NP New User Review. The Good, Bad and Ugly

RTL - 0 STARS
Since 2018 we have been waiting for RTL support.

Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of NicePage (NP). I am a Web developer with over 20 years of experience and I have tried every Website builder on the planet.

Here's my honest review after 30 days, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

First... THE GOOD (but keep reading)

In my opinion NicePage is better than ALL of them. Better than Wix, square space, mobirise, boot strap studio, web flow, godaddy builders or any of the dozens of other drag and drop website builders.

TRUE WEB 3.0 CAPABILITIES - 4 Stars *
NicePage is a true Web 3.0 development platform allowing web designers the ability to design the perfect website with layering and animation capabilities that far exceed the capabilities of competitors. In a nutshell, I can FINALLY develop any design I can conceive of with pixel-level precision. I'd give it 5 stars except for responsive design issyes (below).

TEMPLATE/IMAGE LIBRARY - 5 Stars *
In my opininion, NP has the most complete library of templates, components, elements & photo libraries available in the market today in 2022. The design templates are extraordinary in their style and attractiveness, and there are a LOT of them.. Far and away better than other builders.

DESIGN INTERFACE - 5 Stars *
NP features an exceptional, intuitive design interface. I've found it very easy to learn and use. After selecting a block or element, the contextually aware interface makes it quick and easy to adjust the parameters & functions of the selected component. Truly a web designers dream.

KNOWLEDGE LIBRARY - 4 STARS ****
To be fair, I can understand how difficult it is to keep a knowledge library up to date, particularly when the software evolves as quickly as NP. Since I purchased the software about a month ago, there have already been 4 significant updates and improvements which tells me the company is very proactive in improving the software. Thats a good thing. Kudis to NP NP developers!

However, Its obvious that many of the support resources & videos are no longer applicable to the current version.

For example the "smart builder" which is supposed to be able to build out a rough draft of a new site automattically is no longer an option, yet the support center AND some of the marketing materials/videos indicate that it is - one of the reasons I made the investment).

This causes confusion when the videos, text and screenshots do not accurately represent the current state of the software. Not a problem perhaps to experienced users but very confusing/misleading an to a new user.

There are numerous other support resources that are out of date and/or no longer applicable to the current version.

LIGHT WEIGHT AND FAST! 4 Stars ****
NP generates lightweight/unbloated code that loads extremely quickly on mobile devices. Current standards for 2022 is approx 2.5 seconds initial page load (LCP). But be careful about bells and whistles, animations and unoptimized images that can slow down page load speeds.

Always, ALWAYS test your page load speed at gtmetrix.com. Load speed is more important than you may think. NP excels at this.

THE BAD

PRICING - 2 Stars **
As I mentioned previously, I am a new user. Imagine my surprise when after purchasing the "Business" version, I received an offer for 50% off the initial purchase price! Just another case of a company giving better offers to new customers than taking care of existing customers. Poorly done.

At the very least - as a current customer, I should have received a free upgrade to the "Pro/Ultimate" version. Though I must admit that even at $199, this software is still a great value.

LICENSING - 2 Stars **
Note that in ALL CASES, the licensing shows as "lifetime" but you only get updates for 1 year (even in the Ultimate/Pro plan) so its not really lifetime is it? This feels a bit misleading. At the very least, the company should give customers the option for lifetime upgrades - even if the price is greater.

WHITELABELING - 2 Stars **
I don't know this for certain, but my guess is that most NP users are professional website developers. Your typical DIY'er probably doesn't have the knowledge to discern why NP is the better alternative.

As a designer/developer, I certainly don't want my customer - or my customer's competitors - to know the development platform I'm using. This is clearly a case of what's good for NP customers is not good for NP as a company - whose primary goal is to grow their userbase & revenue.

I can certainly understand the argument. But this FORCES me to purchase the most expensive plan. Additionally, I have concerns on whether it is TRULY white label (unclear from the documentation). A professional developer knows how to right-click > view source code and look for clues as to the platform in use, even if its not forward facing on the website.

NOTE: Apologies NP staff, LOVE your software but i'm not in the business of selling your software. The fact is, it gives me a competitive advantage that I don't want to give up. What's good for you is NOT necessarily good for me.

FORMS CAPABILTY - 1 Star *
Again, just my opinion but NP has not taken into consideration the needs of us professionals.

FORM ISSUE #1
Case in point:
As a web developer and digital marketing professional, I need to be able to prove my value in generating leads for my clients. WHAT THEY REALLY WANT IS LEADS! That is the fundamental basis of my value, not just a "pretty website". I make the phone ring, the website is simply a means to that end.

As it is currently, unless I'm willing to use a custom or 3rd party solution, or a Wordpress/Joomla plug in, or a Google form, or develop a custom .php script, NP does not provide me with the simple ability to even CC myself on form submissions so I can track performance and report to my customer.

I use NP SPECIFICALLY because I don't want to write code. Even lesser capable competitors allow this very basic option. And it's not just me.. assuming this would be a simple fix, I scoured the forums where several others had the same request.

Easy fix. Simply allow me the ability to enter a 2nd email to receive a copy of form submissions. Or at least provide me with a cut & paste version of the form Processor php file that can do this basic task.

After several requests, apparently this is just too much effort for support staff. They will however point you to several confusing, out of date webpages where you can figure this out for yourself without their help (If you know PHP - I don't which is why I use NP to begin with).

FORM ISSUE #2
My first customers site has already recieved 20+ spam submissions within 3 days of go-live. My customer thinks I'm an idiot. Their former site did not have this issue.

My assumption is that the current form submission function is EASILY exploitable by spam bots. Yes I can set up a Google captcha, but this adds comlexity and friction to the submission process. Nice to have the Captcha option but I shouldn't have to use it.

RESPONSIVE DESIGN - 0 STARS
If you've spent any time on the support forums, you likely know that the responsive design capabilities of NP are far less than perfect.

While the idea of building for all viewport sizes is absolutely critical, the NP implementation is glitchy to say the least. Desktop and laptop views pretty much work as expected, however tablet and mobile views are extremely hit or miss.

I find myself making numerous changes over and over because changes in 1 view have a ripple effect on others. I CONSTANTLY have to check all versions/view ports because I have zero confidence in the consistent behavior of the software.

In my opinion this should be a top priority.

In summary, I REALLY like this software. Overall I'd give it 3.75 stars for usability.

My advice to NP developers..

1. Listen closely to your professional users. Our needs are NOT the same as a casual 1-time amateur user.

2. Make my job easier and minimize the need to look elsewhere to find solutions to patch the short comings of the NP software.

3. Help me promote my business.. not yours.

Thank you and keep up the good work!

Hi, I agree with you with the good things xD

I try to share you my opinion about 3 things you say, license, whitelabel and form.

Form: you can email yourself from form (by nicepage) or connect it to emailchimp, google sheets and others, for spam it's normal and you just have to use a re-captcha, it's not NP fault.

Whitelabel: As you should see in the table https://nicepage.com/premium here full whitelabel it's only for ultimate, I think that' great because the licenses below are too much cheap, for this reason you have nicepage footer in free vesion (if you pay you can remove "Made with nicepage" with the right button). The whitelabel plugin for wordpress it's only possibile with ultimate, I think that's okay.

License: once you bought a license you have it forever, this mean that next your last free updates (after one year) you can still use that version forever for free, but if you update nicepage software you'll cant have the function for what you pay, because it's a version for which you din't pay (in the end you pay for the updates and support). If you missupdates you have two choices: back to older version or pay for another year of updates.

Some tips:, you can bought nicepage renew after some months or when do you need a particulary updates,moreover remember that renew it's about the half price you pay the 1st time. When popoup offers with huge discounts renew one more year with that promo, it's more cheaper.