Reviews and expert opinion Virb

Virb has a lot of unexploited potential, but for now it’s only good for a basic, no-frills website.

Since its launch 11 years ago, Virb has positioned itself as a legitimate website builder – however, there is a sense that Virb’s development has stalled. The editor feels clunky and outdated. Drag and drop WYSIWYG editors are the standard among modern website builders but this isn’t the case for Virb whose editor, which is viewed in two modes, has a somewhat steep learning curve.

For the most part, integration with third-party widgets (and there are plenty here) is seamless with the option of adding code to create custom widgets to your liking.

While Virb gives you the basic tools to build a simple and responsive website, there is still a lot missing.  While it features access to HTML and CSS and various SEO tools, inbuilt site statistics, integrated stores, and a drag and drop interface are sorely lacking.

Beautiful business-first themes: Presently, there are about 26 templates available in Virb, which can be filtered by various categories, which include personal, portfolio, organization, business, restaurant, and music. The templates are slick and will certainly give your website a stunning, modern look.

Responsive: All Virb themes are responsive and will look great on desktop, tablet, and smartphone. A really neat feature here is the theme history, which lets you swap one theme for another without losing all your content. This is a complete time saver.

Customizable: You can undertake simple customization of themes including changing fonts, colours, and backgrounds. HTML and CSS access means you can change the theme as a whole or only make changes to certain pages to build your dream site. The best part is that you can easily preview your site as you progress with the building process.

Blog:  It’s easy to add a blog page on your Virb site. You can create rich posts by making use of features such as text, quote, audio, link, and photo. While you can save draft posts, unfortunately you cannot schedule posts to be published in the future. Other helpful features include RSS subscriptions for visitors, and Disqus and Facebook integration to power the comments section. The blogging tool generally gets the job done, but serious bloggers might want to look at a stronger platform such as WordPress.

eCommerce: There’s no inbuilt eCommerce function here; instead, what you get is integration with Big Cartel or Etsy. Setting this up requires some backend work, which includes signing into either of the two online stores. This obviously adds to the time needed to set up a web store, which can be inconvenient. On a positive note, Virb offers inbuilt eCommerce settings that let you describe the size of the product, select the number of product photos to be displayed, and link products to the cart.

SEO: Virb claims to have powerful SEO tools for each of their HTML-based templates. Yes, the tools are available but don’t expect anything advanced. You can include everything from site description to keywords. The tools here are basic, but they get the job done.  This site builder lacks in-house site analytics, requiring you to add Google Analytics to view the stats.

All You Need to Build a Website is Under One Roof.

Building your Virb website starts with selecting a theme, choosing page types, adding settings, and then customizing the content. The entire process takes a little longer than it would with other drag and drop builders, but all the tools you need to undertake the process are easily accessible right from the dashboard. What’s more, there is a nifty progress bar that guides you as you build your first website.

Useful Tools Only a Click Away.

As mentioned, the drag and drop functionality is conspicuously missing from this site builder. Even so, most other things are easy to access—including signup, access to the toolbar, features, settings, and site analytics. Virb supports a host of widgets, making it a complete breeze to add music, videos, images, store, events, and social buttons to your pages.

Going by the comprehensive knowledge base, Virb has evidently taken time to provide as much information as possible about how the site builder works. In the comprehensive Help Center, you will find everything from neatly organized and searchable documents to in-depth video tutorials.

Unfortunately, there is no real-time help via phone support or live chat. The only way to contact the support team directly is through email but only between Monday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST.

Virb lacks an updated social media presence, so this would not be the best way to reach them.

Simplified Pricing for Great Features.

Virb offers just one plan. This lack of variety can be a bit disappointing if you are looking for more flexibility with pricing, but it might also simplify things quite a bit. Another benefit is that you are not tied to any long-term contract.

There is a 10-day trial period but this is quite short given the industry standard of 14 days. For a fixed monthly rate, you get access to site customization, inbuilt mobile styling, unlimited pages, unlimited photos/videos/audios, cloud hosting, custom domains, stunning themes, blog, SEO tools, site analytics, store integration, file storage, and support.

No credit card information is needed during the trial period, but once you sign up after the trial period, you will not get a refund if you change your mind.