Many creatives choose to create an online portfolio to build their professional online presence and highlight their best work to potential clients. If you’re looking to do that, Duda, a popular website builder that powers over 14 million sites, is worth considering.
In our Duda review, we’ll go over some of the service’s crucial information for you to decide if it’s the best website builder for your creative needs.
Duda review: plans and pricing
Duda doesn’t offer any free plans. The cheapest Basic plan ($19/month) allows individuals to build personal sites with fundamental features such as website personalisation, SSL security, and access to free and premium images. Users of the Basic plan will only receive email support.
For those working in digital agencies and individuals who design websites for clients at scale, Duda offers three other plans with team collaboration capabilities and client management functionality, such as user permissions, site comments, and white-label client access.
The Team plan ($29/month) provides chat and phone support and allows you to add three team members to work on a site with you. This is also the only plan that offers users a 14-day free trial.
Those with more team members and who need to build multiple websites can consider Duda’s Agency plan ($59/month). You can have up to 10 team members, build four websites, and enjoy priority support via phone, chat, and email. In addition to all the features from the Team plan, you’ll get advanced features like widget design customisation and website export. For all paid plans, there is a cost-saving option to be billed annually.
Duda’s final Custom plan is for those who need 24/7 dedicated support, support for an unlimited number of team members, and managed services like account management and tailored technical, design, and sales training. You’ll have to contact Duda’s sales team for a quote.
Duda also offers paid e-commerce add-ons for all users. A standard plan (list 100 products) costs $7.25/month, an Advanced plan (list 2500 products) costs $19.25/month, and an Unlimited plan (unlimited number of products) costs $39/month. All plans support over 40 payment methods with no transaction fee and the Unlimited plan allows for POS integration.
Against its competitors, Duda’s pricing plans are pretty costly. For comparison, Wix has paid plans ranging from $4.50 to $35/month, although if you want e-commerce tools, you’ll have to pick one of the Business plans, which start at $17/month.
Duda review: features
We’ll break down some of Duda’s key features here.
Design and personalisation
Personalising your site is easy with Duda’s large selection of mobile-responsive templates. The templates are neatly sorted into sections like Portfolios, Restaurant and Food, Online, Travel, and Business. You can even filter your selection by colour.
Duda also conveniently shows you how your site will look on a desktop, smartphone, and tablet. Simply click on a template thumbnail for a preview. In addition to templates, Duda supports hundreds of fonts that you can use to personalise your site.
Apps and widgets
Duda offers widgets for you to improve the functionality of your site. The website builder integrates with third-party services like Zoom, Twitter, Facebook, and PayPal.
In addition to widgets, users can browse Duda’s app store for free or paid apps like Paperform, Usercentric, and Loxi. You won’t spend too much time there, though—there are fewer than 20 apps for you to explore. But with Duda’s focus on quality over quantity, you’ll find powerful apps that integrate seamlessly with your site.
E-commerce capabilities
For all of its plans, Duda offers an option for users to add e-commerce tools to build an online store. These include sales tools like product page layout templates, shopping carts, automatic tax calculations, and checkout options.
Duda review: interface
After selecting a plan, setting up an account, and deciding on a template, you’ll be directed to the main editor to build your site. A toolbar on the left shows you a list of tabs: Design, Pages, Widgets, Content, Personalize, Ecommerce, Blog, App Store, and Settings.
On the intuitive editor, you can drag and drop content, widgets, and elements onto a page easily. Unfortunately, Duda doesn’t offer a dedicated app for you to edit your site on mobile. You can, however, use the mobile web version of the site builder, which works just as well.
Duda review: security
At Duda, vulnerability scans are conducted regularly and monitoring tools are put in place to detect any abnormalities and misuse. The service also conducts central patch management. In other words, Duda’s team downloads security patches on behalf of its users. Hackers are thus unable to take advantage of known security issues to gain access to data.
Duda review: support
Duda offers email, chat, and phone support, but the level of support that you’ll receive depends on the plan you choose. Duda’s website also features a knowledge base and a blog with useful articles for troubleshooting. You’ll also find educational resources in the form of webinars and courses with site-building tips and tricks from industry experts.
Is Duda right for you?
With an intuitive editor, multiple personalization options, and, a ton of educational resources, Duda is worth considering. Those looking for a website builder with a large selection of third-party integrations, however, may prefer competitors like Wix, which offers more than 250 third-party apps.
Furthermore, Wix’s Business plans feature e-commerce tools right out of the box and are considerably cheaper. At $17/month, Wix’s cheapest Business e-commerce plan allows users to list an unlimited number of products. With Duda, a Basic plan with the cheapest e-commerce add-on would set you back $21.25/month and you will be limited to 100 product listings.
That said, if optimizing a site for mobile is a priority for you, Duda, with a feature that helps you visualize how your site looks on desktop, smartphone, and tablet at every step of the way, is a good choice.
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