Appy Pie vs Zoho Sites: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Appy Pie and Zoho Sites both offer user-friendly platforms, but they cater to slightly different needs and preferences.

• 
  Appy Pie (Overall Grade: 7.2/10)
  
  is ideal for users seeking a no-code solution with a focus on ease of use and quick deployment. Its AI-driven website builder and extensive customization options make it accessible for beginners and those without technical skills. Appy Pie excels in providing a simple, drag-and-drop interface, making it a practical choice for individuals and businesses looking to establish an online presence with minimal effort.
• 
  Zoho Sites (Overall Grade: 7.6/10)
  
  offers a more comprehensive set of features, particularly for users who need advanced customization and integration with other business tools. Its visual editor and diverse template collection cater to various website types, from blogs to business sites. Zoho Sites stands out for its robust hosting quality, proactive website speed optimization, and seamless integration with Zoho’s suite of applications, making it a strong contender for users seeking a reliable and scalable website builder.

	Overall grade: 7.2	Overall grade: 7.6
Design functionalities & templates	6.8	7.4
Ease of use	8.3	7.0
Ecommerce	7.2	7.4
Website Editors	7.7	7.5
Product testing options	8.9	8.8
Price	7.4	8.6
Hosting quality	6.9	8.0
Website speed optimization	5.0	7.1
Plugins/extensions and integrations	6.4	7.3
Marketing features	7.5	7.6
Customer support	8.2	8.3
Website security	7.5	8.1
AI capabilities	7.2	7.5
User Management	7.3	7.3

Best for ecommerce

7.2

7.4

Verdict

: When comparing Appy Pie vs Zoho Sites for ecommerce, Zoho Sites has a slight edge due to its more comprehensive set of features and better integration with its suite of business apps.

• 
  Appy Pie
  
  : Appy Pie’s Website Builder is designed for ease of use, making it a good choice for individuals and small businesses looking to establish an online presence quickly. It offers essential ecommerce features like product and inventory management, multiple currencies, and various payment gateways. However, it may lack the depth and customization options needed for more complex ecommerce operations.
• 
  Zoho Sites
  
  : Zoho Sites, integrated with Zoho Commerce, provides a robust set of ecommerce tools suitable for a range of business needs. It offers extensive product page customization, multiple payment gateways, and strong marketing and SEO tools. This makes it a more versatile option for businesses looking to scale their online operations.

Best for informational & business websites

7.4

7.9

• 
  Appy Pie
  
  : Appy Pie’s Website Builder is designed for ease of use, making it accessible for users without coding skills. It offers a simple drag-and-drop interface and a wide array of templates, making it a practical solution for quickly creating professional-looking websites. However, it may lack some advanced features and customization options that more experienced users might seek.
• 
  Zoho Sites
  
  : Zoho Sites provides a user-friendly platform with a collection of customizable templates and a visual editor for easy customization. It offers more creative control and a wider array of design features compared to Appy Pie. Zoho Sites also excels in hosting quality and speed optimization, making it a reliable choice for businesses that need a robust and efficient website.

Detailed comparison

6.8

7.4

🏆

Winner: Zoho Sites.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more creative control and a wide array of design features, Zoho Sites is the preferred choice.

Appy Pie offers a wide array of website templates with over 10,000 options, catering to various needs and budgets. Categorized across industries, these templates are mobile-friendly and customizable, allowing users to edit colors, fonts, layouts, and add features. The platform’s pre-designed themes, layouts, and user-friendly drag-and-drop builder enhance visual appeal and customization ease, making it accessible for users without coding knowledge.

Appy Pie Themes

Compared to Appy Pie, Zoho Sites offers a diverse collection of over 150 templates, thoughtfully categorized into industries like Restaurants, Architecture, Health, and more. Each template provides a pre-designed layout with responsive design for various screen sizes. Customization options include visual elements such as colors, fonts, and images, as well as the ability to modify layouts and content using the visual editor. For advanced users on the Advanced Plan, there’s the option to leverage HTML and CSS for deeper customization.

Zoho Sites Themes

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8.3

7.0

🏆 Winner: Appy Pie

. Scoring 8.3, Appy Pie is acclaimed for its simplicity and intuitive design, making it highly accessible for users without coding skills. Zoho Sites, with a score of 7.0, offers a user-friendly platform but with a steeper learning curve, especially for those requiring advanced features and robust automation. If ease of use is a priority, Appy Pie is the clear winner in this category.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites

. While both platforms offer solid learning resources, Zoho Sites provides a wider range of high-quality learning resources for both beginners and advanced users, making it easier for users to learn and adapt.

7.2

7.4

Appy Pie and Zoho Sites both offer ecommerce capabilities, but their approaches differ. Appy Pie provides built-in ecommerce features, while Zoho Sites integrates with Zoho Commerce for ecommerce functionality. Both platforms support multiple payment gateways and offer product page customization. However, Zoho Sites has a slight edge in the ecommerce score.

Ecommerce themes and templates	6.0	6.5
Product page customization	7.0	7.0
Payment processing and commissions	6.5	6.8
POS capabilities	6.0	5.5
Payment gateways	7.5	7.2
Product numbers	6.5	6.0
Additional ecommerce features	7.0	7.3

Appy Pie ecommerce features:

• Product and Inventory Management
• Shopping Cart
• Multiple Currencies
• Promotions and Discounts
• Order Management
• Shipping Options
• Analytics
• Tax management

Zoho Sites ecommerce features:

• Product and Inventory management
• Order management
• Payment Processing
• Marketing and Promotions
• SEO and Analytics
• Security

Ecommerce themes & templates

Appy Pie offers a small selection of ecommerce website templates. These templates are designed to help users create online stores quickly and efficiently, without the need for coding skills. Appy Pie’s ecommerce templates feature mobile-first designs, customizable product galleries, and various other features aimed at enhancing the online shopping experience for both the store owner and their customers.

On the other hand, Zoho Sites offers a range of ecommerce website templates and themes designed to cater to various industries and business needs. These templates are customizable, allowing businesses to tailor their online stores to their brand and product offerings. Zoho Commerce, in particular, provides beautiful and highly customizable ecommerce store themes, aiming to enhance the online shopping experience.

Product page customization

Appy Pie’s Website Builder provides users with extensive customization options for product pages, enabling the creation of unique online stores or product showcases without requiring advanced coding skills. Users can personalize product details like descriptions, images, and pricing, ensuring they can offer comprehensive information to assist customers in making informed purchasing choices.

Zoho offers extensive product page customization options, allowing users to tailor the display of their products. This includes features like image galleries, sliders, and video integration, enabling businesses to present their products in a visually appealing manner. Additionally, Zoho facilitates the configuration of product variants like size and color options, as well as efficient inventory management directly from the product pages.

Payment processing

When it comes to payment processing, Appy Pie offers a user-friendly platform for integrating payment processing and POS capabilities into mobile apps and online stores, supporting multiple payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Square for secure and versatile customer transactions. While it facilitates easy payment integrations, commission management may require third-party solutions or custom setups. This makes Appy Pie an effective tool for businesses looking to provide a comprehensive shopping experience with a focus on mobility and flexibility.

Zoho Sites, in conjunction with Zoho Commerce, offers robust payment processing capabilities and supports integration with multiple payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Square, facilitating secure online transactions. While direct POS system integration and commission management might require leveraging additional Zoho tools or custom solutions, the Zoho ecosystem provides a comprehensive suite for businesses to manage both online and in-store sales efficiently. This integration ensures flexibility and security for businesses aiming to provide a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels.

7.7

7.5

🏆

Winner: Appy Pie

. With a score of 7.7, Appy Pie’s website editor is acclaimed for its simplicity and no-code platform, making it an excellent choice for beginners looking to create websites effortlessly. It employs an AI-based approach to website creation, allowing users to develop websites without diving into coding or complex web development processes. The platform emphasizes ease of use and efficiency, offering a user-friendly experience that enables the creation of basic to more sophisticated websites within minutes.

Zoho Sites’ editor, scoring 7.5, offers a user-friendly website editor with an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface that makes website design straightforward and accessible, even for those with no technical background. The visual editor further simplifies the customization process, enabling users to tweak the look and feel of their website sections without any coding knowledge.

Mobile editor/app

5.5

5.5

🏆

Winner: Tie

. Both Appy Pie and Zoho Sites do not offer a dedicated mobile app for website editing. However, they provide some level of editing capabilities through the mobile browser.

Appy Pie’s website builder does not have a dedicated mobile app, but it allows users to edit their website using the mobile browser. This feature can be handy for making quick changes or updates to your website on the go.

On the other hand, Zoho Sites does not have a dedicated website editor app either. However, it allows users to edit the visual aspects of the mobile version of their website, such as font size, color, background, and shadow, through the mobile interface. However, it does not allow content changes through the mobile interface.

In summary, both Appy Pie and Zoho Sites offer limited mobile editing capabilities, and neither of them stands out as a clear winner in this category. Therefore, the choice between the two would depend on your specific needs and preferences.

8.9

8.8

Overall Result

:

Appy Pie Wins

. Appy Pie scores slightly higher than Zoho Sites in product testing options, with a score of 8.9 compared to Zoho Sites’ 8.8. Both platforms offer a free trial period, with Appy Pie offering a longer duration of 30 days compared to Zoho Sites’ 15 days. Both platforms allow users to test all premium features during the trial period. However, only Zoho Sites offers a money-back guarantee.

Free Plan	No	Yes
Trial Duration	30 days	15 days
Testing Premium Features	All features during free trial	All features during free trial
Money Back Guarantee	No	Yes

7.4

8.6

Zoho Sites offers more affordable plans and a higher price score compared to Appy Pie.

However, Appy Pie provides an enterprise plan tailored to specific business needs, while Zoho Sites offers options suitable for enterprise needs through their Agency Plan and add-on packs.

	Offerings	Offerings
$0-$10	No offering at this amount.	Starter ($8.00/month): Offers basic features suitable for small websites, including 5 pages, 500MB storage, 10GB bandwidth/month, SSL hosting, domain connection, ad-free experience, and more. Ideal for personal blogs or small business websites. Value for price: 6.5
$15-$25	Start ($18/month): Suitable for personal projects, offering 50 GB storage and access to professional theme templates, domain connection, no Appy Pie ads, CSS & Java customization, etc. Value for price: 6.5	Pro ($23.00/month): Upgrades significantly on the Starter plan, offering 50 pages, 100GB storage, unmetered bandwidth, 50 forms, and advanced features like social share button, audio player, comment box, scheduled blog post, and dynamic content. Best suited for professional sites that require more resources and functionalities. Value for price: 8.0
$30+	Grow ($36/month): Aimed at small businesses, providing unlimited storage, advanced marketing and monetizing tools, multiple payment gateways, etc. Value for price: 8.5	Agency ($32.00/month): Tailored for agencies managing multiple sites, providing a bundle plan that offers significant savings and flexibility. Includes all Starter features with the option to add Pro features as needed. Value for price: 9.0

6.9

8.0

🏆

Winner: Zoho Sites

Zoho Sites offers managed hosting with a focus on speed and scalability, boasting a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 12 global data centers. It’s ideal for users who need a reliable and efficient hosting service. Appy Pie, with a 99% uptime and reliance on Amazon Web Services, provides a proprietary hosting service suitable for users who prioritize ease-of-use and quick deployment. However, Zoho Sites stands out for its superior reliability and efficiency, earning it a higher rating.

Do they offer hosting?	Yes, included in all paid plans	Yes, included in all paid plans
Data Centers:	Relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS)	12 globally: Canada(Montreal and Toronto), US(Quincy and Dallas), India(Mumbai and Chennai), Australia(Sydney and Melbourne), China(Beijing and Shanghai), Japan(Tokyo and Osaka)
Type of hosting:	Proprietary hosting service	Managed Hosting
Uptime:	99%	99.9%
Uptime Guarantee:	Yes, 99%	Yes, 99.9%

5.0

7.1

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites

Both Appy Pie and Zoho Sites prioritize website performance and page speed, but Zoho Sites takes a more proactive approach to speed optimization, making it the winner in this category.

Focus	User-driven optimization	Regular testing and updates
Performance Tools	User-accessible tools	Optimized code and libraries, Cache balancing
Key Strategies	User-driven optimization	Regular testing and updates, Optimized code and libraries, Cache balancing
Load Times	Varies widely, dependent on optimization	Below 2-5 seconds average
Page Speed Scores Range	Varies widely, dependent on optimization	70-80/100 average
Core Web Vitals Improvement	No disclosed information	Performance optimization techniques

Zoho Sites takes a proactive approach to website speed optimization, regularly testing and implementing updates to ensure optimal performance. They use optimized code and libraries and balance cache to maintain fast load times. Zoho Sites websites typically load in under 2-5 seconds on average, and their PageSpeed scores average between 70-80/100. They also focus on improving Core Web Vitals by implementing various performance optimization techniques.

On the other hand, Appy Pie, as a website building platform, doesn’t directly implement specific speed optimization strategies for your website. However, they offer various tools and features that can help you optimize your website’s speed on your own. Both load times and PageSpeed scores vary widely, depending on the optimization and user’s location. Appy Pie does not disclose any information on their Core Web Vitals improvements.

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6.4

7.3

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites.

Zoho Sites scores 7.3, offering a diverse range of plugins and extensions, and integrates with Zoho’s suite of applications and third-party services. Appy Pie, scoring 6.4, also provides a range of plugins and extensions, but Zoho Sites’ integration with its own suite of applications gives it an edge.

It’s worth noting that both platforms offer a range of plugins and extensions across various categories such as marketing, design, social media, SEO, payments, and more. However, Zoho Sites’ approach of integrating many extensions into their paid plans provides users with access to more features as they upgrade, giving it an advantage over Appy Pie.

Appy Pie Applications

Zoho Sites Applications

7.5

7.6

🏆

Overall Winner: Zoho Sites

. Zoho Sites edges out Appy Pie with a slightly higher score, indicating a more comprehensive set of marketing features. Both platforms offer similar features, but Zoho Sites’ integration with its own suite of business apps may provide a more seamless experience for users.

SEO Tools
Email Marketing
Blogging	Platform supports content creation and management	Yes
Social Media Integration	Simplifies content sharing and audience engagement	Extensive management across platforms
Analytics and Reporting	Integration with Google Workspace	Offers traffic analytics and supports Google Analytics
Ads and Promotions	Tools for creating and managing promotional content	Integrated with Zoho Marketing Automation

8.2

8.3

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites

. When comparing Appy Pie vs Zoho Sites, Zoho Sites edges out slightly in the customer support category with a score of 8.3. Zoho Sites offers 24/7 support through live chat, email, and phone, along with a comprehensive knowledge base and community forum. This ensures users have access to reliable and prompt support whenever needed.

Appy Pie also provides robust customer support with 24/7 availability through live chat, email, and phone. They offer extensive documentation and tutorials to help users troubleshoot common issues independently. While Appy Pie’s support is commendable, Zoho Sites’ slightly higher score and additional community forum give it a slight advantage in this category.

7.5

8.1

🏆

Winner: Zoho Sites

. Zoho Sites has a slightly higher security score of 8.1 compared to Appy Pie’s 7.5. Both platforms prioritize user data protection and website security, offering advanced encryption, strict access controls, and two-factor authentication. However, Zoho Sites edges out with its secure data centers and regular backups, ensuring data safety and availability.

Appy Pie, while offering similar security measures, does not explicitly mention data center security or regular backups. Both platforms are committed to providing a secure environment for website creation and management, with regular security updates and dedicated teams monitoring for potential threats.

7.2

7.5

AI Builder	Appy Pie uses AI algorithms for automatic website design and customization
AI Ecommerce features	Personalized shopping experiences and AI chatbots for customer service	Unique product recommendations and sales predictions
AI Content Generation	Advanced AI algorithms for content creation	AI content assistant for creating engaging landing page copy
Additional AI Features	Chatbots, virtual assistants, and AI-powered analytics	AI assistant for productivity, sales, and customer service enhancements

🏆 Winner: Appy Pie

. With a score of 7.2, Appy Pie’s AI capabilities are more comprehensive, offering a full-fledged AI builder, AI ecommerce features, AI content generation, and additional AI features.

Zoho Sites, with a score of 7.5, does not have an AI builder but offers AI ecommerce features and AI content generation through its AI assistant, Zia.

7.3

7.3

🏆 Winner: Tie

. Both Appy Pie and Zoho Sites offer different user access levels based on the plan chosen.

• Appy Pie’s website builder offers different user access levels based on the plan chosen. For the Free Plan, one user has full editing privileges. Paid plans include the Starter Plan (3 users), Hobby Plan (5 users), Professional Plan (10 users), and Enterprise Plan (unlimited users). Each plan designates an Admin with full access and additional Editors with varying editing rights. Additionally, paid plans allow for customization of roles, enabling tasks such as content editing or design adjustments.
• The number of users who can edit a Zoho Sites website and their access levels depend on the chosen plan. The Free Plan allows only the owner to edit, while paid plans like Pro, Business, and Enterprise offer access for up to 10, 25, and 50 users respectively. Zoho Sites provides four access levels: Admin, with full editing rights and user management; Contributor, who can edit content and create pages but not manage collaborators; and Author, limited to editing text content without access to settings or user management.

Appy Pie User Roles and Access Levels:

Zoho Sites User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

SSL Certificate
Custom Domain
Free Custom Domain Included
International Domains
Mobile Responsive
Page Speed
Website Builder Mobile App
Convert a Website To An App
Website Analytics
Multilingual Sites
Multiple Users

User Feedback

Appy Pie

1328 reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars

Zoho Sites

111 reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars

Appy Pie garners positive feedback for its user-friendly interface and excellent customer support, offering low-code solutions for app and website building without requiring coding experience. Users appreciate its ease of use, extensive features, and ability to create apps and websites quickly. While some express a desire for more customization options and templates, overall, Appy Pie serves as a valuable tool for businesses and individuals seeking to create apps and websites efficiently, solving the problem of complex coding requirements and providing a platform for easy communication and engagement with users.

Zoho Sites receives mixed reviews, with users praising its user-friendly interface, extensive template library, and seamless integration with other Zoho products, which simplifies website development and management for small businesses. However, some users express dissatisfaction with its limited design flexibility and the inability to create custom features. Overall, Zoho Sites addresses the need for cost-effective website solutions, particularly for those without coding knowledge, offering a one-stop-shop for building and managing websites with varying degrees of customization and integration with other business tools.

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