5 Best Website Builder Tools
When you’re in the planning phase of your online business, you may not exactly comprehend what building a website entails. Only when faced with the work itself do you realize that maybe you’re not quite equipped to handle it. Although building websites has become much easier than in the past, some website building models still require you to be on top of your technical skills. Thankfully, drag and drop website builders will make sure you don’t have to be an IT wizard to launch a website.
Website builders are a great alternative for individuals who are not endowed with the necessary tech skills to build a website with a traditional content management system like WordPress or Drupal, or small businesses or start-ups that don’t have the resources to hire an agency or someone to create a website for them. Website builder tools make it possible to create a full-blown website, blog or online store with little to no technical knowledge through a user-friendly web interface that you can master in minutes. These website builder tools are created to guide users through a step-by-step process in creating their websites and make use of templates and drag and drop features to help you add content and functionality to your website.
These are the best online website builder tools we recommend:
| Company | From | ||
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# 1 |
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FREE / |
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# 2 |
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FREE / |
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# 3 |
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FREE / |
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# 4 |
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FREE / |
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# 5 |
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$0.99 / mo |
What to Expect From a Website Builder Tool?
When building websites with traditional CMS tools, you also have to worry about buying a domain, choosing a web hosting company, dealing with software updates. Website builders have all of these aspects integrated in their services allowing you to buy a domain directly from them for which they’ll also provide hosting, or even provide you a free domain. Software updates are automatically handled, so you don’t have to worry about that either. All this convenience is available at an affordable monthly price. Most website builder tools will have a free version of their services, which is a stripped-down version of their paid plans. You can use this free version to test out their platform and see what you can achieve with the different tools and features.
A website builder tool will allow you to have everything you need to build a website – responsive design, a selection of ready-made yet customizable website templates, access to photo galleries and image editing tools, access to eCommerce tools, marketing tools, and social media integration tools. Most website builder tools will give you some form of access to site traffic stats as well, but not all of them will have built-in site stats, so you’ll have to go about it the old fashion way and create a Google Analytics account for this purpose.
A risk with website builder tools is that should you one day decide to move your site to another host, you’ll most likely be unable to, due to the custom code they use. Some website builders will have your back on this issue too, and will allow you to either output your site in standard WordPress format or let you download the necessary site server folders.
How to choose a good website builder tool?
The number of website builder tools available on the market can easily land you in a choice paralysis kind of situation. It’s important to first decide on the particulars of your future website. Is it going to be a blog, an online store or business website? Will you need to run marketing campaigns, will you need shipping, inventory management and invoicing tools?
You can test out different platforms to see how they fare in the usability department, whether they have enough templates that you can choose from, or if they include certain features that you may absolutely need. You’ll also need to run the numbers and see which plan will be the best for you on the long run or whether you’d be better off with hiring someone to build you a custom website.
It also doesn’t hurt to research aspects such as refund policy, support availability, reputation, number of users, popularity, number of years they have been in operation, etc. All these are important factors, but at the end of the day, you’ll probably choose the website builder tool that has all the features you need and scores high on usability.
5 Best Website Builder Tools
To avoid the choice paralysis conundrum, we’ve chosen to review only 5 of the best website builder tools currently on the market. These tools are user-oriented, have pocket-friendly plans, include a free domain with their plans and allow you to create eye candy websites that meet all modern standards.
Wix.com
Wix was established in 2006, and as a cloud-based platform, it now has over 90 million users worldwide, making it one of the most popular and reputable website builder tool. Wix allows you to choose from hundreds of beautiful website templates whether you’re looking to create a website for your restaurant or you want a launch an online store. Be aware, however, that once you’ve chosen a design for your website, you cannot go back on that. You can customize it, but you cannot choose a whole different design.
Wix has a free to use version with a free Wix domain, free hosting, 500 MB storage and 1 GB bandwidth, but includes Wix brand ads. This is a good option to test the platform before committing to Wix’s premium plans, which range from the most basic plan for $4.50/month to eCommerce and VIP plans that cost $16.50/month and $24.59/month. Wix’s most popular plan is the Unlimited plan, which is designed for freelancers and entrepreneurs costing only $12.50/month for unlimited bandwidth, 10 GB storage and a free domain, powerful and easy to use site builder, access to App Market, Premium Site Booster App, etc.
Wix is one of the fullest-featured website builders, and one interesting feature offered by Wix – which not many website builders have – is the mobile editor that allows you to customize how your website will play on mobile devices by adding/hiding certain elements for enhanced mobile user experience.
Weebly.com
Weebly was also launched in 2006 by a group of college students. Today, Weebly is the website builder of choice for more than 40 million users. The intuitive interface, attractive design templates, and loads of eCommerce options account for its great popularity.
Weebly has mobile-ready and SEO-friendly themes and an iPad site-editing app so you can easily edit your website even on the go. Its SEO-friendly nature is also reflected by the fact that Weebly gives you access to site activity stats so you can see page views, number of daily visitors, top viewed pages, referring sites, term searches, etc.
In terms of pricing, Weebly also has a free option to test the waters and see the Weebly platform in action. Other plans are created with different needs in mind, thus, there is the Starter plan ($8.00/month) for personal use, the Pro plan for groups and organizations (for $12/month), Business plan for small businesses and stores ($25/month), and the Performance ($49/month) plan for power sellers. Plans will include a free domain, Google AdWords credit, unlimited storage, advanced site stats, SEO tools, chat and email support, and many eCommerce features necessary for running an online store.
If you ever decide to migrate from Weebly, this website builder tool allows you to download your website code as standard HTML/CSS.
WebsiteBuilder.com
This website builder was launched in 2014, and it has been continuously refined ever since. It has a straightforward interface that’s easy to master by anyone. WebsiteBuilder allows you to build modern, mobile optimized websites with just a few easy steps.
Whether you need a simple 1-page website or a more complex eCommerce website, WebsiteBuilder has all the tools to make it happen. You can choose from 1000s of themes, create SEO-friendly websites, have access to hundreds of images, and connect with your audience on social media. All paid plans include a free domain name, free hosing and ad credit. Premium level plans will also include priority support, SEO and marketing help.
The Free option lets you take WebsiteBuilder’s features on a test drive. Paid plans start at $10.15/month for the Personal plan, while their most powerful plan, which is an eCommerce plan, costs $15.23/month.
If you ever need to transfer your site to another host, you have no way of exporting your site, unless you download everything manually and save it in HTML. Apart from this drawback, which is common for many website builders, WebsiteBuilder provides you good value for your money, and it’s one of the most efficient platforms for launching a website.
Webs.com
Webs is another user-friendly platform for building websites the DIY way without the help of a designer or programmer. Webs offers a large selection of themes grouped according to industry. These templates are customizable to your specifications. Webs keeps up the pace with its competitors by offering mobile website builder, SEO booster tool, web analytics tool, web store and ecommerce tools.
Webs offers a cloud-based hosting and provides a free plan and three paid subscription plans – Starter ($5.99/month), Enhanced ($12.99/month), Pro ($22.99/month) – so you can choose the type of plan which best matches your requirements. All paid plans include a free custom domain name, possibility to create unlimited pages, plenty of storage, access to premium themes, custom email addresses, email and live support.
While Webs may not be such a large scale website builder as some of its veteran competitors, their plans are some of the most affordable on the market, allowing you to build and maintain a website even on a shoestring budget.
1&1 MyWebsite
While 1&1 MyWebsite have had a short period of stagnation, where they fell behind the competition, they have managed to pick up their game and offer website building services that are on par with the ones offered by industry leader website builders. 1&1 MyWebsite offers rich website creation tools including over 10,000 mobile optimized templates, access to an Image Library with 20 million images, online photo editor, websites automatically optimized for all devices, easy integration of numerous web apps, search optimization tools, online marketing tools, eCommerce integration and sales room for up to 1000 products, secure data transactions, social media tools, and many other aspects related to a successful launching, maintenance and performance of your website.
1&1 MyWebsite offer one Personal plan for $2.99 per month (SSL certificate, website editor, free domain name and basic mail package, 200 mobile optimized design templates) and three business website plans. All plans are now on sale, which results in a Basic business plan costing only $0.99/month for a 12-month commitment period. The Plus plan costs $9.99/month and the Premium plan costs $14.99/month.
1&1 MyWebsite has grown into a robust, feature abundant website builder tool that will help you easily control all aspects of any website you wish to build.
Conclusion
Since their emergence, website builder tools have facilitated the creation of websites for millions of users without the need to rely on professional help and coding expertise. These tools allow you to take matters into your own hands and build a website on your own. They’ve essentially pushed the boundaries of website building and opened the way for people with no or minimal IT skills to bring their visions to life. The drawback of these site builders is that you’re usually stuck with them, however, some site builders (e.g. Weebly) will facilitate the migration to another host, should it ever come to that.
Website builders are the best and easiest way to build blog professionally, with no experience (web developing skills). Plenty of hosting companies are offering best basic plans for starters. Godaddy, 1&1 are good but compare with GoDaddy, 1and1 offers more features, which you have mentioned in this post thanks for sharing mate!
I’ve been using Weebly for about 3 years now for building and managing my website and online shop. I’ve never used other site builder nor CMS, because Weebly provided me with all the features I needed.
I use the business plan, which costs $25/mo if you pay anually, but I have no wories about server, software update or other stuff – no idea what else could come along. Just uploading my product images and waitng for customers to buy it. Simple and easy. Highly recommend Weebly!
Weebly is effective indeed as Marian mentioned above. The comments you make about it in your article also reflect that. I have used it before and now I use SITE123. It is very easy to use and quite intuitive, I love it. Going back to your list, the only one I hadn’t heard about is Webs. Are the final results any good?
Nice article. There are some very good options here. Thanks!