Anyone built their own website with Wix/Godaddy/Squarespace

[MadameGazelle]

Hi - I'm looking for recommendations from people who have used an online company to
build their own website. Ideally one with an online shop. TIA

I'm quite often asked to build websites for people to replace the sites they've built themselves with Wix, Godaddy etc, because they're tearing their hair out with frustration.

If you want an online shop I'd go with Shopify.

I used Wix (although no online shop) and it was terrible. Constant issues, that when I reported to them they said they were aware of and were going to try to resolve them, but they didn't seem in any hurry. Of particular issue was the mobile site. The design/layout on desktop did not match mobile site and lots of things were lost. I had many reports that my site was not available in mobile settings, which Wix apparently knew but didn't bother trying to fix. It was very bad for speed too. I paid for the most premium service too but got little in return.

I currently use Wix which is a lot better than my old Wordpress one with GoDaddy. GD was frequently down or crashing, I discovered my site had been offline for a few days without any good reason, took ages to sort, and generally customer service was terrible. Compared to that Wix has been great, you email an issue and they quickly get back to you, although it has some niggles which bug me about certain features. My mobile site has always matched my main site unlike pp so maybe it depends which design you pick? It's much easier to edit the mobile site in Wix than GD.

To be fair I cancelled my Wix a year ago, so they might have significantly improved since!

Thanks for your comments. Doesn't seem like these build your own sites are the best!

I used 1and1 Ionos for a while, I didn’t have any problems but was using the basic package as opposed to the one with the online shop facilities so can’t speak for that part. It was fairly easy to use and the website looked ok, I’m sure it wasn’t as good as someone designing it for me but I don’t have the £60-£80 a month for that quite yet!

I find Wix pretty usable - the shop plugin is decent.

I used Wordpress. Pretty happy with it but it's fairly expensive (about AU$400 a year).

Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org?

I haven't built a shop in Wordpress.com but it is a pretty good way to get started with a website.

Wordpress.org is a whole other kettle of fish. I often build shops in it, but I am steering people away from it and towards Shopify instead, mainly because the back end for processing orders is so much easier to use.