Ucraft is a simple website builder which permits companies customers to create handsome web sites internet shops.
72 trendy and mobile-friendly templates get you off to a fast begin, and these could be shortly custom-made with the WYSIWYG editor. This lets you drag and drop full sections of content material, in addition to particular person gadgets similar to textual content blocks or pictures, so nearly anybody can construct the positioning they want with minimal effort and problem.
A restricted free plan means that you can create a single touchdown web page. This has Ucraft branding and does not embody drag and drop enhancing, however in any other case it is not unhealthy in any respect: there is a first rate set of customization instruments, an website positioning app, you get a free subdomain (you.ucraft.me) or you should use a customized area of your personal, and there is primary help that will help you out.
Upgrading to the Web site plan permits constructing a full web site with limitless pages, multilingual help, and integration with a scattering of in style internet providers (Google Analytics, Zendesk Chat, Disqus, Fb Messenger, extra), whereas additionally dropping the watermark and throwing in a free area. It seems to be to be cheap worth at $6 (£four.50) a month when put next with related merchandise. For instance, the Wix Combo account has extra options and integrations, however restricted bandwidth and storage, and is priced at £6 ($7.90) a month.
The eCommerce plans do not seem like fairly such a great deal, a minimum of initially. The $13 (£10) a month starter plan limits you to 50 merchandise, as an example, and spending $31 (£23.85) on the Professional plan solely lifts this to 1,000. You need to spend a chunky $60 (£46) a month to take away all limits. Spending $29 (£22.31) on the favored Fundamental Shopify will get you limitless merchandise and file storage, premium options like deserted cart restoration, and a website based mostly on among the finest e-commerce engines round.
Look extra intently on the particulars, although, and Ucraft’s enchantment turns into clearer. Even essentially the most primary plan will get you 70+ fee and delivery strategies, multicurrency help, succesful funds and order administration, and there are not any further transaction charges to eat into your income.
Ramping as much as the $60 (£46) a month Limitless plan provides options like low cost coupons, Favorites and Wishlist techniques, extra tax and VAT choices, the flexibility to promote on eBay US, and cellular apps (iOS and Android) to assist handle your web site from anyplace.
Maybe better of all, you possibly can try all the foremost options just by signing up for Ucraft’s free plan. This offers you entry to the complete web site builder for the primary 14 days, earlier than falling again to the touchdown page-only fundamentals.
Occasional glitches with Ucraft’s personal web site left us somewhat involved – the SSL certificates for a few areas of the positioning had expired three days earlier – however errors can occur to anybody, and general Ucraft creates a optimistic first impression.
Getting began
Whereas some internet providers make you soar by way of hoops earlier than you possibly can join – fill in a prolonged internet type, await a ‘validate your e mail’ message, wait once more whereas your account is activated – Ucraft retains its admin hassles so properly hidden that you will barely discover them in any respect.
Click on ‘Get Began’, as an example, and also you’re instantly prompted to decide on your venture sort from Touchdown Web page, Web site, or eCommerce.
We selected the free Touchdown Web page choice and have been offered with a selection of 21 templates. These principally observe the identical type, with a single giant background picture and a small quantity of textual content, and that will not essentially work for each website sort. They’re additionally notably a plainer choice than you may get with the business plans, however there are some interesting designs, and you’ll customise them somewhat, afterward.
Templates could be previewed full-screen to test them out. Select your favourite and the positioning prompts you to choose your most popular Ucraft subdomain.
We made our choice, and at last Ucraft requested us to enroll. The corporate requests minimal particulars, simply your identify and e mail handle, and if that also sounds an excessive amount of like laborious work, you possibly can check in simply with Google+ or Fb.
Account created, we have been redirected to the dashboard, the place Ucraft greeted us with a starter video information which highlighted all the important thing enhancing options in only two minutes. We closed the video pane and have been speedily redirected to the Ucraft editor.
Enhancing
The Ucraft editor interface stands out instantly for its ultra-lightweight, stripped again interface. On-screen litter is saved to a minimal with all of your core enhancing features bundled collectively in a single left-hand sidebar, and the remainder of the display dedicated to a preview of your web site.
This is not fairly as spectacular because it appears, as a result of all Ucraft has actually finished is transfer some buttons (Media library, Weblog, Ecommerce, Settings, and so forth) right into a separate Dashboards space, and accessing these requires two clicks as a substitute of the one you may see elsewhere.
Clicking or double-clicking a web site object means that you can edit and work with it, very like most different web site builders. You possibly can enter and reformat textual content, substitute and crop pictures, apply some easy animation results, and extra.
Pages are constructed by dragging and dropping predefined blocks of content material. There are round 40 accessible, overlaying all the pieces from headers, titles and physique layouts, to blogs, on-line shops and purchasing carts. The examples you get look first rate, however there’s not lots of variation inside many of the block varieties. We selected the Cowl class, as an example, and got 5 choices, 4 of which have been largely black designs.
For some cause, the editor does not instantly can help you change textual content fonts or resize columns to play with the structure. After we tried, we have been warned that we should improve. That normally interprets to ‘spend more cash’, however right here it merely meant spending just a few seconds activating a free Designer Instruments function.
You are capable of additional customise pages and blocks by including what Ucraft calls Parts, web page objects similar to pictures, textual content packing containers, buttons and so forth. Once more, there’s not a lot selection, however Ucraft nonetheless supplies some worthwhile objects, together with e-commerce blocks, weblog parts, web page navigation choices, types, a mailing record instrument, customized HTML, and integrations with Disqus, PayPal, SoundCloud, Twitter, Instagram and extra.
These components look horribly primary, however discover their settings and you may typically discover actual energy. The Kind button, as an example, solely offers you a regular ‘Title, E mail and Message’ contact type, by default, however in actuality, it could accomplish that way more. A Designer permits including many extra subject varieties; each subject can have customized defaults; reCAPTCHA help protects you from spammers; type contents could be despatched to an e mail handle or through MailChimp, Google Sheets or Intercom; and after the shape is submitted, you possibly can show a customized Thank You message and optionally redirect customers to a selected web page in your website.
Positioning and resizing these objects is troublesome, and in some circumstances not possible. You possibly can’t drag a button simply anyplace on the web page, as an example – Ucraft solely permits objects to be dropped in permitted locations, and determining the place they’re could be tough.
However there are some plus factors, too. All blocks have a Visibility menu, as an example, which lets you cover or show that block relying on whether or not the viewer is utilizing a cellular or desktop machine, or the nation, metropolis and even customized IP used to entry the positioning.
Web page administration is properly dealt with in an easy dialog which additionally permits entry to system pages, similar to ‘Error 404 – Not Discovered’, and means that you can customise them in a lot the identical manner.
Total, Ucraft’s editor is an odd combine. It is easy in some areas and there are good concepts right here, however the lack of options and configurability, and the interface’s many awkward-to-use areas make it laborious to suggest on an general degree.
Media
Picture dealing with is a key ingredient of any web site builder, and Ucraft delivers many of the options and performance you’ll count on.
You are capable of add your personal pictures, as an example, of as much as 5MB in dimension every. Alternatively, Unsplash integration offers you quick access to top-quality free photographs.
Adobe’s Aviary editor is readily available for all of your picture enhancing wants (fixes, enhancements, drawing, annotations), and it can save you your content material to an internet Media library for straightforward entry and reuse later.
You are capable of show a number of pictures with the Slider and Gallery components. That does not precisely provide you with a lot selection, however you do a minimum of get an honest set of tweaks and customization choices. These begin with the fundamentals like structure, spacing, titles and descriptions, however then they get extra attention-grabbing. You possibly can apply your selection of 16 loading and 9 hover results, as an example, and there is a helpful capacity to transform a photograph gallery right into a slider when seen on cellular units.
Video help is weaker: you get a primary front-end participant which accepts your chosen YouTube or Vimeo hyperlink. This labored, however we needed to click on our check YouTube clip twice for it to play. We favored the flexibility to decide on our personal video thumbnail for any specified picture, however observed that the ingredient is not all the time good sufficient to alter the thumbnail itself. After we modified our YouTube URL, as an example, the thumbnail remained set to the earlier clip, and that would develop into complicated, later, in the event you do not discover instantly.
Bonus integrations allow including a easy SoundCloud participant to your web page, embedding iTunes widget code, Instagram content and Twitter feeds.
When you want extra, a Customized HTML ingredient ought to can help you add content material from different web sites and providers. It is tougher to check than traditional, although, as Ucraft does not show the outcomes till you have related your web site to a website.
Running a blog
Most Ucraft templates include a weblog, and though it took some time for us to determine the way it’s managed (the choice is hidden behind a Dashboard > Articles button), it turned out to be carried out very properly.
The opening display shows a neat record of weblog posts, as an example (there have been 4 pattern posts with our template), which could be neatly filtered by class or key phrase. You possibly can edit current posts, add new classes or weblog feeds in a few clicks.
Tapping an Add button means that you can create a brand new publish. The editor is simple to make use of, however primary, and does not help something greater than formatted textual content and pictures. Wix additionally makes use of a simplified editor for blogs, however nonetheless manages to help picture galleries, movies, music, and customized HTML.
The publish administration instruments are extra attention-grabbing, with the flexibility to set publish tags and classes, principal and social pictures, allow straightforward publish sharing or connect with Disqus to permit feedback (there isn’t any built-in remark system). Posts could be previewed on demand, then printed instantly or scheduled to look at a later date.
The Ucraft weblog has its limits, then, however it’s straightforward to make use of and does not have the odd design points we have seen in different Ucraft areas. When you’re solely on the lookout for the weblog fundamentals, it ought to serve you properly.
E-commerce
E-commerce platforms are complicated creations, and it is normally very troublesome to inform whether or not a web site builder’s personal internet retailer has the ability it takes to compete with the remainder.
Ucraft is totally different, as a result of the corporate hasn’t constructed its personal e-commerce engine, as a substitute partnering with the favored and highly effective Ecwid.
This acts as welcome reassurance that the assorted e-commerce plans actually will ship what they promise, together with zero% transaction charges, multicurrency help, 70+ fee and delivery strategies, and a bunch of order administration instruments.
They’re additionally a touch cheaper technique to pay money for Ecwid, which is maybe attention-grabbing in the event you have been wanting on the package deal, anyway. The bottom priced business Ecwid plan prices £12.50 ($16.25) a month, paid yearly, for a catalog of as much as 100 merchandise. Ucraft’s starter plan prices $13 (£10) for as much as 50. There are even higher financial savings on the Limitless plan, the place Ecwid’s prices £82.50 ($107) a month, and Ucraft’s is $60 (£46).
Help
Ucraft help begins with the official web site knowledgebase. An excellent help web site will current you with widespread articles upfront, and can set up all the pieces else into sensibly chosen classes, however this one falls quick on each counts. There is no opening record of articles, some classes are distinctly gentle on content material, others are confusingly named, and several other take some effort to seek out.
You possibly can seek for articles, too, and the search engine does an honest job of putting essentially the most related gadgets on the high. Sadly, most articles are missing element, and unlikely to assist anybody however the novice consumer. There are exceptions, however Ucraft’s knowledgebase did not impress us general.
In idea you possibly can speak to one of many firm’s help brokers through stay chat, however, properly, it may take some time. We have been somewhat suspicious once we opened the chat window and observed a warning that ‘the group sometimes replies in a couple of minutes’, a well crafted piece of non-committal vagueness. We posted a query anyway, and the chat window reported that it had been seen inside a minute or two, however we did not get any response – not even an ‘I will test this for you’ – for greater than an hour.
The eventual chat reply was pleasant and useful, although, and in the event you do not wish to wait on the chat window, you possibly can contact help through e mail, 24/7. As with the remainder of the service, Ucraft help is not going to fulfill the demanding consumer, however in the event you’re pleased with the fundamentals, there’s nearly sufficient right here to get by.
Ultimate verdict
Ucraft is an attention-grabbing web site builder with some worthwhile concepts, however the similar-looking templates and content material blocks, clumsy editor and frequent design quirks imply that it’s somewhat off the tempo in comparison with the highest providers on the market.