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17 Best Site Builders: Wix, Squarespace, and More (2021)
Picking the best site builder can be difficult, because there are 74 popular choices to choose from.
In this guide, I rated and reviewed the best website builders to make a website based on cost, reliability, web hosting services, technical assistance, website speed, SEO, features, ease of use, template design, and more.
We’ll also compare:
The ideal website builders for small businesses.
The ideal free and cheap choices.
The ones with the best SEO.
The best platforms with online shop capabilities.
The best builders for agencies.
And the best options for photographers and artists.
What’s the Best Website Builder?
Using a website builder is a quick and easy way to construct a presence for your brand or internet business. These tools simplify your website management by combining domain registration, hosting, and website design into one stage.
If you are 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 Website Builder for Small Business ($13/month)
Wix is the most popular website builder on the current 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 look beautiful, with scroll effects, and advanced design features like video and animation backgrounds.
If you already have a domain on GoDaddy or want to register one at Wix.com, they make it super easy. Additionally, if you’d like to add e-commerce to your website so that you can sell online, plans begin a $20/month.
If you are a small business, I urge 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 are looking to add an e-commerce store can find these excellent 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 called Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) — the first artificial intelligence site builder. Wix ADI learns on your website and uses that information to design a site tailored to your specific 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 best option.
Read my whole 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 companies to tell their unique stories on the web.
Overall, they are 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 its light frame and looks great on all devices.
With a strong 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 images to choose from.
One of their standout features is their AI Content Generator, which offers SEO-friendly content ideas based on your industry and specific business type.
To begin with this tool, you pick your type of business, then write 2-3 paragraphs describing your brand and context. You then adjust your AI settings and customize them based on duration, experience, and creativity degree. Lastly, you click the Create button and see your distinctively generated content.
Since content creation is a challenge for many website 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 SEO tools to increase your search rankings.
A free SSL certificate and custom domains.
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 various industries like creative agencies, startups, fashion brands, wellness businesses, bakeries, and much more.
Zyro offers three primary pricing plans — a free plan, a mid-tier”Basic” program at $1.99/month, and their high-tier”Unleashed” plan 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.
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 such as Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and Facebook pixels. This is a very popular plan that is most acceptable for small and medium-sized businesses.
Finally, their “Unleashed” program provides every Zyro feature and gives unlimited storage and bandwidth. At such an affordable price of $3.49/month, it is sensible to go for this program and enjoy the unlimited features if you plan to have a great deal of content on your website.
Overall, Zyro is best for small businesses looking to create and grow a website quickly, save money on writing and logo-making using their AI tools, rank higher on search engines, and increase conversion rates with high-quality, mobile-friendly design templates.
You can begin with Zyro free of charge to test out their platform, then upgrade to a paid program when you’re ready to grow your online business.
Get started with Zyro and begin building your site 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 make 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 look excellent down to every detail. The fonts, color schemes, and imagery all mesh perfectly for any site.
Besides design, their platform is great for bloggers. I tested out their WYSIWYG blog editor, and it’s very intuitive.
You drag elements like images, headings, and text onto the page and position it where you would like. They also offer multiple user permissions, Google AMP performance, and you can schedule your articles:
A few small SEO limitations hold Squarespace back from being #1 on this list. To begin with, my XML sitemap pulled in two versions of every page with and without a trailing slash”/.” This dual indexing could potentially result in SEO and duplicate content issues later on. They didn’t have a simple fix the last time I checked.
Secondly, your blog headlines become your meta names, so be cautious when incorporating 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 — sites are elementary to build with their editing tools. In-built analytics tools provide continuous data on-site visitors if you’re not using Google Analytics. Plus, it’s tough to go wrong with a beautifully-designed site for only $12/month.
Monthly prices 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 program provides a free domain name, unlimited bandwidth and storage, free SSL, and 24/7 customer service.
In general, if you’re a small company that needs first-rate web design or a blogger that wants your content to look great, Squarespace is a trusted choice.
Best Free Website Builder (Free — $25/month)
Weebly powers over 530,000 domains and is called the easy website builder of choice for people without much technical experience. 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 own text, images, and content.
They also have a mobile program to track your website’s functionality on the go. And email marketing tools let you send newsletters to your subscribers from inside their tool.
They have a free plan which includes 500 MB of storage, a free SSL certificate, and a domain with Weebly branding. You can use a custom domain with this plan but are forced to have Weebly branding throughout your website. Additionally, the free program only comes with 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 functionality, a free domainname, and $200 of Google ad credits.
Their e-commerce features include product options/variants, coupon codes, stock management, a shipping calculator, shipping labels, and the ability to accept payments through Square and other suppliers.
The degree of customer support you get is based on your subscription level. You can find assistance yourself in several areas, including their site, service center, community discussion, 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 suggest that you begin using 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 due to their simple dashboard and integrations with thousands of program partners.
While not every website owner needs product-selling functionality, I added Shopify to the list because any small business could use them to install their website.
Take a salon for instance.
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 might also sell hair care products online. This creates not only a website but another online source of revenue for your company.
Shopify has a lot of features you’d come to expect from other tools on this listing, including hosting, your own domain name, 70+ specialist themes, a free SSL certificate, and marketing and SEO features.
They also offer mobile commerce, 100+ payment gateways, automated carrier shipping rates, automated tax rates, and the full checkout experience. Besides, you can enjoy omnichannel selling across Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Instagram, and more.
If you’re setting up a new website and think that you might choose to sell products online in the future, it is far better to get started with Shopify rather than another tool that doesn’t take online shopping too.
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, blog features, 24/7 support, and more.
If you want to give Shopify a try, they offer a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Best For Professional Designers ($16 a month).
Some of its other Important features include:
You can add and edit content to your live site.
Invite additional group members to collaborate on a single dashboard.
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 support via email, Webflow community forum, and help center.
Integration with Zapier lets you connect with tools such as 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 provides customizable WordPress themes. These templates enable you to build websites inside of WordPress without the need for custom coding. It is powered by Flex block, a powerful free stream page builder, providing limitless customization options.
All the templates and themes include 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 measures, 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. Fortunately, most hosting services provide a one-click WordPress installation.
Finally, select a theme for your website 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 website, you can drop a message, and their team will do everything for you.
Flothemes can allow you to set up your site for only $499-$1999. Besides setting up your site from the start, they also provide services like page load 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 setup, Typography, color scheme stylization, and much more. You also get complete design freedom, SEO options, and a dashboard.
Pricing:
While their subjects cost a one-time $279, Flothemes offers three pricing strategies for their website 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, site layout setup, theme installation, WordPress transfer, website launching, etc..
The Advanced Setup Package includes full assistance with site setup, styling & launch, site speed optimization & an SEO consultation. Additional features include typography & color scheme stylization, SSL implementation, speed optimization, etc..
Pro Setup Package contains all the features from the Advanced Setup Package together with the tailored mockup & implementation for your homepage.
Best Website Tool with Integrated CRM Tools
HubSpot is a top-notch CRM tool that 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 using their pre-built templates.
Their drag-and-drop editor uses responsive design that will help 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 assortment of marketing software, including tools to manage email marketing, get found online, and capture, engage with and understand prospects.
By way of example, when you create a webpage, you can add calls-to-action and forms that convert visitors into leads. Then, when you understand your traffic, you can dynamically create content unique to site visitors based on their location, device, language, traffic source, or some other detail you choose to catch in your HubSpot CRM.
This integrated marketing suite covers all parts of the customer lifecycle:
Types, live chat, and conversational chatbots capture leads.
Email marketing, retargeting, and messenger integrations send customized messages to your leads.
Their contact builder, analytics tools, and record segmentation help you understand your own prospects.
Personalized experiences, calls-to-action, and smart content turns leads into customers.
Overall, if you’re looking for a website builder that also comes with a full-featured set of CRM and marketing tools, HubSpot is the ideal choice.
The World’s Most Popular CMS
Easiest Free Website Builder for Small Websites
Best Digital Advertising Website Builder for Local Businesses
A Personalized Website with the Power of AI
Best for Enormous Online Stores
Great for Photographers and Artists
Best for startups that want to make bootstrapped sites
Best Site Builder for Agencies and Multilingual Websites
What’s a Website Builder?
A website builder is a tool which allows anyone to manage a site and domain name without manual coding. 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 web, programmers needed to know HTML and CSS to create 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 information sites and ecommerce companies easily create websites 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. As there are 74 choices out there, I’ve condensed the list down to the very best so that you may choose the option that is right for your business or online brand.
If you are looking for the very best website builder overall, I recommend you get started using Wix.
For the best designs and templates, take a look at Squarespace.
If you will need an e-commerce site to sell products online, Shopify is a good choice.
What website builder do you use?