Think Google Sites is the no-brainer answer for a quick website? You’re not alone. Plenty of people grab it when they need a free, super-easy way to put up a site for the school project, team, or a small business. At first, it seems almost too simple. But what happens when you want something more? There’s a lot that Google Sites just won’t let you do. I found this out first-hand when my sons Aditya and Ayaan asked me to build them a flashy cricket club website, and suddenly I was banging my head against the wall. Ready to hear the real talk on its downsides?
Design Freedom or Design Prison?
Google Sites has an honestly positive reputation for its ease—open it up, drag in an image, pop in your text, and you have a homepage in minutes. The frustration starts when you want your site to actually look unique. The range of themes is limited and, frankly, kind of plain. You won’t find the creative flexibility that comes from tools like Wix or Squarespace. There’s no access to the site’s HTML or CSS, so even if you know how to code, Google just shrugs and wouldn’t let you under the hood.
I tried to add a cool animated header for Aditya and Ayaan’s site—no dice. Wanted a pop-up to sign up for match updates? I had to settle with a boring form that didn’t match the theme. Something as basic as moving an image pixel by pixel is not possible; elements snap to a strict, pre-decided grid. That gets old fast for anyone aiming for a custom brand feel, like a business trying to stand out. It’s pretty much impossible to break out of the boxed layouts, which all look “very Google.” You can switch up some colors and fonts, but you can’t get creative with layers, custom buttons, or creative menu layouts.
Anyone who’s spent an hour on Google Sites eventually bumps up against its lack of advanced widgets. No fancy e-commerce plug-ins. No custom sliders, social media feeds, or alive-looking, modern scrolling effects. Want a real booking tool or an advanced image gallery? Forget about it. Sure, you can embed stuff—like YouTube or a basic calendar—but it’s not the same as seamless integration you get with other builders.
And here’s a tip that caught me off guard: if you ever decide to move your site elsewhere, there is no export. You can download pages as .zip, but good luck using those files to recreate your actual site in a tool like WordPress. For anyone expecting to grow their website as their club or side-hustle gets serious, this can be a nasty surprise.
| Feature | Google Sites | Wix | Squarespace |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theme Customization | Very limited | Extensive | High |
| Code Editing | Not allowed | Permitted | Allowed |
| Widget Library | Small | Huge | Large |
| Export Options | Not Supported | Supported | Basic Export |
If design is truly important to you—clean layouts, pro visuals, or a slick vibe that matches your brand—Google Sites is going to feel like painting with a box of just three crayons. My boys eventually lost patience and felt their club didn’t stand out. Be ready to get creative inside some very tight boundaries, or else look for a tool that gives you room to spread your creative wings.
SEO, Custom Domains, and Growing Pains
Now, let’s say you've got a public-facing site and you want people to actually find it. Google Sites claims to take care of the basics, but in practice, it’s a different story. First up, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)—the guts and bolts that help people find your site through Google searches. Google Sites lets you set a basic page title and description, but you don’t get fine control over URLs, meta tags, or OpenGraph social media snippets. So, sharing your story or business on Facebook or WhatsApp? The preview never really looks the way you want.
I did a test for Aditya’s cricket club: typed in our site name after a couple weeks. No dice. Even after sharing links around, it took a while to show up properly in search. Unlike WordPress and competitor website builders, there’s just no plugins for advanced SEO work. You can’t manually create a sitemap or tinker with robots.txt. In short, Google Sites is simple, but painfully basic when it comes to making your site visible.
What about custom domains—having your own name, not a mysite.google.com address? Google Sites does support using a custom domain, but you need to go through Google Domains or get a bit geeky with DNS settings. There aren’t options for SSL settings or CDN controls if you want to tweak for global reach. Basically, if you want your site to look professional and trustworthy (think club, business, or blog), you’ll end up jumping through a few more hoops than you should.
Here’s a stat that shocked me: in a 2024 survey by WebsiteToolTester, 65% of businesses using Google Sites said they switched platforms after hitting traffic or customization roadblocks. Most tools have upgrade paths—outgrow their free plan, and you pay for more grown-up features. Google Sites, on the other hand, just hits a wall. There’s no app store for adding e-commerce, no member logins, not even a way to handle payments for things like club merchandise or subscriptions. That’s a deal breaker for many small businesses or creators looking to grow.
Mobile responsiveness is another thing. While Google Sites technically adapts layouts for phones and tablets, you don’t get to preview or tweak the mobile version. On several test devices, our site banners got cropped and forms looked out of whack—no way to fix it short of redesigning the whole block. Competing builders like Squarespace and Wix? They give you a full mobile editor for a reason.
- SEO meta tag editing: Not supported
- Custom 404 page: Not supported
- Structured data for rich results: Not supported
- Advanced analytics: Limited to Google Analytics
- Online payments: Not supported
Long story short, if you ever expect your site to get real traffic or you care about discoverability and growth, you’ll want to start with a different tool or expect to migrate down the road. That’s a hassle no one loves.
Collaboration, Real-World Usability, and Privacy Limits
You might think Google Sites wins big here since it’s part of the Google Workspace ecosystem—just like Docs or Sheets, it lets you share and collaborate. I was excited at first and shared editing access with Aditya and his teammates. Reality check: it’s not as smooth as it sounds. Collaborative editing is basic—if more than one person is editing a page, changes don’t always update seamlessly. We ran into situations where text got overwritten or got lost during a save. There are no comments or tracked changes, like there are in Google Docs. So, if you’ve got a team working on very different pages (say, Ayaan on tournament schedules while I was writing news updates), sync issues and confusion are bound to happen.
Another thing that bugged me: there’s no way to set detailed user permissions. It’s all or nothing—people can either edit the site or just view it. Other site builders let you give roles: editor, publisher, designer, etc. You can’t limit a club member to only update the results page while blocking access to official announcements. If you’re ever worried about accidental edits (it happens!), you just don’t have much control.
If you've ever tried sharing drafts or getting approval before going live, Google's workflow falls short again. There's no built-in approval process or workflow tools. We had to do everything in a weird loop—copy content to a Doc, get feedback there, and then paste it back into the site. That’s just clunky.
Let’s talk privacy. A lot of people assume “it’s on Google, so it’s secure”—and yes, it’s pretty safe in terms of hosting and backups. But if you need to run a private members-only portal, Google Sites can’t handle logins or gated content. Anyone with your link can see your ‘private’ pages, unless you restrict the whole site. And if you restrict, it only works for people with a Google account or those inside your company or school’s Google Workspace. This caught us out when we tried sharing game schedules with families who didn’t want to create another Google login. That limitation meant extra emails and complaints.
Here’s a quick tip: always double-check your link sharing settings. Accidents happen, and sensitive info can be shared wider than you expected. Business users in particular should check their company’s policy, because Google Sites privacy settings are not as granular as most IT professionals would prefer.
Oh, and about real-world usability—when you hit a technical snag, there’s no live chat or phone support from Google. If you're stuck, you’re mostly left with help documents and user forums, which can be outdated or confusing. For stubborn bugs, you’re at the mercy of community support, and the pros don’t spend much time there.
So, is Google Sites usable for a simple, throwaway site or a student project? Totally. But as soon as you want to go pro, add user roles, or protect content behind logins, the platform’s cracks start to show. Trust me—when you’ve got impatient kids and a growing team, those cracks get mighty wide. My final advice? Take the time to really plan for where you want your website to go. If it’s outgrowing what Google Sites disadvantages can allow, start your search for something more powerful early—your sanity will thank you.