What is the Difference Between Ready Steady Websites® and Other Website Platforms?

We are always being quizzed about the difference between Ready Steady Websites® and other website platforms, so we thought… why not write a blog post about it!

What is the Difference Between Ready Steady Websites® and Elementor or Divi?

Ready Steady Websites® sits on WordPress so it is very similar to Elementor or Divi in that respect. The main difference is that with Ready Steady Websites® you can pick a pre-designed website from our templates that fits best with your business niche and we support you all the way through the process.

Our templates are more like a website in a box where we’ve deeply researched each one of our niches as if we were building the website for a client. So rather than feeling like a theme or template, the site actually feels like it’s designed for your business.

We provide a test environment to create your website on and a live environment for when it goes live. Which means you can create your new website on our test environment away from your live website so nobody else can see it, then when you’re ready we help you switch over.

We also help with all the tech stuff: connecting domains, DNS settings, connecting email marketing systems, connecting payment systems. With Ready Steady Websites®, you will get consistent support from the same person so you know you’re always going to get the same level of great service when you contact us.

The page builder we use is a modified version of Beaver Builder which has a better history of bug free updates than Elementor or Divi and is a very good page builder. With Ready Steady Websites® you get access to our membership site full of tutorials and our support tickets to help you with any questions that arise.

Whereas with Elementor or Divi you are left to google things and ask support for help – but their support teams are geared to help you with issues related only to their page builder, plugins and themes, not other plugins, not payment integrations, not web hosting etc. whereas Ready Steady Websites® support will help you with all of that.

Also, if you are on our Pro plan or higher you get access to all of our templates which means you get over 100 layout options so you can quickly build a website with a mix and match approach.

What is the Difference Between Ready Steady Websites® and Squarespace or Wix?

Squarespace, Wix and others like them are good systems, but we find that people tend to outgrow them in 12 to 18 months of creating their website. This is when they realise the plan they are on is quite limited in functionality and if they want to increase the functionality on their website the cost keeps going up and up.

With Ready Steady Websites® all of our templates are set up ready for ecommerce, they connect with all the major email, payment and calendar booking systems and we actually get cheaper in year two because we know you won’t need as much support from year two onwards.

Squarespace, Wix etc. will always be behind the curve with tech and web trends, SEO etc. as they cannot move as fast as the WordPress community in terms of matching new techniques. WordPress, generally speaking and depending on the web host, is also better for page speed and SEO.

What is the Difference Between Ready Steady Websites® and Kartra or Kajabi?

Kartra and Kajabi and other all in one systems, do it all – websites, landing pages, membership sites, courses, ecommerce, communities, analytics, subscriptions, funnels, email marketing system and then each of them offer a few other things that differ from each other such as podcasting and client management systems.

They really do provide an all in one package. You can do a lot of what they offer with Ready Steady Websites®. We have got you covered for websites, landing pages, membership sites, courses, ecommerce and subscriptions. With an additional plugin that’s compatible with Ready Steady Websites® you can have a community and many people who have membership sites with us are doing this.

We recommend using Google Analytics with our sites and as we already mentioned above, all the major email systems are compatible with our website templates.

Our templates link nicely to external podcast players if you have a podcast but you can’t create them with us and there are some gamification elements to a membership and complicated upsell stuff that we don’t offer as part of our service by default. This is because we feel that sometimes things can get over complicated and we prefer a clean, simple experience. That’s not to say you can’t add these elements to your websites if you want to, we support many plugins and third party software that will do these things.

One word of warning we would give is, when it comes to your emails, we don’t recommend putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. We think it’s sensible to keep your emails separate from your website and membership site. The reason for this is that no website or system is going to have 100% up time. It’s impossible to guarantee that. Things happen like power cuts, human error, servers getting overloaded when a celebrity mentions a website on social media etc.

When your emails are separate from your website or membership site, you can email your list or your members and apologise that you are having technical issues at the moment and your website or membership site will be up again as soon as possible. But when your emails are also on the system that has gone down, and both Kajabi and Kartra have been known to go down, then you can’t send out a message to your list and they are left wondering what is going on.

This happened to someone we know on the final evening of a launch that she was doing and her only chance to let people know was to put posts out on social media and hope that people saw them.

Our Customer Support Makes us Stand Out

I’ve touched on it in this post, but what sets us apart from any of the other services or platforms that I’ve mentioned is the level of support you get with us. If you’re someone who needs to ask questions, who hates tech and doesn’t want to have to worry about connecting systems and wants the hassle of that taken away or who just wants to feel like they have support form someone who actually cares about their business doing well, then that’s what you get from Ready Steady Websites® and our TrustPilot reviews show that.

We Can Also Do It For You

Another little perk of working with us is that if you love our designs, love the idea of having people you know there for support but you don’t want to have to create your website yourself then that’s no problem, we have a Do It For You offer you can buy as an add on. We also have a branding package if you need your branding done as well. We really can create a personalised service for you and your business. To find out more about these, just book in a call using the link in the section below and we can talk it through.

Summary

So, now you know how we differ from the other website and membership site options out there. It may still be that one of the other options is right for you but you can see why we decided to create Ready Steady Websites® in the way that we did and hopefully this post will help you to make an informed choice on the platform that is right for you.

If you think we might be a good choice go and take a look at our website templates and membership site templates and we also have some great resources.

If you’d like to talk further about how Ready Steady Websites® can help your business, book in a free one to one demo call, we’d love to chat.