Mobirise Review

Mobirise Website Builder is a different kind of website builder. It’s not browser-based, so you have to download it to build something. It features innovative editing options and pricing plans. It’s easy to use, if maybe hard to set up.

If you want to make the best out of it, you’ll need to invest money in the beginning because its powerful functions are only accessible through paid add-ons.

If you have a decent understanding of HTML and about $100 to spend, Mobirise Website Builder is a great choice for any industry. That said, if you’re not tech-savvy or you’re looking for cheaper options, Mobirise might not work for you. In this Mobirise Website Builder review, we’ll help you see if that’s the case.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Alternatives for Mobirise

Features

The first thing to mention about Mobirise Website Builder’s features is the lack of a blogging tool. That’s a problem for anyone who wants to increase traffic through organic search and a big obstacle to clear for the service to make it into our best website builders list. With that in mind, let’s see what it can do.

Mobirise Website Builder Extensions

The “extensions” page is Mobirise Website Builder’s app market. It features add-ons such as the PayPal Shopping Cart, which lets you do ecommerce, and the SEO tool, which lets you generate robots.txt files and sitemaps.

The app market is how Mobirise makes money. You purchase extensions to upgrade your website. We’re going to talk more about them in the “pricing” section. For now, we’ll go over a few things.

Most extensions are inexpensive for what they offer. For example, the PayPal Shopping Cart extension, which lets you sell products online, is only $39 and covers one year of updates and support.

Most of the templates you can purchase are stunning and geared toward certain audiences. If your business is among those Mobirise had in mind, such as wedding planning or a gym, you’ll find the theme for it helpful.

For example, the educational theme is well-made. If you want to sell an online course, Mobirise Website Builder has you covered with this extension, which adds support for video, form collection and a beautiful layout to your toolset.

That’s a smart way to integrate pricing into your app market. You can create a simple website and upload it on GitHub, through FTP or your hosting company of choice, but for a stunning result you have to buy extensions.

What could be improved is the quantity of add-ons. Not all industries are covered by the extensions. If you’re a dentist or freelancer who wants to use Mobirise Website Builder, you’ll struggle with the templates.

Though that’s true, Mobirise Website Builder’s rival SiteBuilder only has seven add-ons in its market and they’re unimportant. SiteBuilder does have perks, though, so check out our SiteBuilder review before drawing conclusions. That said, Mobirise Website Builder’s app market is miles ahead of SiteBuilder’s.

Mobirise Website Builder SEO

As for SEO, Mobirise Website Builder not the best builder out there. You can add an extension that will generate a sitemap and robots.txt files, but that’s about it.

Even without that extension, you can edit short snippets of metadata in the vanilla editor. Though that’s not a game changer, it’s important to cover it, as well.

You can also install the Code Editor extension to ensure everything is clean and make it easier for Google to find you.

That’s a lot of struggle for minimal results, though. If you want an easy-to-use builder that helps your Google ranking, read our Wix review.

Mobirise Website Builder eCommerce

Mobirise Website Builder doesn’t include an ecommerce tool for free. To start selling on your website, you must purchase the PayPal Shopping Cart extension.

For a one-time payment of $39, you can sell digital or physical products. It’s not an all-inclusive ecommerce pack because it only accepts PayPal transactions, but it’s much cheaper than what you’d get elsewhere.

What we like about the add-on is that it comes with an exhaustive tutorial, detailing how to set up your shop and add and manage products. It has clear, concise explanations and videos to illustrate the points made.

Mobirise Website Builder, coupled with its PayPal extension, is a good choice if you don’t focus on ecommerce but still want a small store on your website.

For better results, try Shopify. Don’t just jump into it, though. It’s a complex platform, so read our beginner’s guide to Shopify first.

Mobirise Website Builder Contact Forms

Building an email list with Mobirise Website Builder is tough if you don’t buy the $39 Form Builder extension. Besides name, phone, email and a message field, you can’t include anything else. You can’t add special buttons, change the typography or customize the fields.

That’s a big minus because you’d be better off linking to a Google Form than using Mobirise Website Builder’s form submission tool.

Though limited, the Form Builder extension can still work on a small project or task. It’s good enough, for example, if you just need people to sign up for something.

Don’t be discouraged, though. If you like Mobirise Website Builder and have to build an email list, buying the Form Builder add-on may meet your needs.

Features Overview

Pricing

The vanilla version of Mobirise Website Builder is free to download and use. We’ll talk more about what you can do with it later, but for now, let’s see what the service offers to those willing to spend money.

Most of the extensions are just upgraded templates geared toward certain audiences — for example, WorkshopAMP is for repair shop businesses. On top of those, you get feature-specific extensions, such as Paypal Shopping Cart and Form Builder, which add a lot of customization options.

What’s great about purchasing extensions is you get them for life. You make a down payment that grants you access to the tool. Plus, you have one year of priority support and updates to the add-on.

Though unorthodox, this method is much better than offering paid plans.

If you just want ecommerce, you can invest in that and not have to purchase the highest tier plan on offer like you would with most providers. In those cases, the plans could be pricey because they come with extra languages, increased bandwidth and priority support.

For example, Voog is great for localization, but getting the best multilingual experience from it means spending money for certificates and features that you don’t necessarily need. Mobirise Website Builder does it better, but Voog still has merits, so make sure to check out our Voog review.

That’s not to mention that chances are you’re going to come out richer at the end of the year than if you were to purchase a top-tier subscription from a different builder.

Design & Tools

We’ve talked about extensions, vanilla features and pricing. Now, let’s tackle the editor. Mobirise Website Builder’s editor is focused on simplicity.

Everything on the dashboard is clearly organized. Though the editing tools aren’t labeled as much as they should be, you should get the hang of it within five minutes of playing around.

“Pages,” unsurprisingly, lets you manage the pages of your website.

It’s also where you can adjust the URL of your pages and the metadata for better SEO.

“Sites” lets you manage all site projects in-app.

It’s also where you adjust the export route of a website. On top of that, it’s where you can upload a favicon and activate effects for scrolling on a page. Though not complicated, the section will be important when publishing your website.

“Login” and “Help me!” are self-explanatory. The first lets you register with Mobirise Website Builder and the latter will send you to a contact form to get in touch with the developers.

Finally, the “extensions and themes” tab takes you to a screen where you can install free and paid add-ons for your website.

Those aren’t Mobirise Website Builder’s bread and butter, though. The main thing you’ll be doing if you use the service revolves around the “blocks” section.

The “blocks” screen features several subcategories with premade page sections.

The “menu” category is simple. With the vanilla version, you get to choose between two menu formats. Once you settle on a menu type, you’re ready to choose a header for your page.

The vanilla intro tab has nine headers to choose from. They come with images, sliders, slogans and titles combined in various ways.

The other categories aren’t complex, but let’s go through them anyway.

“Sliders” includes galleries and image carousels. ”Features” has blocks designed to help you illustrate the benefits of working with your enterprise. It’s a smart addition, because it makes it easy to compile a “services” or “about us” page.

“Media” lets you add all sorts of videos and standalone images. Though functional as it is, it would be awesome if you had access to stock content from the tab.

“Article” features things such as titles, body blocks and social integrations used to compose and publish articles. It’s not a content management system, but it’s enough if you just want to blog about what you’ve been up to.

“Info” features blocks that help you outline pieces of data. Though useful, the system would be better streamlined if the content was merged with the “features” block.  “Testimonials” lets you insert customer reviews. Unfortunately, there’s no testimonial block with an image carousel in the vanilla version, which would’ve been a big plus.

“Social” has share and follow blocks for popular social media services. “Pricing tables” has cool pricing plan blocks to use if you’re diversifying your offerings. “Forms” has a few templates for form collection and “maps” allows you to integrate a Google map into your page.

Lastly, the vanilla “footers” tab has four footer blocks that you can use. Mobirise Website Builder’s footers are well-made and accompanied by social icons, maps and a slick design.

Besides adding blocks, you can make on-page edits.

The feature lets you modify text, typography and colors, which optimizes your workflow. That’s not uncommon among website builders, but Mobirise Website Builder does it well because the edit buttons and fields are small, simple and responsive.

Ease of Use

Once you get accustomed to the service, Mobirise Website Builder is easy to use. There aren’t a lot of labels on controls or drag-and-drop sections, so it takes time to see what everything can do, but you can get the hang of it within 15 minutes.

To get started, you need to download the software from Mobirise’s website. Once that’s settled, you need to register to gain access to the editor. Sign up and you’ll be ready to work.

The user interface is simple and aesthetic. WYSIWYG is the default editor look, which lets you build the structure of a website in less than half an hour. Based on what you need from your website, it might take more time if you purchase extensions, as well, but 30 minutes is the ballpark figure for building the backbone of it.

All blocks come with dummy content, so next you’ll need to insert the images and blocks of text you need to entice visitors. If you don’t need to code or add dozens of products, everything can be taken care of in one sitting.

When it comes to publishing, things aren’t so bright. Once you’re done editing, you can publish your website to a local drive or an FTP.

Unfortunately, Mobirise doesn’t offer hosting services, so you’ll need to pay extra for a hosting platform. If you need help finding one, read our guide on how to choose a web hosting provider.

That’s the main drawback of using Mobirise Website Builder. You don’t get an all-inclusive package to take care of your online needs in one place. If you’re just a little tech-savvy, that won’t be an issue, but for most people, publishing a website with Mobirise Website Builder will be a hassle.

If you’d rather put all your eggs in one basket, Squarespace and Weebly are better choices. They offer templates that are just beautiful, but you also get hosting and deeper customization. Read our Squarespace review and Weebly review to learn more about them.

Support

Mobirise’s support is exhaustive. Click “help” in the editor and you’ll get a pop-up with links to a help center, a forum and a contact form.

The help center is well-organized.

There are six categories of FAQs and tutorials, and they come with great explanations and tutorial videos. Though we had to overcome some hurdles when testing Mobirise Website Builder, the help center was enough to answer our questions.

If you don’t get the answers you need from Mobirise’s knowledgebase, you can also take to the forums.

There’s a huge community of Mobirise developers ready to help with niche issues and questions. If nobody has asked about your problem yet, you can start a thread and get aid from fellow Mobirise Website Builder users.

If those two don’t work, you can contact the developers using the in-app contact form. Emails are answered promptly and professionally.

All in all, you shouldn’t encounter any obstacle that takes more than a day of your time.

The Verdict

Mobirise Website Builder is a great tool. It’s innovative, has a good offer and you can get something awesome up and running in a matter of days (or even hours).

Unfortunately, the software takes a hit for lacking features. No blogging tool is a big issue in 2019, considering how hard other companies are working to crack the Google algorithm formula. Add a poor SEO tool in the mix and you just won’t be found organically.

If you want an awesome blogging platform, read our best web hosting providers article. We recommend WordPress, which is the CMS king, but maybe something else will work for you just as well. Before you go with WordPress, though, make sure to read our beginner’s guide to WordPress.

Was our take on Mobirise Website Builder fair? Did you have a different experience with it? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading.