For the website builder, Names.co.uk has four pricing plans which are divided based on usage limits and the features customers have access to. All of them come with a free year of domain hosting upon registering for an annual plan.

Starter

The Starter plan comes in at £7.99/month and is focused on getting you online quickly. Websites are limited to five pages, it comes with a single email address that has 5GB of storage, full access to the drag-and-drop builder, a free stock photo library, site statistics, SEO tools, and a free SSL certificate.

Professional

The Professional plan is £9.99/month and builds on the Starter plan. It removes the 5 page limit on sites, allows customers to incorporate a blog, and provides more granular editing options. It also supports site personalization, multilanguage websites, and a booking widget that is connected to a calendar.

Professional Shop

Professional Shop is £24.99/month and is focused on providing eCommerce tools to help customers sell online. It supports up to 100 products (digital and physical), comes with unlimited storage, dozens of payments providers, support for multiple currencies, inventory management, and so much more.

Premium Shop

The Premium shop plan is £42.99/month and continues to build on the previous plan. You can create and edit orders yourself, edit invoices, get access to a mobile POS, allow customers to upload files with their orders, built-in abandoned cart recovery workflows, and much more.

Names.co.uk has a limited entry-level plan for a website builder but redeems itself to an extent with the Professional and Professional Shop plans. The largest plan is a bit pricey when compared to dedicated eCommerce store builders.

Names.co.uk was founded in 1996, well over 20 years ago. It started as a domain registrar and hosting company for brands and individuals across the world. Today, it has expanded its footprint to include email hosting, security, and a website builder targeted at freelancers, small businesses, and medium businesses.

Names.co.uk has a solid grasp of the core features needed to build a website from scratch but not many advanced features. This includes a drag and drop site builder, separate mobile editing, a stock image library, and developer tools for advanced users to add custom HTML and CSS.

Image editing

Customers can upload their images or choose from those provided as part of the stock photo library. Once a selection is made, you can further edit by cropping, adding overlays, including text on the image, applying multiple filters, and more.

Animations widget

The handy tool makes it possible to add different types of moving graphics to your site. They can appear after scrolling a certain distance, on click, or another action that the user takes. It adds a layer of interactivity to websites and encourages visitors to stay longer.

Countdown timers

The simple countdown timer widget can be customized to match your brand and create urgency or build excitement. It’s simple to integrate and can have a big impact on conversions across your site.

SEO tools

The core SEO options like custom URLs, page titles, meta descriptions, and image alt tags can be edited to optimize the content on your page. A sitemap is automatically generated as well which can be submitted to Google for rapid site indexing.

The Names.co.uk website builder comes with well over 100 templates right out the gate. They’re professional-looking, customizable, and broadly categorized into groups such as education, services, etc. The templates serve as a starting point for your design and can be customized to meet your needs.

Users can change the fonts, colors, basic layout, and much more with the templates. It is possible to change templates but the site will be reset and all previous customizations will be lost. For practical purposes, you won’t want to switch templates unless you’re willing to lose the data that has been added to a site.

If you’ve used a website builder in the past, you should be comfortable working with the Names.co.uk website builder. It works with sections instead of a true free-form site builder. Elements can be dragged into sections you created (or that come with the template) and they’ll snap into place. After placement, a settings window will open allowing you to customize the element to fit your needs.

A simple site with a few pages can be built in a matter of hours. This is true whether you have deep experience building websites or are a complete beginner. One thing to note is that there are many options within the menu so it may take some getting used to.