NING Review – The Best Online Community Website Builder? [Social Network Website Builder]

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Do you need to establish a custom social network? Do you want to nurture an extensive online community? If you’ve been wondering how to create your own blog site for free, use NING the blog website builder.

From monetizing content to email broadcasting; NING, a social network website builder, offers a wide variety of services wrapped up in a neat little package.

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Today we’ll be finding out exactly

  • What NING is?
  • Why you should use NING to handle your community website building needs? and
  • What makes NING stand out from a sea of competitors?

So, let’s jump right into it and review NING.

NING Review - A Feature Rich Online Community Website Builder
NING Review – A Feature Rich Online Community Website Builder

What is NING?

NING is an online community website builder helping brand-minded users to develop their websites that operate as a social network. 

Founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini in California back in 2004,  NING website builder has come a long way from its free-form platform days and has taken its 21 000 customers along with it.

NING Review - A Feature Rich Online Community Website Builder
NING – A Feature Rich Online Community Website Builder

 

Today NING has a presence in over 180 countries and is known worldwide as an industry leader. Presently, NING website builder is the largest SaaS platform aimed at helping brand-minded users develop websites that operate as a social network.

NING guides users through every step of the journey to creating their very own social network —from picking the perfect domain name for their site to providing in-depth analytics.

Why Should you Use NING?

What makes NING stand out from the rest of the crowd is that it offers so much more than a standard website builder, like it let you create a social network website.

By using NING social network website builder, you’re essentially transforming your website from a static site into a thriving social hub. Where your followers, customers, and partners can virtually gather to share content and ideas.

There are many features owing to NING’s worldwide success and rising popularity.

Here are some of them, which we feel are worthy enough to mention in this NING review.

NING Review – A Feature Rich Online Community Website Builder

NING Features: Create & Cultivate Your Unique Community Website
NING’s Social Network Website Builder Features: Create & Cultivate Your Unique Community Website

#1. Website Design Made Easy

One of the reasons owing to the ever-growing popularity of NING website builder is that it’s so easy to get started.

You don’t need to be a tech whizz or professional developer to build a website with NING.

Start by picking a template from the options available and start customizing it with the Design Studio tool.

Modify the template elements, adjust layouts, select your color scheme, and personalize your site by including your own images & logos.

You can explore the NING sites, as this online site builder also offers a bunch of quality design templates. These Ning sites will definitely help you to make your decision to onboard with NING.

#2. Preview Your Website Before Going Live

While NING’s social network website builder doesn’t offer drag-and-drop builder functionality, its user-friendly dashboard eases this slight inconvenience.

You can see your changes as they’re applied and give them all a final inspection in a website preview before taking your site live.

#3. Create Your Own Social Network

Ning is one of the best social website builders. Once your site has been created and filled with content, you can invite new members to join your network.

Utilize NING’s social network website builder capabilities to create forums, polls, live chats, broadcast emails. Along with both private & group messages to initiate optimal engagement within your community.

#4. Seamless Sharing

Thanks to some clever integration capabilities, your members can log in or signup to your community through their social media accounts.

Once logged in, your community can effortlessly share your content through the social networks they are linked to, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Vimeo.

You can also achieve multichannel communication by pulling in content from other social media channels, and RSS feeds into your Activity Feed.

#5. Publishing Tools

Utilize the SEO tools that NING provides to make your content comment-worthy. Enable comments your way, and organize events for your community. The in-built SEO tools also help you to improve the search engine rankings of your site.

You can share videos, images or photos, and audio content like music or podcasts to keep your community engaged and involved.

#6. Monetization of Blog, Website, and Social Media

This one of the best social website builders offers built-in eCommerce functionality that has been developed specifically for content creators, another point to highlight in this NING review.

While you can’t turn your site into an online store just yet. The available eCommerce feature allows you to monetize your site by enabling the option of paid access to your most valuable content.

You can also set up a paid membership for your community. Additionally, the NING monetization platform facilitates the acceptance of payments in exchange for content and the collection of donations.

The monetization aspect of NING is perfectly suited toward content creators, bloggers, businesses, and non-profit organizations. With multiple payment options, multi-factor authentication, and fraud prevention measures, handling your payments is a breeze.

#7. Mobile Optimization

Thanks to its responsive design, you can access your social network from mobile devices. You can even add new features or edit your navigation while you’re on the go.

#8. Privacy

There are three different kinds of clubs you can choose from while setting up your community. The first club is public, which is open to all including search engines. The second club lets you have a private option. And the third one is an exclusive members-only club.

On top of that, you can set up different permissions across your site—meaning one page could be viewed by the public while another is strictly for members’ eyes only.

Every user has total control over their own level of privacy.

Ning ensures that the data generated in your community belongs to you. The best online community site builder feature Ning offers to you without any hurdle that every piece of content or data whether it was created by you or your members

#9. Email Broadcasting

One of the worst things you can do is allow your community to feel stagnant after you’ve worked so hard to get them to your site in the first place.

With an integrated email broadcasting service, this is no longer a concern because you can keep in touch with your community regularly via email.

Plus, because NING offers this service, you don’t need to worry about the time or money spent setting up and managing other email services.

What Makes NING Different from its Competitors?

You might be wondering what makes NING different from competitor website building platforms like Wix or Weebly?

While reviewing the NING, we find out that the main difference is that NING websites are actually custom social networks that allow you to build engagement and foster relationships with your members.

In case you’re asking ‘well, why not just use social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter?’ The answer is simple: customization and control.

For starters, you don’t have to abide by the strict rules and regulations these networks have in place.

NING lets you have a high level of control over your network. It provides you all the comprehensive tools you need to flourish your site.

These include anti-spam tools, built-in SEO features, and adjustable permission levels for users.

You can even promote your most active users to special positions like admins or moderators. How’s that for an incentive to engage?

Unlike competitors, this online community site builder provides a built-in email broadcast service that makes it easy to create newsletters and promote your posts within your community.

The level of support that NING provides is another factor that makes NING stand apart from the crowd.

NING offers support by providing access to a network of expert creators, 24/7 customer support, live chat, and a help center. And if you opt for the monthly Ultimate plan, you even get your own personal account manager.

The Verdict

NING is the perfect marketing tool for brand builders and people who’re looking to foster engagement and cultivate meaningful relationships with their followers.

With monthly plans ranging from $25 all the way up to $99, you can easily find a plan that works for your budget.

But before you are ready to pay for the service. Take a 14-day free trial to see whether NING meets your requirements and expectations.

Picking an online community site for your specific needs is an ongoing process, so take your time.

Hope you find the review of NING useful, do share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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3 thoughts on “NING Review – The Best Online Community Website Builder? [Social Network Website Builder]”

  1. Avatar of jameela

    Hi,
    Wanna give a big thanks!!I read your post and I tried ‘NING’.I can;t believe I really had created my own blog site.I am just very happy all thanks to you.Please write more.

    Reply
  2. Avatar of Rachella

    Ning’s greatest weakness is that it doesn’t have an app version for mobile. “Optimised for mobile” is not the same thing

    Reply
  3. Avatar of ehsan hoseini sianaki

    Hello good time
    It was very good and useful. It helped me a lot.

    Reply

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