Encontado help center

Getting started

Your first website takes a few minutes of answers and about 15 minutes of design.

The interview

Choose New website in the studio menu and pick the kind of website you are making, such as a business website, an online store, a booking website or a portfolio. Then answer a few short questions: your business details, what you do, who your customers are, what visitors should do, how the website should look and feel, what to keep from your current brand and anything to avoid.

• Every question has Show me an example and Skip this one. Short honest answers are better than long ones.
• Your answers are saved in your browser as you go, so you can come back later on the same device.
• The designer uses only the facts you give. It will not invent reviews, awards, staff or prices, so add the real ones.
• At the end, Check your brief and press Design my homepage.

Importing your current website

If you already have a website, type its address in the Your current website card and press Read website. We read that page and up to five more pages on the same site: the text, headings, pictures, colours, fonts, phone number and email address. You can remove anything before the design starts.

Pages behind a sign-in, PDFs and some content that only appears with JavaScript may not come through. Add anything missing to your answers.

Photos, logos and documents

The first question lets you add material the designer should use. All of it is optional.

• Logo and photos: up to 8 images (PNG, JPG or WebP, up to 15 MB each). Mark which one is your logo.
• Menus, brochures, and documents: up to 5 PDF, text or Markdown files. Scanned PDFs without real text may come back empty.
• Products and inventory: an Excel (.xlsx) or CSV spreadsheet. We show how many products were found, and your shop is filled with them after the website is created.

Where you have no photo, the designer picks stock photos from Pexels. Real photos of your work, your premises and your team are always better: add them later under Photos and swap them in. The only pictures the AI draws are logos, on the logo page.

While your homepage is designed

A homepage usually takes about 15 minutes. You can watch it take shape, ask to be told when it is ready, or close the page and come back: the work carries on without you. When it is ready you can Edit homepage, Build the full website (about 15 more minutes), Ask for a change or Try another direction. Read What the designer checked before you publish.

Editing your website

Click anything to change it. Everything saves as you go.

Click to change

Open Edit website. Click any headline, paragraph, button or photo on the page to change it. Text can be typed over, made bold or italic, or linked. Photos have Replace. A selected item can be moved up or down, and Colors, size and font changes its look. Undo all changes to this puts one item back as it was.

Use the Desktop, Tablet and Phone buttons to see each size, and Preview to see the page as visitors will. The Sections panel adds a section, and Settings holds the text search engines and social sharing show.

Page tabs

Every page of your website appears as a tab above the canvas, with Home first. Choosing a tab saves the page you are on and opens the other one in the same editor. A page that is still being designed is marked. To add a page, open Website overview, choose Add another page, give it a title and say what it should cover, then press Design this page (about 10 minutes).

Ask the designer

Ask the designer changes the page for you from a plain request. To change one part only, click it first: the note says Only this part will change, and the rest of the page stays exactly as it is. Otherwise the request applies to the whole page. A small change usually takes a few minutes, a whole page longer. You see Before and After, and choose Switch to the new version if you like it.

Requests that work well are specific:

• "Make the headline shorter and say that we deliver on weekends."
• "Move our opening hours up so they are the first thing people see after the photo."
• "Use a darker background for the reviews section so it stands out."
• With a button selected: "Make this say Book a table and link it to the booking page."
• "Add a short section about our catering service, using the details in my brief."

Requests that do not work well: "make it better" (say what you do not like), new facts the designer has no way to know (type them into the request), and new pictures. The designer cannot draw or find photos: upload your own under Photos, click a photo on the page and choose Replace. For a logo, use the logo page.

Undo and saved versions

Undo and Redo (or Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z, with Shift to redo) step back through your last 40 changes. Under the More actions menu, Earlier saves of this page lists saved versions, and Bring it back restores one. Go back to the original design returns to the designer's first version. The website overview also lists earlier finished designs.

Your shop

Sell products from your website. Payments go straight to your own Stripe account.

Adding products

Open Grow your business, then Online shop, and switch the shop on. On the Products tab, type a name and price and press Add, or use Add with all the details for the description, photos, category, stock, weight and more. Sizes or colours with their own price are Choices. A product can also be a digital download.

To sell a product on a schedule, switch on Sell as a subscription in the product window, choose how often and any subscriber discount. Subscribers appear on the Subscriptions tab, where you can pause, resume or cancel them.

Importing a spreadsheet

Choose Add many at once, then Upload a spreadsheet (Excel .xlsx or .xlsm, CSV or tab-separated text, up to 10,000 rows). Templates are offered if you are starting from scratch. We match your columns, such as name, price, SKU, stock, category, description, choice, tags and photo link, and show them so you can change any match before you press Import. Numbers files need to be exported to Excel or CSV first, and old .xls files saved as .xlsx.

After an import you can Undo this import, or Add photos to products, matched by file name. Importing the same file again updates products instead of doubling them. You can also Paste a price list or Photograph a price list.

Taking payments with Stripe

Customers can browse your shop straight away, but they can pay online only once you connect Stripe. Press Connect Stripe on the shop or on the Get paid page and follow Stripe's steps; Stripe checks your details and pays money into your bank. Then switch on checkout. You stay the seller: payments, payouts and refunds happen in your own Stripe account, and card details never reach Encontado.

Under Payments and delivery, set local pickup, a shipping charge, a free-shipping threshold and the countries you ship to. Automatic tax calculation is not switched on, so set your prices with tax in mind. The Orders tab shows every order; Issue refund refunds through Stripe, and Restock returned items puts stock back.

Publishing and your own domain

Put your website online at a free address, then add your own name.

Publishing

Press Publish in the editor, or Publish my website on the overview, and choose your address (name.encontado.com, 3 to 40 letters, numbers or hyphens). We check every page before it goes live, which can take up to a minute. The new address can take a few minutes to start working the first time; meanwhile it works at encontado.com/s/name/. After changes, press Publish my changes. Take offline removes the website from the internet without deleting it.

Connecting a domain you own

Publish first. Then open Your own web address and, under Connect a name you already own, type it as www.yourbusiness.com and press Connect. Copy each record we show (Type, Name and Value) into the DNS settings at the company where you bought the name. Two checks must pass, ownership and the security lock. That usually takes less than an hour and can take up to a day. Check now checks again, and Stuck? lists the usual fixes.

Buying a new domain

On plans that include it, Get a new name lets you search for a name, choose one and pay with Stripe. It is registered in your name, with privacy protection and automatic renewal switched on, and connected to your website for you. If the registration cannot be completed, the payment is refunded automatically. If you ever delete the website, the domain stays yours.

Customer accounts

Let customers sign in on your website to see their orders and check out faster.

Turning accounts on

Open Grow your business, then Customer accounts, and choose Off, Optional or Required for some things (checking out, booking a time, getting event tickets or joining a membership). Customers sign in at /account/ on your website with any email address, using a password or a link sent by email. Sign in with Google and Apple appear as Not set up yet until they are available. Accounts belong to your website only, and Remove deletes one from your customer list.

Bookings

Take appointments on your website.

Setting up bookings

Open Grow your business, then Bookings. Set your Days and hours and What people book, then switch bookings on. New bookings appear on the Bookings tab. Deposits need Stripe to be connected.

Events and tickets

List events and let people sign up or buy tickets.

Adding an event

Open Grow your business, then Events and tickets. Free sign-ups work straight away. Paid tickets need Stripe; until it is connected your website shows that tickets are available soon. You can email everyone with a ticket, and cancelling an event refunds paid tickets automatically.

Memberships

Offer paid or free membership plans and members-only content.

Setting up memberships

Open Grow your business, then Memberships. Create Plans, add Members-only content, and see who joined under Members. Taking payments and discount codes need Stripe.

Quotes and invoices

Send a quote or an invoice and get paid.

Sending an invoice

Open Grow your business, then Quotes and invoices, and press New invoice. Email it sends it to your customer. Card payment needs Stripe; cash or cheque payments can be recorded with Record a payment.

Email newsletter

Write to the people who subscribed on your website.

Sending a newsletter

Open Grow your business, then Email newsletter. Add your mailing address in its settings (the law requires one in marketing email). Write it for me drafts an issue, Send a test to me checks it, and Send now or Schedule it sends it. Every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link, and people who unsubscribe are never emailed again. Only write to people who agreed to hear from you.

Billing and plans

Start free, and move to a paid plan when you want more.

Plans

Every website starts on Free: the full website, every page, a name.encontado.com address, the business tools, and publishing whenever you like. The plans page shows the paid plans, Plus and Pro, and whether they are on sale yet. Paid plans are billed monthly through Stripe, and you can cancel at any time; a cancelled plan runs to the end of the month you paid for. There are no refunds for part of a month unless the law requires one. If a payment fails and is not fixed within the grace period (currently 7 days), your websites move to the Free plan's limits and nothing is deleted. The terms have the details.

Content guidelines and reporting

What may be published, and what to do when something is wrong.

The rules

Every brief, upload, change and page is checked against the content guidelines. In short: tell the truth about a lawful business, use material you have the right to use, and nothing that harms or tricks the people who visit.

Reporting a website

Anyone can report a website built with Encontado, without an account, from the link at the bottom of every published website. Give its address and say what is wrong. A person reads every report.

If your brief or page was refused

Automatic checks sometimes get it wrong. Open Grow your business, then Blog, contacts and team, and the Content checks tab. Press Ask for a review, explain why, and press Submit appeal. A person reviews it.

Troubleshooting

Most problems fix themselves. Here is what to do when they do not.

A design is taking a long time

A homepage usually takes about 15 minutes, and a busy moment can make it longer. Your work is saved at every stage. If a design stops part way, Encontado notices and resumes it by itself from the saved draft, and the screen says Picking up where we left off. There is nothing you need to do, and you can close the page.

The designer could not finish

If a design still cannot finish, you see The designer could not finish this one, with Your work is saved. Press Continue the saved draft or Try again. If it happens again, try Edit my answers to shorten or simplify the brief, and tell us so we can look.

Publishing was stopped

Before a page goes live we check it on phones, tablets and computers. Only measured problems stop publishing: text that runs off the screen, text too faint to read, or a missing picture. The studio tries to fix these itself first. If it cannot, the message says which page; open it, fix or replace the item, and publish again. Check my pages on the overview runs the check without publishing. "The page changed during review" means an edit landed while we were checking: just publish again.

Signing in

You sign in to the studio with your email address (or your username) and your password. If you forget your password, choose Forgot your password? on the sign-in page: we email a 6-digit code to the address on your account, and you choose a new password. That signs you out on every other device. You can change your email and password under Account; changing the password signs out your other devices.

Your account and your data

Deleting a website, closing your account and privacy requests.

Deleting a website or your account

To delete one website, open its overview and choose Delete this website at the bottom, then type delete to confirm. It goes offline at once and its pages, versions, shop and customer records are removed for good; your photo library stays. A domain you bought stays registered to you. To close your whole account, ask us. Download anything you want to keep first. The privacy policy explains exactly what is removed.

Contact support

A person reads every message.

Write to us

Use the support form. If you are signed in to the studio, we see your username automatically, so you do not need to explain which account. You can also email support@encontado.com. To report a website that breaks the rules, use the report form instead.