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17 Best Site Builders: Wix, Squarespace, and More (2021)
Choosing the best website builder can be hard, as there are 74 popular options to choose from.
In this guide, I ranked and reviewed the best website builders to make a website based on price, reliability, web hosting services, technical support, site speed, SEO, features, ease of use, template design, and much more.
We’ll also compare:
The best website contractors for small businesses.
The best free and cheap options.
Those with the best SEO.
The top platforms with online store capabilities.
The very best builders for agencies.
And the best choices for photographers and artists.
What’s the Best Website Builder?
Using a website builder is a quick and effortless way to construct a presence for your brand or online business. These tools simplify your site management by combining domain registration, hosting, and website design into one platform.
If you’re not too knowledgeable about web design and development, you’ll want to go with a simple drag and drop editor.
The choice is all up to you.
Here are my top picks for the best website builder to use this year.
Wix.
Best Site Builder for Small Business ($13/month)
Wix is the most popular website builder on the market, with over 100 million consumers.
They have 500+ ready-to-use templates to design your website in any industry. These templates are mobile-optimized and have 100 fonts to choose from (or you can upload your own).
Their designs also appear beautiful, with scroll effects, and innovative design features like video and animation backgrounds.
If you already have a domain name on GoDaddy or need to register one at Wix.com, they make it super easy. Also, if you want to add e-commerce to your site so that you can sell online, plans start a $20/month.
If you are a small company, I urge Wix as the best online store builder. You don’t necessarily need a platform with more advanced options like BigCommerce and Shopify. Wix website owners that want to bring an e-commerce store can get these excellent new features.
Wix is the most user-friendly site tool on the market. You can almost always customize the look and feel of your website with no programming knowledge.
They also have a tool called Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) — the first artificial intelligence site builder. Wix ADI learns on your site and uses that information to design a website tailored to your precise needs.
This tool leverages AI selecting from billions of combinations of pictures, text, layouts, and contact forms.
Finally, if you’re looking for the best website builder for small businesses, Wix is your very best choice.
Read my whole Wix review for more in-depth analysis.
Get started with Wix.
Greatest Modern Website Builder with Free Plans (free — $3.49/mo)
Zyro is a site builder with a mission to assist local companies to tell their unique stories online.
Overall, they are best known for simplicity and speed.
With Zyro, you can create a business website fast and easily with no coding required. Your site also loads fast due to the light frame and looks great on all apparatus.
With a powerful set of tools, Zyro helps grow your online business with pre-made design templates, AI-driven text, an intuitive drag-and-drop tool, mobile-readiness, and over one million stock pictures to choose from.
One of the standout features is their AI Content Generator, which offers SEO-friendly content ideas based on your industry and specific business type.
To get started with this tool, you pick your type of business, then write 2-3 sentences describing your brand and circumstance. Then you correct your AI settings and customize them based on length, experience, and creativity level. Last, you click the Create button and see your distinctively generated content.
Since content generation is a challenge for many site owners, this tool creates new paragraphs for you that can rank better in search and increase conversion rates.
Some other excellent features include:
Built-in search engine optimization tools to improve your search rankings.
A free SSL certificate and custom domain names.
An AI-driven logo and slogan maker.
24/7 customer support via email and live chat.
AI heatmaps to increase website conversions and forecast visitor behaviour.
Mobile-optimized, fast-loading website designs.
Free website design templates for different industries like creative agencies, startups, fashion brands, wellness businesses, bakeries, and more.
Zyro offers three primary pricing plans — a free plan, a mid-tier”Basic” plan at $1.99/month, and their high-tier”Unleashed” program at $3.49/month.
Their free plan doesn’t include a custom domain name but does provide 99.9% uptime, an SSL certificate, 500MB of bandwidth and 500MB of storage.
Next, their “Basic” program permits you to connect your own domain name, increases bandwidth and storage, and includes extra features like ad removal and integrations with tools like Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and Facebook pixels. This is a very popular plan that’s most acceptable for small and medium-sized businesses.
Finally, their “Unleashed” plan provides every Zyro feature and provides unlimited storage and bandwidth. At such an affordable price of $3.49/month, it is sensible to go with this plan and enjoy the unlimited features if you’re planning to have a lot of content on your website.
Overall, Zyro is ideal for small businesses seeking to create and develop a site quickly, save money on composing and logo-making using their AI tools, rank high on search engines, and increase conversion rates with high quality, mobile-friendly design templates.
You can get started with Zyro free of charge to check out their stage, then upgrade to a paid plan when you are ready to grow your internet business.
Get started with Zyro and start building your website today.
Best Website Design for Personal Sites ($12/month)
When I think of Squarespace, my mind goes directly to their beautifully designed home page. They truly know how to create beautiful, high-quality websites that look great for both small businesses and personal websites alike.
With over 100 design templates to choose from, they lead the pack when it comes to design. Squarespace templates look excellent down to every detail. The fonts, color schemes, and imagery all mesh flawlessly for any site.
Besides design, their stage is wonderful for bloggers. I tested out their WYSIWYG blog editor, and it’s very intuitive.
You drag elements like pictures, headings, and text onto the page and place it where you want. They also offer multiple user permissions, Google AMP functionality, and you can schedule your articles:
A few small SEO limits hold Squarespace back from being #1 on this list. To begin with, my XML sitemap pulled two versions of each page with and without a trailing slash”/.” This double indexing may potentially result in SEO and duplicate content problems down the road. They didn’t have an easy fix the last time I checked.
Secondly, your blog headlines always become your meta names, so be cautious when incorporating your headlines for SEO. You can read more in my full Wix vs Squarespace review.
Other great features make up for these drawbacks. Their ease of use is topnotch — sites are elementary to assemble with their editing tools. In-built analytics tools provide continuous data onsite traffic if you’re not using Google Analytics. Plus, it’s hard to go wrong with a beautifully-designed website for only $12/month.
Monthly prices range from $12/month for their Personal plan up to $40/month for their Online Store (Advanced) plan. Monthly prices are based on a one-year contract, and Squarespace includes a free domain. The Personal program provides a free domain name, unlimited storage and bandwidth, free SSL, and 24/7 customer support.
Overall, if you are a small company that needs first-rate web design or a blogger that wants your articles to look great, Squarespace is a trusted option.
Best Free Website Builder (Free — $25/month)
Weebly powers over 530,000 domains and is called the easy site builder of choice for people without much technical experience. They offer a lot of great features. If you’re a blogger, you can use Weebly.com to select a domain name and use their editor to add your own text, images, and content.
They also have a mobile app to track your website’s functionality on the go. And email marketing tools allow you to send newsletters to your subscribers from within their tool.
They have a free plan which comes with 500 MB of storage, a free SSL certificate, and a domain with Weebly branding. You can use a custom domain name with this plan but are made to have Weebly branding throughout your site. Also, the free plan only includes chat and email support, but no phone service.
Weebly’s paid plans vary from $5 to $25 per month. On the high end, their Business Strategy gets you advanced e-commerce performance, a free domain, and $200 of Google ad credits.
Their e-commerce features include product options/variants, coupon codes, inventory management, a shipping calculator, shipping labels, and the ability to accept payments via Square and other suppliers.
The degree of customer support you get is based on your subscription level. You’ll find assistance yourself in many locations, including their site, support centre, community forum, social networking, and programmer documentation. They also have live chat, email, and phone support.
If you’re looking for a simple website creator to get up and running, I recommend you get started with Weebly.
Best Site Builder for Ecommerce ($29/month)
Shopify is a favorite ecommerce platform used by over 800,000 online companies so sell products online. They were founded in Canada in 2004 and quickly became a powerhouse due to their simple dashboard and integrations with thousands of program partners.
While not every website owner needs product-selling performance, I added Shopify into the list because almost any small business could use them to install their website.
Have a salon for example.
With Shopify, not only could you set up a quick site including a blog, a map of your location, contact info, and appointment scheduling (with an app), but you could also sell hair care products online. This creates not only a website but another online source of revenue for your business.
Shopify has a great deal of features you’d come to expect from other tools on this list, such as hosting, your own domain name, 70+ specialist topics, a free SSL certificate, and marketing and SEO features.
They also offer mobile commerce, 100+ payment gateways, automatic carrier shipping rates, automated tax rates, and the full checkout experience. Besides, you can enjoy omnichannel selling across Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Instagram, and much more.
If you’re establishing a new website and think that you might choose to sell products online in the future, it is better to get started with Shopify rather than another tool that doesn’t take online shopping as seriously.
They offer three plans ranging from $29/month to $299/month. The $29/month Basic Shopify Plan should give site owners everything they need, including a complete website, an online store with unlimited products, blog features, 24/7 support, and much more.
If you’d like to give Shopify a try, they give a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Best For Professional painters ($16 a month).
Some of its other key features include:
You can add and edit content to your live website.
Invite other team members to collaborate on a single dashboard.
Add up to 100 pages to your site.
99.9% uptime guaranteed and SSL certificate.
Automated backup.
Custom fonts available.
Create custom 404 pages.
Customer care through email, Webflow community forum, and help center.
Integration with Zapier enables you to connect with tools such as Slack, MailChimp, and Asana.
You can add up to 3000 products on your site with eCommerce support.
Best WordPress Themes for Photography and Creative Websites ($279 one-time).
Flothemes is a business that offers customizable WordPress themes. These templates enable you to build websites inside of WordPress with no need for custom coding. It’s powered by Flex block, a powerful free stream page builder, providing limitless customization options.
All of the templates and themes come with premade layouts and content blocks. You may also customize colors, fonts, the structure of the webpage, and more.
Flothemes help you build your website in a few steps, including:
Register a domain name and hosting service provider for your site. You can even check Flothemes cloud hosting services, starting at $26 a month.
Install WordPress.org and connect it to your website hosting. Luckily, most hosting services offer a one-click WordPress setup.
Finally, select a theme for your site or portfolio.
You can see several how-to tutorials by Flothemes or contact the customer care team.
If you need help setting up the entire site, you can drop a message, and their staff will do everything for you.
Flothemes will help you set up your website for only $499-$1999. Besides setting up your site from the beginning, they also provide services like page loading speed optimization, SEO, styling, etc.. Plus, you get two screen sharing sessions of 45 minutes each with specialists and one SEO consultation call of 45 minutes. In general, you get six rounds of implementations.
Additionally, Flothemes provides features like SSL implementation, WordPress installation, Typography, color scheme stylization, and much more. You also get complete design freedom, SEO options, and a dashboard.
Pricing:
While their themes cost a one-time $279, Flothemes offers three pricing plans for their website setup services, including:
Simple Installation Bundle: $499
Advanced setup packages: $999
Pro Setup packages: $1,999
The Simple Setup Package can help you skip the technical components and jump straight to adding content and personalizing your theme. It provides features like WordPress installation, website layout setup, theme installation, WordPress transfer, site launching, etc..
The Advanced Setup Package incorporates full assistance with site setup, styling & launching, site speed optimization & an SEO consultation. Additional features include typography & color scheme stylization, SSL implementation, speed optimization, etc..
Pro Setup Package includes all the features from the Advanced Setup Package together with the tailored mockup & execution for your homepage.
Best Site Tool with Integrated CRM Tools
HubSpot is a topnotch CRM tool which also has a full-featured CMS and website builder. Using their platform, it is possible to create website pages, blog posts, landing pages either from scratch or with their pre-built templates.
Their drag-and-drop editor uses responsive design that will assist you create webpages that look great on any device. Where HubSpot stands out is its personalization and integrations.
Unlike other tools on this list, HubSpot comes integrated with a wide range of marketing applications, including tools to manage email advertising, get found online, and catch, engage with and understand prospects.
By way of instance, when you make a webpage, you may add calls-to-action and forms that convert visitors into leads. Then, when you understand your visitors, you can dynamically create content unique to site visitors based on their location, device, language, traffic origin, or some other detail you choose to capture on your HubSpot CRM.
This integrated marketing suite covers all parts of the customer lifecycle:
Types, live chat, and conversational chatbots capture leads.
Email advertising, retargeting, and messenger integrations send customized messages to your leads.
Their contact builder, analytics tools, and record segmentation help you understand your own leads.
Personalized experiences, calls-to-action, and smart content turns leads into customers.
Overall, if you’re looking for a site builder that also comes with a full-featured pair of CRM and marketing tools, HubSpot is the best choice.
The World’s Most Popular CMS
Easiest Free Website Builder for Small Sites
Best Digital Advertising Website Builder for Local Businesses
A Personalized Website with the Power of AI
Best for Large Online Stores
Great for Photographers and Artists
Best for startups that want to make bootstrapped websites
Best Site Builder for Agencies and Multilingual Websites
What is a Website Builder?
A website builder is a tool that allows anyone to manage a website and domain name without manual programming. In other words, a site builder is a tool or software program that will help you build a web site.
In the old days of the net, programmers needed to understand HTML and CSS to create a website. Today, if you want to code a website, there is a steep learning curve — you need to have extensive knowledge of JavaScript and PHP. Not so with site builders.
These tools help everyone from small businesses and bloggers to information websites and ecommerce businesses easily create sites in minutes.
How much does it cost to build a website?
Is Wix better than WordPress?
How much does a website cost monthly?
Does Google have a site builder?
Can I get a free website for my company?
There you have it — my list of the greatest website builders. As there are 74 options out there, I’ve condensed the listing down to the top so that you may choose the option that’s right for your small business or online brand.
If you’re looking for the very best website builder complete, I recommend you begin using Wix.
For the best designs and templates, check out Squarespace.
If you will need an e-commerce website to sell products online, Shopify is a fantastic choice.
What website builder do you use?