Site by Nite provides a wide selection of pre-designed website templates for you to choose from for your website. There are many designs that are unique and specific to certain businesses, industries, or topics, and then many that are generic in nature.
In fact, if you see one specific for a topic that you really like, but the topic doesn't fit for your site, be sure to look through the designs since many of the specific designs started from a general design.
If you can't find a general design for one of the specialized designs, you may be able to lay in graphics or an image over the parts that are topic specific. This is a very unique feature to Site by Nite that many builders don't allow.
Most website builders have a specific area that you are allowed to add your content into and make changes, kind of like filling out a form. Site by Nite designs feature a fully editable and customizable page body as well as the ability to make adjustments or overlay graphics anywhere on the page.
As you look through the designs, you'll notice that they all feature a very similar layout design for the body of the content area. This is done to make comparing designs much easier, since you can always change the layout later.
What is unique is that you will start out your design with everything you see when you choose a design. This may not seem like a big deal, and it shouldn't be... but it is. Most of the other website builders will show you thumbnail images of designs, just like Site by Nite does, but when you actually go to start your site, you'll find that the content area is one big blank spot. Suddenly that great design isn't so great, because most of it was just a mock up sample and isn't really part of the template. Sure, you could try to recreate it, but now you're back to needing to have a lot more experience as well as needing to create all the extra images and graphics that made the design look so good to begin with.
Along with choosing the design you wish to use, you'll find that there are a number of color themes to choose from. This allows you to further customize your design and make it unique to you.
New designs are continually being added, and you can always make suggestions in the forum for different types of designs or new topics that you think would be good. Since the designs need to be made specifically for the website builder, you will also find that you see the same designs all over the web like some of the general templates that get purchased and used in thousands of sites, over and over again.
The features that Site by Nite provides to control the layout and customize your design makes it about as close to a custom design as you could get, at a fraction of the cost.