Standing out in today's online world is a tall task, but luckily you don't have to be a website developer to make it happen. The only problem is that many website builders combine watered down features with rehashed designs so that you're never left with a chance to make your company look good online.
That's why the IMCreator website builder makes me stop and think. They claim that it's not your average drag and drop designer, so that's enough for me to dive in and figure out why it's so unique.
IMCreator delivers what it calls “Stripes,” but from the looks of it these are just creative names for templates.
However, the pricing is amazing for IMCreator, and the features seem to be the same, if not better, than options like Weebly and WIX.
So, let's take a gander at what IMCreator has to offer, and understand exactly what types of businesses IMCreator is best suited for.
How Many Sites Have Been Made With This Website Builder?
IMCreator Features
The IMCreator feature-set impressed me quite a bit, considering you'll see that the pricing below is far better than competitors.
To start, the drag and drop editor uses some unique technology to make your movements and designs more dynamic, while also allowing everything to look better together. Each design is full responsive, and you get unlimited hosting, a domain and bandwidth, all for free.
I wouldn't get too excited when it comes to areas like marketing, social media or analytics, but in general, this lets you generate a beautiful website with the bare bones features. Heck, they even have ecommerce included.
IMCreator Ease of Use
This is big selling point for IMCreator, so let's see how it holds up. Getting into the editor takes about five seconds since you don't even have to create an account with your own email accounts. That's right. I haven't ever seen this before, but you can just go with a guest account to develop a site without any strings attached.
A video shows up in the dashboard to walk you through it, helping you learn about the system before toying with it.
I wouldn't say the editor is exactly drag and drop, but it lets you click around and modify anything on the template you chose. They seem to call the templates Stripes because they are mainly one page layouts with beautiful formatting. Basically, you are stuck with the widgets and features built into the theme, but it's not that bad because the themes are stunning.
IMCreator Pricing
As we talked about above, the pricing is one of the main draws with IMCreator. You can choose between three solutions, and there's no need to punch in your credit card information when getting started with the free account. My favorite part is that they named the plans after who they think should be using them.
- Students, artists and non-profits – Pay $0 for unlimited hosting and to connect your own domain. You get access to all the themes and ecommerce sites, and your site is completely ad free. This is a killer deal, since places like Weebly force you to have ads and a weird subdomain with the free plan.
- Commercial Use – Pay $7.95 per month for everything you get with the free theme, except from the looks of it, IMCreator only gives out the free plan to students, artists and non-profits. So, you probably can't hide it from them. Might as well pay the small amount.
- Resellers, White Label and Pros – Pay $250 annually if you're planning on selling sites to your own clients. You get unlimited sites for your clients, white label branding, a reseller control panel, ecommerce and an ad free interface. As you can see, it's pretty easy to decide if this is the option for you.
Overall, you can't beat this pricing model, because anyone can try it for free without being held down by goofy subdomains and ads.
IMCreator Templates and Design
Each template is a one page layout, and they provide some built-in features like social media buttons, sliders, headers and widgets. Overall, these are some of the more modern themes I've seen, and it's worth noting that one page themes seem to be the way of the future (They are perfect for mobile devices).
Each theme looks great on tablets and phones, and you can choose from hundreds of options. Some of the categories include photography, music, portfolio, hotel, wedding and church.
IMCreator Ecommerce
The stores offer unlimited products, but you're not going to find the advanced customer retention and marketing tools you'd see in builders like WooCommerce and Shopify. Therefore, we recommend this for the average small business that would like to list a few products online. We also like it for a musician or author who is trying to sell a few books or singles.
IMCreator SEO and Marketing
SEO is built into the system, so all of your meta tags and titles are generated automatically. The search engines are notified when a change is made to your website, but marketing is limited to blogging and social media. That's not to say that you can't integrate with MailChimp and other tools, but the built-in solutions are lacking.
IMCreator Customer Support
The IMCreator support page is filled with a decent amount of documentation. A full manual is provided if you'd like to read through that. In my opinion, most folks don't like going through a complete manual, so that's somewhat useless. However, you can go to the knowledge base to search for problems that have occurred with the website builder in the past. In addition, 24/7 support is included with an email form. So, if you have a situation with your website, shoot the company an email and they'll get back to you.
The downsides with IMCreator support? You don't have access to live chat or phone support. Maybe this will come along eventually, but it's not available right now. On a side note, the company has social media pages and how-to tutorials as well.
Conclusion
Are you interested in a more unique take on the whole web designer world? You might want to give IMCreator a try. I like this best for creatives or individuals running small businesses. Bloggers may not like that marketing is lacking, but a simple portfolio website can go a long way for a small band or photographer. If you'd rather a larger store, Shopify is your go to option. In terms of a more complex builder for advanced developers, WordPress.org is a suitable option.
Let us know in the comments section if you've tried out IMCreator before.
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