* Website tools have been around since the early 2000s, and they look a lot different today than they did back then. Features get more advanced, user expectations increase, and building a website isn’t the same as it was 10+ years ago.
Choosing the best website builder can be difficult, as there are 74 popular options to choose from with different feature sets.
When learning how to create your website, I want to make this first decision easier for you. By showcasing the top website builders, I want to help you find the right solution for your business.
These website builder reviews take into account web hosting services, price, reliability, technical support, site speed, SEO, features, learning curve, ease of use, template design, and more.
We’ll also compare:
- The best website builders for small businesses.
- The best free and cheap options.
- The easiest choices if you’re not technically savvy.
- The ones with the best SEO.
- The best platforms with online store capabilities.
- The best builders for agencies.
- And the best options for photographers and artists.
Let’s get started.
Disclaimer: Please note, I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links below at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. These are the best tools I have tested for launching and running a website. You can read my affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.
What is the Best Website Builder?
Using a website builder is a quick and easy way to build a presence for your brand or online business. These tools simplify your site management by combining domain registration, hosting, and site design into one platform.
While you lose some control compared to managing hosting separately, website builders can still be a good option.
For example, your requirements will be different, based on the features you need. If you’re a local business, a simple 5-page website could work. Or if you’re building a personal brand portfolio, web design is most important.
In the end, the choice comes down to ease of use vs. control.
If you’re familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you can choose a more advanced content management system (CMS) and control the look and feel of your website. If you’re not too savvy with web design and development, you’ll want to go with an easy drag and drop editor.
The choice is up to you.
Here are my top picks for the best website builder to use this year.
1. Wix.
Best Website Builder for Small Business ($13/month)
Wix is the most popular website builder on the market, with over 100 million users. They have 500+ ready-to-use templates to design your website that work for many different categories and industries. These templates are mobile-optimized and have 100 fonts to choose from (or you can upload your own).
Their designs also look beautiful, with scroll effects, and advanced design features like animation and video backgrounds.
If you already have a domain on GoDaddy or want to register one at Wix.com, they make it very easy. Also, if you’d like to add e-commerce to your site so that you can sell online, plans start a $20/month.
If you’re a small business, I recommend Wix as the best online store builder. You don’t necessarily need a platform with more advanced options like BigCommerce and Shopify. Wix website owners that want to add an e-commerce store can get these great new features.
Wix is the most user-friendly website tool on the market. You can almost endlessly customize the look and feel of your site with no coding knowledge.
They also have a tool called Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) – the first artificial intelligence website builder. Wix ADI learns about your site and uses that information to design a site tailored to your specific needs. This tool leverages AI choosing from billions of combinations of images, text, layouts, and contact forms.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for the best software for small businesses, Wix is your best choice.
Read my full Wix review for more in-depth analysis.
Get started with Wix.
2. Zyro.
Best Modern Website Builder with Free Plans (free – $3.49/mo)
Zyro is a website builder with a mission to help local businesses to tell their unique stories online.
Overall, they are best known for simplicity and speed.
With Zyro, you can create a business website quickly and easily with no coding required. Your site also loads fast due to its light framework and looks great on all devices.
With a powerful set of tools, Zyro helps grow your online business with pre-made design templates, AI-driven text, an intuitive drag-and-drop grid tool, mobile-readiness, and over one million stock images to choose from.
One of their standout features is their AI Content Generator, which provides SEO-friendly content ideas based on your industry and specific business type.
To get started with this tool, you choose your type of business, then write 2-3 sentences describing your brand and context. You then adjust your AI settings and customize them based on length, expertise, and creativity level. Lastly, you click the Generate button and see your uniquely created content.
Since content creation is a challenge for many website owners, this tool creates new paragraphs for you that can rank better in search and increase conversion rates.
Some other excellent features include:
- Built-in SEO tools to improve your search rankings.
- A free SSL certificate and custom domains.
- An AI-driven logo and slogan maker.
- 24/7 customer support via email and live chat.
- AI heatmaps to increase website conversions and predict visitor behavior.
- Mobile-optimized, fast-loading website designs.
- Free website design templates for different industries like creative agencies, startups, fashion brands, wellness companies, bakeries, and more.
Zyro offers three main pricing plans – a free plan, a mid-tier “Basic” plan at $1.99/month, and their high-tier “Unleashed” plan at $3.49/month.
Their free plan does not include a custom domain name but does provide 99.9% uptime, an SSL certificate, 500MB of bandwidth and 500MB of storage.
Next, their “Basic” plan allows you to connect your own domain name, increases bandwidth and storage, and includes extra features like ad removal and integrations with tools like Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and Facebook pixels. This is a very popular plan that is most suitable for small and medium-sized businesses.
Finally, their “Unleashed” plan provides every Zyro feature and provides unlimited bandwidth and storage. At such an affordable price of $3.49/month, it makes sense to go with this plan and enjoy the unlimited features if you plan to have a lot of content on your site.
Overall, Zyro is best for small businesses looking to create and grow a website quickly, save money on writing and logo-making with their AI tools, rank higher on search engines, and increase conversion rates with high-quality, mobile-friendly design templates.
You can get started with Zyro for free to test out their platform, then upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready to grow your online business.
Get started with Zyro and start building your website today.
3. Squarespace.
Best Website Design for Personal Sites ($12/month)
When I think of Squarespace, my mind goes right to their beautifully designed home page. They truly know how to create beautiful, high-quality sites that look great for both small businesses and personal websites alike.
With over 100 design templates to choose from, they lead the pack when it comes to design. Squarespace templates look excellent down to every detail. The fonts, color schemes, and imagery all mesh perfectly for any website.
Besides design, their platform is great for bloggers. I tested out their WYSIWYG blog editor, and it’s very intuitive.
You drag elements like images, headings, and text onto the page and position it where you would like. They also offer multiple user permissions, Google AMP functionality, and you can schedule your posts:
A few small SEO limitations hold Squarespace back from being #1 on this list. First, my XML sitemap pulled in two versions of every page with and without a trailing slash “/.” This double indexing could potentially lead to SEO and duplicate content issues down the road. They didn’t have an easy fix the last time I checked.
Second, your blog headlines always become your meta titles, so be careful when adding your headlines for SEO. You can read more in my full Wix vs Squarespace review.
Other great features make up for these drawbacks. Their ease of use is top-notch – sites are elementary to build with their editing tools. In-built analytics tools provide steady data on-site visitors if you’re not using Google Analytics. Plus, it’s hard to go wrong with a beautifully-designed website for just $12/month.
Monthly prices range from $12/month for their Personal plan up to $40/month for their Online Store (Advanced) plan. Monthly costs are based on a one-year contract, and Squarespace includes a free domain. The Personal plan provides a free domain name, unlimited bandwidth and storage, free SSL, and 24/7 customer support.
Overall, if you’re a small business that needs first-rate web design or a blogger that wants your content to look great, Squarespace is a reliable choice.
4. Weebly.
Best Free Website Builder (Free – $25/month)
Weebly powers over 530,000 domains and is known as the easy website builder of choice for people without much technical expertise. They offer a lot of great features. If you’re a blogger, you can use Weebly.com to pick a domain name and use their editor to add your text, images, and content.
They also have a mobile app to track your website’s performance on the go. And email marketing tools let you send newsletters to your subscribers from within their tool.
They have a free plan which comes with 500 MB of storage, a free SSL certificate, and a domain with Weebly branding. You can use a custom domain with this plan but are forced to have Weebly branding throughout your site. Also, the free plan only comes with chat and email support, but no phone support.
Weebly’s paid plans range from $5 to $25 per month. On the high end, their Business Plan gets you advanced e-commerce functionality, a free domain, and $200 of Google ad credits.
Their e-commerce features include product options/variants, coupon codes, inventory management, a shipping calculator, shipping labels, and the ability to accept payments through Square and other providers.
The level of customer support you receive is based on your subscription level. You can find assistance yourself in many areas, including their blog, support center, community forum, social media, and developer documentation. They also have live chat, email, and phone support.
If you are looking for a simple website creator to get up and running, I recommend you get started with Weebly.
5. Shopify.
Shopify is a popular ecommerce platform used by over 800,000 online businesses so sell products online. They were founded in Canada in 2004 and quickly became a powerhouse due to their simple dashboard and integrations with thousands of app partners.
While not every website owner needs product-selling functionality, I added Shopify to the list because almost any small business could use them to set up their website.
Take a salon for instance.
With Shopify, not only could you set up a quick website including a blog, a map of your location, contact info, and appointment scheduling (with an app), but you could also sell hair care products online. This creates not only a website but another online source of revenue for your business.
Shopify has a lot of features you’d come to expect from other tools on this list, including hosting, your own domain name, 70+ professional themes, a free SSL certificate, and marketing and SEO features.
They also offer mobile commerce, 100+ payment gateways, automatic carrier shipping rates, automatic tax rates, and the full checkout experience. Plus, you can enjoy omnichannel selling across Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Instagram, and more.
If you’re setting up a new website and think that you may want to sell products online in the future, it’s better to get started with Shopify rather than another tool that doesn’t take online shopping as seriously.
They offer three plans ranging from $29/month to $299/month. The $29/month Basic Shopify Plan should give website owners everything they need, including a full website, an online store with unlimited products, blog features, 24/7 support, and more.
If you’d like to give Shopify a try, they offer a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
6. Ucraft.
Best New Multi-functional Website Builder with Built-In Tools (Free – $69/month)
Ucraft is a popular landing page builder that recently launched a great multi-functional website builder. They offer a lot of useful tools – a blogging platform, landing page creator, logo maker, and ecommerce functionality.
A small business could use Ucraft to create a logo, launch their new website, and start selling products online.
Ucraft has over 80 pre-designed responsive website templates that cover niches like fashion, photography, restaurants, ecommerce, agencies, sports, business, events, and plenty of others. They also have over 100 pre-designed blocks you can add to pages to include things like CTA buttons, forms, footers, testimonials, etc.
If you’re looking to create a completely free website, they offer a free plan that lets you:
- Connect your domain name.
- Obtain SSL security.
- Create up to 15 pages.
- Add basic page elements.
- Add Google Analytics.
- Access to 24/7 support.
Their free sites all have Ucraft branding and limitations. If you’re looking to create a professional website, you can get started for $10/month and this gives you some new features.
These include the removal of Ucraft branding, unlimited web pages, SEO tools, design tools, and blogging tools. You can also invite multiple team members to edit your site, add integrations, and get started with ecommerce.
I also really like their logo maker, which lets you add custom icons, text elements, and shapes to create your logo.
Overall, if you’re a small business looking for a website builder that has a lot of built-in tools to help you create logos, landing pages, or sell products online, Ucraft is a great choice.
7. Webflow.
Best For Professional Designers ($16 per month).
Webflow is a California-based website builder that helps you build, build, launch, and host websites.
The Webflow designer tool leverages semantic HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to build a site that aligns with your requirements. You can either drag and drop HTML elements or choose pre-designed elements like sliders, tabs, background videos, etc.
Plus, you can use a CSS based system to make changes to multiple elements at the same time. It also lets you add custom codes to any page in the
or before the of any web page.The ability to create reusable symbols like navbars, footers, signup forms, etc., also helps you design your site quickly.
You also get over 100 free and paid customizable templates for different business, portfolio, and blog types.
Webflow also puts special emphasis on the visual aesthetics of the site. You can create animation effects like parallax, precise reveal animations, progress bars, etc., and add them to your web pages. For that, it provides over 20 pre-built interactions, animations, and triggers.
Additionally, Webflow works as a content management system that lets you add content directly, import CSV files, or via API. You can even integrate other data sources with Webflow’s CMS.
The tool also comes with built-in SEO tools. Some SEO features include auto-generated XML sitemaps, alt tags for images, semantic code, fast page loads, mobile-friendliness, customizable metadata, etc.
You also get specific features to build an eCommerce site. For instance, Webflow provides customizable product fields to highlight product features, images, and other information. The website builder also helps you create a checkout process, customize your homepage and gallery layout, upload your logo, etc.
Webflow also provides you with web hosting from Amazon Web Services and Fastly. The hosting meets HTTP/2 standards that help your site load faster.
You can even buy your domain directly from GoDaddy and Google Domain and connect it to your Webflow site.
Some of its other key features include:
- You can add and edit content to your live website.
- Invite other team members to collaborate on a single dashboard.
- Add up to 100 pages to your website.
- 99.9% uptime guaranteed and SSL certificate.
- Automated backup.
- Custom fonts available.
- Create custom 404 pages.
- Customer support via email, Webflow community forum, and help center.
- Integration with Zapier lets you connect with tools like Slack, MailChimp, and Asana.
- You can add up to 3000 products on your website with eCommerce support.
Pricing:
Webflow offers two types of plans. The Site plans help you connect your custom domain, collaborate with other members, and enable checkout for your eCommerce site. On the other hand, the Account plans allow you to add your logo, add more projects, create a team dashboard, and more.
Site Plans:
- Basic: $12 per month
- CMS: $16 per month
- Business: $36 per month
- Enterprise: Custom-pricing
Account plans:
- Starter: $0 per month
- Lite: $16 per month
- Pro: $35 per month
The free plan lets you experiment with two projects and helps you try the platform before upgrading to more advanced plans.
8. Flothemes
Best WordPress Themes for Photography and Creative Websites ($279 one-time).
Flothemes is a company that provides customizable WordPress themes. These templates help you build websites inside of WordPress without the need for custom coding. It’s powered by Flex block, a powerful free flow page builder, providing limitless customization options.
All of the templates and themes come with premade layouts and content blocks. You can also customize colors, fonts, the structure of the page, and more.
Flothemes help you build your website in a few steps, including:
- Register a domain name and hosting service provider for your site. You can also check Flothemes cloud hosting services, starting at $26 per month.
- Install WordPress.org and connect it to your website hosting. Luckily, most hosting services provide a one-click WordPress installation.
- Finally, pick a theme for your website or portfolio.
- You can watch several how-to tutorials by Flothemes or contact the customer support team.
- If you need help setting up the entire site, you can drop a message, and their team will do everything for you.
Flothemes will help you set up your site for just $499-$1999. Besides setting up your site from the beginning, they also provide services like page load speed optimization, SEO, styling, etc. Plus, you get two screen sharing sessions of 45 minutes each with experts and one SEO consultation call of 45 minutes. All in all, you get six rounds of implementations.
Additionally, Flothemes provides features like SSL implementation, WordPress installation, Typography, color scheme stylization, and more. You also get complete design freedom, SEO options, and a dashboard.
Pricing:
While their themes cost a one-time $279, Flothemes offers three pricing plans for their website setup services, including:
- Simple Setup Package: $499
- Advanced setup packages: $999
- Pro Setup packages: $1,999
The Simple Setup Package helps you skip the technical parts and jump straight to adding content and personalizing your theme. It provides features like WordPress installation, site layout setup, theme installation, WordPress transfer, website launch, etc.
The Advanced Setup Package includes full assistance with site setup, styling & launch, site speed optimization & an SEO consultation. Additional features include typography & color scheme stylization, SSL implementation, speed optimization, etc.
Pro Setup Package includes all the features from the Advanced Setup Package along with the tailored mockup & implementation for your homepage.
