First look at Pixenio: Review of the new online website generator

I am surprised that as a longtime WordPress user, I have become a fan of exactly the opposite approach to the website creation — online building. I like to test different builders like Wix or Squarespace, try new things and try to figure out which one of these tools can actually be used for the client websites.

Recently I came across a newly launching project on Product Hunt — Pixenio online website builder. Its first public version was released just a few days ago.

I decided to try it!

What is Pixenio and what it looks like

Pixenio is an AI website generator. It is presented as being very simple to use. Supposedly website management is as easy as Facebook. Let’s see if it’s really true.

But what surprised me the most — it’s the first online web builder (that I’ve encountered) that has no Page Builder. Do they even mean it seriously?

Because, when I compare it e.g. to Wix, Wix has the Wix Editor. It enables the website editing, addition of sections etc. Likewise, in Squarespace, the Page Builder is available within the left sidebar.

Pixenio doesn’t use Page Builder at all and the web creation works on another principle — the principle of inserting content directly into the admin. The building happens on the system side itself. The webpage is generated according to the selected template. And depending on what content (texts, images, logo…) you put in and what sections you activate, that’s what determines how the page will ultimately look like.

But let’s go step by step.

Wizard creates the first visual design for you

The first step in the website building process via Pixenio is the wizard which prompts you to enter some basic data.

The wizard is quite simple, and I would say also quite helpful for less technically savvy users. You just need to fill in the inputs in 3 steps in the form of answers to the questions. The system asks you basic things (such as name of the website, a description of what you do etc.) and you just answer them. At the same time you can, but don’t have to, upload your logo or some other image.

In the last, third step, you choose the theme determining how your website should look like (the showcase of the available themes can be viewed before the start of the website building).

Only 3 themes are currently available. But there are also different variants included too. We will see what direction the developers will take. The good news is that after you build your website, you can change the template to another one whenever you want to (later I’ll show you how).

I used the default theme Tom Tom for my testing and this is the generated result:

I confess that I did not have high expectations. Generally, website creation takes up a lot of time. When I realized that I have filled in like 3 and half sentences in the wizard, I am quite satisfied with the result. What do you say?

So I continued building my webpage.

Admin interface

In my opinion, repetitive / continuous work with the website is becoming more necessary. Work does not stop at the website creation stage. Therefore, the easiness of the content management is crucial.

Pixenio’s admin interface is completely minimalist with just a few settings.

Unlike other builders, developers did not pack here millions of tweaks (of which half would never be used). Even my 60 year old neighbor who owns a hardware store at the corner of the street and is still using the button-controlled phone, would probably manage to through these few clicks and build his first website. Or at least I hope so 😊.

As I already mentioned, Pixenio doesn’t have a Page Builder, so all technical changes and the whole website content management happens here in admin interface.

Btw. I don’t know if you’ve already tried to edit a subpage via Squarespace. You can get lost quite easily on Squarespace. It did happen to me many times before that even for a small change I had to click through the whole administration process. And until I found what I needed, 10 minutes passed. I dedicated the whole article Squarespace vs. Wix: How to add Site Title and Logo to your website to the complexity of the editing.

And when we are talking about the difficulty of admin interface and setup…

One of the most complicated platforms for website creation is WordPress. Its wp-admin is literally a labyrinth compared to online builder interfaces that aim to make the website building as simple as possible. But yes, it’s hard to compare this when you can set pretty much anything in WordPress — from the font size or font type, through Widgets, sidebars, banners, to activating all kinds of different plugins.

Some things cannot be changed

As I mentioned earlier, administration in Pixenio is ultra simple and user friendly. So yes, the statement of the developers that making a website through Pixenio is as easy as working with Facebook is indeed true.

But what can’t stay unnoticed is that many things in this online builder are fixed. What do I mean?

For example, you cannot change the positioning of images, set the font size in pixels, change the font or add any elements on the website. You can only activate those elements that are designed for that particular template. And, for example, if you want the blog to be positioned differently or have testimonials displayed in a different way, you have to choose exactly such a template that has the desired structure.

Perhaps you may wonder why the developers have done this when the competition offers an endless amount of settings and customizations of even the smallest details. I searched a bit, went through the whole Pixenio website and even read their @Pixenio blog. And I found out that their philosophy is to generate such websites that will always look good (regardless of the amount of content) and which users won’t be able to “break” by the unqualified interference.

Due to many settings being omitted, the website is ready very quickly. If one has some idea what it should be about :).

The system is designed to allow editing only the most essential things and primarily the content. The layout and design can’t be altered much.

Changes in look, colors and homepage variants

But what can be changed are the templates themselves. So far you can switch between the three templates — Canary, Tom Tom and Traveler.

Color palletes

Next, you can select a color palette that changes the background, links and color of the buttons. The website color scheme can be customized to best fit your logo, corporate colors and corporate identity.

Homepage variants

As I mentioned previously, Pixenio doesn’t allow you to add or manually move elements on the page (e.g. you cannot add sidebar in the template where it is not designed to be included by default).

But if you would like to have blog posts placed on the main page — this is possible by changing the Homepage variant.

Each template has multiple variants of the homepage providing creation of different website variations so that you can display what you need.

By this Pixenio makes up for the absence of the functionality of letting users to add/ remove individual parts of the website. Users can simply choose different homepage variant — the one which fits their requirements.

Content that always stays. And never disappears

It seems to me that the biggest advantage of Pixenio engine is that you can swap the template for a different one at any time, change the color scale and homepage variant without losing the content you’ve already added to your website. You can keep switching between individual templates to see which one you like the most. This is really an incredible feature, because you don’t have to re-enter the content again and again.

If I had to compare it with, e.g. Squarespace, Pixenio definitely wins in this respect. Because when you change the Squarespace template, all your data gets erased and you have to start completely from scratch. I find this illogical and very annoying. It’s a pure waste of time and in addition, it can discourage many users.

So what do I say about Pixenio?

Pixenio is an online builder that can have an interesting future ahead of it. Like any project in its beginning, it is still not perfect and few bugs still need to be crushed. I also miss some features. But in general, I would say that Pixenio appealed to me and I think it has a great potential to reach out to a wider range of users — mainly end-users and smaller businesses who need a simple online presentation.

Using this online tool, they can manage to do it quite quickly and it’s definitely a cheaper solution than to hire a professional developer. The price for Pixenio services is set to 8 or 12 € per month, depending on whether you choose a monthly or annual subscription. The tax must be added to the total price.

For those who do not want to read the whole article :) I put together a couple of points so that you can have a quick idea of the strengths and weaknesses of Pixenio:

Pros

• Very well-designed wizard and UI — almost everyone can handle it
• Universal design — the website looks good with any amount of content and images
• Website is built automatically by the system instead of you — it frees you up from element positioning (Pixenio does not have a Page Builder) or coding
• All the templates are fully responsive and can be edited over a mobile phone or tablet
• Option to choose from different homepage variants
• Ability to change templates without losing content
• Basic SEO settings directly in the admin interface
• Preset inputs for easy filling of opening hours for business units

Cons

• Currently available only abridged first version
• So far there’s just a few templates to choose from — they do not have to fit for every type of business
• The ability to create only presentation pages — e.g. missing eCommerce solution
• Missing option to add tables
• Missing integration with Google Maps
• Elements cannot be positioned directly in the page layout which may not suit experienced developers

The final version of my website

Finally, I would like to show you how my first Pixenio website looks like using different templates, color pallets and homepage variants.

Template used: Tom Tom
Color palette: Green & Red
Homepage variants: Blog

Template used: Canary
Color palette: Default
Homepage variants: Services

Template used: Traveler
Color palette: Turquoise & Black
Homepage variants: Blog

Which version do you like the most? And what do you think about Pixenio? Do you like the approach of this website builder? I’m curious about your opinion!