7 best website builders in 2023

Best website builders in 2023

Best for creating quick and simple websites

Strikingly

Blueprint Rating

Monthly fee

$12

Free domain

For one year

Drag-and-drop builder

Yes

What you should know

Strikingly makes it very easy to put a quick and simple website together without much fuss and the VIP plan removes plenty of the restraints of the next tier down. You’ll get unlimited products, a drag-and-drop builder, unlimited bandwidth, 100GB of storage and a dedicated account manager for support. However, it doesn’t offer the design flexibility of other providers like Wix, Squarespace or Weebly, so if your needs are complex, you may get better value for money elsewhere.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Great for quickly putting together a simple website with a drag-and-drop editor.
• Dedicated account manager with the VIP plan.
• Free 14-day trial for all price plans.

Cons

• Limited features make it unsuitable for complex website designs.
• Storage is capped at 100GB.
• A custom domain name is only available with an annual plan.

Best for experienced bloggers

WordPress.com

Blueprint Rating

Monthly fee

$0

Free domain

Yes

Drag-and-drop builder

Available through plugins

What you should know

WordPress is one of the biggest website-building and blogging services in the world and is used by millions of individuals and businesses. However, it’s not the most straightforward of the builders on our list, so we’d recommend it for experienced bloggers who know how to derive the best value out of its powerful blogging tools and customization capabilities. It also represents a fairly significant annual investment, so if content is a major part of your business strategy, then we’d recommend it. Otherwise, there are simpler and more affordable options.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Allows a high degree of customization and a range of premium themes.
• Designed for blogging with social media integration and commenting.
• Huge variety of useful paid and free plugins.

Cons

• Steeper learning curve than other website builders.
• Storage cap of 50GB for website media.
• Relatively expensive compared to other providers and plans.

Best for small businesses looking to eventually scale up

Wix

Blueprint Rating

Monthly fee

$16

Free domain

For one year

Drag-and-drop builder

Yes

What you should know

Wix offers a powerful and easy-to-use website builder for all of its plans, but the Wix Business plan amps up the capabilities. It offers:

• Double the storage (100 GB) and video hours (10) of its Core plan.
• Advanced shipping.
• 250 dropshipping products.
• 1,000 KudoBuzz reviews.
• Five currencies.

It’s a big step up for businesses looking to take advantage of an intuitive and attractive website builder and increase sales.

In addition, Wix’s Business Elite option offers a significant step up both in terms of cost and capabilities. This is why we recommend it for businesses looking to scale up and invest in their website capabilities. It offers advanced marketing, analytic and e-commerce features, unlimited storage space, customized reports and priority customer care that becomes useful for larger operations.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Advanced marketing, analytics and e-commerce features for growing businesses.
• An easy-to-use drag-and-drop platform with a library of over 800 templates.
• 24/7 priority customer care with VIP phone support and personalized training.

Cons

• Expensive compared to other providers and plans.
• Migration to and from other platforms can be challenging.
• Advanced e-commerce, marketing and analytics features only with higher tiers.

Best for solo e-commerce

Shopify

Blueprint Rating

Learn More

Via Shopify's Website

Monthly fee

$39

Free domain

No

Drag-and-drop builder

Yes

What you should know

Shopify is designed for sellers. The Basic plan offers a reliable and trustworthy digital shopfront with excellent functionality, including dropshipping capabilities. While you don’t get your own domain, if you’re a solo entrepreneur and you want to focus more on selling your wares, then Shopify offers an excellent starter platform. With unlimited products, lots of free and paid e-commerce templates, third-party apps, API access and always-available support, it’s an industry leader in e-commerce.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Centered around e-commerce.
• Offers plenty of useful features and free templates.
• 24/7 customer support.

Cons

• No free domain name.
• Limited tools for creating and managing content.
• Expensive premium plans for companies that plan to upgrade.

Best for e-commerce businesses on a budget

Weebly

Blueprint Rating

Monthly fee

$0

Free domain

For one year

Drag-and-drop builder

Yes

What you should know

Weebly is one of the simplest website builders available, and it offers a free version. Weebly’s $10-per-month Personal plan is a great first step for solo creators and entrepreneurs wanting to showcase their work and skills. With a range of attractive themes, unlimited bandwidth, the ability to sell items and useful but somewhat simple features for selling, it’s functional while still being a modest financial commitment.

In addition, for a relatively modest price of $12 per month, the Professional plan offers a lot. You’ll get unlimited storage and bandwidth, unlimited products and no ads for less than half the price of the Wix Business plan ($32 a month) and cheaper than Squarespace’s Business Plan ($23 a month).

Alongside a free domain for a year (when you purchase the yearly plan), access to phone support, inventory management, marketing tools and password protection make it a strong offering for businesses on a budget.

Weebly’s next step up from the Professional plan is its Performance plan. At $26 per month, it boosts e-commerce capabilities with extra features like item reviews, abandoned cart emails and the ability to accept PayPal payments.

They’re complimented by extra insights into store performance, engagement with marketing emails, traffic from referrals and monthly SEO audits. However, while it’s an affordable option compared to other providers, you’ll get more website-building and blogging freedom with services like Wix and Squarespace.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Relatively affordable.
• Easy to use.
• A range of extra e-commerce features like item reviews and abandoned cart emails.

Cons

• Limited customer support hours.
• Limited customization and theme variation.
• Blogging features are weaker than other providers.

Best for powerful and stunning websites

Squarespace

Blueprint Rating

Monthly fee

$23

Free domain

For one year

Drag-and-drop builder

Yes

What you should know

Squarespace is hugely popular for a reason. It’s easy to use and offers visually beautiful website designs. The Advanced Commerce plan adds a range of powerful features like advanced shipping and discounting, subscriptions and commerce APIs for custom integrations. These can be useful for businesses of all sizes that are aiming to grow and are willing to pay a relatively premium price for it. Just pay mind to the limited customer support options available.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Visually stunning designs and templates, all mobile optimized.
• One of the easiest platforms to use.
• Plenty of third-party apps to connect.

Cons

• Customer support is limited, with no phone support.
• No backup or autosave features.
• Relatively expensive compared to other providers and plans.

Best for marketing agencies

Duda

Blueprint Rating

Monthly fee

$25

Free domain

No

Drag-and-drop builder

Yes

What you should know

Duda’s Agency plan gives you access to a powerful website builder that offers a lot in the way of customization within its template limits. You get access to a custom widget builder and third-party widget integrations, website exporter and four websites with Amazon Web Services hosting.

However, it’s moderately expensive side compared to other providers like Wix Business. It also charges extra for many complementary features, including $12.99 a month for extra websites and $7.25 for the cheapest e-commerce plan that only allows you to sell 100 products. With membership and client billing tools included in the Agency plan, we’d recommend it more for agencies with the budget and team to support multiple websites.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Good value with four websites included.
• Priority support over email, chat and phone.
• Strong membership and client billing tools.

Cons

• The ability to sell products is included in a separate plan.
• No free domain name.
• Complementary features cost more.

Best website builder comparison

What is a website builder and when to use one?

Website builders are software or programs you can use to create your own website even without coding experience. These programs often feature pre-built templates and an intuitive interface that allows even beginner designers to build a clean and practical website.

Website builders can be useful for a range of applications, whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or a business looking to scale up. If you’re wondering when to use a website creation platform, we’d particularly recommend them if:

• You’re a creative professional and you need a portfolio.
• You want to open an online shop.
• You want to publish a blog.
• You want to advertise your small business.

How to choose the best e-commerce platform for your business

To find the best e-commerce platform for your business, consider its ease of use, security features, hosting capabilities, scalability, functionality, appearance and user experience. 

Here’s what to look for in a website builder:

Ease of use

While you won’t need to have any real knowledge of coding languages like HTML or Javascript with most platforms, not all offer the same straightforward experience. Some website builders like WordPress offer greater degrees of customization, but novices might find it harder to learn all the tools available. 

On the flip side, based on our testing, services like Squarespace and Weebly are among the easiest to use of all providers. They each provide an intuitive interface and dashboard to manage your e-commerce business, with scores of templates and drag-and-drop components that make building your website relatively simple.

Security features

Protecting user data and preventing fraud is paramount when running an online business. It’s estimated that e-commerce fraud losses will reach $48 billion in 2023, and around 42% of global fraud by value will occur in North America. 

Ensuring your e-commerce platform has robust security measures, password protection and PCI compliance standards implemented can help protect your business from becoming a victim of payment fraud. 

Scalability

All businesses want to grow, so it’s important to ensure your e-commerce platform is well-equipped to help you scale up when required. Keep your business’s goals in mind, and look for an e-commerce platform that can match what you need now and as you grow. As you evaluate a website builder’s scalability, consider these features: 

• Storage: How much data you can store on your website, from images to videos and other files.
• Bandwidth: The amount of user traffic your website can handle.
• Uptime: How long your e-commerce platform will be online and available to users, (often given as a percentage of time online). 
• Products and pages: How many products you can list for sale and the number of pages your website can support to market your business and its products. 
• Plan tiers: Whether upgrading plans as you scale up will provide good value for your money by adding features like extra storage, bandwidth, user reviews and product listings.
• Customer support: Whether customer support will always be available as your needs grow and on the channels you prefer.

Functionality

Keep in mind the size and type of business you run, and whether you’ll need certain features to be included in your website builder or e-commerce platform, such as:

• Omnichannel marketing: Does your e-commerce platform offer support for promoting your products on your website, on social media sites and other platforms?
• Payment processing: Can you accept and process payments on your website or e-commerce platform?
• Inventory and shopping: Can you manage an online shop and inventory using seamless synchronization and automation tools?
• Analytics: Will you have access to SEO tools and marketing analytics so you can make better informed business decisions based on how users interact with your website?
• Mobile-friendliness: Will your platform adapt to mobile browsing? Insider Intelligence predicts that mobile commerce sales will account for over 43% of 2023’s total retail e-commerce sales, increasing from 42% in 2022.
• Integrations: Can you integrate third-party apps if required to add functionality like payment processing or inventory management?

Appearance, themes and user experience

It matters how your website looks and feels for users. From visual appeal to navigability, it helps to bear your overall vision in mind when comparing website builders and e-commerce platforms. Take note of customization options, pre built templates, themes, fonts and color schemes and whether they’re freely available or behind a paywall.

How much does it cost to build a website?

The cost of hiring a web designer to build a website varies depending on their experience and expertise as well as your specific requirements. A good ballpark figure to start with is around $5,000, but remember to factor in other costs like content creation, analytics and maintenance when thinking about how much it costs to build a website.

Is it worth paying someone to build a website?

This is dependent on how confident you feel using a website builder yourself. If you’re building a website for an individual, such as a portfolio or a personal web page, it’s likely to be more cost-efficient to create it yourself using an easy website builder like Weebly or Squarespace. 

Small businesses with more of a budget to outsource such tasks and that don’t have a website designer on staff might benefit from paying a web designer. However, many website-building services make the process of creating a website simple and straightforward, so it could be worth trying it out for yourself first.

Providers like Shopify and Squarespace offer free trials in which you can have a go at creating your website to see if it’s right for you.