Reviews and expert opinion Zyro

Can It Compete with the Big Names in Site Building?

Zyro has been around a little while, but until recently, it’s struggled to compete with bigger names like Wix and Squarespace. That’s changing, bit by bit, as new features are developed and old ones are revamped.

Here at Website Planet, we like to stay on top of those developments to make sure you always know which site builders are the best. And on a personal note, I do love me some new features.

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Zyro offers cheap pricing and solid features. The platform is available in English, German, French, Malay, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, and Spanish.

But are those new features good enough to push Zyro up in the rankings? Is this the service where you’ll want to spend your time and money building a business? I dove in and spent some time creating a test website with Zyro, and I can safely say that It’s got potential, and it’s a lot better than it used to be. It’ll work for some – let’s see if it’s right for you.

There Are Plenty of Them, and They’re Pretty

Zyro has over 100 templates, and from what I’ve seen, they’re good. They’re grouped into categories like eCommerce, the generic-sounding “services,” photography, portfolios, resumes, and even landing pages.

They load quickly, they’re mobile compatible, and they look good. They trend more towards minimalism, but that’s par for the course for most site builders. When you need to build dozens (or even hundreds) of website templates that all work with one system, it’s best to go simple.

What I like best is that because of how the Zyro editor was designed, these templates do not lock you into any specific content layout. What you see in the preview is more of a suggestion than a hard and fast rule.

It’s All About Custom Design and Lots of Marketing

Compared to a lot of the competition, Zyro is rather minimalist in terms of features. That’s not a bad thing, as such. It’s more that Zyro focuses on a simple set of features that’s designed to get you up and running with an online business quickly and simply.

They’re good features. There just aren’t too many of them.

That said, every plan comes with SSL, SEO tools, and full access to all of Zyro’s AI tools (more on that in the Ease of Use section), plus the ability to make a blog.

From the Website plan on up, you can get a free domain for the first year (if you pay for the whole year), as well as unlimited bandwidth and file storage.

The Drag-and-Drop Editor

The actual site builder is quite flexible, with several pre-built page elements to choose from. You can just fill in your pre-generated site with content, of course, but there’s also a lot you can do from scratch with text, images, videos, maps, and forms.

You can drag and drop any element almost anywhere on the page, and it’ll snap to a grid, like so:

And then, of course, you can change the site’s overall color scheme, fonts (this is new!), and more any time you like.

While this system is in no way as advanced as what you’d get from Wix, or as polished as what you’d get from Squarespace, it combines plenty of design freedom with sensible defaults. Basically, there’s lots of potential for easily creating good-looking custom designs.

One problem I ran into was that I had trouble with making columns of images with text below them. Oh, they looked fine on the desktop view, but on mobile, everything looked out of order. This image shows the desktop view on the left and the mobile view on the right:

Well, turns out this is an easy fix. In the editor, you can edit the mobile view separately from the desktop view. Just hit the little “phone” button (as seen in the image below), and you can rearrange your site elements to your heart’s content.

I had to ask Zyro’s support team for help to figure this out, though.

In the end, my test website looked like this:

eCommerce Is Here, Of Course

Want to start an online store? Well, from the eCommerce plan on up, you can do this just by picking one of the templates in that category. In minutes, you’ll have a store where you can manage inventory, customer service, order tracking, and even marketing campaigns from one dashboard.

There are dozens of payment and shipping options to choose from for international e-commerce, and you can sell your products on Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram as well.

There’s even a customer relationship management (CRM) tool included to help you keep track of all your customers. Everything you need to start a moderately sized online business, really. Oh, and you can manage your store via mobile, so you can sell stuff on the go.

The eCommerce Plus plan also allows for multi-language stores, making it ideal for international retail.

There Are Strong SEO & Marketing Features

Like any good site builder, Zyro wants your site to succeed so you’ll keep paying money for it. Is that too cynical? Whatever – it’s mutually beneficial, so I don’t hold it against the company, or any other site builder for that matter.

Zyro’s particular SEO and marketing suite includes heat maps, Facebook Pixel integration, Facebook Messenger integration (for free live chat), Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager.

Basically, if you really want to track your users (though I don’t recommend doing too much of that), then Zyro has you covered.

Zyro Also Has Blogging Tools

Zyro’s blogging system is simple but reasonably effective. You get the usual features like the ability to set publishing dates, define post categories, have multiple authors, and so on.

You also get a lot of the same design and formatting tools for editing posts as you do with the overall site editor. No, you can’t just drag and drop things anywhere on the page, but you do get a smooth visual editing experience, which shows you exactly how the post is going to look before you publish it.

This is quickly becoming the standard for lots of blogging platforms, and it’s good to see it here, too.

It’s Different from Other Site Builders, but Still Easy to Use

Zyro’s way of doing things is not overly complicated, but it’s just a little bit different from other site builders. Ironically, this means that having experience with other builders can slow you down a little as you adjust to the new system.

I got my test site built in about 30 minutes, and obviously that’s not bad. Just keep in mind that I can usually do it in 10-15 minutes, because I have a process that works for most site builders already.

Still, once you learn a couple of tricks, there’s little to hold you back from creating a customized (if somewhat basic) site design. Zyro is a tool for beginners, and absolute beginners shouldn’t need more than an hour to get comfortable. If that.

Besides being generally simple, Zyro has a bunch of extra features to streamline the process for you:

There’s a Website Importer

This tool won’t design a whole site for you based on an existing site – it’s not made for that. What it will do is import all your content from another site, then let you arrange it and lay it out on your own.

Moving content can often be one of the most tedious parts of switching between services, so that’s a real bonus. And if you want to switch more than a few sites over, it’s a godsend.

There Are Quite a Few AI-based Business Tools

Zyro has a real do-it-for-you attitude, if I’m honest. The company has developed a number of tools that use basic AI (also known as machine learning) to do half your work for you.

What do I mean by “half your work?” Well, first there’s an AI business name generator (for when you want to start a business, but just don’t know what to call it). Then there’s the AI slogan generator, just because. Want to run a blog, but aren’t sure what to write about? There’s always the AI Blog title generator.

But let’s say you really get stuck. You have a business, maybe some pictures, but you’re no marketer. What are you going to say? Well, the AI writer will literally generate pages of content for you, based on details you provide (like what type of content you need and the industry you’re in). The content is pre-designed for SEO, and Zyro’s marketing team swears your text will be “unique”.

Well, that might be a stretch, but at least it gives you some ideas, right?

The Knowledge Base Can Help, but Won’t Always

Want to learn more about Zyro before you really get started? Got stuck while building your site? Well, Holy Documentation, Batman! Zyro’s got a knowledge base to help you out.

The knowledge base doesn’t have everything, though. Remember that problem I had earlier with the columns and the mobile view? Yeah, I couldn’t find information about that anywhere – I had to ask support for help. Still, the knowledge base covers most of your basic questions.

It’s Supposed to Be 24/7 Service, but…

Zyro’s offices are in Lithuania, so there are times when service is technically available, but slower than usual. Still, even then you shouldn’t have to wait very long for support. A couple of hours at most.

Mind you, a couple of hours can be a lot when your business is on the line, so I’d recommend having all your problems earlier in the day if you’re in North America. Or better yet, try to have them during Lithuanian business hours.

Was that… too mean? I watch so much sarcastic British TV, I can’t tell anymore. Anyway, when I did get service, it was polite and mostly helpful.

Email (Which Is Also the Live Chat?)

Okay, I sent an email support request via the email form on Zyro’s website. And then the live chat popped up with the question I’d just sent in. Well, I got my response via both channels, so it worked, I guess.

Supposedly, the ETA for email responses is 1-2 days, which is a huge amount of time. Fortunately, I got my response in 2 hours, which is certainly better. Under-promise and over-deliver, I always say.

Anyway, I asked if the content generated by the AI writer was copyrighted, and if I could still use it if I moved my site elsewhere. Turns out you can:

Live Chat

After that, I just bypassed the email form, because what’s the point?

Next up, I asked, “Which TLDs are supported with the free domain that comes with yearly plans? I mean, .com and .org, sure, but what about .works, .blog, and the like? Are there any limits on that sort of thing?”

Although I got a response in minutes, the tech did NOT directly answer my question. All I got was a, “Go look at our domains page. If you can find it, you can have it.” That’s not particularly helpful, and I was unsatisfied with this response.

Even so, I did what he said. Fun fact: .link domains are not available at Zyro.

Lastly, I asked about the issue I was having with laying out columns of content on the page. This time, the tech was not only prompt but had exactly the answer I needed. So I was quite happy this time around.

Zyro’s initial pricing is quite cheap, all things considered. You can pay monthly or yearly, and all yearly plans come with a significant discount, as well as a free domain for the first year. Of course, after your first payment period, the price goes up quite a bit.

These higher prices are still fair, though, especially if you manage to make some money off your site (which is sort of assumed to be the idea when you make a site on Zyro). Each plan includes a free domain name for one year and four months of free hosting — even if you opt for the entry-level Website plan.

Plus, paying upfront for a longer amount of time comes with significant discounts.

Cancellations & Refunds

There’s a dead simple 30-day money-back guarantee on all paid plans. Cancel in the first thirty days, get your money back. Done.

This is particularly useful with Zyro – because unlike most other builders, Zyro doesn’t offer a free trial or plan.