Because of this, I'm oftentimes left with a decision—pay a premium to hire my own research team and create new and compelling content, or pay a fraction of the price for an AI writing tool that can quickly research a topic and write a paragraph as well as (or better than) most humans.

When the topic doesn't require specialized knowledge, I'm more likely to use AI.

In order to find the best AI content writer, I tested 12 copywriting tools and had each one generate a paragraph reviewing it's own service. The results were a mixed bag, but it's fair to say that the cream rose to the top.

Best AI Content Writers (2023)

Most Popular

Copy.AI

$49/mo*

• Dedicated to short form writing
• Free Trial Option
• $11M in Funding

Lab Notes:

Copy AI is a worthy competitor in the race to build neural content writers that match or exceed the abilities of human writers. Our testing showed a tool capable of producing quick and easy product descriptions, headlines, and social media content, but it lacks output for full-length articles and other long-form writing.

Read Review

Try For Free

2,000 words/mo Free

Our Favorite

Jasper AI

$82/mo*

• Templates for long and short form content
• AI art platform add-on
• $125M in Funding

Lab Notes:

We've been using Jasper AI almost exclusively after trying out the other writers. It's the best funded writing platform, which means continued improvement, but does also come with a heftier price tag. We don't mind the added cost, though as it still comes in well under the price of paying a human writer for roughly the quality of work.

Read Review

Try For Free

10,000 words free through our referral link

Best Value

Anyword

$24/mo*

• Plagiarism checker
• Writing community access
• $21M in Funding

Lab Notes:

Anyword is by far the cheapest of our top 3 AI writing tools, but doesn't give up much in terms of quality. We found that Anyword's short-form, technical copywriting was indistinguishable from humans and held up to the top competitors. In addition, Anyword gives users 2 months free trial to give the app a try.

Read Review

Try For Free

2 Months Free

The prices above are subject to change. Your costs may vary.

Researched, Reviewed, & Written by

Tim Seidler – Owner & Founder | WebMonkey

Our recommendations are based on real-life, hands-on experience and updated regularly on the basis of new product releases, pricing changes, and a number of quality factors.

Why use an AI content generator?

The real question is, why not?

If you haven't actually sampled text from an AI writing tool yet, I suggest you do. Entire paragraphs are generated in the blink of an eye simply by providing a few keywords and clicking submit. Not only that, but the copywriting that is produced can rival any professional human writer depending on the subject matter.

Instead of making you do all the work, I've picked a few target keywords and phrases to demonstrate just what these writing tools can do.

Our Choice – The Best AI Writing Tool

JASPER AI

By far the most comprehensive and awe-inspiring copywriting tool we have had the privilege of testing. Jasper spits out perfectly crafted sentences with almost no need for keyword manipulation. It's as if this text generating technology can read your mind and put your words on paper far better than you'd ever imagine was possible.

Try Jasper Free

First Impressions

I started using Jasper in the spring of 2023, and it just now occurred to me to review its writing technology along with its competitors.

The aha moment for me was when I found the paragraph generator in the list of templates. By simply typing in a question or topic and clicking “generate,” Jasper opened my eyes to how quickly I could produce copywriting on a large scale.

Since then I've used it to summarize bible verses, talk about art colleges, and review products.

When people catch onto AI writing technology the same way they've begun to find AI art, the world will change very rapidly, and I truly believe that Jasper will be leading the way.

Jasper AI Review (of itself!)

Jasper AI is a writing assistant powered by advanced artificial intelligence. It's designed to help copywriters produce error-free writing faster and more efficiently than ever before.

By utilizing advanced text filtering, plus deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) technologies, the writing assistant offers instant checks of your writing for spelling, grammar, tone of voice, punctuation and other inaccuracies. With this level of precision and accuracy, Jasper AI ensures both efficient and effective writing when it comes to tackling any text writing tasks.

The paragraph generator tool within Jasper enables users to quickly generate a high-quality, engaging paragraph with just a few clicks. With tags and sentence structures already included, all you have to do is add your own topic of discussion and let Jasper AI take care of the rest.

This technology can be used for a variety of applications such as short stories, essays, blog articles, social media posts, and much more. Editing is not necessary when using this cutting-edge tool; the generated paragraph is presented in an easy-to-use format that will save countless hours of time and energy in the writing process.

The text above was combined from two separate outputs. The level of specificity about the service shows me that Jasper actually looks at existing information on the web and bases the answer on it's findings.

How much does Jasper cost?

Jasper pricing is variable, but the company currently sets their Creator plan at $49/mo. For more advanced users the Pro plan is set at $69/mo.

Does Jasper AI have a free trial?

Yes! Jasper offers a 7-day free trial to try out the Creator and Pro plan features.

How much money has Jasper raised?

To date, the company has raised more than $126 million from both venture capital and private investment funds. The success of Jasper AI has been credited to its cutting-edge technology, which helps businesses reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Funding was led by notable venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Base10 Partners, with a number of other investors, including Radiant Venture Capital and Vertex Ventures, joining the latest round.

Most Popular AI Writer

COPY AI

It's hard to compete with Jasper, but lucky for Copy AI, they had a head start. Boasting more than 300,000 users, this service more than triples the reported users of Jasper. Though I found it slightly inferior in its ability to spit out perfect paragraphs, for certain applications, Copy AI is the way to go. It's also slightly less expensive if you're price conscious.

Try Copy AI Free

First Impressions

The first time I used the tool I tried to find a template that allowed me to generate a full paragraph based on one topic. What I came up with was Bullet Point to Paragraph.

It asked for a topic and at least 40 characters of text to describe what I wanted it to say. For me, it seemed a little excessive to require a character count when I'm ultimately trying to reduce my writing. That said, I was thoroughly impressed by the output.

I was given five well-crafted options of varying lengths. The sentences were arranged in multiple paragraphs—unlike Jasper, which bunches them all into one continuous string.

I like that it told me how many characters and words were in each output. They ranged from 80 words to 225 words each. Having the choice to decide how concise I wanted the requested text to be was a very nice touch.

Copy AI Review (of itself!)

With the new Copy AI from Artificial Intelligence SaaS, you can create content for blogs, e-books, and webpages that is indistinguishable from a human writer. Not only is it capable of writing in text format with an individual voice for each piece, but it can also create multimedia content that enriches your messages with images and videos.

Copy AI's machine learning algorithms look at the content you provide them as well as what other people like to read on the web. They learn from all this data to develop their own style and improve upon it over time. This means that not only do you get great content created by artificial intelligence software but the content will get better over time!

To see how well Copy AI works, I gave it the task of writing a blog post about itself.

The sentence above blows me away. The AI tool was self aware enough to know I was asking it to review itself.

Most Affordable AI Writer

Anyword

Rivaling the best AI writing tools, but costing less than half their competitors, Anyword delivers a simplified user interface that allows you to quickly jump into text generation using their AnyCopy feature. You also have the ability to work with pre-determined templates tailored to specific types of copywriting. Try it free for 2 months.

Try Anyword Free

Anyword Review (of itself!)

The AI Writing Tool from Anyword is a revolutionary program that can help streamline the writing process for all types of content. This AI-driven writing platform helps to automate aspects of the writing process such as research, grammar, and spellchecking. The easy-to-use interface allows users to customize the writing process to their particular needs and write with confidence.

Furthermore, the tool offers detailed analytics on your writing performance which can help to inform and improve your writing style in the future. All in all, the AI Writing Tool from Anyword is an impressive product that is sure to help make anyone's writing experience more efficient and effective.

I'm having a hard time finding fault with Anyword. I loved the simplicity of the interface. While they offer the same templates as other services, I didn't feel as overwhelmed with choices right away. Their AnyCopy tool allows you to jump into text generation mode right away, which I appreciate.

More AI Writing Tool Reviews

ChatGPT Review (of itself!)

ChatGPT is a valuable tool for writing content. It can help generate ideas, draft articles, and even refine your writing. The AI provides quick responses, which makes it ideal for brainstorming sessions. Its ability to understand and respond to various topics ensures that the content produced is relevant and well-informed. Whether you're writing a blog post, an essay, or social media updates, ChatGPT can assist in creating clear and engaging content.

One of the strengths of ChatGPT is its versatility. It can adapt to different writing styles and tones, making it suitable for a wide range of content needs. The AI can also help with editing and proofreading, ensuring that the final product is polished and free of errors. However, it's important to review the AI's suggestions to ensure accuracy and appropriateness. Overall, ChatGPT is a helpful tool for anyone looking to improve their writing process and produce high-quality content efficiently.

ChatGPT is one of the most popular AI content writing platforms and for good reason—it's versatile, concise, and conversational. It's also very affordable for how powerful it is. The main downside is that it has periods of downtime during times of peak traffic.

CopySmith Review (of itself!)

The Copysmith copywriting tool is a powerful technology that makes it easy to write persuasive copy quickly and conveniently. It uses AI technology to help you create optimized content for a wide range of marketing applications.

With its advanced algorithms, it can detect your target audience, determine the best voice and tone to use, automatically define USPs, pick keywords and phrases that ensure maximum engagement rate, and even generate headlines and body copy with just a few clicks.

Its sophisticated algorithm helps ensure that you get great quality content while also saving time and energy. Furthermore, with its extensive library of writing styles, it can be adapted to fit almost any type of writing – from SEO blogs to website copy and beyond! With its easy-to-use dashboard and affordable pricing plans, Copysmith makes it extremely fast and easy to generate engaging content that resonates with your intended audience.

Copysmith has a wide range of AI tools and templates to meet multiple writing needs. And while the platform takes a bit of practice to get the hang of, its output is solid when compared to other AI writing platforms.

Peppertype Review (of itself!)

If you're looking for a writing tool that can help you get your ideas down quickly and easily, you should check out Peppertype. It's a great AI-powered tool that can help you with everything from brainstorming to editing.

I really like the way that Peppertype helps you to organize your thoughts. It's easy to add new ideas and rearrange them, and the AI provides helpful suggestions for how you could improve your writing. The editing features are also really helpful, and I've found that the tool does a great job of catching errors that I might otherwise miss.

Overall, I highly recommend Peppertype if you're looking for a writing tool that can help you be more productive. It's helped me a lot, and I'm sure it can help you too!

I don't like that the Peppertype tool chooses to speak in the first person on my behalf. The writing is well done and can pass for human, but that doesn't mean I want to portray that. If there were additional checkboxes that gave me the option to change perspective I think I'd like it more.

Rytr Review (of itself!)

Rytr is an AI writing tool that uses AI to generate content for you. This article will discuss some of the use cases of this tool and how it can help you in your business.

The Rytr AI writing tool is a content generation platform that takes care of all the tedious tasks involved in creating content. It can help you generate blog posts, articles, newsletters and more. It also allows you to customize your content by adding images, videos, or links to relevant resources.

If you are looking for a way to save time on content creation while still maintaining quality, then this is the best AI writing assistant for you!

I don't love the way the tool infuses, what I deem, basic high school formatting into the text output. Telling me what the article will discuss and signing off with a paragraph that summarizes the previous paragraph is unnecessary filler, and I don't want to have to filter through that for the meat of the topic every time I ask for an output. On the other hand, if it was offered as a checkbox I could turn on and off, I think that could be useful.

Copymatic Review (of itself!)

If you are in search of a writing tool that can help you get your work done faster and easier, then you should definitely check out CopyMatic AI. This amazing tool uses artificial intelligence to help you write better and faster. Here is a review of this amazing tool to help you decide if it is the right fit for you. CopyMatic AI is a revolutionary writing tool that uses artificial intelligence to help you write better and faster. This amazing tool was created by two former Google employees, who saw the potential of using AI to help people write better.

CopyMatic AI is designed to help you improve your writing skills by giving you real-time feedback on your work. This writing tool is very easy to use. All you need to do is type in what you want to write and the tool will give you real-time feedback on your work. The feedback includes suggestions on how to improve your grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. You can also use the tool to check your work for plagiarism. CopyMatic AI is a very affordable writing tool. It only costs $3 per month, which is very reasonable considering the benefits it provides. Overall, CopyMatic AI is an excellent writing tool that can help you write better and faster.

While there are some highlights in the generated text, the overall impression I get is that this tool needs more development. The sentences are choppy, and it repeats “real-time feedback on your work.” Ultimately I don't want to have to edit AI writing extensively, as that defeats the purpose of using a copywriting tool in the first place.

WriteSonic Review (of itself!)

I recently had the chance to try out Writesonic AI Writing Tool and I must say, I'm impressed. It's an incredibly powerful tool, with a simple and intuitive interface that makes creating content incredibly easy. The AI-driven writing capabilities are particularly impressive. It can quickly generate content ideas and help you refine them into full-length articles, without you having to do any of the heavy lifting. The AI also checks your work for grammar and spelling mistakes, so you don't have to worry about making any errors.

I also found the tool's collaboration capabilities to be incredibly useful. It was easy to share my work with my team and get feedback in real-time, and the integrated chat feature was great for discussing ideas. Overall, I'd highly recommend Writesonic AI Writing Tool to anyone looking for a powerful and easy-to-use writing tool. It's definitely worth checking out!

Again, I don't love the first person. After trying out a few of these tools, I do think that it chooses that voice when you specify “review” in your seed keywords. When I swapped to asking about “features,” I didn't get the same perspective. The tool also chose to use the word “incredibly” more times than I'd like, but I think that overuse of adverbs is common across most AI writing tools. I also have a suspicion it might be one way Google's algorithms identify AI content—so beware.

Simplified Review (of itself!)

In this fast-paced world, we are always looking for ways to be more productive. One way to be more productive is to automate some of our tasks. This is where ai writing tools come in.

Ai writing tools can help you write faster and better. They can also help you with your grammar and spelling. In this article, we will review some of the best ai writing tools.

Though I included their brand name, Simplified, in the text prompt, the AI failed to return a result that was specific to this service. It also failed when it came to writing a lengthier response.

Scalenut Review (of itself!)

Scalenut is a unique AI writing tool that allows users to write articles and essays faster and with more accuracy. The Scalenut platform uses natural language processing (NLP) technology to analyze the user's text, identifying the main ideas, sentences, and paragraphs. This information is then used to generate an outline for the article or essay, as well as suggestions for improvement.

The Scalenut platform also includes a revision feature that helps writers edit their work quickly and easily. With this tool at your disposal, you will be able to produce top-quality content in no time!

Scalenut's AI writing tool performed well in my opinion. It gave me two paragraphs that are neatly written and go into some level of detail about the product.

Frase

Frase.io is yet another option for AI copywriting. Their tool offers a free trial that includes on search query. After that, you'll need to upgrade to a paid plan. The Solo plan gives you 10 queries per month for $15, the Basic gives you 30 queries per month for $45, and then Team plan is $115 per month for unlimited queries.

When there are services that give you access to much more for less, we have a hard time understanding why anyone would choose them.

Article Forge

Article Forge is a gated AI writing platform. In order to activate your free trial you're required to give up your credit card information and agree to the price increase after 5 days ($57/mo). This tells me that they either don't trust that users will want to use their service after testing the tool or that they're out of touch with the current ecosystem and are falling behind in other areas as well.

We recommend waiting for a free trial without strings attached or trying Jasper instead.

Copy Shark

After filling out Copyshark's application to demo the product before anyone else, I was left disappointed. Unfortunately, they're one of the only services that actually required a credit card up front.

Sadly, I know if I signed up for the trial I'd forget about the subscription and pay the $59/mo unintentionally.

It's hard to believe anyone would pay for a writing service they can't try first. For now, I'll wait to voice my opinion on the Copy Shark AI writing tool until they open up to free trials.

Examples of AI generated copywriting

The best way to show you the power of these copywriting tools is to put them to work. Below you'll find actual text that was created in a few short seconds.

Industry: Religion
Keyword: John 3:16
Thoughts: This example shows that the AI generator for Jasper was able to identify the actual bible verse, quote it, and summarize its relevance in a matter of seconds.

Generated by Jasper.ai

Industry: Education
Keyword: Best Nursing Schools in Chicago
Thoughts: Again, the paragraph generator from Jasper is able to pull relevant and specific information about the subject and craft a near-perfect paragraph that would take most humans significant brain power and time to match.

Industry: Gaming / Ecomm
Keyword: TITAN EVO 2023 SERIES Gaming Chair
Thoughts: If you're looking for product descriptions; Jasper is able to quickly research and summarize product details effortlessly.

Does AI generated content rank well in Google?

Yes! The writing generated from the best AI tools doesn't seem to be easily detected by search engines, and is capable of ranking quickly in the SERPS.

Don't believe me? Sign up for examples of AI generated content ranking top 10 within 24 hours!

Assuming you have an established web presence and follow standard SEO best practices, there's no reason AI generated copywriting can't perform well on Google.

Top 3 AI Copywriting Tools

Winner – Jasper

10,000 Words Free

Runner-Up – Copy.AI

2,000 Words/mo Free

Best for Less – Anyword

Get 2 Months Free

The post Best AI Content Writer : We Asked 12 AI Writing Tools to Review Themselves Then Assessed Their Answers appeared first on WebMonkey.

However, while larger companies have more flexibility to experiment or even create their own email marketing systems, small businesses often rely on existing options. When margins are tighter, a few percentage points of difference between a company can be enough to make or break your business.

With that in mind, we looked through the options to find the ten best email marketing services for small businesses. Before we get into the reviews, however, we want to briefly explain our process and how to interpret these reviews.

Finding The Right Service For You

Every email marketing service is different, and even more importantly, so is every small business. What works for other stores in your industry won’t necessarily work for you, particularly when we account for your staff’s skill and how much time you can devote to creating marketing emails.

That’s why our top companies list is alphabetical and does not have a universal winner or “best overall”. Titles like those can imply that you should choose a particular service even when that may not be right for your business.

Instead, we recommend reading through the reviews of all of these services, then determining which of them best fits your needs as a small business. Once you know that, you can focus on choosing between your top choices.

Don’t forget to account for company growth. If your business is stable and unlikely to change significantly in the future, that’s different from a business where you may need significantly higher marketing capacity over the next few years. It’s better to go with the service you want to use in the future, even if that’s different from the best choice right now.

Finally, all of the information below is accurate as of the last time we updated this article. However, some elements (like pricing) may have changed since then. Always check the current pricing on a marketing service’s website before you sign up with them.

Best Email Marketing Platforms 2023

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is an automation-focused marketing platform with a wide variety of features. Outside of email marketing, it also provides services like CRM, win probability estimations, market segmentation, and even engagement tracking.

This makes ActiveCampaign fundamentally more robust than email-focused companies, although not every small business wants or needs these features.

Pros:

• More features than most companies
• Highly personalized content
• Good for more extensive marketing teams

Cons:

• Requires more work than some competitors
• Doesn’t have as many templates

Major Features:

• Audience Segmentation: This feature allows you to group and organize contacts based on practically any information you have about them. For example, if you’re releasing a new accessory for a product, you can create marketing emails for people who bought the primary product.
• Conditional Content: Conditional content shows different things to different users based on whether they’ve met particular criteria. For example, this can add content to marketing emails if people purchased a product. This helps to automate the process of creating personalized marketing campaigns.
• Drag-And-Drop Design: ActiveCampaign’s email designer makes it easier to create reasonably good-looking marketing emails without worrying about coding them. This includes adding text, images, buttons, videos, line breaks, and other things.
• Integration: ActiveCampaign integrates with various apps to provide support for different users.
• Multi-User Editing: This system allows multiple users to edit marketing campaigns. While this isn’t as relevant for small businesses, it does help if you have one or two other people at your business who can help craft marketing messages.

Like all good marketing companies, ActiveCampaign features an extensive collection of analytics options to help you understand what your audience responds to. Once you know what works, you can perform additional tests to continue optimizing your emails and improving your results.

This is the fundamental key to success in email marketing as a small business. When the evidence guides your actions, you can produce better marketing emails with less effort. They even save older drafts so you can revert a template anytime you need to.

Overall, ActiveCampaign is a solid choice for many small businesses. It’s also extremely budget-friendly, with the basic email service available for as little as $9/mo if you have 500 or fewer contacts. The pricing goes up as you get more contacts, but you should get enough of a return on your investment to cover each stage when you get there.

We particularly like how you can focus on email marketing without paying for all of their other features. The premium option levels include more than most small businesses need, so paying for that would be a waste of funds.

That said, the other features also offer the opportunity for growth, so ActiveCampaign is a good choice if you expect your business to change over time and want easy access to marketing systems beyond emails.

AWeber

AWeber is a small business email marketing system, which is a significant difference from ActiveCampaign above. Like our previous choice, they focus on using automation to streamline the process and improve results for companies like yours.

Pros:

• Huge library of email templates
• Focuses more on email than most of its competitors
• Particularly easy to use

Cons:

• Not as good if you want non-email marketing

Major Features:

• Campaign Marketplace: AWeber offers pre-built marketing campaigns that can let you perform marketing even faster than their other options. That’s saying something because the other options are pretty fast in their own right.
• Drag And Drop Designer: AWeber offers easy-to-make custom emails and, more importantly, the same thing for landing pages. The second part is extremely useful because a poor follow-up to a good email will only hurt your conversion rate.
• Smart Designer: The Smart Designer is an AI-based assistant that helps create branded email templates. It does this by looking at your website to gather logos, imagery, and colors then bases customized templates for you based on that data. Recognizably branded emails perform better, so this is a useful feature.
• Template Library: AWeber’s library of email templates simplifies the process of making emails even further. In most cases, this is more useful than the Drag and Drop system because it’s faster, and they can promote templates that work better.

Aside from its technological features, AWeber offers 24/7 customer support. That’s extremely useful if you’re planning a marketing campaign late at night or even early in the morning if you end up needing help with a technical issue.

Even better, they offer a free version of their services. This supports up to 500 subscribers on your list and 3000 emails per month maximum, but also offers outstanding access to their other software and services. AWeber free includes email design, campaign automation, landing pages, full technical support, and more.

We like this a lot. If you have an incredibly small business, free email marketing is the best deal you can get, and AWeber’s systems are good enough to make it work for you. Even if you have more customers than that, you can start with only part of your subscription base to test their system and get to know it, then sign up for a paid plan when you’re more familiar with it.

With all of that in mind, AWeber is a good choice only if you’re a small business and expect to remain so. It does not offer other types of marketing services, so you’d need to sign up with someone else to do anything else.

They’re also a bit more expensive than some competitors on the lower end, starting about $19/mo for up to 500 subscribers on a pro plan and scaling up to $149/mo for a maximum of 25,000 customers.

At that point, though, you’re stretching the definition of a small business and should consider other services. We like AWeber as an option for small companies, but it’s not a great choice for medium or large organizations.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a comprehensive marketing platform offering email, online stores, website creation, and social media marketing as its main focuses. However, they also serve as a good example of when to scrutinize marketing hype.

For example, they claim that you can build an excellent website in minutes. While it’s true that you can use a template to set up the basics of a website, creating a truly comprehensive site that includes unique images and photos, company information, and content for users to access takes somewhat longer. In short, remember to be careful when a company hypes itself up.

Pros:

• Integrates with a wide variety of marketing tools
• Includes in-depth guides to help you learn more about marketing
• Centralizes data so you can understand things better

Cons:

• More useful for mid-sized businesses than small ones

Major Features:

• Centralized Marketing: Constant Contact lives up to its name by gathering multiple marketing tactics in one platform. This includes email, but also social media, SEO, and other processes.
• Ecommerce Integration: Constant Contact helps integrate its email marketing practices into the websites it creates. This is somewhat easier than doing each thing separately and trying to ensure they can link up together.
• Email Campaign Ideas: This page includes design tips, best practices, recommendations, and other content tailored to specific industries. This is useful for designing the material, but not quite as fast as AWeber’s Template Library.
• Marketing Advisors: Constant Contact has a large team of online marketing advisors that you can connect with through email or, more usefully, over the telephone. This allows for rapid guidance whenever you’re unsure about a part of an advertising campaign.

As we can see from these features, Constant Contact is fundamentally different from our first two choices. It’s not as easy to use as AWeber, so it’s not the best choice if you’re short on time and want to automate as much as you can. However, since it’s more interconnected, it offers seamless support for more marketing strategies.

Constant Contact also works out better for companies expecting some level of growth. The more types of marketing a company offers, the better it is as you continue growing. Constant Contact offers a 60-day email marketing trial, which is long enough to learn most of the nuances of their system.

Email marketing here starts at $20/mo, which is relatively high for the introductory level. Websites are sold separately and start at $10/month, and they include SSL Certificates, unlimited storage, analytics, custom domains, and eCommerce support. However, they have extra transaction fees, and that adds up over time.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a creativity-focused marketing platform. Alongside email marketing, it also focuses on signup forms and landing pages for visitors. Note that this isn’t quite the same thing as a full website design. Landing pages are simpler, and users may not visit anywhere else, but sometimes that’s all you need.

The main difference here is that ConvertKit isn’t so much for small businesses as it is for tiny businesses. You might use it for selling individual products to relatively small groups of people, rather than a larger number of people around the world or in your neighborhood.

Pros:

• One of the best choices for single-employee businesses
• Better for artistic products
• Has a clear, easy-to-understand flow between its components

Cons:

• Not as good for regular businesses

Major Features:

• Easy Email Templates: Like many other companies, ConvertKit offers email templates to help make reasonably decent-looking marketing emails with minimal effort. This isn’t unique to them, but they do a good job at it and have a respectable number of options.
• Email Automation: Automation options include visual options to help you understand the automation paths and adjust it as needed. Analytics information helps you see how different steps are performing, allowing you to tweak and improve them over time.
• Email Signups: ConvertKit emphasizes this more than many other email marketing companies. Signup forms work together with their landing pages to help get more and more people onto your marketing lists, ultimately helping you grow your business.
• Landing Pages: For sufficiently small businesses, landing pages make more sense than full websites. These are direct sales pages that focus entirely on one product, and you can make more landing pages for each new product you want to offer.

All of these are decent features, and to an extent, we’re glad ConvertKit exists. There are only so many large businesses out there, and not every small business wants to grow that way. Companies that focus exclusively on the smallest businesses aren’t right for everyone, but they are right for some people, and that’s what really matters here.

In short, ConvertKit only makes sense if you’re extremely small and just want to do easy setups for marketing your products. This is closer to hobby-level than true business-level stuff. It’s also a good option if you want to test things with a smaller audience before opening up your marketing to a larger group. That’s a niche case, but it is a viable option.

Drip

Drip is a small business-focused eCommerce engine. Their main product is something they call ECRM, or eCommerce customer relationship management. This is an important distinction from purely email-based marketing because it means you can’t effectively separate the email from everything else. You should use all of their systems, or none of it, but nothing in-between.

Pros:

• Does a lot more than just email
• Flexible, but focuses on premade workflows to minimize your startup times
• Good for users who want to spend time optimizing marketing campaigns

Cons:

• You won’t get anywhere near the full value unless someone can devote a lot of time to it

Major Features:

• Customer Data: The customer data processes gather and display information to help you understand your audience. These include tags (which make it easier to segment audiences), customized fields, event tracking, and integration with platforms like Facebook and Shopify to understand the customer’s entire journey.
• Engagement: Engagement options support customer interaction, including through the use of SMS and behavior-based automation. Drip’s engagement tools also support things like showing advertisements to specific users just after other interactions they get, such as email or physical postcards.
• Optimization: Drip’s optimization options include data dashboards that clarify useful insights and A/B testing systems to let you see which variants of your marketing processes are the most successful. This is key to long-term growth, so it’s one of our favorite features within automation systems.
• Personalization: Personalization options include things like providing unique discount codes, product recommendations, or price-drop notifications based on their previous behavior. This allows you to get the benefits of sales without necessarily giving those benefits to the public at the wrong time.
• Workflows: Drip focuses on premade workflows rather than asking you to build them yourself. Notably, they have quite a lot of premade choices, and that makes it much easier for small businesses to get started.

Like ConvertKit, Drip isn’t a great choice once your business grows past a certain point. It has a process to use, and that process certainly works, but it’s only flexible within its own structure and doesn’t connect too well to most outside services. That’s why businesses that want to work with a lot of other services should choose another email provider instead.

However, Drip is easy to set up and get going. Their workflows are the biggest part of this because most of those have been heavily optimized over the years to work for most people in most situations. You can realistically install dozens of well-made automated workflows in a couple of minutes, giving you an instant, fully-functioning marketing campaign.

Pricing starts at $19/month for up to 500 subscribers, with unlimited emails from your account during that period. This scales up to about $1,599/mo if you have 140,000 people, and anywhere higher than that is customized pricing. However, that’s well beyond small business, so chances are you’ll never have to worry about the high end of their fees.

GetResponse

GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing platform for companies of all sizes, which is excellent if you want to grow your small business and stick with the same marketing system. Changing systems is relatively difficult past a certain point, so that’s not a small consideration.

Email isn’t the only part of their platform, but it is a significant part, and it has several features that help it stand out as a viable choice for small businesses.

Pros:

• A great choice if you want to keep growing your company
• Easy access to art
• More landing page options than some other services

Cons:

• Requires more marketing experience to get the most from it

Major Features:

• Automated Blog Digest: This is relatively rare among email marketing services, so it stands out as a more significant selling point. This system helps you increase your blog’s reach by sharing it on social media and through email pages, which is excellent if users enjoy reading your content.
• Autoresponders: These are automated email sequences that automatically follow up with users who perform certain activities. These are a great way to help users feel like you’re giving them timely, personalized attention.
• Landing Pages: GetResponse heavily emphasizes the use of landing pages, including showing different landing pages to different groups. This allows you to fine-tune your customer’s experience based on data like culture, regional education, and spending habits.
• Shoppable Emails: Shoppable emails allow people to add products to their cart directly from the email. This reduces the number of steps users need to complete to buy something and thereby helps improve overall sales rates. Like the automated blog digest, this is a surprisingly rare feature.

Like other email marketing services for small businesses, GetResponse includes a selection of responsive templates that help improve conversion rates. Their landing pages are exceptionally robust thanks to their use of Shutterstock and Giphy. These services mean you don’t have to provide your own pictures, and that makes a huge difference.

They also support A/B testing to get more information on which services are effective and which aren’t. We always like seeing that, and the added flexibility of on-page options like countdown timers, forms, and popups lets you customize things even more.

GetResponse starts at $15/mo for up to 1000 subscribers on your list, which is a bigger list size than many competitors have before costs start going up. Their pricing scales up to $450/mo for 100,000 people on the regular plan. They also have premium plans for moderately higher prices.

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most well-known email marketing platforms for small businesses, and with good reason. However, in recent years, they’ve been expanding their offerings to become more of an all-in-one marketing platform. Their current services include website creation, marketing, and even help for physical advertising like postcards.

Physical ad services are scarce among email marketing companies. While that’s not a deciding factor for most businesses, it does show that MailChimp is willing to look outside of the box and create services that can help your small business from a single centralized area.

Pros:

• One of the largest and most reliable services
• Offers comprehensive email and website development
• Extensively compatible with other apps

Cons:

• Can be a little overwhelming if you don’t know where to begin

Major Features:

• Content Studio: MailChimp’s content studio uses an AI-based Creative Assistant that helps rapidly build on-brand designs and edit them as needed for different marketing channels. This makes it easier to provide a consistent look regardless of where customers find you.
• Extensive Integration: MailChimp can connect to many types of apps and stores to further improve our experience. For example, their system will automatically gather your product images and store them in one place so you can add them to marketing emails and other material as needed.
• Team Collaboration: MailChimp is team-friendly, which means that multiple people can work on the same marketing campaign, and everyone will still be on the same page for creating content.

As a comprehensive service, MailChimp works best when you use it for all of your marketing needs. Luckily, their focus on integration means you can still use most of your existing apps and software, and that’s a benefit most of its competitors can’t offer. If you’re still unsure which service to use, MailChimp is a pretty good choice for most small businesses.

Pricing starts at free for up to 2,000 contacts and one primary audience, which is useful for learning their system and getting used to it. This easy entry is another reason they’re a good default choice. Paid plans range from $9.99/mo (for up to 50,000 contacts) to $299/mo (for their premium services and over 200,000 contacts).

MailerLite

As their name implies, MailerLite is an email-focused marketing platform, although they offer to land pages to help complete the experience. They’re fundamentally a lighter marketing platform than many of their competitors, but that’s not always a bad thing.

When you’re dealing with everything else your business needs, a system that’s too involved can be just as bad as one that doesn’t have enough features. Balancing your time commitments is essential to success, and MailerLite’s inherently smaller service is sometimes the best choice.

Pros:

• Simpler and easier to use than some competitors
• Average customer service response time of fewer than 5 minutes for a chat
• Supports features like pop ups and surveys

Cons:

• Not a good choice if you want to keep growing your business

Major Features:

• Drag And Drop Emails: MailerLite features basic templates supported by a drag and drop editor. This isn’t as robust as AWeber’s, but they’re not trying to be that comprehensive, either.
• Integration: MailerLite integrates with services like CouponCarrier, Shopify, and WooCommerce. This makes it easier to start working if you’re already using popular platforms.

MailerLite’s focus on simplicity is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. It’s not a good choice if you want to keep growing your business because you’ll hit a point where it simply doesn’t have the features to keep up with other services.

That said, we need to point out the difference between the number of subscribers and the complexity of your business. You can market to a huge list of people while still having a simple business. MailerLite is suitable for simple businesses, regardless of size, but not for complex companies.

Pricing starts at free (with 12,000 emails/month and up to 1000 subscribers) and scales upward from there. Costs go to about $1,915/mo for up to 600,000 subscribers, and anything beyond that is going to be custom pricing.

SendGrid

SendGrid is an email-focused platform, which means they don’t do much with landing pages, websites, eCommerce stores, or social media. That means they’re not as good of a choice if you want to centralize your marketing while your company grows, but it also means that they’re extremely good at their focus.

SendGrid is particularly suitable for high volume senders. They claim to send out more than 80 billion emails per month, giving them incredibly precise insights about user behaviors in different industries.

Pros:

• A great choice if you only want to work with emails
• Includes an email API for customized programming
• Supports email testing
• Offers many extra features, including flexible design, list management, and comprehensive statistics

Cons:

• Not good for anything besides email

Major Features:

• Flexible Systems: SendGrid supports both customized programming and the use of their Drag And Drop interface, which means you can design emails and other content exactly the way you want to use it.
• Great For High Volume Delivery: SendGrid delivers more emails than most of their competition, which means their platform is optimized for extremely high volumes. Therefore, you can scale your deliveries upward without worrying about running into technological limits.
• Supports Growth: While it doesn’t provide non-email marketing services, SendGrid is a good choice for businesses of all sizes. This means you can keep using it no matter how big your business gets, and you can even bring other employees onboard.

Overall, we don’t like SendGrid for small businesses as much as some other options on this list. The reason for that is their focus is entirely on email, and small businesses often do better with a comprehensive platform. For email-only needs, however, it’s a top choice.

Pricing here ranges from their free plan (limited to 100 emails/day, with no time limits) to $14.95/mo for their initial paid plan. This scales up to $29.95/mo for up to 100,000 emails, or more if you want their pro features.

Note that SendGrid prices things mainly by the number of emails you send, not your list’s size. This is different from most of their competitors and worth keeping in mind. They switch to customized pricing on the professional plans around the time you hit 1.5 million emails/month, but that’s beyond most small businesses.

SendinBlue

SendinBlue is an all-in-one service that offers email, SMS, ads, landing pages, and other marketing opportunities. Like most of their competitors, they provide extensive automation to help minimize the time you need to spend tweaking things. Their platform is fully GDPR-compliant, too, which is useful if you want to market in the EU.

They claim to send about 100 million emails per day, which is a small fraction of what SendGrid does. That doesn’t mean SendinBlue is bad, but numbers like these help illustrate the scale of different systems.

Pros:

• A great choice for businesses who want to centralize marketing efforts
• Supports transactional emails
• Integrates with advertising systems for retargeting
• Supports plugins for added connectivity

Cons:

• Fewer templates than services like AWeber

Major Features:

• Email Heat Map: This is a rarer analytics service that visually displays how people engage with your emails. This makes it easier to tweak and adjust things, so the most important things are in the areas where people have the most activity.
• Send Time Optimization: This part of their service uses a machine learning-based algorithm to adjust send times and improve overall email delivery rates.

Overall, SendinBlue is a generalist service. Their email systems and analytics are more than viable, but they don’t have quite the same edge in specific areas as many of their competitors. That said, they’re not fundamentally bad at anything, either. Since they’re an all-in-one, they’re good at centralizing data and supporting your needs as your business grows and changes.

SendinBlue also uses click-through reports, which help simplify the critical information, rather than bombarding you with charts and graphs. This is a nice touch for small business owners who don’t have the time to spend poring over big data’s fine details.

Like most of the better services, SendinBlue offers a free plan, which in their case allows unlimited contacts but only 300 emails per day. Their other plans range from $25/mo (10,000 emails) to $99/mo (100,000 emails) on their base plan and somewhat more for their pro plan.

Final Thoughts

All of the services above are great options on their merits, but they have different focuses. AWeber and ConvertKit are especially visual (reminding us of Adobe's advertisement maker). SendGrid, on the other hand, is amazing for high volume delivery. If you’re still unsure which service is right for you, start by narrowing it down to your top three choices and figuring out which service will be the best choice in the future.

The post Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business appeared first on WebMonkey.

Google uses Core Vitals to determine a website's ranking. Thus choosing a WordPress theme that optimizes Google's Core Vitals criteria is critical to performing well in Google rankings. We've evaluated the best WordPress themes for Google Core Vitals to help you choose the best option for your website. Let's get started!

What are the Best WordPress Themes for Google Core Vitals?

If you want to optimize your website's performance on Google Core Vitals, these WordPress themes are an excellent place to start.

Here are our top choices for the best WordPress themes for Google Core Vitals:

• GeneratePress
• Astra
• Neve
• Twenty Twenty
• Zakra
• Schema
• OceanWP
• Hello Elementor

Google uses the following metrics to determine the UX.:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): is how quickly the webpage loads. To perform high on this metric, LCP should happen in 2.5 seconds of when the page begins to load
• First Input Delay (FID): the time from the user's initial interaction with a website to when the browser responds to the exchange. Shouldn't be over 100 milliseconds
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): is a website's visual stability. For a good UX, websites need to sustain a CLS of less than .01

The themes that made our list are among the fastest full-featured WordPress themes available. The fastest among them is open to interpretation; some barebones themes will perform faster on objective speed tests using Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTMetrix.

The themes we chose for this list will ensure your visitors have a positive UX. These themes will also help you maximize your Google Core VItals metrics, ensuring your website has the best chance at ranking high in Google search results.

Best WordPress Theme for Google Core Vitals Review

Now that you understand the criteria that make up Google Core Vitals let's take a closer look at the WordPress themes that made our list.

GeneratePress

If your focus is improving your website's performance while maintaining the ability to customize and control your page, GeneratePress is worth checking out. GeneratePress comes in free and premium versions and is arguably one of the fastest WordPress themes available.

It is an elegant and lightweight WordPress theme. GeneratePress's founder and lead developer, Tom Usborne, tested the basic GeneratePress theme's speed. The results speak for themselves.

GeneratePress got a GTMetrix score of 100/100 and a Google Insights Page score of 100/100 for desktop and mobile. Their test website loads in under one second; that's a lightning-fast loading time.

Generate Press has a lot to offer in addition to speed; it's also a great WordPress theme. GeneratePress is a versatile and fully customizable theme making it adaptable to most businesses. The theme boasts over one thousand 5-star ratings on wordpress.org.

Features

Although GeneratePess has a free option, its best features are available only with the premium version.  By now, you know that GeneratePress is all about speed and streamlining the UX. One of its main features is its lightweight and fast. It comes with 14 modules that allow you to make the most of the theme. What’s nice is that you can disable any that you don't need.

The theme is built on the lightweight but powerful Flexbox Grid, which looks great across devices. The schema is built-in, ensuring improved search engine result pages. The WordPress Customizer works superbly with all theme customization options found in one place, making learning how to customize the theme straightforward.

GeneratePress works with the most popular WordPress plugins, including Jetpack, Yoast SEO, Akismet, Wordfence Security, BuddyPress, and many more. There's a lot for developers to like with many hooks and filters. Developers can use these features without altering the theme files that reset when the theme updates.

Pros: 

• Fastest WordPress theme
• Easily customizable, knowledge of coding not required
• Excellent performance when all modules are active
• Developer friendly
• Affordable pricing

Cons: 

• Free version has limited features
• No option to buy a lifetime plan

Our Choice – The Best Theme for Core Vitals

ASTRA

One of the most popular WordPress themes, Astra, also has a good reputation for quickly loading web pages. Astra's goal is to have a premade website ready to go as soon as you install it on your WordPress site. It is a multipurpose theme that is customizable to meet just about any niche.

Download Astra

You can further customize Astra by pairing it with WordPress page builder plugins, which is a popular way to use this theme. In addition to all the customization options, Astra is known for its outstanding performance. Astra's GTMetrix score is 100/100, and its Google Insights Page (mobile only) score for mobile was a highly respectable 99/100.

Astra has a free basic version and a pro version. It packs excellent features, including developer tools, ease of use, and solid coding, into an attractive WordPress package. Astra has over 4500 5-star ratings on wordpress.org.

Features

Astra's most prominent feature is its quick load times, with Astra claiming a load time of 1.1 seconds the generic “hello world” post using their theme. Astra doesn't use JQuery, which is one reason it loads faster than other WordPress themes. According to WP Rocket's speed test, Astra comes in right after GeneratePress with a speed of 1.599 seconds.

Coding is the backbone of any theme, and Astra is a well-coded theme. However, Astra has a page builder, so you don't need to know coding to use this theme. Astra uses Underscore's starter theme. Underscore is the basis for recent default WordPress themes. Thus, Astra's theme is clean and logical.

Astra supports schema markup to benefit your website's SEO and has many theme hooks for developers to add content. If you don't want to build your website from scratch, Astra stands out for the number of pre-built templates it offers. From Gutenberg and Brizy to Elementor and Beaver Builder, there are many page builders to choose from.

Pros: 

• Lots of customization options
• User-friendly and easy to configure
• Fast loading speed
• Offers many pre-built templates
• Developer friendly

Cons: 

• Best features only available with Pro version
• A bit expensive
• No support forum

Neve

ThemeIsle, the company behind Neve, is known for creating fast and flexible themes and plugins. Neve is a multipurpose theme with a highly customizable layout. It's also the fastest of Themselse's themes. Neve works well with large and small websites. This theme is user-friendly and compatible with all of the popular page builders.

Neve performed well on GTMetrix speed tests with a score of 99/100 on Google Insights Page (mobile only); it scored 100/100, making it an excellent option for improving your website's speed. Neve is a multipurpose WordPress that will work well with just about any website.

The website's setup is easy; you can have a basic webpage up and running in minutes thanks to Neve's many starter sites. You don't need to know how to code to use this theme. Neve has close to 500 5-star ratings on wordpress.org.

Features

If you want to improve your website's mobile speeds, Neve is worth a look. The Neve theme focuses on faster and more robust loading experiences on mobiles and tablets. The theme also is fully responsive, adjusting to the screen size of any mobile device.

Neve supports all of the major page builders and comes with built-in SEO to improve indexing and ranking. If you're setting up an online store, Neve works seamlessly with Booster for WooCommerce to ensure your business has every opportunity to succeed.

Nerve offers many options for customizing the layout of your website, including efficiently designed headers and footers. Three are also various hook locations that allow custom code to create innovative and professional designs.

Pros: 

• Outstanding onboarding process
• Focus on mobile optimization
• Translation ready, great for non-English speaking countries
• Lean core theme
• Many customization options

Cons:

• Limited options with the free version
• Homogenous starter sites

Twenty Twenty

Twenty twenty is WordPress's default theme that gets a new updated release annually. This theme comes installed on every WordPress build; you can also install past versions of the theme, such as Twenty Nineteen.

Twenty Twenty is a Gutenberg ready theme and integrates well with the Gutenberg page builder. Gutenberg is a block editor, and Twenty Twenty allows users to take full advantage of its flexibility.

Besides being a great theme, Twenty Twenty's performance metrics are impressive. WordPress's default theme consistently performs as one of the fastest WordPress theme options. Twenty Twenty has stable code and a slim file structure, which enhances its performance. Its GTMetrix score is 100/100, and its mobile Google Insights Page score is 99/100.

Features

All versions of the Twenty Twenty theme, past and present, are free to use. Twenty Twenty doesn't have as many ratings as other themes, but those that exist are overwhelmingly positive. Twenty Twenty has a lot of notable features.

Since it's updated yearly to match WordPress's current version, many say it integrates perfectly with WordPress. As mentioned above, Twenty Twenty is one of the fastest WordPress themes. One reason is its file sizes, and requests are regularly very low. Being made for WordPress reduces the speed and conflict issues found with many third-party themes.

There are countless customization options for Twenty Twenty, and it comes with various tools such as editor styles, colors, fonts, and infinite scrolling. The theme also adapts brilliantly to mobile devices and offers lots of user-friendly tools adaptable to all devices.

Pros:

• Landing pages are easy to make
• Outstanding performance with mobile devices
• Integrates almost perfectly with WordPress
• Great block editing
• Lightweight with fast loading speeds

Cons: 

• Simplistic, barebones look
• Variable fonts can be slow

Zakra

A ThemeGrill creation, Zakra, is a lightweight multipurpose theme that has something to offer everyone. Zakra's speedy interface stands out, scoring 99/100 on the GTMetrix speed test and 98/100 on Google Insights mobile page score. These scores match the speeds of the industry's top performers.

Features

Zakra offers both free and premium versions of its theme. Unlike most themes, Zakra free version comes with impressive features. However, the premium version is where Zakra truly shines with excellent WooCommerce tools, blogging options, and advanced headers.

If you have an online store, Zakra is worth considering because it is especially suited to online businesses. With its speed optimization, you'll maximize your opportunities for conversions. Being AP ready and fully responsive, Zakra looks great across all devices.

There are many demos for this theme, including many eCommerce starter sites. Zakra integrates seamlessly with Elementor giving you many customization options. Zakra's optimization tools make it a pleasure to use.  Zakra has over three hundred 5-star reviews on wordpress.org.

Pros: 

• SEO friendly
• Lightweight with a clean user interface
• Great for small businesses
• Compatible with Gutenberg and a few other page builders
• Highly flexible sidebars

Cons: 

• Fewer options than GeneratePress on what you can disable on a post or page
• Some users report difficulty loading the theme on mobile devices

Schema

“The fastest SEO WordPress theme available” is how Schema advertises itself. It is a clean and lightweight theme with a professional design. This theme is known for its quick loading speeds and was designed with bloggers and entrepreneurs in mind.

Schema comes with a responsive, highly customizable design. While it's not as fast as GeneratePress, Schema still posts some impressive speeds. On the GTMetrix speed test, Schema posts a speed of 93/100 and gets the same 93/100 on Google Insights mobile page score.

While it's not the fastest theme, it's not bad. Plus, it comes with all the tools you need to build and run an impressive website or blog.

Features

Schema is a premium website theme; there's also a free version called Schema Lite. Schema's fully responsive design ensures it looks great on mobile devices as well as PCs. The theme features a custom options panel, post widgets, shortcodes, and pixel perfect design.

In line with its focus on SEO optimization, it includes rich snippets that help search engines find your sight resulting in higher search engine rankings. The theme manages ads efficiently, coming with an ad management panel that allows you to manage your website's ads easily. The theme's code is secure and lightweight, and it supports custom CSS.

If you need to build a multilingual website, Schema is translation ready. You can also choose from hundreds of Google fonts for your website. It also has social media sharing functionality. As if that weren't enough, outstanding support is available from its support forum.

Pros: 

• Rich snippets
• Clean Code
• High-quality support
• Leader in SEO WordPress themes
• Very user-friendly

Cons: 

• A very text-heavy theme
• Doesn't work well if you want to build a visually appealing site

OceanWP

OceanWP is an easily customizable and fast WordPress theme. It's a free multipurpose theme that gives you a lot of control over your website using the real-time WordPress customizer. While the core OceanWP theme is free, it also offers many free and premium extensions that add functionality.

OceanWP stands out for being user-friendly, allowing you to import ready-made demo sites using their free import extension. With the free version, you get seven free extensions, and you have the option of adding 11 more premium extensions to customize the theme further.

This theme is a hit with users because it's easy to use and intuitive, giving users the power to customize the theme to their needs—oceanWP scores 98/100 on the GTMetrix speed test and 86/100 on the Google Insights mobile page score.

Features

One of OceanWP's best features is its WordPress customizer settings. Even with only a few extensions installed, the user has a long list of options to choose from. This is more than what you'll find on the average WordPress theme. The theme also comes with many unique and attractive demos for designing your site.

The theme is fully responsive and arguably looks better on smaller devices but performs well across the board—the built-in SEO to help your page's indexing and search rankings. The theme also supports WooCommece, which is a must if you're setting up an online store. WooCommerce features include quick view, native cart popup, and a floating cart bar.

OceanWP also works well with most popular page builders such as King Composer, Beaver Builder, and Elementor. It supports social media integration, popup notices and has a full-screen scrolling tool. The theme also has one-click ready to use templates.

Pros:

• Easy onboarding process has you up and running in no time
• Lightweight theme with fast page loading times
• Large selection of quality demos
• Offers a large number of free and premium extensions
• Developer friendly with SEO integration

Cons:

• The customizers options can be overwhelming
• Not compatible with speed optimization plugins

Hello Elementor

Hello is a lightweight and barebones WordPress theme designed to work with the Elementor page builder plugin. Unlike the other themes we've reviewed, Hello won't look like a real webpage until you start using the Elementor plugin.

Being so stripped down of features and its styling makes Elementor one of the lightest themes available. With Hello, you're responsible for building everything from scratch. If you want full control over your website, Hello is worth a look. Hello is a free starter theme that works with either Elementor or Elementor Pro page builders.

If you're not familiar with Elementor, it's a drag and drop WordPress page builder that is easy to use and requires no coding knowledge. Hello scores a 99/100 on the GTMetrix speed test and 100/100 on the Google Insights mobile page score.

Features

One of the best things about Hello is it's free and one of the fastest WordPress themes available. You don't have to worry about bloat or excess code when using Hello because none of that is preloaded on this theme. Developers will appreciate the hooks available to expand the theme.

Hello integrates perfectly with the Elementor page builder allowing you to make any type of website you need. The theme's base design and files are minimalistic, which contributes to the theme's speed. The interface is uncluttered and user-friendly.

Many page builder elements come included with Hello, such as portfolios, Google Maps, video, heading, spacers, posts, and much more. The theme is fully responsive and looks great across devices. If you have questions, Hello has a strong support system with many articles online.

Pros:

• One of the fastest WordPress themes
• Seamless integration with Elementor page builder
• Great for building fast landing pages
• The theme is 100% free
• No bloat or excess code

Cons:

• Basic styling options
• You have to start from scratch to build a website

FAQs

If we haven't answered all of your questions above, maybe you can find what you're looking for in this list of frequently asked questions.

• How can I improve my core web vitals?

One of the best things you can do is optimize your website's images. Images on your site are most likely the website's LCP. If you optimize your images, you'll be one step closer to improving your core web vitals.

• What is page experience?

The series of signals that indicate the user's perceived experience while visiting a page, apart from the web page's quality and content.

• How do I check my website's Google Core Vitals performance? 

You can use the following tools:

• Google Chrome Extension
• PageSpeed Insights
• Web.dev Measure
• Google Search Console

Final Thoughts

Performing well on Google Core Vitals is essential to search engine indexing and ranking. Google introduced Core Vitals to help websites optimize the UX. Choosing the right WordPress theme will help you improve your website's Google Core Vitals performance. To optimize your website, be sure to select a theme that is clean, lightweight, and above all, fast.

All of the WordPress themes that made our list perform admirably; however, GeneratePress stands out in a crowded field. Before choosing a theme, be sure it matches your business goals. Selecting one of the themes on our list will put your website on the path to performing well on Google Core Vitals.

The post Best WordPress Theme for Google Core Vitals & Page Experience appeared first on WebMonkey.

WordPress has 200 themes, so what's the best WordPress theme for blogging? 

What's the Best WordPress Theme for Blogging?

In the interest of time, we've listed our top seven choices right from the get-go for anyone who can't stick around: 

1. Divi – Best Overall 
2. Thrive Theme Builder – Best for Lead Generation 
3. Hemmingway – Best Free Theme
4. Typography – Best Minimalist Theme
5. Astra Pro – Best for Premium Expansion
6. Entrepreneurship – Best for Magazine Style 
7. Angle – Best Flexible Space 

We've also gone into great detail about blogging themes and each of our top choices, so read on to learn even more valuable information. 

How We Determined Our Top Choices

The themes we picked weren't just picked from a hat. In fact, we used a thorough screening process based on critical features that we feel are important for blogger themes. The features we focused on the most included:

• Ease of Use
• Customization/Design
• Support
• Value

These four components serve as a good starting point for finding a high-quality blogging theme. 

Divi – Best Overall

Created by Elegant Themes, the Divi theme has proven to be our number one choice overall. Not only is it prevalent among WordPress users across the board, but it builds in tons of useful and impressive features that are easy to implement. 

Pros

• Extremely user-friendly
• Ready to use out of the box
• Highly customizable
• Multipurpose use 
• Easy and direct text editing
• Mobile responsive layouts
• Includes 20 premade layouts

Cons

• You have to load your page before truly seeing the layout
• No live chat support
• Elegant Themes uses a separate marketplace, meaning you have to pay for additional plug-ins 

Ease of Use: 4.5/5

This functional theme is set to go from the start. It works just like any average WordPress theme – despite the fact that it's third-party created. 

Divi is very much a learn-as-you-use platform. In other words, the best way to pick it up is to just jump right in. Once you get going, you'll notice that all of the columns, content block, text boxes, and rows are simple to move, juggle, and adjust. 

Customization/Design: 4.5/5

Divi provides both premade layouts and the ability to completely customize your entire site. With the easy-to-use tools and many template options, you can essentially create any kind of structure or design that you can think of. 

You can start with anyone of their included designs or layouts and work from there.

One specific design element we'd like to highlight here is Divi's split-testing module. Here, you can split your screen between two designs or layouts and review them side-by-side.

Support: 2/5

Users report having severe difficulties in terms of reaching out and making contact with support agents. Not only do they say that support agents take well over a day to respond, but there also appears to be problems with the live chatbox. If you don't keep the chat box open on your screen, you will automatically get kicked out. 

Value 3.5/5

There are only two pricing options when it comes to using Divi: a yearly module and lifetime access.

As far as value goes, the lifetime option is pretty good. But we did find some issues with the limited yearly subscription. For example, your access is severely limited, even though you're paying a significant amount.

Even with the upgrade, the theme has its own separate marketplace for plug-ins and add-ons.

Thrive Theme Builder – Best for Lead Generation

The Thrive Theme Builder is our favorite theme for bloggers who need to generate leads, make conversions, and secure reliable income from their content. 

Pros

• Simply and fun customization (drag and drop)  
• User-friendly and easy to operate
• Start from scratch or use a Shapeshift starter theme
• Thrive Editor allows for quick and easy content management
• Lightweight and mobile-optimized
• Conversion and website traffic focus

Cons

• Basic understanding of WordPress is required
• Theme is not compatible with some e-commerce add-ons like WooCommerce 
• Theme is not recommended for code users

Ease of Use: 4.4/5

Thrive Theme Builder was designed to let you achieve a professional-looking website without the use of a professional.

Using Thrive starts with three simple steps:

1. Upload Thrive Theme Builder
2. Follow the simple Site Creation Wizard
3. Add content and publish it

It really is that easy. Plus, you have the option to build your theme from scratch or use the Shapeshift feature. This little tool lets you design a custom site in just about 15 minutes.

Customization/Design: 4.5/5

The Thrive Theme Builder is an excellent option for anyone who's not quite technically savvy, but still wants complete control over the design aspect of their website. This is great for bloggers because you often need to showcase your personality through your website's appearance. 

With Thrive, users have so much control that they can literally alter their theme pixel by pixel. Even individuals with little to no coding or site-building experience can create and customize every element, including fonts, colors, layouts, category pages, headers, footers, sidebars, and more.  

Support: 4.9/5

Thrive Theme's support meets the standard of excellence. They are highly responsive and easy to get in touch with, especially considering the access to support tickets right in your dashboard. You will absolutely get a response within 24 hours, but likely even sooner.

Value: 4/5

It seems that users get a lot for their buck when it comes to Thrive. There are two membership options: the Thrive Membership and the Agency Membership. This nice thing about Thrive is that they divide their memberships by need.

The Thrive Membership is recommended for individuals and entrepreneurs, while the other is for agencies and web designers. We like this because it leaves no question as to which you will need. 

Hemmingway – Best Free Theme 

Hemmingway is our choice for the best free theme for bloggers. Simple yet appealing to the eye, this is a theme that even the newest of bloggers can find great value in. 

Pros

• Basic theme for beginner bloggers
• Free option that allows you to start out without paying 
• Clean and attractive appearance with some personalization options
• Excellent performance and mobile-optimized
• Easy installation and activation
• Special post format options

Cons

• Minimal design/formatting options
• Limited widgets/add-ons 
• Little to no support

Ease of Use: 5/5

Because the Hemmingway theme focuses on the written word over design, super-technological features, and development, it's incredibly easy to use. If you're a blogger who simply wants to write without worrying about setup, design, and distractions, this is the theme for you. 

Upon setup, users simply have to activate the theme – and just like that, you're ready to go. It already looks good, and it's ready for mobile devices as well. 

Customization/Design: 3.5/5

Because this theme was specifically created to be simple and easy to use, it feels hard to give it a customization rating. While there may not be a whole realm of design options at your fingertips, there are a few things that you can control.

The Hemmingway theme allows users to customize colors, including accents, backgrounds, links, and buttons. You can also create custom header images and post in special formats, including video, quotes, and standard. 

There are also four different areas for widgets if you so choose to include them.

Basically, you can tweak your formatting a little bit, so it's nice to have those options even with such a simple platform. 

Support: 2.5/5

The critical thing to understand here is that Hemmingway was a theme that was kind of created in someone's spare time. It's not super involved, it's easy to use, and there's not a lot of features – so basically, not a lot can actually go wrong. 

Because of these details, the support really isn't super involved here. You can secure essential support within the WordPress forums, but you won't have access to technical documentation, live chats, or genuinely dedicated support. 

Value: 4.5/5

Considering this theme is free, there's really not much to question on its value. Most individuals who use this theme come here for the explicit purpose of a no-hassle, no-cost platform to post their personal writing. 

That being said, when you're paying nothing for something, you're getting a pretty good value. 

Typology – Best Minimalist Theme 

As the name suggests, the Typology theme is a modernized, text-based WordPress theme that boasts a minimal design that allows bloggers to focus on what they do best: write. 

Pros

• Minimalist designs focus on content over design
• Simple and easy to use 
• Compatible with a wide range of plug-ins, browsers, e-commerce programs, and software
• Responsive design
• Fast and reliable speeds

Cons

• Does not use images
• Not ideal for visual bloggers

Ease of Use: 4.5/5

When there's less to set up, learn, and put into place, themes become that much easier to use. The Typology theme lets your focus on what's important and puts everything you need well within your reach. 

It's incredibly easy to start your page, with most things being pretty self-explanatory. However, if you do run into a bump along the way, the responsive support team is there for comprehensive guidance. Plus, you can always tap into the step-by-step setup guide.  

Customization/Design: 4.8/5

Hear us out on this one. Yes, this is a minimalist theme. However, the theme has also managed to capture the attention of users even without the use of images or animations altogether. 

Users still have several design and customization options they can implement to make their blog their own. 

From top to bottom, you can choose various displays for your cover area, your intro, your posts, and more. You can select your ideal layout, and of course, fine-tune your typology from font style to font size and beyond. 

With unlimited colors, fonts, and logo optimization, you can genuinely make this simple website your own with ease. 

Support: 4.6/5

In some cases, themes with minimal design selections tend to have less than stellar support. However, Typology is the exception. Customers rave about their support team, who typically answers in 24 hours or less. You also have access to WordPress experts and a complete setup guide. 

Value: 4.8/5

For just $59, you can set up your captivating yet straightforward blog focused purely on your writing. If you're looking for a platform that you can make your own without having to worry about extra frills and complicated coding, then this is it. 

The value is excellent here; we can't say enough about it. 

Astra Pro – Best for Premium Expansion

While Astro Pro is an excellent theme for beginners, we also love that it offers fantastic premium expansions so your site can grow as you develop your skills and knowledge. 

Pros

• Versatile design for blogs, portfolios, businesses, and online shops
• Free version allows you to start and explore
• Offers tons of high-quality designs and the ability to import more
• Superb upgrade options – both paid and free
• Created by a long-running development company

Cons

• Extra steps for customer support
• Limited style and layout options for comments, headers, and other areas

Ease of Use: 4.8/5

Astra lets you use the page builder of your choice, so you can pick whichever one you're most familiar with. And, you don't have to use any code whatsoever. Both of these details make the theme incredibly user-friendly. 

You can also opt to use the default theme. Here, you can still customize, but you get a starting layout that makes it simple to change a few things here and there as you please. Operation is fast, simple, and involves a lot less clicking and scrolling than other themes. 

Customization/Design: 4.9/5

The big deal about Astra Pro's customization options goes far beyond the features and bleeds over into its speed. Many themes have a wide range of options, but the theme itself can't handle these details without sacrificing speed.

With Astra Pro, you can customize essentially any little element of your website, including backgrounds, colors, typography, layout, and more. This is even true of the free version, which is super generous.  

Support: 4/5

Generally, support is outstanding across Astra's platform. When you enter the support page, you do have to type in the issue you have before actually talking to someone. Some people find this extra step annoying, but it's really not a big deal. 

Value: 4.5/5

Some users say that Astra Pro is one of the best WordPress themes ever. While we won't go that far, we can agree that you are indeed getting your money's worth with this theme. 

The theme is easy to use, fast, offers a free version, and tons of excellent design options. In fact, many users agree that even with the free version, they have more than enough to build a solid blog. The paid upgrade is just a bonus. 

Entrepreneurship – Best for Magazine Style

Writers and bloggers come in all shapes and sizes. Some prefer poetry, while others focus on satire. Entrepreneurship is an excellent choice for bloggers focusing on the magazine-style. 

Pros

• Captivating design
• Responsive design
• Search engine optimized 
• Fast and reliable 
• User-friendly
• Fully customizable

Cons

• Many options designed for entrepreneurs may be irrelevant
• Some aspects are a little complicated to set up. 

Ease of Use: 4/5

The easiest part about using Entrepreneurship is the setup. In just about three minutes, you can choose your basic settings and install your theme. The setup allows you to skip over certain steps that you can handle later on, or you can choose all your settings right away. 

Because of extra features like social media integration and shortcodes, inexperienced users might have a little bit of difficulty setting this theme up and customizing it. 

Customization/Design: 4.7/5

With Entrepreneurship, you have tons of options when it comes to customizing and designing your website. You can choose from advanced typography, unlimited sidebars, unlimited color schemes, and even huge, customizable menus. 

It also comes ready for widgets, several languages, and a wide range of file types. You can use third-party plug-ins and even apply code edits. Basically, there's nothing you can't do. 

Support: 4/5

Not only does Entrepreneurship offer 24/7, 365-day support, but they also deliver a Child Theme Support that lets you build your own theme. When direct support is lacking, they have extensive documentation where you can often find many of the answers to your questions about features and theme details. 

Value: 4/5

Given that support, customization, and ease of use average out across the board here, we agree that Entrepreneurship gives you a good value here. The membership often offers free trials for multiple sites, while the paid version is one-lifetime cost – and it's a pretty good deal. 

Angle – Best Flexible Space

Angle is another minimalistic theme that was actually designed and created by bloggers. What could be a better option for bloggers than that? 

Pros

• Clean, elegant, and simple design
• Portfolio module focuses on writing and work
• Customizable homepage, color, and typography
• Plenty of space for widgets and add-ons

Cons

• 1

Ease of Use: 4/5

There is so much that you can do with this simple layout that it may feel a little overwhelming at first. Of course, with images being an optional addition, it only becomes complicated if you take it to that level. 

Overall, the setup is super easy. With just one click, you can install your theme and get going. From there, you can customize what you like rather than spending hours upon hours setting up every little detail. 

Customization/Design: 4.5/5

The Angle theme delivers a theme options panel that lets you choose from a wide range of built-in theme options. You can edit your homepage, layout, colors, styles, and more. You can even go beyond these visible themes and edit items such as exporting/importing, SEO, and general settings. 

On top of that, Angle's portfolio module lets you prominently display images. While other blogging sites focus on the words, this theme understands that some bloggers also want pictures, photo galleries, and visual effects. 

Support: 4.6/5

Angle has customer support agents that actually answer the questions that you have. They answer quickly and concisely, delivering comprehensive solutions that are easy to understand and implement. 

Value: 4.5/5

Compared to other themes, this one is particularly affordable. And with this low cost, you gain access to a simple design with a lot of options backing it up. It's basic yet flexible, allowing you to showcase your portfolio without any hassles, coding, or hoops to jump through. 

How to Choose the Best WordPress Theme for Blogging

The great thing about being a blogger is that there are so many creators out there designing themes specifically for your sector. While other professionals, like sales leaders, photographers, and videographers, might have to find more specialized platforms for their craft, bloggers have the luxury of a wider range of options.

Ease of Use

As a blogger, your main focus is most like your writing. While you may implement things like videos, photos, etc., the words are the most important thing here.

Rather than a theme that requires coding and has complicated instructions for every step, look for a theme that implements drag and drop tools, easy-to-find sections, and helpful tips. 

Customization & Design Flexibility

Some WordPress themes come with set themes that cannot be changed once you have chosen them. Still, more of them have very set layouts and formatting that don't really give you much room to toy around and change things up. 

The best WordPress themes allow bloggers to customize their pages, choose their own colors, and mess around with various fonts. While a theme will start out with a suggested color scheme, font choice, and layout, you should have the freedom to mix it up and try new things. 

Select a theme that will allow your creative side to thrive. You may not be a design expert, but that doesn't mean you can't put your own unique twist on any given page, header, or text box.

Support

We'll just come out and say this right away: the more money you're spending on your theme, the more likely you are to have quick and reliable support.

That's not to say that with a cheap or even a free theme, you definitely won't have good support. In general, though, since you're paying more, the theme's creator wants you to stay happy. 

High-quality support is critical to have on hand should something go wrong with your website. When you're up and running, live, and with loyal site visitors, the worst thing that can happen is a glitch in your site.

Value

A lot of factors will come into play when considering the overall value of your WordPress theme. The main question here is this: is your theme worth the money you're spending on it? 

Many of the themes we listed above come with monthly fees. The price ranges vary, as do the features built into each. A good theme will offer a wide range of features for a fair price. If you're paying a lot per month for only a few features, there's a chance you're paying too much.

The post Best WordPress Themes for Blogging 2023 – Content Never Looked So Good appeared first on WebMonkey.

It can be tough to know which WordPress security plugin is right for you, but luckily, we’re here to help. Here, we’re going to go over the best security plugins available for both personal and professional WordPress users.

What is the Best WordPress Security Plugin?

1. Sucuri: Best overall WordPress security plugin.
2. Wordfence: Best free option.
3. iThemes Security Pro: Most versatile choice.
4. Bulletproof Security: Best for pro developers.
5. MalCare: Best for cleaning up.
6. SecuPress: Best for novice users.
7. Jetpack Security: Best value for your money.

WordPress Security Plugin Comparison

Here’s a quick overview of all our favorite WordPress security plugins and how they compare in important areas.

Sucuri

Best Overall

Sucuri is one of the most well-known names in security when it comes to WordPress websites. It also works for other popular site building platforms, including Joomla, Drupal, Magneto, and more, making it a versatile choice for web developers.

Pros:

• Powerful firewall protection blocks brute force attacks from bots and hackers.
• Advanced malware scanning and removal for any website.

Cons:

• Support can be slow, especially for users who don’t have a paid plan.
• A bit of a learning curve to use and customize.

Ease of Use: 4.6/5

Sucuri is fairly easy to use for most users. The user interface is intuitive, though there can be a bit of a learning curve for more advanced features. In general, though, it’s easy for even tech novices to customize their security settings to best protect their website.

Website Features: 5/5

Malware Scanning: Depending on the plan you choose, Securi will scan for malware every 12 hours to every 30 minutes.

Instant notifications: If your website is hacked, you’ll receive an immediate notification that something is wrong.

Firewall Protection: Paid plans offer some of the best DDoS and firewall protection of any WordPress security plugin available on the market.

Malware Removal: Sucuri will clean up any website infected by malware, including existing websites requiring thorough cleaning.

Blacklist Monitoring: Securi will ensure that your website doesn’t get blacklisted thanks to hackers’ actions.

Value for Money: 4.4/5

Sucuri offers a free version that scans and eliminates the most common threats facing WordPress website owners. You’ll have access to features such as malware scanning, integrity and blacklist monitoring, and security hardening at no extra cost.

If you’re looking for more advanced security, Sucuri offers three tiers with additional features such as firewall security and SSL support. You can choose between the Basic version for $199.99 per year or the Pro version for $299.99 annually. There’s also a Sucuri Business plan available for $499.99 per year that offers a malware removal SLA.

Wordfence

Best Free Option

Wordfence is one of the most popular security plugins for WordPress around, with over 150 million installs. It allows you to see and fight threats in real-time, whether they come from bots, Google crawlers, or hackers trying to access your site.

Pros:

• It allows you to see traffic and hack attempts in real-time so that you can nip problems in the bud.
• Fairly comprehensive free solution for small website owners.

Cons:

• The scanning process is complex and can easily overload the site server, especially with larger WordPress websites.
• Fewer pricing tiers available than other popular plugins.

Ease of Use: 5/5

Wordfence has a user-friendly dashboard that’s easy to navigate even for those new to the software. You can easily configure your security setup and check on potential threats in real-time. Even tech novices will have no trouble using even the more advanced features of Wordfence.

Website Features: 4.4/5

Real-Time Monitoring: See data about potentially malicious traffic in real-time to stop attempted attacks.

Malware Scanning: Scan files, plugins, themes, and more to ensure that they’re safe for your site.

Repair Functions: If files are corrupted, you can view and repair them.

Country Blocking: Wordfence lets you block all traffic from geographic regions known for cybercrime.

Two-Factor Authentication: 2FA capabilities let you make it harder for hackers to make their way past your website’s defenses using brute force attacks.

Web Application Firewall: A WAF ensures that threats are blocked before they get a chance to reach your site.

Value for Money: 3.8/5

Wordfence offers a free version of the software that provides plenty of protection for most small websites. You get much more than many other free options, including two-factor authentication, real-time analytics, malware scanning, and a WAF.

If you want an even higher level of protection, you can upgrade to Wordfence Premium to access more security features. Premium plans start at $99 per year and include advanced options such as spam protection, real-time updates, and top-level support.

If you own multiple websites, you can save on Wordfence Premium plans by buying in bulk. You can save up to 25% by buying more than one site key. However, there aren’t multiple pricing tiers for users protecting a single website.

iThemes Security Pro

Most Versatile Choice

iThemes fights malware, spam, hackers, and more with a wide range of security features. It’s trusted amongst WordPress users worldwide, thanks to its strong focus on eliminating vulnerabilities against brute force attacks.

Pros:

• Over 30 different security measures make this a versatile choice for any website.
• Strong protection against brute force attacks.

Cons:

• Live customer service is only available with paid plans.
• Since iThemes has no scanner of its own, it relies on Sucuri’s SiteCheck Malware Scanner.

Ease of Use: 4.4/5

It’s easy to install iThemes security and use it to protect your WordPress website. The intuitive interface is easy to navigate, though there are many different features to sort through. It may take some time to get used to all of the different security options available to you.

Website Features: 5/5

Plenty of Options: There are more than 30 different security features to choose from when using iThemes Pro.

Malware Scanning: iThemes offers malware scanning through Sucuri’s SiteCheck Malware Scanner.

404 Detection: Find hidden problems causing 404 errors for your website.

Brute Force Protection: Avoid bots or hackers attacking your password with a brute force attack.

Away Mode: Protect your dashboard when you’re away from your computer.

Backups: You can schedule regular backups of your database.

Strong Passwords: You can gain access to airtight passwords and 2FA features.

Value for Money: 4.3/5

The free version of iThemes offers enough basic protection for most small websites and personal projects. However, it’s less comprehensive than many other free plugin options available on the market.

iThemes Security Pro offers many more features designed to help protect your website against cyber attacks. Three premium plans offer security options such as 2FA, malware scans, free updates, and support for up to two websites. There’s a blogger plan for $80 per year, a small business plan for $127 per year, and a Gold plan for $199 annually.

Bulletproof Security

Best for Pro Developers

If you’re looking for customization, Bulletproof Security gives you complete control over just how you want to operate different security features to protect your website.

Pros:

• Includes advanced security tools that allow users a high level of customization.
• The premium version is good value for money, with a one-time fee.

Cons:

• The dashboard can be a challenge to use for tech novices.
• Folders and data tables can be difficult to uninstall completely.

Ease of Use: 3/5

While Bulletproof offers plenty of protection for web developers of all skill levels, it can be challenging to figure out for those with less experience. The interface isn’t the most user-friendly. It can take a while to figure out how to use the software’s unique settings, though a setup wizard can make things a little bit easier.

Website Features: 4.3/5

Login Security: Special login security and monitoring features ensure that only authorized users can access your website.

Database Backups: Backup and restore corrupted databases to keep your website running smoothly.

Malware Scanning: An MScan malware scanner checks for threats to alert you before they become a problem.

Advanced Security Tools: Unique options such as BPS Pro ARQ Intrusion Detection allow experienced web developers to optimize their security settings.

Value for Money: 4.6/5

The free Bulletproof plugin offers a wide variety of tools that can help to keep small websites safe. You can even get database backups without any extra charge, which most other security plugins don’t offer.

If you want to upgrade to the Bulletproof Premium, it costs just $69.95. The software is actively updated and developed so that you know you’re getting the strongest protection possible against both old and emerging threats. The company offers a 30-day moneyback guarantee in the event you aren’t satisfied.

MalCare

Best for Cleaning Up

MalCare is one of the few WordPress security plugins designed to not only detect malware but also eliminate it. It’s fast, effective, and users trust the plugin’s intelligent approach to online security.

Pros:

• Able to remove malware once it’s detected.
• Multiple security features at the click of a button are easily accessible for users of all skill levels.

Cons:

• Doesn’t work for locally hosted websites.
• No two-factor authentication feature.

Ease of Use: 4.8/5

MalCare is easy to use, with a clean layout and a dashboard that’s easy to read and navigate. It makes threats clear and gives you control over which actions you’d like to take, from scanning for malware to removing it.

Website Features: 4.2/5

Remote Malware Scanning: Unlike many other plugins, MalCare’s remote scanner won’t overload your server.

One-Click and Automated Malware Removal: You can get rid of malware you find on your computer with just the click of a button or a scheduled purge.

Developer Tools: MalCare offers both client reports and white labeling.

Country Blocking: Block addresses from geographical regions attempting to hack your site.

Firewall Protection: Guard against brute force attacks in real-time.

Value for Money: 3.7/5

MalCare offers a free plan that gives you basic malware scanning capabilities. You can detect threats to your website, but you won’t have access to the tools you need to fix the issue.

If you want a greater protection level, MalCare offers a range of premium plans that include advanced options such as single-click malware removal. Personal plans start at $99 per year, but you can also find plans for developers with multiple websites. The Small Business plan costs $259 per year, while the Developers plan costs $599 annually.

SecuPress

Best for Novice Users

While relatively new to the market, SecuPress has made a name for itself as an effective WordPress security plugin over the years. It’s easy to use and offers all of the security features most web developers need to protect their site, especially from brute force attacks.

Pros:

• Easy to use thanks to a user-friendly interface.
• Protects against brute force attacks through multiple avenues.

Cons:

• Malware removal costs an additional fee.
• Customer support can be difficult to contact.

Ease of Use: 4.9/5

SecuPress is one of the easiest plugins around to use, no matter your level of expertise. It’s got a sleek and simple dashboard that’s a breeze to navigate. SecuPress lets you choose exactly which features you want to enable or disable to keep your site safe.

Website Features: 3.8/5

Regular Scans: You can set up a 35 checkpoint security scan or a PHP malware scan in no time flat, checking themes, plugins, and more.

Malware Removal: If you’re willing to pay a fee, you can have a professional remove malware from your website to have it up and running smoothly once more.

Login Protection: SecuPress lets you protect your site against brute force protection attacks.

Geo-Blocking: Block entire geographic regions if you’re suffering from repeated attacks.

WordPress Backups. Ensure your files and databases are safe with online backups.

Value for Money: 3/5

The free version of SecuPress offers plenty of features that can help protect your website from brute force attacks, including login protection, blocked IP’s as well as a firewall. The free plan will also guard you against most hackers and malicious bots.

If you want access to more advanced features such as two-factor authentication, Geo-blocking, PHP malware scans, and instant notifications, you need to upgrade to a premium plan starting at $69.99 per year. You also have to pay an additional fee for malware removal and professional configuration of your site.

Jetpack Security

Best Value for Your Money

Jetpack offers a wide variety of features for your WordPress website, and the plugin isn’t just limited to security functions. It gives you a comprehensive way to revamp your site and attract the kind of traffic you’re looking for.

Pros:

• Offers modules and features beyond simple security options.
• Offers a wide variety of cost-effective paid plans.

Cons:

• All of the extra features can interfere with website speeds.
• It can be somewhat difficult to navigate through different options.

Ease of Use: 3.8/5

The same people who make WordPress make Jetpack, so naturally, they’re easy to use together. However, it can be somewhat confusing to navigate the user interface with all of the additional features. It may take some time to get used to using all of the different modules available.

Website Features: 4/5

Control of Social Media: Jetpack can help you to control your social media posts, photos, and videos that appear on your site.

Spam Protection: You can avoid annoying and sometimes dangerous spam messages in your inbox.

Backup: Ensure you don’t lose valuable data with a paid backup.

Brute Force Attack Protection: Ensure you don’t fall victim to hackers using brute force on your password.

Secure Sign-on: Protect your website against unauthorized parties acting as you at login.

Value for Money: 4.8/5

Jetpack’s free version is enough for most personal and small business websites to protect themselves against hackers and malware. It includes features such as brute force attack protection and secure login.

You can access more security features by upgrading to a premium plan, starting at $99 per month. There’s a Backup plan, a Scan plan, and an anti-spam plan that all offer basic protection. You can also get Jetpack Security or Jetpack Complete, which both offer even more real-time security features.

How to Choose a WordPress Security Plugin

Before you launch your website, it’s crucial that you take steps to protect yourself against cyber attacks by investing in a security plugin. However, the question remains: how do you pick the right plugin for your WordPress website?

You can find plugin options to suit any style of website, from personal blogs to online storefronts. However, there are a couple of important things to keep in mind when it comes to WordPress security plugins.

Ease of Use

If you’re a tech novice, it’s best to stick to security plugins with a user-friendly setup. The dashboard should be easy to read and navigate without too steep of a learning curve. On the other hand, more advanced developers may want to opt for customizable security options that may be too complex for beginners.

Value for Money

For many of us, the most critical consideration when it comes to web plugins is cost. If you’re on a budget, you can find plenty of free WordPress security plugin options ideal for smaller websites. However, if you want access to advanced security features, you may want to upgrade to a premium option.

Security Features

When it comes to security features, more is always better. However, keep in mind what type of website you’re setting up when you consider what you want. For example, a blogger may be concerned about login page protection, while online storefronts may be more concerned with financial data encryption capabilities.

Will a Free Security Plugin Protect Me?

Many WordPress security plugins offer a free, bare-bones version of their product for those looking to improve their online security without breaking the bank. Most free software provides basic protection on top of the options already included by WordPress.

While free plugins might suit some users, they aren’t the best option for everybody. They offer limited security, especially for WordPress websites that include data collection features, such as online shops.

For just a few dollars each month, most plugins will let you upgrade to a paid version that offers far more security features than the free software. For example, instead of just basic firewall protection, you may also gain access to tracking options, recovery tools, and more.

If you’re worried about the security of you or your customers’ data, we recommend springing for a paid security plugin instead of a more basic free option. Look for something that provides maximum protection for your WordPress website. Many plugins offer tiered pricing depending on the level of security you need.

9 Best WordPress Security Plugins: Roundup

Installing a security plugin for your WordPress website is always a good idea. With so many options available on the market, though, it can be tough to figure out which will provide the best protection for you. That’s why we recommend Sucuri as our favorite WordPress security plugin, along with six other top-quality options to keep your site safe.

Best WordPress Security Plugins

1. Sucuri – Best overall.
2. Wordfence – Best free.
3. iThemes Security Pro – Most versatile.
4. Bulletproof Security – Best for pros.
5. MalCare – Best aftercare.
6. SecuPress – Most user-friendly.
7. Jetpack Security – Best value.

With the right WordPress security plugin, you can keep both you and your customers safe from online attacks. Investing in the right security can make all the difference in the long-term success of your website.

FAQ’s

If you’re still considering which security plugin is best for you, consider these tips.

Which WordPress security plugin is easy to use?

Most WordPress plugins are developed with the novice user in mind, so they’re all generally easy to use. SecuPress has one of the easiest dashboards to navigate, with clear labeling and color-coding.

Which WordPress security plugin is best for advanced users?

If you’re looking for more control over your online security, you may want to opt for something that allows you to take control and customize safety solutions. Bulletproof Security offers a range of tools geared towards more advanced web developers.

Which WordPress security plugin is the cheapest?

Almost all security plugin options offer a free version of their software. Often, this is enough for web developers on a budget looking to amp up their online protection. If you’re looking for more advanced features, Jetpack security offers some of the best value for your money, though options such as SecuPress cost less annually.

The post Best WordPress Security Plugins 2023 : Top Add-Ons to Stop Hackers and Brute Force Attacks appeared first on WebMonkey.

Plugins are third-party software programs that add new features to your existing site. Written in PHP, these plugins can easily integrate with your current theme. 

In this discussion, we will cover seven of the best WordPress SEO plugins to improve your traffic and optimize your page for search engines.

What is the Best WordPress SEO Plugin?

Most WordPress reviews admit that these seven plugins are a “must-have” if you're serious about standardizing your website.

1. Yoast SEO is the best overall plugin, ranked #1 most often by users. 
2. SEMRush offers the most comprehensive tools but is not cheap.
3. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP is the best plugin for analyzing traffic. 
4. SEO Squirrely is the best SEO plugin for beginners.
5. The WordPress Multilingual Plugin helps reach non-English web traffic.
6. SEO Framework is a popular choice for companies that don't have a budget for SEO marketing.
7. SEO Press is the best low-cost and or free service that offers the most important SEO features.

Yoast SEO proved to be the best, offering a balance between costly but thorough research. Below, we detail the pros and cons of each plugin.

#1 Yoast SEO – Best Overall

Why hire an SEO consultant when Yoast SEO can give you that consultation for free? Yoast can teach you how to get more traffic from search engines, attract social media users, and increase engagement with many interactive features.

Yoast helps you automatically create related keywords and synonyms for better SEO traffic, based on your input. You can also improve indexing by controlling the metadata, allowing search and social platforms to identify your site. 

You get previews of how your site looks on social platforms and a readability check for natural flowing sentences and SEO efficiency. You can even check against duplicate content or mark certain links as “no follow.” 

Some of our favorite features include getting suggestions for internal linking, the ability to add proper internal linking structure, and content insights, which intelligently analyzes your SEO keyword strategy. 

Customer support includes premium level, and one year of 24/7 support and updates, or free, just a knowledge base. Yoast SEO was the plugin most users put at the top of their list.

Pros

• Available in multiple languages
• Automated warnings for broken links or old pages
• Work with block editor or classic WP 

Cons

• Ad-supported, unless you pay for a premium membership
• The free version limits you to one keyword

Price

• $89 for Yoast Premium for one website

#2 SEMRush – Most Competitive Tools

Some consider SEMRush the best overall SEO tool, on account of all the awards its won (US Search, MENA Search, SEMY, Interactive Marketing) and how comprehensive its set of tools are to the experienced web manager. 

SEMRush does let you find organic keywords and search terms that you can actually compete for and easily rank for – which is much appreciated in a competitive field. Designed to help you outperform the competition, you can analyze other websites, including their ads, content, and social media pages. 

You can research what other sites are doing with your targeted keywords and discover ways to top them. Aim for the top 10 results with focus keywords and also integrate your social media accounts. 

SEMRush also auto-researches your industry, going so far as to report market leaders, game changers, and influencers to watch, see how they're breaking the industry, and do to capitalize. 

The plugin assists in four areas: eCommerce, enterprise, and lead generation for larger agencies. You can select PPC, content marketing, or social media ads for easy management and tracking. 

The only reason SEMRush isn't higher ranked is because of its high price compared to other plugins.

Pros

• Audit pages and do keyword research to rank fast
• Analyze your keyword competitors and learn from their winning strategies
• Track your competitors and industry leaders on social media

Cons

• One of the most expensive SEO plugins
• Some features are only available at the highest premium level, like branded reports, historical data, API access, and Google Data Studio Integration

Price

• $99.95 per month for pros, 
• $199.95 per month for gurus
• $399 per month for businesses

#3 Google Analytics Dashboard for WP – Best Analytics Plugin

It can be a chore going through the maze of the Google Analytics website. Most days, you want a fast update with the most relevant information. The Google Analytics Dashboard by ExactMetrics will report on traffic spikes, insights, real-time stats, and even eCommerce tracking. 

You can easily customize the plugin to track affiliate links, Adsense banner ads, file downloads, outbound link clicks, and conversions for each WordPress form. You can even check out advanced insights like scroll depth (how long people scroll on your site), referrals from traffic sources, custom event tracking, and custom analytical reports that you design. 

There's no need to hire a developer when all you have to is click a few buttons and get reports delivered to your WordPress dashboard. The premium service comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee. 

Pros

• Get page insights and track the popularity of pages, posts, authors, and products
• See “live” reports of users who are currently viewing your site
• Read summaries from a WordPress dashboard or an email summary

Cons

• Only works with self-hosted websites
• Minimal options for the lite version

Price

• $399.50 for agencies
• $199.50 for professionals
• $99.50 for plus
• $699.50 for 100 websites

#4 SEO Squirrely– Best Plugin for Non-Experts

If you're a bit lost looking over the complex results from Google Analytics or Yoast, know that SEO Squirrely offers a more accessible interface. The plugin also lets you manage your content in a search-friendly and ideal for human readers.

SEO Squirrely helps with tasks like finding targeted keywords, analyzing your content for mistakes and efficiency, and giving advice on improving the user experience. Choose between a non-SEO export mode, or perform 300 various SEO tasks manually. 

With SEO Squirrely, you can check traffic reports, track engagement with your content, and even see ranking positions for all your pages accordingly. Get suggestions from AI on how to bring more traffic and how to make your pages more visible and readable for long-scrolling. 

The plugin also performs several technical issues, such as generating an XML sitemap and also helps you create viable rich snippets and social snippets. The so-called “Non-Human Private SEO Consultant that lives inside your WordPress” doesn't compete with other SEO plugins but enhances them. 

Using red/green elements design explains what you need to do to change red-coded problems (site and SEO issues) into a green solution. The more “greens” you have, the more you will notice a correlation between top Google search results. 

Along with an easy interface, SEO Squirrely also comes with an education cloud, coaching lessons, and 14 “recipes” to follow to improve SEO traffic immediately. 

The free version of the plugin is limited by volume, but surprisingly, most features are still enabled.

Pros

• Compatible with other SEO WP plugins
• You can switch between free and pro, depending on your immediate needs
• The free plugin is almost fully-featured, except for a lower volume of traffic

Cons

• Ad-supported, unless you pay the premium

Price

• $29.99 per month for pros, 35 focus pages, five websites
• $71.99 per month for business, 70 pages, ten websites
• $75.99 per month for agencies, 250 pages, five websites

#5 The WordPress Multilingual Plugin – Best International Plugin

The WPML plugin is ideal if you're going for an international or multilingual audience. The plugin was designed for blogs, not just corporate sites, meaning it has many advanced features beyond simple translation. 

The plugin performs technical processes, such as translating pages and taxonomy, menus, theme texts, and custom types. The plugin also works with every theme, plugin, or even page builders that use modern API.  

You also get control over-optimization, specifically for multiple languages. Customize how you want URLs to look, or set SEO metadata for translations. Sitemaps are also generated for the language of choice and guaranteed to pass Google Webmasters validation. 

With this plugin, search engines can understand your site's structure and not be confused by inconsistent language. Drive traffic to the right pages, but always in the right language. 

WPML comes in two versions: blog and CMS. Over 40 languages are installed and available for easy translation and publishing. Another great feature is that you can add your unique language variants to the WPML language editor. Or, you can customize different languages according to directories, domains, or subdomains.

Subscription rates are for the year, with a lower renewal rate than signup, making it fairly inexpensive.

Pros

• Make your website available in multiple languages and get the SEO benefits associated
• Customize further language variants directly into the editor
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Cons

• Could be a waste of money if your product is not universally simple or tailor-made for non-English speaking customers
• Basic blog subscription does not have all the key features of higher premium services, such as WooCommerce integration 

Price

• $29.99 for multilingual blog
• $79 for complete CMS 
• $159 for agencies and unlimited sites

#6 SEO Framework – Best Free Plugin

Many plugins developers claim their product is free but lets you download a “lite” version. Not so with SEO Framework, perhaps the only 100 percent freeware plugin that's useful for SEO. No ads, no waiting, and no limits on what the product offers. 

SEO Framework is not built for an agency but a small business. It's also powerful enough to support a team and not just an individual. It integrates with WordPress and offers a colored scale showing how to optimize your posts for searchability. 

By hovering the mouse cursor over the column, you get detailed notes on how to improve your pages according to traditional white-hat theory. It's a must-have for users who have a limited understanding of SEO in the first place, particularly Google's penalization policies.  

SEO Framework operates on an almost-expert level, with the ability to generate meta tags (in multiple languages) and automating various technical processes. You don't have to be an expert to understand the menus. 

You tweak various words and structures according to the automated advice, which is based on Google webmaster guidelines – a great source of information for modern web design. Another excellent feature is the free support forums where users answer questions, usually within 48 hours. 

You can also get advice for sharing on social media, avoid the most common mistakes, check for duplicated content, and notifying search engines when new content has been published. 

While SEO Framework doesn't have the in-depth analytics or systems of paid services, they offer a competitive package for a growing company (or individual) who can't afford to invest in something more significant. 

Pros

• Free practical SEO strategies with an easy-to-use system
• Works with WordPress API for easy integration with other plugins
• Avoid common mistakes made with SEO thanks to an automatic warning

Cons

• Not as in-depth as other plugins, particularly in analyzing competitors

Price

• Free!

#7 SEO Press – Best Low-Cost Plugin

Called the “most affordable” plugin, SEO Press offers a low-cost monthly subscription or a free SEO tool kit for free, with limited options. Basic SEO services are provided, even for the free services, such as automatic breadcrumbs (linking pages together), redirections, sitemaps, and broken link monitoring. 

With an installation wizard, you can easily modify title tags or create a sitemap for indexing. Manage meta description for every post, page, or custom post type. Or, opt to improve your social networking presence with open graph protocol, pioneered by Facebook. An “open graph” lets you standardize metadata to represent a page's content more efficiently. 

Despite being low-cost (or free for the lite plan), the service does not contain ads, nor does it send back private information to the publisher. Multiple features are free, such as titles, metadata, sitemaps, content analysis, unlimited keywords, and some Google analytics integration.

For the premium service, additional features include importing and exporting SEO data, custom schemas, URL rewriting, breadcrumbs, 404 monitoring (for missing pages), WooCommerce integration, and unlimited sites. 

Pros

• Even the free plan offers nice features, like keyword and content analysis
• Easy integration with other WordPress plugins and themes
• Money-back guarantee within 14 days

Cons

• Relatively new company with fewer reviews

Price

• Free lite version
• Low cost $39 a year, with a year of support

FAQs About WordPress and Plugins

“How important is it to SEO-optimize your web content?”

One reason to download an SEO plugin immediately is to protect your site against a Google search penalty. Google's penalties against websites have been well-documented, and in some cases, highly speculated upon, since the company explains very little about their algorithms. 

While many will debate over what companies are allowed to earn #1 ranking, most smaller companies are guilty of minor breachers – most of which can be resolved. Even if you do get penalized, you can take steps to correct the issues, using Google's webmaster site, or even reading a list of known Google penalties, such as from Search Engine Journal. 

“Why do some plugins not work when I try to install them?”

Keep in mind that many plugins and even some themes will not work with older versions of WordPress. Most plugins require not only a newer WordPress installation, such as 5.5.1 but also a newer PHP version 5.620 or higher. 

While it's easy to update WordPress with just a click, updating PHP older versions may require installing new software on the web host Cpanel directory and then reinstalling WordPress. Your web host may assist with these issues, or they may not have higher PHP updates. Contact the company to know for sure. 

“I haven't read up on SEO for a while now… how have things changed?”

Things have changed quite a bit, and unfortunately, many businesses are experiencing “unexplained” drops in traffic as a result. As many SEO consultants would tell you, ranking high in SERPs is now a matter of better customizing your content for a targeted audience. 

According to influencer Neil Patel, some SEO fundamental principles are still the same. Choosing the right keywords is critical, but it's not just about producing keyword-friendly content anymore. 

Some tips he recommends (and which some of our plugins address) include: 

• Removing plugins or content that slows down your site
• Linking to other related websites for more relevant links
• Write for humans first – humans who enjoy reading!
• Improve metadata
• Integrate your website with social media

“Why should I backup my website before installing a new plugin?”

It's important to backup your entire website before installing new plugins, new themes, or even a new version of WordPress. You can do this with software (for example, a company like BlogVault) or by merely downloading/exporting your website onto your computer for importing a WordPress backup or restoring a MySQL database.

Some people avoid the crashing problem altogether by creating a clone of their live website and using it just for installing plugins or themes to make sure the system doesn't crash. 

Usually, crashes happen because a plugin, written by an amateur, could be poorly coded or conflict with another plugin on your site. Not all plugins integrate well with others. Plugins can also crash with your choice of theme or even your version of WordPress. 

“Help! A plugin crashed my website. What do I do?”

If you've received a white screen after installing a new plugin, don't panic! You can be alarmed, yes, because obviously something went wrong and your site is not displaying correctly. But what's important is that you still have options. 

If you can still access the admin area, visit the plugins.php and deactivate the new plugin manually. You may have to deactivate more than one plugins or themes if you're unsure where the conflict is happening. 

If you can still access themes, go select a default meme until you remove all the errors/conflicts. If you can't access anything, go to your files directory and Cpanel, provided by the web host. 

You can rename the plugins folder and immediately deactivate all plugins automatically. If the white screen is still there, you may need to revert to a default WordPress theme. You can go to the themes folder and delete the theme from the server. WordPress should then go back to a default theme, restoring admin privileges.  

Sometimes the white screen provided an error message, saying something like “Line 52” or something similar. While you could theoretically try to fix the bad coding yourself, never attempt to do this without first backing up the CSS file and any other files you're going to be manually editing. 

If you mess up the code even more so, you need to paste the text as it was, especially if you don't understand coding. The safer alternative might be to reinstall WordPress and import your content all over again, rather than hire an expert to find the error.

Conclusion

Our research concluded that SEO Yoast was the most-wanted and researched plugin for WordPress, though there was formidable competition from other developers. 

Remember that keyword marketing success is about understanding your target audience and not merely producing keyword content. Marketing professionals understand what the target audience is looking for and the best ways to reach them. 

As recent news developments have shown, finding success in SERPs is determined not only by quality writing but also:

• A well-structured website that makes for comfortable viewing
• Content that's shareable by social media outlets
• A more direct approach to pages lets the readers know this is what they want to read. 

Companies are investing millions in modern SEO marketing because the rules have changed considerably from ten years ago. Customized content and relevant content is what matters and that’s where these plugins can help. 

Downloading an SEO plugin for WordPress is the first step to making your site competitive locally, nationally, and, most of all, to the readers more likely to buy.

The post 7 Best WordPress SEO Plugins for Higher Rankings in Google 2023 appeared first on WebMonkey.

With the web-building platforms available, you can have your site going live a few hours after reading this article.

To help you make the best decision, we reviewed over 70 web-builders and picked 7 of the best for construction companies and home builders.

To cut a long story short, WordPress was the overall best website building platform.

• Overview
• Features
• Video Review

WordPress Website Builder

Best for Beginners

WordPress is a very powerful platform. In fact, 43% of the internet is built using its powerful content management system. It allows construction companies and home builders (without prior design experience) to build high-quality websites with minimal effort. In addition, it's universally known by design firms if (or when) you consider an upgrade.

Beginner Friendly

Universally Accepted

Low Cost

Starting Price : $0/mo

Read Full Review Free Help

WordPress Website Builder Features

Feature List

Coming Soon

Starting Price : $99/mo

Read Full Review Free Trial

WordPress Website Builder Video Review

Coming Soon!

Starting Price : $99/mo

Read Full Review Free Trial

Here is a quick summary of each platform's greatest strength:

• WordPress — Best for DIY Websites & Customization
• Wix — Best for Construction Companies and Home Builders
• Weebly — Best for the Construction and Building Startup on a Budget
• Squarespace — Best for Companies With Some Technical Knowledge
• GoDaddy — Best Website Builder for Speed
• Duda — Best for Construction Template Designs
• Strikingly — Best Customer Support and After Sales Services

WordPress is best for DIY and designer assisted development, Weebly offered the best value for money, and Squarespace had the most innovative template designs. Here's how each platform performed across different metrics:

WordPress

Best Builder for Construction Blogs

Blogs are very popular marketing tools in the digital market. WordPress is designed with the blog in mind. It may not be the best for other types of websites, but WordPress is the way to go if you are heavily reliant on blogs.

Pros

• Very pocket-friendly with some packages going for as low as $5/month.
• It's easily the most powerful builder for blogs in the market today.

Cons

• It's not as efficient for building non-blog websites. If blogging is only part of your greater interests, go for Wix. It has decent blog-building capabilities, and it's also suitable for other types of websites.
• For the best experience, you have to do some coding. More often than not, you'll require the input of a WordPress specialist.

Ease of Use: 3.0/5

This is one of the trickiest builders to use unless you're willing to settle for generic templates. Extensive customization is only possible through coding, but it's not that hard to find WordPress coders.

If you are looking to create a non-blog website, this platform will prove double the trouble. It's doable, but only after much effort.

Flexibility of Design: 2.6/5

Most of the templates are designed with bloggers in mind. If you're looking to launch a blog, you'll find everything to your liking. If not, you're better off going with Wix.

Website Building Features:

WordPress has two very powerful design features:

• Social Media Integration: Your blog needs to link visitors to your social media profiles. With this in mind, WordPress shares your blogs to your social media automatically. With a few widgets, you can direct all visitors to your platforms, increasing your following.
• SEO Optimization: WordPress templates are designed to rank with minimal effort from you. If you want to optimize your pages further, you'll have to upgrade from the free and cheapest plans.

Customer Support: 3.0/5

There are no dedicated support systems. If you want any questions answered, you'll have to search their knowledge base. To their credit, the base is pretty extensive and explicit in the directions presented. If you can't find an answer, you may have to hire WordPress savvy help.

Value for Money: 4.5/5

It may not be the most feature-rich platform, but it's one of the cheapest we tested. It offers four affordable packages:

• Free
• Personal: $4/month
• Premium: $8/month
• Business: $25/month

Wix

Best for Construction Companies and Home Builders

Wix is a very powerful platform. It allows construction companies and home builders, without prior design experience, to build high-quality websites with minimal effort. With their drag-and-drop feature, there's virtually no learning curve. You could have a high-quality website hours after creating an account.

Pros

• Very easy to use, especially for those without a coding background. Don't let the ease-of-use fool you; Wix builds powerful sites with commendable quality control.
• Wix has a robust App market where you can get hundreds of applications to streamline your site's operation. You'll also find a few third-party construction-related apps to customize your website further.

Cons

• You can't use content in one template to modify another.
• You can't transfer your site. Consequently, if you ever grow past Wix's capability, you'll have to cough up some serious cash to recreate your site outside the platform.

Ease of Use: 4.5/5

Wix is very easy to use. The design process is straightforward and doesn't require any technical background whatsoever. With their smart assistant, ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence), all you have to do is answer a few questions, and the program generates a uniques website for your brand.

Flexibility of Design: 3.9/5

Wix has over 500 templates you can customize. These are professionally designed templates that you can modify with videos, payment tracking systems, unique surveys, and the like. Coding isn't required for modification.

For those who want to incorporate custom code into their websites, Wix Corvid will come in handy. It allows for the inclusion of new code into Wix-generated pages.

Website Building Features: 4.7/5

Wix offers four main features for extensive template modification:

• SEO Wiz: This App gives unique SEO strategies based on your location, target keywords, and other data.
• Wix Video: For easy integration of custom videos with your site.
• Ascend: This is a marketing package that helps you interact with your customers by creating custom messages for your clients.
• App Market: The App market has over 200 applications. Use construction-relevant Apps for enhanced user experience.

Customer Support: 4.7/5

The Wix customer support is available by phone from Monday-Thursday, 5 AM-5 PM (EST). Of note is the abundance of help buttons on the site. In every stage of the design process, there's a button linking you to the relevant guides. You'll rarely need to call support.

Value for Money: 4.5/5

Wix has four plans for e-commerce websites, and four plans for all other sites.

E-commerce Plans

• Enterprise: $500/month
• Business VIP: $49/month
• Business Unlimited: $27/month
• Business Basic: $23/month

Other Websites

• VIP: $39/month
• Pro: $22/month
• Unlimited: $17/month
• Combo: $13/month

The availability of such an extensive package program gives you increased choice and flexibility.

Weebly

Best for the Construction and Building Startup on a Budget

Weebly is a powerful website builder available at very pocket-friendly prices. It's an intuitive platform with a very straightforward design process. In terms of ease-of-use, it's not in the sphere of Wix, but it's much cheaper than all the other featured platforms. With the most basic plan, you'll pay just $6 per month.

Pros

• Amazing value for money. Unmatched if we consider the number of features available per dollar.
• The Weebly mobile App allows you to edit your site from your phone. This application is available on both Android and iOS platforms.

Cons

• The degree of customer support you receive is dependent on the plan you're on. In short, you pay for more assistance.
• The inbuilt photo-editor isn't very powerful.

Ease of Use: 3.2/5

Weebly's drag-and-drop capabilities are similar to Wix. You get to make edits in real-time without switching between different modes. That said, this is not the easiest platform for noobs. They have very little visual cues, leaving you to your wits for the best part.

Flexibility of Design:

Weebly has over 40 templates that you can edit. They are well-designed but not as appealing as Wix templates for the most part. For enhanced customization, you can modify the codes via the Code Editor.

Website Building Features: 4.3/5

Weebly has three main website building features:

• App Center: Weebly has a huge App center with over 300 industry-unique applications.
• SEO: The platform features several SEO Apps to help your site rank.
• Membership Options: This feature allows you to limit the access of some pages to specific individuals. You can create a club or tier system for your clients with ease.

Customer Support: 4.0/5

Weebly has a robust community forum to answer the most pressing issues. For direct contact with the relevant authorities, you can call on any day 6 AM-6 PM PST.

Support tickets are addressed 24/7, and live chat is available Monday-Friday, 6 AM-6 PM PST. On weekends, live chat is only open 8 AM-5 PM PST.

Value for Money: 4.8/5

Even with the most basic plan, Personal Plan, you get a load of features, including 500MB of storage. The three premium packages are:

• Personal: $6/month
• Professional: $12/month
• Performance: $26/month

Squarespace

Best for Companies With Some Technical Knowledge

If you already have tech-savvy personnel, Squarespace is the way to go. It's not as straightforward as Wix, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. This platform offers very advanced design tools. You have an increased capability to customize your website, although that comes with a steeper learning curve.

Pros

• Squarespace had one of the most intuitive approaches to social media integration we tested. If you're keen on developing a presence, Squarespace should work just fine.
• Powerful SEO features.

Cons

• Customer support was quite impressive. The live chat personnel went as far as taking screenshots to help explain some of the more technical concepts.
• Their templates didn't perform very well on our speed tests. You may have to modify your templates a lot for better speeds.

Ease of Use: 3.9/5

This is not the easiest tool to use, especially if you have no technical background. For the person with a little technological know-how, the trade-off should prove worthwhile. It may take longer to design your site, but you get more freedom for customization.

Flexibility of Design: 3.6/5

The templates are high-quality and eye-catching. They are designed to be mobile-friendly, so you don't have to do much optimization. In their original states, we found the templates to be a little slow for comfort, but a little tweaking should remedy the situation.

Website Building Features: 4.3/5

Unlike the first two entries, Squarespace doesn't host an App store. You will have to settle for the features the platform has to offer. That said, the platform offers four handy customization features:

• Domain Migration: Squarespace easily integrates with your existing domains. You are also allowed to buy domain names on the platform.
• Social Media Interaction: We enjoyed seamless integration with popular social media platforms. For the better part, we could load content from our accounts and onto our sites without trouble.
• Blog Capability: Squarespace proved very effective at running blogs. It's not at WordPress's level when it comes to blogging, but it performed significantly better than Weebly.
• SEO Minded: This platform makes it easy to tweak your Meta descriptions, add tags to images, and optimize your site for Search Engines. This is pretty beneficial to construction companies that are looking to generate organic traffic.

Customer Support: 3.9/5

Squarespace has a live chat 24/7 on the weekdays. email and Twitter support are active at any time of day, 7 days a week. You can also connect with a very interactive community forum.

Value for Money: 3.5/5

This platform offers 14-day trials to new users, but not free accounts. The premium packages are:

• Personal: $12/month
• Business: $18/month
• Basic Commerce: $26/month
• Advanced Commerce: $40/month

GoDaddy

Best Website Builder for Speed

With GoDaddy's ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence), you can have your site up and running in minutes. The design process is hugely automated at the expense of creative flexibility. Its templates have a professional feel to them, but they are not as sleek as Squarespace and Wix templates.

Pros

• Very quick to design and launch a site.
• Very advanced e-commerce capabilities; it can accommodate upwards of 5,000 products. Excellent if you also plan to sell goods along with your construction services.

Cons

• It is very limiting on creative input. It even has restraints on colors, fonts, and template layouts.
• It's not very powerful. If you have a rapidly growing business, you'll outgrow them too soon.

Ease of Use: 3.6/5

GoDaddy has an intuitive drag-and-drop feature, if you don't like their ADI. Drag-and-drop is as quick as Wix in some cases, but it doesn't offer much in terms of design flexibility.

Flexibility of Design: 3.5/5

GoDaddy does not rank very high on flexibility. You will get over 100 themes, though. Before launching your site, you can preview the template in over 20 different styles. Even Wix doesn't have such a feature.

It's an excellent builder if you want your website to go live in the shortest time possible.

Website Building Features: 2.5/5

This platform is considered by many to be a quick fix builder. It offers three main building features:

• Social Media Integration: There's not much you get from GoDaddy in terms of social media integration. At best, all you can do is have icons linking to your profiles, but no automated linking like you find in WordPress.
• GoDaddy SEO: This feature automatically optimizes your site. It's not available to subscribers on the cheapest plan, though.
• Google Analytics: This platform integrates with Google Analytics. Most of the other web builders rely on proprietary tools, which don't match Google Analytics.

Customer Support: 3.2/5

Their customer support doesn't match Wix and Weebly, but it's much better than WordPress. Live chat is available Monday-Friday, 5 AM-6 PM PST.

The platform also has an excellent knowledge base and an interactive help forum. Phone support is active 24/7.

Value for Money: 3.0/5

It has a 30-day free trial and four price plans:

• Basic: $10/month
• Standard: $15/month
• Premium: $20/month
• E-commerce: $25/month

Duda

Best for Construction Template Designs

Duda markets itself as a builder for web designers, so you can't expect it to be as intuitive as Wix and Weebly. It's not as complicated as WordPress, though. What you'll find most impressive are its customizable templates for construction websites.

Pros

• Well-designed templates: Customization is pretty easy unless you want above-average creative freedom. In such a case, you'll need some web-design background.
• You can personalize the user experience by tweaking how different visitors see your site.

Cons

• Not very easy to use, especially if you want a lot of creative freedom.
• SEO support for websites could be better.

Ease of Use: 4.0/5

Duda's themes are not as flexible as Wix's themes. This is because the templates are highly structured and can only be dragged onto specific page locations. That said, it is slightly easier to customize than Squarespace — if your site is minimalistic.

Flexibility of Design: 4.5/5

Personalized user journeys were a reserve of coders until Duda launched its personalized user options. The best thing about it is that its available on the cheapest plan.

Website Building Features: 3.0/5

Duda doesn't have a lot of building features. The SEO prompts that you receive in Wix, Weebly, and GoDaddy are not available in Duda. It has no App store or marketing features. It's only suitable for construction companies that need well-designed sites without undue regard for integrated SEO and marketing features.

Customer Support: 3.5/5

You get support access according to the price plan you purchase:

• Basic plan gets email support
• Team plan get email, live chat, and phone support
• Agency plans get prioritized email access, live chat, and phone support.

Value for Money: 2.2/5

Duda is one of the more expensive builders we tested. They don't have a free plan, but new accounts get a 14-day trial. It has three paid plans:

• Basic: $14/month
• Team: $22/month
• Agency: $74/month

Strikingly

Best Customer Support and After Sales Services

Strikingly was hands-down, the best interaction we had with customer support. If you're new to running a website, go for this platform.

Pros

• Amazing value for money. Only second to Weebly in this regard.
• Very proactive customer support.

Cons

• It only accommodates one-page sites.
• It is not scalable, go for Wix if you are a fast-growing brand.

Ease of Use: 3.7/5

Much like Duda, the platform is easy to use, but at the expense of creative flexibility. It's a good option if you're after a quick one-page site. For more creative freedom, go for Weebly or Wix.

Flexibility of Design: 3.0/5

With a one page site, you have to limit the information you avail to the visitor. Otherwise, you risk having a very long page that will discourage user interaction.

Website Building Features:

On the pro plans, users can add a live chat function via FaceBook's Messenger App. You also have the option to work with MailChimp, a marketing App, from your site. With the free plan, the best you can do in social media interaction is to add links to your profiles.

Strikingly is very poor in terms of SEO support. If you are a growing start-up, it won't do. You're better of going for Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix.

Customer Support: 4.9/5

For all their shortcomings, where features are concerned, they have excellent customer support. Apart from a vast volume of helpful tutorials, there's always a chatbox encouraging you to cat with support.

These Happiness Officers, what they call their support team, are available 24/7.

Value for Money: 3.0/5

Strikingly has three affordable plans:

• Limited: $8/month
• Pro: $16/month
• VIP: $49/month

In a Nutshell

Before settling for a website builder, consider your unique needs and situation. Some builders are very technical and will need some coding: Other platforms do all the work for you after having you answer a few questions.

Go for builders that best suit you. If you are a rapidly growing business, go for the more scalable platforms: Weebly, Squarespace, and Wix. You'll pay more, but you'll get all the features you need.

I would suggest that you take up platforms on their free-trial offers to see how well they address your needs. This way, you're sure of what you're getting before you pay.

The post 7 Best Website Builders for Construction Companies, Contractors, and Home Builders appeared first on WebMonkey.

There is common browser support for many CSS/HTML color codes (listed below) such as text-color:RED. There are also hex code equivalents like text-color:#FF0000. It's also possible to enter an RGB version such as text-color:rgb(255, 0, 0).

Using hex values seems to be the safest approach. It doesn't rely upon the long-term acceptance of color naming from browser developers and is much more widely used than RGB. We suggest you stick to hex codes for all future web design.

Below you'll find the most recent list of commonly accepted color names with their hex and RGB values. If you're looking for variations of individual colors such as pastels, brand colors, or sports team colors click the “view all” link next to each section.

Red Color Codes view all >>

Red#FF0000rgb(255, 0, 0)

IndianRed#CD5C5Crgb(205, 92, 92)

LightCoral#F08080rgb(240, 128, 128)

Salmon#FA8072rgb(250, 128, 114)

DarkSalmon#E9967Argb(233, 150, 122)

LightSalmon#FFA07Argb(255, 160, 122)

Crimson#DC143Crgb(220, 20, 60)

FireBrick#B22222rgb(178, 34, 34)

DarkRed#8B0000rgb(139, 0, 0)

Maroon#800000rgb(128, 0, 0)

Pink Color Codes view all >>

Pink#FFC0CBrgb(255, 192, 203)

LightPink#FFB6C1rgb(255, 182, 193)

HotPink#FF69B4rgb(255, 105, 180)

DeepPink#FF1493rgb(255, 20, 147)

MediumVioletRed#C71585rgb(199, 21, 133)

PaleVioletRed#DB7093rgb(219, 112, 147)

Orange Color Codes view all >>

Orange#FFA500rgb(255, 165, 0)

LightSalmon#FFA07Argb(255, 160, 122)

Coral#FF7F50rgb(255, 127, 80)

Tomato#FF6347rgb(255, 99, 71)

OrangeRed#FF4500rgb(255, 69, 0)

DarkOrange#FF8C00rgb(255, 140, 0)

Yellow Color Codes view all >>

Yellow#FFFF00rgb(255, 255, 0)

Gold#FFD700rgb(255, 215, 0)

LightYellow#FFFFE0rgb(255, 255, 224)

LemonChiffon#FFFACDrgb(255, 250, 205)

LightGoldenrodYellow#FAFAD2rgb(250, 250, 210)

PapayaWhip#FFEFD5rgb(255, 239, 213)

Moccasin#FFE4B5rgb(255, 228, 181)

PeachPuff#FFDAB9rgb(255, 218, 185)

PaleGoldenrod#EEE8AArgb(238, 232, 170)

Khaki#F0E68Crgb(240, 230, 140)

DarkKhaki#BDB76Brgb(189, 183, 107)

Green Color Codes view all >>

Green#008000rgb(0, 128, 0)

GreenYellow#ADFF2Frgb(173, 255, 47)

Chartreuse#7FFF00rgb(127, 255, 0)

LawnGreen#7CFC00rgb(124, 252, 0)

Lime#00FF00rgb(0, 255, 0)

LimeGreen#32CD32rgb(50, 205, 50)

PaleGreen#98FB98rgb(152, 251, 152)

LightGreen#90EE90rgb(144, 238, 144)

MediumSpringGreen#00FA9Argb(0, 250, 154)

SpringGreen#00FF7Frgb(0, 255, 127)

MediumSeaGreen#3CB371rgb(60, 179, 113)

SeaGreen#2E8B57rgb(46, 139, 87)

ForestGreen#228B22rgb(34, 139, 34)

DarkGreen#006400rgb(0, 100, 0)

YellowGreen#9ACD32rgb(154, 205, 50)

OliveDrab#6B8E23rgb(107, 142, 35)

Olive#808000rgb(128, 128, 0)

DarkOliveGreen#556B2Frgb(85, 107, 47)

MediumAquamarine#66CDAArgb(102, 205, 170)

DarkSeaGreen#8FBC8Brgb(143, 188, 139)

LightSeaGreen#20B2AArgb(32, 178, 170)

DarkCyan#008B8Brgb(0, 139, 139)

Teal#008080rgb(0, 128, 128)

Blue Color Codes view all >>

Blue#0000FFrgb(0, 0, 255)

Aqua#00FFFFrgb(0, 255, 255)

Cyan#00FFFFrgb(0, 255, 255)

LightCyan#E0FFFFrgb(224, 255, 255)

PaleTurquoise#AFEEEErgb(175, 238, 238)

Aquamarine#7FFFD4rgb(127, 255, 212)

Turquoise#40E0D0rgb(64, 224, 208)

MediumTurquoise#48D1CCrgb(72, 209, 204)

DarkTurquoise#00CED1rgb(0, 206, 209)

CadetBlue#5F9EA0rgb(95, 158, 160)

SteelBlue#4682B4rgb(70, 130, 180)

LightSteelBlue#B0C4DErgb(176, 196, 222)

PowderBlue#B0E0E6rgb(176, 224, 230)

LightBlue#ADD8E6rgb(173, 216, 230)

SkyBlue#87CEEBrgb(135, 206, 235)

LightSkyBlue#87CEFArgb(135, 206, 250)

DeepSkyBlue#00BFFFrgb(0, 191, 255)

DodgerBlue#1E90FFrgb(30, 144, 255)

CornflowerBlue#6495EDrgb(100, 149, 237)

MediumSlateBlue#7B68EErgb(123, 104, 238)

RoyalBlue#4169E1rgb(65, 105, 225)

MediumBlue#0000CDrgb(0, 0, 205)

DarkBlue#00008Brgb(0, 0, 139)

Navy#000080rgb(0, 0, 128)

MidnightBlue#191970rgb(25, 25, 112)

Purple Color Codes view all >>

Purple#800080rgb(128, 0, 128)

Lavender#E6E6FArgb(230, 230, 250)

Thistle#D8BFD8rgb(216, 191, 216)

Plum#DDA0DDrgb(221, 160, 221)

Violet#EE82EErgb(238, 130, 238)

Orchid#DA70D6rgb(218, 112, 214)

Fuchsia#FF00FFrgb(255, 0, 255)

Magenta#FF00FFrgb(255, 0, 255)

MediumOrchid#BA55D3rgb(186, 85, 211)

MediumPurple#9370DBrgb(147, 112, 219)

RebeccaPurple#663399rgb(102, 51, 153)

BlueViolet#8A2BE2rgb(138, 43, 226)

DarkViolet#9400D3rgb(148, 0, 211)

DarkOrchid#9932CCrgb(153, 50, 204)

DarkMagenta#8B008Brgb(139, 0, 139)

Indigo#4B0082rgb(75, 0, 130)

SlateBlue#6A5ACDrgb(106, 90, 205)

DarkSlateBlue#483D8Brgb(72, 61, 139)

MediumSlateBlue#7B68EErgb(123, 104, 238)

Brown Color Codes view all >>

Brown#A52A2Argb(165, 42, 42)

Cornsilk#FFF8DCrgb(255, 248, 220)

BlanchedAlmond#FFEBCDrgb(255, 235, 205)

Bisque#FFE4C4rgb(255, 228, 196)

NavajoWhite#FFDEADrgb(255, 222, 173)

Wheat#F5DEB3rgb(245, 222, 179)

BurlyWood#DEB887rgb(222, 184, 135)

Tan#D2B48Crgb(210, 180, 140)

RosyBrown#BC8F8Frgb(188, 143, 143)

SandyBrown#F4A460rgb(244, 164, 96)

Goldenrod#DAA520rgb(218, 165, 32)

DarkGoldenrod#B8860Brgb(184, 134, 11)

Peru#CD853Frgb(205, 133, 63)

Chocolate#D2691Ergb(210, 105, 30)

SaddleBrown#8B4513rgb(139, 69, 19)

Sienna#A0522Drgb(160, 82, 45)

Gray Color Codes view all >>

Gray#808080rgb(128, 128, 128)

Black#000000rgb(0, 0, 0)

Gainsboro#DCDCDCrgb(220, 220, 220)

LightGray#D3D3D3rgb(211, 211, 211)

Silver#C0C0C0rgb(192, 192, 192)

DarkGray#A9A9A9rgb(169, 169, 169)

DimGray#696969rgb(105, 105, 105)

LightSlateGray#778899rgb(119, 136, 153)

SlateGray#708090rgb(112, 128, 144)

DarkSlateGray#2F4F4Frgb(47, 79, 79)

White Color Codes

White#FFFFFFrgb(255, 255, 255)

Snow#FFFAFArgb(255, 250, 250)

HoneyDew#F0FFF0rgb(240, 255, 240)

MintCream#F5FFFArgb(245, 255, 250)

Azure#F0FFFFrgb(240, 255, 255)

AliceBlue#F0F8FFrgb(240, 248, 255)

GhostWhite#F8F8FFrgb(248, 248, 255)

WhiteSmoke#F5F5F5rgb(245, 245, 245)

SeaShell#FFF5EErgb(255, 245, 238)

Beige#F5F5DCrgb(245, 245, 220)

OldLace#FDF5E6rgb(253, 245, 230)

FloralWhite#FFFAF0rgb(255, 250, 240)

Ivory#FFFFF0rgb(255, 255, 240)

AntiqueWhite#FAEBD7rgb(250, 235, 215)

Linen#FAF0E6rgb(250, 240, 230)

LavenderBlush#FFF0F5rgb(255, 240, 245)

MistyRose#FFE4E1rgb(255, 228, 225)

The post HTML Color Codes – 2023 Browser Supported Hex Codes appeared first on WebMonkey.