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17 Best Site Builders: Wix, Squarespace, and More (2021)
Choosing the best site builder can be hard, because there are 74 popular options to choose from.
In this guide, I rated and reviewed the best website builders to make a website based on price, reliability, web hosting services, technical assistance, site speed, SEO, features, ease of use, template design, and much more.
We’ll also compare:
The best website contractors for small companies.
The ideal free and affordable options.
The ones with the best SEO.
The best platforms with online shop capabilities.
The very top builders for agencies.
And the best choices for photographers and artists.
What is the Best Website Builder?
Using a site builder is a quick and easy way to construct a presence for your brand or online business. These tools simplify your site management by combining domain registration, hosting, and site design into one platform.
If you are not too knowledgeable about web design and development, you’ll want to go with an easy 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 available on the 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 advanced design features like video and animation backgrounds.
In case you already have a domain on GoDaddy or need to register one at Wix.com, they make it super easy. Additionally, 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 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 website tool on the market. You can almost always customize the appearance and feel of your site 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 site and uses that information to design a site tailored to your precise needs.
This tool leverages AI selecting from billions of combinations of pictures, text, designs, and contact forms.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for the best site builder for small companies, Wix is your best option.
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 companies to tell their unique stories online.
Overall, they are famous for speed and simplicity.
With Zyro, you can create a company website quickly and easily with no coding required. Your website also loads fast because of its light framework 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 offers SEO-friendly content ideas based on your industry and specific business type.
To begin with this tool, you choose your type of organization, then write 2-3 sentences describing your brand and context. You then correct your AI settings and customize them based on length, expertise, and creativity degree. Last, you click on 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 search engine optimization tools to improve 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 predict visitor behavior.
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 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 plan 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” program permits 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 really popular plan that’s most acceptable for small and medium-sized businesses.
Finally, their “Unleashed” program provides every Zyro attribute and gives unlimited storage and bandwidth. At this affordable price of $3.49/month, it makes sense to go for this program and enjoy the unlimited features if you’re planning to have a lot of content on your site.
Overall, Zyro is ideal for small businesses looking to create and grow a website fast, 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 check out their platform, then upgrade to a paid plan when you are 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 right for 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 look excellent down to every detail. The fonts, color schemes, and vision all mesh perfectly for any website.
Besides design, their stage is wonderful for bloggers. I tested out their WYSIWYG blog editor, and it is very intuitive.
You drag elements like images, headings, and text on the page and place it where you want. They also offer multiple user permissions, Google AMP performance, and you can schedule your articles:
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 double indexing could potentially result in SEO and duplicate content problems down the road. They didn’t have an easy fix the last time I checked.
Second, your blog headlines 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 steady data on-site visitors if you are not using Google Analytics. Plus, it’s hard to go wrong with a beautifully-designed site for just $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 plan provides a free domain name, unlimited bandwidth and storage, free SSL, and 24/7 customer service.
In general, if you are a small business that needs first-rate web design or a blogger that wants your content to look great, Squarespace is a reliable choice.
Best Free Website Builder (Free — $25/month)
Weebly powers over 530,000 domain names and is known as the easy site builder of choice for people without much technical expertise. They offer a lot 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 allow you to send newsletters to your subscribers from inside their tool.
They have a free program which includes 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 get Weebly branding throughout your website. Also, the free plan only includes chat and email support, but no phone service.
Weebly’s paid plans range from $5 to $25 per month. On the high end, their Business Plan gets you innovative 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 providers.
The level of customer support you receive is based on your subscription level. You’ll find assistance yourself in many areas, including their blog, service centre, community discussion, social networking, and developer documentation. They also have live chat, email, and telephone support.
If you’re searching for a simple website 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 businesses 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 app partners.
While not every site owner needs product-selling functionality, I added Shopify to the list because any small business could use them to install their site.
Take a salon for instance.
With Shopify, not only could you set up a quick website including a blog, a map of your location, contact information, 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, such as hosting, your own domain name, 70+ professional topics, a free SSL certificate, and marketing and SEO features.
They also offer mobile commerce, 100+ payment gateways, automated carrier shipping rates, automatic 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 might choose to sell products online in the future, it is far better to begin with Shopify rather than another instrument that does not take online shopping as seriously.
They offer three plans ranging from $29/month to $299/month. The $29/month Fundamental Shopify Plan should give website owners everything they want, 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 offer 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 edit and add content to your live site.
Invite additional team 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 care via 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 website with eCommerce support.
Finest 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 sites inside of WordPress with no need for custom coding. It is powered by Flex block, a potent free flow page builder, providing limitless customization choices.
All the templates and themes include premade layouts and content blocks. You may also customize colors, fonts, the structure of the page, and more.
Flothemes help you build your website in a few measures, including:
Register a domain name and hosting service provider for your website. You can even check Flothemes cloud hosting services, starting at $26 a month.
Install WordPress.org and join it to your web site hosting. Luckily, most hosting services offer a one-click WordPress setup.
Finally, pick a theme for your website or portfolio.
You can see several how-to tutorials by Flothemes or contact the customer support team.
If you need assistance setting up the whole website, you can drop a message, and their staff will do everything for you.
Flothemes can help you set up your website for just $499-$1999. Besides setting up your site from the start, they also offer 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 strategies for their website setup services, including:
Simple Setup Package: $499
Advanced setup packs: $999
Pro Setup packages: $1,999
The Easy Setup Package helps you skip the technical components and jump directly to adding content and personalizing your motif. It offers features like WordPress installation, site layout setup, theme setup, WordPress transfer, website launching, etc..
The Advanced Setup Package includes full assistance with website setup, styling & launching, site speed optimization & an search engine optimization consultation. Additional features include typography & color scheme stylization, SSL implementation, speed optimization, etc..
Pro Installation Package contains all of the features in the Advanced Setup Package together with the tailored mockup & implementation for your homepage.
Best Site Tool with Integrated CRM Tools
HubSpot is a topnotch CRM tool that also includes a full-featured CMS and website builder. Using their platform, you can create website pages, blog posts, landing pages from scratch or with their pre-built templates.
Their drag-and-drop editor uses responsive design to help you create webpages that look great on any device. Where HubSpot stands out is its personalization and integrations.
Unlike other tools on this listing, HubSpot comes integrated with a broad assortment of marketing software, including tools to manage email advertising, get found online, and catch, engage with and understand leads.
For instance, when you make a webpage, you may add calls-to-action and forms that convert visitors into prospects. Then, when you know your visitors, you can dynamically create content unique to website visitors based on their location, device, language, traffic source, or some other detail you choose to capture on your HubSpot CRM.
This integrated marketing suite covers all parts of the customer lifecycle:
Forms, live chat, and conversational chatbots capture leads.
Email marketing, retargeting, and messenger integrations send personalized messages to your leads.
Their contact report builder, analytics tools, and record segmentation help you understand your leads.
Personalized experiences, calls-to-action, and smart content turns leads into clients.
Overall, if you’re seeking a site builder that also includes a full-featured set of CRM and marketing tools, HubSpot is the best alternative.
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 create 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 site and domain name without manual programming. In other words, a website builder is a tool or software program that will help you build a website.
In the old days of the web, programmers needed to know HTML and CSS to create a website. Today, if you wish to code a site, there’s a steep learning curve — you need to have extensive knowledge of JavaScript and PHP. Not so with website builders.
These tools help everyone from small businesses and bloggers to news sites and ecommerce companies easily create websites 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 website 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 options out there, I’ve condensed the list down to the very best 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 site builder complete, I recommend you begin 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?