IM Creator Review: What’s it All About?

IM Creator was actually founded by a former Wix employee. However, it’s not been met with quite the same popularity as Wix, nor has it competed very well with other website builders.

I hadn’t heard much about IM Creator, and nor had many others, to be honest. It’s for this reason I wanted to investigate it in more detail. I quickly learned that IM Creator isn’t for beginners, which is why perhaps it’s not widely known.

If you have a lot of web design or development experience, IM Creator may be a suitable platform for you. However, if you’re just starting out, I’d definitely stay away from it before you give yourself a headache.

As with most things though, it’s not all doom and gloom. I signed up to IM Creator so that I could give you an honest low-down on its templates, features, design tools, customer support, pricing, and pros and cons.

#1: Pros and Cons

#2: Ease of Use

Signing up to IM Creator is pretty simple, you just need to enter your email address, username and password to get started. You’re taken straight to the template selector where you can choose the template you want to begin with.

Following this, you’re pretty much thrown in at the deep end with no guidance and no toolbar to select elements from. I actually found it difficult to create a website with IM Creator’s website builder, which makes little sense to me.

If you want to change a design element, you’ll have to click it on the template. So, if I want to change the background image of the header, you have to locate it and update the existing image.

Because there’s no drag and drop editor, IM Creator feels the complete opposite to intuitive. Unlike Wix, you have to feel around in the dark to try and find what you want to change and add.

In comparison to the big names in the website builder world like Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly, IM Creator feels like it falls very short in terms of ease of use. If you’ve never created a website before, don’t start your journey here, as you’ll likely get very frustrated and lost.

#3: Templates

IM Creator’s templates are pretty decent. They’re professional, modern and they are all mobile responsive, which is a must when designing a website. Finding a template is quite easy, simply use the categories on the left-hand side to filter your selection.

There’s a wide range of industries to choose from including photography, services, business, restaurants, eCommerce, music, and film. Each template shows a mobile and desktop version, giving you an idea of what your site will look like across multiple devices.

When you select an IM Creator template, it will be pre-populated with content. Once you launch the editor, you’ll need to click on the content you want to change or remove, but there’s not much in the way of creative freedom.

As we already know, there’s no drag and drop functionality, so you’re quite limited to what you can actually do. However, if you’re feeling particularly creative, you can ditch the template idea altogether and create your own design from scratch.

This is actually a feature that’s quite interesting to me. Whilst I wouldn’t recommend this for beginners or people with no web design experience, it could be quite a fun little task for someone who wants to show off their creative flair.

#4: Tools and Features

For me, IM Creator seems to lack certain tools and features that make it easy to create a website. After all, a website builder should be simple to use, because the idea behind them is that they help people without web development experience, to create a website.

There are a few good features, like having a free plan, being able to connect your domain name, and allowing donation buttons on your website. However, these simple features feel very few and far between when you consider what else is available on the market.

IM Creator doesn’t offer an app store or any kind of plugins. These kinds of features are essential to creating a unique website, which is something almost every other website builder offers.

Let’s take a look at some of the good features that IM Creator offers:

• Free Hosting: As with most website builders, IM Creator offers free web hosting and the ability to connect your domain. Servers are hosted using Google and Amazon’s secure servers with unlimited bandwidth and storage on premium plans.
• eCommerce: If you want to sell products via your website, you won’t need a specific pricing plan to access the eCommerce features. You’ll have access to store analytics, checkout services, and orders.
• Blogging: You can easily add a blog to your website with IM Creator. There’s a blue + icon in the editor that allows you to integrate a blog with your site, however, the tools are very basic.

#5: Customer Support

IM Creator claims they offer 24/7 support, which is a must when you’re dealing with websites. If your website goes down or encounters an issue, you’ll need to access support immediately.

IM Creator’s support center gives you access to their how-to guides, step-by-step tutorials, FAQs, and customer support. The average response time on their ticket system is 12 hours.

If you want premium 24/7 support, you’ll need to pay for IM Creator’s premium pricing plan. Every customer has access to basic customer support, and the ticket system, but if you want something more hands-on, you’ll need to pay the price.

Overall, I felt IM Creator’s customer support was pretty good. Whilst it may seem like a long time, a 12 hours response time when they’re hosting millions of websites is actually pretty fast.

#6: Pricing

To be honest, I find IM Creator’s pricing a little confusing, simply because there are two pricing models on their website, with no clear definition between them.

If you look on the homepage of their website, IM Creator outlines their free plan is only available to students, artists, and non-profits, whereas their pricing page doesn’t specify this.

Also, on the homepage, each plan offers unlimited hosting and are all ad-free, whereas the pricing page claims the free plan only offers 50mb hosting, and XPRS branding is removed on the Pro & Whitelable plan.

If you want to pay for the premium plan, you can do so in multiple ways:

• £7.88/mo (biannually)
• £6.30/mo (annually)
• £5.51/mo (2-yearly)
• £4.72/mo (3-yearly)

#7: Summary

After signing up for IM Creator and reviewing each aspect of it, I can’t say that I’m particularly impressed. I tried really hard to be open-minded about their website builder, but I just felt at every level, there was always someone else doing it better.

In terms of ease of use, IM Creator is not for beginners. If you’re skilled in web design or web development, you may find it easier to work with, but to be honest, I doubt you’d want to explore the restrictions they put on creative freedom.

If you want to start building your first ever website, I’d honestly recommend Wix or Weebly. They are both much easier to use, are intuitive, and the difference in price is barely noticeable.

IM Creator does offer a free plan, but we think this is only available to students, artists, and non-profits (though this isn’t really clear from their website). Creating a free website with eCommerce features is a bonus, however, I still wouldn’t recommend it for beginners.

It’s not all terrible though. IM Creator does have a selection of beautiful templates that are all mobile responsive. If you’re looking for a simple website that looks good, with blog integration features, then it may be worth your time.

All-in-all though, there are so many other website builders out there who do things better, in each area, every time.