The Best Website Builder of 2024: Top 10 Reviewed and Rated

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With a website builder, anyone can make their mark online without needing years of design or coding experience. The best website builders have scalable features and professionally designed templates – they’re also quick to set up, easy to customize, beginner-friendly, and very affordable! This is why our research gives special significance to these features.

We’ve researched and tested more than 50 website builders over the years, which is why we feel confident saying that Wix is the best overall website builder.

Wix combines ease of use with total creative freedom, making it easy for beginners to create professional-looking websites. Squarespace isn’t far behind though, delivering the best template designs on the market, making it perfect for creatives. Shopify sits comfortably in third place, thanks to its ecommerce capabilities and huge app store.

Take a look below to see our full list of the 10 best website builders, and compare them against each other.

10 Best Website Builders of 2024

  1. Wix The champion of website builders
  2. Squarespace Best value for money
  3. Shopify Best for growing revenue
  4. GoDaddy Best for building a website quickly
  5. Square Online Best for selling online for free
  6. Hostinger Best for uptime reliability
  7. WordPress.com Best for creating a blog
  8. IONOS Best for enterprise support and functionality
  9. Site123 Best for hobby and personal websites
  10. Jimdo Best for building simple websites

We’ve used our independent and unique research process to create this list. This means that all of our ratings are backed by hours of product testing and analysis, so you can be sure our recommendations are accurate and reliable. We aim to be honest and transparent – after all, our primary purpose is to find you a website builder that’s going to help you fulfill your goals.

This is also why we’ve rigorously tested and selected 50+ of the top web builders out there, measuring them up against our high standards. These methods helped us narrow it down to a list of the best 10, each of which we felt answered our readers’ needs. Because of this, we’re confident that you’ll be able to find the ideal website builder to suit you and your website-building aims.

Compare the 10 Best Website Builders

Before we jump into the reviews of each website builder, take a look at the summary table below to get an idea of which builder might be your perfect match. Use the arrow at the top of the chart to compare the different platforms. We’ve started you off with our top three: Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify.

Swipe right to see more
0 out of 0

Wix

Squarespace

Shopify

GoDaddy

Square Online

Hostinger

WordPress.com

IONOS

Site123

Jimdo

Overall Rating
4.8
Overall Rating
4.7
Overall Rating
4.3
Overall Rating
4.2
Overall Rating
3.7
Overall Rating
3.4
Overall Rating
3.2
Overall Rating
3.0
Overall Rating
2.8
Overall Rating
2.7
Best For

Best overall website builder

Best For

Best value for money

Best For

Best for growing revenue

Best For

Fastest way to build a website

Best For

Sell online for free

Best For

Best for uptime reliability

Best For

Best for experienced builders

Best For

Best pricing deals from $1

Best For

Best for hobby websites

Best For

Very cheap pricing plans

Starting from
Starting from
Starting from
Starting from

$9.99

Starting from

($0 on the Free plan)

$29

Starting from

$11.99

$2.49 + 3 months free (with the 48-month plan)

Starting from

$4

Starting from

$1

Starting from

$12.80

Starting from

$9

Free plan or free trial

Free plan

Free plan or free trial

14-day free trial

Free plan or free trial

Free trial

Free plan or free trial

Free plan

Free plan or free trial

Free plan

Free plan or free trial

No

Free plan or free trial

Free plan

Free plan or free trial

No

Free plan or free trial

Free plan

Free plan or free trial

Free plan

Features
4.8
Features
4.6
Features
4.0
Features
3.1
Features
3.5
Features
2.8
Features
2.8
Features
2.2
Features
2.3
Features
2.1
Number of templates

800+

Number of templates

100+

Number of templates

100+

Number of templates

100+

Number of templates

50+

Number of templates

100+

Number of templates

300+

Number of templates

15+

Number of templates

150+

Number of templates

100+

Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter/X
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • TikTok
  • Pinterest
Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter/X
  • LinkedIn
  • TikTok
  • Pinterest

 

Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit
Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter/X
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • TikTok
  • Pinterest
Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter/X
  • TikTok
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Pinterest
Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter/X
  • LinkedIn
Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Twitter/X
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Twitter/X
  • Pinterest
Social media integration
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter/X
  • LinkedIn
AI Features
  • Wix ADI
  • AI Text Creator
AI Features
  • Squarespace AI
AI Features
  • Shopify Magic
AI Features
  • GoDaddy ADI
  • AI Product Descriptions
  • Conversations App
  • GoDaddy Digital Ads
  • AI Prompt Library
AI Features
  • AI recommendations
AI Features
  • AI website builder
  • AI heat map
  • AI logo maker
  • AI hosting assistants
AI Features
  • Jetpack AI assistant
AI Features
  • AI text generator
AI Features
  • AI text generator
AI Features
Claim 50% off View Squarespace Visit Shopify Visit GoDaddy Visit Square Visit Hostinger Visit WordPress Visit IONOS Visit Site123 Visit Jimdo

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And, if you want a quick overview of our top five website builders, check out our video below:

#1. Wix

The Champion of Website Builders

Pricing range: free – $159 per month 

Editor's Choice

Wix

The champion of website builders

Outstanding

4.8

out of 5
  • Best internal features
  • 800+ template designs
  • Powerful SEO tools

Free plan available

Paid Plans: $16 - $159 / month

Pros

  • Free plan (ideal for smaller projects)
  • One of the easiest builders to use
  • In-house marketing & ecommerce features

Cons

  • Can’t switch template once site is live
  • Range of options can feel overwhelming
  • Pay more for the best features
Wix Review

Wix Overview

After our latest round of research, Wix remains our best website builder overall, maintaining its previous score of 4.8 out of 5. It’s an extremely beginner-friendly platform that gives you total creative control over your site, combining a huge range of features with easy drag-and-drop editing tools. To put it simply, Wix is one of the easiest builders to get to grips with and takes the top spot – alongside Squarespace – in our ease-of-use testing, scoring 4.4 out of 5.

We noticed a boost to Wix’s SEO tools, which now includes Semrush integration and keyword support. Wix also has a ton of new internal blogging features, such as the addition of author bios, allowing users to rely more on Wix’s built-in functionality as opposed to third-party apps that can slow down your site. Particularly useful features include Social Posts to help with marketing; and the Wix Owner app, so you can manage your online store from your cell phone!

With a 10% increase in its “Help and Support” score from last year, Wix has proven itself to be a reliable and supportive website builder – a good thing considering its higher price point, especially in comparison to other top website builders that offer cheaper plans, such as GoDaddy and Hostinger.

Additionally, Wix’s design score has also improved by almost 5%, bringing its new design rating to an impressive 4.6 out of 5, which is largely thanks to the flexibility it offers when customizing your website and the growing number of templates available.

Despite some ups and downs in its recent scores, Wix is still a winning choice. Our advice is this: if you’re unsure about which website builder to use, give Wix a spin for free and see how you get on.

Wix Pricing

Wix has a free plan, four premium plans, a starting price of $16 per month, and an enterprise plan for large businesses. A recent price increase negatively impacted Wix’s overall value for money score by 12%, dropping its score for 2023 to 3 out of 5. Its higher pricing plans mean individuals and small businesses will need to consider their budgets before getting started online with Wix. That being said, it’s not just Wix that has increased its fees since last year, with builders like Squarespace and GoDaddy seeing an average price increase of 30% or more.

However, considering Wix’s excellent built-in features, its price point is very reasonable since you’re less likely to require third-party plugins, unlike other builders, such as Site123.

Wix Features

Wix is the best for website features, scoring a mighty 4.8 out of 5. Not only does it offer a free plan with generous features, such as SEO tools and a mobile editor, but you can also unlock additional tools on Wix’s premium plans, including a built-in marketing suite to help promote your business online and engage with website visitors. If you’re thinking about selling online, you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Core plan for $27 per month.

Wix News

What’s new with Wix this month?

  • You can now use Afterpay as a payment method on Wix. The buy now pay later solution has been added to help customers spread out the payments of their purchase. Afterpay is currently only available as a payment method through Wix Payments in the US.
vergleich website baukasten wix logo

Wix is Our Top Rated Website Builder

Enjoy a 14-day free trial and see if it’s the right fit for you – no credit card, no contract

Features

Wix’s feature score of 4.8 out of 5 is the highest of any web builder we tested, and you can enjoy a lot of benefits just from its free plan. You’ll have access to greater features such as website analytics and unlimited storage if you upgrade your plan, but Wix’s free plan is still pretty generous. It includes:

  • Up to 500MB of storage
  • 24/7 customer support
  • Social sharing, so you can promote your site
  • A mobile editor, so you can optimize your site for mobile devices

But, how exactly did Wix score so highly? There are specific areas Wix excels at, and it specializes in providing internal functionality for its users, meaning there’s no need to rely on third-party apps if you don’t want to! In comparison, Shopify purposefully directs its users toward its huge app store.

Wix has incredible marketing tools to utilize, such as Social Posts, which helps you design graphics for your social channels, and email marketing features.

Additionally, its tailored ecommerce plans and features, such as its inventory management tools and built-in analytics, will help set you up for success if you’re looking to start selling online.

However, if you do need to add extra features, you can – Wix is home to a huge app store full of helpful services.

Wix also offers very powerful SEO tools to help your website get found on Google, including new features such as Semrush integration and keyword support. Another great point to mention is Wix’s internationalization features – you can go global with Wix Multilingual by sharing your content in 180 languages.

Design

Wix has always been a top contender when it comes to design, largely because of its template options and customization tools. It’s no real surprise that Wix has increased its design score by 4.5% in this year’s research – from 4.4 last year to 4.6 out of 5 – which now puts Wix in second place behind design-powerhouse Squarespace.

Wix comes with over 800 professionally-designed templates for you to choose from. These are all split into different industries, such as “Events” and “Photography”, making them easy to filter until you find the right one. Last year, Wix expanded its template offering to keep up with the design and functionality that users expect from a website, and Wix continues to make improvements, enhancing the overall appeal and experience of its websites.

Unfortunately, you can’t swap templates once your website is live, so make sure you take your time in choosing. But don’t worry if you can’t find the perfect template right away since Wix gives you plenty of customization tools!

It’s easy to make your Wix website unique thanks to its editor – simply drag elements like text boxes and images to exactly where you want them, or employ Wix’s ADI to do the work for you. Add pages, delete anything you want… Wix gives you total creative freedom!

best website builders wix editor

Value for Money

Pricing plans have considerably increased marketwide since 2022, so Wix’s performance in our value for money category has dropped by almost 12% – now scoring 3 out of 5 as opposed to last year’s 3.4. Wix’s price hike means that not only do you get less bang for your buck, but it also makes it harder to scale your business affordably.

However, Wix has a free plan that you can stay on as long as you like, which is great for getting started. Of course, it has its limitations, such as displaying ads on your site, so for a truly professional site, you’ll want to look at its paid plans.

There are four premium plans to choose between, starting at $16 per month (billed annually) – a 14% increase from last year’s price! These plans remove Wix ads and let you use a personalized domain name, as well as increase your storage allowances.

Out of the four, three of these are dedicated ecommerce plans, starting from $27 per month (billed annually).

Ease of Use

Wix remains as easy to use as ever, sitting in our top position with a score of 4.4 out of 5 – joint first with Squarespace. One user who tested out Wix said this about the builder:

“It’s really intuitive to use, a beginner would grasp it easily!”

We received a lot of feedback about how beginner-friendly and easy-to-customize Wix is, especially thanks to its drag-and-drop editor. However, the large number of features and tools felt overwhelming for some, and in some cases, the editor was slow to respond which isn’t ideal if you’re a business owner that needs to update content on your site every day.

Help and Support

While Wix’s customers will certainly feel the squeeze in their pockets, Wix does make up for its higher prices with an impressive help and support score of 4.8 out of 5. That’s a huge increase of 10% since 2022! In fact, Wix is now in joint first place for support, along with Squarespace and IONOS.

Wix offers 24/7 phone and live chat support, but you can get VIP care and avoid any possible queues if you upgrade to a higher-tier plan. The usability and available support provided through Wix’s Help Center is where Wix really shines, complete with video tutorials and trending topics.

Customer Satisfaction

Wix has always been a customer favorite, and our 2023 scores keep the website builder as a strong choice, scoring 4.7 out of 5 for its customer satisfaction – an increase of 1% since 2022’s score of 4.6. And it’s easy to be content with such a user-friendly platform! Wix’s Trustpilot score has improved from 1.6 to a whopping 4.1, and 80% of users that tested the builder are likely to recommend it to others.

Wix in Action: Starr Sackstein

Headshot of Starr Sackstein
Starr Sackstein
Professional Author & Consultant
Starr Sackstein is a professional author and consultant who wanted a website to highlight and capture her business offerings, as well as provide a space for people to find her work and resources.
… I like their Owner’s app as it is easy to upload blog posts or events.

Q&A

When did you start using Wix? How long did it take to build a website?

When I researched Wix, I liked that it was easier to use than WordPress which is what my old website was made with. Wix made it easy to build, and create an email list for marketing and a blog to house resources. While researching, I tried out a bunch of other website hosts and decided that Wix suited my needs best.

I started using Wix more than three years ago. I like that I can buy my domain and site in one place and have their support as I did it. Building the website took a while, but I already had a lot of the content. Once I set it up, I paid a person on Fiverr to clean it up and optimize it for SEO.

What do you like most about Wix?

As I continue to use the service, I like their Owner’s app as it is easy to upload blog posts or events.

What would you change about Wix?

One thing I don’t love about Wix is that although they have a competitive cost for hosting and maintaining the website, there seems to be a lot of pay-for-play kind of services, and I get emailed a lot since I don’t sign up for them.

Have you used Wix’s customer service? How did you find it?

They have been helpful with continued SEO (I’ve paid for their service to optimize as well), but other than that, I have had little reason to reach out to their customer service.

Were you satisfied with the website you made, and would you recommend Wix to others?

My website has been complimented by my peers often as it showcases the many things I do as a business person and also houses my publications and education content in one place, making it easy for people to contact me after they read my books.

Click the + to see our favorite part of Starr's website

Client testimonials and reviews displayed on Starr Sackstein's website

With Wix, you can easily add customer testimonials and reviews to your website using a pre-designed element, just as Starr Sackstein has done. This is a great way to boost credibility and trust in your site or business.

More Information

  • Read our in-depth Wix Review for a full look at Wix’s features, ease of use, and more
  • Read our Wix Pricing review for a breakdown of its pricing plans and what you get with each premium package
  • Want to sell online? Our Wix Ecommerce Review tells you all you need to know about creating an online store with Wix
  • Wix might be our top choice, but how can you know it’s the best choice for you? Take our four-question website builder quiz to find out!

#2. Squarespace

Best Value for Money

Pricing range: $16 – $49 per month

Squarespace

Best value for money

Excellent

4.7

out of 5
  • Best website designs
  • Most cost-effective plans
  • Beginner-friendly builder

Free trial available

Paid Plans: $16 - $49 / month

Pros

  • Excellent built-in features and UX
  • Enhanced third-party integrations
  • Ideal for creative portfolios

Cons

  • Customization is more limited
  • No 24/7 live chat available
  • No autosave when editing
Squarespace Review

Squarespace Overview

Squarespace is a sophisticated website builder that has a lot to offer creatives and businesses alike, from beautiful templates to feature-rich plans. It continues to hold on to its second-place position with a score of 4.7 out of 5 overall, performing impressively across all of our research categories – particularly design, support, and ease of use.

Squarespace is one of the easiest builders to use, meaning you can get set up quickly and without hassle! In fact, Squarespace improved by 11% in this area since last year, and it’s joint first with Wix in our ease of use category, scoring 4.4 out of 5.

Where Squarespace really shines is its template designs – they’re the best on the market, scoring 4.7 out of 5 in our design functionality category. It’s also the perfect choice for creatives who want a visually impressive website! When there’s so much competition out there, standing out with a beautiful and user-friendly site is important. It’s not a case of style over substance because Squarespace also has a huge range of features to give your site the power it needs.

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace offers the best value for money, increasing its score by 15% since 2022 with a new rating of 4.6 out of 5. It has four premium plans, ranging from $16 to $49 per month (billed annually), and its highest two plans unlock ecommerce features, too. But, if you’re still on the fence, you can try out Squarespace’s 14-day free trial first.

Squarespace Features

Sitting just behind Wix, Squarespace has a new website features rating of 4.6 out of 5 – an increase of 4% from its previous score of 4.4 out of 5. Credit for this successful performance is down to Squarespace’s excellent marketing tools, as well as improvements the builder has made to third-party app integrations and internal extensions, such as online bookings and scheduling.

Squarespace Feature of the Month

This month, we’re highlighting the following Squarespace feature:

  • Squarespace allows you to lock your entire website or individual pages behind passwords. This is useful if you’re working on your website and don’t want prying eyes, or if you want to keep certain pages restricted to select users. You can even edit the password-protected page so visitors only see what you want them to see.
squarespace logo

Enjoy a 14-day Free Trial With Squarespace

Also claim 10% off with code ‘WBE’

Features

Renowned for its aesthetic templates, Squarespace isn’t just a pretty face. The builder saw a 4% boost to its website features score in 2023, sitting just behind Wix with an improved rating of 4.6 out of 5. This increase is largely thanks to Squarespace’s efforts to enhance third-party apps and internal add-ons, such as online bookings, scheduling features, and CRM tools.

Squarespace plans come with plenty of built-in features, meaning you’re guaranteed a high level of quality and security from the get-go. Everything you need is right at your fingertips! For example, you can:

  • Install multiple templates to work on at once
  • Use video backgrounds
  • Add custom codes
  • Upload and share music
  • Link your social accounts
  • Design logos

If you want to optimize and expand your site, you can use Squarespace Extensions to integrate with a range of third-party platforms, such as Printful, Quickbooks, or ShipStation. These are a great way of growing your site without upgrading your plan. Alternatively, you can make the most of Squarespace’s impressive marketing features, which scored a perfect 5 out of 5 in our marketing tests – an increase of 25%!

Design

Squarespace has the best quality designs of any website builder on the market. With sleek, sophisticated, modern templates, it creates truly stunning websites. It’s an ideal choice for creatives and those in search of real customization since Squarespace knows how to make your website look good.

As one of our users said, “I felt like I was great at making websites but really it was just Squarespace doing it for me!”

You can easily switch your template, even once you’ve published your site (unlike Wix), and can work on more than one template at the same time – super helpful!

squarespace editor

Since 2022, not much has changed in terms of design improvements and Squarespace’s score of 4.7 out of 5 remains the same. However, a few features are now available permanently across all of Squarespace’s templates, including the ability to add videos to pages and forms.

Squarespace continues to dominate the website design space and successfully delivers aesthetically-pleasing templates and elements to its users.

Value for Money

As we’ve already mentioned, there’s been an industry-wide price increase to website builder plans and Squarespace is no exception – in 2022, its starting plan went from $12 to $16 per month, which is a rise of 33%!

Despite this, would it surprise you to know that Squarespace is actually the best value for money out of all of the website builders we tested? It’s true! Squarespace scores a winning 4.6 out of 5 in our latest value for money research, which is a 15% increase since 2022. Though its plans have increased in price, Squarespace’s offering of features has also continued to improve.

For example, Squarespace’s $16 starting plan is actually comparable to Wix’s Unlimited plan at $22 per month – an absolute bargain! You get unlimited bandwidth and a free domain from the start with Squarespace.

If you’re looking for options, Squarespace has four premium plans, ranging from $16 to $49 per month (billed annually). The highest two plans unlock advanced ecommerce functions, and if you’re still unsure, Squarespace also provides a 14-day free trial, so you can try its builder out totally risk-free.

Ease of Use

Squarespace’s ease of use saw the largest increase in score since 2022 – an 11% boost to hit 4.4 out of 5, putting Squarespace in joint first position with Wix.

Several of our testers actually found Squarespace more user-friendly than Wix, which would be the first time this has been noted since our research process began five years ago:

“I loved the background grid for organizing your layout – it was so good for making sure everything was aligned properly. My page ended up looking so much sleeker and neater than when I used Wix.”

Users also found that Squarespace offers a lot of guidance when building a website, including great SEO prompts, a grid layout when editing to steer users away from messy designs, and onboarding questions to help identify the right templates and support from the start.

Help and Support

When it comes to help and support, Squarespace sits on top of the podium – along with Wix and IONOS. In our latest research, its score decreased by 5% to 4.8 out of 5, instead of its previous perfect score of 5 out of 5. However, this drop in score is solely down to the increase in pricing, since Squarespace’s offered support remains the same as last year. In comparison, though Wix’s prices also increased, Wix made improvements to its help and support to keep them level.

So, what support can you get with Squarespace? You can contact the customer care team 24/7 via email and social media, or use Squarespace’s live chat function throughout the week. Additionally, you can turn to Squarespace’s detailed Help Center or community forum to find answers, discussions, and tutorials.

Customer Satisfaction

Squarespace is our third-best website builder for customer satisfaction, scoring 4.5 out of 5 – remaining stable from last year’s research. Based on our testing of the builder, it received a lot of appreciation for its grid-style editor and overall user experience. Plus, it was the site our testers would most likely recommend to others – even beating our top website builder, Wix!

Squarespace in Action: Golden Injectables

Headshot of Tim and Marlie Cochrane, founders of Golden Injectables
Tim Cochrane
Co-Founder
Golden Injectables is a top cosmetic injectables clinic based in Melbourne and Bayside, Australia. The business decided to build a website to support its service-based physical store.
Squarespace was an obvious choice given how simple it is to use and edit without being a tech/coding wiz!

Q&A

When did you start using Squarespace? How long did it take to build a website?

We needed to build a website to support our service based “Bricks & Mortar” store, that had the ability to seamlessly integrate ecommerce functionality for our skincare products. Initially, we made the mistake of paying a 3rd party developer who “offshored” the project, which made it challenging to refine UI/UX themes with time delays and communication breakdowns.

With this in mind, we chose to go it alone and use Squarespace. We already used Acuity Scheduling (also known as Squarespace Scheduling) which meant our booking system would be native to the platform. Squarespace was an obvious choice given how simple it is to use and edit without being a tech/coding wiz!

We’ve been using Squarespace for 14 months. It took around 15-18 hours to build the initial website, however there’s always updating and tinkering to be done! It’s still not perfect, but it’s made enjoyable given the ease of use!

What do you like most about Squarespace?

We love the ease of integrating code, UI assets to pages and the inbuilt SEO tools. Although not perfect, Squarespace provides basic SEO from the “drag and drop” inputs. Squarespace is one of the larger players in the industry, which means users get to piggyback off their ingenuity!

What would you change about Squarespace?

We’d like the option to edit with more accuracy, however we understand that this simple isn’t possible given the amount of templates provided that come PC/mobile ready. Although it’s not a deal breaker, we would love the ability to personalize templates more, however I don’t see this happening as their business model centers around ease of use to the everyday consumer.

Have you used Squarespace's customer service? How did you find it?

I think we’ve been Squarespace’s #1 customer service users… with no fault from Squarespace. We have had a few questions along the way to do with functionality etc… I can happily say they have been great! After you submit a form, you’re emailed a ticket number straight away. Our questions have been answered in 24 hours or less and always followed up promptly should more investigation be required.

Were you satisfied with the website you made, and would you recommend Squarespace to others?

We’re satisfied with the website overall! We would certainly recommend Squarespace for anyone in the startup phase and looking to “go it alone”. I forecast that due to the growth of our business, we will be looking to onboard an expert in Squarespace web development within 12 months to assist with tidying up minor issues we’ve experienced and improving the overall look, design, and functionality!

Click the + to see our favorite part of Tim's website

Golden Injectables homepage showing navigation options and booking CTAs

We love how Golden Injectables website cuts right to the chase and offers users various options to get in touch (pop-up chat option) and make a booking (visible in the top banner and navigation bar).

More Information

  • Read our Squarespace Review for a detailed look at this top-quality builder, and find out if it’s the right choice for you
  • Got products you want to show off? Squarespace combines stunning visuals with advanced sales tools: read all about it in our Squarespace Ecommerce Review
  • What’s so good about Squarespace’s designs anyway? Check out our Squarespace Template Designs Review to find out!
  • Our Squarespace Pricing review goes into detail on Squarespace’s price plans, and why Squarespace is the best value for money
  • Looking for a discount? Take a look at our exclusive Squarespace Offer Code, which will save you 10% on the cost of any Squarespace plan
  • Unsure? Our Wix vs Squarespace comparison breaks down the strengths and weaknesses of each builder’s features, templates, and more to find the best option for you
  • If all of this extra reading isn’t your kind of thing, let us do the hard work for you! Get free, personalized recommendations from the experts when you take our quiz

#3. Shopify

Best for Growing Revenue

Pricing range: $29 – $299 per month 

Shopify

Best for growing revenue

Very Good

4.3

out of 5
  • Best overall ecommerce
  • Supports big inventories
  • Heavily reliant on apps

Free trial available

Paid Plans: $29 - $299 / month

Pros

  • Strong suite of sales features
  • Great for scaling your business
  • Huge app store

Cons

  • Reliant of third party apps
  • Customizability is limited
  • Expensive plans
Shopify Review

Shopify Overview

When it comes to selling online, you won’t get much better than Shopify. Founded in 2006, the platform has since become the go-to builder for businesses wanting to establish an online selling presence, taking third position on our list with an overall score of 4.2 out of 5.

Its popularity is fully deserved. Shopify stands out when it comes to website features, scoring an impressive 4 out of 5 in our research. It’s packed with a ton of high-quality sales tools that will help your online store grow.

In particular, we were impressed by the effectiveness of its security tools, as well as the number of multi-channel integrations it offers, and the wealth of payment options available.

But that’s not all – Shopify also shines for its ability to handle large and complex inventories in addition to its checkout customizability, shipping options, and ease with which you can add promotions to your pages or offer discount codes to your customers.

It’s no wonder Shopify proved so popular in our user testing, receiving an impressive customer score of 4.8 out of 5. But you don’t have to take our word for it – Shopify offers a three-day free trial so you can try it out for yourself!

Shopify Pricing

Shopify has three premium plans to choose from, ranging from $29 to $299 per month (billed annually). You can also dive into the world of selling with Shopify’s Starter Plan, which costs $5 per month but only permits selling across social platforms.

When it comes to value for money, Shopify scores 3 out of 5 in the category – its plans are considerably more expensive than others in this list, such as Wix and Squarespace which start at $16 per month.

Shopify Features

Scoring 4 out of 5 for its website features, Shopify is ideal for websites looking to sell online or grow their business. Its plans come with plenty of powerful sales tools, such as the ability to add promotions as well as helpful marketing features, like personalized pop-ups.

Shopify News

What’s new with Shopify this month?

  • Shopify Flow, a tool that helps to automate workflows, has recently been improved. Upgrades to its task picker tool mean users can navigate their library with ease, and the enhanced search functionality will help business owners locate their desired apps in a flash.
Shopify logo 2

Enjoy $1/Month for 3 Months

Shopify has some of the best sales features on the market, take them for a spin with its 3-day free trial

Features

With a website features score of 4 out of 5, Shopify offers plenty of basic website-building tools to help you create something that’s functional and equipped to grow.

We were particularly impressed with Shopify’s additional app and widget integrations. It has an enormous app store, with over 6,000 apps to choose from. This means there are plenty of options if you’re looking to further expand on what your store can do.

It can be overwhelming to know where to start, so we’ve compiled a list of our top 15 favorite Shopify apps to get you started.

Shopify also performs well on the marketing front. It has a number of built-in features, such as its email shout-out and newsletter function. Plus, its multi-channel integrations are ideal for allowing you to expand across a number of different platforms. However, the immense number of marketing apps really help take things to the next level.

Whether it’s creating personalized popups with Kevy, sending targeted emails with Klaviyo, or managing SMS or social campaigns with Remarkety, there’s a wealth of different marketing apps available to help increase and improve your customer reach.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that, although plenty of apps come with a free plan, you’ll need to pay extra for most of them. These costs can mount quickly, and you’ll need to factor this in when working out your monthly expenditure.

But, if you’re looking for new channels to sell from, TikTok Shop has recently launched in the US. Shopify stores can now seamlessly sync their inventories with the social platform and start selling to customers already using the app. You can even run TikTok ad campaigns from your Shopify admin! And, with over 150 million TikTok users in the US, it’s a great opportunity to engage with a larger audience.

Design

Shopify offers 86 different themes to choose from, all of which boast high-quality, professional designs.

Each theme comes in a range of color schemes, so you can select one that best suits your brand, and all of them are mobile-responsive, meaning that customers can view your online store on the go.

However, only nine of Shopify’s themes are actually free. You’ll need to pay for any of the other 77, with each template costing anywhere between $150 to $350. Although the free themes still look good, there’s no denying that the paid themes offer more in the way of features and aesthetics.

When it comes to customizability, Shopify is more limited than other builders, such as Wix, but there’s still plenty of room to put your own stamp on your site.

We were particularly impressed with the customizability of Shopify’s product pages. It offers a ton of filtering options, allowing users to sort the results by size, color, price range, vendor, product style, type of material, and more. Not only will this make the layout of your product pages more attractive, but it’ll ensure a better user experience, too!

Shopify also comes with a handful of extra design features, such as its built-in image editor, and a library of high-quality stock images.

Squarespace Stock Images

Out of all the builders we tested, Shopify wasn’t the easiest to use when it actually came down to nailing the perfect site design. As a result, it scores 4 out of 5 in this category. This is mostly down to the fact that the platform is split into two interfaces: the frontend, where you can edit the design of your store, and the backend, where you’re able to add products and manage your inventory.

Some users found switching between the two slightly confusing. However, most didn’t think it was a problem in the long run, with one user saying:

“I struggled initially with a few aspects, but once I figured it all out, it all seemed really obvious.”

Given the power of its features and the overall professionalism of its designs, we think that the slightly steeper learning curve is an acceptable trade-off!

Value for Money

Shopify offers three different pricing plans. Take a look at the annual price below:

This is a little pricier than other platforms, which is why Shopify only scored 3 out of 5 in this category. However, when you take a look at the quality of the features it offers, we think that this higher price point is somewhat justified.

Shopify doesn’t offer a free plan, but you can enjoy a three-day free trial before paying $1 per month for the first three months. This allows you to test Shopify out for yourself (on select plans) without committing to a fully paid subscription.

Although three days might seem very brief compared to other web builders, the fact you get three months for $1 means you’ll still pay much, much less for Shopify in those initial months. You’ll also have a longer non-committal period than other website builders that offer one or two weeks for free before locking you in for good at a premium price. So, don’t miss out on this Shopify deal!

Alternatively, if you don’t want to opt for a full Shopify plan just yet and want to explore the world of ecommerce, you can sign up for Shopify’s Starter Plan. For just $5 per month, you can sell your products across your social media channels, manage your inventory with ease, and get the latest sales data. Then, if or when you’re ready, you can simply upgrade to a higher-tier plan to unlock more features.

Shopify in Action: Sweet Home Vanilla

Headshot of Amanda Vos
Amanda Vos
Owner
Sweet Home Vanilla is a family-operated small business, specializing in creating DIY pure vanilla extract kits, quality Madagascar vanilla beans, hand-poured candles, and beautiful gift accents.
From products to orders to shipping, it’s all there.

Q&A

When did you start using Shopify, and how long did it take to build a website?

I wanted to build a website for my small business to sell physical products that I make. I chose Shopify because it currently has the best reputation for ecommerce.

I started using Shopify in August of 2021. It took me about two months to create my website from scratch using the Emerge theme in Shopify.

What do you like most about Shopify?

My favorite thing about my Shopify website is that it’s all inclusive and pretty much provides everything I need to run my small business online. From products to orders to shipping, it’s all there.

What would you change about Shopify?

Something I would change about Shopify is the ability to customize my website myself with greater ease and without hiring out to someone to code it. It isn’t very intuitive and figuring out how to make changes to the appearance has proven to be very time consuming.

Have you used Shopify's customer service? How did you find it?

Shopify’s customer service is minimally helpful in my experience. Typically when I reach out, the response is to direct me to an article that they believe will provide answers, rather than a person communicating with me directly to resolve the issue.

Were you satisfied with the website and would you recommend Shopify to others?

At this time, I am satisfied with my website. I think in the future, hopefully as my business grows, I may need to revise some elements of my website. I would definitely recommend Shopify to any new business owner looking to create a website.

Click the + to see our favorite part of Amanda's website

Sweet Home Vanilla product catalog showing "out of stock" labels

We love how Sweet Home Vanilla keeps customers up to date by showing which products are available to buy and which are out of stock thanks to the image labels. It’s a great way to highlight which products are popular and in demand!

More Information

  • If you want more details on Shopify, take a look at our thorough Shopify Review, where we dig deeper into what this platform is all about
  • Money on your mind? We get it! Our Shopify Pricing review puts Shopify’s plans under the microscope, so you can decide which is best for you

#4. GoDaddy

Best for Building a Website Quickly

Pricing range: $9.99 – $29.99 per month

GoDaddy

Best for building a website quickly

Very Good

4.2

out of 5
  • 5-minute setup
  • Good for basic sites
  • Affordable starting plan

Free plan available

Paid Plans: $6.99 - $469.99 / month

Pros

  • Fastest route to building a website
  • Switch templates at any time
  • Start with its free plan

Cons

  • Only suitable for basic websites
  • More restrictive block elements
  • Limited blogging tools
GoDaddy Review

GoDaddy Overview

In fourth position, we have GoDaddy with an overall score of 4.1 out of 5 – a 6% drop from its 2022 score of 4.4. Though it hasn’t quite reached the top three this year, GoDaddy remains a very user-friendly builder and it’s a great option for anyone looking to create a website quickly.

In fact, GoDaddy makes it easier than ever to get online, scoring an excellent 4.1 out of 5 in our ease of use category, which puts GoDaddy just behind Wix and Squarespace. Just enter your details and GoDaddy creates a tailored website for you to customize. Choose between simple layouts and follow guidance on adding elements for an extremely straightforward – and speedy – building process.

However, GoDaddy isn’t the best choice for powerful or complex websites. It may offer speed and simplicity, but this also means it’s not the best choice for building a truly personalized website and its design score has seen a decline of 6% to 4.1 out of 5. That said, GoDaddy should tick all of the boxes for smaller sites and businesses, particularly because of its simple layout and user-friendly, design-assisted format.

GoDaddy actually saw a boost to its customer score in 2023, from 4.3 last year to an impressive 4.6 out of 5. With heightened brand awareness and positive reviews from users, GoDaddy is clearly a hit with customers.

GoDaddy Pricing

Pricing has increased across all website builders which has had an impact on our value for money scoring – GoDaddy comes joint third (with Square Online and WordPress.com) with a rating of 4.1 out of 5. Thanks to its free plan, you don’t need to worry about committing right away, but if you do want to sign up, GoDaddy offers four premium plans, ranging from $9.99 to $29.99 per month (billed annually).

GoDaddy Features

GoDaddy’s features have dropped by 7% since 2022, with a new score of 3.1 out of 5 that puts GoDaddy towards the middle of the pack. The decline is mostly due to our heightened focus on marketing features in our latest round of research, and GoDaddy’s subsequent struggle to perform in this particular area. For example, GoDaddy’s blogging tools are fairly limited, with only writing and scheduling functionalities available. But it’s not all downhill – GoDaddy’s site speed and SEO features saw real improvement this year!

GoDaddy News

What’s new with GoDaddy this month?

  • Small businesses using GoDaddy can now use the newly launched Email Automation feature. This allows users to customize and personalize email templates, as well as schedule for the ideal time. Once set up, you can use the automation to trigger customer emails without any manual work, whether that’s welcoming them to your business or thanking them for subscribing to a newsletter.
godaddy logo

Make the Most of GoDaddy's Free Plan

GoDaddy is perfect for getting a simple site online quickly thanks to being easy to use, and its AI features

Features

In our latest 2023 in-house research, GoDaddy came out with an average score of 3.1 for its website features – a 7% decline since the previous year. GoDaddy’s features are fairly middle-of-the-road, lacking depth and power. For example, if you want to run a blog, you’ll be limited to simply writing and scheduling posts.

Starting at $9.99 per month (billed annually), its cheapest Basic plan, however, gives you most of the essentials for starting a website, including the following features:

  • Analytics dashboard
  • In-house SEO – including the new ability to make custom headers and URLs
  • Marketing tools, such as social post scheduling
  • Custom video creator

You’ll get greater features by upgrading to the Premium plan, allowing you to take online payments for bookings and widen your newsletter’s reach, for example.

Though GoDaddy’s features might not appear as exciting as other builders on this list, it’s worth mentioning that this simplicity and user-friendly approach is what makes it possible to get your website set up so quickly. In fact, GoDaddy is also the only website builder in our 2023 research that saw an improvement in its site speed performance!

And, according to a recent case study, GoDaddy claims to have successfully improved overall website performance for its customers by 75%.

Design

Looking at design functionality, GoDaddy’s score has declined by 6% to 4.1 out of 5. Simply put, more website builders are offering a wider range of templates and elements in comparison to last year, so GoDaddy doesn’t stand out as much in this arena.

And with GoDaddy’s restrictive style, using block elements and few customization options, you’ll get little in the way of design flexibility.

Unfortunately, GoDaddy is also let down by its lack of a mobile editor – a pretty shocking fact when so many websites are viewed on mobile devices. GoDaddy assures its websites are mobile-responsive, but users have no way of controlling this view or accessing the editor themselves.

best website builders godaddy editor

Despite the above points, GoDaddy’s editor is pretty simple, which can be a positive for beginners, and its ADI feature (Artificial Design Intelligence) allows you to get online fast by building a personalized template for you to edit. This saves you time and makes customizing much easier since most of the hard work is already done for you.

Value for Money

Marketwide price increases have left GoDaddy with a value for money score of 4.1 out of 5 – a 5% drop since 2022. GoDaddy offers a free plan, so you get plenty of time to decide if it’s the right fit for you before committing to anything.

If you choose to upgrade, there are four paid plans to choose from, ranging from $9.99 to $29.99 per month (billed annually). Plus, its two highest plans are ecommerce-specific, so if you’re looking to start an online store, GoDaddy has you covered.

Ease of Use

GoDaddy’s ease of use score remains steady at 4.1 out of 5 – its efficiency and time-saving features when it comes to building a site are great, and GoDaddy keeps its editor clear and simple. One user that tested GoDaddy said:

“It was easy to use. I could find everything I needed to find. If I needed to make a simple website for a business this is the one I would choose.”

Of course, GoDaddy’s physical design and style can’t be compared with better services like Squarespace, but our users generally found it to be more enjoyable and streamlined thanks to GoDaddy’s ability to decide a lot of features on your behalf.

Help and Support

Scoring 4.3 out of 5, GoDaddy’s help and support has seen real improvements in the last few months.

GoDaddy offers the following support options across its plans:

  • 24/7 phone support – also available on the free plan!
  • 24/7 live chat
  • Email support – a new feature
  • Help center
  • How-to videos
  • Community forum

The best part is all of these support features are available on GoDaddy’s cheapest plan.

Customer Satisfaction

Thanks to an increase in brand awareness since our last round of testing, more people are looking toward GoDaddy than ever and its customer score has increased by 6% to 4.6 out of 5. GoDaddy also receives a perfect 5 out of 5 score for its online comments, so you know the website builder has the nod of approval from the community.

GoDaddy in Action: WolffMann Wellness LLC

Headshot of Renelle Wolff
Renelle Wolff
Clinical Social Worker & Licensed Therapist
Renelle's private practice, WolffMann Wellness, provides individual therapy and new parent workshops online for people residing in the District of Columbia, Florida, Texas, and Virginia. The practice is founded upon decades of clinical experience with parents and young adults.
Building a website was my favorite part of building my business.

Q&A

When did you start using GoDaddy, and how long did it take to build a website?

Seeing the increased need for online psychotherapy care during the pandemic, I decided to start my own private practice to offer teletherapy services in the various states I am licensed. Building a website was my favorite part of building my business. It was a space I could express my professional self for the world to see.

Once I decided to start my private practice, I was so eager to build my own site that I didn’t research too much. GoDaddy was my first thought as I used their free website building service years ago for my wedding website. I remembered how easy the process was and I just jumped right in. I did do a quick online search for a coupon/promo code and was surprised the price was a lot cheaper than I expected. I bought my domain and website package which included standard marketing.

As a full-time parent to pre-schoolers, I spent my downtime and evening building the site for a few months.

What do you like most about GoDaddy?

I started with writing the text and then inputting the text into a template which was created by GoDaddy. I found this tool very easy to use.

About one year following my first website build, I decided to change the design a bit and it was fairly easy to switch to another design template within GoDaddy.

Overall, my favorite feature is the marketing tools; I can check in how my website is performing, how many views, and how people are finding my site. It also has built-in SEO help.

Have you used GoDaddy's customer service? How did you find it?

I have used their tech support a few times; each time there has been very little wait/hold time and I am directed to someone who walks me through the issues step by step. I have always felt supported by their team members on the phone and enjoy the friendly chatter while on the phone.

Were you satisfied with the website you made, and would you recommend GoDaddy to others?

I am very satisfied with my website and overall use of GoDaddy. The goal of my website was to provide future clients a small overview of myself, my therapy practice, and to promote my business online. It has been a fantastic marketing tool and a lot of fun to build. Overall, I am very happy I decided on GoDaddy and continue to recommend their services to others building their own website.

Click the + to see our favorite part of Renelle's website

Client portal page on WolffMann Wellness website

For a business like WolffMann Wellness, the website will focus heavily on the client and their needs. We were impressed to see a dedicated client portal on the website, allowing users to easily make and edit appointments online.

More Information

  • Read our GoDaddy Website Builder Review to get the details on this speedy builder, from ease of use to FAQs
  • Want to sell online? Read our GoDaddy Ecommerce Review to find out if this is the best builder for your online store
  • Similar to GoDaddy’s ADI function, our website builder quiz makes it easy to find your perfect match. Just answer four questions and hey presto! It’s free, quick, and easy.

#5. Square Online

Best for Selling Online for Free

Pricing range: free – $79 per month

Square Online

Best for selling online for free

Good

3.7

out of 5
  • Sell on its free plan
  • Quick onboarding
  • Outdated templates

Free plan available

Paid Plans: $12 - $79 / month

Pros

  • Great value for money
  • Built-in marketing tools
  • Rated highly by customers

Cons

  • Limited customization
  • Difficult for beginners
  • Lacks tools to support growth
Square Online Review

Square Online Overview

Square Online is a new entry on our list of the best website builders, with an overall score of 3.7 out of 5. Square Online is a simple builder, tailored more for businesses looking to sell online thanks to its generous free plan and handy ecommerce features.

For this reason, we’d highly recommend it for small businesses or entrepreneurs because its free plan gives you the ability to sell right away – a feature that’s usually locked behind a paywall. If you’re already using Square’s POS with your business, like our real-life example below, then you can smoothly connect everything to your new website.

That being said, Square Online isn’t the easiest to use when editing. Its design functionalities can feel quite restrictive, and the lack of advanced features, such as personalized SEO, can make it difficult to grow your website. If this is something your website requires, we recommend looking at Wix.

Square Online Pricing

In our value for money research, Square Online scores an excellent 4.1 out of 5, which puts the builder on par with GoDaddy and Squarespace for price. Square Online has a free plan that you can stay on for as long as you’d like, and two paid plans: Plus and Premium. Prices range from $29-$79 per month, billed annually.

Square Online Features

Square Online’s website features are average in nature, scoring 3.5 out of 5 in our latest round of research. This puts it in fourth place for features – behind Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify. Each plan comes with SEO tools, marketing support, and impressive sales features, but you’ll need to subscribe to a paid plan if you want access to more.

Square Online News

What’s new with Square Online this month?

  • Square and Afterpay sellers broke a new record over the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend. In total, 70 million transactions were made and online cart sizes were almost four times larger than in-person purchases, highlighting the importance of creating a website for your business and optimizing it for the holidays.
square logo

Is Square Online Right For You?

Square Online might limit you creatively, but its free plan lets you start selling online right away.

Features

Coming in fourth position for website features, Square Online scores an average 3.5 out of 5 in this research category. After acquiring Weebly in 2018, there hasn’t been much innovation or development on the website builder, while its competitors have raced ahead by introducing standout features.

Our research shows that Square Online prioritizes its ecommerce capabilities over the usability and functionality of its website builder, seeing improvement in its app market and its sales tools. For example, you can now add checkout links when selling via email and schedule appointments.

But if you want to unlock the best features, you’ll need to upgrade to one of Square Online’s premium plans. These are just some of the features you can enjoy:

  • Access to a library of 100 million images
  • Free domain for one year
  • Customer accounts
  • Ecommerce functions, including abandoned cart emails and Paypal payments
  • Website analytics

Design

Unfortunately, Square Online is really let down by its design functionality, scoring a poor 2.6 out of 5 and putting it on par with IONOS in our rankings. Many builders have made considerable improvements in this area over the last year, especially when it comes to template development, which makes it hard for Square Online to compete in the rankings.

Square Online uses the familiar drag-and-drop website builder, although it doesn’t offer much flexibility when designing because of its limited template choice and lack of unique elements. Still, if you’re after a simple and minimalistic website, this can easily be built with Square Online. For more control, you’d be better off with Wix or Squarespace.

Value for Money

As we’ve already touched on elsewhere, every website builder has increased its pricing since last year’s research – understandable given the current market and economic situation. Square Online is no exception, with the cost of its plans going up by a mega 142%! Still, with its ecommerce-friendly free plan, Square Online receives a value for money score of 4.1 out of 5. It’s a great option, especially when so many builders only offer a free trial or nothing at all.

But, if you’re looking to commit, Square Online has two paid plans: the Plus plan costs $29 per month (billed annually), and the Premium plan costs $79 per month (billed annually). A lot of other builders, including Wix, don’t let you sell online unless you upgrade to an expensive ecommerce plan, so Square Online is one to consider if you’re looking to get your business online without breaking the bank.

Ease of Use

We put Square Online to our website builder testers, and the overall consensus is that while many found it easy to use, the platform comes across as outdated in comparison to others, and you won’t be granted total creative control. In our ease of use testing, Square Online scores a decent 3.5 out of 5 – putting the builder just above Site123.

Many users found it more straightforward to use than other builders because of its simple design and support when building. One user who tested out Square Online said:

“It was my favorite – so easy to use! I didn’t struggle once trying to find anything.”

And one person was particularly impressed by Square Online’s free plan:

“The few things behind a paywall were unique, not essential. This made it feel like they were worth paying for but you could still do without.”

So why didn’t Square Online receive a better score with these glowing reviews? Well, it wasn’t the right fit for everyone. Another website tester said:

“The dashboard has so many options and headings that it becomes overwhelming at times.”

Help and Support

Square Online scores 3.3 out of 5 for its help and support. If you stumble into a problem, you can contact Square Online via its weekly live chat and phone support, available Monday to Friday between 6am and 6pm PT. If you want 24/7 phone support, the option is reserved for premium plan users only.

There’s also a knowledge center full of guides and answers, and a seller community where you can get your questions answered by other Square Online users.

Customer Satisfaction

For customer satisfaction, Square Online scores 4.2 out of 5, putting it just behind Squarespace. The key takeaway from our research is that 80% of our website testers said they would recommend Square Online to others – many users found it easier to use and navigate than other builders, and they found the prompts when building very helpful. But it won’t be the perfect fit for everyone, with others finding Square Online quite restrictive. Thankfully, with a free plan, you can give it a go yourself!

Square Online in Action: Stress Blends

Stress Blends logo - a blue ring with
Shawn Drumgo
Owner
Stress Blends provides luxury self-care options, with its premium, clean and cruelty-free bath and body products focusing on relaxation and stress relief. The Square Online website is designed to support access to the products online and in-person.
I like the ease of use and the centralized platform for online and in-person selling…

Q&A

When did you start using Square Online? How long did it take to build a website?

I started using Square Online in August 2023. It took approximately 5-7 days to build my site.

I wanted to build a website to offer all of my available product options for sale online, as a complement to my Amazon store.

I chose Square Online for the following reasons: low cost for a small business, feature-rich and intuitive platform, online and in-person tools, the ability to scale as my business grows, and for the name recognition to provide a level of trust for shoppers.

What do you like most about Square Online?

I like the ease of use and the centralized platform for online and in-person selling, coupled with a mobile app.

What would you change about Square Online?

Add an option to request a support rep to call immediately to assist with issues.

Have you used Square Online's customer service? How did you find it?

I have used the customer service. They were able to understand and address my issues.

Were you satisfied with the website you made, and would you recommend Square Online to others?

I’m satisfied with my website and I would recommend Square Online.

Click the + to see our favorite part of Shawn's website

Product filter options in Stress Blends online shop

To help customers on their shopping journey, online stores can add product filtering so users can find what they’re looking for easily. We like the options included by Stress Blends, such as the ability to filter by deals or sales.

More Information

#6. Hostinger

Best for Uptime Reliability

Pricing range: $2.99 per month

Hostinger

Best for uptime reliability

Above Average

3.4

out of 5
  • Simple templates
  • Drag-and-drop editor
  • Affordable single plan

Paid Plans: $2.99 - $109.99 / month

Pros

  • A cheap, basic platform for beginners
  • Keep things simple with one plan
  • 24/7 live chat support

Cons

  • Lack of creative control
  • Weaker features than Wix and Squarespace
  • Poor scalability due to its single plan
Hostinger Review

Hostinger Overview

In sixth place, we have the Hostinger Website Builder – a website builder and hosting provider wrapped up in an affordable package. It scores 3.4 out of 5 in our latest research, seeing a boost to its performance in our website features and design categories, and scoring highly in our value for money and ease of use tests.

But what makes Hostinger Website Builder special? To summarize, it’s a beginner-friendly website builder with nice, clean templates, but it’s Hostinger’s affordable price, AI tools, and web hosting capabilities that sets it apart. For example, Hostinger’s server response time is 0.45 seconds, which is essential for a smooth-running website, while Wix, one of our top builders, only has a response time of 1.3 seconds!

Hostinger is best known for being a hosting provider, and it can be a little confusing when you’re starting out. To find Hostinger’s website builder, you need to sign up for its Website Builder & Web Hosting package – Zyro was recently integrated into the Hostinger platform, so if you’ve ever tried Zyro before, then Hostinger’s website builder plan will feel familiar.

Hostinger Website Builder’s scores 3.6 out of 5 for its design capabilities. We are impressed by its offering: Hostinger is simple to use and navigate, and its templates are easy to edit even if you don’t have any tech skills. The templates aren’t very customizable though, so if putting a personal touch on your branding is a top priority, then you may want to consider Squarespace.

The bottom line is that Hostinger is a platform with a lot of potential – some of it unfulfilled, especially when it comes to overall features and scalability which could leave you feeling unsatisfied in the long run. Still, it’s relatively new to the website builder space so it has time to evolve. On the plus side, Hostinger costs less than our top website builder picks, and you get a great web hosting service, which means there’s one less thing to worry about!

Hostinger Pricing

Hostinger keeps things simple by only having one plan. Its Website Builder & Web Hosting package costs $2.99 per month – and, if you sign up for a 48-month contract, you’ll get the first three months for free. Pricing has increased across the market, but Hostinger’s plan remains very affordable, which is why its value for money score is 4 out of 5. Since Hostinger is a new addition for our 2023 list, we can’t reflect on its performance since last year.

Good To Know: You can even get 10% off your Hostinger plan by entering our exclusive code WBE at checkout!

Hostinger Features

Hostinger scores a low 2.8 out of 5 for website features. Its features are fairly limited in comparison to builders like Wix, which has excellent built-in tools for blogging and email campaigns that Hostinger just can’t match. In particular, Hostinger’s marketing and ecommerce features aren’t very powerful, and with only one plan, there’s no option to expand or improve the existing features.

Hostinger News

What’s new with Hostinger this month?

  • Hostinger has introduced additional AI tools to support users when creating content and visuals for their website. The AI blog writer can generate posts up to 2,000 words long, and you can even tweak the tone of voice before submitting your request. And, if you’re looking to break up your text with an image or two, you can use Hostinger’s AI image generator to create royalty-free graphics.
hostinger logo

Interested in Hostinger?

Hostinger combines web hosting with its website builder to deliver an all-in-one package – for an affordable price!

Features

Hostinger only offers one website builder plan, and though web hosting is neatly included within the package, its list of additional features is pretty short. For website features, Hostinger scores 2.8 out of 5 and it’s easy to see why.

Here are some of the basics you get with Hostinger’s plan:

  • Free domain (for the 1st year)
  • Advanced website security features, such as unlimited SSL certificates
  • Free email

You can activate plenty of built-in tools, such as Google Analytics, but there’s no app market to browse, so you’re reliant on what Hostinger has to offer. It simply falls short of the competition, especially when it comes to its marketing and ecommerce features – you get what you pay for, and for a cheap price, that isn’t much.

Hostinger Website Builder is also let down by its lack of ADI and blogging functionality, which is another reason why it scored so poorly in our testing. The fact you can only add new blog posts with Hostinger means the website builder can’t compete with the likes of WordPress.com which gives you a whole suite of blogging tools.

We did, however, notice a 100% improvement to Hostinger’s SEO services, meaning you can now edit alt tags and add meta titles, for example. Sadly, there’s no keyword support or dedicated SEO integrations, so the feature is limited.

That being said, Hostinger is first and foremost a web hosting provider, and if you choose its website builder and hosting package, you’ll get it all rolled into the one plan.

Design

Hostinger’s score of 3.6 out of 5 puts it in fifth position for design functionality.

Hostinger offers hundreds of professionally-designed templates to choose from – all of which have a stylish, modern feel in keeping with the latest trends. Plus, designing websites with Hostinger is just easy. Its drag-and-drop builder uses helpful lines to guide you as you go, meaning it’s pretty difficult to make a messy page.

That said, Hostinger’s templates aren’t very customizable – a far cry from the creative control you get with our top builder, Wix. Hostinger’s editor is very section-based, and you can’t stray much from the original layout you’ve chosen. You also can’t change templates once your site is live, and without any ADI functionality, you’ll have to design something you love from scratch.

Value for Money

Hostinger keeps things simple – and affordable – by offering one website builder/web hosting package bundled into a single plan. Despite marketwide hikes in pricing, Hostinger scores 4 out of 5 in our recent value for money research.

Because Hostinger is primarily a hosting provider, its pricing works a little differently from most of the other builders on this list. For example, Hostinger doesn’t offer a free trial or plan, but it does provide an impressive 30-day money-back guarantee, so you’ll have plenty of time to decide if you like it or not. Prices start at $2.99 per month (billed annually), but if you opt for a 48-month contract, you’ll get the first three months for free!

The only thing you need to keep an eye on is the renewal fee after your initial term has ended. For a 12-month term, your plan will renew at $8.99 per month, but for a 48-month term, it’ll renew at $6.99 per month.

Ease of Use

Hostinger Website Builder scores 3.9 out of 5 for ease of use. Its drag-and-drop editor means beginners can get to grips with the builder quickly, but its limited features and lack of customization options could lead to some frustrating moments. We’d recommend more user-friendly builders, such as Wix or Squarespace.

Help and Support

Hostinger Website Builder receives a score of 3.3 out of 5 for its help and support services. You can contact Hostinger’s support team via 24/7 live chat, but there’s no option to give them a call.

If you’d prefer to solve the issue yourself, you can take a look through Hostinger’s knowledge center and explore its tutorials and step-by-step walkthroughs.

Customer Satisfaction

Hostinger’s customer satisfaction score is 2.8 out of 5 – one of the lowest on the list. As we’ve already mentioned, despite the cheap cost, Hostinger provides a pretty limited service and the overall user experience might feel restrictive to some. To others, it could be the perfect builder!

Hostinger in Action: SOLD Corp Watches

Watch face with a crown on top - logo for SOLD Corp
Rafee Rahman
Owner
SOLD Corp Watches is a blog site that focuses on affordable watches for men. Rafee's goal is to help people decide what watch to buy without spending too much money since fashion should be accessible to everyone.
… I designed my site the way I wanted in just a few days.

Q&A

When did you start using Hostinger? How long did it take to build a website?

I wanted to build a website for several reasons. I was highly passionate about watches and wanted an outlet to express my opinions. I want to help people understand more about watches and give exposure to those brands that offer quality at an affordable price point. I also wanted the learning experience of building my own website, as it is a valuable skill to have nowadays. I chose Hostinger because of its solid reviews, easy-to-use structure, and low starting prices. I didn’t want to invest too much in the beginning out of caution, so Hostinger’s low yearly prices were a big draw for me. It’s easy to use and comes with lots of useful features, like a free domain registration.

I started using Hostinger in September 2023. It took me about three days to build my website. It was my first time using WordPress to build a website, so there was definitely a steep learning curve. However, the process is easy with Hostinger and I designed my site the way I wanted in just a few days.

What do you like most about Hostinger?

The thing I like most about Hostinger is the custom email domain capabilities. You can very easily create multiple custom email addresses with your website’s domain as part of your plan. I have created admin@soldcorp.com and social@soldcorp.com. It makes outreach more professional and more organized. It is very easy to access these emails directly from your Hostinger profile too. Other great features include the ability to test your website’s speed easily and the AI logo maker.

What would you change about Hostinger?

If I could change one thing about Hostinger, I would unlock a few more features as part of the premium plan. For example, I only get one credit for the AI logo maker. Another thing I would change would be to decrease the gap between the first year and second year pricing. They get you in the door with super low prices, which was important to me since keeping costs low was a top priority when I first started. However, I would like the second year pricing to be a little lower and a little closer to what I paid this year.

Have you used Hostinger's customer service? How did you find it?

I have not really had any problems that would warrant a customer service contact so far. I guess that’s a good thing since I have had no technical issues at all really. The only “downside” to that is that I have not been able to test their response times and helpfulness. They were very helpful by giving me lots of automatic tips when I first opened my website though.

Were you satisfied with the website you made, and would you recommend Hostinger to others?

Yes, I was satisfied with the website I made and I would definitely recommend Hostinger to others. It is a great tool for beginners to easily start their own website, and it has the functionality and capabilities to continue serving you will as you gain more experience and knowledge. It isn’t really bad at doing anything. The web hosting is reliable which is very important. You don’t want your website going down all the time. All in all, Hostinger has been a great service for me.

Click the + to see our favorite part of Rafee's website

Blog post about quartz watch movements on SOLD Corp Watches blog

If you’re thinking about monetizing your blog posts, affiliate links can be an easy and low-effort way to bring in cash. SOLD Corp Watches includes links throughout its blog posts and even includes copy to alert the reader, meaning the business is being completely transparent about how it makes money.

More Information

#7. WordPress.com

Best for Creating a Blog

Pricing range: free – $45 per month 

WordPress.com

Best for creating a blog

Above Average

3.2

out of 5
  • Well-suited to blogs
  • Not beginner-friendly
  • Customize with code

Free plan available

Paid Plans: $4 - $45 / month

Pros

  • Literally built for blogging
  • Thousands of plugins to add
  • Paid plans start at just $4/month

Cons

  • Limited customization (without code)
  • Not great for websites that aren’t blogs
  • Poor help and support
WordPress.com Review

WordPress.com Overview

WordPress.com is the basic website-building platform offered by WordPress. WordPress.org, on the other hand, is an advanced content management system that offers greater power but demands technical expertise.

If you’re interested in WordPress.org, you can check out our WordPress.com vs WordPress.org comparison. But for now, let’s dive into WordPress.com.

WordPress.com scores an overall 3.2 out of 5 in our recent round of research, which is a drop of 10% since last year’s rating of 3.5 out of 5. But it’s not all bad for WordPress.com – with the shifts across the board, WordPress.com has actually climbed our rankings and now finds itself as our seventh best builder instead of its previous spot in ninth place.

That being said, WordPress.com isn’t the easiest website builder to use, meaning it’s not a very beginner-friendly option. To make the most out of this builder and expand your site, you’ll need to get to grips with some basic coding. It’s no real surprise that WordPress.com’s ease of use score is pretty low – a poor 2.7 out of 5.

Sure, WordPress.com isn’t suitable for novices, but if you have a bit of technical confidence and are thinking about building a content-heavy website, it could be the right choice for you.

WordPress.com Pricing

Sitting in third place with GoDaddy and Square Online, WordPress.com scores an impressive 4.1 out of 5 for its pricing. This is a 15% drop in score since last year, but with everyone hiking up their fees, it’s not too shocking, and WordPress.com’s plans remain pretty affordable. You can sign up for its free plan, or choose between its four premium options, which range from $4 to $45 per month (billed annually).

WordPress.com Features

In contrast to its high value for money score, WordPress.com scores a low 2.8 out of 5 for its website features. Yes, there are plenty of great blogging and content features, and the builder has recently improved its marketing functionalities, but WordPress.com’s features come at the expense of its usability.

WordPress.com News

What’s new with WordPress.com this month?

  • WordPress updated Jetpack, its mobile app, to increase efficiency and improve the overall user experience. With a new and customizable interface, users can navigate the app with ease and iOS devices benefit from additional functionality, such as swiping gestures.
wordpress.com logo

Build a Content-Heavy Site?

We’d recommend WordPress.com for experienced builders looking to create a content-heavy site, such as a blog. If you’ve got the technical knowledge, take a look!

Features

WordPress.com scores a weak 2.8 out of 5 for its website features – supplying its users with plenty of options but neglecting its overall user experience and ease of use. This year, we noticed a real improvement in WordPress.com’s marketing features, which certainly helped boost its features score by 34% since its score of 2.1 in 2022.

Plus, it wouldn’t be WordPress.com without plenty of blogging tools, such as:

  • Social bookmarking
  • RSS feed
  • Archives
  • Comments
  • Search feature

You also have control over details like displaying the author bio on single posts, or where you want featured images to appear.

If you want to create an online store or business website, you can do that too – but this works best when combined with a blog. If you want to bend WordPress.com to create anything that’s not a blog or a very content-heavy site, you’ll start to struggle pretty early on. So, if you’re a total beginner or have another purpose for your website in mind, we’d recommend steering clear of WordPress.com to avoid feeling overwhelmed!

Design

WordPress.com scores 2 out of 5 for its design functionality this year, putting the website builder a single rank away from last place. To put it simply, WordPress.com targets informational, content-heavy websites, like blogs – design isn’t its strong point.

You get over 300 free and paid themes to choose from, with theme prices falling between $30 and $80 for a one-off payment. You can then customize these templates, which is made even easier if you know some basic coding. Of course, beginners may struggle with the editing layout, since it isn’t as simple as drag-and-drop builders like Wix.

best website builders wordpress.com editor

It’s hard to really customize WordPress.com templates for anything other than blogging, so think about the type of site you want to create ahead of time. For example, a portfolio website is probably a no-go!

It’s also worth noting that the WordPress.com platform is designed to showcase what the main dashboard of the .org site operates like, with the intention that users will swap after outgrowing the capabilities of the more basic platform.

Value for Money

Even though it’s a trickier builder to get to grips with, you get a lot for your money with WordPress.com – it’s our third-best option for price, scoring 4.1 out of 5 along with GoDaddy and Square Online. Test it out first with its free plan, or choose between WordPress.com’s four premium plans, ranging from $4 to $45 per month (billed annually).

Ease of Use

Considering all we’ve shared already, it’s not too surprising that WordPress.com performs poorly in our ease of use research, scoring a low 2.7 out of 5. Users that tested it had very few positive things to say, further enforcing the idea that WordPress.com isn’t suitable for anyone just starting out. For a more user-friendly experience, we’d recommend Wix or Squarespace.

One user even said this of WordPress.com:

“It didn’t feel user-friendly at all, and I spent a lot of time clicking around to figure out what everything is. So many icons!”

But, if you do have the technical knowledge or any experience in basic coding, this could be a match made in heaven!

Help and Support

Considering WordPress.com’s troubling usability, it’s a shame to say that it’s also not the best for help and support. It only scored 3 out of 5 in our testing, which is why we don’t think it’s a good fit for beginners.

There’s a help center you can access, though one of our users that tested WordPress.com said that its “explanations were so complicated that I often lost the energy to complete the task.” Alternatively, you can submit a question to the online forum – just don’t expect any 24/7 support channels!

Customer Satisfaction

Scoring 3.9 out of 5 for customer satisfaction, WordPress.com sits in the middle of the pack. Since 2022, its score has dropped by almost 4% – with limited design options, tricky editing tools, and a lack of help and support, it’s simply another blow to WordPress.com’s usability.

WordPress.com in Action: Tiny Workshops

Nick Rowan
Founder
Tiny Workshops is a website that hosts interviews with creatives around the world and provides guides for getting started with creative hobbies.
It allowed me the freedom to focus on content and hit the ground running.

Q&A

When did you start using WordPress.com, and how long did it take to build a website?

With everyone stuck at home during the pandemic, I had an idea for a website that was all about starting new creative hobbies with limited space and resources, which is how Tiny Workshops was born. Most of my experience at this point was with content, not website building or design, so I wanted an easy solution to get started right away. I knew that if I spent a week researching other hosting options I might lost interest. I also knew that I always had the option to migrate to a WordPress.org website in the future, although I haven’t felt the need yet.

I first used WordPress.com for another blog that I started back in 2017, but Tiny Workshops was launched in July 2020. It took me less than a day to get the website started, which is the main reason I chose WordPress.com. I whipped up a logo in Canva, picked a simple template, and started writing my first post.

What do you like most about WordPress.com?

My favorite thing about WordPress.com is how easy it is to get started. You don’t need to find separate providers for hosting, a domain, a theme, and so on. It allowed me the freedom to focus on content and hit the ground running.

Although it hasn’t been as relevant for Tiny Workshops, the WordPress.com community is also a great feature to build an audience early on. Members are generally very friendly, and it can be hugely motivating to receive positive comments on your first few blog posts.

What would you change about WordPress.com?

I don’t like that some features, such as plugins and URL structure, are tied to higher tier subscriptions. Plugins, in particular, are a must for any serious website.

Have you used WordPress.com's customer service? How did you find it?

I have used WordPress.com’s customer service on several occasions, and it’s always been great. Both for website hosting issues and troubleshooting theme design customizations, responses were quick and helpful.

Were you satisfied with the website you made, and would you recommend WordPress.com to others?

I’m very satisfied with my WordPress.com website and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to others. I have recently changed to a theme that supports the new site editor, which has been perfect for the small tweaks I needed to make. The website is now large enough that I could justify hiring a designer to make things look more professional, but as someone with two small kids and limited time, I’d rather avoid the hassle.

Click the + to see our favorite part of Nick's website

Drop down navigation menu showing guides on Tiny Workshop

For a website that covers interviews, guides, and tutorials, we love that the navigation bar is incredibly helpful and user-friendly. Tiny Workshops thinks about its audience and categories its guides so readers can find what they’re looking for quickly.

More Information

  • Read our WordPress.com Review for a full look at this ideal blogging platform, including its pricing plans, features, ease of use, and more
  • To learn more about the difference between the two WordPress platforms and what each one can offer you, check out our WordPress.com vs WordPress.org comparison guide
  • See how WordPress.com stacks up against our best overall website builder in our Wix vs WordPress comparison guide

#8. IONOS

Best for Enterprise Support and Functionality

Pricing range: $1 – $25 per month  

IONOS

Best for enterprise support and functionality

Average

3

out of 5
  • Basic tools and features
  • Multilingual options
  • Cheap introductory deals

Paid Plans: $0.5 - $35 / month

Pros

  • 24/7 phone and live chat support
  • Templates cover wide industry range
  • Set up sites in different languages

Cons

  • Platform feels behind the times
  • Requires commitment to paid plan
  • Confusing to work with
IONOS Review

IONOS Overview

IONOS has everything you need to create a functional, standard website. It scores 3 out of 5 in our 2023 research. This 8% drop in performance since last year puts IONOS at number eight on our list.

One of the main drawbacks of IONOS is that its designs look dated when compared with the other builders on this list. Your website won’t look like a Squarespace template or win awards for its designs, but it’ll get the job done. IONOS is a functional builder, rather than a stylish one – it won’t create the best looking site on the internet, but what it does have on offer could be the perfect fit for your needs.

IONOS also has very impressive help and support channels, coming joint first with Wix and Squarespace thanks to its score of 4.8 out of 5. Though your site will be simple, IONOS is there for guidance if you need it, whether that’s via 24/7 phone support or live chat.

IONOS Pricing

Despite its basic features, IONOS is a good option for anyone on a budget thanks to its very cheap introductory deals, scoring 3.1 out of 5 in our value for money research. There are three paid plans in total, all of which also give you the option to build an online store for an extra fee – its Plus plan starts at just $1 per month for the first year.

IONOS Features

IONOS scores a below average 2.2 out of 5 for its website features, making it the second worst builder for features, just ahead of Jimdo. IONOS offers users the basics, such as email marketing tools and social media widgets. It equips its users with the essentials so that they can build a functioning website, but it doesn’t provide anything to help your site thrive or stand out. For example, IONOS lacks booking tools, which other builders like Wix and Squarespace include on their cheapest plans.

IONOS Feature of the Month

This month, we’re highlighting the following IONOS feature:

  • IONOS’ AI Text Generator and Text Improver are just one of many AI features provided by the website builder. You can use the AI Text Generator to create new content in seconds or simply optimize existing copy for SEO purposes.
1&1 IONOS logo

Do You Like The Sound Of IONOS?

IONOS has incredibly cheap introductory offers, including a plan from $1 per month for the first year!

Features

IONOS scores a low 2.2 out of 5 for its website features, putting it one rank up from the bottom of the list. It’s an 11% improvement since last year’s research, but IONOS simply provides users with the bare minimum across its plans. But for the cheap deals on the table, that’s understandable!

IONOS is certainly missing advanced features, especially when it comes to marketing – it lacks pop-ups and wider social media support, for example – but IONOS won’t be a problem if you’re only after the basics.

One of the main strengths is IONOS’ multilingual feature which is available on all plans. This is great for widening your visitor base and creating a modern website. Despite its lack of advanced tools, IONOS does offer basic email marketing support, as well as social media widgets, so you’re not left completely in the dark ages.

Design

IONOS isn’t the best website builder for creating a stunning website or portfolio – its designs are pretty dated, and you have very little creative control. In our latest research, IONOS only scores 2.6 out of 5 for its design functionality – nothing very special in comparison to other builders on our list.

Its template designs are basic and lack appeal, and the limited customization on offer makes it feel as though IONOS is holding its users back from being able to build something unique.

That being said, we do appreciate that you can add pages and optimize them for search engines all within the editor itself – there’s no need to jump back and forth between your website and backend dashboard.

Value for Money

We’ve already touched on IONOS’ amazing introductory deals – $1 per month for the first year is definitely something to shout from the rooftops! However, IONOS did receive a very poor value for money score in our research. Its new score of 3.1 out of 5 is a 26% decline from last year’s score of 4.2 out of 5.

IONOS’ poor rating hasn’t been helped by the marketwide price increases which caused us to amend our research algorithm, but it’s also been let down by its lack of powerful features. Ignoring the cheap starting deals, the renewal price that follows doesn’t match up with the features you receive. For example, the $1 offer increases to $15 per month after the first year – for just a dollar more, you could buy Wix’s $16 plan and enjoy better features and design tools.

IONOS doesn’t have a free plan or a free trial to enjoy, so you have to commit to a paid plan right away, and you can choose between its three paid plans: Starter, Plus, and Pro. Just be cautious of the real price when deciding! The cheap deal won’t last forever, and you’ll soon be stuck with a pricier plan.

Ease of Use

In terms of ease of use, IONOS also struggles, scoring 2.8 out of 5. There haven’t been many changes since 2022, and its basic functionalities can make the whole process of building your website feel limited and restricted.

Help and Support

In positive news, IONOS scores a very high 4.8 out of 5 for its help and support services – this puts it on top with Wix and Squarespace. Improvements have been made to its knowledge center performance, from general usability to an increase in available answers, so you’re more likely to find a solution to any problem.

You can also call or message IONOS 24/7, but we have noticed that its live chat feature seems to always be unavailable due to busy advisors.

Customer Satisfaction

IONOS’ customer satisfaction performance remains steady from last year, scoring an average 3.3 out of 5. It’s worth mentioning that IONOS has the same Trustpilot score as Wix (4.1), but with its poor ease of use score and restrictive user experience, we’d recommend more enjoyable website builders, such as Wix or Squarespace.

IONOS in Action: Restaurant POS Hacks

Headshot of Jacob Clark
Jacob Clark
Owner
Restaurant POS Hacks provides state-of-the-art restaurant management solutions to restaurants, bars, cafes, bakeries, and food trucks at an affordable price (or free for qualified restaurants).
… they might just have the best support team out there!

Q&A

When did you start using IONOS, and how long did it take to build a website?

I built a website so I could have a place of my own to direct prospective buyers to; I didn’t want to rely solely on social media and running ads. I also wanted to use SEO as a marketing strategy to bring in prospects, hence why I needed a website. I chose IONOS specifically because of the low price, ease of access, and great customer service.

I started using IONOS a little over a year ago, although this website (Restaurant POS Hacks) is only about six months old. It took me 3-4 days to build the site and get it to how it currently looks.

What do you like most about IONOS?

My favorite thing would be the price honestly. It has everything I need (domains, hosting, business email, etc.), all at an affordable price.

What would you change about IONOS?

I wouldn’t change anything about IONOS. I’ve used multiple website builders, as well as hosting platforms. IONOS, to me, has been the best all around. I have no complaints.

Have you used IONOS' customer service? How did you find it?

I have used IONOS customer service and they are both prompt and superb. They’re quick to answer your call, as well as solve any problem you might have. I had to contact them on day two of building my site because my domain wouldn’t link to my site. It was a frustrating moment, but after a five minute conversation with their support team, my problem was fixed. I’ve had no problems since then with my website.

My only grievance is that sometimes they’ll call to offer new products or services, and the call always comes from an international number, prompting me to ignore the call. Other than that, they might just have the best support team out there!

Were you satisfied with the website you made, and would you recommend IONOS to others?

I am most definitely satisfied with my website and IONOS is the only website builder that I’m willing to recommend to anyone!

Click the + to see our favorite part of Jacob's website

Company stats on Restaurant POS Hacks about us page

It’s a great idea to give website visitors digestible statistics, like Restaurant POS Hacks has done, to show off the success of the business. This helps build customer trust and boost your authority in the industry.

More Information

#9. Site123

Best for Hobby and Personal Websites

Pricing range: free – $75 per month

Site123

Best for hobby and personal websites

Average

2.8

out of 5
  • Suitable for personal sit
  • Basic features
  • Outdated templates

Free plan available

Paid Plans: $12.8 - $97.5 / month

Pros

  • Simple to understand
  • Plenty of paid plans to choose from
  • 24/7 support available

Cons

  • Terrible templates and designs
  • Lack of creative control
  • Ads on free plan
Site123 Review

Site123 Overview

Approaching the end of our top 10 list is Site123 – a simple website builder that is best for hobbyists and personal sites. Scoring 2.8 out of 5 in our recent research, Site123 has dropped 16% since last year and its low category scores will explain why.

Site123 is actually the worst builder when it comes to design. Despite an improvement of 23% since last year’s research, Site123 only scored 1.9 out of 5 in 2023 – from bad to bad, really. This means we don’t recommend it for creatives or business owners looking for a really professional-looking site.

Given the poor quality of Site123’s in-house features, it’s a good thing there are also plenty of third-party apps that you can integrate with your site if you want additional functionality. Site123’s app market has a mix of free and paid integrations, so you can spend as much or as little as you’d like.

Another upside for Site123 is that its overall building tools are very basic and quick to understand, plus its onboarding questions and ADI service means you can get set up with relative ease.

With all that said, we’d solely recommend Site123 for people looking to create something personal, or hobbyists building a simple website. Look at other builders on this list if you’re setting up a small business site, blog, or online store!

Site123 Pricing

Site123 scores 3.4 out of 5 for value for money – it’s pretty average, but definitely not the worst of the bunch! You can enjoy Site123’s free plan for as long as you want, or upgrade to one of its five paid plans, ranging from $12.80 to $75 per month (billed annually).

Site123 Features

With a score of 2.3 out of 5, Site123’s website features are pretty underwhelming. Any improvements that have been made since last year are few and far between, and Site123 doesn’t offer anything that other builders don’t already provide, such as SEO tools and mobile optimization.

Site123 Feature of the Month

This month, we’re highlighting the following Site123 feature:

  • A great way to build trust in your website and business is through testimonials. Site123’s testimonial page feature allows you to showcase customizable customer reviews – you can include images, star ratings, and links to completed work.
site123 logo

Want To Build a Basic Hobby Site?

Site123 is ideal for personal websites or hobbyists looking to set up a site quickly. You can get started with this simple builder for free!

Features

Site123 scores a rating of 2.3 out of 5 for its website features, putting it near the bottom of our list in this research category. Though this is a 6% increase since last year, Site123 continues to struggle in this area – its plans simply offer the bare minimum, which is why we wouldn’t recommend this builder for anyone building a professional website.

Its free plan starts you off with:

  • 250MB storage
  • 250MB bandwidth
  • A Site123 branded subdomain

This is alongside its general website building features, such as email marketing, SEO support, and website security. If you want to remove the free ads, improve your storage, and gain access to enhanced tools, such as website statistics, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Design

Design isn’t Site123’s strong point – in fact, it’s the worst option on this list if you’re looking for stylish templates and aesthetically-pleasing elements. In our latest research, Site123 scored a shockingly low 1.9 out of 5.

Site123 has hundreds of free website templates to choose from, and they’re categorized by purpose, from “business” to “CV” to “photography”. However, from our thorough browse of its listings, Site123’s templates are incredibly basic and look very outdated, especially in comparison to stunning builders like Squarespace.

Selection of Site123's website templates with categories for browsing

In fact, one user that tested the site for us said this:

“Site123 feels like it hasn’t kept up with the consumer and has therefore become outdated in both function and design.”

Value for Money

When it comes to value for money, Site123 scores 3.4 out of 5 – a drop of 17% from last year’s score of 4.1. With marketwide price increases, Site123 now sits towards the middle of the pack, sandwiched between Hostinger and IONOS.

Site123 offers five paid plans to choose between. Take a look at the 12-month fees below:

  • Basic: $12.80 per month – Remove Site123 floating ads
  • Advanced: $19.80 per month – Remove all Site123 ads
  • Professional: $28.80 per month – Unlock website statistics
  • Gold: $34.80 per month – Unlock store reviews and abandoned cart
  • Platinum: $75 per month – Unlock max 1,000GB storage

As you can see, Site123’s cheapest plan doesn’t remove all ads from your site, so bear this in mind when choosing your paid plan. The cheapest you pay for an ad-free site is $19.80 per month, and for this price, you could buy Wix’s cheapest $16 plan for better features and designs.

But if you’re not ready to commit to a plan just yet, you can start your website-building dreams without spending a cent thanks to Site123’s free plan.

Ease of Use

Site123 scores an average 3.2 out of 5 for its ease of use, seeing no real change since last year’s research. It’s a simple builder to use, and its helpful onboarding questions, as well as its ADI feature, will help you get up and running quickly.

One user that tested the website said this of its ease of use:

“It’s good for people with no design experience who want a website up and running quickly.”

Help and Support

Site123's pop up live chat feature

Help and support is the one area where Site123 impressed us, scoring 4.3 out of 5. It now sits in second place with GoDaddy – behind our three joint winners in this category – and its performance has improved by 18% since last year! When you build a website with Site123, you instantly get access to the following support:

  • 24/7 live chat
  • Onsite editor prompts
  • Community forum
  • Video tutorials

It also has a powerful knowledge center that we found both easy to navigate, and jam-packed with helpful articles.

Customer Satisfaction

As for customer satisfaction, Site123 scores a weak 2.7 out of 5 – a decline of 25% since 2022, which now makes Site123 the second worst option in this category. In comparison to its competitors, Site123 doesn’t compete. Users are more likely to recommend and choose other providers, such as Wix. For example, only 54% of the users we had test Site123 would recommend it to others! On the other hand, 80% of users would recommend Wix.

Site123 in Action: Yuval Eizik Blog

Headshot of Yuval Eizik
Yuval Eizik
Blogger
Yuval's blog started a side hustle that turned into a functioning business. After struggling to find a simple website builder, Yuval worried that making money online was just a dream until Yuval found Site123.
I like that it is completely simple and you don’t have a complex UI or too many unnecessary options.

Q&A

When did you start using Site123? How long did it take to build a website?

I started using Site123 about six months ago. If you look at my website, you would need help understanding how I completed so much. The first basic pages that every website needs are a home, about page, blogs, and some other stuff. It actually took me a few hours to a few days to get it all running.

What do you like most about Site123?

I like that it is completely simple and you don’t have a complex UI or too many unnecessary options. It has everything you need, and you can easily build your own responsive, good-looking website. Most people are afraid that when a program is simple, it will miss many important aspects, but Site123 doesn’t miss a thing. I can write a complete blog post, and within an hour, it’ll be fully optimized for SEO. You can add images, videos, custom HTML, pretty much everything you need.

What would you change about Site123?

I would add some more blog designs and functionalities related to writing content since there aren’t many options available now. If you imagine insane CSS animations or cool transitions, you will not be able to do that. I know they focus on simplicity and ease of use, but specifically in blogging where people make the most money from affiliate marketing and ads, it is very important to add some more complex functionalities like table of content and navigation abilities – which you only really have on sites that are maybe WordPress-based.
Another important functionality that’s really missing is a proper backup system. The only way to backup the site is to duplicate it, leaving you with a messy UI and wasted space.

Have you used Site123's customer service? How did you find it?

I have, a few times – the customer service is great. You have a small button on your screen, and an actual person (not a bot) answers you pretty much immediately. They are glad to help any time for free, even without having a subscription.

Were you satisfied with the website you made, and would you recommend Site123 to others?

I’m really satisfied with the website, and totally recommend it to everyone.

Click the + to see our favorite part of Yuval's website

Website page showing categories for a blog

We love the use of an infinity scroll on Yuval’s blog. This makes jumping between sections really smooth and user-friendly.

More Information

  • Interested in Site123? Take a look at our full Site123 review to find out everything about this website builder

#10. Jimdo

Best for Building Simple Websites

Pricing range: free – $24 per month 

Jimdo

Best for building simple websites

Average

2.7

out of 5
  • Rigid designs
  • Great value for money
  • Help and support lacking

Free plan available

Paid Plans: $9 - $24 / month

Pros

  • Cheap ad-free plans
  • Simple to navigate
  • ADI website builder

Cons

  • Limited designs and rigid customization
  • No 24/7 support available
  • Poor user experience
Jimdo Review

Jimdo Overview

Rounding out our top 10 is Jimdo, a basic website builder that’s best for creating simple websites at a low price. With an overall score of 2.7 out of 5, Jimdo’s seen a 25% drop in performance since last year’s score of 3.6 out of 5. This is mostly due to Jimdo’s poor ease of use evaluations and stripped-back features.

In fact, Jimdo comes last for a few of our research categories – most noticeably for ease of use and customer satisfaction, where Jimdo scores 2.2 out of 5 for both. Users who tested the builder found it difficult to use and struggled to have any real creative control.

Now, don’t forget that even though Jimdo is at the bottom of this list, it still made our top 10, beating out other website builders across the market to become one of our recommended choices. So, even though it doesn’t perform as well as others on this list, Jimdo could be the right builder for you!

Jimdo Pricing

Is value for money important to you? Jimdo’s our second-best option when it comes to price, scoring 4.2 out of 5 and sitting just behind Squarespace. Jimdo comes with a free plan so you can build risk-free. If you’re looking to upgrade, you can choose between four premium plans. Two of these are online store focused, so if you’re simply looking to build a website, plans range from $9 to $14 per month (billed annually). It’s also worth mentioning that Jimdo’s cheapest paid plan, at $9 per month, is ad-free!

Jimdo Features

Jimdo has all of the basic features you need to build your website, but it sits in last place in our website features category for a reason, scoring 2.1 out of 5. If you want the power to edit, personalize, or create something more advanced or personalized, Jimdo will start to feel rigid very quickly. For real creative control, we’d recommend looking at Wix or Squarespace instead.

Jimdo Feature of the Month

This month, we’re highlighting the following Jimdo feature:

  • If you’re subscribed to Jimdo’s VIP or Unlimited plans, you’ll unlock online booking tools. Whether you’re a photographer or looking to set up fitness classes, Jimdo allows you to set up both individual and group bookings which you can customize to suit your business.
jimdo logo

Is Jimdo Your Favorite So Far?

Jimdo is a great option if you’re not looking to spend too much, plus it has a free plan so you can give it a good test run first.

Features

Not only is Jimdo last on our list, but it’s also the worst for website features out of all 10 website builders. Though it has improved by 10% since last year’s figure, Jimdo’s new score is an underwhelming 2.1 out of 5.

It’s a simple enough builder to get to grips with, but it doesn’t provide much in the way of features. We appreciate that you can optimize your website for cell phones, and even remove ads for just $9 per month on the cheapest paid plan.

However, Jimdo severely lacks any blogging functionality, has limited SEO capabilities, and doesn’t offer any direct marketing abilities. Jimdo also doesn’t currently support member areas or password-protected pages, so it can be hard to cultivate a loyal, engaged following, or build a membership website.

Design

Design with Jimdo is pretty restrictive. In our latest design functionality research, Jimdo scores 3.3 out of 5 – this puts it towards the middle of the pack. We’d recommend it for anyone who’s tight on time, or is less confident with design so doesn’t need the creative control that other website builders provide.

If you want to set up a site quickly, then Jimdo is a good option, especially with its free plan. It works in a similar way to GoDaddy, using ADI to create a personalized website for you. Think GoDaddy, but with Squarespace’s emphasis on white space, and you’ve got something close to Jimdo – though if speed is all you’re after, we’d recommend GoDaddy over Jimdo because of its better features and designs.

best website builders jimdo editor

Unfortunately, Jimdo also has a bad habit of railroading you into whatever industry or niche it designates you after your initial onboarding, meaning you’re a little stuck when it comes to editing your website.

One user that tested Jimdo said this of its restrictive editing tools:

“The ADI feels helpful at first and it does give you a unique template but you then have limited feature options based off that industry you have chosen.”

Value for Money

Jimdo came second in our value for money research, scoring 4.2 out of 5 and sitting just behind Squarespace. With Jimdo, you can enjoy building for free, but if you choose to upgrade, there are two website builder plans:

  • Start: $9 per month (billed annually)
  • Grow: $14 per month (billed annually)

When you upgrade to Start, ads will be removed from your site, while Grow unlocks visitor statistics, SEO, and priority support.

There’s also an additional two plans if you’re looking to set up an online store, ranging from $18 to $24 per month (billed annually).

Ease of Use

The main reason Jimdo sits in last position on this list is because of its poor ease of use score, dropping 35% since last year to now rest at 2.2 out of 5. In our user testing, some participants found it very straightforward to use, but others really disliked it:

“There are so few options for features that I find it difficult to understand how anyone could manage a full website from this service.”

And another interesting takeaway about Jimdo’s builder:

“It lets you build the website it wants you to make, rather than the website you want to make.”

But why not try its free plan for yourself and see how you get on with Jimdo?

Help and Support

Jimdo received the worst score for help and support out of all the builders – dropping 10% since last year to its new score of 2.3 out of 5. Support is tailored depending on how much you pay for your plan, with the Grow plan receiving help within hours as opposed to days on the Start plan.

In terms of other support channels, you can submit a help request or use Jimdo’s Help Center to find a solution yourself. We also have to flag that there’s no customer support available on its free plan at all, so you’ll need to upgrade to unlock this “feature”.

Customer Satisfaction

Jimdo is also the worst-rated website builder for customer satisfaction, scoring 2.2 out of 5 – in comparison to last year’s score of 3.4 out of 5, that’s a 37% decline! Only 28% of users said they would recommend the builder to others, which we think paints a pretty good picture of how user-friendly Jimdo is.

Jimdo in Action: LiFi

Jeroen van Gils Head Shot in front of some vines
Jeroen van Gils
CEO of LiFi
Jeroen van Gils chose Jimdo as the website builder to help grow LiFi's online presence. Jeroen is the CEO of LiFi which provides a wireless optical networking technology service that uses light-emitting diodes (LED) for data transmission.
I absolutely love Jimdo!

Q&A

Why did you choose Jimdo?

I’ve been using Jimdo with LiFi for about two years now, and I absolutely love it! It’s by far the easiest website builder I’ve ever used, and it’s really helped me to get my online presence up and running.

What do you like about Jimdo?

There are so many great features, and I love the fact that I can easily switch between the different layouts to find the one that best fits my needs.

What improvements would you make?

The only thing I would change is the pricing structure – I think it’s a bit too expensive for what you get. There might be other builders on the market that offer more for a similar or cheaper price.

How easy was it to build a site using Jimdo?

Because of the ADI functionality, it’s one of the easiest website builders I’ve come across.

Would you recommend Jimdo to others?

Overall, though, I would definitely recommend Jimdo to anyone looking for an easy way to build a beautiful website.

More Information

5 Other Good Website Builders

So far we’ve taken you through our top 10 website builders. But what about the platforms that didn’t quite make the cut? Here are some strong options:

#1. Webflow

Webflow is a powerful platform, but not one we’d necessarily recommend for the everyday user. Webflow is geared towards web designers, but this hasn’t yet been translated into a beginner-friendly, drag-and-drop interface. The selection of tutorials is amazing though, and the platform is definitely headed in the right direction.

#2. Format

Format is becoming increasingly popular in the photography/portfolio space, and it’s one we’re keeping an eye on. We don’t think it’s quite a challenger for the likes of Squarespace just yet, and isn’t really suited to non-portfolio websites, but we’re interested to see how this platform grows and develops.

#3. PageCloud

PageCloud is an easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder, but when we tried it out, it fell down in two areas: mobile responsiveness and price. You have to edit the mobile version of your PageCloud website separately to make sure it’ll format properly on mobile. Its prices start at $20/month, which would make it the most expensive platform on this list. While it doesn’t make our top 10 at the moment, we do think it has a lot of potential.

#4. Carrd

Carrd is a really interesting platform. While it’s not right choice for a typical website, it’s really strong in its chosen niche: one-page websites. It’s ideal when you want to go one better than a PDF, whether that’s for a resume or personal site, or a project outline. There’s a free plan, or you can create up to three sites for just $9 per year, making it really great value.

#5. Mozello

While Mozello didn’t make it into our top 10, it’s a great option for those needing a site in multiple languages. If this is what you need, it’s definitely one to consider! It also has a good mobile editor.

4 Website Builders to Avoid

What goes up must come down, and on our quest to find the top builders for getting you online, we inevitably came across a fair few that we wouldn’t recommend:

#1. WebStarts

WebStarts’ homepage has a distinctly budget feel to it, which isn’t the most reassuring first impression. Sadly, when we tested WebStarts for ourselves, the platform did little to restore our confidence. It brings nothing special to the table, and instead lags far behind competitors in terms of user experience.

#2. Yola

There’s nothing really ‘wrong’ with Yola, it just trails so far behind the competitors featured higher up on this list that we can’t see it catching up. That said, at least its prices reflect this (there’s a free plan, and paid plans start at just $4.95 per month).

#3. Webs.com

It’s a similar story with Webs.com, except this platform’s designs are dated and its plans are more expensive. Webs.com was taken over by Vistaprint in 2011, and the process of setting up an account and starting to build your site still has a slightly disjointed feel that could come from this merger.

#4. One.com

One.com builds you a website the ADI way. You enter basic information about your site, and One.com produces a website to match. Unfortunately, Wix and GoDaddy already offer ADI options, and although One.com is cheaper, the others are better (and two have a free plan). One.com is also reluctant to let you sign up without entering card details (either for a domain name or a website plan), which is unusual in our experience and is not something we like to see.

Buying Guide: How Do You Pick the Best Website Builder For You?

Now you know the 10 best web builders on the market, but what if you’re still feeling a bit stumped? Which of these fine builders should you choose to create your website?

While we may not be able to read your mind through the screen, we can give you some handy pointers to help find your perfect website builder – and let you know what you should be on the lookout for:

How do website builders work, and why do I need one?

Website builders offer some structure to creating your website, rather than making it from scratch with code. Instead of a blank page, you are given a customizable template you can alter and edit without having to worry about any of the inner technical workings of the website. Things like hosting, storage space, domain names, and features are all taken care of, meaning you can just focus your time on customizing the aesthetics of your site and adding what features you need.

Unless you are a professional web designer by trade, website builders offer a way for your average person to build a website, and also save magnitudes of time doing it as well, with most website builders letting you have a completed site in under a day.

How do I choose the best website builder?

To find the best website builder for you, you need to assess it according to your needs. Everyone’s needs will be different, so here are a few just to get you started:

  • How easy it is to use?
  • How long does it take?
  • Which plan is right for me and is it affordable?
  • What features does it have?
  • How flexible is the design?
  • How good is the help and support?
  • Are current users satisfied with it?

Then, try out more website builders. Even if the first one you try is perfect, it’s still worth having something to compare it to.

How much does it cost to use a website builder?

Website builders are incredibly affordable, typically costing around $5 – $40 per month, depending on what you need your website for. Some website builders, such as Wix and Square Online, even offer free plans that allow you to create a website for free (although your website will come with ads, and you won’t be able to connect a custom domain name).

Using a website builder is a smart choice because they’re easy to use and you’re in full control of your own website. When hiring a website designer or developer, you can end up shelling out thousands of dollars for a swanky site, then have to pay even more each time you need something tweaked or updated.

How do you switch to another website builder?

Switching website builders will require backing up and migrating all of your previous website’s assets. This can be a long process and can require a lot of hard drive space if you choose to do it manually. Automatic migration services are available, but these can cost between $300-$400 each time.

Which website builders have AI tools?

AI tools in website builders have become very popular over the past year. Most website builders will have some form of AI integration, whether it be design-based like Wix and GoDaddy’s ADI service or ChatGPT text generation. AI makes website building even easier as it can handle a lot of the menial jobs website building requires. For example, Shopify Magic is a text generation tool from Shopify that can write product descriptions. If you have a lot of products, Shopify Magic can generate 5 product descriptions in the time it takes a human person to fill out one, meaning you have more time to spend on more creative tasks.

Which website builder is best for small businesses?

Through our testing, we discovered that Wix is the top web builder for small business. If you’re looking to sell online, there’s always Wix Ecommerce!

Our Testing Methodology

Our in-house research team carries out rigorous testing to find the best website builders on the market. Before we make any recommendation, we make sure each and every builder goes through this research process. This helps us rate and compare the builders fairly, and we make sure to focus on important factors that users have told us matter the most:

  • Website Features – weighting: 20%

When it comes to website features, there’s a lot to look at to determine the range and quality available from each builder. This includes looking at SEO, marketing functionalities, blogging tools, internationalization, storage space, domain names, and emails. We also examine what’s available as a built-in tool and what’s accessible via an app market.

  • Design Functionalities – weighting: 20%

We know how important the overall look of your website is, so we make sure to test each builder’s template selection, flexibility when designing, editor, ADI options, and UX.

  • Value for Money – weighting: 10%

Everyone wants to find an affordable but powerful website builder, so we’ve focused heavily on the quality of features vs the price point. We also investigate whether the platform offers a free trial or plan, and the average costs of its plans to make sure we share cost-effective options.

  • Help and Support – weighting: 5%

We test each builder on a variety of criteria. This includes seeing what customer support options are available, the depth of its knowledge center, restore options, and whether dependable support is available on the cheapest monthly plan.

  • Customer Satisfaction – weighting: 25%

To further enhance our recommendations, we look at what others are saying about the website builders. Our research focuses on review site scores, online comments, brand recognition, market analysis, UX, and user recommendations.

  • Ease of Use – weighting: 20%

Don’t just take our word for it! We get groups of everyday people and external parties to test the builders and give us feedback. Depending on the research area, this can include small business owners, entrepreneurs, bloggers, artists, and more. This helps us:

  • Understand exactly how easy (or difficult) beginners find the builder for their needs
  • Uncover any issues within the builder
  • Judge customer satisfaction

Click here to go back up to the website builders.

Best Website Builders: Round-Up

You’ve now seen our rundown of the top builders for websites, and hopefully you now have a better idea of which builders are best suited to your needs.

All of our recommendations are based on in-depth research and feedback from people just like you. They’re not picked out of thin air, so you can feel confident that the information we’ve provided you with in this article is fair and accurate.

Below is a quick recap of our top 10 website builders:

10 Best Website Builders of 2024

  1. Wix The champion of website builders
  2. Squarespace Best value for money
  3. Shopify Best for creating a scalable online store
  4. GoDaddy Best for building a website quickly
  5. Square Online Sell online for free
  6. Hostinger Best for uptime reliability
  7. WordPress.com Best for creating a blog
  8. IONOS Best for enterprise support and functionality
  9. Site123 Best for hobby and personal websites
  10. Jimdo Best for building simple websites

As you can see from our list, each website builder has its own strengths. Whether you want a cutting-edge, stylish website, great value for money, or even require a helping hand, there is a builder for you.

Overall, though, the best website builder in our research was Wix. It offers everything small businesses could need to start selling online and offers three ecommerce-specific plans.

If you’re unsure of where to start, jumping on Wix’s free plan is a great way to get building and figure out what is and isn’t right for you.

Try out as many website makers as possible by using the free trials (or plans) on offer. This will give you a real feel for each one, and ensure you choose the one that meets your needs.

Still Unsure Which Website Builder is Best for You?

  • November 2023: Added Website Builder Expert video on the best website builders to the introduction.
  • July 2023: Wix’s pricing and plans have changed.
  • April 2023: Weebly has been removed due to lack of recent development. Square Online replaces the builder because it lets users sell for free and scores highly in our value for money research, taking position #5.
  • February 2023: Shopify’s pricing and free trial have changed.
  • January 2023: Revised our top 10 list according to our 2023 research.
  • November 2022: Zyro has recently been acquired by web hosting provider Hostinger.
  • October 2022: We have updated the prices for GoDaddy and Zyro.
  • September 2022: Added a note about GoDaddy’s work to improve Core Web Vitals for customers.
  • July 2022: New addition at #4. Shopify added to cater for businesses looking to sell 10+ products online.
  • October 2021: GoDaddy and Zyro have climbed the list because of improvements in features. Weebly has dropped to #5 because it hasn’t updated its products recently.

FAQs

These are some of the most popular questions we’re asked by our readers about website builders.

Found a question that you want to know the answer to? Click the + to reveal the answer.

Website builder software is extremely popular, with millions of people using it worldwide. Wix, for example, boasts over 109 million users, with 45,000 people signing up to the platform every day. You can also take a look at our article on website builder revenue to see how a few companies performed over the last year.
Without any coding knowledge, website builders allow you to build a website quickly and easily for a small monthly cost. This means you won’t need to hire a web developer to do it for you, saving you thousands of dollars. Website builders are perfect for non-technical, time-conscious individuals who don’t have a lot of money to spend.

However, these benefits are offset with more limited customization options when designing your website. Unlike with WordPress.org, you don’t get complete control over how you want your website to look. Your website can also suffer from slow(ish) loading speeds due to the number of sites hosted on a website maker’s servers, while some builders don’t allow you to backup your website.

According to our research and testing, Wix is the easiest website builder to use. It has a straightforward editor and offers helpful hints make it simple for users to get to grips with. Many users found that they could get a website up and running with Wix in less than a day!

GoDaddy is also another great option. Its ADI builder means that all you need to do is answer a few questions and GoDaddy will build your website for you!

In our expert research and testing, Wix came in first place for the best free website builder.

This is because it is the easiest to use, and the features you get are better than its competitors! In second place is GoDaddy, which is great for building a website super quickly. Square Online rounds out the top three and is ideal for small businesses on a budget because you can start selling on its free plan.

Both of these website builders are great options but, according to our research, Squarespace has an overall overall score of 4.7 out of 5 compared with WordPress.com’s overall score of 3.2 out of 5.

Squarespace is easy to use and offers great value for your money, but it also offers better website design with stylish templates and elements. WordPress.com, on the other hand, isn’t very beginner-friendly and is built for blogs rather than websites that want a range of features.

Squarespace won our overall design category, but for pure flexibility, your best choice is Wix. You can drag-and-drop anything, anywhere. This is also one of the reasons Wix is so easy to use, but be careful – it can be a hindrance, too. Most website builders restrict you so your site meets design best practices, whereas with Wix, it’s all in your hands.
Website builders are mainly used by individuals or small to medium-sized businesses. Most are scalable, unless you’re looking to sell products in bulk. If this is your aim, you’ll need an ecommerce website builder, like Shopify or BigCommerce, which are powerful online store builders used by multi-million dollar businesses.
Absolutely. The selection of templates you see when you’re choosing your preferred look are just populated with example content. All the images, text, buttons, and features can be changed. It’s just there to give you a general idea of what your website’s layout will be. It’s also worth picking a template that’s relevant to your industry because the chances are the features you need will already be built in.
A custom domain name is what people type into their browsers, i.e. ‘www.websitebuilderexpert.com’. Some website builders give you a year’s free domain when signing up to a premium plan, but expect this to renew at around $10 per year. If you’re on a free plan, you’ll get given a sub-domain, which includes the website maker’s name, e.g. ‘www.websitebuilderexpert.wix.com’.
A website builder is an online platform that helps you create your own website. Web hosting, or a self-hosted website, is when you pay for a space online to situate your website. Typically, the cost of hosting your website is included in your monthly fee for a website builder.
During our in-depth testing, we discovered that GoDaddy has a faster server response time than Wix. However, Wix is still a reliable website builder, which is why it remains our top choice overall!
Written by:
I’m the Content Manager here at Website Builder Expert, which means I read and edit nearly all the content we publish, and work with our wonderful writers and researchers to bring you the best possible advice for achieving your online goals. Over the past five years I’ve built demo websites using all the website builders we review, so I have the experience and expertise to help you out. You’ve got the experts on your side – I’m here to help you reach your online goals, and enjoy the process too!
Researched by:
natasha_willett
I love to understand human behavior and the cognitive biases that drive us to do what we do. For over nine years I have worked as a mixed method researcher – research using a mix of numerical data and personal experiences – across a range of sectors, from insurance and policy development to finally arriving at Website Builder Expert five years ago. Fascinated by consumer decision-making, I meticulously built our leading ranking methodology to explore where providers like Wix sit within a competitive industry and what value they truly bring to our audience.
As a member of the Market Research Society, I’m an advocate for high ethical, commercial, and methodological best practices. All of this combines to give you the most ethical recommendations based on real data.

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