Duda Review

Duda features a strong code editor, a good SEO tool and a large variety of customizable blocks and elements. It’s features are not particularly exhaustive, however, but for the most part you’ll find everything you need. Problems may arise when you’re trying to drastically alter the layout of a page, because every element you use can only be placed in pre-determined sections.

Add into the mix the lack of an app market and things start to look bad for the tool. Regardless, most small to medium businesses or personal projects can benefit from a beautiful website created with this builder. To see if Duda is right for you, read on, or try it yourself with the free trial.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Alternatives for Duda

Features

Duda’s features are exhaustive. It’s helpful that you can add snippets of HTML and CSS at any point, it’s easy to manage a blog and its stats and search engine optimization functionalities come close to a full-fledged SEO assistant. With that in mind, it does have drawbacks.

Duda Code Editor

Click the “</>” symbol in the editor’s top bar to access the code for your website.

Unlike most website builders, Duda’s code editor is helpful. You still need advanced HTML and CSS knowledge to take advantage of the developer tools, but Duda’s strength is that it’s easy to access the code and manipulate it in bite-sized chunks.

All website sections are separated into categories, so if, for example, you want to resize a single element, you can learn how to modify a float and edit that element, even if you don’t have a comprehensive understanding of HTML or CSS.

If coding is something you’d do along with regular drag-and-drop editing, read our Mobirise review. Its code editor is not as seamless as Duda’s, but its developer support is top notch.

Duda Blogging

The blogging tool is also well-made.

Besides the beautiful design, the blog manager lets you quickly add, remove or edit posts. Everything you publish comes with an RSS, but you can’t integrate comments with anything.

What’s cool about Duda’s blogging tool is that you can edit the layout of your blog at any time. Though most website builders make you choose a blog theme, or stick you with a template’s blog theme, Duda lets you make small changes to your blog’s structure even after publishing a website.

Edits apply to all posts, though, which is a double-edged sword. Though that means decreased customizability, it keeps your website consistent, which is good for ranking higher on Google.

Duda SEO

Since we mentioned ranking on Google, let’s talk SEO. Duda is built to make it easier to rank well. You get free SSL encryption with all plans and you can edit metadata. Add a great code editor and most people with knowledge about Google’s algorithm should be equipped to rank first.

If you’re a beginner, it might be tougher to get started. You can still make it work with research, but the process isn’t optimized for new users.

If you want an SEO wizard that’ll hold your hand through the process, read our Wix review. Besides being our top choice, it also has an awesome SEO wizard.

To keep track of how people view your website, Duda included a stats tool. Unfortunately, it’s mostly useless because it’s rudimentary and you can access more data by integrating with Google Analytics.

Duda eCommerce

If ecommerce is why you’re starting a website, steer clear of Duda. It doesn’t have a bad store system, but the feature is incomplete.

You have to pay extra to add more than 10 products to your website. With that in mind, the ecommerce feature would work great for those who are only selling a few courses or digital products, especially since free accounts can sell online.

The ecommerce platform is easy to use — Duda creates a store for you, with dummy content and buy buttons included — but it’s not a platform to build big online stores on.

Duda’s store can work in some cases, but for a full-fledged ecommerce platform you should consider Shopify. It’s built for selling online, but it’s harder to use, so check out our beginners guide to Shopify before trying it.

Duda Features Overview

Pricing

Basic Vanilla Editor Details	1-year plan $ 14.00/ month $168.00 billed every year
Team Four team members,Collaboration tools,White label platform Details	1-year plan $ 22.00/ month $264.00 billed every year
Agency Everything in Team,10 team members,API access & website exportWidget builder Details	1-year plan $ 74.00/ month $888.00 billed every year

If you were to make an individual analysis on whether to buy Duda, it’d be worth it. Compared to the market standard, though, it’s expensive.

The Basic plan is the editor you get to try in the free 30-day trial minus the collaboration tools, such as the comments tab. If you’re a bootstrapper, you should be fine with this plan, regardless of your enterprise’s size. It’s especially good for portfolio websites or youpreneurs.

The Team plan brings collaboration to the table. There isn’t a lot to say, just make sure you grab the deal if you love Duda, but you need deep customization and someone to help you with coding or advanced settings.

The Agency plan isn’t worth it. For $74 a month, billed annually, you only get a bit more than you do on the Team tier. If you need a widget builder, you’d be better off with a different platform like Wix or Weebly.

Design & Tools

Duda’s editor is striking and it lets you create beautiful websites.

Once you sign up for the service, you get to choose from a lot of templates. They’re all good-looking, responsive and easy to work on. Plus, they come with industry-specific website structures and dummy content, which make it easier to get something published fast.

We recommend browsing the themes before making a decision. You can change your theme later, but it’ll be much harder to redo all the content from the ground up. It’s easy to half shut your eyes and grab the first thing because the templates are well-made.

Once you’ve chosen a template, you’ll be sent to the editor.

The top bar has cool tools. For example, the left-most scroll-down menu lets you navigate through existing pages. That’s helpful because most website builders make you go back to the dashboard to edit pages. With Duda, the process is streamlined.

Next to that tab are the device icons. You can use them to see how a change will look on a device. It’d be the total package if you could also choose not to show certain elements on one device or another, but it’s still a nice add-on.

That tab is where you can access developer tools, as well. Though the icon can be counterintuitive, if you know enough about CSS, you’ll figure out that “</>” lets you code.

Lastly, Duda stores your revisions. If you make a mistake, during the same session, you can click “undo” or “redo” to update your website for quick revisions. Duda doesn’t feature a full revision history like Elementor, but it’s still helpful.

An innovative feature in Duda is its comments.

On the right side of the editor, there’s a small toolbar that lets you add and manage comments.

You can check a full comments log to track your team’s work. That helps if you work with someone on your website, which is probable considering the code editor.

The Duda Panel

You’ll spend most of your time working with the left panel. It features most website builder features, so let’s tackle them one by one.

The “design” tab lets you modify typography and visual aspects, such as the color palette or website layout. It only lets you do global changes, though. For particular design choices, you’ll have to tackle each section individually. That said, compared to Mobirise, Duda’s design feature is powerful. You can edit a lot of aspects, even things such as font weight or line height.

The “pages” tab is self-explanatory. You use it to manage the subpages of your website. What’s awesome is that Duda lets you localize pages from this tab. Adding different website versions based on language is simple and quick, so international brands with local charters will have an easy time working with Duda.

That said, if localization is important to you, read our Voog review. Though not an extraordinary builder in general, it’s great for translating your website.

The “content” tab works like a file manager. From there, you can manage content uploaded to your website, such as files, form responses and the business information you may need.

The “personalize” tab is one of Duda’s innovative features. There, you can automate processes by creating rules. Basically, you choose a trigger, which could be as simple as a person visiting your website, and actions that take place when that trigger is detected.

What’s even better is that most actions you can automate, such as showing pop-ups or personalizing content for first time and regular visitors, have already been built by the developers. All you have to do is change the placeholder content into something that represents your enterprise.

The “settings” tab lets you edit back-end data. For example, you can play with the metadata of your pages, edit HTML sections or change your website’s 404 error message.

Compared to other builders with settings tabs, Duda’s is optimized to help beginners understand what they can and can’t edit. It doesn’t have complicated headers or a counterintuitive structure. It’s just segmented into things you can edit.

The “widgets” tab is straightforward.

It’s a section to add premade blocks and elements. You just drag them into the editor and modify on-page where need be.

Compared to other builders, Duda’s elements are plentiful and polished, so most website building needs will be taken care of. Everything’s at your disposal, from PayPal donate buttons to image carousels and testimonial sections.

Lastly, there are the “store” and “blog” tabs. We tackled what they can do under features, but we still wanted to mention that, like all sections of the Duda editor, they’re beautifully designed.

Even if that doesn’t sound like the most important aspect, it makes the sometimes hard job of creating a website easier.

On top of all those options, you can do on-page edits. For things such as pop-ups, you can customize elements with just a few clicks. That’s not revolutionary, but it makes for an optimized workflow.

Ease of Use

Everything about Duda is easy to use. Even the code editor is broken into bite-sized chunks.

What we want to point out is that Duda is easy to use despite its powerful features. There aren’t many aspects that you can’t modify as a beginner, and with HTML and CSS knowledge, the sky’s the limit.

That’s because Duda is well-organized and labeled. You don’t need to go through tutorials to figure out which options are under which category. Plus, options such as redo and undo, on-page edits and a drag-and-drop interface make for a seamless workflow.

The only thing that’s not easy to do is organize elements on the page the way you imagine them. To keep your website’s code from getting messy, you can only stack blocks in predetermined sections of a page, so make sure your ideal homepage design can fit into a grid before signing up for Duda.

If ease of use is important to you, but you want to try something cheaper, read our Site123 review. It doesn’t have a drag-and-drop editor, but it’s easy to use.

Support

Duda’s support isn’t outstanding, but it does its job. There are different benefits and updates to your support depending on the plan you purchase, but let’s talk about what everyone gets.

For starters, everyone is can use Duda’s help center.

There, you’ll find seven categories of Q&As and tutorials to help you navigate the editor. Though helpful, we didn’t need to use the help center because Duda is easy to use.

If you find yourself in trouble with the tool, you can contact the developers via email. The average response time is a few hours during U.S. business hours and about one day if you struggle in the middle of the night.

If you upgrade to the Team or Agency plan, you can also contact Duda agents via chat or phone. Plus, any email that you send will be marked and treated with priority.

Duda’s support is robust. It covers its bases, but there’s not much innovation or anything extraordinary to mention.

The Verdict

Duda is a decent choice for anyone who wants to go online. It’s limited in terms of ecommerce, but any small business or agency should do just fine with the tool. Because of its beautiful design, powerful features and ease of use, Duda ranks up there with our best website builders.

If you’re keen on blogging, read our best web hosting providers article. Duda has a good blogging feature, but WordPress may be better aligned with what you need. If that’s the case, read our beginner’s guide to using WordPress and our intermediate guide to using WordPress.

Do you agree with our review of Duda? If not, make sure you slide down into the comments section and let us know. Thanks for reading.