we choose Strikingly over all of the other platforms? Here are 6 Must Have Features that we love about Strikingly!

Responsive Content

This means that our site was optimized to look and function really well on any mobile, desktop or screen your customers are viewing it on. Nowadays, most people are checking out sites on their phone, it has to function well. This was super important to us for this reason alone.

Powerful Ecommerce Management

If you are selling products or services on your website, you need to be able to set up your store fairly easily and be able to offer your customers different payment options. You also want the option to be able to track what is going on in your store fairly easily. We sell a combination of services and products and having a really easy to use order management tool was too sweet to pass up.

Marketing and Sales Tools

When your site is new, you need all the tools that will help you to increase traffic and ultimately sales to your site. Strikingly offers easy to use pop-up tools, email marketing options and newsletter capability. With a click of a button, you can reach out to your customers. We use this tool anytime we have new content or services or products that we want to share with our audience.

Unlimited Bandwidth

If you don't know why this is important, you need to find out. Try going viral and not having unlimited bandwidth. Can you say crash and burn website? We haven't had to test the limits of our unlimited badwith feature yet, but we are glad to know that it is there if we need it.

Modular site add-ons

When your business starts to grow, you will need features that will keep up with your growth. Strikingly offers grow with you add-ons such as live chats, product reviews and pop-ups.

Affordable pricing

This one is hard to find when looking for a website builder. Strikingly has one of the best PRO yearly options. For $16 per month, you can have a robust ecommerce site, paid membership and a free domain. Upgrading to their VIP plan is also affordable. We love saving money, do you?Sure?

The best part about Strikingly is that you can try them for FREE- Click Here to give them a try. If you have any questions, their customer support team is fantastic and will get back to you right away. But, if you want feedback or help from a real user, don't hesitate to reach out to us directly either. If we can help you, we will.

Disclaimer- Just a heads up that if you buy anything from any of the links in this article, we do get a small commission. We know you are smart and will only buy what you need, so happy shopping.

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