Strikingly review: Pros and cons in 2024

Best for creating quick and simple websites

Strikingly

Blueprint Rating

Free plan available

Yes

Starting price for paid plans

$12 per month

Integrated e-commerce features

Yes

Pros

• Easy to use drag-and-drop editor.
• Reasonably priced compared to many competitors.
• Mobile app allows for remote editing and website management.

Cons

• More limited customization options than with some other builders.
• Unlimited storage not included with any plans.
• Only able to sell a limited number of products with lower-tier plans.

If you’re looking for a website builder for your small business, you may be considering Strikingly. In addition to its wide array of templates and customization options, Strikingly also offers e-commerce features, which will enable you to sell products or services to your customers through your site. 

Content manager at QuickIZO, Karan Tiwari, shared, “If simplicity and speed are your jam, then Strikingly might just be the perfect recipe for success.” However, there are both pros and cons to weigh before deciding whether Strikingly is the best fit for your needs.

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Strikingly overview

Strikingly is a website builder designed with simplicity in mind. It offers a wide assortment of template options along with a drag-and-drop builder, making it possible to create a website with no prior design or coding experience.

Small businesses looking to sell their products or services online can add the Strikingly Simple Store to the relevant pages. With the e-commerce features offered, customers can apply coupons to their order, you can set up different shipping options and you can accept various forms of payments, all of which can help you scale your business.

A few of the other features that Strikingly offers include Simple Blog posts for creating your own blog, website analytics, writing contract forms and sharing your social media feeds on the website. With Strikingly, users can leverage their existing domain name (with some plan levels) or register for a new domain. There is a free plan with more limited features. Paid plans range between $12 and $59 per month.

Strikingly pros and cons

Before deciding whether Strikingly is the best website builder for your company, take a few minutes to compare the pros and cons of the platform.

Pros

One of the biggest benefits of Strikingly is that it is simple to use. Tiwari explained, “The ease of use is unmatched – even your tech-challenged Grandma could whip up a professional-looking site in minutes.” 

Strikingly features an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, which allows users to customize the look of each page without any coding or design experience. Simply click on the text or images on the page to make changes or to adjust their position. Tiwari also noted that “the templates are sleek and modern, making [Strikingly] perfect for those who want to project an air of sophistication without breaking a sweat.”

Strikingly offers a range of plans to fit different budgets. There is a free plan available that allows you to build unlimited free sites and sell up to one product. 

If you’re looking for more features, you’ll likely want to choose a paid plan. Fortunately, those start at just $12 per month, with the most expensive option costing $59 per month. Many of Strikingly’s competitors are more expensive. For example, Shopify’s paid plans start at $39 per month and can cost up to $399 per month. The top-tier plans offered by Duda and Wix cost $149 and $159, respectively.

Strikingly also offers a mobile app that is available for both iOS and Android operating systems. With the mobile app, you can edit and publish web pages from your phone. The app also allows you to view website analytics to see how your site is performing, view and respond to messages from customers, track order status and view new orders.

Cons

Strikingly is not without some drawbacks, which may impact whether it is the best platform for designing your business’s website(s). While the drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to design a website, Tiwari explained, “Customization options are somewhat limited, leaving creative souls yearning for more freedom to express their unique flair.” 

Another potential downside of Strikingly is that unlimited storage is not included with any of the plans. Even the VIP tier is capped at 100 GB of storage per site, with the lower tiers offering even less. Depending on your storage needs, this may or may not be an important factor to consider.

Those looking to open an online store should also note that there is a limit to the number of products you will be able to sell with most of Strikingly’s plans. Only the VIP tier allows users to sell as many products as they’d like. The next tier down, the Pro option, only allows users to sell up to 300 products, and the free and Limited plans only allow for up to one product.

Strikingly pricing and value

	FREE	LIMITED	PRO	VIP
Cost	$0 per month	$12 per month	$20 per month	$59 per month
Key features	Unlimited free websites. 5 GB bandwidth (monthly). 500 MB storage (per site). 1 product per site. 24/7 support.	2 limited sites and unlimited free sites. 50 GB bandwidth. 1 GB storage (per site). 5% transaction fee.	3 pro sites. Unlimited bandwidth. 20 GB storage (per site). Up to 300 products. 2% transaction fee. Password protection. Site memberships. Pop-ups. Site search. Store product reviews.	5 VIP sites. 100 GB storage (per site). Unlimited products. Live chat widget. Ability to send newsletters. Multiple languages and auto translation.

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There are four different plan options that Strikingly customers can choose from: Free, Limited, Pro and VIP. 

The free plan is the most basic. Users can make an unlimited number of free sites (with up to five pages per site) but will only have 5 GB of bandwidth each month and 500 MB of storage per site. This plan also comes with a Strikingly.com domain (users cannot connect their custom domain name). Users looking for e-commerce features will only be able to list one product for sale on their site.

The Limited tier costs $12.00 per month with monthly billing. Additional discounts are available if you pre-pay for two, three or five years (pay just $6 per month when you choose a five-year subscription). The Limited plan offers more features than the free tier, including 1 GB of storage per site and 50 GB of bandwidth. 

With the Limited plan, subscribers can connect their custom domain and will receive free SSL security for that domain. This plan enables users to make up to two limited sites and an unlimited number of free sites. Individuals and small businesses are still only able to list one product for sale and will pay 5% transaction fees.

The Pro plan continues to build on what is offered by the Limited tier. It costs $20.00 per month with monthly billing, $16.00 per month with annual billing and only $11.20 per month when you prepay for a five-year subscription. With this tier, users are allowed to create up to three Pro sites with up to 100 pages per site. They receive unlimited bandwidth and 20 GB of storage per site. 

The Pro plan increases the number of products users can list up to 300, and the transaction fees drop to just 2%. Some of the other key features of the Pro plan include the ability to offer site memberships and paid subscription members, integrated product review pop-ups, a site search bar, password protection and custom forms.

The highest tier is the VIP plan. With monthly billing, this option costs $59.00, but the price can drop as low as $34.40 per month with a five-year subscription. It continues to expand on the features included with the Pro plan, offering unlimited bandwidth, 100 GB of storage per site, 0% transaction fees, membership tier options, support for multiple languages and translation and a live chat widget. 

With the VIP plan, users can also sell an unlimited number of products on their site, share newsletters with customers and manage up to 2,000 active contacts. Strikingly offers live phone support during business hours and priority customer service to VIP subscribers.

Website editor features

Strikingly’s editor is designed to allow individuals with little to no design or coding experience to create attractive websites with ease. Lead financial consultant at Kredite Schweiz, Michael Schmied, shared that his company tried Strikingly before settling on the platform it currently uses. 

“What I appreciated about Strikingly was its simplicity. It’s very user-friendly, making it a great choice for beginners,” Schmied shared. All you need to do to make changes is to click on the text or images to replace, resize or reposition them. 

For many users, this format may be ideal. However, those who want complete control over every aspect of their website may find the editor to be insufficient to help them achieve their vision. 

Schmied explained, “I found that this simplicity came with limitations, particularly when it came to customization. I felt somewhat restricted in how I could design my site, which ultimately led me to look for other options.” Ultimately, Schmied still recommended Strikingly to “anyone looking for a straightforward, no-frills website builder.”

Blogging features

Strikingly may be a good fit for those looking to create a blog. In fact, we’ve named Strikingly as one of the best blogging platforms available today. After choosing a name for your blog, use Strikingly’s website editor to customize one of the templates to match the theme and message you want to share with readers. Adding the Simple Blog section to the website converts the site into a blog, allowing you to create individual pages for each post you write.

With Strikingly, you can embed images, videos and call-to-action buttons within each post. The drag-and-drop editor also makes it possible to easily rearrange text and images within a post. Changes made within a post are automatically saved to prevent you from losing your work. Once you’re happy with the way a particular post looks, publish it to share with your audience.

E-commerce features

The Simple Store feature offered by Strikingly makes it possible to sell goods or services through your website. As the name implies, Simple Store is designed to get an e-commerce website up and running quickly and easily. Personalize the look and feel of each page using Strikingly’s templates and drag-and-drop editor. 

Strikingly offers PayPal and Stripe integrations to offer flexible payment options to your customers. Once you’ve designed your store, added products and enabled PayPal or Stripe, then you can publish your page and start selling right away. 

With Strikingly’s e-commerce features, you can offer coupons, set shipping rates and allow your customers to create membership logins. The Pro and VIP plans also allow users to set up paid subscriptions, post product reviews on their pages and enable pop-ups to direct customers to specific items or specials. 

One downside of Strikingly’s e-commerce features is that many of the plans place a limit on the number of products you can sell. The Free and Limited plans only enable you to sell one product, for example. With the Pro plan, you can sell up to 300 products, and there is no limit on the number of products you can sell with the VIP plan.

Strikingly vs. top competitors

	FREE PLAN AVAILABLE	LOWEST PAID PLAN	E-COMMERCE FUNCTIONALITY	MAX STORAGE AMOUNT	SERVICE AND SUPPORT
Strikingly	Yes	$12 per month	Yes	100 GB	24/7 email and live chat support, limited phone support for VIP plan
WordPress	Yes	$9 per month	Yes	50 GB	Live chat support for some plans (hours vary by plan)
Wix	No	$16 per month	Yes	Unlimited	24/7 phone support, limited live chat hours

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Strikingly vs WordPress

Strikingly and WordPress are two popular website builders. While there are some similarities between the two platforms, there are also some key differences to consider. 

Both WordPress and Strikingly offer free plans with a comparably priced starter plan ($12 per month for Strikingly and $9 per month for WordPress). The upper tier plans are also similarly priced, with Strikingly’s costing $59 per month and WordPress’ costing $70 per month. 

One notable difference between the two companies is that WordPress offers an Enterprise plan, suitable for large companies and organizations. For this reason, WordPress may be the best option for well-established companies with more intense web design needs, while Strikingly may be the right choice for startups and small businesses.

Another key difference between the two platforms comes down to the website editor. Strikingly is known for its simplicity. Between the various themes, the block editor and the ability to drag and drop text and images, novices can easily craft a beautiful and functional website without any prior experience. 

WordPress is also designed to be easy to use. However, because users can customize their sites even more than with Strikingly, it comes with a bit more of a learning curve. You need to understand the dashboard options, learn how to add and remove blocks within each post and add plugins to get all the features you want. 

However, many WordPress plans offer the option to add code to your website to help you achieve a specific vision, which may not be possible with Stirkingly’s more limited editor. If you have coding experience, the platform’s additional customization capabilities may be a benefit to you.

Strikingly vs Wix

Wix is another one of Strikingly’s top competitors. Again, both platforms have a lot of similarities, including the relative ease of building a website without prior coding or design experience. However, for those who are looking for the simplest builder, Strikingly may be a better choice. The drag-and-drop editor makes it simple to move text and images around the page and edit content. 

Wix can be a bit more complex to use. Each template is fully customizable, and you aren’t limited in how you’re able to reposition text or images. While this ability may be a downside for design novices, it could be a positive for those who want to bring a specific vision fully to life.

The two platforms also differ when it comes to pricing. Overall, Strikingly is the more affordable option. It offers a free plan, and the most expensive plan option only costs $59 per month. On the other hand, Wix does not have a free plan. Its most expensive plan costs $159 per month, a full $100 more than Strikingly’s VIP tier.

Featured website builder offers

Wix

Learn More

Via Wix’s website

Monthly fee

$17

Free domain

For one year

Drag-and-drop builder

Yes

Web.com

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Via Web.com’s website

Monthly fee

$19.99

Free domain

Only when paying annually

Drag-and-drop builder

Yes

Squarespace

Learn More

Via Squarespace’s website

Monthly fee

$23

Free domain

For one year

Drag-and-drop builder

Yes

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)