Strikingly scores a poor 2.5 out of 5 in our website features research. There’s nothing to really make the website builder stand out from others within the category, so you shouldn’t base the entirety of your decision on its features.

Nowadays, social media is like oxygen – it seems that people, but especially businesses, need it to survive and thrive.

Strikingly has a social feed section in its builder where you can add and link to your social media accounts. This way, visitors can easily follow your updates.

However, there are certain features that aren’t available on the free plan. For example, you’ll need the Pro plan, or above, to import posts from a Facebook page rather than your personal timeline. With the higher plans, you can also add a live chat feature to your site with Facebook Messenger.

You can choose to connect your website to your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, so your latest posts will show on your site. It’s not the sleekest or most intuitive social feed, but it’s simple and does the job, and Strikingly automatically checks your feed every five minutes for new posts.

Like most website builders, Strikingly has a built-in analytics feature so that you can see how many people have visited your site.

The information includes which countries visitors are viewing the website from, when people have visited your site, and if they’ve come from a mobile or desktop device. You can view these stats over different time frames as well: last 24 hours, last seven days, last 30 days, and last 90 days.

This default analytics feature is the only one available on Strikingly, but it gives a clear, basic overview of your website’s traffic. That being said, if you want a comprehensive analysis of your site, Strikingly suggests using Google Analytics, and even provides a guide on how to install this in its help center.

If you’re serious about getting as many people to your site as possible, then you might need to dip your toe into the waters of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We promise it’s not as scary as it sounds!

Basically, there are certain things you can do to tell Google and other search engines what your site is about, and how useful it might be to people. Think of it as putting signposts on your website, pointing visitors in the right direction.

If your site is a blog about cooking, for example, adding in the right signposts tells Google to show your site to someone searching for baking tips, or a new recipe. SEO also helps people who are looking for cooking blogs know that your website might be one they’re interested in.

This is a whole new world for most people but, don’t worry, Strikingly keeps it pretty simple, giving you an SEO checklist to follow.

In terms of marketing, Strikingly has less to offer than other website builders. So far, the only email marketing tool available is for Pro users – you’ll need to embed an external system called MailChimp into your site.

You can add various forms and contact pages to your site for you to keep in touch with your visitors, all of which are available with Strikingly’s free plan. They’re quite basic features, so whether you choose Strikingly or not depends on how important marketing is to your site.

You can buy a domain on any of Strikingly’s plans – even the free plan! This means you can secure your domain name first, and then upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready. Once you’ve signed up for the Limited or Pro plan, then you’ll be able to connect your domain to your website.

Even better, you can register your domain for up to 10 years – so, whether you want to lock it down long-term, or renew more regularly, Strikingly has you covered.

Strikingly offers a wide range of Top Level Domains (TLDs). These are domains ending in extensions such as .boutique or .shop, and give you a unique website address to really stand out from the crowd.

These TLDs can cost more. Usually, you’ll pay $24.95 per year for normal domains like .com, .net, or .org.

Strikingly automatically connects the domain to your site, and domain privacy is included when you register as well. There are helpful guides in the knowledge base which tell you how to register and connect domains.

If you already have a domain, you can transfer it to Strikingly from another registrar. This makes it easy for you to manage your websites and domains from one place.

Strikingly autosaves any changes for you when you’re editing your site, which is really useful!

Unfortunately, there are no backups, so it might be worth making a copy of your website, just in case. You can do this by going to your dashboard, clicking the “More Options” menu, and selecting “Clone”.

This automatically creates an unpublished copy of your website for you to store. It doesn’t sync when you make new changes though, so it’s worth making a new copy every now and then to keep it up to date.