Voog Review

Launched and maintained in Estonia, Voog helps small businesses create beautiful websites and translate them to reach a global audience.

If you need an easy set-up, localization and coding features, Voog is a good choice. Its editor and pricing make it simple to duplicate your website in different languages and having coding skills opens a lot of customization options.

Voog, admittedly, has a somewhat steep learning curve, but it’s one of those cases where it’s easy to use the tool, just hard to master it. Keep reading our Voog review to see if it is right for your online needs.

Alternatives for Voog

Strengths & Weaknesses

Features

Voog is well-equipped to create a stunning website, especially if you take advantage of its coding. The problem with its feature lineup is that it’s not good at bringing traffic to your website because there’s no dedicated SEO tool, making it difficult to rank well.

With that in mind, there are powerful tools waiting to shine in its editor, so let’s tackle the most important ones.

Voog Blogging

Adding a new blog post on Voog is straightforward. Create a new blog entry and the software will automatically generate the page for it, so all you have to do is populate it with content.

Editing the page is also easy. You can edit the body content, page title and tags and see the end result in real time.

It’s rare to see such a simple approach to blogging in a web builder. Wix makes you fill out forms to set up a new post and you can’t fully edit the page like you can a homepage. It makes up for it in other areas, though, as you can see in our Wix review.

Voog is a true content management system, allowing you to save drafts, set publish dates and even add regular elements on a page, such as social buttons and image carousels.

Unfortunately, the feature is not without fault. You can’t have post topics or integrate with Facebook for the comment section, which diminishes a user’s experience on your website.

That said, there aren’t a lot of issues, which makes Voog a good choice for blogging. If you want a more powerful CMS, you could try WordPress. It’s built for blogging, so if that piques your interest, read our beginner’s guide to using WordPress. Unlike Voog, it doesn’t include web hosting, though. If you’re taking that path, read our best web hosting for WordPress guide, too.

Voog and eCommerce

Adding ecommerce to your website is also easy. In short, you start by creating the ‘Add to Cart’ button on a page, add product information to the element and create the product page around that.

It’s uncommon, but it does its job. The process is set up so that you put in work in the beginning, then sit back and make slight changes afterward.

Before adding products, you have to set up your web store and button details. After that, you can add product images and descriptions, which is a segmentation that gives you a good workflow.

On the flip side, Voog doesn’t support store categories. Its system will only work for small online shops and platforms with exclusive or rare items.

Plus, your customers can only pay via PayPal or MakeCommerce, so it’s not a versatile system. On the Standard plan, advanced e-commerce features, such as batch processing, were missing, but it does its job for small projects.

If you’re keen on e-commerce, you’d be better off with a builder made for that, such as Shopify. If that platform suits your needs, make sure to read our beginner’s guide to Shopify.

Voog Localization

One of Voog’s biggest pluses is its easy localization. The company takes pride in “speaking foreignese” and it shows.

Adding a new version of your website in a different language is simple. All you have to do is click the flag in the top right corner and you’ll be sent to a duplicate structure of your website.

After that, just replace the content with your desired translation and you’re set. Visitors to the website will be able to switch between languages the same way you did.

All of Voog’s plans support localization. The cheapest version lets you add up to three languages, which is more than any other website builder.

Site123 has a cool localization feature, as well — it’s probably the second-best out of website builders — but its system is more rigid. You can add a duplicate of your website, but the page will only automatically display in a different language if a person is in a certain region.

Voog gives more control to the visitor, but if you want to do it the Site123 way, make sure to read our Site123 review.

Developer Tools

With coding, Voog opens more opportunities. If you upgrade to the Plus plan, you get full access to your website’s code.

To access the coding tool, go to “settings,” then “template editor.” That will open the code editor, which lists the elements on your page.

You can code using different programming languages and everything is made easier by Voog’s API. The documentation for the tool is extensive, which is a big plus for the feature. If that sounds good, make sure you check the platform’s guide to getting started with the code editor.

Voog Features Overview

Pricing

Even Voog’s pricing is more straightforward than other website builders. You only have to choose between three plans: Standard, Plus and Premium.

Before nitpicking each one, something to note about Voog is that it doesn’t have a free plan. You can try its Standard plan for 30 days for free, but you can’t publish your website, so you can’t use the platform long-term if you don’t pay.

That goes against the norm, with most builders offering a subdomain at no cost, but it helps the customer take action. If Voog is right for you, you’ll pay, which will motivate you to get your website up and running.

Standard 3 users, 3 languages, 30 pagesCustom domainLimited store3% transaction feePassword protected pagesFully customizable designAPI access & developer toolsSSL security Details 2 GB Storage Space Unlimited GB Bandwidth 1 Domains Domain Name	1-month plan $ 9.08/ month 1-year plan $ 0.57/ month $6.80 billed every year Save 94 %
Plus 10GB storageUnlimited pagesComplete online store3% transaction feeFree domainDatabase tool Details 10 GB Storage Space Unlimited GB Bandwidth 1 Domains Domain Name	1-month plan $ 15.88/ month 1-year plan $ 0.95/ month $11.35 billed every year Save 94 %
44.25 Unlimited resourcesNo transaction feePriority supportCustom SSL certificate Details Unlimited GB Storage Space Unlimited GB Bandwidth Unlimited Domains Domain Name	1-month plan $ 56.73/ month 1-year plan $ 3.69/ month $44.25 billed every year Save 93 %

The Standard plan offers 2GB of data storage, three languages, 30 pages and up to three collaborators. You get SSL encryption and you can set up shop online, but the platform takes three percent of each sale made and you don’t get all the e-commerce features. You can get a custom domain, but you’ll have to pay extra for it.

Standard is good if you’re getting started with e-commerce and want to see if it’s right for you or just want another place to expand your online presence. For example, if you already sell small items, it’s a good place reach new customers.

The Plus plan ups the data storage to 10GB and doesn’t cap languages, pages or users. You also get a free domain, full access to your website’s database and the all-inclusive e-commerce pack, even if the website still takes 3 percent of every sale.

Plus plans are perfect for a company selling products online to an international audience because you can add as many languages as you want. That said, make sure you’re able or funded well enough to tap into the coding opportunities.

The Premium plan is similar. It removes the restriction on data storage and the transaction fee, but it also throws in custom SSL, custom CDN and priority support. Whatever you do, we recommend starting with one of the other plans, then upgrading to Premium if Voog works for you.

It’s not that you might fail with the platform. If you’re keen on localization and beautiful results, it will do its job, but the benefits added on the Premium plan are not that important when you start.

Design & Tools

Designing a publish-ready website is easy with Voog. It has a bottom row with five main buttons that let you edit everything and more options in the right bottom corner for preview and the like.

On top of that, you can edit some aspects of elements directly on the page, such as the location of an inserted Google Map. It’s not hard to learn what each button does and we’ll cover each possibility, but there’s a big caveat to the Voog editor.

You can make a page look like anything you imagine, but you’re going to need code for that. Fine retouches and element adjustments are only possible through Voog’s developer tools, which is a big problem for beginners or people who just don’t want to code.

For example, if you want elements to appear in columns, you’ll have to code that. The default structure is stacking elements on top of one another. As for the editor itself, there are only a few options.

Voog Interface

The “add” button is self-explanatory. You can use it to insert elements, such as text blocks, forms, videos, sounds or even a “buy” button. Though it’s not revolutionary, it makes it easy to get started with Voog. All you have to do to add something is drag it from the bottom bar to wherever you want it on the page.

The “files” section lets you upload content for further use. Compared to the media library of Squarespace, it is much easier to use because you can drag elements directly from the files bar, as opposed to a different tab.

That said, SquareSpace makes up for that with its stunning results, so make sure to check out our SquareSpace review before making up your mind.

Under the “content” tab, you can edit blog posts, catalogs, the store and the structure of your website. This tab is well-categorized and provides quick access to important settings and menus, which makes the editor easy to navigate.

The “stats” tab is the simplest one. It provides quick access to website analytics, such as visitors, sources and about 0.01 percent of what you’d find with Google Analytics. It’s not extensive, but it’s a nice way to see how you’re doing at a glance.

You can find the backend of your website under the “settings” tab. Here, you can make global website changes, manage users and domains or set a custom robots.txt file. Like the latter one, the tab features unorthodox options, so it’s a nice playground for experienced users.

The other buttons include “save,” “preview” and “support.” You won’t find yourself using them too often, but they’re good to have nearby.

All in all, the editor is elegant and powerful. You can achieve a minimally-viable product with it and even build complex websites with some work.

If you want something just as easy to use, but way more powerful without coding, you could give Weebly a try. To see if it’s right for you, read our Weebly review.

Ease of Use

Once you’ve chosen a website category and a template, you’re thrown into the editor. There are a few templates to choose from, but they are similar to one another. That’s not a huge problem because they are all beautiful, but the lack of complexity could prove to be an issue for the user who has a clear image in mind of what their website should look like.

Next, there’s an optional tutorial that highlights what each button does, but it’s not that important.

The developers behind the editor took great care to make everything intuitive. Adding images, text, forms or even Google Maps extensions is easy.

Play around with the editor for 30 minutes and you’ll start to have ideas, though. “What if I placed this image carousel next to a short snippet about me?” or “I wonder if I can make this button hover.”

That’s when you’ll start feeling overwhelmed. The platform is powerful and has many unorthodox features, but they’re hidden behind a lot of research (and more often than not, coding).

Placing an image carousel next to a short text snippet or making a button hover requires you to mess with the code editor. If you have experience coding, it’s as easy to use as the editor itself. The documentation is plentiful and the process is streamlined, but for a person with no tech skills, it’s gibberish.

The software is easy to pick up and lets you produce a minimally-viable product, but without some grind or extra bucks, not everyone will be able to tap in to its full potential.

A plus is that Voog provides you with developers to work with. You’ll pay extra for that, but it’s good because you know they’re able to manipulate the software to its full extent.

Support

Voog’s support doesn’t stand out, but it does its job. The knowledgebase has a few frequently asked questions listed on top of the page and if you scroll down you’ll find 12 help sections. They’re composed of short tutorials and the occasional Q&A, but they’re not exhaustive.

That is, unless we’re talking about documentation. Voog’s API and developer documentation is top-notch.

Problems do arise, so you might need to contact Voog. The company boasts 24/7 support, but that is not necessarily the case. By phone, you can only contact them between 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Berlin time. If you’re not in that interval, you’re left with email or chat.

Its agents respond to tickets seven days a week and the chat system is decent, with most response times being under an hour. By email, you might wait longer for a response, but we recommend it if your issue is not urgent. The answer given is always more thorough.

The knowledgebase could be expanded and nobody would mind a faster response time, but overall the support is good.

The Verdict

If you want stunning results in no time, with little effort, you might be better off using a different builder. You can check our best website builders to see which one suits you, but we generally recommend Wix. To find out why, read our Wix review.

That said, if you’re not scared to get your hands dirty and plow through the documentation and you want a website that’s easy to localize, give Voog a shot.

If you want something different, you can read our best web hosting providers article. We recommend using WordPress with these providers, but look around and see if something else piques your interest.

What do you think? Was our take on Voog fair? If you disagree with us or if there’s something you want to add, make sure you take on the comment section below. Thanks for reading.