Format vs Strikingly: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Format and Strikingly both offer unique advantages, but they cater to different user needs.

• 
  Format (Overall Grade: 5.8/10)
  
  is tailored for creative professionals such as photographers, artists, and designers. It excels in providing high-quality, customizable templates that showcase portfolios beautifully. With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, Format is user-friendly and ideal for those without technical skills. However, its ecommerce capabilities and customization options are limited compared to Strikingly, making it less suitable for users seeking extensive ecommerce features or advanced customization.
• 
  Strikingly (Overall Grade: 6.6/10)
  
  offers a more versatile platform with a wider range of templates and designs. It is user-friendly and provides comprehensive ecommerce solutions, making it suitable for small businesses and individuals looking to create professional websites quickly. Strikingly’s higher scores in ecommerce, hosting quality, and marketing features make it a more robust option for users who need a well-rounded website builder with advanced functionalities.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Strikingly outshines Format in ecommerce capabilities, making it a more robust choice for online stores.

• 
  Format
  
  : Designed for creative professionals, Format offers basic ecommerce functionalities like inventory management, discounts, and multiple currency options. However, it lacks ecommerce-specific templates and extensive customization options, making it less suitable for comprehensive online stores. When comparing Format vs Strikingly, Format’s ecommerce score is 5.2.
• 
  Strikingly
  
  : With a higher ecommerce score of 7.2, Strikingly provides a more complete ecommerce solution. It includes features like product listings, inventory management, SEO tools, and social media integration. Strikingly also offers a variety of ecommerce templates and extensive product page customization, making it a better choice for those looking to build and manage a professional online store.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: Strikingly slightly outperforms Format for informational business websites, thanks to its broader range of templates, better speed optimization, and more comprehensive customer support.

• 
  Format
  
  : Format is tailored for creative professionals, offering nearly 100 customizable templates that are perfect for showcasing portfolios. Its drag-and-drop interface is intuitive, making it easy for users without coding knowledge to create visually appealing websites. However, its focus on portfolio websites may limit its versatility for other types of informational sites. With a score of 7.2, Format is a solid choice for creatives looking to display their work professionally.
• 
  Strikingly
  
  : Strikingly is a versatile website builder that caters to a wide range of users, from individuals to businesses. It offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and a variety of modern, customizable templates. Strikingly also excels in website speed optimization and customer support, making it a reliable choice for those looking to create and manage professional-looking informational websites. With a score of 7.4, Strikingly is slightly better suited for informational business websites compared to Format.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Strikingly.

Strikingly slightly edges out Format with a score of 7.2 against Format’s 7.0. Strikingly offers a wider variety of templates and designs, and its platform is more user-friendly.

Format is a website builder specifically designed for creatives, offering nearly 100 customizable templates tailored for various artistic disciplines. It emphasizes high-quality imagery and mobile-friendly designs, ensuring portfolios look professional on any device.

Format Themes

On the other hand, Strikingly offers a wide variety of templates and designs for its website builder. With over 60 unique templates to choose from, users can find a design that suits their needs and preferences. The templates are modern, visually appealing, and customizable, allowing users to personalize their websites.

Strikingly Themes

🏆 Winner: Format

. With a score of 8.3, Format edges out Strikingly (8.1) in terms of ease of use. Format’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface and straightforward dashboard make it accessible for users without extensive technical skills, making it an attractive option for creative professionals. Strikingly, while also user-friendly, may be limiting for users requiring advanced functionalities.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Strikingly

. Both platforms offer solid learning resources, but Strikingly goes a step further with its comprehensive support center, tutorials, guides, and direct customer support via live chat or tickets. Format, on the other hand, provides a help center and a YouTube channel with tutorials and updates.

When it comes to ecommerce, Strikingly outperforms Format with a score of 7.2 against 5.2. While Format offers basic ecommerce functionalities tailored for creatives and photographers, it may not suit those looking for extensive ecommerce features. Strikingly, on the other hand, provides a more comprehensive ecommerce solution, allowing users to create online stores, manage inventory, set up shipping and tax options, and accept payments through various payment gateways.

Format ecommerce features:

• Inventory management and tracking
• Discounts
• Multiple currency options

Strikingly ecommerce features:

• Product Listings
• Inventory Management
• Coupons and Discounts
• SEO tools
• Analytics
• Social Media Integration

Ecommerce themes & templates

Format does not offer ecommerce specific templates, limiting its appeal for those looking to build an online store. On the other hand, Strikingly offers a variety of ecommerce website templates designed by a world-class team of website designers and developers, ensuring your ecommerce site stands out.

Product page customization

Format offers limited specific details on product page customization, focusing on showcasing products through high-quality imagery and detailed descriptions. Strikingly, however, allows for more extensive customization, including unique product URLs and region-specific pricing for a tailored shopping experience.

Payment processing

Format integrates with major payment gateways, including Paypal and Stripe, but charges a commission on sales. It does not have built-in POS (Point of Sale) capabilities. Strikingly supports secure payment processing through Stripe, Square, and other gateways like PayPal, offering a range of options for ecommerce sites. The transaction fees vary depending on the payment gateway and user location, with specific plans possibly incurring additional Strikingly fees, except for VIP users.

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Winner: Tie

. Both Format and Strikingly scored 7.5 for their website editors, indicating a similar level of quality and user-friendliness.

Format’s website editor is specifically designed for creative professionals, offering nearly 100 professionally designed templates and thousands of design variations without requiring any coding. It supports direct video hosting, high-quality image rendering, and easy template switching. However, its focus on portfolio websites limits its versatility for other uses.

Strikingly’s website editor is designed to be user-friendly and allows for a range of customizations to cater to users’ preferences. It supports drag-and-drop functionality for rearranging sections and offers a variety of settings for different elements. It also enables editing for mobile design, ensuring that sites are responsive across devices. Strikingly’s editor is more versatile and user-friendly compared to Format’s editor, making it a great tool for beginners and those looking to get online quickly.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Format

. Both Format and Strikingly do not offer a dedicated mobile app for editing. While it is possible to edit your website using a mobile browser, the interfaces presented are the same as the desktop versions, making them difficult to use on a smartphone. However, Format scores higher than Strikingly in the mobile editor score, indicating that it provides a better mobile editing experience. Despite this, both platforms could benefit from improvements in their mobile editing capabilities.

Overall Result

:

Format wins

. Format scores 8.3 in product testing options, while Strikingly scores 7.1. Format does not offer a free version, but it provides a 14-day free trial during which users can test all premium features. Additionally, Format offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. On the other hand, Strikingly offers a free version and a 14-day free trial with access to all features, but it does not provide a money-back guarantee.

Strikingly offers a more affordable range of plans, including a free option, and has a slightly higher price score than Format.

Winner: Strikingly

. Strikingly offers managed hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Although they do not disclose detailed information about their data centers, they use multiple data centers to ensure a secure and highly available service. On the other hand, Format does not provide detailed information about its hosting type, uptime, or data centers, which makes it difficult to assess its hosting quality.

🏆 Winner: Strikingly

Both Format and Strikingly prioritize website performance and speed, but Strikingly has a higher website speed optimization score and employs a more comprehensive set of strategies for speed optimization.

Strikingly, with a website speed optimization score of 7.9, employs a comprehensive set of strategies for speed optimization, including CDN, code minification, caching, optimized server response time, image optimization and compression, and responsive design. Although Strikingly does not disclose specific load times, it reports an average PageSpeed score range of 80-90/100. Information about Core Web Vitals improvements is not disclosed.

Format, on the other hand, focuses on image and video optimization for speed optimization. Load times and PageSpeed scores can vary depending on optimization and website complexity. Format does not disclose any specific information about their Core Web Vitals improvements. With a website speed optimization score of 5.0, Format’s speed optimization strategies are less comprehensive than Strikingly’s.

🏆 Winner: Strikingly.

Strikingly scores slightly higher with a 5.1, offering a wider range of plugins and extensions to enhance website functionality. Format, scoring 4.9, offers a limited selection of plugins/integrations, which might be a drawback for users looking for extensive customization options.

While Format offers key integrations like Adobe Lightroom, Mailchimp, and Google Analytics, Strikingly provides a more diverse array of free apps and integrations, including Instagram Feed, Google Reviews, WhatsApp Chat, Social Feed, and more. These integrations cover various needs such as social media integration, customer reviews, communication, and content display, aimed at increasing user engagement and conversion.

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Overall Winner: Strikingly

. Strikingly stands out for its more comprehensive marketing tools, especially in SEO, email marketing, and social media integration. Format, while offering a range of marketing features, is more limited in its capabilities.

🏆 Winner: Strikingly

. Comparing Format vs Strikingly, Strikingly edges out Format with a slightly higher customer support score. Strikingly offers 24/7 customer support via email and live chat, and VIP users benefit from phone support, providing a more direct line of communication. Users appreciate the quick and friendly responses, which help in resolving issues efficiently.

Format also provides 24/7 customer support through email and live chat, with a tech support team distributed across different countries to ensure round-the-clock availability. While Format’s support is reliable and accessible, it lacks the additional phone support option available to Strikingly’s VIP users, which can be a crucial factor for some users seeking more immediate assistance.

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Winner: Strikingly

. Strikingly edges out Format with a slightly higher security score. Strikingly’s commitment to security is evident in its implementation of advanced technology infrastructure and security measures, including two-factor authentication and DDoS protection.

Format also prioritizes security, with encrypted data storage and strict access controls. However, it falls slightly short in comparison to Strikingly’s more comprehensive security measures.

🏆 Winner: Strikingly

. Strikingly, with a score of 1.6, has limited AI capabilities, but it does integrate some AI-powered features to aid in website creation, such as a visual editor for direct element editing and layout suggestions, as well as automatic image resizing for optimal display across devices.

Format, on the other hand, does not have any AI capabilities and scored 0.0 in this category. It is a more traditional website builder that relies on user input for all aspects of website creation and management.

🏆 Winner: Strikingly

. Strikingly offers a more comprehensive user management system compared to Format.

• Format allows only one user to manage and edit websites, which can be limiting for teams or businesses that require multiple people to manage different aspects of the website.
• On the other hand, Strikingly allows you to invite up to 10 teammates to edit and manage your site. You can assign different roles to these teammates, such as Admin, Editor, Store Manager, Blogger, and Agent, each with specific levels of access and permissions.

Strikingly User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

User Feedback

Users highly praise Format for its user-friendly website builder, particularly noting the ease of adding images and the effectiveness of customer service. Many reviewers appreciate the variety of modern templates and the platform’s suitability for users without technical expertise, especially photographers. Format’s mobile app and proofing section receive special mentions for their convenience and functionality. However, some users desire more customization options, particularly for mobile views, and mention minor limitations in template flexibility and SEO functionality. Overall, Format is celebrated for its ability to provide a professional online presence easily and efficiently, solving users’ needs for showcasing work and attracting new clients.

Users appreciate features like the ability to import data from LinkedIn, a variety of attractive templates, and responsive customer service. However, there are some reported issues, such as unexpected subscription renewals and limitations in customization options. Despite these drawbacks, Strikingly is valued for its ability to quickly create professional-looking websites, making it suitable for personal projects, startups, and small businesses. While pricing and customer service options may not appeal to everyone, those seeking an uncomplicated website building experience with diverse design choices may find Strikingly to be a suitable solution for their needs.

FAQ