Best Website Builders

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

We’ve built and managed hundreds of websites over the last decade using just about every website platform for various projects and use cases. Based on our experiences, Wix is the best website builder for most because it’s beginner-friendly, incredibly easy to use, affordable, and versatile enough for any type of website. From business websites to blogs, personal online diaries, online wedding invitations, and ecommerce stores, it’s an excellent choice across the board.

The Best Website Builder for Most

If you’re looking for a fast and affordable way to build your next website, Wix is the way to go. You can choose from more than 700+ pre-made templates or leverage Wix’s ADI tool to automatically build your website in a matter of minutes.

Its drag-and-drop interface is suitable for everyone, even complete beginners. Plus, you can create any type of website including an online store, a blog, or a business site.

The 5 Best Website Builder Options to Consider

1. Wix – Best website builder for most users
2. Squarespace – Best website builder for creatives
3. Shopify – Best e-commerce website builder
4. WordPress – Best for bloggers and content creators
5. Weebly – Best free website builder

When it Make Sense to Invest into a Website Builder

You can invest in a website builder as soon as you’re ready to start creating a website. And in most cases, there’s little to no upfront investment to get started.

Yep, you can build a website for free. And aside from WordPress, all of the options on this list don’t require you to buy web hosting services. So you don’t have to worry about the tech side of connecting things on the backend of your website.

Keep in mind that while you can start for free, you eventually need to upgrade to a paid plan if you want a professional website. You can upgrade after your trial period or right before you’re ready to launch.

In the meantime, you can experiment with different website builders to get a feel for them before paying anything.

#1 – Wix — The Best Website Builder for Most

Wix is our top recommendation for most users. It’s extremely affordable and easily customizable. Plus, it’s entirely drag-and-drop, making it perfect for beginners and non-technical users.

Wix’s ease-of-use is seriously second to none.

With no design, coding, or website development skills, you can get your website up and running in less than an hour. Or even faster if you use the Wix ADI tool.

All you have to do is answer a few questions, decide what pages you want to have, and let the artificial intelligence software do the rest. It’s a huge time-saver and requires no technical know-how on your part.

If you don’t want to use the ADI tool, all you have to do is choose a template, add the pages you need, and customize your template using the drag-and-drop builder.

Plus, Wix’s templates are mobile-friendly, SEO friendly, and you have over 500 options to choose from.

Despite its simplicity, Wix is also incredibly flexible. You can build any type of website, including an ecommerce store, a blog, a creative portfolio, menus, scheduling tools, and more.

Seriously. If you can imagine it, you can build it with Wix.

Pricing for a personal website starts at just $13 per month. Business and ecommerce sites start at $23 per month. But you have to go with a business plan if you want to accept online payments in any capacity.

With that said, you can start using Wix for free. Actually, you can build and launch your entire site with Wix without ever paying a dime. 

But unfortunately, your domain won’t look professional because you’re stuck with a Wix subdomain—yourwixusername.wixsite.com/yoursitename.

It’s long, messy, and unprofessional. Which… is fine if you’re just messing around and getting used to the platform. But once you’re ready to go live, I highly recommend upgrading to a premium plan so you can connect your own domain name.

Sign up for a free account to get started with Wix today!

#2 – Squarespace — Best Website Builder For Creatives

Squarespace is the perfect website builder for creatives professionals, like artists, musicians, designers, and photographers.

Why? Because Squarespace’s templates and overall design aesthetic is perfect for visual-heavy businesses interested in displaying their work in a fun and creative way.

Plus, getting started is incredibly easy. All you have to do is choose a template, customize it using the drag-and-drop builder, and hit publish.

It’s seriously that easy.

Plus, the drag-and-drop editor is probably one of the easiest to use.

However, you do sacrifice a bit of design freedom in exchange for ease of use. With that said, Squarespace’s pre-built templates are beautiful and ready to go out of the box.

So, you won’t need to do much customization (aside from adding your own images and text) before you launch.

Once you get up and running, Squarespace gives you the tools required to turn your website into a tool that sells your services and products for you.

You can easily add a beautifully-designed e-commerce store, learn more about your customers using detailed analytics, and integrate your website with various marketing channels.

Squarespace pricing starts at $12 per month for the most basic plan.

However, if you want built-in ecommerce functionality, business plans start at $18 per month.

It’s important to note that Squarespace keeps 3% of every transaction on the basic e-commerce plan. But you can upgrade to a higher tier to avoid those transaction fees if they become too expensive.

Sign up for a 14-day free trial to take Squarespace for a test drive today!

#3 -Shopify — The Best Website Builder For Ecommerce

Shopify is arguably the most well-known ecommerce platform on the market today. But in addition to supporting ecommerce transactions and facilitating sales online, Shopify is also a website builder.

If you’re starting a new ecommerce site from scratch, Shopify will be your best option.

As an all-in-one solution, you can use Shopify to find a business name and create a brand using free tools. Once you build your online store, Shopify makes it easy to sell from anywhere. In addition to your website, you can sell via social media, online marketplaces, and even in-person with Shopify POS software.

To build an ecommerce store with Shopify, simply create a theme and customize it with your content. 

Shopify has a mix of free and paid themes for everyone. From minimalist styles to big imagery, grid style, 3D products, and large inventories, you’ll be able to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Customize your site by adding features and functionality from the 3,200+ integrations available on the Shopify App Store.

If you need some extra assistance, you can connect with a Shopify expert to help set up your store or get everything optimized for search engines. You’ll also benefit from award-winning support 24/7.

Shopify has three plans, starting at $29, $79, and $299 per month, respectively. You’ll have to pay extra for some app integrations and themes.

The only real downside of using Shopify as a website builder is the fact that it’s so niche-specific. It’s only made for building ecommerce websites.

If you’re starting an ecommerce business, set up a Shopify account and try it free for 90 days.  

#4 – WordPress.com — Best For Bloggers and Content Creators

WordPress is the most popular CMS platform in the world. It powers more than one-third of the entire Internet, and we use it here at Crazy Egg.

With that said, there are two versions of WordPress—an open-source version, and an all-in-one site builder. We use the open-source version because it comes with advanced customization capabilities.

You can learn more about it at WordPress.org (but be warned, it’s not for the faint of heart unless you’re familiar with building websites).

However, the all-in-one site builder is much easier to learn if you’re just getting started. It comes with everything you need to launch your website out of the box, including web hosting, a free domain for the first year, and dozens of free themes to choose from.

The lower pricing tiers are a bit limited, but they’re an excellent place to start if you’ve never built a website before.

There’s even a free forever plan you can use to try it out for as long as you’d like. You can’t connect your own domain and you’re stuck with WordPress ads, but it’s an excellent way to take the platform for a test drive before investing.

The higher tiers is where things start getting more interesting. On the Business Plan and higher, you can install plugins to add functionality to your website.

There are more than 50,000+ plugins you can use, making the possibilities the endless. From integrations to ecommerce functionality, SEO tools, and automatic translations, there’s seriously a plugin for everything.

Plus, you also get unlimited premium themes with more advanced customization options and design control.

With WordPress, you can easily create new blog posts with the Gutenberg editor, schedule them to go live whenever you’d like, and monitor each post’s performance with easy-to-understand analytics.

All without ever touching a line of code.

Paid plans start at $4 per month, but to get the full functionality from WordPress, you need the Business Plan at $25 per month.

#5 – Weebly — The Best Free Website Builder

Weebly is another well known and popular website builder. Like most of the options on our list, you can use it to create a website for free.

But Weebly’s free plan goes above and beyond other free plans on the market. Just for signing up, you’ll get a free SSL certificate, 500 MB of storage, free hosting, SEO tools, lead capture forms, live chat support, and email support. 

Unfortunately, the free website builder is branded with a Weebly subdomain. So it’s not a long-term solution. But it’s a great option for those of you who are just starting out. 

Weebly has a drag-and-drop site builder, which makes it easy for anyone to create and customize a website from scratch.

You’ll benefit from features like site search, custom fonts, video backgrounds, and an image editor. 

Weebly also gives you custom HTML/CSS and Javascript access. So if you have a developer or want to make changes to your site’s code, you’ll have that option. 

If you look at the other choices on our list, Weebly can be described as a blend of all four. It’s very good for basically every category. It has the drag-and-drop functionality of Wix, ecommerce capability like Shopify, beautiful designs like Squarespace, and HTML access like WordPress.

But head-to-head, I don’t think Weebly really edges out any of these particular platforms in a specific category. 

If you’re a beginner and want to start building a website for free, Weebly is top option to consider. Premium plans start at just $6 per month. 

Methodology For Choosing The Best Website Builder

All website builders are not created equally. So how can you find the best website builder for your unique situation?

There are certain factors that you should look for when evaluating a prospective platform. I’ll explain the methodology that we use and recommend here at Crazy Egg. You can weigh these elements according to your personal needs. 

Ease of Use

Creating a website from scratch doesn’t need to be challenging. If you don’t have any development or design experience, you’ll definitely want to go with a drag-and-drop site editor.

Wix will be your best option here. But Squarespace, Shopify, and Weebly all have drag-and-drop builders as well. To get this type of building functionality with WordPress, you’ll need to install a plugin. But it will ultimately fall short if you’re comparing it head to head with a platform like Wix.

Overall, Wix will be the easiest option. You can use AI technology to automatically build a custom website for you. The entire process takes just a few minutes.

Customization

The process of creating a website using a site builder is pretty standard from platform to platform. You’ll start with a theme and template before making custom changes from there. 

While these themes and templates will give you the flexibility to add images, text, videos, and other content, there will always be some level of restriction in terms of what you can customize.

For most of us, that’s not a problem. But if you want total control for complete customization and content management, WordPress will be the best option to consider. 

Website Type

What type of site are you creating? The answer will depend on which website builder will accommodate your needs.

Shopify is the clear winner for ecommerce sites. For portfolios and sites for creative professionals, use Squarespace. WordPress is the best option for bloggers and content websites.

Small businesses and everyone else will lean towards Wix. If you don’t like Wix for some reason, Weebly is a good runner-up for beginners that need simplicity. 

Support

When it comes to something as important as your website, customer support is crucial. If your site is having problems and you need assistance, you’ll want to get in touch with someone who can solve your issue as soon as possible.

Most website builders offer 24/7 customer support. But to get the most out of that support, you’ll need to be on a premium plan. Weebly offers email and live chat support with all free plans, but you won’t get that benefit from every platform.

If you want an extensive knowledge base with self-help guides, tutorials, and access to forums, WordPress is perfect for you. But they don’t have the traditional type of customer support you’d get from Wix or Shopify. 

Pricing

Building a website doesn’t need to be expensive. In fact, three of the five options on our list (Wix, WordPress, Weebly) allow you to create a website for free—all five let you start for free.

A free website builder is not a long term solution. It’s a great way to get started, but you’ll definitely need to upgrade if you want to build a legitimate website. 

The price will depend on the features required to run your website. For example, plans for ecommerce functionality cost more than plans for a basic personal site.

Look beyond the cost of your website builder subscription for any additional costs that will be incurred. For example, with WordPress, you’ll need to get a domain name and web hosting service from other providers. With Shopify, you might have to pay for a theme or apps that you’re integrating with your online store. 

Summary

Ready to build a new website? It all starts with choosing a website builder. For most users, Wix is an excellent place to start. Plus, you can try it out for free before you pay to see if it’s a good fit.

However, each website builder on the market today is unique. The right choice for you might not be the best for me. Whether you’re starting a blog, ecommerce site, online portfolio, personal site, small business website, or anything else, there’s an option for you on this list.

Use the methodology that I’ve described in this guide to find the best website builder for your needs.