So you finally decided to create your own website, huh? Congrats on that. Now you must be finding an easy way to create that website, a website builder, maybe? No wonder you are confused. There are so many out there with similar offerings. Anyone can get confused. Let’s solve the puzzle a bit and see if we can find some winners for Website Builder for 2019.
We will review the following 15 website builders:
- WordPress.org
- WordPress.com
- Wix
- Shopify
- BoldGrid
- Weebly
- Squarespace
iPage Website Builder- GoDaddy Website Builder
- Web.com
- Webs.com
- Site 123
- Webnode
- Site Builder
- Jimdo
1. WordPress.org
WordPress.org is the most popular website builder in the world. It is open source, doesn’t cost a dime and it is more than just a website builder. It is a content management system. You can run a blog, an ecommerce store or anything under the sun with your WordPress install.
Pros:
- It is free, it costs nothing to build your website
- It is completely customizable
- There are more than 2500 themes available for free
- It supports more than 50,000 plugins and more are added day by day
- Migration to other platforms is easy.
- You can create a robust E-commerce website using WordPress
- You can create a multilingual website using WordPress
Cons:
- You need to install WordPress on your own host, so the cost of hosting is the main drawback. Plus you need to maintain the hosting environment. That’s a bit of a technicality.
- You need to purchase the domain name separately.
Pricing:
WordPress.org is a self-hosted free, open-source service. It means your only real cost is that of hosting and domain name.
WordPress.org is a self-hosted free, open-source service. It means your only real cost is that of hosting and domain name.
2. WordPress.com
Confused about WordPress.org and WordPress.com? WordPress.org is a free offering kept open source by the community of developers that work on it. WordPress.com is the commercial offering put forth by creators of WordPress.
Pros:
- It is a website hosting service
- It takes care of software and backups automatically.
- It offers access to paid themes and plugins
Cons:
- You need to upgrade to their business plan to install custom themes and plugins
- It does not support eCommerce feature and third-party ad support for a premium or lower plans
- You have to follow the terms and conditions of WordPress.com when scaling up your eCommerce business.
Pricing:
The basic plan is free but very limiting. All the paid plans are billed annually. These are Personal $4 per month, Premium $8.25 per month, and the Business plan at $25 per month.
3. Wix
Wix is a website builder that is based on cloud. It offers ease of use and tons of customizations.
Pros:
- Wix is a legit website builder. More than 100 million users use it worldwide.
- It provides a user experience that is optimized for all devices. You can create responsive websites.
- It is an excellent option for ecommerce stores.
- There are endless customizations and you can tweak it the way you want.
- It has decent support.
- It offers long-term discounts, making longer-term purchases cheaper.
- You get free SSL with each paid plan
Cons:
- It offers email accounts with G-suite for $5 which is costly.
- E-commerce websites are available at a higher price.
- Free plans include ads by Wix. You need to purchase premium plans to remove this ad.
- Moving your website to another platform is quite complete.
- You need to buy domain name yourself in case you opt for a connect domain plan.
Pricing:
Wix offers a free plan that comes with a wix branded domain. To connect your domain to your wix website, you need to shell out $9.16 per month. The premium plan starts at $14.95 per month which includes a free domain. The ecommerce plan starts at $26.25 per month.
4. Shopify
Shopify is a website builder that is specifically targeted for online stores and ecommerce website. As it specializes in this niche, those who want to build an ecommerce website often consider Shopify to be a better option compared to the other website builders. It has 1 million active users while it powers around half a million websites.
Pros:
- It is a fully hosted website solution
- One does not need to worry software, update installation or keeping regular backups.
- It has integrated payment solution called Shopify Payments.
- It supports third party payment gateways.
- It offers full inventory management.
- It allows unlimited products, easy marketing solutions.
- It has an intuitive drag and drop interface which makes it easy to build custom websites without knowing any code.
- There are multiple customizations available.
- We can integrate shopify into WordPress
Cons:
- The pricing is a bit costly compared to other website builders.
- Migration from shopify is difficult
Pricing:
The Basic plan is pegged at $29 per month. The premium option comes at $79 per month. The Advanced Shopify plan costs $299 per month. There is one more plan called Shopify Lite which costs $9 per month.
5. BoldGrid
BoldGrid is a website builder that is built upon WordPress, thus it takes full advantage of the WordPress platform. It uses a combination of multiple components such as themes, widgets, plugins, pages, page layouts, menus, photos, icons etc.
Pros:
- User can take benefit of the functionality of WordPress
- Migration is easier.
- You get 100% ownership of the website
- The plugin itself is free
- There is a huge community support
- You can set up a staging site.
- Website code can be customized.
- It offers good customer support
Cons:
- Unlike all-in-one website builders, you have to pay for hosting separately.
- For eCommerce, drag and drop tools are not available.
Pricing:
The basic plugin is free. However, you will incur hosting costs. BoldGrid recommends InMotion as a webhost. Their “Launch” plan starts at $4 per month, Power plan at $6 per month and Pro plan at $13.99 per month.
6. Weebly
Weebly is one of the fastest growing and perhaps the oldest website building platform. It offers easy to setup and highly customized website building solution. You can choose the template that suits your needs and with the drag and drop functionality you can create any type website you want.
Pros:
- It is a fully hosted platform thus it removes the need to install and manage a software. It takes care of hosting and manages the software at the backend.
- It comes with a intuitive page builder. There are numerous website designs to start with.
- It has built-in ecommerce support
- It features contact forms, photo galleries, sliders and more
- It supports custom fonts
- It has advanced animation effects and other cool feature to make your website stand out.
Cons:
- User is locked with the features that are offered.
- No further independent development or coding is possible.
- There is a charge of 3% on every purchase made on its ecommerce platform.
Pricing:
Like other website builders, there is a basic plan that is free. Paid plan starts at $8 per month which is billed annually. The Pro plan costs $12 per month. Business plan starts at $25 per month.
7. Squarespace
Squarespace offers professionally designed templates and lot of customization options. It is fully hosted website builder. It has a great support and each site comes with free SSL.
Pros:
- It has great enterprise grade infrastructure that is perfect for your website hosting.
- It is secure and robust platform
- It offers fully editable numerous templates. It even allows one to use multiple templates for the same website.
- It has an ecommerce platform that has an user-friendly interface
Cons:
- It offers limited integration with third party services.
- The ecommerce plans restricts payment gateways only to Apple Pay, Stripe and PayPal.
- It is costly compared to the competitors.
Pricing
The Plans start from $12 and $18 per month. The online stores starts from $26 and $40 per month.
8. iPage Website Builder
iPage is an add-on the hosting service provided by iPage. It is easy to use, customizable website builder.
Pros:
- Drag and drop functionality makes it easier to build a website
- It includes 100+ page templates that are mobile friendly.
- It has built in social media tools, SEO settings, beautiful image galleries.
- It can embed videos, Google Analytics and add ecommerce store
Cons:
- It is limited in terms features offered.
- It is not possible to add a new feature to your website.
- It does not support third party integrations and add-ons.
Pricing:
The basic plan comes free with your iPage hosting. The Premium plan starts at $6.99 per month. The business plan is priced at $15.99 per month.
9. GoDaddy Website Builder
GoDaddy, one of the largest hosting provider in the world, recently changed its default website builder. In 2017, they launched their new website builder called “GoDaddy Central”. It asks you information about the kind of site you want and presents you with a unique website based on the information you provided.
Pros:
- You can create a website in a matter of minutes and can go live instantly
- It is very easy to use.
- The drag and drop functionality comes with several customized blocks.
- It has a photo gallery integrated with professional images from Getty Photography that can be used by the users.
- Its pricing is cheaper compared to some other competitors.
Cons:
- It does not allow much creative freedom
- Some of its features lack depth
- Its sites aren’t as visually appealing.
- Migration to WordPress is quite difficult
- Emails are expensive.
Pricing:
Personal plan is pegged at $5.99 per month. Business plan is priced at $9.99 per month. Business Plus plan costs $14.99 per month. All these plans are billed annually.
10. Web.com
This might just be the website builder that has received the poorest of reviews on the internet. It has so low reviews that you should double check your decision to go with this website builder. This is one of those websites that you should avoid.
Pros:
- The cheap $1.5 offer that gives you a custom domain name.
- You can publish site instantly using industry specific photos from Web.com
- It has 24/7 phone support
Cons:
- It has highly overpriced plans
- There is no free plan or free trial
- The customization tools aren’t that user-friendly
- Template quality is low
- It has a horribly designed knowledgebase.
- They have shady billing practices.
Pricing
The Website Builder plan starts at $22.95 per month. Website and Online Marketing plan starts at $29.95 per month. The Website, Marketing and Store plan costs $39.95. Compared to others, this is insanely costly per month price.
11. Webs.com
Webs website builder has helped run more than 55 million websites. It is one of the most popular website builder but it is also one of the most expensive options for the value you get.
Pros:
- They provide around 2500 design templates
- It is user-friendly and intuitive
- It allows the user to build membership directly on their platform
- You can integrate third party tools using its App Store
- It provides a good customer service experience.
Cons:
- It has limited set of features
- Its integrations can not be extended.
- You cannot hire a developer to integrate a tool or code.
- Its templates are not easy to edit.
Pricing
Webs.com offers a limited free plan. The paid plan starts at $5.99 per month. The Enhanced plan costs $12.99 per month. The Pro plan is featured at $22.99 per month.
12. Site123
Site123 is a very simple and no-nonsense, straightforward website builder. Its design assistance helps you craft the website you want without needing any coding knowledge.
Pros:
- Ecommerce is well supported with an extensive knowledge base.
- Visually pleasing hundreds of design templates.
- Delivers superior uptime
- Themes are mobile-friendly and responsive
- Provides App Market
Cons:
- You can’t change template once your site goes live
- It does not provide much creativity and flexibility
- Some features lack depth
- Support is not at par
Pricing:
The Pricing varies as a per the duration for which the plan is purchased. For example, priced annually, the Basic plan costs at $10.8 per month, Advanced at $16.8 and Professional at $22.8 per month. The Gold plan is priced at $28.8.
13. Webnode
Webnode is one of the largest players in the website building industry with more than 30 million registered users. They support more than 20 languages. You can build a multilingual website with them.
Pros:
- With its drag and drop editor, it is easy to use.
- It offers responsive designs with a lot of variety.
- It has a multilingual feature to support different language versions of your website.
- It is SEO friendly
- It provides a good contact form and password protection is great
Cons:
- It has limited ecommerce features
- The blog service is basic
- It can take some time until you know your way around.
- It is missing some important widgets.
Pricing:
There is a free plan with few features. The paid plan starts from $3.95 per month for the Limited Plan which includes a webnode ad in the footer. Mini plan includes email and costs $5.95 per month. The Standard ad free plan is priced at $11.95 per month. The Profi plan costs $24.95 per month.
14. SiteBuilder
SiteBuilder’s drag and drop editor can help you create a simple website in minutes. Within an hour, you can publish your website without needing any coding knowledge. The basic option is very limiting though.
Pro:
- More than 2,00,000 users have used it
- There are more than 1200 templates to choose from.
- You get the free domain name for the first year without any ads on your website
Cons:
- Emails cost extra at $5/ month through Google’s G-Suite.
- Limited customization limits creativity
- The site does not feature any extra services
- The Premium plans are overpriced
Pricing:
The paid plans start at $3.84 per month for the Pro Plan. The Premium plan costs $5.99 per month. The eCommerce plan starts at $9.22 per month. These are Sale prices for 50% off. Once it is over, full pricing is applied which makes it pretty costly.
15. Jimdo
Jimdo Creator has created more than 20 million websites. It’s focus on easy to use website builder has created a huge following for Jimdo. Features do not add complexity for the users. It has a good performance when website speed is considered.
Pros:
- Good Pricing
- Easy to Use
- It is SEO friendly
- It has a mobile app
- Best speed performance
Cons:
- Templates are rigid, it’s difficult to add functionality
- There is a lack of numerous customizations. There are very few templates available.
Pricing:
The basic version has limited features and it is free. JimdoPro starts at $7.5 per month. JimdoBusiness is priced at $20 per month. These are annually priced.
This was our look at one of the best website builder options available in 2019. Each has its pros and cons and no one is perfect. We have also included some which you should avoid. Hope this comparison is comprehensive enough for you to choose your own website builder. Though on the surface, drag and drop are easier to build a website, on the longer term we recommend a content management system like WordPress.
