Reviews and expert opinion WebWave

Feature-Packed Website Builder with an Excellent Free Plan

Today, building your own website is basically easier than opening a bank account. Long gone are the days of needing a degree in computer science; with numerous website builders available, practically anyone can create their own professional, well-designed, seamless website. The only question is, which website builder should you use? Over 180,000 people have chosen WebWave to build their website since its launch in 2013, so I figured this would be a good one to put to the test.

Some of the things I love about this builder are the way you can remove all of WebWave’s branding on your finished site, its flexible templates, and the free Unsplash integration. WebWave also frequently updates the website builder to give you access to the best possible features, including support for websites in over 43 languages.

If you’re on a tight budget, you can easily build your website with WebWave for free, so there’s no risk. However, the free plan does have limitations. If you want a website with your own domain name (and without advertisements or WebWave branding), you’ll need to choose the (reasonably priced) Premium Plan. It’s a great option if you have a small business and you’re looking to create your first website.

Thousands of people have chosen WebWave, but is it the right solution for your needs? Read on to find out!

60+ Free and Responsive Templates That Are Completely Customizable

While some website builders offer a small selection of free templates and offer (nicer) premium templates for purchase, all of WebWave’s 60+ templates are free. Plus, they’re all mobile responsive. The downside is, there’s no way of switching your template once you’ve chosen it.

Template Types

WebWave offers templates to meet a wide range of needs. You can choose a blank template or pick one of the themed templates. It covers a variety of industries, such as:

• Business (e.g., construction companies, legal practices, architects, etc.)
• Health and Beauty (e.g., fashion, beautician, doctors, etc.)
• Hobbies and Interests (e.g., football team, band, etc.)
• Education (e.g., school, kindergarten, etc.)

Template Customization

All of WebWave’s templates are completely customizable, giving you the flexibility to change them to meet your specific needs. You can rearrange elements on pages, change colors and fonts, and set layout elements to appear on every page.

Template Organization

One thing I did find disappointing with WebWave is that templates aren’t arranged into categories, and there’s no way of searching by keyword. You have to keep clicking Show More and scrolling down until you find the template that you’re looking for.

A Great Set of (Basic) Tools for Building Your Website

WebWave’s features aren’t going to blow your mind and are actually pretty standard for a website builder. The elements you can add in its drag-and-drop editor, for example, are quite basic, such as text, images, slideshows, icons, forms, online stores, and videos.

It lacks some of the bells and whistles of some of the more well-known website builders, but it does have some stand-out features.

Animations

It’s possible to add animations to virtually any element on your website, though you probably shouldn’t overuse this feature as it may impact on page loading speeds. You can choose animation effects including fly in/out, fade in/out, reveal/hide, fold in/out, and expand in/out.

Integrations

If you want to add third-party features to your website, like Facebook comments, a Typeform survey, a LiveChat popup, or a Shopify store, then WebWave makes this relatively simple. You just need to generate an embed code with your third-party app and add it as an HTML element on your website.

Interactions

The interactions feature in WebWave gives you the option to show and hide elements as your visitors browse your website. For example, you could choose to have an element show up as a popup window only after someone presses a button on your website. Or, you could display a customer review when your visitors scroll to a certain point on your website.

Drag-and-Drop Editor Comes With Quirks and Complexities

WebWave isn’t the easiest to use, despite its drag-and-drop interface. Nor is it the most complicated, however. I probably wouldn’t recommend WebWave if you’re a complete beginner, as it can take some figuring out when you first get started, but some elements of its interface aim to make it more user-friendly.

Settings Panel

The settings panel is where you can customize your website elements (style, color, fonts, animations, etc.,) and webpage settings (thumbnails, SEO metadata, translations, and publication settings). The settings panel is neatly organized with expandable menus and easy-to-navigate tabs.

Layers Panel

The first thing I noticed about WebWave was how similar its interface is to Photoshop; it even has a Photoshop-style layers panel. In this panel, you can duplicate, move, and delete layers, as well as use layers with the interactions feature. Layers can also be helpful when editing your website, as you can hide elements to compare how your website looks with and without specific colors or other additions.

Tooltips and Guide

If you find yourself confused when using WebWave’s drag-and-drop editor, you’ll appreciate the guided tour feature that takes you through all the essential aspects of the website builder. There’s also tooltips, which are accessed when you hover over or click on the ‘?’ symbol in the settings panel sections, which explain the tools and how to use them.

Building a website with WebWave is relatively easy if you don’t need to do much customization and just want to add your content to the pre-designed templates. It’s also easy to add basic elements like text and slideshows and drag them to where you want them on the page.

Adding a new page is a simple matter of clicking Create New Page on the website tab in the settings panel. Adding images is easy, too. The image library is arranged in tabs so you can choose from your existing library of images, search for an image on Unsplash or upload a new image.

If you want to set up an online store on your website, there’s a button for that directly in the toolbar. However, you will have to go to the Snipcart website (the e-commerce provider that powers stores on WebWave) to set up your online store.

If you need help with your website, you can get in touch with WebWave directly via the editor; there’s a “Help” button at the bottom that opens a popup window. Live chat is available during “business hours” (although there are no details of specific times on the website, unfortunately). Out of these hours, you’ll be prompted to enter a message, which will be responded to “within 24 hours.”

I chatted with one of the support agents and found that it took around 25 minutes to get a response. That’s not the worst I’ve experienced but not the best, either.

Alternatively, you can turn to the knowledge base that has lots of helpful articles and guides to building your WebWave website. While you can search for topics on the knowledge base homepage, the search button in the top bar doesn’t seem to work, so you’ll have to go back every time you want to change your search term.

WebWave’s pricing is really simple, which is refreshing for a website builder! Upgrade to the Premium Plan to get access to your own domain name and an ad-free website. You also get an SSL certificate, a .com domain name, priority support, free backups, and an email mailbox. If you build websites for others, you can opt for a bundle;  each website requires its own Premium Plan, effectively. You can pay via credit card (all major credit cards accepted) or online transfer.

The free plan gives you all the features you need to build your website. Unlike some website builders, tools in the editor aren’t separated into free or premium. You can create unlimited pages, use unlimited storage, and use unlimited bandwidth. Also, you have access to free images via the built-in Unsplash collection.

The free plan comes with a webwave.me subdomain but the subdomain is automatically generated, and you can’t change it without upgrading to the premium plan. If you’re using your website for business, a custom domain is an absolute must, since the auto-generated subdomain you get for free is a jumble of letters and numbers that would look particularly unprofessional.