If you are looking to create a professional website, you may have encountered the Remixer website builder by Dreamhost. Given the reputation of the hosting company, it does seem like a good place to start – or is it? In this review, we’ll see what the program has to offer and find out if it is the right solution for you.
What Is Remixer
Remixer is a simple program that builds websites using a click-to-edit command interface. What you see in the editor is basically the same as what appears on the web page. All content is hosted on Dreamhost and domain registration is also available when needed.
How Does It Work
After creating an account, the first thing to do is to select a theme for the website layout. Each theme is designed for different professions and purposes such as;
- Small businesses
- Professional individuals
- Travelers
- Event
- Portfolios
- Restaurant Owners
- Startups
- Niche Marketers
- Musicians
On top of the default template provided, one can expand the web page by adding audio, gallery and video elements to the content.
How Much Does It Cost
There are generally two types of hosting plans to choose from. One is called ‘Standard’ and the other one is ‘All Access’. The main difference is that the latter comes with free custom email addresses so that your online correspondence will appear more professional. Of the two, you can opt for the monthly, yearly or the 3 years payment plan.
- Monthly – $7.95/month (S) / $10.95/month (A)
- Yearly – $6.95/month (S) / $9.95/month (A)
- 3 Years – $4.95/month (S) / $7.95/month (A)
If you are not sure which one to choose, use the 14 days free trial to test out the platform before deciding. That’s exactly what I did and here are my thoughts about its features.
The Pros
(1) The editor is generally easy to use because most of the commands are intuitive and since you can view the front page at the same time, the layout can easily be adjusted when necessary.
(2) The theme responsiveness, meaning the ability of a web design to adapt to mobile devices, is quite sleek and smooth. This will provide good experience if you are targeting mobile users.
(3) If you are an active social media user, you can easily integrate pre-existing images from Instagram, Facebook or Flickr and publish them on the web gallery. Alternatively, you can also upload images from your computer, Pixabay (a stock image site) or import from another website. This is a great feature for those who rely on image sharing to promote their work/brands.
(4) I like that they have a monthly plan option because this allows for short term projects such as events and portfolios to engage with some online activities without too much fee commitment.
The Cons
(1) Having started my blog from scratch using WordPress, I know pretty much what’s required to create a professional looking website. So for me, 13 types of theme selection are very limiting. Every small businesses serve different products/services, every event has their own theme and every niche blog tells a unique story.
Hence, just like the content it serves, I believe that website designs should also come in varieties and the ability for customization. Imagine creating a restaurant website that looks like everyone else’s – that would be boring and unattractive.
(2) While Remixer appears to cater for online businesses, it doesn’t fully support a business activity online. For example, there’s no online store feature and there’s no way for customers to leave reviews about their experience. That means, one can only publish information, but can’t engage with sales or customer interaction. It doesn’t quite serve the purpose of a business website, right?
(3) Back to the hosting plans, the company isn’t very elaborative about what is being offered. For example, when it comes to adding images to a gallery, is there a storage limit? What about content? How many pages can you actually publish on a site? Do the plans cover backup and technical support as well? None of these concerns are being addressed, even in the FAQs.
(4) Last but not least, my biggest problem with this website builder (and many others) is the lack of SEO settings. Having the ability to optimize a web page can put your site on higher rankings in the search engines and increase your exposure to online viewers. When a platform doesn’t cater for this, there’s very little chance for your site to be found online.
For example, you can’t attach ‘Alt Text’ to gallery images and if you are thinking to start a traveling blog, you’d be surprised that it doesn’t even have a blogging feature. Basically, you are only limited to publishing pages, but not posts and as a result, you can’t create enough information to rank for keywords that are being searched for everyday.
What are keywords, you may ask? Well, they are the search terms that people type into Google every day.
- What is the best pizza in Atlanta
- Hair salon near me
- Best coffee place for espresso
These are just some phrases that can be turned into interesting articles to attract new audience to one’s site. Besides, if the platform allows analytic trackings (Remixer doesn’t), you can leverage from Google Analytics and Search Console to see which part of the world your readers are coming from and what type of keywords your site is ranking for.
Is Remixer Worth Your Time?
After trying out the platform, I’ve come to the conclusion that Remixer is probably good for creating short term web pages that don’t need to track any user engagement like personal events, community activities and portfolios.
When it comes to online business operations, however, I think the features are severely lacking and somewhat outdated as compared to more advanced publishers such as WordPress.
With WordPress, you can do more important things like running an online store 24/7, reach out to new customers/clients and get more recognition from the search engines. After all, if you truly want to create a professional website, why not make it big, right?
Well, I hope that this review has given you some insights on what Remixer website builder can (and can’t) do. If you like to know more about turning your skills/passion into profits, please check out my recommended online training platform and see how you can get started.
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Hi there, since you said that WordPress is the better option, where can I go to learn more about it? I’ve read a few articles and tried it myself but it can still be overwhelming. Also, is WordPress always free?
Hi there Manny,
There are basically two types of WordPress out there. The self-hosted WordPress.org and the fully hosted WordPress.com. With self-hosted, using the software is free, but you need to find and pay for your own hosting plan. With the latter, hosting is already taken care of – you just need to select the type of website capacity you desire, ranging from free to paid plans.
WordPress isn’t difficult to use, it just takes a bit of getting used to. Instead of just reading about it, it’s better to have some hands on with the editor to familiarize with features like plugins, widgets and themes. A good place to learn about this platform is through WordPress by SiteRubix. It is self-hosted but comes with a free subdomain that gives access to what you can expect from WordPress.org. Give it a try and if you need any help, just let me know.
Hi Cathy,
Thanks for your honest review of Remixer. When you start out it’s difficult to choose a website building platform because you simply don’t know what you will need. For budding online entrepreneurs, reviews like yours are crucial. As a matter of interest, what platform do you use yourself? How much time do you invest in creating content versus looking after your subscription numbers and rankings?
Hi there Anita, I use self-hosted WordPress and it serves me well because content is my main strategy here as blogger. I actually spend a lot of time, on a daily basis, researching and writing about the topics that interest my audience.
At this point, I don’t really pay much attention on subscription numbers and rankings yet as I feel that there’s much to do for my posts in terms of SEO. I really want to get a good grasp of the basics before moving into something else.
Wow Cathy, what a great find. I am brand new to the whole online world and have been doing research to find the tools that I thought would be my best fit. Just recently I started looking at review websites like yours here only to discover my thoughts were completely wrong and the Remixer was one of those tools.
I now feel there are much better options out there to start off with and that I can grow into. Thanks so much for the thorough and unbiased review. Question – would you have a recommended platform for a completely new noob who has no tech-skills but wants to create a business website?
Hi there Jair, there are only a few publishing platforms that are in my good books. The first one is Vistaprint website builder – they are easy to use and supports many features that a local business will need. The other one is the good old self-hosted WordPress which do come with some learning curve, but because there are so many plugins, widgets and themes to experiment with, you have more options to market a business online.
Hope this helps.
Great review of this website builder. In watching the video, the builder was built to be easy. Much like many of the other click and drag builders on the market.
It’s appealing to those who know little about websites or how an online business works. So they are happy to have an easy and fairly cheap option to build good looking websites.
Then some time down the road, they’ll be disappointed because their website is not producing the business as they hoped for.
It’s great that these companies provide these easy tools but without the knowledge and tools to make them productive, they are essential a waste of time and money for a business.