Founded by former Wix employee Jonathan Saragossi, IM Creator has struggled to reach the dizzying heights of the popular drag-and-drop platform where he cut his teeth. Instead, IM Creator finds itself at the foot of the ladder when it comes to the ladder of the best website builders. And for quite a few reasons.
From our research, we found that IM Creator provides a more complicated design experience than it needs to – so, in short, it’s not for beginners. Instead, we recommend IM Creator for users with plenty of web design experience. It even offers a whitelabel plan known as IM XPRS, allowing professional web designers to build client websites through the platform.
For a more user friendly journey, we recommend Wix or Squarespace, which both score higher in our ease of use testing. And, if you’re looking to build an online store with an ecommerce website builder designed for selling online, we suggest Shopify as a first port of call, since it’s the best ecommerce platform we’ve tested.
In this review we’ll cover areas like IM Creator’s template design, tools and features, customer support, and pricing. After reading this article, you’ll know all about the key aspects of building a website with IM Creator, and whether it’s the right platform for you.
What Is IM Creator?
Founded in 2011, IM Creator is a website builder that enables you to create a website, then customize it to the needs of your business, without needing coding skills. It’s free for students, artists, and non-profits, and starts from $8 per month for everyone else. While IM Creator is good for those with some web design experience and comes with beautiful templates, we found it hard to use and lacking in features when compared against market competitors like Wix or Squarespace.
What Are IM Creator's Pros and Cons?
Pros:
✔️ Provides aesthetically pleasing templates and design elements – each element can be customized to your chosen template with a quick click.
✔️ Keeps your branding consistent, with all design elements aligning to one particular theme – ideal for those not-so-creative users.
✔️ Offers the ability to change how your website looks on mobile within the desktop editor.
✔️ Paid plans start at an affordable $7.95/month (for a 12 month subscription) – and free if you have proof you’re a student, an artist, or a non-profit.
Cons:
❌ No free trial available on any of its paid pricing plans.
❌ Free account only available for students, artists, and non profit organizations, with formal proof required.
❌ Restrictive interface makes it difficult to create a website, especially compared to the freedom found on GoDaddy and Wix. Also, there is no drag-and-drop editor, and little help offered.
❌ Not for someone just starting out on their website building journey – better suited for simple web design.
❌ Ecommerce and blogging functionalities aren’t very scalable long-term
How Easy Is IM Creator to Use?
Believe it or not, IM Creator makes it difficult to actually create a website. This irony stems from a few big issues.
Firstly, unlike most website builders, there is no widget dashboard to help you add elements. With IM Creator, you are required to click somewhere and select the existing element in order to change it.
Secondly, there is no intuitive drag-and-drop feature like on Wix. This is really restrictive because, apart from a few editing clicks, there’s not much you can do with the pre-configured layout. And while it provides more creative freedom than builders like Site123, IM Creator still falls way behind our top scorers for design, Squarespace and Wix, when it comes to customization.
Lastly, IM Creator doesn’t provide any prompts or guides. You’re somewhat left in the dark – you have to click on the area you’d like to customize, then on three dots, then an icon. The whole customization process is long winded, rather than a breeze.
How Much Does IM Creator Cost?
In terms of subscriptions, IM Creator offers three plans. Its free plan is for students, artists, and non-profits, which is great news if you fall into one of these categories! If you don’t, then IM Creator’s cheapest plan is its Premium plan for $7.95 per month (billed annually). The final and most expensive plan is the Creator Pro Whitelabel plan for $350 per year.
IM Creator’s $7.95 per month plan is a cheap entry price compared to other top builders. For example, Wix and Squarespace both cost $16 per month on their cheapest plans. However, IM Creator’s lack of scalable features impact its value for money, meaning you may get more for your money with a better quality, albeit more expensive, builder.
Let’s take a closer look at each plan:
Free Plan
Don’t get too excited – the free plan is only for students, artists, and non-profits. To benefit from this subscription, you’ll need to provide written proof, and a description as to why you need a website. And, as we’ve covered, the customer support is extremely basic on this plan. There’s no other free plan or free trial so if you’re not a student, artist, or run a non-profit, then you’ll need to sign up straight away for the Premium plan.
Premium Plan: $5.95-9.95/month
This is for businesses. You can connect your own domain, which helps to build your brand identity, and enjoy access to unlimited bandwidth, so you can create a large website without worrying about slow loading speeds. Overall, it’s an affordable option compared to the rest of the market.
So, why the price range? Well, how much you’ll pay for IM Creator’s Premium plan depends on how long you sign up for.
- 3 year plan: $5.95/month
- 2 year plan: $6.95/month
- 1 year plan: $7.95/month
- 6 month plan: $9.95/month
While signing up for three years does offer big savings, it does mean you’ll have to pay for that whole three years upfront. This large outlay won’t suit all businesses – particularly small ones, which need to keep a tight handle on cash flow – so we don’t recommend opting for the longer plans.
It’s also worth considering that IM Creator doesn’t offer a free trial on either of its paid plans. So instead of diving in with a three-year plan to save a bit of cash, we recommend instead taking advantage of IM Creator’s aforementioned free plan if you can first. Doing this will give you time and space to figure out if IM Creator is right for you – before committing to a long-term contract and locking yourself in!
Pro & Whitelabel: $350/year
As the name suggests, this is a plan for whitelabel businesses. For example, it’s for web design agencies looking to create sites for clients using a website builder. As part of this plan, you get unlimited licenses, which means you can build as many client websites as you like using IM Creator.
How Good are IM Creator’s Templates?
IM Creator offers some slick templates. It has over 30 designs to choose from, which are all mobile responsive so they look good on all screens. These themes are also separated into a wide range of industries, including photography, architecture, weddings, resumes, real estate, and many more.
Like all website builders, each template is pre-populated with sample content, which you can then customize yourself. With IM Creator, you can change the text, imagery, and overall layout with a few clicks, but this isn’t nearly as simple as it is on Wix or Squarespace. There is no drag-and-drop feature, which makes editing your website feel much longer than it needs to be.
Feeling adventurous? You also have the option to create a design from scratch. However, if you don’t have much web design experience, we recommend sticking to the templates.
One of the drawbacks with IM Creator’s design flexibility is that you cannot change your template after publishing. So pick carefully – if you want to change templates down the road, you will have to re-insert all of your content.
Another restriction is that you cannot access the HTML or CSS codes. This can be frustrating if you’re a keen coder and want to make custom edits to the templates. Of course, if you aren’t comfortable with codes, then don’t worry about this.
What Tools and Features Does IM Creator Offer?
As you know, IM Creator makes it hard to create a website. This is partly due to the features, and their lack of quality and customizability – they’re quite frustrating to use at times, and if you don’t have any web design experience, you’ll struggle with the tools on offer.
However, what we do like about IM Creator’s features is that you can connect your own domain on all price plans. Also, you can implement a donate button for charity websites, and you have access to stock imagery which can help speed things up when designing your site.
IM Creator loses some serious points by not offering an app store, image editing tools, or any email marketing. These are some important features for building a successful website, and can be found on nearly every other website builder on the market.
But what about features in other areas?
Ecommerce
Despite its flaws, IM Creator is one of the few website builders to offer ecommerce functionality without requiring you to upgrade your subscription. However, its ecommerce offerings are weak.
The ecommerce features available include store analytics, checkout services, and unlimited storage and bandwidth on all plans, but that’s about it. If you’re serious about creating an online store, you’re much better off using a more established platform like Shopify or Wix.
Find Out More:
- Read our Shopify Review for more information on its pros and cons
- Read our Wix Ecommerce Review to see why we recommend this builder for small online stores
- For a wider selection, check out our list of the Best Ecommerce Website Builders
Blogging
Adding a blog is great for SEO (search engine optimization), because it’s useful for adding keywords to your website. Blogs are also great for keeping your visitors up to date with your latest news or deals. With IM Creator, you can add a blog using the blue ‘+’ button at the top of the page.
With IM Creator, the basics are there, but the toolbox could be much more comprehensive. And when you consider the fact there’s no access to apps, which can help boost your site’s performance, you can see why this platform doesn’t feature high on our list of best blogging platforms.
For a website builder more suited to the demands of establishing and maintaining a blog, we also recommend checking out our guide to the best website builders for SEO.
What Help and Support Does IM Creator Offer?
The IM Creator support is quite basic. To benefit from 24/7 customer support, you’ll need to upgrade to the Premium plan, costing $7.95 per month – but what do you get from the free plan?
Well, you get – in IM Creator’s own words – “basic” support. IM Creator uses a ticketing system, allowing customers to submit support tickets with a query or problem, before a support agent comes back with an answer. The average response time is under 12 hours, which is rather impressive considering that IM Creator is currently powering around 11 million websites.
You can also download a helpful user guide, which is something most website builders don’t provide. This gets a big tick from us. On top of that, there is a large knowledge center filled with questions, queries and qualms, which can help you find the answer you need.
If you have the money for IM Creator’s most expensive plan (Pro & Whitelable, which costs $350/year), you’ll enjoy equally “PRO” support. There isn’t too much information on IM Creator’s own website about what this entails, but it appears to include 24/7 assistance, and your own dedicated business consultant on hand to support you with any question or query you might have.
Overall, though, the IM Creator support options could be far more comprehensive. For example, there is no live chat support, and you can’t reach out to IM Creator customer agents over the phone.
IM Creator Review: Summary
We’ve now reviewed all the key areas for building a website with IM Creator. Covering everything from ease of use to customer support, you should now have a clear idea of whether IM Creator is for you.
Still undecided? Don’t worry – that’s why we’re here! Put simply, IM Creator is not for beginners. If you’re building your first website, then you should look at Wix, which scores highest in our ease of use testing. Aternatively, check out the range of small business website builders if you’re looking to start small and build on a budget.
IM Creator provides virtually no prompts or visual cues when you’re building your site, and it lacks the intuitive drag-and-drop features found on other leading platforms.
You could forgive a platform that’s frustrating to use if it had a free plan. And IM Creator does – to an extent. While there is a free option, it’s only for students, artists, and nonprofits. And you’re required to have written proof.
However, IM Creator does provide some beautiful templates, and you can integrate your blog quite easily. But for everything else, including customer support, ease of use, and ecommerce functionality, IM Creator could do much better – to the point where using this platform may actually create problems for your website.
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