How to Choose the Best Website Builder in 2019 (Compared) ~PART 2~

Continue from PART 1.

6. Weebly

Weebly is an easy to use website builder with tons of great designs. It includes a beautifully crafted page builder which allows you to edit your website without learning any coding skills.

Pros

Weebly is a fully hosted platform, so you don’t need to install and manage any software. They take care of hosting your website and managing all the software that runs in the backend.

It comes with dozens of website designs to use as an starting point for your website. These gorgeous designs are fully editable using Weebly’s live page editor.

Weebly also comes with built-in support for ecommerce. This allows you to easily create an online store and start selling.

Each Weebly site comes with built in features for contact forms, photo galleries, sliders, and more. This allows you to easily add features to your website without any complicated setup process.

Cons

Weebly is a fully hosted platform so you are locked to the features they offer. You cannot hire a developer or designer to add new functionality of feature to your website.

Weebly charges 3% transaction fees on every purchase made through your ecommerce store. You’ll need to upgrade to their business plan to avoid these additional fees.

Pricing

Weebly comes with a very basic free plan. Their paid plans start from $8 per month billed annually. The pro plan costs $12 per month, and their business plan costs $25 per month.

If you are wondering how it stacks up against WordPress, then check out our comparison of Weebly vs WordPress.

7. Squarespace

Squarespace is a popular fully hosted website builder known for its great designs and ease of use.

Pros

Squarespace comes with enterprise-grade infrastructure for hosting your website. This secure and robust platform allows you to focus on growing your business without worrying about hosting.

Squarespace includes tons of website designs to get started. All of these designs are fully ready for all types of content. They are fully editable, and Squarespace even allows you to use multiple templates for the same website at once.

Adding content to your website is very easy on Squarespace. Just point anywhere on your website and start typing. You can easily drag and drop items on pages to create your own layouts in minutes.

Squarespace also has an ecommerce plan which allow you to add an online store to your website. It offers a nice interface to manage your products, inventory, orders, coupon discounts, and more.

Cons

Squarespace offers limited integrations with third-party service which can be a hurdle in growing your business.

Their ecommerce plans only allow Stripe, Apple Pay, and PayPal for payment processing. You cannot add additional payment gateways.

Pricing

Squarespace websites start from $12 per month and $18 per month. Their online stores start from $26 and $40 per month.

Squarespace is a beautifully designed platform that offers very easy to use features. It can be perfect if you just want to quickly build a website.

If you are wondering how it stacks up against WordPress, then take a look at our comparison of Squarespace vs WordPress.

8. GoDaddy Website Builder

GoDaddy is one of the largest domain name and hosting service providers in the world. They offer a simple and elegant website builder complete with hosting included.

Pros

GoDaddy Website Builder is a simple and easy tool to create professional looking websites. It comes pre-loaded with several ready to use blocks that you can drag and drop to build different layouts.

It also has integrated photo library with professional images from Getty Photography that you can use on your website. You can also upload your own photos and create image galleries.

GoDaddy website builder works on smaller screens too. This allows you to work on your website on the go using your mobile phone or tablet.

Cons

It is not as feature rich and flexible as most other website builders on this list. It offers limited set of features with fewer design options.

It is quite difficult to move your website from GoDaddy Website Builder to WordPress.

Pricing

Personal plan costs $5.99/month, business plan for $9.99/month, and business plus plan for $14.99/month. All plans are billed annually.

GoDaddy Website Builder can be used for a basic website with a few pages. However, it is not a good choice to build content rich websites.

9. WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a blog and website hosting service run by Automattic. It is created by Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress open source software, hence the name WordPress.com. To learn more, see our article on how are WordPress.com and WordPress.org related.

However, WordPress.com is not the same as self-hosted WordPress.org. Please see our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details.

Pros

WordPress.com is a website hosting service. Built on top of the same WordPress software but with a totally custom user experience. You don’t have to worry about the software and backups as WordPress.com takes care of it.

Their free and paid plans have different set of features. All plans allow users to choose from hundreds of free and paid WordPress themes. You can then use the built-in customizer to add your site title, use widgets, add navigation menus, and so on.

It doesn’t offer the same drag and drop functionality of other website builders. However, you can easily customize designs to a certain extent.

Cons

You cannot install custom plugins or themes unless you upgrade to their business plan.

Premium and lower plans do not have ecommerce features or third-party ad network support. With the business plan, you can use WooCommerce and third-party ad networks. However, you will still have to follow WordPress.com’s terms and conditions.

Pricing

The basic plan is free, but is extremely limited. Their personal plan starts with $4 per month billed annually and includes a custom domain. Premium plan costs $8.25 per month billed annually and it gives you the ability to monetize your site and advanced design customization. Business plan costs $24.92 per month billed annually, and it gives you the ability to have Ecommerce and custom plugins.

10. BoldGrid

BoldGrid is a new kind of website builder that is built on top of WordPress. It is available as a standalone WordPress plugin as well as a fully hosted website builder suite.

Pros

BoldGrid is built on top of WordPress, so you get full advantage of WordPress with a customized user experience. BoldGrid’s website builder allows you to choose a professional design from their gallery of themes.

After that, you can customize those designs with a drag and drop customizer. You can point and click on any item in the preview section to edit its properties. You can change colors, fonts, layouts, navigation menus, and widgets with ease.

Need a staging website? BoldGrid creates one for you with a single click. This allows you to test out your new designs, layouts, plugins, and themes before making it live for everyone to see.

It also comes with a full WYSIWYG page editor. No more guess work when editing your pages in WordPress. You’ll get exactly what you see on your page editor window. You can also use GridBlocks to simply drag and drop elements to your page and build your own layouts from scratch.

All BoldGrid themes are ready for WooCommerce. This allows you to easily create a storefront using BoldGrid’s drag and drop builder (see our list of best WooCommerce hosting companies).

Cons

BoldGrid runs on top of WordPress, so you will still need a self-hosted WordPress.org website to use it.

But the good part is backups are included through BoldGrid backups, so you don’t have to worry about that.

Pricing

BoldGrid basic plugin is available as a free download. You’ll need a WordPress hosting account and a domain name to install and use it. We recommend using InMotion Hosting because they are an official BoldGrid hosting provider.

This means you can easily setup BoldGrid with a few clicks on InMotion Hosting’s platform.

InMotion Hosting has agreed to offer WPBeginner users 50% discount on hosting. Click here to get started with InMotion Hosting.

If you want to use WordPress but with the ease of hosted drag and drop website builders, then BoldGrid would be perfect for you.

11. 1&1 IONOS Website Builder

1&1 Website Builder is a premium website builder designed specifically for small businesses, individuals, and starter websites.

Pros

The 1&1 IONOS Website builder is a fully-hosted solution to easily create a website in minutes. It comes with hundreds of professionally designed templates to create fully functional business websites.

All templates are mobile friendly out of the box and your website will look great on all devices.

Select your industry to get a template that already contains the content matching your needs. You can tweak it as little or as much you like with user friendly interface.

Each plan comes with a free domain name and your own branded email addresses. Support is available 24 / 7 via phone, live chat, or email.

Cons

There are no integrations or third-party extensions that you can install to your website for new features.

The website builder and online store builder are two separate products. If you want to start an online store, then you need to sign up for their online store builder.

Pricing:

They are running a $1 for six months offer on all their plans. Regular prices start from $7 per month (Essential), $10 per month (Business), and $20 per month (Pro).

12. Ucraft

Ucraft offers an easy to use website builder for blogs and businesses wanting to add a shopping cart and start selling products.

Pros

Ucraft comes with a drag and drop website builder with dozens of templates to choose from. All website designs are fully mobile friendly. Getting started with a basic website takes only a few minutes and requires no technical skills.

They offer a limited free plan and let you add your own custom domain name. All paid plans include one free domain registration.

All paid plans also include eCommerce features with more than 70 payment methods to accept online payments. Other notable features include on-site search, Google Fonts, multi-currency stores, multilingual website, discount coupons, and more.

Ucraft also has integrations available for several third-party tools and services like Google Analytics, Live Chat, Zendesk, Intercom, and more.

Cons

There are enough integrations available but you are only limited to those currently available.

The pro website plan lets you add only 50 products at a time. You will need Pro Shop plan to add more products.

Pricing

Ucraft offers a limited free plan with the ability to connect your own domain name. Their paid plans start from $10 per month for Pro Website, $21 per month for Pro Shop, $39 per month for BigCommerce.

Our Pick for The Best Website Builder

After carefully evaluating different website builders, we believe that WordPress beats them all in overall performance, ease of use, price, and flexibility.

WordPress is an excellent choice for beginners as well as business websites. Some of the world’s top brands are using WordPress on their websites. See all the reasons to choose WordPress as your website builder.

If you want to build your website with the best website builder, then get started with WordPress by using Bluehost. It is definitely our #1 choice.

You can read our step by step guide on how to make a website for detailed instructions.

If you’re looking to build an online store (eCommerce website), then we recommend BigCommerce as the best eCommerce website builder because it offers all the features that you will need at the best price.

If you want a WordPress alternative, then we recommend using either Wix or Gator.

Wix offers a limited free website builder, and you can upgrade to their premium plans to unlock more features.

Gator offers a very affordable website builder for small businesses, and it’s definitely a top choice for non-techy business owners looking for a WordPress alternative.

We hope this article helped you choose the best website builder for your project. You may also want to see out list of tools to help you grow your website.

How to Choose the Best Website Builder in 2019 (Compared) ~PART 1~

Website builders are a perfect solution for individuals and small businesses to start a website without hiring a developer. However, finding the best website builder can be tricky for beginners.

There are so many website builders on the market, how do you know which one is the right solution for you?

In this article, we’ll help you choose the best website builder by going over the pros and cons of the most popular options.

We will be comparing the following website builders in this article. If you are interested in a particular website builder, then just click on the name to skip ahead.

1. WordPress.org
2. Wix
3. Gator by HostGator
4. BigCommerce
5. Shopify
6. Weebly
7. Squarespace
8. GoDaddy Website Builder
9. WordPress.com
10. BoldGrid
11. 1&1 IONOS Website Builder
12. Ucraft

Choosing the Best Website Builder — What to Look for?

Before comparing the top website builders, we recommend that you write down what you want to do with your website? What are your goals and what features would you like to see on your website.

For example, you can write down things like: have a blog section, photo gallery, online store, reservation system, contact form, slider, etc.

If you are unsure about what you want, then check out your competitors or other websites for inspiration.

Most website builders offer a drag and drop user interface to build your website. You can take advantage of the trial accounts to test drive before you make your final decision.

Next, you need to consider your growth options. Will you be adding regular updates to your website? Do you need a blog section? Would you be selling more products on your website in the future?

You need to make sure that the website builder you choose is capable of handling your needs as your business grows.

That being said, let’s take a look at the top website builder platforms to make your website without hiring a developer.

1. WordPress

WordPress.org (also known as self hosted WordPress) is the world’s most popular website building platform. Over 34% of all websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.

Note: There are two versions of WordPress available. There is self-hosted WordPress.org and WordPress.com. We will talk about WordPress.com later in this article. You can also read our WordPress.org vs WordPress.com comparison for more details.

The self-hosted WordPress tops our list of best website builder due to its popularity, powerful features, scalability, and ease of use.

WordPress is a free and open source website builder. This means that you have maximum control over your website compared to any other builder in this list.

Unlike other website builders, you will need a WordPress hosting account and host your own website (this is a lot easier than it sounds).

Pros:

WordPress gives you complete control on every aspect of your website. It can be used to build any kind of website. For example, an eCommerce store, community forums, a social network, a membership website, and more.

There are thousands of pre-made WordPress themes that you can use for your website’s design. It also has amazing drag and drop page builders like Beaver Builder and Divi which allow you to easily create your own page layouts.

You’ll also get access to more than 50,000 free WordPress plugins. These are like apps for WordPress that adds additional features and functionality to your website.

WordPress is fully translated into dozens of languages and can be easily used to create multilingual websites.

When you consider all the above benefits, WordPress is by far the cheapest website builder in the market.

Cons:

You will have to manage your own website, which means you will need to familiarize yourself with a new system. This slight learning curve is easily overcome by most users, but it does feel a bit difficult in the beginning.

You will also have to keep up with WordPress updates, plugin updates, and create backups.

Pricing:

While WordPress is a free website builder, you will need a domain name and web hosting to get your website live which typically costs $14.99/year and $7.99 per month respectively.

Fortunately, we have worked out a special deal for WPBeginner users. You can start a website for only $2.75 per month with Bluehost, an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. They are offering our users 60% off on web hosting that comes with free SSL and a free domain name.

→ Click here to Claim this Exclusive Bluehost offer ←

With this special pricing, WordPress is the cheapest website builder in this list for small business.

For more details, see our guide on how to make a website with step by step instructions.

2. Wix

Wix is another popular cloud based website builder. It offers ease of use combined with a powerful set of features to easily build your website.

Pros

Wix is a fully hosted platform, so you will not have to pay for hosting. You get access to hundreds of templates to choose for your website’s design. Each template is fully editable with their intuitive drag and drop site builder.

It also comes with dozens of free and paid apps that you can install on your website. These apps allow you to add new features and functionality to your website. Some of them are created by Wix, and others are created by third-party developers.

Wix offers a free plan with limited bandwidth and storage. However, you can use this plan to test drive their drag and drop website builder. It does not include a domain name, so if you decide to keep your website, then you may want to upgrade to a premium plan.

You also get a free SSL with all Wix plans, but you will need to turn it on for your website.

Cons

Free and Connect Domain plans will show Wix branded ads on your website. You’ll need to upgrade to their Combo or Unlimited plan to remove those ads.

If you ever decide to move your website away from Wix, then you will find it quite complicated to do so.

Their Connect Domain plan which costs $9.16 per month only lets you connect a custom domain name, so you’ll still have to buy a domain name separately.

Pricing

Wix offers a limited free plan with a Wix branded sub domain. You can connect a domain for $9.16 per month. Their combo plan starts at $14.95/month and will get you a free domain name. The ecommerce plan costs $26.25 per month.

If you are interested in how it stacks up against WordPress, then see our comparison of Wix vs WordPress.

3. Gator by HostGator

Gator is brand new website builder by HostGator, one of the most popular web hosting provider in the world. The Gator builder is an all-in-one website building & hosting solution which makes it a perfect website builder for small businesses.

Pros

Gator is a fully hosted platform, so you don’t have to worry about the software, updates, or backups.

It has an intuitive website builder that lets you choose from 200+ professional website design templates. Each design comes with simple customization options that you can configure from the builder itself.

You can edit any item on a page with a simple point and click interface. You can also drag and drop commonly used items like images, videos, photo gallery, text, columns, maps, and contact forms.

You also have access to a built-in stock photo library, so you can find and add beautiful photos on your website.

All paid plans also include a free custom domain name for your website. The eCommerce plan also comes with the ability to setup an online store and sell your products online.

Since Gator is a paid product, they don’t sell your data or show any ads on your website.

Cons

Unlike some of the other options in the list, Gator doesn’t have a free plan. They also do not offer a free trial.

Like other proprietary builders in the list, you cannot hire a developer to help you significantly modify your website design or add new features to your website.

Pricing

Gator paid plans start from $3.84 per month, $5.99 per month for premium, and $9.22 for eCommerce plan. It is definitely one of the cheapest website builders in the list.

Gator can be used to build a small business website, a store with limited items, or a photo gallery. However, it is no match for the power of the most popular website builder, WordPress.

4. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is the best eCommerce website builder in the market. If you’re looking to create an online store that scales, then BigCommerce is the platform for you. It comes with all the essential features built-in, so you can keep your overhead low and margins high.

Pros

BigCommerce is a fully hosted eCommerce solution, so you don’t have to worry about website speed, security, or updates. They handle the server and technical side for you, so you can focus on growing your business.

Unlike other hosted eCommerce solutions, BigCommerce has a native integration with WordPress which allows you to leverage the flexibility of WordPress while taking advantage of the headless eCommerce power of BigCommerce. In simple terms, your website will be fast and secure no matter how much traffic you get.

BigCommerce integrates with all popular payment gateways including Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Square, Amazon Pay, Visa Checkout, Chase Pay, Ayden, and more. Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce doesn’t charge a transaction fee for you to use these payment gateways.

You can start with one of their many pre-made website templates and customize it to match your needs using their easy drag & drop website builder.

BigCommerce comes with many features built-in to handle conversion rate optimization such as cart abandonment, improved product search, product reviews, coupons, and more.

The best part is their dashboard that lets you see the metrics to help you grow your business with confidence.

Cons

If you are just starting out, then you will find BigCommerce pricing a bit higher than other website builders in the list.

Since it’s a proprietary platform, migrating away from BigCommerce will be difficult.

Pricing

BigCommerce comes with a 15-day free trial for all plans. Their basic plans at $29.95 per month which comes with all the essential features that you will need. You can upgrade to the plus plan which costs $79.95 per month for additional conversion optimization features. Their pro plan costs $249.95 per month which has all the advanced features you may need.

The best part about BigCommerce when compared to Shopify and other third-party eCommerce platforms is that they have a seamless integration with WordPress which can be a huge plus if you want to combine the flexibility of WordPress with the power of BigCommerce.

5. Shopify

Shopify is another popular eCommerce website builder designed specifically for online stores and ecommerce websites. It powers more than half a million businesses with 1 million active users. Over 40 Billion dollars worth of products have been sold on Shopify’s platform.

Pros

Shopify is an all-in-one fully hosted solution, this means you don’t have to worry about managing software, installing updates, or keeping backups. Shopify does all that for you.

It offers integrated payment solution called Shopify Payments. You can also add third-party payment gateways to accept payments.

As an ecommerce website builder, Shopify comes with full inventory management, unlimited products, powerful stats, easy marketing solutions, all neatly wrapped under one roof. They have hunereds of designs to choose from, and you will never need to add code.

With its intuitive drag and drop interface, Shopify makes it super-easy to create a full-fledged ecommerce store. They also offer in-store POS, which allows you to sell products at your location, while accepting all credit cards and taking advantage of Shopify’s inventory, shipping, marketing, and stats management tools.

You can even integrate Shopify into WordPress, allowing you to use both great solutions at the same time.

Cons

If you are just starting out, then you may find Shopify’s pricing a bit higher than some other website builders in this list.

If you ever want to move your website away from Shopify, you will find it quite difficult to do so.

Pricing

Shopify’s basic plan will cost you $29 per month. You can upgrade it to Shopify for $79 per month or Advanced Shopify for $299 per month. Shopify also offers a Shopify Lite plan for $9 per month, which basically allows you to add a buy button on any website.

If you want a hassle free ecommerce website builder, then Shopify may be the perfect option for you.

Continue PART 2 ---- Part 2

10 Essential Components of A Successful Website

Thanks to the existence of website builder services and powerful Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, building your very own website is now becoming easy and fast. Just like any Do-It-Yourself (DIY) projects, your new website will be more appealing if you plan ahead before you jump in. That means you need to understand first what are the most important elements of a great website i.e. essential  features that help people to find your website, navigate it, connect with you and so much more.  Let’s group these important website components into two categories: things your visitors will notice when they landed to your website, and things that work “behind the scenes”. In order to have an effective website, both sets of elements must exist and when your website is well constructed, they all work together.  Here’s what you’ll need:

1) Reliable Web Hosting Service

Once you already picked up your own domain name, the next thing you need is a reliable web hosting service. Think of your web host provider as similar to a landlord who rents you space for a physical store. They provide and maintain the server space where your site files “live” and allows your visitors to come by and explore your site. Like a good landlord, a trustable web hosting provider will provide excellent service, ongoing server maintenance and improvements, and good customer service support. If you pick a host with a website builder included just like ServerFreak’s Website Builder hosting plan, you can snap together the framework of your site in just a few minutes.

2) A Content Management System (CMS)

Your content management system works behind the scenes to help you organize and maintain parts of your website such as meta data and site pages, and it makes it convenient for visitors to find their way around your site. Alternatively, you can create your own if you have some knowledge on coding. Or you can utilize WordPress, which is the most popular CMS around. There are thousands of plugins, themes, and templates available to help customize WordPress sites. Learning how all those elements work together can take time. To get a site up and running faster, especially if it’s your first site, a website builder will include its own content management system as part of its all-in-one service.

3)  SEO Basics

Learning how to get your website ranked in the search engines for targeted keywords is a must-know skill and added advantage because competition among webmasters is getting stiffed nowadays with millions of sites on the internet now in competition for a spot on the 1st page of search results. Hence, you’ll need to follow and implement several Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices in order for your website to get found. To execute this, you need identify which keywords visitors are using (or will use) to locate your website – the more specific and local the better, especially if your site serves a local or regional audience. Distribute those important keywords wisely in your meta data, media tags and file names and also site copy. There are other important aspects of SEO that you cannot simply ignore, like mobile-friendly optimization and fast page load times of your website.

4) Analytics Tools

The best analytics tool available is the Google Analytics tool.  Google Analytics is the most popular and easy to use resource, it is free and it integrates easily with WordPress and some website builder tools.  It is crucial for you to understand how Google Analytics works because this will allow you to know how people are finding your site, which pages they spend the most time on, and how well different elements of your site convert.

5) Inventory Management

Inventory management is crucial when selling products on website. You need to keep track of which product is in stock, what’s sold and what’s on order. When inventory management is integrated with checkout process and your shop pages, both you and your clients will know whether an item is available to purchase.

6) Mobile Friendly Template and Theme

Another important factor for a successful website is to optimize your website for various devices:  desktops, laptops, tablets and especially mobile phones.  You need to install a mobile-optimized or responsive design so that your website can load fast, easy to read, and easy to navigate on the phones, which are the way most web users search now on the internet. In addition, Google also favours website that is mobile-friendly by rewarding them with better position in the search engine results.

7) Sections That Visitors Expect

Have you ever landed on a brand new online website that felt a bit off and did not feel quite right? Chances are that feeling of ‘wrongness’ was caused by the site missing some elements  you’ve come to expect: a home page that inform you what’s the site is all about, an “About Us” section that shows there are real people behind the website, and “Contact Us” section which enable readers or customers to reach you if they have any feedback or questions.

8) Media

Humans are visual beings and likely to be attracted by meaningful and captivating images. Hence, it is important to incorporate images into your website or blogs instead of posting articles alone. Our eyes are naturally drawn to images, especially if they move and make noise, and images are a must if you’re selling merchandise online. People will also want to see a photo of you in your “About Us” section. For search engine optimization (SEO) purpose, you need to select images that are optimized to look good and load fast, and be sure to tag and name your website’s images in ways that use your SEO keywords.

9) Social Media Links and Integration

Social media marketing is a great way to promote your website but there is no need to register for every single social media marketing account out there. Most importantly, select a few popular social media account such as Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest and integrate these accounts to your website with the use of website builder.  Each time you make a new post on your website, the widgets will show your latest posts and the plugin will share the latest post updates to all of your linked social media account at the same time.

10) Shopping Cart and Payment Tools

If your site includes a shop, you’ll want a reliable, easy to use shopping cart and payment tools like PayPal or Square that are popular with most online shoppers. Most e-commerce platforms integrate well with WordPress, and many website builders can help you set up shopping and checkout tools in a snap.

If you are running e-commerce website, it is crucial to integrate a reliable, easy-to-use shopping cart and payment processors such as Paypal or Stripe that are popular with most online shoppers. Although WordPress can be used to run e-commerce sites (known as Woocommerce), you may also use website builders such as Weebly or Wix to assist you in setting up shopping and checkout funnels for your online store with ease.

Conclusion

Now that you know the basics your site needs to succeed, you’re ready to get started! Check out our options for getting it done, including ServerFreak’s Website Builder hosting plan that includes all the elements on this list.