uKit review
Comparison Reviews by Industry Experts
UKIT website builder review
The modern market implies a need to have own site for active business life. But not all people are willing to pay hefty money for the development of a site, taking into account that prices may start with 1,000 USD per the simplest copy with several pages. Other people don’t know how to figure out the technical specification for the development, only having an idea and functionality in their heads. And the third category of people would be capable of creating own site but do not have programming knowledge.
Specifically for all these categories, there are a number of websites builders online that neither requires money to make a site nor special knowledge. And today we are making an article filled with uKit reviews – one of the most powerful tools on a market. uKit is formerly known as ucoz and it was developed by Russian programmers that work under ‘ucoz’ name.
UKIT website builder does not require any knowledge of Photoshop or coding and does pretty much all of the background work automatically, following the actions of a user that are done in an easy-to-comprehend visual WYSIWYG editor. It is possible to choose from a number of areas of the site (like an online shop, blog, landing, personal site, news feed site, a business site, and others) and hundreds of patterns for further modification from available on uKit website. With many add-ons, social widgets, and useful optimization tools, uKit becomes one of the most powerful DIY site creating tools for newbies and advanced users striving to receive a beautiful and functional site to run.
UKIT review: general Pros and Cons of the site builder
Pros:
- The easy interface that is mastered in several minutes
- Has multiple types of sites to build easily
- You can launch your first site already in 20 minutes (if you need to do it super fast) or in several days if you need thoroughly elaborated and maximally optimized site having over a dozen of varying pages
- Low prices that are discounted up to -30%
- Imports images and posts from Facebook and VK.com (including the scheduled auto-import)
Cons:
- Many looking-same templates that largely reduce the effective number
- Only has 14-days free trial period, after which either there will be a banner (or several) on each page of the site or you must buy a paid subscription
- Does not allow to download the created pages on your PC to use elsewhere (but allows linking your site to any available domain in a paid subscription option)
- Quite limited blog and store (it’s impossible to create a store with thousand or more pages as each page is created manually).
It is easy to use
Unlike many modern sites, ucoz tool doesn’t need to receive a ton of your information. Right after you enter your e-mail and come up with the password, you are allowed to the main interface of uKit. To make it download without problems, be sure to disable AdBlock on this site. A small price for a useful and fast ucoz site editor.
Then you see 2 main areas: uKit Dashboard and the uKit Builder. The first one is a working place for the uKit manager and becomes quite handy when a site is created and it’s time to monitor its effectiveness: Google Analytics, visitors, promotion ranking and pieces of advice on that, notifications managing and reading, uploading a favicon, get help, and other sections. The uKit Builder is the place where you create your uKit site. It is very simple for users of any technical background, even if it is absent. It does not have the command line (where HTML code is generated) and it has a preview window to see the obtained result immediately.
The ucoz builder automatically makes the adaptive site design fitting all screens and all devices following the up-to-date technology: laptop, mobile, tablet. Some elements may be switched off for a mobile and tablet version, though – like backgrounds and big buttons, so you have to double-check when switching amongst versions in uKit’s design.
In the Sites Pages area of the uKit builder, you can set the number of pages of the site, copy-paste pages, reorganize, and rename them. Also, you can change a home page to another.
What features and flexibilities uKit has
E-commerce in uKit.
Commercial sites are the costlier in the world of online pages, as they are specifically created to generate profit. And that is why their price tag is too heavy for too many users. If you just starting and can’t afford tens of thousands of dollars for a regular online store to sell your 100-200 positions, a wise choice is to use uKit. However, you won’t be able to create some powerful ‘all-embracing’ e-commerce site using ucoz like Amazon with millions of positions or even a thousand of them (as each page must be created manually) but with diligence and persistence, you will be able to make something good in uKit during 1-2 days.
Ucoz calculator.
If you sell something that consists of variable parts and the final price depends on many factors, calculator embedded into the site will allow your visitors to calculate a price tag on their own, playing with characteristics and variables. This largely increases customer satisfaction and the desire to make a purchase.
Table Sheets in uKit.
Very similar to Excel and Google tables, ucoz table sheets offer you the same powerful options, including cells merging, coloring, placing buttons into cells, arranging alignment of the text, and making calculations.
Font options in uKit.
Within the selected template, you can play with fonts and their combination. However, only two differing fonts per 1 page are allowed (for the header and the rest of the text), as uKit guys believe that more font types and combinations are not advisable for smooth user experience on one page. The most part of web designers recommend using two fonts for smooth reading and comprehending of the text, so it was made this way in order to prevent worsening of visual content.
Video and images in uKit.
This is the thing that’s mostly forgotten (or unknown) by novice users – optimizing the sizes of downloaded pictures and videos. These two are responsible for the biggest part of the site’s traffic. When a picture is uploaded, it is automatically optimized using Progressive JPG and PNG systems of compression to create optimal sizes for each specific case (viewing on different devices and downloading). You can import video and images from Facebook and VK.com.
Widgets to use in uKit.
Those functional pieces largely enhance the user experience and may be one of the reasons to prefer your site over the sites of competitors. These include:
- Map
- Price List
- Table
- Reviews
- Steps to complete
- Timer (for instance, how much time left to the end of an attractive offer with a discount – landing pages are simply unimaginable today without this widget)
- Quote
- Timeline
- Google Search (to make the search on your site and beyond it)
- News
- Weather, and others.
You can insert your own widget having a program code of it, however, this option is available not through all subscription tariff plans.
Hosting the site in uKit.
Unlimited hosting space is another feature of uKit tool, which profitably differentiates it from others. Pages loading speed is optimized automatically, no matter how many and what types of data you put on them. It is an essential part of SEO promotion, which is required to boost the site up. The most part of sites created using uKit is loaded within 3 seconds, which is one of the most essential reasons why search engines register them goodly. Having slower loading time significantly deteriorates ranking positions.
You can also upload many files to your site to share them with other users (however, each separate file takes a separate button to be downloaded and the number of buttons per one page is limited).
Promo in uKit.
Promotion of the site is implemented based on up-to-date criteria.
Options of service tools in uKit.
If you are creating a site that falls into certain restrictions like an obligatory need to have a change of color and font gamma for people with impaired vision, it is possible to do with ease. You can set up a number of designs that will be an alternative for your site. This might be useful for educational institutions, government facilities, and others that fall under such regulation.
Make your own design of the ‘404 page’ filling it with correct links or even maybe selling buttons that will increase your conversion rate. Want to make a totally differing design? Everything is in your hands (except changing the template for this specific page).
Integration of uKit and Amo CRM tool.
AmoCRM is one of the most used Customer Relationship Management systems in the world. It has lots of free functionality and can be easily integrated. We will leave the explanations of the need of CRM system to prophets of CRM systems and will concentrate on what it can do: collecting and submitting client information to you. It is collected at all stages and cases when a visitor or a prospect gives you their data (name, surname, phone, email, social profile and so on) so you can use it for your marketing goals, make connections, analysis, and boost up the productivity of your business.
Simply start a profile in that system through an integrated channel of access from the uKit tool to begin filling up the database.
Domain in uKit.
Similarly to many other top-rated sites that allow making the design of a new site, when you create yours, it is automatically assigned with a temporary name that you may write to make it look like ‘yoursitename.uKit.me’ or let a system generate it automatically. This step is undertaken on the Wizard stage. When you do not continue with the paid subscription, the advertisement banners are added to your site. They immediately disappear when you opt for the paid using. Under the paid subscription, you receive a number of options for ad-free hosting of your site (during a year, for instance). It is advisable to pay for a year or two at once – to save up to 30% of the initial monthly price.
Thus, after creating and launching the site even during the free trial, you can immediately get to work, sharing its link with people. However, it is advisable to get a permanent address first (ending at .com or .org, or whatever) to avoid making changes to your correspondence in a short while. Linking the address (from the given list of domains) is possible here in the Dashboard. When the deal is done, your site’s address will be refreshed within 15-25 minutes.
SSL in uKit.
SSL Security is one of the most important issues in the modern Internet. Visually it means that your site will have ‘HTTPS’ instead of ‘HTTP’ at the beginning of its address. Technically, it means the following:
- the site will be included in the search engines’ lists as ‘reliable’, which means that users will not be forbidden from visiting it nor having warning notifications
- it will be safe to pay on the site (PayPal and WalletOne as easily attached as means of payment, as well as the separate Ecwid gateway that enables over 40 different payment means, and that support over 45 languages and all currencies of the world)
- the site receives a reliable certificate.
It is almost unallowable not to have SSL today. By the way, it costs you nothing, requires no visual changes to the content of your site, and it is activated in meager seconds only with two clicks of a mouse – so hey, you lose nothing, so activate it straight away!
Possible design options in uKit
A user of uKit is free to select from hundreds of predefined templates that are grouped into 40 categories and niches that include:
- blogs
- e-stores
- personal and business pages
- forums (with a possibility to add comments via Disqus add-on)
- landing pages and others.
When you are done choosing the category and template, you can always change the template in the future.
You can move, delete, and create pre-defined elements on pages, configure and erase text, pictures, and backgrounds. You can duplicate pages with a similar design to easily alter only some elements that are embedded. It is possible to alter color schemes, fonts, sizes, and their highlighting with opaque geometry figures to make it easy to read and distinguish important information.
All the designs to select from are professional, automatically adaptive to fit different screens and devices and allow maintaining mobile and laptop versions simultaneously. When you change the laptop one, the mobile version updates automatically.
SEO friendliness of uKit
The main thing in promotion is to make search engines see your site and include it into the databases to make it appear in the search results. To make it happen, it is crucial to fill in the following tags of every single page without the rest in uKit:
- Title (usually up to 80 characters with spaces in length)
- Description (usually up to 160 characters with spaces in length).
In addition to that, you must have enough widgets to be installed on your uKit site that enhance user experience. Also, the text must include headings and subheadings, normalized (optimized) video and picture content, and informative filling that describe the essence of your site or the product/service you sell.
When you enter the uKit’s tab of Promotion, you immediately see the normalized score of optimization of your site (to make it any use, it must be in ‘green’ area, while not obligatorily reaching 100%). Remember that correct filling of tags and other stuff does not guarantee you the inclusion into search engines at once. You should think about more SEO must-do things like usage of keywords in tags and text. There is a button in uKit of inclusion of the site into the index – use it only when you see that your site is ‘green’ enough.
Support of the uKit service and pricing policy
There is a knowledge database that has answers to many basic possible questions. The base is categorized so you can easily find answers to all your questions. As the tool is multi-language one, there is multi-language support in:
- English
- Russian
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Polish
- Turkish.
Also, if you did not find the answer to your question, you may call a support engineer via Skype or to write a letter to the support service officer to have a written answer in a short while during working hours.
As for the pricing policy, it is quite flexible and represented as follows:
- 5 dollars a month (‘Minimal’ subscription plan)
- $10/month (‘Basic’)
- $12/month (‘eCommerce’)
- $15/month (‘Pro’).
Here is the comparison chart of what each plan provides:
| uKit Minimal | uKit Basic | uKit eCommerce | uKit Professional | |
| Custom domain assigning | + | |||
| Unlimited number of domains, pages, space on the disk, SMS notifications, and visitors | ||||
| 24/7 support | ||||
| Live chat support | – | + | + | + |
| Premium designs | – | |||
| Goals in Google Analytics | – | |||
| eCommerce | – | – | ||
| Customization of code and color schemes | – | – | – | |
| Wide statistics | – | + | ||
| Mobile-friendly site | + | |||
| Temporarily hosting and backups | ||||
| Several hundreds of professional designs | ||||
| 14-days trial | – |
If you purchase for 3 months, you get a -5% off discount. -10% applies when you buy it for 6 months, -20% comes when procuring for a year, and -30% (regular maximum) applies when you purchase for 24 months with one payment at once. This discount applies to not only uKit premium plans but the basic as well.
As you can see, the pricing does not dramatically differ among plans so it would be a wise choice to subscribe for a ‘pro’ if you want to have unlimited access.
Reviews of users for uKit
Kuthresh Rajappali:
I liked the smooth building process that is accompanied with easy drag-and-drop functionality. I immediately can see what I’m building and be completely visual. When I wanted to know how it would look like in the page, I just press a Preview button to see the picture in two seconds.
Hamsur Budraddin:
Convenience is the most for me as a person who is really, really far from all that site-building stuff. When I haven’t managed to find a normal price on my local market to make a convenient online store for my small auto shop, I simply spent 3 days on my own to receive exactly what I was picturing in my head. Everything is customizable, it has super many tools and easily usable options. More pre-defined themes would be nice to have.
Ilya Novitsky:
It’s a nice tool for its money, especially when you realize that you don’t have to go deep into SSL and hosting issues if you are completely unaware of them. It took me a day to launch a site for my travel blog and maybe several more days to fine-tune it.
Bernard Chow:
Fabulous design that is smoothly integrated with CRM system – just fine for my business to get started.
Ishmail Heisenberg:
Everything is so intuitive that I was okay with its usage already in 5 minutes, and in 30, I bathed in it like a fish in the water. I was playing with fidgets and designs for several days, being completely immersed into the beauty of its vast functionality, and the end product suited me in everything I wanted.
Frequently Asked Questions about uKit
How to add Google Analytics to uKit?
In the Dashboard panel, click on the ‘Google Analytics’ to configure and add it.
How many people use uKit?
Thousands every month.
How often does uKit have sales/discounts?
It may be every week or on a monthly basis – subscribe to the newsletter to stay in touch.
Is uKit really as mobile-friendly?
Yes.
Who is it for?
For beginners of business and people who don’t have huge money to pay for the web development but who want to receive professional and workable site fast.
Is it free?
It has 14-days free trial period, then you have to opt for 1 out of 4 subscription plans.
Is it good for blogging?
Yes. Also, when you’re setting a blog type of site, it is possible to arrange an automatic import of posts from a page from social media (that may include pics). Also, you can write a post before and to schedule posting of each of it – there is no need to explain to experienced bloggers, what importance it has when you must go somewhere but you have to post something on the schedule.
As a conclusion
The uKit includes large capabilities to start a working site already in a few hours for people who are unaware about coding, web design, hosting, linking, are not familiar with Photoshop, and all other technical and organizational aspects that are connected with building-up and launching the site. It embraces much bigger functionality than just basic and its affordable pricing policy will suit every user who wants to boost own online business.
