Duda Review
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- Date Established
- 2010
- Location
- Palo Alto, CA
Pros
- Easy to use
- Numerous templates
- Excellent customer support
- Multilingual sites
- “Personalization rules” are helpful & innovative
Cons
- No free plan
- eCommerce tool is sold separately
- Expensive pricing
Overview
Duda is an innovative website builder that focuses on meeting the needs of web design agencies and SaaS platforms, though its site builder is well-suited to small- to medium-sized businesses as well. In 2010, Itai Sadan and Amir Glatt, entrepreneurs and devotees of The Big Lebowski, founded a company dedicated to mobile-optimized websites. They named it Duda as an homage to The Dude, so I’m inclined to like Duda right off the bat.
Based in Palo Alto, Duda was named number 185 on Inc. 500’s 2014 list of fastest-growing companies and currently hosts over 16 million websites. Initially just offering DudaMobile, a mobile-only website builder, Duda later launched DudaOne, a responsive site builder for building desktop and mobile sites alike. This product is now simply referred to as Duda. With its clean, fresh presentation and concerted efforts to project cultural values congruent with its intended audience, Duda is a compelling presence in an industry crowded with faceless look-alikes.
Read on to learn more.
Table of Contents
Business Types Supported
Duda’s website builder is marketed as a scalable solution for web design agencies and SaaS platforms. The websites you can create with Duda are well-suited to a wide variety of small business types, though. All you Business Achievers should find a good portion of Duda’s 106 contemporary, mobile-responsive templates to your liking. The templates are sorted into the following categories:
- Online store
- Business
- Landing page
- Professional services
- Restaurant & food
- Blank
- Events
- Portfolio & resume
- Lifestyle & health
- Travel
- Community & education
Duda Pricing
Duda once offered a free subscription plan, but sadly, the free plan is no more. You can still try out the package for free for 14 days without entering your payment information, but after that, you’ll need to choose one of Duda’s three paid plans. The pricing starts at $14/month, which is a bit pricey for a basic website plan. The pricing shown below is based on an annual plan, though monthly subscriptions are also available (though they are more expensive on a per-month basis).
Basic
The Basic plan costs $14/month and includes:
- 1 website
- Additional websites available for $171/year
- Hosted on Amazon Cloud
- Email support
- Website personalization
- HTTPS encryption
- Multi-language website
- App store
- Millions of free and premium images
- Limited content library
Team
The Team plan costs $22/month and includes everything in the Basic plan plus:
- 1 website
- Additional websites available for $117/year
- Email/chat/phone support
- Full content library
- Up to 4 team members
- Unique permissions for each team member
- Team assets
- Fulfillment channel
- White label client access (Custom branding/domain)
- Users & permissions (Client)
- Site comments
- White label stats & analytics
- White label sales & marketing materials
- Limited dynamic pages with internal collections
Agency
The Agency plan costs $44/month and includes everything in the previous plans plus:
- 4 websites
- Additional websites available for $99/year
- Priority support
- Up to 10 team members
- Instant websites
- Website export
- Widget builder
- Full dynamic pages with internal collections
- API (Up to 1K API calls per month)
There’s also an Enterprise plan for companies with 100+ websites under management. For pricing details, you’ll have to contact the company for a quote
Duda also offers eCommerce add-ons. You can get an eCommerce add-on no matter which subscription level you have. Here are the details:
Standard eCommerce add-on
- $7.25/month per site
- 100 products
- Filter & sort by keyword, attributes, price range, and category
- Automated discount coupons
- 40+ payment gateways
- Up to 100 MB of digital downloads
- Facebook integration app
- Sell products on Instagram
- Google shopping feeds
- Advanced SEO
- Inventory tracking
- 45 built-in storefront translations
- Multi-currency support
- Gift cards
- Track payment & shipping status
- View abandoned carts
- Low stock notifications
- Advanced data management
- Manually configurable shipping/tax zones, rates & rules
- Realtime shipping quotes for leading carriers (UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc.) without setting account
- Custom tracking code on “thank you” page
Advanced eCommerce add-on
- $19.25/month per site
- 2500 products
- Store management app for Android & iOS
- Automatic tax calculations for US, Canada, UK, EU, & Australia
- Up to 1 GB of digital downloads
- Mailchimp integration
- Sell on Amazon & eBay
- Remarketing with Google Analytics
- Multilingual store
- Stock control for options & product combinations
- Digital download protection
- Fancy product filters
- Recover abandoned carts
Unlimited eCommerce Add-On
- $39/month per site
- Unlimited products
- Square POS
- Up to 10 GB of digital downloads
Duda plans can be paid for using your credit card or PayPal. Sorry, no personal checks.
Ease of Use
Rating: Excellent
If you’ve used website builders before, Duda’s interface should look familiar to you. Options to save your work, publish your site, upgrade your account, and undo/redo edits are laid out in the bar along the top, while options to edit your website are placed in the column along the left side of the screen.
Elements and widgets can be plopped onto your site in classic drag-and-drop fashion. Once placed, these elements can be moved around at will and altered however you like. It’s really a joy to use, and you never feel limited in terms of how you can arrange things.
Hardware & Software Requirements
All that is required of you is a computer, an updated browser, and an idea.
Duda Features
Rating: Excellent
Duda provides its users with a plethora of handy, customizable features. Let’s explore them, shall we?
- Dashboard: Duda’s dashboard gives you easy access to your websites along with your site statistics and account details.
- eCommerce: Duda provides a solid eCommerce package. Duda’s eCommerce setup walkthrough is helpful and thorough, walking you through the shipping and payment options and illuminating your path to an attractive eCommerce site. The end result is a functional and attractive online store for either physical or digital goods. The strength and number of your eCommerce features will depend on which eCommerce subscription add-on you purchased.
- Blog: Duda’s Blog tool will see you creating a basic blog in no time flat. You get some decent options for changing your blog’s layout, and you can even save backup copies of all your blog posts. You can also add whatever element you like into your posts, just as if you were editing one of your pages.
- Personalization Rules: One thing that sets Duda apart is its inclusion of personalization rules. This feature allows you to create elements that appear only when certain conditions are met. For example, you can create a box that plays a video, triggered only to pop up the first time a visitor comes across your site. Alternatively, you can set a special message to display only to repeat visitors to your site. You can also set up a contact page that displays different contact info depending on the time of day (perhaps a “click-to-call” button during business hours and a contact form during non-business hours), or have your bowling alley’s website display a message on Saturday reading “Closed for Shabbos.” It’s a feature that introduces a level of flexibility you don’t always see in a DIY website builder.
- Form Builder: Duda brings a highly customizable contact form to the table. Add as many fields as you want, and customize each one by selecting from ten different field types. Build the contact form of your dreams!
- Image Editor: Duda lets you edit the photos on your site with some basic editing options. Adjust the brightness, add text or stickers, pick a frame, and the like. Compared to many Duda features, it’s fairly rudimentary, but it’s nice to have nonetheless.
- Multilingual Websites: One handy Duda premium feature is the ability to create multilingual websites and add additional languages to your existing website.
Other Duda features include a full set of SEO options, a photo gallery, a YouTube widget, a map from Google Maps, a dining reservations app called OpenTable, social media feeds, a WordPress feed, a restaurant menu, a PayPal button, full HTML/CSS editing in Developer Mode, and more. Overall, Duda is formidably featured, offering a generous package of features for both individuals and small businesses, particularly restaurants.
Web Design & Editing
Templates
Duda’s 106 templates aren’t quite as crisp and pretty as those of Squarespace or Wix, but they’re definitely above average. They’re also highly customizable. Most importantly, they’re mobile responsive and will behave nicely on tablets and smartphones.
Desktop Editor
Duda’s site editor is a flexible tool that can accommodate both newbies and design professionals. It’s simple enough to not overwhelm you if you’re just looking to build a quick website for your business and capable enough to use in a professional capacity. Sadly, there is no mobile editor, though there is a mobile app for eCommerce management.
Mobile Responsiveness
All Duda sites are fully mobile responsive. You won’t have to worry about how your site displays on smaller screens.
Duda Integrations & Add-Ons
Duda’s small app store features some nice CRM and listing management integrations, but there’s nowhere near the number of add-ons available as you’ll find in, say, Wix’s app market.
Duda Customer Service & Technical Support
Rating: Excellent
For support, Duda offers an extensive knowledge base, email support, and (with at least a Team subscription) live chat or phone support. Many website builders lack phone support, so it’s good to see it included here. In my experience, Duda’s customer service has been helpful and prompt.
Duda Reviews
Rating: Excellent
Negative Reviews & Complaints
Professional reviewers have a few qualms with Duda:
- No site portability
- Editor can be slow
- Occasional glitchiness
- Few integrations
In reviewing customer feedback, a few users have complained about the usefulness of the customer service. On the whole, however, complaints are few and far between.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
Duda has received more plaudits than raspberries from reviewers and users alike, who have seen fit to applaud the following:
- Great mobile responsiveness
- Very easy/intuitive to use
- Great personalization features
- Strong eCommerce
- Great white label and CRM features
User reviews of website builders typically span the gamut from pleased to horrified, but Duda’s user reviews are consistently positive to a degree I don’t normally see.
Final Verdict
Duda is a real breath of fresh air. With advanced CRM features, eCommerce, and useful personalization features, Duda deserves your consideration as a website builder. Larger eCommerce operations may want to go with something like Shopify instead, but for web design agencies and most types of small businesses, Duda gives you more than enough juice to crank out high-quality websites with a minimum of fuss.
With mobile-responsive templates and a fresh ethos, Duda provides a lot of value, even if the prices are a touch on the high side. For startup businesses, Duda might be just the thing to get your vision out there.
If you will it, dude, it is no dream.
Jason Vissers
Jason Vissers is a writer and cereal chef from San Diego. He graduated with a Political Science degree from San Diego State University in 2001. He's been writing about website builders, crowdfunding sites, online lenders, and credit cards for Merchant Maverick since 2015. Additionally, Jason can't eat raisins.
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Quite possibly the world’s most incompetent support staff. Our company literally doesn’t use their support because they’re so rude and unhelpful.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Le Caire Lounge
Any updates I do, do not update. No phone numbers unless if you are a paid pro subscriber. Free subscribers have no phone support and Duda website ad is showing all over your free website which is understandable but with the glitches they have on their dashboard editor, it’s not encouraging to upgrade your account. Besides their plans prices are way higher than any competitor.So I emailed them about their editor feature not updating the changes but I get a generic response without looking at my account with their standard fixes which basically what I’ve been doing with no luck.I just emailed them again after 3-4 day with the issue still persist to look into my account but still have to wait for another few days until I get a response and hopefully would get some resolutions.Would not recommend.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: SSE online, LLC
I have used Duda for a number of years and it hasn’t gotten any better. I waste days (not hours) publishing, and republishing without my changes saving. This is an extremely glitchy service and I totally regret purchasing the “site for life”. My mobile site gets 404 error messages all the time. I really wish you would change your overall rating because it sucks people into a bad service. I AM using the current version of the product and it’s as bad as ever.Go use a webhost that has a dynamic format – and NOT duda mobile!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Jason, the writer of the report, sure is heck used the product. All the little nuances and things he talks about are right on. Every disgruntlement and pick was great. I felt like I was writing it. A thought. I am miffed that in 2017 there is not a nice and simple webbuilder application that runs and reads whatever other websites and allows you to get below and edit all the code. The proprietary webbuilders is just a way to make a captured audience. I would much rather develop my code locally and ftp the site up to the Internet and I am still just so surprised that this is not available. Especially if you go to a web speed tester or analyzer and it tells you the fixes, but where your site is it is impossible to fix. For years I have tried different products and websites. I started in the 90’s as a PC DOCS Engineer and setting up webservers on Sun Systems Unix and many other platforms. So, I am not a novice, but I am not artistic at all, which led me out into the world. I started looking like crazy again when I had an old website that I could not get ranked in google or yahoo again. I started for a long time on smacking up a wix site. It was the first problem of any flexibility that was a concern of mine. Godaddy and Ipage were problems, but found their builders way too inflexible. Oh, I spent a good amount of time on a WordPress site which I wish I could get that time back. I felt I was back in the day when there were not standards in computing. I really felt myself get to the point where I was going to start scripting, Oh, Google Sites really isn’t something you would consider competing in the market, for those of you who have dabbled. Duda stuck out after searching and failing on all of these. This analysis that I am commenting on is great. 1. Little quirky things, like I can not find a Small Capital Letters font. That font should be everywhere. 2. Could not figure out how to put things in the margin after duda templates hem you into their active workspace. When you publish your site it ensures it is cleanly in the middle. But, there is a lot of wasted real estate.3. Wanted to do more with google analytic tagging but you are not allowed that far into the code. 4. Occasional make you pissed off editor. I had several times when dragging an object it turned a part that was one column, into two, but didn’t look at it as a change. I could not undo it and nothing had triggered a difference on the page. That is REALLY frustrating. I could go on.Six months ago I started to put up my new site. I was going to dabble in web pages to give me a break from practicing law. It ends up that both are jealous mistresses. Every product I mention here, from Rapidweaver to WordPress to Go Daddy, I built an entire website and that is why this review stands out. He picks out the biggies that I would mention, as well. Trying to transfer, move, whatever. Builders are all proprietary and to ftp the site down creates jumble. I gave duda.co my own four star ranking and stated it was on the 5 star fence. To me, it really is a 5 star product, but I don’t want them to stop. I started way back using Rapidweaver. Quirky and bad concept. I NEVER grew comfortable with it.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
These guys are a joke, they made changes in their code and did not trouble themselves to inform any one that sites are down. Our client informs us and I contacted duda. There is no human one can contact and their support time is slow. 7 days later as it seems an earlier email of theirs went to junkmail. I was given instructions to change code on my wordpress site. I didnt know that I have to be a coder in order to pay for their mobile app service. 4 emails asking them to call me have gone ignored as they do not even bother addressing the fact that I do not know how to code, instead they are patting me on the back with how far I have managed to go changing parts of their code step by step. WHAT A JOKE, I hope Duda continues to teach their customers on how to decipher duda code and to teach the world how they have NO SUPPORT while corrupting your personal websites code in the process. BEWARE OF THIS JOKE OF A COMPANY!!!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
You don’t have to be a coder to use Duda.co. You have to be a coder to use WordPress. I knew everything about wordpress and packed it in because I feel it is 200 suitcases with different API suites to augment their window opening wordpress ass. Can’t stand WordPress and I can’t believe the amount of time I spent PROGRAMMING my own work arounds. For instance, the “read more” delimeter. They forgot to put the code along with that one. Different plug ins don’t work with others. I mean it is nice to have 3 trillion add ons, but not if they don’t play well.
I programmed my own “read more” and many others before I packed it in. Clumsy “Open as a New Window Editor” WordPress. At the end of editing and doing things I might have 14 active editors open and then must re-enact my closing of the windows so I don’t overwrite the newest and latest that I just spend an hour changing. Dear WordPress. Go away. I bet their own website was made by duda.co. You and I know that the foot in the door was that they cannot make a mobile site worth a crap. So, you head out and look for a mobile programmer. Duda.co comes up as the best for mobile sites, but maybe not primetime for desktop. However, in my business, 80 percent of more come from mobile devices.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
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I had Dudamobile Javascript put into over a dozen of my important websites so they can be better seen on mobile devices and all of a sudden all of them are going to a 404 error page on mobile devices only. This is frustrating a lot of my readers and customers! I have contacted Duda in Ca, a dozen times and they have done absolutely nothing to help me! The Customer service is the worst on the planet and they will not take any phone calls. The e-mails I got back from them were totally senseless and worthless! I told them that I would be doing this review if they didn’t provide the needed customer support but they didn’t seem to care one bit! I feel that you will be very sorry if you do business with this company that is ready to take your money while providing worthless customer support!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Being new to this I have limited understanding of the whole concept of hosting a website.
Is there a link in Duda where you can add a members data base by logging in from my website?
Do they host email addresses too?
Thanks
Mark
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Mark! Thanks for your question – while you can set up password-protected pages with a premium plan, Duda has no membership/database features and does not host email addresses.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Oh my goodness! Amazing article dude! Many thanks, However I am
going through issues with your RSS. I don’t know why I cannot subscribe to it.
Is there anybody else getting similar RSS issues? Anybody who knows the solution will you kindly respond?
Thanks!!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
About 6 months ago today September 28 I set up my business on this companies platform. i wanted both Android and IOS platforms. I spent over two weeks setting up my mobile site. It came well. I published it and found out it will not work at all on the Android Platform and partially well on the IOSD platform. I had paid my money only to have both site not work properly. I contacted customer service but you have to use email as there isnt a phone number to talk to some one. Well here it is 6 months later and they have been telling me over and over again they have no idea of when the issue will be fixed. I have asked all kinds of questions and they just keep saying its a big problem and it takes time to fix. i just thought i would advise any future customers that this company has problems with troubleshooting your mobile site after you spend good time creating it. My site is http://www.audio-videospecialists.com. take a look for yourself and see what you think. It works partially well on IOS but not at all on AndroidThanks for taking the time to read this
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Frederic! Your site looks quite nice on my iPhone, but unfortunately, I don’t have an Android device to test it on.
Thanks for your input though!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
This site addresses issues that were never resonded to by your company. The one I’m most concerned with is the comment by Jason Vissers above. “I don’t have an android device to try this on”.
???? Seriously? You are a web development platform. How can you NOT have android devices to try things out on? I will have to keep looking unfortunately. I love so much about your company but the lack of response by yourselves tothe people who have posted here on this site are making me really worry. The other concerns I have are no email hosting, and no web domain hosting although really it’s the email hosting that is the bigger concern. Also the only comments allowed on your sites are FB only.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Elizabeth,
Thank you for the comment, but I believe there may be some confusion here. Jason Vissers is an independent reviewer for our website called Merchant Maverick. He is not a representative for Duda. The issues that have been addressed on this site about Duda, are actually issues that Jason dug up about Duda as this is a review that he wrote. As a reviewer, Jason isn’t able to try every platform on every device, and that is why he hasn’t had a chance to try Duda on an Android. With that said, we’ll definitely take your comments into consideration and will consider purchasing an Android device exclusively for testing.
Best,
Amad Ebrahimi | Founder
Merchant Maverick
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I have worked with a lot of different website editors. The Duda platform is one of the best ones out there. In my opinion there is only ONE down side, and that is their support. The support is not very responsive, and not very helpful.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
HiThanks for the info. Does Duda satisfy Google’s requirement for mobile friend websites?Thanks, Andy
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Andy! My test site with DudaOne did indeed pass Google’s mobile-friendly test!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.