Best Website Builder

Starting a website for your small business, online store or blog is in your mind? But the problem is that you don’t know how to create a website as you are not a web developer or coder and still you want to create a professional website without hiring website developers.

You can do that by using website builders. You don’t know what a website builder is?

What is a website builder?

Website builder is a complete package consisting of different tools that can help you to create beautiful professional looking websites for you. They can be online or offline. These tools are a perfect solution for small business, blogging, portfolios, online stores, photographers, hotels and restaurants, as well as clubs and associations.

The major advantage of a website builder is that it comes with different themes or templates for different businesses. You can choose any of these themes and start modifying the images and content according to your business. This makes super easy for you to create a website without starting from blank slate. 

If you search in Google about the best website builders, you will find hundreds of results. How do you know which is the best for you? 

Best website builder for you?

I have tested most of the popular website builders available in the market before writing this article. In this article, I will walk you through pros and cons of most popular website builders available in the market.

Want to know the answer directly? Wix is the most popular builder for most of the people.

I will take you through below The best 11 popular website builders in this article after testing more than 30 website builders personally available in the market. If you are interested in any particular one, then you can jump to that directly by clicking on the name below.

• Wix 
• WordPress
• Squarespace
• Ucraft
• Shopify
• Webflow
• Weebly
• Godaddy website builder
• Bigcommerce
• Constant Contact website builder
• Duda

What to consider before making final decisions?

Before choosing the best website builder, my suggestion is that first you note down the goal of your website, the features required to accomplish it. 

For example, you can note down things like the blog section, photo gallery, image slider, contact form, login section, payment system etc.

Not sure about the sections you require for your website? I am sure that you have gone through your competitor sites, if not search for your competitor sites and analyze them, surely you will get some idea about the layout of the website.

Most of the website builders offer drag and drop facilities for above mentioned features along with many others. You may take the advantage of the trial period the website builders are providing and make the final decision if you want to continue with it.

While creating a website, you should always keep scalability in your mind. Can the builder provide the support if your business grows? For example, you want to add more selling products, more sections or regular updates like blogs on your website. 

Now let’s check out each of the above website builders in depth which will surely help you out to choose the best website builder out there in the market.

#1. Wix

Wix is the most popular website builder out there with 110m users. It is a cloud-based web development platform that was first developed and marketed by an Israeli company named Wix. It offers users easy to use combined with a powerful set of features to easily create HTML5 websites through the online drag and drop tool.

It is very easy to create a website using Wix builder which provides lots of options to its user including 500+ themes. They provide a variety of features including an App Market for even more features and integrations. You will find plenty of free and paid apps there in the App Market. Some of these Apps are created by Wix itself and the rest all are created by third parties.

This builder offers a free plan with limited storage and bandwidth. With the free plan, you can test drive their drag and drop website builder. The free plan does not include domain name still you use Wix free website, the URL of the website will look like this:

username.wixsite.com/siteaddress  

In our case it will be ebloggingtools.wixsitecom/ebloggingtools

You can see how weird it looks. So, you might be interested in using a custom domain. For this facility, Wix charges $5 per account per month or about half with the annual plan. You can also connect your google analytics and email account with your domain. 

Their combo plan starts with $13 per month (billed annually). It’s ad-free, including a domain for 1 year and hosting. An unlimited plan costs $17 per month which is best for large projects providing unlimited bandwidth, 10GB storage. Wix’s cheapest eCommerce plan is Business Basic which costs $23/mo.

You will also get an SSL certificate with every plan of Wix but you need to turn it on for your website.

One of the major differences between Wix and other website builders is that it is an unstructured editor. That means, most of the website builders support limiting you dragging and dropping within a predesigned grid whereas in Wix you can drag and drop elements anywhere on the page. This way Wix provides great flexibility to the user.

To create a Wix website, just click on “Create Website”.  Immediately a question will be asked: What kind of website do you want to create? After that, the AI will help you out to create your website based on your requirements (You can opt-out and go all alone to create your website from the blank editor). 

Till now, I have discussed all the good things in Wix. Let’s now check out a few cons of the Wix website builder.

As mentioned earlier, using the free and connect domain plan, you can connect your custom domain to the Wix website. Still, you will find Wix branded ads on your website. However, you can remove these ads by upgrading to their Combo or Unlimited plan.

If you ever decide to move out to Wix, the process is complicated. For example, if you want to move into WordPress in the future, you have to start building your website from scratch.

Having said that Wix can be a perfect choice for small business and website owners who want to build websites with zero coding knowledge. 

#2. WordPress

More than one-third of the websites on the internet are powered by WordPress, by this, you can understand the popularity of WordPress. It is one of the most popular content management systems in the world. Originally started for making blog websites, now you can create any kind of website using WordPress from eCommerce to restaurant websites or full online newspapers. 

Actually there are two versions of WordPress available out there. They are WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

WordPress.org is a self-hosted WordPress where you need to buy a domain and hosting yourself. On the other hand, WordPress.com is like other website builders on this page. It comes with hosting, domain registration, built-in plugin, automatic software updates, security, a selection of themes, and dedicated support. 

This makes our life easier. Otherwise, you have to find and do everything yourself. 

WordPress.com has one free plan and 5 premium plans.

• Free – Limited resources 
• Personal – $48 per year
• Premium – $96 per year
• Business – $300 per year
• eCommerce – $540 per year
• VIP – starting at $5000 per month

WordPress is a free and open-sourced website builder. That means you will have a lot more control over your website as compared to other online website builders on this list.

Unlike other website builders, it doesn’t come with domain and hosting. You need the following to start setting up your website.

A Domain Name – This is the address of your website. Mine is eblogging.com – you need to buy yours. We recommend going to go bluehost.com and check if your domain is available. 

Hosting – This is the space where your website files will be present which enables users to access your site. We recommend you to start with a basic shared hosting plan from Siteground or WP Engine if you don’t mind paying a premium, which is optimized for WordPress. You can read our article on Best Web Hosting provider for more details. The hosting generally costs $8/mo, but you can get with half of the price with the promotional offer. 

Theme – WordPress theme controls the look of your website. Every WordPress site comes with a free pre-installed theme. There are hundreds of free and premium themes available in the WordPress theme directory to start with. I recommend getting a theme from ThemeForest with $30 to give your website a more premium look. If you have brought hosting from WP Engine, there is no need to buy themes from anywhere as WP Engine provides 35 premium themes that you can use easily on your website.

Once you are ready with your domain and hosting account, you are good to go with installing WordPress on your site. This will take hardly 5 minutes and get your login credentials.

After login into WordPress, you will get to see that your site came up with a basic pre-installed theme. If you don’t like the pre-installed theme, simply install another one, either from the available themes in WordPress theme directory or the premium theme, you bought from ThemeForest, by uploading the theme’s zip file. From the dashboard of WordPress, you can do everything for your site like changing site settings, creating a menu, sidebar, publishing blog posts, and many more. WordPress is the best when you deal with content-driven sites. 

If you require any kind of support or are stuck somewhere, there are tons of help material available on the internet. Overall, WordPress can be a little bit hectic for a beginner to start, over the long run this will give great flexibility when your site grows.

#3. Squarespace

Squarespace is my favorite website builder due to its clean and elegant design. They offer 100+ best templates, best in the market to start with. If you want to create unique designs for your website this website builder is certainly for you.

It is not the easiest builder to use in the market but it will not take much time to get used to it. You just have to give a little bit of time and patience towards this builder.  

One of the best parts about Squarespace is their template. As I mentioned earlier, they are best in the market and responsive. Their template designs look both artistic and modern and there are a lot of them. All of these templates are fully editable for any type of content. Over time they keep adding new templates and improve the existing one.

Adding content in Squarespace is super easy. Just start with any available template and start modifying directly as per your need by clicking on that section. Also, you can drag and drop the required elements on the pages to create your own template within a minute.

Squarespace offers an eCommerce plan by which you can set up your own online store easily. It has a very nice interface to manage your store’s product, inventory, orders, coupon discounts, and more.

Squarespace is not the cheapest in the market. Website plans start from $12 per month and $18 per month for personal and business websites while eCommerce plans start from $26 and $40 per month. 

With this price, you will get enterprise-grade hosting for your website. So, you can give more concentration to your business without worrying about the hosting. Also, they offer a free domain for one year with their annual plan, G-suit email account for one year, and a free SSL certificate with all the plans.

There are a few things that I personally did not like. For example – there is nor backup and restore solution, which is a bit disappointing. It’s eCommerce plans only allow Stripe, Apple Pay, and PayPal for payment processing. There is no option to add additional payment gateways in your site.

It will take a little bit more time for beginners to get used to this website builder. Also, there are limitations like integration with third-party service which can be a hurdle in growing your business.

Squarespace is a beautifully designed platform that is perfect for creating any kind of personal website, blog website, and eCommerce website quickly.

#4. Ucraft

Many people may not have heard about this website builder but this website certainly made their footprint in this industry. They are mainly known for their creative templates and easy-to-use editor. 

You can easily use it to create a blog website as well as set up a small business site or even jump into the eCommerce niche with a fully functional digital store. Creating a landing page is super easy in Ucraft thanks to their WYSIWYG editor and you can also use their ready-made templates that look stylish and up to date.

Like most of the website builders out there, it also offers a drag and drop facility in their editor which is a time saver for the beginners. Users can start building their website from scratch using a blank canvas or go with available ready-made templates. Choosing a pre-made template and modifying it as per your need is a much more convenient option for newbies as creating a website from the blank canvas can be a bit tricky.

Do you know what is the best thing about Ucraft? It has a free plan where apart from getting access to basic features, you can connect your custom domain to it. Obviously, some Ucraft banding ads will show on your site. Their premium plan starts with $10 per month where you will be having more access like listing up to 50 products, ads-free websites, and many more.

Ucraft offers its customers plenty of features to play with. Apart from their free SSL, SEO App, integrated google analytics in each of its plans even in the free one, customers can use more functionality that delivers more eCommerce, blogging, and customization capabilities with premium plans.

This website builder comes with a free and super easy logo maker by which you can easily create a custom logo for your website in a minute. There are over 1 Million icons that you can use during your logo creation.

In case you are stuck with any problem while building your website, you can contact the customer representative via live chat. Generally, they respond within a minute. Apart from that, you can refer to their extensive guide available on their website. The guide covers different topics like how-to-guide, articles on all essential topics like how to build a website using Ucraft website builder, app integration, dashboard tips, and many more. The articles also describe all eCommerce features, White Label solution, etc.

A few downsides with the Ucraft website builder are that the number of templates is limited (63 themes) and you cannot move the block element anywhere in the canvas.

Ucraft can give a great experience to those who don’t know coding and website design and do not want to spend ages learning how to operate a complex website building.

#5. Shopify

Shopify is another popular website builder that is specifically built for eCommerce. If you are looking for making a pure eCommerce website and online store, I strongly recommend you go with Shopify. It has around 1 Million active users and powered more than half a Million online businesses. As per statistics over 40 Billion dollar worth of products has been sold from the Shopify platform.  

Shopify is a complete package for your online business. That means that you don’t have to worry about hosting, software to manage your store, installing updates, backup, and restoration of your store. Shopify will take care of everything for you. 

Shopify comes along with all the features that you need to manage your online store. They come with full inventory management, unlimited products, manual order creation, gift cards, powerful stats, easy marketing solutions, payment solutions, and many more under one roof. 

They have their own customized payment system solution named Shopify payment. If you would like to use a third party payment solution to accept the payment from a customer, there is an option for that too.

Building an online store is super easy using the Shopify website builder. You can set up a store with a few clicks. You can choose templates for your store from their 60+ themes which are modern, sleek, and responsive, they look good on both desktop and mobile. Want to customize them? You can use their live editor to customize the site as per your need. The speed is also pretty good. If you have knowledge of HTML and CSS, then you can follow your heart’s content while editing.

You can also integrate Shopify into WordPress to take advantage of both the solutions.

If you decide to move your website away from Shopify in the future, you will find it quite difficult to do that. 

As a beginner, you will find that pricing is on the higher side as compared to the other website builders in the market.

The Basic plan in Shopify starts with $29 per month where you find all the basic features for starting a business. You need more features once your business grows. In that case, you can upgrade to their Shopify plan which costs $79 and Advance Shopify plan which is $299 per month. 

If you want to create an online store without more hassle then this build is certainly for you. 

#6. Webflow

Webflow is sometimes called “Website for Web Designers”. 

Until a few years back, it was a tradition to use WordPress and Drupal for website creation by most of the web designers for their client. These days, website builders like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace opened the possibility of web designing to anyone and everyone. 

If you consider website designing using WordPress which is more traditional and the creation of a website using a website builder is the modern way, then Webflow sits somewhere between the traditional and modern approaches.

This makes Webflow popular among web designers. This is a perfect solution for those who want a platform that is fully customizable but without thinking about the complex code behind it. 

Webflow designers are based on one of the basic concepts of web designing called “The Box Model”. It is the process of creating a box for every element of your website and overlaying them on the top of one another. Text Boxes, image boxes, button boxes all add up to form the layout of your site.

Because of this great flexibility, you can design almost anything you can think of. 

This makes Webflow categorically a different tool than other website builders like Squarespace or Wix. Squarespace or Wix does not provide you the complete freedom. Generally, they provide beautiful templates and hide the complexity of code from the end-user as a result they are easier to use. On the other hand, Webflow does not start with a template and has a much steeper learning curve BUT you can do way more with it.  

Webflow currently offers 6 plans to their customers. 3 of them are for website building and rest three are for managing eCommerce. Their Basic plan starts at $12 per month. Using this plan you can publish your basic website online which will have only basic elements like contact form, image gallery, menu, etc. While the CMS plan is for creating blogs or content-driven websites, the Business plan for high traffic websites looking for market and scale. 

Webflow’s eCommerce plans start with $29 per month which is perfect for the new business getting off the ground. If you are looking for more features or scale to give new heights in your business, you may consider upgrading to their eCommerce Plus or Advanced plan.

They have their own help center called Webflow University which is an online resource. Here you can find guides from everything ranging from how to use the platform to how a specific integration works. This should be your first place to search if you are struck by something. In case you are not finding the appropriate solution there, you may post your problem in Webflow’s community forum where so many experienced users of Webflow can surely help you out on your problem. 

One of the drawbacks of Webflow is that they are currently not providing any phone or live chat service, meaning the only way to get in touch is via email.

Webflow is out of the box website builder. Although this is not for every designer. It definitely has a learning curve. While this does not mean that users of Webflow need extensive knowledge of HTML and CSS to get success. They have to spend a few hours learning at least the basic concept and name of the elements to build a unique website using this builder.

#7. Weebly

Weebly is another popular website builder mainly known for its ease of use. It comes with tons of great design to start with and provides a beautifully crafted page builder to edit your website without learning any coding skills.

It is mandatory to mention in 2020 that Weebly currently maintains 2 different editors to create websites – Weebly editor and Square editor.

Weebly editor is the existing old editor of the company which is excellent and very easy to use. They claim that this is the best editor available in the market for editing non-eCommerce websites.

On the other hand, the newly introduced Square editor is mainly used for creating eCommerce sites. This editor comes into existence after the acquisition of Weebly by Square in 2018. The editor is less flexible but easier to use as compared to Weebly editor. 

Weebly is a fully hosted company. That means that you don’t have to worry about the hosting, software needed to install and update to manage your website as everything is taken by Weebly itself. This helps you to concentrate on your business.

Like most of the website builders, they also provide pre-made templates to start building your website within minutes. Although the number is limited as compared to the leading website builders like Wix or Squarespace. They have just over 40 themes in their theme gallery, you can check this out in the theme gallery before you sign up for an account. 

There are many things I love about Weebly, particularly for business and eCommerce. They provide a simple tool to do everything you would like to do like creating a member area, scheduling appointments, and installing SSL certificates on your website.

The best thing about Weebly editor is their App center which enables you to install apps that add new features and elements in your  Weebly website.

Weebly’s eCommerce platform is not as powerful as Shopify but it is much easier to use. This is perfect for low volume stores. One of the good things is that your Weebly site perfectly fits into the Square ecosystem which provides an all-in-one solution for payment systems, point of sale, appointment, gift card, team management, and more under the same login.  

Weebly provides one of the best free website builders. They are especially generous with eCommerce features and provide phone support. I haven’t seen any other website builder provide support to their free customers like this. Their premium plan starts with $6 per month (billed annually) or $9 per month which enables customers to connect a custom domain to the Weebly website. 

Weebly also offers a 30-days money-back guarantee on their yearly or bi-yearly plan. Please keep in mind that Weebly does not guarantee any money back with their monthly plan.  

With the introduction of the new Square editor, confusion spreads among the existing users. They feel like there are some limitations as compared to the existing Weebly editor. Weebly editor is still a choice for many because of the ease of use. 

#8. Godaddy website builder

You might have heard about GoDaddy if you are in the online business. GoDaddy is one of the largest domain name registrars and hosting providers in the world. They also offer their simple and easy to use website builder with hosting included to their customers.

GoDaddy offers beginner-friendly website builders, with a mobile-friendly design. Using this website builder, you can create a professional-looking website within a short period of time. 

GoDaddy website builder comes with many ready to use blocks that can drag and drop to build different layouts. It has an in-built photo gallery that is integrated with Getty photography where you can find hundreds of royalty-free images to use on your website. You can upload images from your own computer as well, to use in your website.

This builder also supports mobile and tablet. That you can work on creating websites using GoDaddy website builder from mobile or tablet too.

They offer 4 different plans to choose from. The Basic plan which is meant for small websites starts from $10 per month. Their Business plan comes with a very simple Paypal button and a simple SEO tool which is $15 per month. This pricing comes with the annual contract. Premium and Ecommerce plans are useful for large websites and eCommerce stores.

The online store is quite easy to manage and well-integrated with the editor. The Ecommerce plan offers all the basic features to run an online store like abandoned shopping cart recovery, coupons, product variations, digital products, gift cards, a variety of shipping methods, and offline payment methods.

GoDaddy website builder is not as feature-rich as other top website builders in the market. They come with a limited set of features and fewer design options.  

If you ever decide to move away from GoDaddy to some other website builder or popular CMS system like WordPress, it is quite difficult to do so.

My recommendation is that if you want to build a small website, you may go with this. One of the biggest strengths of this builder is the ease of use. 

#9. BigCommerce

Bigcommerce is one of the best eCommerce website builders available in the market. As the name suggests, if you are looking to set up an online business that scale then Bigcommece is for you. Their system offers every single feature that you need to get success in your eCommerce business. 

Currently, they powered more than 1,00,000 stores worldwide and have generated about 17 Billion sales from their platform making them one of the biggest eCommerce platforms worldwide. 

According to BigCommerce, building a beautiful online store is a piece of cake with their theme. Also, they offer a wide range of built-in marketing tools to promote your product on different platforms. I will try to share my findings with you after trying their platform for several days.

BigCommerce is a fully hosted eCommerce platform. That means you don’t have to bother about hosting, website speed, updates, security. They handle all the technical side for you so that you can focus on only growing your business.

Unlike most of the other hosted eCommerce solutions, BigCommerce provides easy integration with the most popular CMS solution WordPress. So, you can enjoy the power of the two best solutions at the same time. In simple terms, your website will be featured rich for eCommerce powered by BigCommerce, on the other hand, your website will be fast and secure enough no matter how much traffic you get.

They support most of the popular payment gateways including tripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Square, Amazon Pay, Visa Checkout, Chase Pay, Ayden, and more. BigCommerce doesn’t charge any transaction fee for using these payment gateways.

BigCommerce comes with many pre-made templates in their stock. You can start with any one of these templates and customize as per your need to create a beautiful online store with the help of their drag and drop website builder.  

It comes with inbuilt features such as abandonment, improved product search, product reviews, coupons, gift cards, and more. Also, their App store provides you the flexibility to use third-party software to enhance the features of your store in a very simple manner. 

The best part about BigCommerce is its stats rich dashboard which enables you to keep track of every transaction and helps you to grow your business with confidence.

You will not find any free plan in BigCommerce however a 15 days trial period is there with all plans. Their Basic plan starts with $29.95 per month which comes with the basic feature you need to set up an online store. You can upgrade to the Plus plan which costs $79.95 per month with more optimization for better conversion. Their Pro plan comes with $249.95 per month which has all the advanced features you may need which the business grows.

If you compare the pricing of BigCommerce with other website builders, you may find it is a little bit on the higher side. But it is justified with the features they provide. The main advantage of this platform is that you can integrate BigCommerce with WordPress which makes you more powerful than ever.

#10. Constant Connet website builder

Constant Connect can be a perfect choice for those who want fast loading speed for their website along with all other basic features from a website builder. Constant connect is known as the best email marketing service provider in the world. But their A.I. powered website builder which helps you to create a beautiful website within a few clicks also one of the best website builders available in the market. 

You can take advantage of their ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) guided wizard to create a complete custom website design with personalized images and content suggestions.

One of the biggest advantages of this Constant Connect is that the editor is integrated with the Unsplash image library which gives you the liberty of more than half a million professional quality images to use on your custom website. 

Constant connect offers numbers of pre-made templates to choose from and their drag and drop builder helps you to customize the template as per your test very easily. All the templates they offer are fully responsive which means they are equally beautiful on desktop as well as in small devices like mobile, tables, etc.

It is a fully hosted website builder so you no need to worry about hosting, software, updates, security, and all. They will take care of everything on behalf of you. They also provide live support for their customers on a 24×7 basis via phone and chat which is great for small business owners.

The website builder is integrated with a number of popular payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Mollie.

Other features on this platform you will get like a logo maker, lead capture forms, website analytics, eCommerce, and more.

Constant  Connect provides one of the best free website builders by which you can create a beautiful custom blog, website, or even online store with no cost to you. You can add unlimited pages as well.

Like most of the website builders, if you want to connect a custom domain to Constant Connect you have to purchase their basic plan which comes with $10 per month (or $8.50 per month if pre-paid annually). 

If your business needs email marketing, you may consider their Email Marketing or Email Marketing Plus plan which comes with all the website builder features with all marketing automation.

Constant Connect website builder can be a great choice for a wide variety of businesses for those who don’t want to use WordPress. 

#11. Duda

Powering more than 450000 businesses online, Duda certainly becomes one the best choice among many business owners. As per Duda, the aim of their website builder is to “make web design painless” with their simple and creative templates. All you need is an internet connection and you are ready to build your custom website using Duda website builder within a minute, without coding skill. 

You can start editing their pre-made templates by changing text, adding images, creating new pages, and building your own widgets. Once you are done with the editing of your website, you can simply publish it online. Duda is a fully hosted website builder, they will host your site which is included in all of their plans. 

Although Duda can be used by anyone, their main targets are agencies and freelancers who need to create multiple websites quickly.    

Their ease to use website builder is very helpful even for beginners. They can use their drag and drop facility to build websites very quickly within a short period of time.

You can use Duda for making online stores as well. Apart from the beautifully designed aspect, they offer integrated design between your website and your storefront, and pre-designed product page layouts. Duda also comes with some many eCommerce tools like a variety of payment gateway options (including Paypal, Square, and Stripe), automatic tax calculation, product categories, coupon codes, low stock notification for customers, customized shipping options and rates. 

Dude slightly fell down in terms of SEO as compared to other builders like Weebly. Although it provides all the basic SEO features like free SSL, responsive templates, Google page speed optimization, Customized title, meta description, and page URL.

In terms of pricing Duda is one of the most expensive website builders, I have tested so far. The Basic plan costs around $14 per month (billed annually). 

They have a total of three plans to choose from, ranging from $14 to $74 per month when billed annually. There’s also an Enterprise plan for those who have hundreds of websites and need a custom quote.

So, when it comes to building a multilingual website, Duda is leading the way. Also, this can be a perfect choice for freelancers and agencies who want to create multiple websites in a short period of time.

The Best Website Builder for 2020

After testing all the popular website builders, according to me, WordPress beats all in terms of performance, ease of use, flexibility, and pricing. 

If you are planning to create a content driven website, WordPress is the best choice out there. It is an excellent choice for beginners as well as businesses. Although they do not provide drag and facility for building websites, it’s already pre-built. 

For building online stores (or eCommerce websites), my recommendation is BigCommerce which comes with all the essential features to build an online store with a great price. 

In terms of all-in-one website builders, I love Wix and Squarespace.