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17 Best Site Builders: Wix, Squarespace, and More (2021)
Choosing the best site builder can be difficult, because there are 74 popular options to select from.
In this guide, I rated and reviewed the best website builders to create a web site based on cost, reliability, web hosting services, technical support, website speed, SEO, features, ease of use, template design, and more.
We’ll also compare:
The ideal website contractors for small companies.
The best free and cheap choices.
The ones with the best SEO.
The top platforms with online store capabilities.
The top builders for agencies.
And the best options for photographers and artists.
What’s the Best Website Builder?
Using a website builder is a fast and effortless way to build a presence for your brand or internet business. These tools simplify your site management by combining domain registrationhosting, and site design into one stage.
If you’re not too savvy with 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 site builder to use this year.
Wix.
Best Website Builder for Small Business ($13/month)
Wix is the most popular website builder available on the current market, with over 100 million consumers.
They have 500+ ready-to-use templates to design your site in any business. 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 want to register one at Wix.com, they make it super simple. Also, if you’d like 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 recommend Wix as the best online store builder. You don’t necessarily require a platform with more advanced options like BigCommerce and Shopify. Wix website owners that want to add an e-commerce store can find these great new features.
Wix is the most user-friendly site tool on the market. You can almost endlessly customize the look and feel of your website with no coding knowledge.
They also have a tool named Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) — the first artificial intelligence site builder. Wix ADI learns about your website and uses that information to design a website tailored to your precise needs.
This tool leverages AI selecting from billions of combinations of images, text, designs, and contact forms.
Finally, if you’re seeking the best site builder for small companies, Wix is your best choice.
Read my full Wix review for more in-depth analysis.
Get started with Wix.
Best Modern Website Builder with Free Plans (free — $3.49/mo)
Zyro is a website builder with a mission to help local businesses to tell their unique stories on the web.
Overall, they’re best known for speed and simplicity.
With Zyro, you may make a company site fast and easily with no programming required. Your website 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 more than one million stock pictures to select from.
One of their standout features is their AI Content Generator, which provides SEO-friendly content ideas based on your industry and specific business type.
To get started with this tool, you pick your type of organization, then write 2-3 paragraphs describing your brand and circumstance. You then adjust your AI settings and customize them based on length, expertise, and creativity degree. Lastly, you click the Create button and see your distinctively created content.
Since content generation is a challenge for many website owners, this tool creates new paragraphs for you that can rank better in search and increase conversion rates.
Another excellent features include:
Built-in search engine optimization tools to improve your search rankings.
A free SSL certificate and custom domains.
An AI-driven logo and slogan manufacturer.
24/7 customer support via email and live chat.
AI heatmaps to increase website conversions and predict visitor behaviour.
Mobile-optimized, fast-loading website designs.
Free website design templates for different industries like creative services, startups, fashion brands, wellness companies, bakeries, and more.
Zyro offers three main pricing programs — a free plan, a mid-tier”Basic” program at $1.99/month, and their high-tier”Unleashed” program at $3.49/month.
Their free program doesn’t include a custom domain name but does provide 99.9% uptime, an SSL certificate, 500MB of bandwidth and 500MB of storage.
Their “Basic” plan allows you to connect your domain name, increases bandwidth and storage, and includes extra features like ad removal and integrations with tools such as Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and Facebook pixels. This is a very popular plan that’s most suitable for small and medium-sized companies.
Finally, their “Unleashed” program provides every Zyro feature and provides unlimited bandwidth and storage. At this affordable price of $3.49/month, it makes sense to go with this plan and enjoy the unlimited features if you’re planning to get a great deal of content on your site.
Overall, Zyro is ideal for small businesses seeking to create and develop a website fast, save money on writing and logo-making with their AI tools, rank higher 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 online 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 in regards to design. Squarespace templates appear excellent down to every detail. The fonts, color schemes, and imagery all mesh flawlessly for any site.
Besides design, their platform is wonderful for bloggers. I tested out their WYSIWYG blog editor, and it is very intuitive.
You drag elements like images, headings, and text onto the page and position it where you want. They also offer multiple user permissions, Google AMP functionality, and you can schedule your posts:
A few small SEO limits hold Squarespace back from being #1 on this list. First, my XML sitemap pulled two versions of every page with and without a trailing slash”/.” This dual indexing could potentially lead to SEO and duplicate content issues down the road. They didn’t have a simple fix the last time I checked.
Secondly, your blog headlines always become your meta names, so be careful when adding your headlines for SEO. You can read more in my whole Wix vs Squarespace review.
Other great features make up for these drawbacks. Their ease of use is topnotch — websites 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 costs range from $12/month for their private 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 plan provides a free domain name, unlimited storage and bandwidth, free SSL, and 24/7 customer service.
Overall, if you’re a small company that needs first-rate web design or a blogger who wants your content to appear great, Squarespace is a trusted option.
Best Free Website Builder (Free — $25/month)
Weebly powers over 530,000 domains and is called the simple site builder of choice for people without much technical expertise. They offer a great deal of great features. If you are a blogger, you can use Weebly.com to pick a domain name and use their editor to add your text, images, and articles.
They also have a mobile app to track your site’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 program which comes with 500 MB of storage, a free SSL certificate, and a domain name with Weebly branding. You can use a custom domain with this plan but are made to have Weebly branding throughout your site. Also, the free program only includes email and chat support, but no phone service.
Weebly’s paid plans range from $5 to $25 per month. On the high end, their Business Strategy gets you innovative e-commerce performance, a free domainname, 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 level of customer support you receive is based on your subscription level. You’ll find assistance yourself in many areas, including their site, service center, community forum, social networking, and developer documentation. They also have live chat, email, and phone support.
If you’re searching for a simple site creator to get up and running, I suggest that you begin with Weebly.
Best Site Builder for Ecommerce ($29/month)
Shopify is a popular 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 because of their simple dashboard and integrations with thousands of app partners.
While not every site owner needs product-selling functionality, I added Shopify into the list because almost any small business could use them to set up their website.
Have a salon for instance.
With Shopify, not only could you set up a quick website including a blog, a map of your location, contact info, and appointment scheduling (with a program ), but you might also sell hair care products online. This creates not only a website but another online source of revenue for your business.
Shopify has a lot of features you’d come to expect from other tools on this list, including hosting, your own domain name, 70+ professional themes, a free SSL certificate, and promotion and SEO features.
They also offer mobile commerce, 100+ payment gateways, automated carrier shipping rates, automated tax rates, and the complete checkout experience. Plus, you can enjoy omnichannel selling across Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Instagram, and much more.
If you’re setting up a new website and think that you may choose to sell products online in the future, it is far better to begin with Shopify rather than another instrument 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 website owners everything they need, including a complete website, an internet store with unlimited products, site features, 24/7 support, and more.
If you’d like to give Shopify a try, they offer a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Best For Professional Designers ($16 per month).
Some of its other Important features include:
You can edit and add content to your live site.
Invite other team members to collaborate on a single dash.
Add up to 100 pages to your website.
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 centre.
Integration with Zapier enables you to connect with tools like Slack, MailChimp, and Asana.
You can add up to 3000 products on your website with eCommerce support.
Best WordPress Themes for Photography and Creative Websites ($279 one-time).
Flothemes is a company that offers customizable WordPress themes. These templates enable you to build websites inside of WordPress with no need for custom coding. It is powered by Flex block, a potent free stream page builder, providing limitless customization choices.
All the templates and themes include premade layouts and content blocks. You may also customize colors, fonts, the arrangement of the webpage, and more.
Flothemes help you build your site in a few steps, including:
Register a domain name and hosting service provider for your site. You can also check Flothemes cloud hosting services, starting at $26 a month.
Install WordPress.org and connect it to your website hosting. Fortunately, most hosting services provide a one-click WordPress installation.
Finally, pick a theme for your site or portfolio.
You can watch several how-to tutorials by Flothemes or contact the customer support team.
If you need help setting up the whole site, you can drop a message, and their team will do everything for you.
Flothemes will help you set up your website for only $499-$1999. Besides setting up your site from the start, 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. All in all, you get six rounds of implementations.
Additionally, Flothemes provides features like SSL implementation, WordPress installation, Typography, color scheme stylization, and 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 site setup services, including:
Simple Installation Bundle: $499
Advanced setup packs: $999
Pro Setup packages: $1,999
The Easy Setup Package helps you skip the technical components and jump straight to adding content and personalizing your motif. It provides features like WordPress installation, website layout setup, theme installation, WordPress transfer, website launch, etc..
The Advanced Setup Package incorporates full assistance with website setup, styling & launch, site speed optimization & an search engine optimization consultation. Additional features include typography & color scheme stylization, SSL implementation, speed optimization, etc..
Pro Installation Package includes all of the features in the Advanced Setup Package together with the tailored mockup & implementation for your homepage.
Best Website Tool with Integrated CRM Tools
HubSpot is a topnotch CRM tool which also has a full-featured CMS and website builder. Using their platform, you can create website pages, blog posts, landing pages either from scratch or using 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 marketing, get found online, and capture, engage with and understand prospects.
For example, when you make a webpage, you can add calls-to-action and forms that convert visitors into prospects. 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 prospects.
Email advertising, retargeting, and messenger integrations send personalized messages to your prospects.
Their contact builder, analytics tools, and list segmentation help you understand your own prospects.
Personalized experiences, calls-to-action, and smart content turns leads into customers.
Overall, if you’re seeking a website builder that also includes a full-featured set of CRM and marketing tools, HubSpot is your best choice.
The World’s Most Popular CMS
Easiest Free Website Builder for Small Sites
Best Digital Advertising Website Builder for Local Firms
A Personalized Website with the Power of AI
Best for Large Online Stores
Great for Photographers and Artists
Best for startups that want to create bootstrapped websites
Best Site Builder for Agencies and Multilingual Websites
What’s a Website Builder?
A website builder is a tool that allows anyone to manage a website and domain name without manual coding. In other words, a website builder is a tool or software program that will help you build a web site.
In the old days of the web, programmers needed to know HTML and CSS to make a website. Today, if you want to code a site, there is a steep learning curve — you want to have extensive knowledge of JavaScript and PHP. Not so with website builders.
These tools help everyone from small businesses and bloggers to news websites and ecommerce businesses easily create sites in minutes.
How much does it cost to construct 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 business?
There you have it — my list of the greatest website builders. Because there are 74 choices out there, I have condensed the list down to the top so that you can choose the option that’s right for your small business or online brand.
If you are looking for the very best site builder complete, I recommend you get started with Wix.
For the best designs and templates, take a look at Squarespace.
If you need an e-commerce site to sell products online, Shopify is a good choice.
What site builder do you use?