Switzerland is known to produce some of the best watches, cheeses, and chocolates in the world.
Allyou.net is a Swiss made service (founded in Zurich in 2011) with 51,468 users (at the time of writing). But can it be added to the list of Switzerland’s finest? Let’s jump in and find out!
What is it?
AllYou calls themselves “a professional online portfolio tool for creatives.” In other words; an easy to use but professional drag-and-drop website builder for graphic designers, photographers, artists, stylists etc., to showcase their work.
The Process
For the sake of the review, I built myself an online portfolio to showcase some of the best photography work in my library (actually just the first few pictures I found on my phone…) Here is the quick and easy process.
For what it’s worth, it took me about 30 minutes to built the site but I was writing notes and taking screenshots at the same time.
STEP #1 – Choose Theme
You can select from a choice of 17 themes categorized as either center structured, left navigation, or above navigation. All themes are portfolio focused so they have plenty of visuals and titles/description areas.
STEP #2 – Customize Fonts
A selection of over 1000 fonts are provided with an option of uploading your own font and choosing every colour that has ever existed. Once you’ve selected a font, you can adjust placement, size, height, spacing, alignments, and margin sizes.
STEP #3 – General Site Customization
This is where you can really play around, customizing everything from the site’s structure to video sizes, to backgrounds, to albums (and more.) I had some trouble navigating through the options as there are so many, but once I figured it out the variety wasn’t a problem.
STEP #4 – The Final Bits
Finally, you have the option of creating a landing page, mobile view, and more technically, writing your own custom CSS (for an additional $7 per month *see pricing below*.) Once you’ve competed this (all of which are optional), you’re ready to hit publish!
Pricing
Okay, let’s talk about what you’re all probably wondering at this point… pricing. I created my site on their 14-day free trial (no credit card is required for the trial), but once that expires you’ll need to decide whether you’ll fit under the $8 per month ($12 month to month) plan. Or if you’ll be customizing your own CSS and are in need of an additional 8 GB’s (10 GB total), $15 per month ($20 month to month.)
The Extras
There are a few extras that I thought I should briefly touch on.
They advertise SEO optimization saying “We make sure that your online portfolio has the best possible chance of ranking well in search engines.” I’m not totally sure what this would look like as I didn’t write any content for my site.
You also have the option of embedding videos and audio from 3rd party sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Soundcloud.
Unfortunately, if you have any issues, there’s no live support. There is however a fairly large support forum with a ton of answered questions. If you can’t find any answers there, you have the option of submitting a request which will be answered by one of AllYou’s support staff.
Another bonus (which is actually something that should be expected in 2016 so isn’t really a bonus) is that your site will be 100% retina ready and mobile supported. Coolio.
Conclusion
With a massive selection of website builders available, AllYou is playing in a very broad field but separates itself by appealing to those looking for a simple and easy to use solution. If you are looking to simply display a portfolio online, I would recommend AllYou.