The different types of website platforms out there is simply incredible as I discover yet another one this week called Hypesalons that appears to be the one of the kind free salon website builder. I know there are a lot of you who are into this type of niche so I thought I would save you the trouble by reviewing the service (so that you don’t have to) and show you a better solution to grow a beauty business online.
What Is Hypesalons
Hypesalons is basically a simple website builder designed for, as the name suggests, businesses that are involved in hair salon, spa and nail salon niche. All you need to do is to create an account and it will bring you straight to the editor dashboard which is basically the front end of what your website would look like.
The service offers two types of plan – a basic website that costs $59/year and a premium website (more features) for $89/year. Looks pretty affordable so I took it for a test run to see how well it would fit an online business set up.
The Pros
- All the themes and designs seem fitting to the industry. It gives you an idea of what a salon website should look like.
- Similar to most website builders, the editing process is quite intuitive. You just need to click and edit on the areas of the web page that you want.
- I am glad to see that they have some basic SEO settings in place such as meta titles and meta descriptions. In case you don’t know what are those, SEO settings will help to get your website indexed faster on the search engines.
- They offer an online store feature so that’s an additional sales channel that you can consider for your business.
- The builder also comes with a set of calendar tools that enable you to make appointments online. I thought that feature was pretty handy.
In general, everything is very easy to set up with no technical skills are required.
The Cons
- The company tags themselves as a ‘free website builder’, but in actual fact, you are only given 10 days of free trial. I find that to be very misleading because there is actually no free plan whatsoever.
- Although they have nice designs, there are only 30 variations to choose from. That’s not a lot of variety when you consider how huge the beauty industry is.
- It’s nice that the themes are mobile responsive, but when I tested out further, the mobile designs look different from the home page, thus giving the impression that you are visiting a different site. I don’t think that this is good for the user experience.
- The premium feature gives you up to 100 pages in which they are used as subpages beneath the main navigation. I don’t particularly recommend this because it would make your menu items too deep and cluttered. This limitation also doesn’t allow you to add more content to your site for future use. Which brings me to the next question…
- Can your website content be exported if you decide to move to another platform? I asked the support team about this and there was no reply. It is also not indicated in the FAQs that you could do this so I am guessing that you can’t.
- When it comes to social sharing, you are only limited to Facebook and Twitter. It doesn’t seem to integrate Pinterest which I think is a huge disadvantage because this niche is very visual oriented and you’ll be missing out on a lot of traffic that could potentially derive from Pinterest users.
All in all, Hypesalons is purely a site builder platform. It doesn’t teach you about engaging with your customers and most importantly, it doesn’t show you how to do local marketing for your business.
Considering these limitations, I would be wary about using this service for the long term. I would much rather go with WordPress by SiteRubix that has the reputation of building stable websites that could make any business thrive.
SiteRubix WordPress – My Preferred Website Platform
I’ve been reviewing various website builders since 2014 and WordPress is by far, one of the best platforms that you can invest in your online business.
- There are hundreds of mobile-responsive and professional looking themes in the beauty niche.
- You can use a variety of plugins to add desired features on your site. There’s almost always a plugin for anything that you want.
- WordPress doesn’t limit you to the number of pages that you can create and because it’s originally a blogging platform, you can also add blog posts to grow the content on your site. Tips; more content will generate more online traffic to your site.
- WordPress is supported by web developers, designers and experienced online marketers. That’s why it is favored by most online business owners when it comes to website creation.
- Most importantly, it’s an open source software and it’s free to use by the public. You do need to find your own hosting provider and here’s where SiteRubix comes into the picture.
SiteRubix not only provide you with premium hosting services (daily backups and malware monitoring), but it also gives you access to the online training at Wealthy Affiliate that will teach you the right marketing techniques to grow any type of business.
Here’s a quick comparison of the tools and resources that you can benefit from this awesome platform.
Hey, I hope that this review has given you an idea on what Hypesalons, the so called ‘free salon website builder’ can (and cannot) do. If you need more help starting a salon business online, do get in touch with me at my recommended training platform and I’ll walk you through the process step-by-step. Talk to you soon.
Have any thoughts or questions about this topic? Please do not hesitate to leave them in the comment area down below.
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Hello, Cathy. Great review.
Hypersalon seems like a useful tool for those in this niche. I have a service in the investment niche I am trying to sell online, so this may not come in handy.
I also found your Wealthy Affiliate recommendation at the bottom interesting. Can Wealthy Affiliate teach me how to sell my service? I ask because I am fairly new to the internet marketing world, so I have no experience how to sell my products or services. Thank you.
Hi Vini, you mentioned about selling service. Here’s what I think you might need;
1) Feedback/testimonials from previous customers.
2) Video presentation about a certain topic of your niche.
3) Offer free consultation in exchange for readers email.
4) Blog frequently about the common problems faced by people in your industry and offer your service as part of the solution.
Wealthy Affiliate’s training teach you from ground up – building websites, writing articles from keyword research and building an email list – all of which can help you reach out to targeted audience that might be interested in your service. If you need any help moving forward, just let me know.
Hi, thank you for your review. While HypeSalons doesn’t really appeal to me, the idea of having a business niche specific website is certainly interesting. I think some normal beauty salon shop may actually go and sign up with them.
Do you know if they provide their customers with their own domain name? and is that included in the subscription?
Hi Steven, if you are referring to custom domain (brandable name), then no. They are a hosting/site building platform and don’t deal with business domain registration.
Hypesalons is a unique enough name while still suggesting it’s niche, which is clever. I would have to agree with you though, based on your comparison chart, that SiteRubix would be the superior option. With that being said, I can see how having a site builder that utilizes templates specific to a niche, can be quite attractive as well.
The thing with this type of sitebuilder is that they often oversimplified a lot of process that contributes to search optimization. Consequently, I think it makes more harm than good. WordPress is a better platform that comes with more niche specific themes that looks more professional.
First off, let me say that I love the title of your website. It is what first caught my eye and peeked my interest. I must admit that I had no idea of what a hypesalon was. Now thanks to you, I don’t really care learn any more about one. You have clearly shown that Siterubix is the better choice. Thank you
Hey Cathy,
Hypesalons look interesting, I have a friend who just opened a L’oriel salon for girls only hair cut and I could definitely recommend her Hypesalons, much easier than creating our own site from scratch though.
Does it have a vast database of designs to choose from that’s different than the normal wordress themes we come across?
Hi Riaz, unfortunately this website builder doesn’t offer a lot of designs. In fact, if your friend have the chance to try it out, he/she might not be impressed with their user interface as well. I would still recommend using WordPress, not only for their theme variety but also for its SEO friendliness. Sounds like your friend is starting a local business which means it’s even more important to be found on the search engines.