Friday Website Builder Review: Reskinned Duda At Twice The Price!

My suspicions were immediately raised by the platform’s sheer familiarity. It looked similar to a popular website builder, Duda. Here is the evidence that led us to our conclusion:

• Identical Templates: The first giveaway was the template library. I have scrolled through thousands of templates for our templates collection, so I immediately noticed Friday’s website templates appear to be identical to Duda’s library, which I later confirmed.

Friday’s template collection included the same templates I had seen when gathering Duda templates.

• The Dashboard: To confirm the hunch, I examined various third-party reviews of the platform. The screenshots and descriptions of the user experience cemented our theory: the dashboard, editor, and core features of the Friday Website Builder are virtually indistinguishable from Duda.
• The Features: I compared Friday’s feature list with Duda’s, and it was pretty much the same, except for some wording changes.

In short, I found that Friday is just white-labeled Duda.

White-labeling is a common practice in the software industry. Duda, specifically, has built a massive business by marketing its platform to agencies and SaaS companies, enabling them to resell the builder under their own brand.

In fact, one of Duda’s plans is literally called “White Label,” and the custom plan promotes its “fully white labeled platform” feature.

I assume Friday is on a custom Duda plan and is selling the product directly to consumers at a higher price, without adding significant proprietary value.

Friday is white-labeled Duda, but it doesn’t offer everything Duda does.

• At first glance, I noticed that Friday doesn’t showcase the newly launched Duda templates in its library.
• Many of the features available with Duda, like Duda Bookings (a scheduling platform), aren’t available in Friday.
• Duda has an app store that allows you to connect dozens of third-party apps to add features to your website—for example, their latest integration with the print-on-demand platform Printify enables Duda users to sell branded merchandise. Friday doesn’t have an app store.

In short, Friday offers less of Duda for over double the price. Plus, it’s dependent on Duda, and if there’s any issue with its connection to Duda, its users’ websites are at risk of damage.

We highly recommend avoiding Friday. Instead, choose one of these top website builders—Duda is somewhere in the middle of the list, while Squarespace tops it.