Google Sites Review: Why Is It A Good Option for SMBs? [2024]

Google Sites at a Glance

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Google Sites Pros, Cons, & Things That Could Be Better

Should You Use Google Sites?

Google Sites offers a simple and free way to host information online. It’s a good place to start if you have absolutely no website-building experience. It’s also available in over 70 different languages, which is a lot more than almost any other website builder.

However, you won’t be building the next hit blog or massive e-commerce enterprise with it anytime soon. Well, at least not if you use Google Sites on its own. If you sign up for Google Workspace, you’ll get access not only to Google Sites but also to other Google and third-party apps to extend your site’s functionality.

Google Workspace offers collaboration tools and a range of affordable plans that work well for small businesses that want to improve team coordination. Also, it comes with essential project management features that could be invaluable if you’re building an internal project website.

If you’re a freelancer looking for a website builder with advanced capabilities, Google Sites might not be the best choice. I recommend considering Wix instead1, which offers more functionality while staying easy to use. You can even use it for free.

Limited Templates, but Customizable to an Extent

Google Sites offers a very limited selection of 17 generic templates. Though each template is supposed to be designed with a different purpose in mind, the variation between them is so limited that you’re really only getting 17 different arrangements of the same heading, subheading, and image structures. Still, every template has a clean look and is mobile-responsive, ensuring your website looks good on smaller screens.

It should be noted that with Google Workspace, you’ll get over 50 additional website templates to choose from through the Sites Starter app. These are more versatile when it comes to design and functionality and more suitable for business and e-commerce needs. Most of them are not free, but there are plenty of stylish options at affordable prices.

Design and Customization

Given the limited number of templates available, you might be wondering whether you can create a distinctive-looking site with this builder. But the good news is you can customize any of the templates a fair bit.

We’re not talking about complete creative freedom, of course, but you can change colors, font styles, as well as the layout of your text and images. For its limited customization, it’s worth noting that Google Sites offers hundreds of different font choices.

Another thing I like is that each template comes with snippets of filler text that provide instructions and recommendations for content, instead of the good-old “lorem ipsum” filler. You still have a sense of what the text will look like on each page once it’s published, and you also get a bit of guidance in terms of copy.

Incorporate Content from Nearly Any Google App

Since Google Sites is part of the massive suite of Google apps, it’s incredibly easy to connect files from various tools and group them together on your site. Your site is connected to all of your Google accounts via your email address, so you have instant access to anything saved on your Google Drive. You can directly incorporate content from Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, Map, Forms, and Charts.

You can embed files on any page, and they will appear as thumbnail previews. You can adjust the size of each thumbnail and link to charts, spreadsheets, documents, etc, or link to the actual files – just be sure to set the permissions so the right users can open them. This is incredibly useful for aggregating project files, resources, or other documents related to a project.

Optimize Your Workflow With Third-Party Apps

Using Google Sites with a Google Workspace account gives you access to plenty of free and paid integrations in the app marketplace. You’ll find apps like Mailchimp for email marketing and Slack for team communication.

Also, if you need more advanced project planning features than what Sheets can give you, you can easily add a fully-fledged project management platform like monday.com or Jira. This lets you sync tasks and projects between Google Workspace and your chosen project management platform. For example, you can add Sheets, Docs, and other files to your monday.com task cards and maintain an uninterrupted flow of information.

Search Google Images or YouTube Directly From the Interface

Adding documents and such from your personal Google Drive is useful, but not really unexpected: Google likes to connect all of its products. What really impressed me is the ability to directly search Google Images and YouTube from the Google Sites interface (and then add those images or videos to your website).

In other words, if you want to embed a YouTube video, you don’t have to use a separate tab in your web browser. You just search from a pop-up box and place the video wherever you like on your page.

You can do a Google Image Search in the same way. This search box filters images to bring up those labeled for commercial reuse, which means you can legally use them without paying fees. Just be sure to verify that commercial reuse is actually allowed (since Google warns that the filter isn’t perfect), and give credit to the original source if required.

Collaborate on Your Site in Real Time

If you’re used to collaborating with others and sharing files on Google Docs, you’ll find that Google Sites works similarly. You can grant editing access to team members for real-time collaboration. You can also control who views your Google Site, restricting access to specific people, groups, or making it public for internet searches.

If you have a Google Workspace account, you can use Google Chat and set up unlimited “spaces” where you can assign tasks, set deadlines, and discuss project goals. You can create an unlimited number of spaces and make them private, restricting access to project collaborators only.

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Announcement Banners

This last feature is really useful and I was impressed by its simplicity. You can easily add a customized announcement banner to your site with the option to place it sitewide or on a single page.

Customization for the banner is limited to color and text, but it’s an easy way to provide visitors with important information or direct them to a useful resource for getting started on your site.

User-Friendly Design and Intuitive Guidance

Google is good at understanding users’ needs and meeting them effectively. This carries over to Google Sites, which offers an intuitive, streamlined interface without a lot of clutter. Even if you’re not familiar with Google’s other apps, it’s super easy to find your way around Google Sites.

When you create your first site on Google Sites, you’ll get a series of pop-ups guiding you through the process of setting up your website. If you need a quick refresher, you can click the three dots on the menu bar, go to Help, and select Take a tour to open these pop-ups again.

Clean, Simple Interface

The Google Sites editor interface is really pleasing to look at and almost soothing to use. It’s free of clutter and expanding menus, focusing only on the essentials. There’s really only one place to look to find what you need, so it’s very straightforward, and you can start building your site quickly.

Google Sites uses a drag-and-drop editor on a grid layout. Essentially, you can move elements where you want them, but they’ll always snap into the existing design grid to keep everything aligned. You can use individual content blocks to design your own layout, or you can choose from a small selection of existing layouts to save time and effort.

Research and Content Generation With Gemini

Google Sites templates offer content guidance through the examples and instructions within the content blocks. But for more support – especially for regular blogs, product descriptions, or email publishing – a Google Workspace account with the Gemini add-on can be helpful.

Gemini for Google Workspace is an AI-powered assistant that can help you speed up the process of managing projects and creating content. You’ll have to pay an additional fee to use it, but it could be a worthy investment.

Accessibility Features for Users with Disabilities

Google Sites incorporates several features to make websites accessible to people with disabilities. For instance, you can add descriptive text to images and captions to tables to make it easier for people who use screen readers to understand the content of your website. Also, Google Forms are designed to be accessible to people who use assistive technology in reading.

Additionally, you can navigate through Google Sites using only your keyboard, which is essential for people with motor disabilities.

Helpful Knowledge Base, but Live Support Available Only to Google Workspace Customers

Google Sites has very little in the way of support. There are no live support options – not even an automated chat – so you’ll have to rely on the series of support documents and the community help forum if you have issues.

The support documents are fairly comprehensive, but I still found questions that they couldn’t answer. The community help forum is pretty hit-or-miss, too. It’s always worth checking to see if someone asked your exact question and received an answer, but there are a lot of repetitive questions along with ones you could solve by reading the support documents.

All of that said, one thing I really appreciate about Google’s support documents is that they list specific error messages you may receive and give instructions for dealing with each message. In other words, they don’t just provide generic troubleshooting to work through the most common problems – they give you steps to directly solve the problem you’re experiencing.

Note that if you sign up for a paid Google Workspace plan, you’ll get access to 24/7 live chat, email, and phone support. Not only that, but you’ll also get more comprehensive self-help resources, including demos, tutorials, and learning labs.

Google Sites Is Free & Gives You More Value With a Google Workspace Account

Google Sites is completely free and comes with your Google account. Every feature and function is available for free on personal accounts (except for 24/7 customer support). But there are limits to this. If you’re using a free, personal account to set up your site, you’ll only get 100 MB of storage per site (and note that any attached files count against this). Want any more than that? You’ll have to upgrade to Google Workspace, which starts at $6/month.

Google Workspace offers a range of affordable plans that work particularly well for small businesses with a focus on project management and team collaboration. Even the cheapest Business Starter plan includes unlimited projects, 30 GB of storage space per user, and video conferencing for up to 100 people. Higher-tiered plans come with additional perks, such as appointment booking pages and advanced chat rooms with client/guest access.

If you run a small company that requires a private company website, Google Sites combined with Google Workspace is an efficient and affordable tool. But if you want to stick to a free website builder with bigger storage, advanced design tools, and superior SEO tools, I recommend checking out Wix1.