STRATO Website Builder Review: A Promising Platform [2024]

STRATO Website Builder at a Glance

Should You Use STRATO?

Though STRATO is mostly known as a reliable, EU-based hosting provider, it also offers a complete website builder with integrations to the rest of STRATO’s offerings. I got a chance to test STRATO’s website builder a while back, and while it wasn’t quite there yet, it had the bones of a high-quality and easy-to-use builder.

Since then, STRATO has completely revamped its website builder, overhauling everything from its editing tools to its user dashboard. I wanted to see exactly how much better this new and improved builder was, which is why I put it to the test. Overall, there were some things that I liked and some that I didn’t. The rework fixed a lot of my issues with the original builder, but there are still some things that could be better.

The question is: is this website builder a worthwhile investment in 2024? Well, I definitely wouldn’t recommend it for sites outside of its intended purpose, like personal or informational websites. However, if you’re looking to create a professional, simple site for an EU-based business, STRATO is worth a closer look.

The Same Templates as IONOS, but They’re Somehow More Customizable

Here’s a bit of context you didn’t necessarily ask for: before launching its website builder, STRATO started as a hosting service provider that caters to small businesses and professionals. As it turns out, STRATO is a subsidiary of IONOS, a company that also started as a hosting service provider before launching its website builder.

The previous version of STRATO’s website builder offered 197 different templates. The new and improved builder offers… 23. What’s more, it’s the exact same 23 templates that you find on IONOS’ website builder. To be fair, that also means they have the same advantages as IONOS’ templates. Namely, each template is sleek, professional, and tailored to a specific industry. (If you want to learn more, you can head over to our IONOS website builder review).

If you don’t want to use any of the available templates, you can also opt to generate your own using AI (more on that below). Funny enough, while the template selection is exactly the same as IONOS’s, STRATO actually gives you a lot more design flexibility.

Design and Customization

At first glance, STRATO’s site editor might seem nearly identical to IONOS’, and at second glance too. Okay, truth be told, in many ways they’re almost identical. Besides just sharing the same layout, both editors function similarly.

Instead of giving you a bunch of widgets to drag-and-drop, you edit your site by adding premade sections. Each of these sections comes categorized by purpose and pre-filled with content. When you add one to your site, you get to choose from a limited number of pre-made layouts for your site.

Now, here’s where STRATO gets interesting. While IONOS limits your section-to-section customization to its pre-made layouts and toggling a fixed number of elements on and off, STRATO actually allows you to add and remove widgets freely.

You can do that by using a point-and-click method and selecting the little plus signs in-between elements, or you can switch on STRATO’s “flexible editing method” to add widgets by drag-and-dropping them on a grid.

What’s more, STRATO allows you to use a layered editing method, which means that you can have overlapping elements in the same space. There’s a reason most traditional website builders don’t let you do this: it’s easy to create a mess of widgets on top of each other if you don’t know what you’re doing. But if you use this feature sparingly, you can add visual interest by having text come up behind an image, for example.

You can edit color schemes, fonts, and typefaces by changing your site’s global settings, or by editing individual elements. The overall design philosophy seems to be: design by making the big, global changes first, and get more in-depth later if you need to. It’s an approach I really appreciate since it allows you to build a professional site quickly if that’s what you need, or approach it step-by-step if you prefer.

STRATO seems to be a step-up from most “simple” builders that prioritize speed over design, without quite reaching the level of other fully customizable builders. STRATO’s widget selection is a bit limited for my liking, but other than that, it reaches a good middle-ground overall.

Few Features, but They’re Good Enough

I’ve been reviewing website builders here at Website Planet for a while, and by now, my editor is probably exasperated by my “Features” sections. If a builder lets you fully step into the Matrix and edit individual bits of code, I complain that it’s too advanced and stacked with tools. If a builder only offers a “do you want to make a website” button with an on/off toggle, I complain that it’s too simplistic.

STRATO falls closer to the latter category. Though it does offer a larger toolbox than others, I can think of scenarios where STRATO’s limited selection of features could be a problem. There are no tools for blogging, very basic SEO tools, and no built-in analytics.

That said, the features it does offer are nicely centered around the needs of businesses. And it integrates nicely with the rest of STRATO’s services, which could be really convenient for some. All in all, STRATO’s feature selection isn’t abysmal, just unimpressive.

Still, STRATO does offer some unique features worth a closer look.

Built-in Website Translator Options

Starting from the “Plus” plan and above, Strato offers a built-in website translation feature. This option allows you to translate your website’s content automatically to over 100 different languages and reach audiences from all over the world.

To activate it, head to the “Settings” menu on the bottom left corner and go to the “Website Translator” tab. There, you can decide if you want to activate the multi-lingual site option, where and how you want it to appear, and which languages you want to make your site available in. You’ll also get more options for fine-tuning the translation tool even more, like using alternative flag icons for certain languages, adding custom CSS rules, and more.

What’s more, even though the editor is only available in German and Dutch, you can select from 104 different languages for your site’s content to be translated from. In other words, you can display your site’s content natively in 104 different languages, and let STRATO translate it into any of the remaining ones.

My one nitpick is that you only get the option for automatic translation, so if you feel you could do a better job translating your site manually, there’s not much to be done. However, the quality of the automatic translation is good enough for that to be fine 99% of the time.

Complete Integrations With the Rest of STRATO’s Tools

Though the STRATO website builder is a standalone product, it integrates perfectly with the rest of STRATO’s business solutions. Obviously, your website is hosted on STRATO’s own servers and registered through its in-house registrar. While I could point out here that STRATO performed fairly well on our review of its hosting services, a website builder offering its own hosting, domain registration, and email service is standard practice.

Where it gets interesting though, is with all the services STRATO offers outside of the standard. STRATO offers marketing integrations to help you improve the SEO, ad presence, and business listing for your website. All of these tools can be extremely beneficial for a business website to stand out.

If you need extra security, STRATO also offers premium SSL certificates. While you do have to pay for these services individually, STRATO offers exclusive discounts if you’ve already paid for its website builder.

Complete Tools for an Online Store

The STRATO website builder is mainly designed around business websites. Specifically, it’s meant to provide business owners with an easy-to-use tool that will help them promote their business and services online. That said, the builder’s functionality doesn’t have to stop there. If you want to sell products directly through your site, STRATO gives you the option to create an online store for an extra fee.

With the addition of its e-commerce plans, STRATO allows you to sell products directly from your website, and even offers a shipping assistant feature to help you create personalized shipping rules for your store.

You can also set your products to “Click & Collect” or scheduled pickup if you have a physical location. Besides accepting payments via card, STRATO also integrates with 20 other payment processors to ensure that your clients can pay for your products however it’s most convenient for them.

Other notable e-commerce features include .CSV data import and export, fully customizable checkout pages, automatic tax calculation, unique widgets, and more.

STRATO Is Intuitive and User Friendly

From the moment I clicked on “Start SmartWebsite” on my user dashboard, every step of creating my website with STRATO was simple and intuitive. After selecting a template (or creating it with AI), I had the option to choose a color palette and make some stylistic choices. Then, I input some basic contact details and was dropped straight into the editor.

The editor is extremely user-friendly and it should take you almost no time to get accustomed to it. Thanks to a well-designed “settings” menu, you can easily change important site settings like your favicon, business profile, and edit your site’s privacy settings.

If you need a little guidance, you’ll find a series of “recommended steps” on the dashboard showing you what to do next. STRATO’s editor is so easy to use that there’s not much more to say about it.

Create Unique Templates Using AI

If you don’t want to use any of STRATO’s templates, you can also opt to use AI to generate a template for you. All you have to do is write down some details about your company, like its name, areas of business, and a brief description. Then, you make some choices about the tone of your website (for example: playful or professional tone, modern or decorative fonts, and which color palette suits you best). After that, STRATO’s AI will generate 4 different design suggestions for you.

Not only is the result as good-looking as any of the other templates, it comes pre-filled with sample text, stock images, and even the most relevant pages for your site.

AI Text Generation and Optimization for Professional Results

If you’re ever stuck trying to come up with copy for your site, STRATO offers AI-powered text generation. It’s based on metrics like industry, the topic of the text, important details to mention, and the desired number of paragraphs. If you’ve already written your text and are looking to give it a little punch-up, STRATO also offers a text-improver tool. All you have to do is highlight your content, select a tone, and let STRATO re-work your text to better fit your desired tone and the rest of your site.

On top of that, STRATO also offers image-generation tools and SEO-text improvement features.

Useful Tutorials for Design Fundamentals

Even though the STRATO website builder is extremely easy to use, you might need some extra guidance from time to time. STRATO offers a complete knowledge base that includes guides and video tutorials with information about its website builder, design fundamentals, and more.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to personally test STRATO’s customer service this time around. In my review of STRATO’s hosting, I reached out to its customer service through its German and English sites. Both times, I received extraordinary response times and thorough, knowledgeable responses (though the email in German came back considerably faster and was a lot more comprehensive).

Due to some issues with the account we used for testing, I wasn’t able to contact email support this time around (now only available for paying clients) and my German is not good enough for a phone conversation. So I’m afraid I have to go here entirely based on my research and previous experience, not first-hand testing. However, based on other users’ reviews, STRATO’s customer support proves itself to be efficient, helpful, and friendly, even if reaching out to it is a bit of a pain.

STRATO’s Plans Offer Just a Little Less Than the Competition

STRATO offers no free plan, no trial version, and no money-back guarantee, which means that you have to be ready to commit to it before making a purchase. STRATO offers three website-builder plans: “Basic” ($7.67 per month, paying annually), “Plus” ($1.10), and “Pro” ($19.73). “Basic” allows you to build a website with up to 5 different pages, offers a free domain and SSL certificate for the first year, and gives you access to a custom mailbox with 5GB of storage. On both the Basic and Pro plans, you also get the first month for free when signing up to an annual plan.

Moving up, “Plus” increases the number of pages to 100, gives you access to the multilingual tools, and lets you use STRATO’s AI SEO assistant, image generator, and text optimizer. It also increases your available storage space from 10GB to 20GB. You also get access to STRATO’s “ranking coach” service, which helps you optimize your site for search engine ranking and get found more easily. “Pro” increases the number of pages to 500, and the amount of storage to 50GB.

There are “webshop” versions of each of these plans available for about double the cost of the “standard” plans. Each webshop plan offers the same features as its standard counterpart and gives you access to STRATO’s e-commerce functionalities. This includes a limited number of products you can list, depending on your plan (500, 5000, and 10000, respectively), and the option to sell digital products of up to 1GB with the Plus and Pro plans.

Besides this, there is also a webshop-exclusive plan called “Ultimate,” ($89.90) which offers every single feature on the “Pro webshop” plan, allows you to sell unlimited products, and increases the size cap on digital products to 10GB per product.

As usual with website builders, the monthly price is lower when you decide to go for an annual billing period (instead of a monthly one), STRATO also offers heavy discounts for the first month when you pay annually.

Personally, I think that while the prices aren’t outrageous, you’re still receiving fewer features than you would with other website builders at every price point. Still, it could be a worthwhile investment for some businesses.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the “webshop” plans, which are just way too highly priced when compared with similar e-commerce plans for other builders. If your goal is e-commerce, I simply don’t think that STRATO would be a good fit for you.

Don’t worry though, there are plenty of high-quality alternatives available if you’re looking to open an online store. If you want to learn more, check out our guide to the best e-commerce website builders in 2024.