IONOS Ecommerce Website Builder Review (2024)
Our Research
IONOS may be best known for its web hosting and domain registration services, but it’s also becoming a leading website builder. It’s affordable with plans starting at $1 per month for your first year and plans as low as $9 per month upon renewal. It is designed to be very user-friendly with an intuitive and code-free site editor, and extras such as pre-built templates, a free domain name, free business email and an online booking tool. Find out if it’s the best choice for you with our IONOS website builder review.
Ionos Pros & Cons
Pros
- Beginner-friendly website builder that requires no experience
- Very competitive intro pricing and affordable renewal rates
- Online booking tools
- Built-in AI text generator
- E-commerce capabilities
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- 99.99% guaranteed uptime
Cons
- Its entry-level plan has a maximum of 10 pages
- Few templates compared to competitors
- Limited design customization capabilities
Ionos at a Glance 9.2 Editor Score
Features & Integrations
9.4
Security Features
9.2
Ease Of Use
9.6
Pricing & Packages
9.1
Customer Service
9.9
9.2 Editor Score
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Overview
What Is IONOS?
IONOS is among the most popular domain name registrars and web hosting services on the market and it has been around for over 25 years. In more recent years, it released its own proprietary website builder to give users a more comprehensive set of website-related services. Its site builder includes everything a business needs to build and manage a website, such as the user-friendly site builder, domain name, SSL certificate, site analytics, online booking tools and the ability to sell products or services online.
Here’s what IONOS offers:
- Website builder
- Domain names
- Web hosting
- Email hosting
- SSL certificates
Ideal for
Like most website builder products, IONOS’s site builder is really designed for organizations that don’t want to get under the hood editing code. This website builder is also a great choice for companies that want a builder that has specialist Ecommerce features. Using IONOS, users can get their Ecommerce site online quickly—without investing a lot of time getting wrapped up in small technical details.
Why Go With IONOS
IONOS’s tool is a good middle ground option for those that want an easy to set up Ecommerce website but don’t want the hassle of a custom setup.
There are some advanced features such as fraud detection and bulk invoice printing. The Ecommerce websites that it can build still aren’t going to be as customizable as ones that are hand-coded. But for those without development resources, this could be a great compromise solution.
Features
Fraud Checker
Any major Ecommerce website can be subject to fraudulent purchasing activity. Store owners need to do everything in their power to prevent such transactions from processing. IONOS features a fraud detection engine which helps store owners to identify fraudulent transactions. Users can receive warnings if transactions trigger certain conditions like originating from certain IP addresses that are known to be botnets or represent malicious activity.
Sales Tax Calculator
Tax rate changes are determined automatically. Additionally, users can set up their business as sales tax nexuses and mark specific customers as exempt from tax.
Other features include:
Multilingual shop: Users can roll out various versions of their online stores in different languages.
Wide inventory management: Online Store Advanced subscribers can add up to 10,000 products and eGoods to their stores. The limit is raised to one million for those on the top tier (Online Store Expert).
Wish lists: Wish lists are a vital online store functionality that allow customers to save items for purchasing later. Those on the top 2 tiers are able to offer customers this functionality.
Amazon / Ebay: Online Store Expert subscribers can sell through Amazon and eBay thanks to an integrated app solution.
B2B support: Online Store Expert subscribers can also set up websites that are designed for business to business selling. Business customers can see pricing exclusive of VAT when browsing the store.
Customization
Template Based
IONOS website builder designed stores are built based on an expert designed template.
All templates feature:
Drag-and-drop sections
Video and image widgets which can be drag and dropped
Automatic labelling for sales items
This means that they’re totally beginner-friendly. No technical skills are needed to register online sales inventory and merchandise them online.
Equally, it’s true that users will not generally be able to achieve pixel perfect customization levels. Therefore, Ecommerce site owners with more advanced customization requirements might be better off going for a dedicated Ecommerce CMS or building their site completely from scratch with proprietary systems.
Payment Processing
Stores built using the builder can accept payments processed via Paypal as well as all major credit cards. Additional payment gateways can be configured depending upon the location of the store. Some users may prefer to configure options such as Stripe and Bitcoin.
SEO Tools
If you’re planning on selling online, then your customers are going to need to find your website. IONOS comes with SEO pre-baked into all its templates. Additionally, the program contains SEO fields in which people can set up individual fields in order to create fields that will boost search engine visibility.
Secure Hosting
Typically those that need to get websites onto the internet need to worry about 2 components: hosting and buying and renewing a domain name. The good news for IONOS customers is that the hosting component is completely taken care of with the Ecommerce site builder package.
In addition to receiving the hosting required to store the website’s files, users also receive a free SSL certificate. This means that those browsing the store will receive the padlock symbol in their browser indicating that the connection is secure and encrypted. This is practically a requirement for anybody thinking about selling online these days.
Customer Support Services
Website builder customers get full access to IONOS’s suite of customer support resources. This includes access to the IONOS Customer Support 24/7 contact options which include:
Support through a phone number. For expedited identification, customers provide agents with a temporary phone PIN and their customer ID
Ticket based support for email resolution
Access to the IONOS Help Center
The Help Center is a veritable trove of information about IONOS’s various products. By accessing this page, users can consult detailed tutorials outlining how to make maximum use of the features that are available including setting up websites and changing SEO configurations.
IONOS Website Builder Pricing and Plans
| Starter | Plus | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introductory Pricing | $5 per month for six months | $1 per month for 12 months | $15 per month for six months |
| Renewal Rate (Billed Annually) | $9 per month | $15 per month | $25 per month |
| Free Trial | No | No | No |
| Storage | 10GB | 50GB | Unlimited |
| Maximum Number of Pages | 10 pages | 200 pages | Unlimited |
| Free Domain Name | Yes, for the first year | Yes, for the first year | Yes, for the first year |
| Free SSL Certificate | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free Business Email | Yes, with 2GB of storage | Yes, with 12GB of storage | Yes, with 50GB of storage |
| Uptime Guarantee | 99.99% | 99.99% | 99.99% |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days | 30 days | 30 days |
| Customer Support | 24/7 via phone and live chat | 24/7 via phone and live chat | 24/7 via phone and live chat |
Other IONOS Features
The main feature of the IONOS website builder is its beginner-friendly site editor that makes it easy to build a website without any experience or coding knowledge. It is also e-commerce enabled for those who would like to create an online store and its plans include all of the website must-haves, such as a domain name, an SSL certificate and even email hosting.
Ease of Use
The leading selling point of the IONOS website builder is its ease of use. While it’s not the most feature-rich website builder on the market, this comes with the benefit of being a much more simplistic site editor. There is no need to have any prior website building or web design experience—never mind knowledge of code. Users simply purchase a plan, choose a pre-built template and customize their chosen template in the simple site editor. One notable feature within the site editor is that it is AI-enabled, which can be used to help write website copy.
E-Commerce Capabilities
In addition to its standard plans, IONOS also offers e-commerce plans for those who are looking to sell online. However, it offers a very limited feature set for online sellers. While many e-commerce site builders include e-commerce-specific features such as abandoned cart recovery, shipping and tax calculators, easy returns processing, dropshipping integrations and more, IONOS does not. So it’s worth considering your particular needs before investing your time and money into an IONOS online store.
Free Domain Name
Every website builder plan includes a free domain name for the first year. This saves businesses that need a domain name about $10 to $20, while also making the process of connecting their domain to their site a lot easier as it will happen more or less automatically when they get a domain from IONOS in the checkout process. It’s worth noting that after the first year, standard renewal rates apply. For example, a .com domain from IONOS renews at $17 per year.
SSL Certificates
All IONOS website builder plans include a free Wildcard SSL certificate. While an SSL certificate is required for online stores to accept payments, it is advisable for all websites to install an SSL certificate as it helps improve your site’s security and also helps your site rank higher in Google search results. SSL certificates are widely available for free, however, it does make it easier to get an SSL directly through IONOS when using its website builder.
Email Hosting
Those who need affordable email hosting will generally find IONOS to offer quality plans for a very competitive price. Its entry-level email hosting plan costs $1 per month for 2GB of storage. Its mid-tier plan costs $4 per month for 12GB of storage and its top-tier plan, Mail Business, costs $5 per month for 50GB of storage. It’s easy to set up—especially for users who purchased their domain name from IONOS as there is no need to manually connect your domain to your email account.
- Mail Basic 1: $1 per month for 2GB of storage (approximately 10,000 emails)
- Mail Basic 1+: $4 per month for 12GB of storage (approximately 60,000 emails)
- Mail Business: $5 per month for 50GB of storage (approximately 500,000 emails)
In addition to its own email hosting plans, IONOS also offers email hosting through Google Workspace. This makes it very easy to set up an email account that uses your own domain name to Google Workspace for those who want to use Google Workspace for their email, but purchased a domain from IONOS. New users currently get three months of Google Workspace for free and upon renewal, it costs $7.20 per month per user for 30GB of storage.
IONOS Alternatives and How They Compare
| IONOS | Weebly | Squarespace | Wix | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $1 per month for 12 months, then as low as $9 per month | Free; $12 per month (if billed annually)* | $16 per month (billed annually) | $16 per month |
| Price for E-Commerce Site | $19 per month | $12 per month | $27 per month (billed annually) | $27 per month |
| Free Trial | No | No, free plan only | 14 days | 14 days |
| Storage | Starts at 10GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Starts at 2GB |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Code-Free Site Editor | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pre-Built Templates | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free Domain Name | Yes, for one year | Yes | Yes, for one year | Yes, for one year |
| Free SSL Certificate | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free Business Email | Yes | No | Free for your first year on some plans | No |
| Accept Online Bookings | Yes | Via a third-party app | Yes | Yes |
| Accept Online Payments | Yes, with online store builder plans | Yes, on all plans | Yes | Yes, with the Core plan or higher ($27 per month) |
| Uptime Guarantee | 99.99% | No | 99.90% | 99.98% |
| Customer Support | 24/7 support via phone and live chat | 24/7 via live chat, email and phone | 24/7 support via live chat and email | 24/7 via email and a callback service |
IONOS vs. Weebly
Weebly is one of the best e-commerce website builders not only for its ease of use but also for its price. While an online store with Weebly that is ad-free and enables you to connect your own domain will cost $12 per month, with IONOS it will cost $19 per month. It’s also generally a better value with Weebly as it is designed to meet the needs of e-commerce businesses with a far more comprehensive set of e-commerce-related features—never mind unlimited storage.
For a basic business website, IONOS is the cheaper option at $9 per month compared to Weebly at $12 per month. Granted, Weebly does offer a free forever plan and a personal-use plan for $10 per month, but neither is suited for professional use. The free plan does not allow you to connect a custom domain, and instead uses a Weebly subdomain (e.g., yourbusiness.weebly.com) and though the personal plan does allow you to connect a custom domain, it displays Weebly ads, which looks unprofessional.
In general, Weebly costs a bit more than the IONOS website builder, but it is far more customizable and offers far more templates, giving users more flexibility to build their ideal site. Businesses that prioritize features and capabilities, and want a website that can more effectively scale with them, will likely find Weebly to be more suitable.
IONOS vs. Squarespace
Squarespace costs substantially more than IONOS at $16 per month compared to $9 per month. Granted, Squarespace does offer a much larger set of features and capabilities. In addition to a far larger template library with award-winning designs and seemingly endless add-ons to expand functionality, Squarespace plans come with unlimited storage and bandwidth. On top of that, Squarespace also offers a free 14-day trial, which enables users to test-drive the site builder and find out if it’s right for them—without having to invest in a plan.
Both have a similar site editor where elements, such as a paragraph of text, a photo or video, banner or contact form, can be added to web pages, but only to specific areas of the page. So when a user drags and drops, say a text block onto the page, it will go to the designated area—as opposed to the exact location on the page where it was dropped. While this type of site editor offers less design freedom, it can help web design beginners build a more professional-looking site.
IONOS vs. Wix
Wix does one major thing very well that IONOS does not: it is very customizable. Wix utilizes a true drag-and-drop site builder so that users can place elements, such as text, images, contact forms or more, anywhere on the page. Whereas, the IONOS site builder is set up so that while users can drag and drop elements to the page, there are set locations where elements can go. Granted, while Wix offers far greater design flexibility, this is not always best for every user. For example, those who are new to web design often find it easier to build a site when they have fewer design options.
Customization capabilities aside, Wix is generally a far more powerful website builder than IONOS. It has far more templates to choose from, which are conveniently broken out into business categories (e.g., professional services, real estate, e-commerce, etc.). It also has a tool that will design a site for you, which can be a good option for those who need a site but don’t want to spend a lot to hire a web designer, but who also do not necessarily want to design their own site.
Bottom Line
IONOS’s website builder tool for Ecommerce is a quick and easy way for users to build and design Ecommerce websites. Although the basic design interface is drag and drop, there are some surprisingly powerful features under the hood including a fraud detection system and support for up to one million products. Users can choose between 3 subscription tiers according to their needs.
About the Company
Founded in Germany and now based in the US, IONOS is a web hosting company that offers a variety of online services, including domain names, hosting packages, and website builder subscription products.
