SimpleSite Review [2024]: Can Simple Still Get the Job Done?

SimpleSite Is a No-Frills Website Builder, but Does It Cover the Essentials?

SimpleSite provides one of the easier website building experiences I’ve had, but that simplicity costs you a lot in terms of what your website can do.

It doesn’t lack anything essential – you can add images and contact forms, sell products, and host a blog – but there wasn’t anything that really wowed me. Every existing feature accomplishes its minimum function, and little else. To compare the best website builders on ease of use, templates, customer service, and value for money, we tried to build the same site on each platform. Check out the results here.

After testing so many website builders, I can tell you that SimpleSite is a great option if you need a smaller website or are a complete newbie to creating websites. If you want anything more complex, you’ll likely be disappointed.

In this review, I’ll show you all the functions and limitations of SimpleSite, so you can decide for yourself if it’s the right platform for your needs or if you’d be better off with an easier and more versatile builder, like Wix.

SimpleSite Templates Look Outdated, But Can They Be Customized to Look Better?

SimpleSite has a pretty limited selection of templates (there are just 36 in total) and to be honest, most of them look a little outdated. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what about them looks so old – maybe it’s the ever-present sidebar with social icons, or the boring and not quite beautiful color combinations – but none of the available templates really wowed me.

I’ve learned through my extensive website builder testing that you can’t judge these tools too harshly by their templates. If you don’t love any of the existing templates, you’re usually able to customize the colors or layout enough to create the site you want. On SimpleSite, however, your customization options are extremely limited. You’re stuck with predetermined color and font combinations based on the template you choose, and you can’t even make simple changes like resizing your images.

These limitations are pretty ridiculous. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to preview the color combinations that come with your template, or to change your template once you’ve started editing your site, so whether you’ll get the colors you want on your homepage is seemingly up to chance. I want chance when I play the lottery, not when I’m building a website.

One thing I do really love is that the color and font options are organized by style (think modern, vibrant, or elegant), and you choose from four combinations that will apply across your site. This is really great for web design newbies who want a consistent aesthetic.

You have a little more freedom to customize your layout. The selection of content blocks is small and you can only place them in certain predetermined areas, but there’s just enough wiggle room to distinguish your site from others using the same template. While updating your colors and fonts and adding custom images will do a lot to make your site stand out, the best way to get away from the cookie-cutter feel is to create your own unique layout by adding text blocks, images, or even slideshows and video.

In short, SimpleSite is a case where you should judge the builder by its templates, because what you see is basically what you’ll get. If you don’t like the template options, you probably won’t be completely satisfied with your final website.

SimpleSite’s Features Leave Much to Be Desired

Most of what makes SimpleSite unique is its simplicity and ease of use. If you’re looking for specialized features for a restaurant site, for instance, or you think you’ll need a  selection of marketing tools for your site, this isn’t the website builder for you – you’ll be better off with a builder like Wix or Weebly. But if you want to quickly create a simple website, such as for a personal blog or an upcoming event, SimpleSite is a good way to get what you need with little hassle.

SimpleSite manages to give you just the essentials of a website builder, and nothing more. For example, you can add blog posts, but there are no options for categorizing, tagging, or otherwise managing them.

That said, as I tested SimpleSite, I felt like it always kept me on my toes – I would be sure I hit its limit and got ready to write it off as a completely ineffective website builder, but then it managed to do just enough to keep me interested.

The list of features below will explain SimpleSite’s limits just as much as its abilities, so you can determine if you’ll be able to use it to accomplish your goals.

Pop-Up Editor for Content Blocks

To add some personality to your cookie-cutter template, SimpleSite offers a list of content elements (think text box, image, or contact form) that you can arrange in any order you’d like. It’s not completely free-form – your content blocks have to stay in a pretty strict vertical alignment – but it provides enough flexibility to create something unique to you.

To modify your content blocks, most elements display a pop-up editor to help you edit text, image alignment, and more, depending on the type of block. For text blocks, this feature shows a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor that looks like Windows Notepad or some other stripped-down word processor. For images, you can find options for alignment and spacing.

I’m torn about how I feel about these pop-up editors. On one hand, they help you focus on the specific task at hand. Your screen is devoted to exactly what you’re working on, so there aren’t a bunch of distractions.

But on the other hand, many of these pop-ups limit your view of making changes in real-time, so you have to open and close the editor a bunch of times to test different background colors or font sizes, which takes up time that you could be using to teach your dog how to fetch you a soda from the fridge.

While I don’t personally love this style of editor, I can definitely see how it would be beneficial for website building newbies.

Built-In Online Store

While SimpleSite’s e-commerce features are as basic as they come, I really appreciate how easy it is to get products uploaded to your site. You simply choose to add a “webshop” page to your site, and are then directed to the product management interface where you enter the product name, description and price. That’s it!

Now, the simplicity of the e-commerce features means that adding and selling products are pretty much all you can do. You do have some control over grouping and arranging products, adding variants like sizes, and setting shipping prices, but these features all feel like just enough to say SimpleSite offers them, rather than providing complete functionality for these needs.

There are a few other notable limits to SimpleSite’s e-commerce features. You can only accept payments through PayPal, and you won’t be able to customize your store page much – there are only three product layout options.

You’re also limited to only five products (variants don’t count) unless you’re on the relatively pricey E-commerce plan. If you’re on the free plan, this is actually pretty nice, because most website builders won’t let you sell any products unless you upgrade to a paid plan. But I find it odd that upgrading to SimpleSite’s mid-range Pro plan, which isn’t exactly cheap, doesn’t increase your store size beyond what’s available for free.

Customizable Contact Forms

Simpler website builders sometimes lack a decent contact form option – it’s typically one default form, if there is one at all – but SimpleSite actually allows for a good amount of customization. You can’t add as many fields as you want, but the freedom to rearrange them and choose which ones are required brings a nice level of flexibility.

Messages are sent by default to the email you used to sign up for your account, which you can change at any time. On a Pro or E-commerce plan, you also have the option to create up to five email addresses with your custom domain name. These can be used as the destination for your contact form, or simply listed on the website so visitors can contact you directly.

Searchable Photo Library from Pixabay

Most website builders have some kind of stock photo library partnership, but SimpleSite keeps it streamlined with a built-in search tool for Pixabay anytime you add an image. (You can also upload your own images from wherever you like.)

You’ll see the exact same image search tool whether you’re adding a header image on your homepage or selecting a few pictures to break up your blog post. I like the consistency and simplicity of this set up, as I’ve seen a lot of website builders that make adding images far more confusing than necessary.

Here, you have two options for images – choosing from Pixabay or uploading your own – so it’s easier to stay on task instead of getting lost in a sea of travel stock photos that make you wonder why you’re writing website builder reviews from your office instead of a beach in the Caribbean.

How Does SimpleSite Live Up to Its Name?

SimpleSite is definitely one of the easiest website builders I’ve ever used, although a lot of that ease is because you don’t have a lot of options for what you can do on your website. The editor interface is intuitive enough, and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t figure out how to do. Here are some specific features that make SimpleSite so easy to use.

Editor Tours as You Need Them

Like most website builders, SimpleSite takes you on a quick tour of the editor interface upon starting to build your website. But these tours don’t disappear after one run-through. At any time, you can access the introductory tutorials or some other help options by clicking the green help symbol on the bottom of the screen. These will walk you through some of the most common tasks or remind you where things are if you need a refresher.

There are also a few places where additional guidance popped up unexpectedly. In one instance, I was trying to get to the product management screen for my online store page. I had no idea where to find it, so I somewhat randomly clicked on my listed product to see what would happen. I was given two actions to choose from, one of which was exactly what I was looking for.

SimpleSite knows website builders have a learning curve, so it makes its guides and tools easily available throughout – this way, even if you don’t update your website for months, you’ll always have help in remembering how it works.

Drag-and-Drop Menu Editor

I spend a lot of time ensuring that my website menus are exactly right because, after all, they constitute the primary way through which your visitors can find what they’re looking for on your site. That’s why I really appreciate how SimpleSite facilitates the easy exploration of numerous menu layout versions.

In this portion of the editor, you drag and drop your pages into the order you want. The changes will appear live on your homepage, so you can immediately change it back if you don’t like it. You can also create subpages by simply dragging a page slightly to right underneath the parent page.

I like that there’s no drop-down or checkboxes you have to use to reorder your pages. It’s really as easy as just dragging them around.

Complementary Fonts Keep Your Design Looking Good

The font selection on SimpleSite leaves a lot to be desired, but one thing I do like is its pairs of complementary fonts. When you choose a pair of fonts, one becomes your header font for titles and section headings, while the second is for body text and the navigation menu.

This approach can be really helpful, especially if you don’t have much design experience. (I remember when I first tried graphic design, I could have really used a cheat sheet like this!) Instead of randomly picking fonts that you like but might not go well together, you can now ensure that your site will have a consistent and cohesive design.

The easy-but-limiting principle applies to the automatically generated color palettes. They’re useful from a design standpoint, but can feel like an unnecessary burden if you are looking for a particular color that isn’t there. It would be better if SimpleSite had more font and color choices or at least gave you the option of creating your own combinations.

SimpleSite’s Support Is Definitely Too Simple

Unfortunately, it seems like SimpleSite put all of its effort into its tutorials instead of building out strong customer service options.

You can only contact customer support via email, and they tell you right off the bat they probably won’t answer you for two business days. In my experience, the longest wait was 36 hours, even over a weekend, so you’ll likely get an answer more quickly than they promise. (Keep in mind that SimpleSite is based in Denmark, so if your business days don’t align with theirs, it may feel like a longer wait.)

Although immediate customer support options were lacking, I did receive clear and direct answers to my questions. Additionally, I appreciated that they consolidated their responses into one email, addressing both of my separate queries, which made it easier for me to ensure that all of my questions were answered.

If you’re looking for more immediate answers, there is a small “support center” consisting of a handful of seemingly random FAQs, most of which are about billing and payments rather than how the editor functions. Overall, it’s one of the worst support centers I’ve seen – I did learn some valuable information, but most questions weren’t things I was wondering and most answers were just one short sentence.

Are SimpleSite’s Prices as Straightforward as Its Editor?

With such a bare-bones editor, you’d expect SimpleSite’s pricing plans to be really clear and not really high, right? Well, that’s only half true: there are only three pricing plans to choose from (Free, Pro, and E-commerce), but the paid plans are far more expensive than I’d expect them to be given the lack of advanced features.

The free plan is very limited, only allowing 15 site pages and 5 online store products. You’ll also have SimpleSite ads on your site, and you get very few design choices. On the Pro plan, you get unlimited pages, images, and more design options, as well as the ability to connect a custom domain, but you’re still limited to just five e-commerce products. To get unlimited products, you need the E-commerce plan, which costs twice as much as the Pro plan – even though more products is the only additional feature you get.

Ultimately, SimpleSite doesn’t really feel worth the cost to me, at least not for most websites. It could be worthwhile for a short-term project where the need for simplicity outweighs the desire for customization, but for a well-functioning and scalable business site, you can get more features for less money elsewhere. Wix is a great all-around website builder, while Weebly has some excellent but still easy-to-use e-commerce features – and you could easily use either one to create a small, simple website as well.

Cancellations & Refunds

Canceling your subscription can easily be done within your account dashboard, with no need to contact customer support. You will need to contact them directly to request a refund, which can be done within 14 days of being charged for a subscription.