Orson (formerly Pikock), like SiteW, is a French-based website builder that was founded in 2012. Although the company is run by a small team of experts, don’t think of it as scrappy because the company is growing fast, catching the attention of some impressive French companies.
Does Orson have what it takes to compete outside of France? I gave it a spin to find out.
How long does it take to build a website using @OrsonFrench? Click To Tweet- Pros and Cons
- Getting Started
- Ease of Use
- Template Selection
- Blogging with Orson
- Orson Premium
- Conclusion
Pros and Cons
[tabs style=”default”] [tab title=”Pros”]- Orson is easier to use than the company lets on. You can get the hang of the website builder in a few minutes and then build a professional website in just a few more.
- The blogging platform is easy to use but also built well. It’s no WordPress, but it certainly is better than the offerings of many other website builders.
- Orson’s template selection is embarrassingly meager. Don’t expect any niche themes, unless you build them on your own.
- The website builder does not allow for as much customization as other more popular ones.
- The premium plan pricing structure doesn’t make much sense.
Getting Started
The process of creating your website with Orson begins with a request for your email address, a password, and a telephone number (not compulsory). You can also choose to log in with your Google or Facebook information.
From there you will be asked to add the logo or name of your website. This is the first website builder I have seen that requests a logo at this stage, but if you don’t have one, you can always add it later.
Next, you will be required to select a theme. You can choose from an assortment of multi- and single-page templates and you can even preview how they will look on both a desktop and smartphone browser.
Once you select a theme, the “Orson Bot” takes a few seconds to get everything together. In the meantime, however, you will receive an email with information about getting started, in addition to a tutorial.
The email also proclaims that creating a website will take a couple of hours.
Ease of Use
Unlike builders like Wix, once the system finishes preparing your site, you won’t be taken to your homepage. Instead, you will be directed to a control panel, which was a little confusing at the start but no big deal once I realized where I was led.
Orson uses a black-based page builder. You can drag and drop elements on a grid within each block, but you cannot place elements wherever you want on the page. You can preview the layout of each block before you select it, something that not all builders offer.
Customization options on Orson are limited. You can select a different background for each block, but changing the font type is impossible and the font color is limited to either black or white. This may not be true for all themes, but this was my experience with the theme I chose.
Orson is easy to use overall and I believe that a couple of hours is an overestimation of the time required to learn the system and create a website.
Template Selection
The area where Orson is lacking most is in template selection. There is a total of just nine multi-page site designs and four single-page site designs.
In a world where themes are a major selling point for any website builder, it’s disappointing when I see companies that lose sight of that. Think about it: why would you use Orson when Weebly offers hundreds of theme options?
The themes that are available are modern, with high-end features like parallax scrolling and eCommerce capability.
Blogging with Orson
Unlike some other website builders, you can add blog posts outside of the website builder. This means that you won’t have to risk making big site changes while simply trying to add a new blog post.
I really liked the blogging platform, which offers a lot of great features inside an easy to understand text editor. You can perform standard things like adding titles, lists, and link, but you can also add tables. Photos are added separately from the text, so you will have to consider where you want to have a break in your writing for media.
There are also SEO tools on the right side of the post, which I liked because others require that you dig around for them a bit.
Orson Premium
Orson comes with a 14-day free trial. Once that period is over, however, you will be required to pay for the service. Orson offers two different payment plans and four different payment options.
Monthly Plan
A monthly play costs just $2 per month. Included is a single page, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, eCommerce capability, and a blog platform. If you don’t want to be limited to a single page, you can opt for the unlimited plan.
For $20 per month, the unlimited plan includes unlimited everything, in addition to a custom domain name. The price bump is probably overdoing it a bit, though.
Annual Plan
Those who prefer to pay annually can do so for $24 per year for a single page website or $240 per year for an unlimited website. For those keeping track at home, the annual plan presents zero cost savings over the monthly plan, making it an extremely silly and pointless proposition.
[box type=”alert”]If you choose to cancel your plan before it runs its course, you can do so and even keep your content.[/box]Conclusion
Orson is a decent website builder with some nice features to boot. The template selection, however, may be enough to turn people towards builders with larger and more complete theme libraries. The level of customizability is also lacking.
I also question Orson’s pricing model and wonder if they are preying on those who can’t do a simple calculation, or if they intend on changing it in the future.
