Hoot Host takes a lot of pride in supporting small businesses. One of the main ways we accomplish this is with our Website Builder plans. These plans create a more affordable option to build and maintain a professional online presence for a business of any size. It is a completely new approach to building affordable websites and supporting small businesses.
We see a huge opportunity in our offer to build affordable websites with your domain, hosting, monthly maintenance, and optimization all included. With no big upfront costs or contracts. Just an affordable monthly plan for a small business to have an effective, professional website. Our customers understand the immense value in our Website Builder plans and the response has been amazing.
But the truth is, there are a few other companies who are following this solution-first model to building affordable websites. In a previous blog post we reviewed a company named Jottful and compared their website builder platform to HootPress – our enhanced version of WordPress. In this post, we’ll review and compare a website service called UENI and how they stack up against the powerhouse that is WordPress.
What is UENI?
UENI pitches their website building service as a reasonably priced way to get a professional online presence. They build it for you, make it easy for you to edit yourself, and offer enhanced functionality options. Compared to a more simple system like Jottful, UENI certainly seems to have a platform that can more effectively empower small businesses with e-commerce functionality, bookings, and popular third-party integrations. They market themselves as an alternative to Wix, where instead of trying to build it yourself and never finishing your website, you can get a Wix-level website built for you using UENI.
When you compare a UENI website vs a WordPress website – topics like overall design presentation, best practices, search engine optimization, accessibility compliance, and performance make an easy win for WordPress.
We took a deep dive into several UENI sites directly from the Success Stories page of their website. We compared them to recent Hoot Host Website Builder customer websites we built in WordPress. The results are an obvious win for WordPress.
All the UENI websites we audited were being given poor ratings in performance, search engine optimization, best practices, or accessibility / compliance. All audits were completed using Google Lighthouse and none of the websites we audited had consistent metrics over 90%.
While every website (regardless of how it was built) always needs to improve on something, it is more than fair to say WordPress websites consistently rank better by Google Lighthouse when it comes to these topics.
Let’s talk about design!
The UENI websites we reviewed were largely built on the same templated framework. So while UENI seems to showcase high level design examples on their website, what their customers end up with is a cookie-cutter website that looks an awful lot like everyone else who uses UENI.
Compare this to WordPress which has thousands of gorgeous theme options to choose from and the debate is over. Plus, with Hoot Host Website Builder our customers receive an actual custom design, branded specifically to their business! No templates, no basic cookie cutter approach – a custom designed website to best represent your business. On the design debate – an easy win for WordPress too.
What about scalability and growth?
UENI does offer higher end integrations and functionality add-ons. However the websites we reviewed were very simple e-commerce stores with limited features, very basic e-commerce functionality, and no obvious CRM integrations. UENI simply cannot compete with the open source community around WordPress or the e-commerce power of WooCommerce. With WordPress, our customers have access to thousands of plugins, tools, security add-ons, and easy integrations to help them grow their website with their business – and easily integrate with literally any third party tools, CRM, or other platforms! WordPress is literally built for growth and scalability, so this is another clear win for WordPress.
UENI vs WordPress – No competition
Hoot Host aims to empower our customers with the world’s greatest content management system and website builder – WordPress! With a platform like UENI a business is simply leasing their proprietary website builder. What this does is traps a business with a website that is really owned by UENI – and even has their logo in the footer. Furthermore, given the shortcomings in design, optimization, and accessibility / compliance we’ve seen from UENI websites, a business is also trapped with a website that limits their growth and poorly represents their business. A business of any size deserves a better solution that they can still afford, and WordPress seems like the obvious answer vs the UENI approach.
What happens if you want to take your website to another host or provider?
With UENI – you can’t. Plain and simple. However WordPress is hosted and supported by all the major providers and thousands of others around the world. It is truly the most used and supported platform in the world. While Hoot Host does have some limited terms and conditions for new customers, we don’t hold your website hostage if you choose to take it elsewhere somewhere down the line. UENI being a proprietary platform, they will not let you take it anywhere else, ever.
Hoot Host Website Builder Plans vs UENI
Our Hoot Host Website Builder plans simply offer more than UENI can because we are using WordPress as the backbone of our affordable website approach. Our plans offer truly customized design (or a theme of your choice), the largest community of open source plugins and tools on the web to help your website grow with you, WooCommerce for e-commerce and online store functionality, plus easy integrations to all the popular third party platforms and CRMs out there. Not to mention the ongoing maintenance, optimization, accessibility / compliance, and security benefits we include every month!
With Hoot Host you get everything included with no extra fees and far more comprehensive services included every month.
All built on the WordPress platform so you know your website is the modern, professional, optimized, and secure online presence it should be for your business. That is why we structured the Hoot Host Website Builder plans around a system that empowers your business and grows with you. That platform is HootPress – our enhanced version of WordPress.
We built a modern interface with powerful integrations that takes traditional WordPress to a whole new level. Making a backend system that is easy to manage with no code or advanced web knowledge necessary. All while still allowing integrations with the WordPress plugins and tools our customers love.
Need more evidence that WordPress is the better choice over UENI? UENI uses WordPress in their own website! Their own website’s blog is built on WordPress. So we can assume they would agree WordPress is pretty amazing.
That’s where we’ll end the comparisons – and the winner is obviously WordPress!
Get Started with Hoot Host Website Builder for an affordable WordPress website! Use code HOOTFREE at checkout to get the first month completely free!