Google Business Profile
Perfect if:
- ●You only need people to find you on Google, quickly.
Skip if:
- ●You need an actual website.
Best For
- ●Local visibility.
- ●Great for "I need something NOW."
- ●Most businesses should create a google business profile:
- ◦ It's free.
- ◦ Relatively easy to setup.
- ◦ It's often the first thing that potential clients will see about your business.
Difficulty
Trial
● N/A
Cost
- ●Free
SEO
(Improve your ranking on search engines like Google.)
If you have this and link your website, it will help improve your SEO.
- ◦ Because google likes to see your website linked on other sites, to boost its trustworthiness.
Customer Support
Difficult to get a hold of support
E-commerce
● N/A
Migration
(Can you move your site somewhere else)
- ●N/A, this is a google listing not a website.
Security
● N/A, this is a google listing not a website.
Accessibility
● N/A, this is a google listing not a website.
Collaboration
(How Easy is it to Collaborate or Hand-off to an Employee)
You can easily add users to help manage your Google Business Listing Profile.
- ● Here's a video guide for adding users and admins:
App Store
(Allows you to add extra features to your website.)
● N/A
Examples
- ●Guide that shows Google Business Profiles to use as examples as you build your own:
More Informatiion
- ●It's free, so it's worth getting your google business profile setup. it usually takes a few weeks for the business to be verified.
- ●13 minute set up guide:
- ●Guide that shows Google Business Profiles to use as examples as you build your own:
Pros
- Free, will help people find your business to potentially lead to some more sales.
- Easy to setup.
Cons
- Looks less professional if you don't add a website to your google business profile, but it's better than nothing and easy to setup.
- Although you can post your menu as images to get around setting up a website, it requires more work for customers to click through images to find the menu images.
Google Sites
Perfect if:
- ●You just want a basic website with maybe a contact form, gallery and map at most, budget and technical hassle need to be minimal, you're okay with a basic design, no complex features.
- ●You want a short term site for an event or a report.
- ●For a very simple store, you could use a template which gives you access to a small store, mostly through JotForm integrations.
- ●If your organization also uses Google Drive and other Google products, the native integration can help a lot.
Skip if:
- ●You need a site that will grow as your business grows. However, you could always start with a free Google Site and move to a more robust page builder later.
- ●Want to avoid having a basic looking site, customization is limited.
- ●Want to have the highest SEO ranking possible (ranking high on google search results)
- ●Need a true E-commerce store.
Best For
- ●Simple blogs
- ●Bio sites
- ●Portfolios
- ●Simple websites
- ●Internal team sites
- ●Disposable sites for one time events or reports
Difficulty
Trial
● N/A it's free.
Cost
- ●Free website builder and hosting with a google account
- ◦ Free SSL cert
- ◦ No tiers
- ◦ No ads
- ◦ However there is a tiny, semi-transparent "Report Abuse" button in the bottom left.
- ●Although you can use the free Google.sites subdomain I highly recommend buying a custom domain.
- ◦ Because lots of scams create sites with google.sites subdomains (site names). So some websites filter out google.site subdomains. Also, it looks more professional to have a cheap custom domain added to your site.
- ●"Google Sites are free to build, host, and maintain with a Google or Gmail account. There are no web hosting fees. If, however, you are using Google Sites in conjunction with Google Workspace, the cost is rolled into the user license fee of all plans."
SEO
(Improve your ranking on search engines like Google.)
Google Sites can show up in search results, and Google themselves say theres nothing blocking it from performing well in search but it's full potential is limited.
- ● The actual limitation is the SEO toolkit: it's very bare-bones compared to other builders. Google Sites gives you only the basics: Site title, Page titles, Header tags, Image alt text, Integrations like Google Analytics + Search Console. That's enough for simple sites, but it means you can't customize things like meta descriptions, structured data, advanced indexing controls, or performance tweaks.
- ● So while it can rank, it's unlikely to compete with sites built on platforms that allow deeper optimization.
- ● If you want to get the most out of Google Sites, these guides cover best practices: https://www.googlesites-seo.com/ https://sites.google.com/site/horstwebdesign/seo-tips https://www.kirksvillewebdesign.com/google-sites/seo
Customer Support
Basically no support if just have a free Gmail account instead of a workspace subscription, however there is a help community.
- ● "Google Sites support for a free Gmail account is basically none existent from Google Inc. themselves. There isn't a way to submit a ticket or talk to a Google representative. With a Google Workspace subscription the situation improves, but it comes at a cost there. However, there is an active Help Community of product experts, which is a forum type system." https://www.kirksvillewebdesign.com/google-sites-developer/google-sites-news/free-website-builder-plans
E-commerce
Only simple stores.
- ● The lack of a proper CMS makes the prospect of managing a large ecommerce site on Google Sites impractical. However, templates have been made which utilize Pay Now buttons and simple storefronts. This link shows Google Sites templates:
- ● Most templates seem to use jotform to create a simple store
Migration
(Can you move your site somewhere else)
- ●You'd have to build from scratch.
- ●You can only migrate it to sharepoint (used for corporate intranets).
Security
Handles basic security for you.
- ● https://sites.google.com/view/templates-marketplace/googlesites/about-google-sites
- ◦ "Your site is hosted on Google’s reliable servers, ensuring performance and uptime."
- ◦ "Google Sites provides automatic backups of your content, ensuring that your work is secure and easily recoverable in case of accidental deletion or changes."
- ◦ "Every Google Site automatically comes with SSL security, ensuring that your site is encrypted and safe for visitors, which helps build trust."
- ◦ "View and restore previous versions of your site, adding a layer of security to your content management."
- ● Your website data is stored on Google's servers, which could raise concerns about data privacy and security for some people.
Accessibility
Not great for accessibility but there are guides to make use of the accessibility features it does have.
Collaboration
(How Easy is it to Collaborate or Hand-off to an Employee)
Very Easy to add someone, and its a very simple website builder
- ● "If, at some point, I want/need to turn webmaster duties over to someone, it wouldn't take eons to show them what to do. I've shown other embroiderers (most of whom are not terribly techie) how to start their sites, and all have been successful. ... it's perfect for the groups I work with (demographics tilt toward senior citizen)"
- ● "I onboarded many nonprofits onto Google Sites because they used Docs and Sheets, but also because your average person can easily make updates".
App Store
(Allows you to add extra features to your website.)
No App store but you can embed code (widgets into your site to extend its functionality slightly).
- ● https://sites.google.com/site/horstwebdesign/integrations-widgets-apps-and-add-ons
- ● Examples of premium "apps", in this case its just code you'll copy and paste into Google Sites:
More Informatiion
Pros
- Free with a google account!
- All google sites are made to work on desktop and mobile devices, so it'll save you time troubleshooting the appearance of the site.
- If your organization also uses Google Drive and other Google products, the native integration can help a lot.
- ◦ "Google Sites really excels at intranet applications because of the easy integration with apps like Google Drive, Google Calendar, etc. "
- You can get templates through their store, theres both free and premium templates
- "I've used Wordpress, Wix, and Squarespace, and just really enjoy the simplicity. There are great prebuilt templates out there, but even using Canva and a few embeds from other platforms and you can have a decent site."
- " We are a school using Google Workspace for Education, basically all of the Google apps like docs, sheets, slides etc. I decided on Google Sites as it is collaborative, and our team could easily work on it, adding content and pulling in images from Google Photos. Most of the team have no experience in web designing but it was easy to set up and we have no complaints!"
- Google sites used to share your google drive or google worksplace storage, but that is no longer the case for new google sites.
Cons
- Minimal customization, so the sites tend to look basic.
- It only supports minimal blogging features.
- If you don't use a custom domain and stick with the google.sites domain, some sites such as reddit filter out google site links because of the high amount of scams and malware that create free google sites to trick potential victims.
Carrd
Perfect if:
- ●You want a clean simple, affordable one page website in roughly an hour. (You can add forms to it)
- ●You want to make it `look` like it has multiple pages, and don't mind the SEO hit & that `multiple pages` on Caard can be buggy
Skip if:
- ●You need blogging or complex features.
- ●You need a real multi-page website
Best For
- ●Simple one-page sites for:
- ◦ Freelancers
- ◦ Entrepreneurs
- ◦ Portfolios
- ◦ Personal Brands
- ◦ Event Organizers
- ◦ Small Biz Landing Pages
Difficulty
Trial
● 7 day trial
Cost
- ●VERY cheap
- ●https://carrd.co/pro
- ◦ Pro Lite $9/year
- ◦ Pro Standard $19/year
- ⁃ You need this tier or higher to use a custom domain
- ◦ Pro Plus $49/yr
SEO
(Improve your ranking on search engines like Google.)
Carrd doesn't offer as much SEO customization as bigger builders, but if you follow the main best-practice tips, you can still get solid rankings.
- ● For small businesses or low-competition niches, it's usually enough. If you're in a very competitive market, though, you probably won't hit the very top spots on Google with Carrd alone.
- ● With Pro Standard or above, you can: Add meta tags, Connect Google Analytics to see your traffic sources and what people search for (super helpful for fine-tuning SEO).
- ● Most of the useful SEO options sit behind a small paywall (Pro Standard or higher), but Carrd is so inexpensive that upgrading a tier is still much cheaper than most alternatives.
- ● Since Carrd sites are lightweight by design, they're often pretty fast. Just avoid huge images or videos and you'll be in good shape.
- ● Helpful SEO guides for Carrd: 7-minute YouTube walkthrough:
- ● More in-depth tips
Customer Support
Offers email support, no phone support. Usually replies within 24 hours.
E-commerce
No built in E-commerce features. But you could have a small shop with an Ecommerce template Ecwid to embed an online store to your Carrd website.
- ● However with Ecwid you are limited to 5 products on a starter plan, 100 to venture, ect. No free plans. Heres a through article which compares shopify to Ecwid:
- ● Embeding options are only available for pro standard and up plans.
- ● Through article which shows how you can use e-commerce options such as stripe, gumload:
- ● You could also use e-commerce templates made by users, prices vary. Heres one example:
Migration
(Can you move your site somewhere else)
- ●Very limited, you'll basically be rebuilding the website.
- ●You Can only export the website on a pro plus plan or higher, though even then the form elements will not be functional in the download.
Security
Handled by Carrd.
- ● Regular Audits: Continuous monitoring and updates to ensure compliance and security
Accessibility
Since Carrd sites are simpler they're more likely to be accessible but you'll have to manually check for accessibility compliance.
- ● There's nothing about "we meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA" for the templates, so if you legally need to meet this requirements or want to care for all your potential customers, you'd likely have to manually check for accessibility compliance.
- ● Simple accessibility tips for Carrd:
- ● Web accessibility Resources:
Collaboration
(How Easy is it to Collaborate or Hand-off to an Employee)
Very simple to share access.
App Store
(Allows you to add extra features to your website.)
Limited to just 5 widgets: Stripe, PayPal, Gumroad, Typeform, facebook. But you can also embed services like Ecwid with a pro standard plan.
Examples
- ●"18 Best Carrd Websites":
- ●A curated gallery of Carrd one-page sites:
- ●"20 Inspiring Carrd Website Examples":
- ●Curated gallery of Carrd one-pagers:
More Informatiion
- ●8 minute overview:
- ●15 minute tutorial:
- ●3 minute guide for setting up a multi page Caard website
Pros
- Very affordable!
- Easy to use
Cons
- For single page websites. Though if you want it to "look" like a multi page website you can use their sections feature or anchor navigator. However it won't have the SEO benefits of a true multi page website because they offer only one crawlable URL, fewer targeted meta tags, and minimal internal linking opportunities. Therefore, search engines will not index those as seperate pages.
- ◦ https://www.silverservers.com/website-design/the-problem-with-one-page-websites-for-seo
- ◦ However there are some solutions such as ZerpHost which are made to transform a Carrd site from a single-page hash-based layout into a properly structured multi-page website.
- ◦ https://www.reddit.com/r/Carrd/comments/1frpdoz/comment/m7o3l97/
- ◦ https://zerphost.com/
- "A "multi page" Carrd is also slightly more complicated to set up.
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