MotoCMS is a website builder, meant for easily building professional, responsive websites. It works on the principle of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and should make web development a fairly easy task.
Founded in 2008 MotoCMS was previously known as FlashMoto - and it actively used Flash to build pages. But the time has passed, new technologies replaced old ones and as a result, the name was also changed to Moto CMS.
MotoCMS is their second generation website builder based on HTML. MotoCMS offers 2500+ themes collected in 60+ categories, specializing in blog and eCommerce functionality. But it's not easy out there for MotoCMS. This website builder has some very able competitors like Weebly or Wix that are not going to go down without a fight.
But maybe MotoCMS can throw a punch or two? I'll try to find this out in my MotoCMS review. So, without further ado, let's dig deeper, and maybe we'll find some hidden treasures. Or skeletons. Who knows.
MotoCMS Hosting Services
Let's visit their hosting options:
Looks like we visited their friend's house instead, right? Firstly, I want to get one thing out of the way. MotoCMS doesn't provide hosting services.
However, you will be able to install and edit MotoCMS on most major hosting providers. This company is able to recommend you a couple of options but I really don't suggest you making any hurried decisions - there are plenty of great web hosting providers to choose from.
In the time of this MotoCMS review, their first choice - InMotion hosting is offering a 1-year deal, for $27. But the renewal price is around $100/month, so it is possible to find better deals...
It's not a bad option, sure, but you may find something better.
MotoCMS Pricing
Now, let's talk about prices. In MotoCMS, you have to purchase templates to get a website going - they will cost from around $100 to $300, $159 and $199 price points being the most popular ones.
Considering that this MotoCMS purchase will give you lifetime access to all the website editing tools, it may actually be a pretty good option.
What will determine the price of a template? Well - there are several things. For example, let's take one of the coffee shop templates.
HTML Version of the template is $139 without any additional fees. On the other hand, if you also want hosting, installation, customization, social media pack and custom hourly development the price may double - or increase by even more. The good news is that MotoCMS offers 14 days free trial and a variety of deals, and discounts:
MOTO3, HTML, and eStore Templates
The MotoCMS themes are separated into two main categories - HTML and Moto 3. And some of the themes, like the one in my example, are available in both versions.
The HTML version costs $139. The Moto 3 version is more expensive at $199. Both HTML and Moto3 are fresh, really responsive and will look perfect on your desktop, tablet or smartphone.
So, what gives?
Well, Moto 3 templates will grant full access to the easy-to-use website builder, while MotoCMS HTML templates get you full access to the content management system (CMS). The difference between Moto 3 and HTML templates is how easy they are to use.
There's also a third category - and it's called eStore. And what this is, is a Moto3 template built for eCommerce. You can also add eCommerce to any other Moto3 template for $49/month.
And since the online shop is ran using the Moto3 website builder, eCommerce is not available on any of the HTML templates.
Buying MotoCMS templates in bulk
Now - the prices we talked about are valid when buying only 1 theme. However, if you're looking to build several websites, MotoCMS has options for bulk purchasing.
If you need a bigger quantity of templates you can get a deal for every 10 additional templates and save proportionally.
For example, you will save $200 ordering 10x MOTO 3 templates, or $800 for 20 MOTO 3 templates.
Also, you will get ProSupport and SEO Audit for HTML version and ProSupport and White Label licenses for MOTO 3 version, increasing with every 10 templates ordered.
Here's how it looks:
| HTML Templates | Price | Bulk price | Discount | Free ProSupport | SEO Audit |
| 10 | $1390 | $1250 | $140 | 1 month | 1 |
| 20 | $2780 | $2220 | $560 | 2 months | 2 |
| 30 | $4170 | $2910 | $1260 | 3 months | 3 |
| 40 | $5560 | $3320 | $2240 | 4 months | 4 |
| 50 | $6950 | $3450 | $3500 | 5 months | 5 |
| MOTO3 Templates | Price | Bulk price | Discount | Free ProSupport | White label licenses |
| 10 | $1990 | $1790 | $200 | 1 month | 5 |
| 20 | $3980 | $3180 | $800 | 2 months | 10 |
| 30 | $5970 | $4170 | $1800 | 3 months | 15 |
| 40 | $7960 | $4760 | $3200 | 4 months | 20 |
| 50 | $9950 | $4950 | $5000 | 5 months | 25 |
MotoCMS Review: Building A Website
From first sight, MotoCMS page is quite impressive. It is easy-to-navigate and to place your order. Keeping in mind that you can choose from 2500+ templates in 60+ different categories it's nice to not get lost and go straight to what you are looking for.
As the manly-man I am, I decided to imagine that I am going to start selling flowers online. For that reason, I need to find a suitable template for my beautiful online flower shop. Let's call this shop Flower Devour. Just for fun.
Further, in this MotoCMS review, I'll try to find a beautiful template for my Flower Devour business and examine how easy I will manage to do that.
On the homepage, we already see a couple of options for our further search. You can either enter a keyword (flowers!) or just select a business niche if you want broader search results:
Imagine, that I get confused, start panicking and just click on "more". No problem, because now I see a nice column of specials, categories, and topics. You can instantly select the preferred version (Moto 3, eStore or HTML) and topic suitable for your webpage:
I scrolled down a little and here it is! My beautiful flower themes! For my Flower Devour shop, I select eStore version and get 3 lovely results:
Let's quickly review the main features offered by MotoCMS templates. You will get:
- Full eCommerce functionality
- Widgets (social buttons, Google maps, embed, etc.)
- Gallery scripts
- Design presets
- Media integration
- Multilanguage support.
Everything you may need and a little bit more.
In my opinion, an especially important feature is that these designs are mobile-friendly and responsive. In the future more and more purchases will be made via mobile phones, so you can just skip site templates that don't look appropriate on your mobile.
Finally, when you find website template that looks suitable for your needs, you can view the live demo of your possible page and if it looks good - even try it free for 14 days. No credit card is needed, all you need to do is enter your email address, click the link...
...and voila! You are in a digital playground where you can get creative!
And the overall experience is very positive. You can edit more or less every single facet of your website.
Right from the start, you can add IDs for Google Analytics, add code to header/footer, connect Disqus, Google Maps, and so much more.
There's also a lot of SEO control - you can edit your robots.txt file, create a sitemap, do redirects, and set up your website for international pages.
Overall, the entire MotoCMS experience was very smooth. It's a powerful CMS, that is as easy to use as any drag-and-drop website builder.
MotoCMS Review - Conclusion
MotoCMS is a very interesting option if you're looking for an easy way to make a beautiful website. The templates are not cheap - and hosting is not included - but what you get is a complete package for many people.
It is perfect for small businesses, looking to build their web presences and also targets web developers by offering bulk packages for those who are looking to purchase multiple templates. Over 2500 templates are more than enough to find the perfect one for your needs and 14 days of totally free trial is a really nice touch.
Great 24/7 customer support, plenty of powerful tools, plugins, and widgets form a great package. And if you're at least one bit interested, I definitely recommend checking it out.
Pros
- Over 2,500+ beautiful templates
- A 14-day free trial
- White label, ready for developers
- Easy to use website builder
Cons
- Doesn't provide own hosting
- A pretty expensive solution
While their interface is nice, no one should buy their product.
You cannot import anything but extremely basic information about your products into their store catalog.
All of the following has to be added manually, one at a time. Obviously, a HUGE problem if you have more than a handful of products, and quite the nightmare if you have more than 100+ products. None of this can be imported or bulk selected and edited:
Additional images (other than 1 primary)
Video URL
Related Products
Variations
Custom Options
Properties
Downloads
SEO settings
They have the ability to search and “assign selected product(s) to a category” already. But, they haven’t added that functionality to at least do the same for properties or the other settings. They should, at the very least, have some way to import this data either on your own backend or through the actual website files. However, they don’t. I almost bought their templates, but caught this huge design flaw beforehand. I’d be really pissed to buy one of their templates and find that all of this has to be done manually, which no other eCommerce template requires. All have import features.
Great company with perfect customer support. They helped me with the installation and are always online at any time of day and night. The only thing that could be better is the price. Though, such king of quality services is worth the money!