Mobirise Bootstrap Website Builder App Review

Bootstrap is one of the popular frontend framework used to build websites from the readymade blocks. There are plenty of static site builders making use of this framework and offer premium services. Mobirise is one such platform help individuals, developers and agencies to create mobile friendly sites in minutes. We have used Mobirise for the past many months and here is a genuine review before you want to invest your time and money.

Concept

Mobirise is a standalone app for PC and Mac which allows to create websites using Bootstrap framework. It can be used offline, though you need internet for certain features like image searching and publishing through FTP. There are hundreds of premade blocks grouped into different themes. The blocks can be like contact form, header menu, footer menu, Google map, slider, social icons set, testimonials, pricing plans, team widget, etc. You can just drag and drop the blocks and build your site in minutes. Each block can be customized further to suit your style. This is a similar concept used in most of the Bootstrap site builder tools.

There is also an online AI site builder offered by Mobirise. You can simply input a prompt like “build an elegant online store with pricing plans for selling eBooks” and you will get the skeleton website (need to register for an account). You can also use the “AI Generations” feature in the desktop app. This article is primarily focusing on the desktop app’s features, themes and blocks and not the AI features.

Pricing

The basic version of Mobirise can be downloaded from their site for free. But the free version will not help much to build a good website. They offer themes and extensions, which can be purchased independently as individual items or as an all-in-one kit.

The all-in-one kit contains all the available themes and extensions with as low as 98% discount. You can get the all-in-one kit is offered for $199, which includes the followings:

• Mac and Windows app that you can download for free.
• Use free .mobirisesite.com subdomain or connect your custom domain.
• Unlimited offline sites with mobile first layouts using the latest Bootstrap version.
• 13.4K+ drag and drop blocks with 100+ free and premium themes.
• 3 sites and 100 AI Generations/month for the Base plan or 10 sites and 1000 AI Generations for the Grow plan.
• Elements include sliders, gallery, hero section, video intro section, pricing tables, contact forms, Google Maps, social blocks, testimonials, teams, shops, WoW slider with 100+ effects and much more.
• Premium extensions like code editor, PayPal shopping cart, form builder and pop-up builder.
• 1 year free support and update with unlimited website usage.

In our opinion individual items are priced at the higher end, pushing users to buy the all-in-one kit. But it will be useful to invest $199 only if you are an agency or developer. For an individual user want to build few sites, this may be big amount.

All the purchased items can be used for lifetime with free updates for the first year. You should buy the items again after one year in order to get updates. Again this is an important point, because Bootstrap itself will get updated frequently to the next version. So you should be in a position to move to the latest version for building new sites. In that case, every year you should buy latest updates from Mobirise which might cause budget problem for individual users.

Note: The free Mobirise app will add a copyright footer message which will say “Design a free website – Click here”. If you like the themes and app design, you can purchase the premium redemption code to remove the footer copyright message.

Getting Redemption Code

In order to use the premium version, you need to get the redemption code after your purchase. Go to Mobirise checkout page where you will see the details of the kit and the discounted price. Change the language and currency if you would like to purchase the item in different currency other than USD.

Fill up billing details and choose your preferred payment method. Mobirise offers the following purchasing methods:

Complete your order by paying the money and get the redemption code.

Setup

Mobirise offers different versions for both PC and Mac. Just download and install on your computer like any other software.

Once installed you need to register for an account in order to use the app. Then navigate to “Hamburger menu > Themes & Extensions” and buy the items you like. Each item has exhaustive demo for you to check the live website blocks in action.

Redeem Code in Mobirise App

You have to redeem the purchased code in Mobirise app in order to get premium themes and extensions.

• Open Mobirise app and click on the three horizontal hamburger menu on the top left corner.
• This will open the menu items and go to “Extensions” section.
• Click on the “Redeem” link and enter your redemption code.
• Finally, click on “Redeem” button to apply the code.

• You can update the themes and extensions under “Extensions” section for one year.

Creating a Website

First you need to create a site from the “Site” menu by choosing one of the available themes. The first page shown on main screen will be your home page. You can add additional pages from “Pages” menu. Both sites and pages can be cloned from the existing ones and modified further.

Then click on the “Add Block to Page” button and drag and drop blocks to the page. The “Edit Site Styles” button allows you to change the colors and fonts at site level. You can add Google Analytics, favicon and customize title, meta description for each page under settings. This will help to have search engine optimized site which will rank better in Google.

Publishing a Website

Once all the pages of your site are ready, you can preview the pages on your computer offline. You have three options to publish your site:

• Save to local drive
• FTP to web server
• Publish as GitHub pages

FTP is a very good option allows you to directly upload all site’s files to the server and the site will be online instantly. Once published, you can make the changes and update only the changes to your live site.

License

Mobirise is a free to use software for both personal and commercial use. You can make any number of themes/sites and use for yourselves or clients.

The license page of Mobirise can be seen here. This is a surprising factor as there are no details found other than that the app shouldn’t be modified or resold. Generally, such software offers detailed license page mentioning the use for different cases like agencies, number of users, limitations, etc. We have also sent an email to their support and clarified on the license part. In simple words – you can do anything with the resulted products (that is your site or theme) of the app without any restriction.

User Friendliness

Mobirise is undoubtedly the easiest way to create your mobile friendly Bootstrap site. You don’t need to know single piece of coding for publishing your site online.

The app is very simple and organized well, offering good user experience.

Premade Blocks

There are more than 2500 premade blocks available in total. But the blocks under a theme can only be used within that theme. This essentially means you can’t use all 2500 blocks on all sites. Approximately each theme has around 50 to 100 blocks. Also each premade block can be customized to change the color, fonts and text/image.

If you have purchased Code editor then the source code each block can be modified inside the app or you can add you own block. Also you can save the frequently used blocks as user blocks for easy picking.

We have also noticed, though numbers of blocks are more the varieties under each category are limited. For example, there are only two premade header menu blocks definitely not sufficient.

Features of the Mobirise App

Mobirise team has made a tremendous effort in creating and updating the app. Below is the summary of features:

• The latest version can be downloaded from the site which will automatically use previous login and projects.
• Easy to use sliding menu with simplified items. You will never search for the menu items.
• Drag and drop blocks within the app, you can easily move the blocks up or down and customize the styles.
• Publish to local drive or directly FTP to the server.
• Premium themes and extensions for purchase.
• Sites, pages, content and images – all can be maintained within the app.
• Free online image library to use royalty free stock images.

Missing Features

Though the app will be attractive at the start, you will find many missing features.

• There is no file management option available in Mobirise. You can’t collect and store all required files for your site under one place.
• The downloaded site structure is more complicated having too many script and CSS files. You can’t change the site structure by combining CSS and JS files into simple folders.
• Not possible to embed PDF documents.
• Only two menu blocks are not sufficient to create different variety of sites.
• The forms will use the third party service called formoid (suspected Mobirise product). When used, it will automatically create an account for routing your emails. If you don’t like this, you should manually remove the email id from each form block before publishing your site and code yourself for processing emails.
• The site contains the complete theme’s CSS / JS framework regardless of whether you have used the blocks in the HTML or not. For example, even you don’t use progress bar component, there will be relevant CSS codes in the style.css file. This will make your site heavy weight though you have only few pages.
• The source code contains plenty of Mobirise links which looks unprofessional for a paid service.
• Bootstrap is the only available framework; there are no other frontend frameworks to choose.

Support

Mobirise has a dedicated forum, email support and complete demo / documentations. These will help you to get decent support when needed. But we still noticed there are misalignments in the elements of some blocks which you may need to adjust the code manually. As far as we have checked, there is no ticketing system for handling issues from premium users.

Final Words

It is true that Mobirise will help you to build website in few minutes. But the questions are how far it will help individual users who need lightweight site within few dollars of budget. Nowadays, you can get a very good Bootstrap theme for less than $10 from any marketplace. On other hand, Mobirise is a best option for agencies and developers. There is no need to worry about licensing part and you can build unlimited sites for clients for $149 per year. So, we recommend purchasing Mobirise paid package if you have a need for creating multiple websites. For a single Bootstrap site, look for an individual theme seller to purchase a theme and spend some time or money for onetime customization.