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The Best Website Builders

Which Website Builder is the Best?

Selecting the right website builder can significantly influence your site's success in attracting and retaining visitors. It's not just about building a website; it's about building one that's user-friendly, loads quickly, functions well on mobile devices, and is accessible to all users.

Website builders are designed to simplify the process of creating your website, and eliminate technical barriers that come with more advanced web development methods. With a website builder, you can become a "drag and drop" designer, making it easy to create your homepage and supporting pages. However, whether this is a blessing or a burden depends on the quality of the website builder, the time you can invest, and your tolerance for learning curves.

Tuesday, March 19th

2024 Website Builder Reviews

WordPress Review Top Consumer Reviews Best-In-Class Blue Ribbon Award 5 Star Rating

WordPress

5 Star Rating Top Consumer Reviews Best-In-Class Blue Ribbon Award

WordPress, a website platform launched in 2003, dominates the internet by powering 45% of all websites. It began as a simple blogging tool but has since evolved into a versatile CMS with an extensive library of themes and plugins. WordPress is open source, allowing for extensive customization, and boasts two primary usage options: the main WordPress site and self-hosting. It excels in search engine visibility and offers abundant resources for user education. Overall, it is a top option for web development, combining flexibility, longevity, and SEO-friendliness. If you want a web builder with longevity and stability in the market, WordPress should be your #1 choice.

Divi Review 4.5 Star Rating

Divi

4.5 Star Rating

Divi stands as a widely favored theme builder that is seamlessly integrated with WordPress, making it nearly effortless to design visually stunning and engaging website designs. With its advanced Visual Builder and AI writing, coding, and image tools, you have access to a wealth of pre-designed layouts to kickstart your project. If you're after a distinctive website that embodies professional aesthetics, Divi proves to be an excellent selection among website builders.

Nicepage Review 4 Star Rating

Nicepage

4 Star Rating

Nicepage works on both Windows and Mac computers and is a versatile website design tool. You can use it by itself or as a plugin for popular content management systems like Joomla and WordPress. There's also an online-only website design offering. There are some minor catches to using this website builder, but it's, on the whole, an intuitive piece of software and worth it's high rating.

Squarespace Review 3.5 Star Rating

Squarespace

3.5 Star Rating

Squarespace is a very popular website builder known for its simplicity, ease of use, and aesthetically pleasing designs. It offers ready-made templates and no-code editing capabilities, allowing you to create visually appealing websites without technical expertise. You have the flexibility to customize colors, fonts, and layouts, and add your own content to personalize your websites. Squarespace provides all-in-one features for website hosting, design, development, and online selling. However, user complaints give us pause, and we recommend that you take a good, hard look at Squarespace before committing.

Duda Review 3.5 Star Rating

Duda

3.5 Star Rating

Duda is more than just a website builder; it's a versatile platform catering to individual creators, teams, and agency professionals for designing websites. If you're seeking a hassle-free, ready-made website with minimal customization, Duda can be an excellent option. However, it may not be the top choice for users who require extensive design freedom and flexibility in their website-building tools.

Wix Review 3 Star Rating

Wix

3 Star Rating

Wix serves as a free website creator and online store platform, giving you the liberty to shape your website just the way you and your audience prefer. With Wix, you can set up a website for advertising, displaying your work, maintaining a blog, or selling products. But it's important to keep in mind that Wix may not be the best choice if you anticipate your website growing significantly over time, as it may require a fresh start down the road.

Weebly Review 3 Star Rating

Weebly

3 Star Rating

Weebly serves as a simple website builder with a range of tools to simplify website creation. It has a solid collection of eCommerce and seamless shipping options. However, the majority of users will find that a more powerful website builder would offer a superior overall experience.

Website Review 2.5 Star Rating

Website

2.5 Star Rating

Website offers a free plan to kickstart your website development using their designer-created templates. When you choose one of Website's premium plans, you'll also receive a complimentary domain name, and your website won't be marred by intrusive ads. While this may sound enticing, the experience can turn frustrating when you encounter error messages such as "your connection is not private" from a platform that should have better security measures in place. Opting for a website builder with a stronger reputation is likely to provide you with more reliable service.

GoDaddy Review 2 Star Rating

GoDaddy

2 Star Rating

With the GoDaddy free website builder, you can effortlessly establish your online presence in just a few clicks. It empowers you to integrate tailor-made features into your website to handle your business needs. Drawbacks to this service include its inability to scale with your evolving requirements and the hidden fees that can unexpectedly increase your total site expenses. And those downsides become a huge pain in the neck for too many users, leading to GoDaddy's lower-than-average rating here.

Site123 Review 2 Star Rating

Site123

2 Star Rating

Site123 offers a cost-effective website-building solution, catering to individuals who lack coding or design expertise. It features a user-friendly wizard that simplifies the process by providing ready-made templates and design options. However, it's important to note that the platform's budget-friendly pricing masks its many shortcomings. We can't give Site123 anything higher than two stars, compared with more robust website builders on our list.

Strikingly Review 1.5 Star Rating

Strikingly

1.5 Star Rating

Strikingly offers an upgraded website builder that allows you to easily modify and customize every element with just a click. You don't need any coding skills or prior design knowledge to use it. However, due to its constraints, Strikingly is primarily suitable for individuals operating on tight budgets and having modest expectations.

Tip Top Website Review 1 Star Rating

Tip Top Website

1 Star Rating

Tip Top Website is a website creator that gives you a free web address and the ability to make up to 100 pages for your site. You can also put online stores on your site. While this might sound good, once you notice how old-fashioned and limited the service is, you'll likely prefer a better website builder.

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Continued from above...

In recent years, online website builders have witnessed an unprecedented surge in popularity. They have transformed the landscape of web development and empowered individuals and businesses to easily create an online presence. This movement can be attributed to a number of factors that have redefined the way websites are designed, developed, and maintained.

First and foremost, online website builders eliminate the need for extensive coding knowledge, making them accessible to a broader audience. Traditionally, creating a website required proficiency in languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, putting up a barrier to those without a technical background. However, with user-friendly interfaces and intuitive drag-and-drop functionalities, individuals without a technical background can now build sophisticated websites without writing a single line of code.

Online website builders can also simplify tasks such as domain registration, hosting setup, and security implementation. This all-in-one approach streamlines the development process from conceptualization to publication. This lets you focus on content and design rather than navigating technical intricacies.

Website builders have also made website development much more cost-effective. In the past, hiring professional web developers could be expensive and time consuming. The easy accessibility of website builders, often available at affordable or even free subscription levels, allows individuals and small businesses to create and maintain their websites within budget constraints.

Many people don't know that their choice of a website builder can have a long-lasting impact on their website functionality and availability. It's crucial to think about the long-term and consider future needs, not just in the coming months, but also in the years ahead.

When you're ready to jump in and get your new website up and running, you could feel a little overwhelmed as you look at all of the options available to help you build it out. Don't worry! We've done a deep dive into today's most popular website building services.

As you decide which website builder suits you best among the options on our list, there are several key factors to consider:

  • Flexibility. Think about how the website builder will adapt to your changing site needs over time.
  • Usability. Evaluate how user-friendly the tool is and whether it aligns with your skills and experience.
  • Search Engine Optimization. Determine whether the service allows you to manage SEO effectively, as this is crucial for website visibility.
  • Stability. Investigate whether the builder functions without errors or glitches, ensuring your site's reliability.
  • Accessibility. Whether your site is accessible to people with visual impairments and other disabilities matters more now than ever before. You don't want to find yourself facing a lawsuit down the line.
  • Cost. Calculate the expenses associated with using the builder and obtaining the features you require for your site.
  • Reputation. Research what other users have to say about their experiences with the website builder to gauge its quality and reliability.

Top Consumer Reviews has conducted thorough reviews and rankings of the best website builders available today. We hope that this information will assist you in creating the ideal website for your business, non-profit organization, or personal projects, ultimately helping you achieve your online goals.

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Website Builder FAQ

Yes, but free website builders should generally be avoided because they fall short of many features that paid website builders include. There are exceptions, such as WordPress, which is free (if you download and self-host your own copy) and is a very powerful and flexible website builder.
It all depends on how comfortable you are with the features of a particular website builder. Some are easier to use than others. For example, some will build your website for you after you fill in a form with your business details, resulting in a new website in just a few minutes. Others will require you to have a basic understanding of the common parts and pages of a typical website, which can take up hours of work on your part.
It depends on the website builder you choose. There are several that offer a full package, including the ability to register your domain, build your site, and host it on your domain right within the same service. Others split up domain registration and hosting into separate concerns.
Anyone who is approaching the task of creating a website for the very first time, especially with little knowledge of how to make successful websites, should consider hiring someone who has that expertise. In spite of the ease of use promised by many website builder companies, websites can be quite complicated when it comes to things like user experience, proper calls to action, image rights, color coordination, search engine optimization, and accessibility for people with disabilities.
Generally, professionals prefer to have creative input prior to any work being done on your website. If you've already done some design or content placement, you'll find it more difficult to find someone who is willing to finish what you've started. If you want a professional to do it, but still want to use a website builder for easy content maintenance, engage their services before you sign up for a website builder plan. Your professional may have some ideas of which one to use and how to make it easier to use your website builder.
Using a website builder can definitely harm your search ranking if you are not careful. Be sure to follow all the guidance the builder may give you on search engine optimization. If the builder doesn't provide that information, or the capabilities necessary for better SEO, you should not choose that builder. Do your research into which builders provide better SEO than others.
The number one reason to use WordPress is content portability. Many website builders want to lock you into their services, so while they may make it easy to import your content from another builder, they sometimes make it difficult or impossible to export your content for importing to another service. If you start with WordPress, you'll have the most content portability.
WordPress is very popular. It currently runs 35% of the websites across the entire Internet. Even though it's very easy to get a new website up and running with a default theme, free theme, or paid theme, it can sometimes become more complicated and frustrating as your content grows or your needs become more advanced.

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