You’re proud of the work you do. As such, the website you promote it on ought to be equally appealing. The best website builder for you to establish a digital portfolio, help generate new business, and attract and retain top talent, however, may differ from another firm’s top pick. From free basic website builders to premium sites that require a fee for web design and hosting, there is a range of providers that make designing and optimizing a website a fairly seamless task. Assess the industry’s popular website builders using the detailed evaluations of each below, and then review these website-building considerations before setting your site live.
Squarespace
Website building and web hosting company Squarespace is lauded for its beautifully designed templates and top-notch design features—important criteria when considering which web builder will best present your projects. Not only does Squarespace facilitate producing a great-looking website, but its recent upgrades also enable you to do so with ease. While some, in the past, have criticized the platform for its steep learning curve, it has become one of the easiest drag-and-drop website builders with a variety of 113 eye-catching website templates that are optimized for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
A fairly intuitive platform, Squarespace offers tools for managing a blog, email marketing campaigns, and e-commerce, plus the insights to track analytics and SEO. It also integrates with digital payment systems such as PayPal, Stripe, and Square. One aspect of Squarespace that’s particularly compelling to interior designers and other creatives is its ability to compile large photography assets in a gallery or portfolio format. Users can customize the templates, created by in-house designers, to suit individual needs including replacing images, altering fonts and colors, sharing on social media, and integrating with Adobe Creative Suite and Google Drive.
How much does it cost to use Squarespace?
Squarespace offers four tiers of paid plans (prices listed are per month with an annual plan), and all yearly plans afford users unlimited storage and bandwidth, a free custom domain name, and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security. The Personal plan ($14/month) enables you to build a website but with no e-commerce functionality. The Business plan ($23/month) is great for growing a business and selling a few items online. The Commerce Basic plan ($27/month) has tools for setting up a shoppable website including unlimited products, no transaction fees, points of service (POS), customer accounts, and integration, to sell via Instagram. The Advanced Commerce plan ($49/month) offers everything from the lower-tier plans plus more robust features for setting up an e-commerce store. Squarespace offers no free plans.
Zyro
Easy to use and comparatively inexpensive, website builder Zyro provides all the necessities for creating a simple, straightforward website, including high-quality templates and a user-friendly grid format (images and text boxes snap to the guide to create foolproof designs). User reviews recommend the platform for first-time site builders, as a drag-and-drop editor makes customizing the webpages a breeze without the need for HTML coding. What’s more, the platform’s customer support is available 24/7. Perks of Zyro include free web hosting (meaning no upfront cost to get started), simple customer relationship management (CRM) tracking, and integration of more than 70 accepted payment methods so you can attract customers from around the world.
How much does it cost to use Zyro?
Zyro offers four premium plans, and all annual plans include four additional months for free, plus free web hosting services, free SSL, a free domain, and three months of free business email. The Website plan ($2.61/month) is appropriate for a professional portfolio, bloggers, or a simple business website. The Business plan ($4.41/month) offers the basic essentials to allow you to start selling via an e-commerce store. The Online Store plan ($8.01/month) provides professional e-commerce tools, while the Advanced Store plan ($14.31/month) offers robust marketing tools to grow your e-commerce website. Zyra offers no free option, but all paid plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Wix
Often heralded as the best small business website builder, Wix boasts ease of use, 800-plus professionally designed templates across all types of industries, countless customization options to afford creative flexibility, highly effective SEO tools, mobile optimization, and overall outstanding ratings from users. Ideal for building a small business website, posting online portfolios, or setting up an e-commerce store, Wix appeals to those with no tech experience because it empowers any user with the tools to make their website exactly as they want it—no coding skills required. A plus: The cloud-based web builder offers website design services as well as web hosting.
If you’re looking to establish a comprehensive online shop, then Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce might be a better fit, but for a small business selling a few products, Wix would suffice. A couple of drawbacks of the platform, however, are that once you publish your site with one template, you can’t change it without starting again from scratch. The wealth of design features, tools, and options may also be overwhelming for those just starting out.
But these cons do not detract from the plethora of advantages offered by Wix to establish your design firm’s online presence. Although Wix doesn’t offer live customer support, it does have tutorials integrated throughout the web editor to guide you through the building process with step-by-step instructions as well as a knowledge center with articles for troubleshooting. While Wix isn’t the cheapest web builder available, it offers significant value with its host of features and tools, and you can also opt for a basic free plan.
How much does it cost to use Wix?
Wix offers versatile payment options, from a basic free website builder to seven paid plans that all have a 14-day trial with a money-back guarantee. All Wix premium plans include an ad-free interface, custom domain, free SSL certificate, free domain for a year, and increased storage, starting with the Combo plan for $14/month. Advanced features are available with each upgrade: Unlimited ($18/month) includes site analytics; VIP ($39/month) offers a professional logo, social media logo files, and first priority customer support. Wix Business and eCommerce plans cater to ecommerce websites with Business Basic ($23/month), Business Unlimited ($27/month), or Business VIP ($49/month). Big corporations, such as Deloitte, CBS, and SAP, rely on the Wix Enterprise plan ($500/month) and its advanced security monitoring and team collaboration tools, among other features.
Duda
With its gorgeous templates—which make those of its competitors pale in comparison—Duda is the best website builder and web hosting site for a design-oriented clientele. Easy to use, with a highly intuitive interface, Duda appeals to beginner users thanks to guidelines that come with every template and enable anyone to design and build a dazzling website quickly and simply. Nearly 100 professionally designed templates offer the ability to add a range of functional widgets to customize pages, but the templates—however visually appealing—are indeed a bit confining, meaning the rigid structure requires you to place text and images within certain areas of the page.
The lack of total creative freedom aside, Duda’s drag-and-drop builder interface still affords enough flexibility for users to easily design their web pages with some personalization and without too much effort. Plus, Duda offers more than 100 font options, a built-in photo editor, valuable e-commerce tools (even with the lowest-tier paid plan), and decent marketing tools. However, all of this comes at a price that’s a bit higher than its competitors, with no free version and premium packages starting at $14/month. Some say Duda lacks value because the steep price does not offer some of the features provided by other web builders, namely robust SEO tools, but, overall, Duda is a solid option for building a website quickly and at a reasonable price.
How much does it cost to use Duda?
With no free option, Duda offers three paid plans (prices billed annually): Basic ($14/month) includes one website, website hosting, SSL security, access to a limited content library, and email support; Team ($22/month) comes with expanded access, including email, chat, and phone customer support plus a 14-day free trial; and Agency ($44/month) includes the design of four sites and hosting, priority email, chat and phone support, plus enhanced features for a team of users.
Strikingly
An incredibly simple drag-and-drop editor, Strikingly lives up to its name by offering myriad stunning templates to enable users to efficiently design visually appealing websites. One of the platform’s many cool features is that templates can be swapped over time to offer greater flexibility–unlike Wix, which doesn’t allow you change out your template without starting all over again. Strikingly remains a viable option for building and hosting a small business website since it’s cost-effective and jam-packed with features, even at the lower-tier payment plan.
Even with its most-basic Limited plan, which is great for getting a gallery or portfolio up and running, Strikingly allows users to publish multiple websites, keeps the sites secure with an SSL certificate, provides 1GB of storage, and offers limited e-commerce options (selling up to five products). Strikingly’s top-tier VIP plan is best suited for businesses warranting email marketing, subscriptions, and a more comprehensive e-commerce store, since this option has the ability to compose and send custom newsletters, create multi-tiered membership subscribers, and sell up to 500 products with no transaction fee.
Strikingly does offer a free plan, but it’s extremely limited—essentially a trial that lets you test some Strikingly features without purchasing a paid plan. But you can sign up for a 14-day free trial with all paid plans. A few cons for Strikingly as a website builder are its poor search engine optimization and limited language availability (10 language options come with an upgraded plan). More advanced features for creating a professional website only come with the more expensive plans, and some say the template capabilities feel limiting. But overall, Strikingly is a great option for creating a stylish, single-page website due to its simple functionality and ability to tweak templates with a few clicks.
How much does it cost to use Strikingly?
Strikingly has a very basic free version that’s essentially a no-time-limit free trial, then there’s a Limited plan ($8/month), Pro plan ($16/month), and VIP plan ($49/month). Costs are based on an annual plan, and all paid plans are available for a 14-day trial.
Shopify
Arguably the best e-commerce website builder, Shopify offers all the necessary features for a web building platform, including web page design and hosting, your own domain name, a free SSL certificate, sufficient marketing and SEO tools, and more than 70 professional themes–plus anything a user would need to set up a fully souped-up online store. Shopify’s e-commerce tools include 100-plus payment gateways, in addition to its own integrated payment solution, called Shopify Payments. Users also get unlimited storage (which doesn’t restrict the number of items you can sell), an intuitive dashboard, and integration tools that enable you to manage your social media accounts and blogs from your Shopify dashboard.
While Shopify offers basically anything you could want or need out of an e-commerce website, there are some downsides: Shopify has an app store with a ton of plug-ins, however, they come at a fairly steep price or a subscription fee. Shopify charges a transaction fee on every sale you make, regardless of which paid plan you choose. And there’s no autosave function, so it’s imperative for you to save frequently while designing and building your website so that your work is not lost. If you’re a small design firm looking to sell goods, Shopify is among the top platforms catering to e-commerce, plus it’s easy to use, affordable, provides 24/7 customer support, and offers options for customization.
How much does it cost to use Shopify?
Shopify offers a 14-day free trial before committing to one of its plans: Basic ($29/month) for mostly digital-first sellers; Shopify ($79/month), which accommodates online and in-person sales; or Advanced ($299/month) for commerce looking to scale, and built-in reporting for taxes, shipping rates, and more.
WordPress
The world’s most popular website builder, WordPress.org—known simply as Wordpress, and not to be confused with the blogger site WordPress.com—powers almost half of the websites on the internet. WordPress is a self-hosted content management system (CMS) that offers ease of use, intuitive interface, scalability based on your business needs, and robust features that go toe-to-toe with any of its competitors. A free and open source website builder, WordPress doesn’t present the confines of other platforms and provides the utmost flexibility in design and personalization of your online presence.
The platform’s advantages are wide-ranging: Through WordPress’s e-commerce store, you can sell digital or physical goods and accept a range of payment methods, from credit cards and bank checks to PayPal and Bitcoin. The platform offers branding freedom, meaning you won’t have to display “Powered by” on your site (as is often promoted at the bottom of other webpage developers), and you’ll be able to sell ads on your site and keep 100% of what you earn, which offers another revenue stream for your business. WordPress also offers more than 59,000 free WordPress plug-ins that allow you to add features to your site, including a shopping cart, contact forms, live chat, Google Analytics, social media tools, CRM, CSS customization, photo galleries, and more. Other benefits of WordPress are that it’s fully translated in more than 75 languages, and it provides powerful SEO tools—far superior to other providers on our list.
While WordPress is not a drag-and-drop website builder in itself, it does coordinate with other drag-and-drop builders—like SeedProd, Beaver Builder, Divi, Elementor, Visual Composer, or Themify—which offer user-friendly professional templates, themes, and features, to let you fully customize your website. You do, however, need a separate web hosting site with WordPress—such as HostGator, Bluehost, or Hostinger, which some consider a drawback, though there are plenty of online tutorials available to walk users through the process.
How much does it cost to use Wordpress?
WordPress is a free website builder, but you’ll have to pay for your own domain name ($14.99/year) and web hosting (approximately $7.99/month). Plug-ins and add-ons will also incur additional costs, but WordPress still ends up being one of the most cost-effective solutions for creating your own website.
FAQs
What is the easiest site to build a website?
Wix consistently tops lists of easiest website builders because it’s a straightforward, drag-and-drop editor that offers 800-plus professionally designed templates that you can customize in minutes. Or, if you’re looking for an even simpler solution, Wix has an artificial design intelligence (ADI) system that will ask you general questions about the type of website you’re building and what you need to accomplish your goal, and then it will create a website shell customized to your specific needs.
Which websites are good for starting a business?
Wix, which has a substantial number of well-designed templates and an easy-to-use build-out process, is often ranked among the best for those looking to launch their companies online. Plus, Wix offers specialized templates across a range of industries that are tailored to the needs of that business. (The restaurant templates, for example, include features for booking reservations.) Strikingly is also a great place to start for designers looking to surpass all the added features for a professional landing page.
How much does it cost to build a website?
It’s possible to get a website up and running for free with providers like GoDaddy, Website Builder, or Weebly—even Wix offers a free, no-frills version. WordPress is a free web builder, but you have to pay for web hosting and a domain name. In general, you can find an adequate website builder and hosting site for about $20/month, which will provide enough features and tools to get your business in a good place to scale.
Zyro offers the most inexpensive paid plans, from $2.61/month for building a simple business site to its most robust e-commerce plan at $14.31/month, and all paid plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee. Wix offers the most versatile plan options: In addition to the free version, it has six premium plans from $14/month to $49/month, as well as a Wix Enterprise plan for big businesses, which tops out at $599/month, and all plans have a 14-day trial with a money-back guarantee.
What is the best website builder for e-commerce?
The reviews are clear: Shopify is the superior website builder for e-commerce. While the pricing (starting at $29/month) might seem steep compared to other platforms on our list, Shopify is specifically tailored to the needs of online retailers, with web design specialists who can help customize your online store design along with 24/7 customer support so that your site is functional around the clock. You can sell unlimited products on Shopify or via integrated partner marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon. Shopify’s robust e-commerce tools—as well as in-person transaction capabilities, too—enable you to manage sales, inventory, daily operations, and customers, and with more than 100 payment gateways, you can easily do business around the world.