With Mozilla Innovation Project’s Solo, you can get a website out in record time, but only if you are looking to build a one-page website with a load of constraints.
The good stuff:
- It’s free
- I generated and customized this website in 1 hour.
- You can connect your own domain
- It’s easy
- Website is responsive
The bad stuff:
- You’d have to work with its constraints
- Who knows what Mozilla will do in the future
I built these two sites to test it. You can click on the images to go to the websites.
How Mozilla Solo Works
You sign up and they’ll ask you a bunch of questions.
Type in some details about the website you want.
Then, choose your font and colour scheme.
Mozilla Solo will decide on what sections to include. You have limited ability to add sections later. Just check everything and delete irrelevant stuff later.
Generate The Website And Edit
Mozilla Solo will generate the website for you. It’ll prepare the text and generate the images.
If you are really using this as your main website, you probably would want to edit some of the text and images, plus add your emails and contacts.
Here’s some of the features that I thought were especially smart:
Carousel Image Gallery
The inclusion of a carousel was amazing. Not even WordPress has a carousel by default.
Contact Form
The contact form works. All you have to do is to enter your email and whenever someone fills the form in, you’ll get it in your email.
The embedding of Google Maps is also another plus. This is an often-asked-for feature when I build websites for clients.
Testimonial Section
Another frequently-asked-for section when I do commercial websites.
Scheduling Section
There’s a scheduling section that will allow you to connect a calendar app.
Connects To Your Domain and Google Analytics
So, if you don’t want your website to be on the soloist.ai domain, you can connect your domain to Solo. In the docs, Mozilla says “Solo is the only website creator that we’re aware of that allows you to connect your custom domain for free and no, we are not going to put ads on your website.
You cannot connect a subdomain — I tried.
Constraints
Mozilla Solo has some constraints and risks.
It’s a new product — I reviewed it in its .93 version, so it’s still in development stages!
It might get better, it might get worse. Let me share with you what the risks are.
“Take It Or Leave It” Design
You’re going to have to modify your images to fit the sections because they aren’t always going to be automatically cropped the way you want them to be.
It’s very evident on the gallery carousels, where you can only upload landscape photos of a specific format.
I can’t seem to add sections. For example, if I wanted another gallery — I can’t. The only section that I can add is the Scheduling section.
You’re going to have to deal with the “Made with Solo” logo at the bottom. Currently, it says you can get rid of it with a paid plan… which doesn’t exist. But it’s a harbinger of what’s to come.
Overall, there’s also the risk that this project will be canned and your website might become unusable.
Finally, over time, you might also start finding this AI website builder’s functions to be limited… in which case, I’ll be here to help you build a website.
But hey, I’m pretty impressed I managed to create a commercially-viable website in one hour. To do that in WordPress would take many more hours and the learning curve for WordPress is much steeper.
Try Solo out here.
Have a project in mind?
Websites. Graphics. SEO-oriented content.
I can get your next project off the ground.
See how I have helped my clients.