Promising NoCode tool for absolute website novices.
I wanted to give my review from the perspective of someone who has worked with a lot of CMS tools... well over a dozen. I've also built websites from scratch dating back to the 90s, although I must admit I don't know many of the current popular frameworks as I'm out of that space. I hope this review helps those considering WebWave.
Benefits:
✅ Truly No Code. If you don't know a single thing about HTML or CSS for making websites, this is a great tool. As others have said, it will feel like graphically editing a word document, but with pre-built sections with functionality baked in. As a no-code guy, I think this is normally looked down upon, but talk about a great enterance for those who have no idea how to build otherwise. Very enabling!
✅ Related to being truly no-code, this is a different paradigm from literally every other approach. I've seen it before to varying degrees over the decades (Xara Web Designer, whatever that thing Microsoft had after Frontpage, etc.) but never in a modern SaaS tool. If you were an Adobe Muse user and didn't like switching to the likes of Webflow, Sitejet, Grapedrop, or even Wix (and so on), then this may be more your style.
Drawbacks:
⛔ HTML output. The HTML output is horrible. This should be expected given the list of similar and dissimilar tools I mentioned above. This is not going to win you any SEO awards or get any high marks with Google or Bing. Admittedly, I haven't run it through their webmaster tools, but I did just look at the code and it's a mess of non-semantic goop, as you'd expect from a word processor / graphic design style editor such as this.
⛔ English translation. The translation into English is pretty bad, making the tool feel very amateurish despite having a lot of the tools you'd look for in a builder. Those tools seem to work fairly successfully, but that translation in the UI and in the training materials (that's my bread and butter, so sorry if I'm too critical here) are in need of improvement.
Review
🧠 If you've never found a replacement for Adobe Muse, Microsoft Expression Web, Xara Web Builder, or the other $20 web builder on CD you got in the early 2000s (being truthful, not derogatory) then this is your solution.
🧠 If you're looking for highly semantic, crisp, SEO friendly code... keep looking.
🧠 If you want a polished interface... keep looking
🧠 If you like the WYSIWYG builders that organize like HTML (Section blocks with elements inside), move right along.
🧠 If you really think building a website should feel like Microsoft Publisher, you have found your home!
Final observation:
For their CMS/Blog, they call everything "news". I think that makes sense for someone building business-oriented sites for SMB clients. This could just be a translation thing as well. I'd suggest WebWave consider changing the wording to more CMS standard terminology, but I digress. I likely won't use this tool for anything production or mission critical, but it is usable.
Michał_WebWave
May 9, 2024Thank you for your feedback! We'll take your remarks into consideration while working on the next versions of our tool.