Best Website Builder for 2024: Reviewed by Our Experts
Whether you’re a business owner or a freelancer with a portfolio, having a website is just good practice. Back in the day, you would’ve had to hire a
Wix is the clear front-runner in the race for website builder dominance. It’s the biggest player with over 8 million live websites according to
Squarespace strikes us as being the cool kid in high school: flashy and hip on the surface but lacking substance underneath. We found it to be in between Wix and Weebly in terms of ease of use, although it did get consistently positive marks from reviewers for the quality of the design options. Where we think it really might shine is for small- to medium-sized businesses who want a nicely designed page and room for e-commerce growth with lower transaction fees.
The Squarespace editor isn’t as intuitive as Wix and Weebly, requiring a little bit of work until you get the hang of it. It has a fair amount of add-ons, website templates and tools, and the universal style editor and strong photo editing are helpful. The responsive website editor means that your site will always look good on a mobile device, but you can only make mobile-specific edits on areas of your page that use their
Weebly flies under the radar relative to Wix with over
Duda is a smaller player compared to the other builders above with
GoDaddy is best known for its custom domain names and web hosting services, so it makes sense that it also offers website builder software. The name is a mouthful — “Websites + Marketing” — but it’s a similar templatized experience like the other options on this list, designed to get a basic site up and running in under an hour.
The free tier includes such niceties as email and social media marketing, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Square and Stripe payments and an SSL certificate. The
When most people talk about WordPress, they’re usually referring to the free open-source software available through WordPress.org. That’s very powerful, but it takes some time to learn and still requires that you find a website host and domain name. If you’re interested in going the advanced route of WordPress.org, we recommend you check out a tutorial or guide such as those you can find on
If Wix is the clear favorite for most website-building needs, Shopify fills that role for an e-commerce store. The platform offers an easy and user-friendly way to get an e-commerce website store up and running online, and it supports business owners throughout the process with their e-commerce tools. Shopify is a safe place to start for most “e-tailers,” although similar to Wix, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect for every scenario.
Like most other commerce-focused builders, Shopify’s platform is geared toward your product and sales details. For those without a ton of experience setting up a retail operation, Shopify’s process ensures you won’t miss an important step as it guides you through inventory, customer information and tax and shipping rates. If you still have a question, Shopify offers 24-7 phone and chat support and an
BigCommerce lives up to its name — it’s best for medium- to large-scale online stores that can cash in on the lack of added transaction fees and unlimited product variants. The store site builder might not be quite as easy to use as Shopify’s, but the amount of time you spend getting used to it could save you a lot of money down the road.
The editor has a lot of features and flexibility when you’re getting set up, but similar to Wix, that can be too much for newcomers. If you have a little experience, those features and tools — like product variants and tax rates — will probably come in handy as you grow or if you’re already at scale.
BigCommerce’s price tiers are identical to Shopify’s at $39 (Standard), $105 (Plus) and $399 (Pro), but what you get at each level differs. Even the lowest BigCommerce plan gives its clients unlimited users, unlimited bandwidth and storage, unlimited products and no added transaction fees. You can even link your e-commerce site to eBay, Amazon, and Walmart. Where the pricing gets a little tricky is with the sales thresholds: The Standard plan only supports annual sales of less than $50,000, while Plus supports up to $180,000 and Pro up to $400,000. Basically, you save a lot of money on transaction fees the more sales you rack up, but if you have enough sales, you have to upgrade to the next plan tier.
As with all the online store builders, it’ll be worth it to do a little math based on your product inventory and expected sales. No transaction fees strike us as a major deal-maker depending on your size, so if you’re a bigger operation, take advantage of the 15-day trial and give BigCommerce a shot.
How to choose the best website builder
Given the wealth of options and the fact that many website builders don’t allow you to pick up and move later on, it’s important to enter the fray with a clear idea of what you need. By first establishing your priorities and direction, it will be easier to find a match for the best website builder and avoid buyer’s remorse down the road.
In terms of pricing, most builders offer two to four different price tiers, each with a different set of features. This can make comparing services difficult since they don’t make it easy to evaluate side-by-side, but that’s a big reason why we’ve created this handy guide.
Generally speaking, you can get a good individual website built for around $10 to $20 a month with an annual subscription. Most e-commerce plans range between $25 to $35 per month and if you need an enterprise-style plan with multiple editors and VIP-level support, prices can go up to $400 per month for a premium plan.
Storage and bandwidth are usually unlimited, but there are exceptions like Wix, which scales its storage capacity according to the plan tier. Even its lowest tier plan has a decent amount (2GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth).
After the big questions like price and storage, finding the best website builder all comes down to what you’re looking for. Below are some guiding questions to help ensure you’re ready to shop like an expert and find the best website builder for your needs.
What is the purpose of your site?
Your first step should be to determine the primary goal of your web presence. Do you want to sell a product? Attract potential customers for your services? Build a portfolio page?
By first establishing your raison d’etre, you’ll be able to prioritize the tools, plugins and capabilities you want in your builder and not get pulled off track by a fancy add-on that isn’t actually helping you achieve your goal. If you’re primarily interested in racking up sales, start by looking at e-commerce specialists, like Shopify and BigCommerce. If you’re a photographer or web designer who wants a beautiful website or portfolio website, Wix and Squarespace are good places to start. Wix might edge Squarespace if you want more control over the design, while Squarespace might be better if you just want a stylish frame for your work.
If you just want something easy to use, Weebly and GoDaddy both offer intuitive builders, with Weebly offering more features and design finesse, while GoDaddy is much simpler and more limited. If you’re setting up a site or store and you want to present a customized experience to users, or if you have something specific in mind for the mobile version of your site, Duda offers the most customization capabilities. If you need both website building and hosting from one provider, then Webflow is the best and no coding knowledge is required for web design. If you’re a wordsmith who can’t be bothered by design decisions and fancy editors, WordPress can help you get your blog up and offers good ways to reach your readers.
How much time do you want to invest in building your website?
This obviously will vary depending on a number of factors, not the least of which is how clear of a design vision you have and whether you have experience building a website. That being said, each site builder has pros and cons when it comes to the level of usability or ease of use based on the features, flexibility and intuitive design of the editing interface. On one end of the spectrum, you have a builder like Wix, which is very easy to use but also comprehensive — the sheer number of options and tools makes it hard to whip up a site quickly. On the other end, you have a builder like WordPress or GoDaddy, each of which doesn’t provide you with a ton of options when building your pages.
Most people will want to devote enough time to their site that it serves its purpose of representing you online in a good light, so we generally recommend you take the time to learn your editor and take advantage of the many options available.
How much design control do you want?
Wix offers a pretty comprehensive suite of site editing tools.
This goes hand-in-hand with time investment, since the more control you have, the more choices you have to make. There are builders like Squarespace that have a fairly rigid design structure, but still let you customize fonts, colors and content. On the other end of the spectrum, you have a site like Wix, which lets you place objects anywhere on your site (at your own risk!), or Duda, which allows you to create custom user experiences based on browsing history.
How big is your site?
Certain editors are more geared toward large site structures (40-plus pages) than others, so it’s important to know whether you will have a ton of pages and sections, or whether it’s more in the realm of a glamorized digital business card or fancy work portfolio.
The number of navigation levels, for example (which you can think of like file folders (or Inception): a page within a directory within another directory would represent three levels of navigation), can be an important consideration. Most pages probably use two levels — sections and the pages within each section, but online stores and other types of sites might need more. Weebly and BigCommerce are probably the best examples of builders that support large site structures, while Squarespace and Wix limit you to two levels of navigation.
How important is e-commerce?
Every builder we researched has an e-commerce option available, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all up to the task. A site like WordPress isn’t really what you want if your plan is to sell products online, while a site like Shopify or BigCommerce is expressly focused on online sales and has lots of e-commerce features. If you really just want to have a clean and easy-to-use online storefront, one of the dedicated e-commerce builders makes the most sense, but if it’s more of an ancillary service or simply nice to have, you can go with the builder that feels the best and sign up for its e-commerce option. There are even builders like Duda, which allow you to sell up to 10 products for free using another plan.
How big is your sales operation?
Many website builders support Square’s payment solutions.
Transaction fees: While we’re not small business owners, we do like math and this variable struck us as particularly important. If you sell $10,000 of products in a month with a 3% vendor processing fee, you’re spending an extra $300 every month. If you’re paying your website host an extra 1% to 3%, that’s another $100 to $300. Those numbers greatly eclipse the monthly rate you’re paying and add up even more if you’re selling significantly more. Before you choose a builder, make sure you read the fine print about transaction fees.
Many builders don’t charge on top of the Square or PayPal rate (usually 3%), but some do. Shopify charges extra if you don’t use Shopify Payments, but if you do use its services, you can get a rate below 3%. Then there are sites like BigCommerce, which doesn’t charge extra but has sales limits for each plan.
We know you’re a smart and savvy business owner who pays close attention to the books, but we thought it would still help to remind you to do the math before signing up.
How flexible do you want to be with the host?
As we mentioned at the top, many builders lock you into their hosting service, but not all. If you’re afraid of commitment or think you might want to switch as your business or services evolve, go with a service like Weebly or Duda that allows you to download your website files for easy use on another host.
The other big factor here is the free trial period. The industry standard is around 14 days, but some go up to a month. Others don’t have a trial period but will give you your money back within 30 days if you’re not happy.