Some web hosting services offer their own website builders, while others simply rebrand a well-known service like Weebly or Squarespace. The newly rechristened 1&1 Ionos follows the latter strategy, incorporating Editors' Choice site builder Duda as its actual site-building tool. Because of that, this is an unrated preview rather than a full review. There are, however, some differences between MyWebsite and Duda, which we'll detail in the remainder of this article.
Pricing and Starting Up
All MyWebsite plan levels offer unlimited pages, no 1&1 Ionos branding, and an SSL certificate for site security. Note that the first-year pricing for the service's plans is far lower than that for subsequent years in all plans: The Business plan costs $1 per month for the first year and $10 per month thereafter. At this level, you get a choice of industry-specific design templates, stock images, a custom domain name, and 5 email accounts. The Essential plan ($3 per month for the first year, $7 per month after that) is, as its name implies, intended for personal use and offers fewer design templates and no stock images.
The Pro account starts out at $10 per month for the first year, and doubles that to $20 per month thereafter; it gets you 10 email accounts SEO tutorials, and an email marketing tool. The two lower-end plans are cheaper than those offered by Duda, which starts at $14.25 per month. All plans include a "personal consultant" to answer your site building and strategic questions.
Only the Premium level offers web store and personalization based on location and date. Unfortunately, upgrading from any lower plan doesn't port over your existing website assets, so you have to start over. The real problem here is that if you build a site with a lower-level account, you can't add a store to it. Ever. 1&1 Ionos assigns you a long account number, which is less handy than most site builders' system of letting you just use your email address.
Web Design with 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite
Before you actually start designing your site, 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite has you fill out some details in a five-step process that includes site name, web address, industry sector, and customer details. This process, which you interact with via a slick new design, helps later by auto-populating relevant site entries. It also provides details for an automatically generated online business card that MyWebsite publishes for you—a nice touch that's preferable to an uninformative placeholder. New options for the online business card are social media buttons and a legal notice.
Next comes the selection of a design template—something common to just about every DIY site builder. 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite's choices all use responsive design, as do Weebly's and Squarespace's. That means that elements resize and move around to fit smaller displays than the standard, wide desktop browser window. The templates are nearly as slick as those of Squarespace, Strikingly, Weebly, and Wix.
The template previews helpfully show you mobile and desktop views of a site created with them. I also like the search box that lets you find a template suited to your site type, for example, music, café, or hairdresser. A plus: Because of the responsive design, you can change your site template later after adding elements and editing. After I chose a template, the site builder loaded. It took a bit longer than most other site builders I've tested—on the internet a half minute seems like an eternity.
Site-Editing Interface
With the incorporation of Duda, the 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite site-building interface has improved since my last look at the service. It now uses a more standard layout, with the main toolbar on left-side rail, rather than the previous version's right-side rail. For a detailed look at the site builder, see my review of Duda. In the meantime, I'll go through the high points of 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite's capabilities and how they differ from Duda itself.
Like Squarespace and Strikingly, the builder doesn't let you place page elements anywhere you want, instead enforcing a responsive design that works well in mobile browsers. You add a page element by simply dragging it from the Widgets panel, or you can tap a Plus sign (+) that shows up between existing page sections in the template. Widgets include all the usual items: text, images, links, social network buttons, tables, lines, and spacers.
MyWebsite offers a few more widgets than what you get in Duda, a smattering of third-party Web services including SoundCloud, LiveChat, eTrusted Testimonials, PollDaddy polls, Scribd, and TripAdvisor reviews. It also adds newsletter, glossary, and FAQ widgets. Both offer YouTube or Vimeo video elements. But there's no large marketplace of third-party widgets like those offered in Wix and Weebly.
Working With Photos
With 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite, you can upload multiple images at once, align them to taste, save them in custom online folders, and even edit them with a limited version of Adobe's excellent Aviary online photo editor. This beats Weebly's system, which makes you upload the same photo again to use it in another place on your site. With over 17,000 free stock images, 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite offers more stock photography than Duda, and adds a selection of over 20 million premium paid images.
Commerce
Even without adding 1&1 Ionos MyStore or upgrading to a Premium account, you can still add a PayPal Buy or Donate button to your site. That's a nice contrast with WebsiteBuilder.com, which doesn't let you collect any money at all unless you upgrade to a commerce plan. But to add shopping cart and checkout functionality to 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite, you need to upgrade to the Premium level.
If you do have a Premium account, you can build your Web storefront from its button on the Widgets menu. You get a lot more products than with Duda's ecommerce offering: 2,500 versus 100. With Duda, you have to upgrade to a $46-per-month account to allow 2,500 items. For details on building and managing an ecommerce store, read my Duda review.
The Store tab gives you access a full-featured online store, including extras like the ability to offer discount coupons, abandoned cart tools, selling on Facebook, and mobile management. Unlike Duda, 1&1 Ionos includes a newsletter feature. You also get integrated shipping from UPS, FedEx, and others. Tax is calculated automatically based on your location. It's a far more capable selling tool than what many other site builders offer.
Publishing and Site Statistics
1&1 Ionos MyWebsite doesn't publish your site until you specifically hit the Publish (or later, Republish) button. That's something I like, since some competitors make your site live before you might be ready. When you do, a dialog box shows a link to your live site, but no social sharing buttons—not really a big deal, but a minor inconvenience.
After you connect your MyWebsite site to a 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite domain, SiteAnalytics can show you the number of visitors as well as referring pages, most-frequently visited pages, exit pages, and technical info such as user operating system and browser. You can also have a synopsis automatically emailed to you. Duda's stats are better organized, however, and accessing them doesn't take you to a separate browser tab is the case with 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite.
The One and Only?
If you're in the market for a DIY website building solution, 1&1 Ionos MyWebsite can get the job done, and it even includes perks like an SSL certificate and unlimited site pages. Since it now embeds Duda, a PCMag Editors' Choice along with Wix, it's a simple matter of seeing whether the price plan and extra widgets suit your needs better than what Duda offers, and whether you're willing to give up Duda's free account option.