In this post, we will compare the following website builders. If you’re interested in a specific website creator, just check through the names to skip ahead.
- WordPress.org
- Constant Contact Website Builder
- Wix
- Gator by HostGator
- Domain.com
- BigCommerce
- Shopify
- WordPress.com
- Weebly
- Squarespace
- Dreamhost Website Builder
- GoDaddy Website Builder
Looking for the Best Website Builder — Here’s What to Look for?
Before comparing the top website builders, do we suggest that you write down what you want to do with your website? What are your ambitions and what features you would really like to see on your website?
For instance, you can write items like: blog, photo gallery, online store (eCommerce), booking system, contact form, SEO features, social media features, etc.
If you’re not sure what you really want, check out your competitors or other sites for inspiration.
Many website builders provide an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface to create your new website. You can enjoy the benefits of the trial accounts (free plans) or the generous money back guarantee to test it out before you make your final decision.
Next, you need to weigh your options for growth. Are you going to add daily updates to your website? In the future, will you be selling more items on your website?
You need to make sure that the website designer you select is able to fulfil your needs as your company expands.
Standards for our Best Website Builder Review
We helped more than 40,000+ users start a website and checked just about every website builder on the market.
We look at a variety of different parameters when evaluating the best site builder choices for each use-case, but our top five elements are:
- Ease of Use – We want to make sure that the website builder is easy to use for total beginners (non-techy users). It has to come with a drag-and-drop builder, versatile editing tools, and customization options.
- Pricing – Because it’s a competitive space, we’re looking for the website builder to deliver the best value for the price. We ask questions like providing a free domain, free SSL, free business email, free eCommerce features, etc. If not, how much does a small business owner have to spend on added extras/hidden costs?
- Designs & Features – We want to ensure that the website builder provides plenty of skilled website templates and makes it versatile to incorporate additional features such as Google Analytics, third-party marketing software, etc.
- Customer Support – Although we expect web builders to have an elegant, easy-to-use interface, we want to make sure that 24/7 customer support is available when needed.
- Data Ownership & Portability – Many newcomers don’t think about it, but being in the business for over two decades, we pay special attention to terms of service to ensure that you own your data, and it’s portable if you need to move.
That said however, let’s take a list of the top platform builder website to make your website without hiring a developer.
1. WordPress
WordPress.org (also known as self-hosted WordPress) is the most common website building platform in the world. About 39% of all websites on the Internet are operated by WordPress.
Note: Two versions of WordPress are available. WordPress.org and WordPress.com are self-hosted. We’ll talk about WordPress.com later in this post. You can also read our WordPress.org vs WordPress.com comparison for more information.
Self-hosted WordPress tops our list of best website builders due to its success, powerful features, scalability and ease of use.
WordPress is a free open source site builder. This means that you have the most control over your website compared to any other online site creator on this list.
Unlike some other website builders, you will need a WordPress hosting account to host your own website (this is a lot easier than it sounds).
Pros:
WordPress gives you full control of every aspect of your website and online presence. It can be used to create a website of any sort. For example, eCommerce stores, community forums, social networks, membership websites, basic websites, landing page, and more.
There are thousands of high-quality pre-made WordPress themes that you can use to build your website. It also has amazing drag-and-drop page builders like SeedProd, Beaver Builder and Divi that allow you to easily construct your own page templates using a drag-and-drop editor.
You will also have access to more than 58,000 free WordPress plugins. These are like WordPress applications that add additional functionality and features to your website, such as shopping cart, contact forms, google analytics, photo gallery, social media tools, live chat, CSS customization, etc.
WordPress is completely translated into hundreds of languages and can easily be used to build multilingual websites.
When you weigh all of the above advantages, WordPress is by far the cheapest website creator on the market.
It also comes with powerful SEO tools that search engines love, and this means that your website will still have the highest search engine rankings.
Cons:
You’re going to have to run your own website, which means you need to get acquainted with a new framework. This slight learning curve is quickly resolved by most users, but at the beginning it feels a little challenging.
You’ll still need to keep up with WordPress updates, plugin updates, and backups.
Prices:
Although WordPress is a free website creator, you will need a domain name and web hosting to get your website online, which normally costs $14.99 per year and $7.99 per month.
Luckily, we’ve worked out a special offer for users of Your Blog Masteer. You can start a website with Bluehost, an official WordPress hosting service, for just $2.75 per month. They give our users 60 percent off on web hosting that comes with free SSL certificate, free domain name, great uptime, and 24/7 phone support.
With such a special pricing, WordPress is one of the cheapest website builders on this small business list.
See our guide on how to build a website with step-by-step guidance for more information.
Note: WordPress works with all popular web hosting services and is actually recommended by several other companies, including GoDaddy, SiteGround, Dreamhost, etc.
2. Constant Contact Website Builder
Constant Contact Web Builder is an intelligent A.I. Driven website builder that lets you create your custom website within minutes. This is a dream come true for non-technical small business owners.
Pros
Constant Contact is considered to be the world’s leading email marketing service. After listening to small business issues, they have decided to develop a world class artificial intelligence website builder that will help you build a website in minutes (without writing any HTML code).
You can use their driven ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) wizard to create a fully customized web design with customized photos and content suggestions.
This intuitive drag-and-drop website builder makes it easy to customize the website layout. You can select over 550,000 free high quality photos from their library to make your website look visually beautiful.
All design templates are mobile-friendly, so your website will look fantastic on both desktop and mobile devices.
Since this is a hosted website solution, it’s a totally trouble-free website creator. They also offer 24/7 live phone support and chat support, which is great for small businesses.
Other features on the platform include logo builder, lead capture type, website analytics, eCommerce, and more.
The best thing about Constant Contact is that it’s a free site builder. This means that you can create a website, forum, logo, and even an online store using their free plan.
If you’re ready to make your website live or start selling, you’ll need to move to a paid plan.
Considering the features, Constant Contact is certainly one of the best professional website builders in this user-friendly list, comes with decent editing tools and SEO features at a great price.
Cons
The developer ecosystem is currently limited, so there are no third-party add-ons that you can install on your website to add new features that Constant Contact does not offer.
Just like any other website creator, if you want to connect a custom domain name, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. The good thing is that they provide you with many resources and third party integrations right on the platform to make your marketing more effective in reaching new and existing customers at a great price.
Pricing:
Constant Contact is a powerful free website builder that lets you create a website, blog, and even an online store. You can add unlimited web pages at no extra cost.
To get a domain name, make your website live, and start selling, you’ll need to buy a website builder package that costs $10 per month (or $8.50 per month if it’s prepaid annually).
All plans come with 24/7 live chat and telephone support.
If you’re planning to integrate email marketing, you may want to consider their Email Marketing or Email Marketing Plus plans, which come with all the features of the website builder combined with all the advanced marketing automation features.
Constant Contact is a perfect choice for small businesses who don’t want to use WordPress.
3. Wix
Wix.com is another common cloud-based app creator. It provides ease of use combined with a powerful collection of features that make it easy to create your website.
Pros
Wix website maker is a completely hosted network, so you won’t have to pay for your hosting. You have access to hundreds of models to choose from for the design of your website. Each template is completely editable with its intuitive drag-and-drop site builder.
Wix has also developed an Artificial Design Intelligence (Wix ADI) to design a beautiful website for you.
Besides lots of templates, Wix also comes with hundreds of free and paid applications that you can instal on your website. These apps allow you to add new functionality and features to your website. Some of them are developed by Wix, while others are created by third-party developers.
Wix provides their users a free plan with restricted bandwidth and storage space. You can as well use this free plan to test your drag-and-drop website builder. It does not include a domain name, so if you decide to keep your website, you will want to move to a premium plan.
Cons
Free and Link Domain plans can show Wix branded ads on your website. You’re going to need to upgrade to their Combo or Unlimited plan to remove those ads.
If you ever plan to move your website away from Wix, you’ll find it pretty difficult to do so.
wix’s connect Domain plan, which costs $9.16 a month, only lets you connect a custom domain name, so you’ll still have to purchase a domain name separately.
Pricing:
Wix provides a restricted free plan for a Wix sub-domain. You can attach a domain for $9.16 a month. Their combo plan begins at $14.95/month and will grant you a free domain name. The e-commerce plan for online retailers costs $26.25 a month.
4. Gator by HostGator
Gator is a popular web site builder developed by HostGator, one of the largest web hosting companies in the world. The Gator Builder is an all-in-one website building & hosting solution that makes it the ideal website builder for small businesses.
Pros
Gator is a fully hosted site, so you don’t need to worry about applications, upgrades, or backups.
You’ll get a simple website builder that lets you pick from 200+ professional website design templates. Every specification comes with simple customization options that can be configured by the builder itself.
Gator also offers you access to an integrated photo archive, so you can find and add beautiful images to your website.
All the paid plans include a free personalized domain name for your website. The eCommerce package also provides the opportunity to set up an online store and sell your items online.
Since Gator is a paid product, it does not sell your data or display any advertisements on your website.
Cons
Unlike some of the other choices on the list, Gator doesn’t have a free plan. They don’t give a free trial, either.
Like other proprietary website builders on the list, you cannot employ a developer to help you dramatically change your website design or add new features to your website.
Pricing:
Gator paid plans starting at $3.84 per month, $5.99 per month for the premium, and $9.22 for the eCommerce package. It is definifely one of the cheapest website builders on the list.
Gator may be used to create a small business website, a limited object shop, or a photo gallery. However, it doesn’t meet the power of WordPress, the most common website builder.
5. Domain.com Website Builder
Domain.com provides an easy-to-use website builder that helps you to develop a small business website, blog, and even an eCommerce website with only a few clicks.
Pros
Domain.com provides a simple drag-and-drop website builder to build your website. You can start with one of their hundreds of professionally built models and customize them using a simple drag-and-drop interface to fit your brand.
All Domain.com site builder models are designed for smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. This means that your website is going to look fantastic on all platforms.
It brings all the powerful features you expect from a well-known website builder, including: website analytics, eCommerce functionality, the ability to add a blog to any website, and a free SSL certificate with all plans.
With their eCommerce plan, you’ll also get inventory management, tax management, coupons & discounts, and several other powerful features.
They also offer live chat and mobile customer service for technical assistance, so you can get started quickly.
Cons
Unlike other common website builders, the web builder of Domain.com does not have a free website builder option. They don’t give a free trial, either. However, they give a money back guarantee in case you’re not satisfied with the purchase.
Their ecosystem extension is tiny, and you won’t be able to hire a developer to create advanced features like WordPress because it isn’t open source.
Because it’s a proprietary platform, it’s going to be difficult to move the website from the Domain.com website creator.
Finally, their starter package limits you to just 6 pages of the website. You need at least their business plan for unlimited websites.
Pricing:
Domain.com Website Builder plans start at $1.99 per month for Beginner, $6.99 per month for Business, and $12.99 per month for eCommerce plans.
All of the plans come with a free SSL certificate, unlimited storage, blog functionality, and phone support.
If you’re searching for a skilled web builder, then the web builder of Domain.com is a great choice. However, if you want advanced features and more control over your content, nothing can beat WordPress (option #1 in our list).
6. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is the best eCommerce website builder on the market. If you’re looking to build an online store that scales, BigCommerce is your platform. It comes with all the critical features built-in, so you can keep your overhead low and your margins high.
Pros
BigCommerce is a completely hosted eCommerce solution, so you don’t need to worry about website speed, security, or updates. They’re doing the server and the technical side for you, so you can concentrate on growing your company.
Unlike many other hosted eCommerce solutions, BigCommerce has a native WordPress integration that allows you to leverage WordPress’ versatility while taking advantage of BigCommerce’s headless eCommerce strength. Simply put, your website will be fast and safe no matter how much traffic you get.
BigCommerce integrates with all common payment gateways like PayPal, PayPal, Apple Pay, Square, Amazon Pay, Visa Checkout, Chase Pay, Ayden, and more. Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce does not charge a transaction fee for you to use these payment gateways.
You can begin with one of their many pre-made website templates and customise them to suit your needs by using their simple drag & drop website builder.
BigCommerce comes with several built-in features to manage conversion rate optimization, such as cart abandonment, enhanced product search, product feedback, discounts, and more. You can swiftly connect to third-party apps directly from their app store for additional functionality.
The best part of it is their dashboard that let’s you see the metrics to help you develop your company with confidence.
Cons
If you’re just starting out, you’ll find BigCommerce pricing a little higher than other site builders in the chart.
Because it’s a proprietary network, it’s going to be difficult to switch from BigCommerce.
Pricing
BigCommerce comes with a 15-day trial free of charge on all plans. Their basic plans are $29.95 a month, which comes with all the key features you’ll need. You can upgrade to a plus package that costs $79.95 per month for extra conversion enhancement functionality. Their pro plan costs $249.95 a month, and has all the advanced features you may need.
The best thing about BigCommerce compared to Shopify and other third-party eCommerce sites is that they have a smooth WordPress integration that can be a massive plus if you want to integrate BigCommerce’s power with WordPress’s versatility.
This is one of the major reasons why BigCommerce is ranked high on our best site builder list.
7. Shopify
Shopify is another successful eCommerce website builder specially built for online stores and eCommerce websites. It powers more than half a million companies and 1 million active users. About $40 billion worth of items has been offered on the Shopify Website.
Pros
Shopify is an all-in-one fully hosted solution, which means you don’t have to worry about handling applications, downloading updates, or maintaining backups. Shopify is doing all that for you.
It provides an integrated payment solution called Shopify Payments that allows you to accept credit cards. You may also add payment gateways for third parties to accept payments.
As an ecommerce site builder, Shopify comes with complete inventory management, infinite items, powerful stats, simple marketing solutions, all neatly bundled under one roof. They’ve got lots of templates to choose from, and you’re never going to need to add coding.
With its intuitive drag-and-drop user interface, Shopify makes it super-easy to set up a fully fledged e-commerce store. They also deliver in-store POS, which enables you to sell goods at your place, while accepting all credit cards and taking advantage of Shopify’s inventory, delivery, marketing, and state management resources.
You can also incorporate Shopify into WordPress, allowing both fantastic solutions to be used at the same time.
Cons
If you’re just starting out, you could find Shopify’s pricing a bit higher than some of the other site builders in this list.
If you ever want to switch your website away from Shopify, you’re going to find it pretty hard to do so.
Pricing
Shopify’s basic plan is going to cost you $29 a month. You can upgrade to Shop for $79 per month or to Advanced Shop for $299 per month. Shopify also provides a $9 per month Shopify Lite plan, which essentially allows you to add a purchase button to any website.
If you want to create a free eCommerce website, then Shopify can be the perfect choice for you.
8. WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a blogging and web hosting service run by Automattic. It is developed by Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of Open Source WordPress software, hence the name WordPress.com. For more detail, see our article on how WordPress.com and WordPress.org are connected.
However, WordPress.com is not the same as WordPress.org. Please see our WordPress.com vs WordPress.org comparison for more information.
Pros
WordPress.com is a web hosting site designed on top of the same WordPress software but with a completely personalized user interface. You don’t have to think about the apps and backups that WordPress.com takes care of.
Their free and premium plans have different features. All of the plans allow users to choose from hundreds of free and paid WordPress themes. You can then use the built-in customizer to add the title of your site, use widgets, add navigation menus, and so on.
It doesn’t provide the same drag-and-drop features as other website builders. However, you can easily customise the designs to some degree.
It comes with powerful editing tools that bloggers find very helpful.
Cons
You can’t add custom plugins or themes unless you update to their business plan.
Premium and lower-level plans do not have the features of eCommerce or third-party ad network support. With a business plan, you can use WooCommerce and ad networks from third parties. However, you will also have to follow the terms and conditions of WordPress.com.
Pricing
The basic free plan is very limited. Their personal plan begins with $4 a month billed annually and includes a personalised domain. Premium plan costs $8.25 a month paid annually and allows you the opportunity to monetize your platform and customise your advanced design. Business plan costs $24.92 a month paid annually, which allows you the right to provide Ecommerce and custom plugins.
9. Weebly
Weebly is an easy-to-use website creator with loads of fantastic templates and features. It includes a beautifully designed page builder that helps you to edit your website without learning any coding skills.
Pros
Weebly is a completely hosted website, so you don’t need to instal or maintain any apps. They’re taking care of hosting the website and handling all the software that runs on the backend.
It comes with hundreds of website templates to be used as a starting point for your website. These beautiful templates can be entirely edited using Weebly’s live page editor.
Weebly also comes with integrated support for e-commerce. This helps you to quickly create an online store and start selling it.
Each website comes with built-in features for contact forms, photo galleries, sliders, and more. This helps you to quickly add functionality to your site without any complicated setup process.
With ease of use and great features, Weebly is consistently ranked as one of the best DIY website builders for beginners.
Cons
Weebly.com offers a completely hosted website, so you’re locked into the services they provide. You cannot employ a developer or designer to add new features or features to your website.
Weebly charges 3 percent transaction fees for any purchase made through your e-commerce store. You will need to upgrade to their business plan to stop these extra fees.
Pricing
Weebly comes up with a very simple free plan. Their paid plans start at $8 per month billed annually. The pro plan costs $12 per month, and the company plan costs $25 per month.
10. Squarespace
Squarespace is a popular professional website builder known for its excellent design and ease of use.
Pros
Squarespace comes with an enterprise-grade platform to host the website. This stable and robust platform helps you to concentrate on expanding your company without thinking about hosting.
Squarespace contains a lot of website templates to get started. All of these designs are fully prepared for all forms of material. They are entirely editable, and Squarespace also enables several models to be used for the same website at once.
Adding content to your website is simple on Squarespace. Only point anywhere on your web and start typing. You can conveniently drag and drop objects on pages to create your own templates in a matter of minutes.
Squarespace also offers an e-commerce plan that allows you to add an online store to your website. It offers a nice gui for managing your items, inventory, orders, coupon discounts, and more.
Cons
Squarespace provides limited integration with third-party providers, which may be a hindrance to your business’ growth.
Their e-commerce plans only allow the payment processing of Stripe, Apple Pay and PayPal. No additional payment gateways can be added.
Pricing
Most Squarespace website plan start at $12 per month and $18 per month. Their online stores start at $26 and $40 per month.
Squarespace is a beautifully built platform that provides easy-to-use features. It can be great if you just want to create a website quickly.
11. Dreamhost Website Builder
DreamHost Web Builder is a modern Web Builder app that is developed on top of WordPress. It is available as part of all DreamHost hosting plans that start as low as $2.59/month with a free domain making it the cheapest website builder on our list.
Pros
DreamHost WordPress Web Builder is built on top of WordPress, powered by BoldGrid, so you get the full advantage of WordPress with a personalized user interface. DreamHost’s website builder allows you to select a professional template from their theme gallery.
After that, you can customize certain designs with a drag-and-drop customizer. You can point and click on any object in the preview section to change its properties. You can easily change colours, fonts, backgrounds, navigation menus, and widgets.
Do you need a staging website? The BoldGrid creator of DreamHost builds one for you with a single click. This helps you to test your new designs, models, plugins, and themes before making them live for anyone to see.
It comes with a full WYSIWYG page editor, too. No more guess work when editing your WordPress pages. You’ll get exactly what you see in the editor window of your website. You can also use GridBlocks to simply drag and drop things to your page and create your own templates from scratch.
The DreamHost WP site builder can be used to create any sort of website with a custom domain name. Since it’s based on WordPress, it’s simple to add blogging features, strong SEO and social networking features, eCommerce features, and more.
All DreamHost Web Builder themes are ready for WooCommerce. This helps you to quickly create a storefront using their drag-and-drop website builder.
Cons
DreamHost WP website creator runs on top of WordPress, but you’ll also need a WordPress.org self-hosted website to use it.
But the positive part of it is that WordPress comes pre-installed for all DreamHost plans. You will also get other powerful features included with DreamHost.
DreamHost doesn’t come with a free plan, but they do offer a 97 day money back guarantee.
Pricing
DreamHost WP Web Builder is available as part of all DreamHost plans starting at as low as $2.59 per month for 1 Web site.
Your Blog Master readers also get a free domain, free SSL certificate, and free domain privacy with the Starter DreamHost package, which also comes with a 97 day money back guarantee.
This makes DreamHost one of the most accessible web builders on the market.
12. GoDaddy Website Builder
GoDaddy is one of the biggest domain and hosting service providers in the world. They provide a simple website builder with hosting included.
Pros
GoDaddy Website Builder is a quick and easy-to-use application for building professional-looking websites. It comes pre-loaded with a few ready-to-use blocks that you can drag and drop to create different layouts.
It also has a built-in photo gallery of professional Getty Photography photos that can be used on your website. You can upload pictures of your own and create galleries of photographs as well.
Website builder for GoDaddy also operates on smaller screens. This allows you to use your cell phone or tablet to work on your website on the go.
Cons
Just Like most other website builders on this list, it is not as feature-rich and versatile. With little fewer design options, it provides a small collection of features.
Moving your website from GoDaddy Website Builder to WordPress is very difficult.
Pricing
The personal plan is $5.99/month, the business plan is $9.99/month, and the business plus plan is $14.99/month. The two plans are billed on a yearly basis.
The GoDaddy Website Builder can be used for a simple website with a few pages of content. However, creating rich content websites is not a good option.
Our Pick for The Best Website Builder
After carefully reviewing all common online website builders, we conclude that WordPress.org outperforms all web builders with overall efficiency, ease of use, price and versatility.
WordPress is an excellent choice for both beginners and business websites. Some of the world’s biggest brands use WordPress for their websites.
If you want to create your website with the best web builder, use Bluehost to get started with WordPress. This is definitely our #1 pick.
You can read our step-by-step guide on how to build a website with comprehensive instructions.
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Disclaimer: To help avoid the option of paralysis, we just compared the top 12 website builder platforms. This list does not include other website builder platforms such as Site123, Duda, Jimdo, SiteBuilder, Webflow, Format, Carrd, Ucraft, Google Sites, Webs, 1&1, Adobe Muse, Yola, Web.com, Webnode, etc. because we think the solutions presented in this article are just superior.
