We get it, sometimes the budget is tight, and you’re looking at a way of building your website – fantastic! You will learn so much along the way that will end up being invaluable to you and your business, and of course, if you ever get stuck give us a shout. read to see the best website builders?
So because we love helping businesses, we are selling ourselves out of business by compiling a list of the best programs to build your website on in 2022. We have found the best website builders for you.
Wix – The best website builder for the complete beginner.
Price: Free- £27 per month
If you are already looking into building your own website, then chances are you have read about Wix. In its earlier days, Wix was seen as the website builder for dummies, but do not underestimate it. They have reinvented themselves and some of the functionality you can get with a Wix site is impressive and budget-friendly.
I would say that hands down, Wix is probably the best choice for beginners. There is so much you can do with it, and its drag-and-drop abilities let you create bespoke and responsive websites with no web design experience. All you need is a good eye for design and knowledge of making your site fully responsive, making sure to design mobile-first.
They also offer a great e-commerce package, so if you have a small business that is currently selling on social media, or you perhaps run a little shop on the high street and you want to go digital – Wix would be the perfect place to start.
The best part? If you are unsure of Wix, the initial plan is free and you can play around to see whether this program is a good fit for you and your brand.
The cons of Wix? There are a few:
- Analytics of your site is only for a paid plan, however, get yourself into the world of google analytics to see how your site performs.
- The free version forces you to use Wix branding. This is probably for us the biggest con of Wix, some people just don’t have the budget to be getting onto the paid plans. we would love to see this change slightly in the future.
- The premium packages are single sites. There are a lot of web builders that off a subscription for their program that you can use on more than one site. However, if you’re a small single business, this won’t affect you.
Overall, Wix is a fantastic web builder and the perfect way to start if you are a beginner with the intent of building your own website, so just give it a try and see if it fits your way of working.
Squarespace -perfect for creatives and really good designs.
The first thing to note about Squarespace is that there is no free version however, there is. 14-day free trial. We would recommend Squarespace for creatives and designers as this is a little bit more sophisticated than Wix. If you’re a complete newbie to web design, we wouldn’t recommend this. It takes a little bit of getting used to.
The best part about Squarespace is the template designs. They are stunning and probably the best out there, so you can make your brand look really sleek and professional, a great way to establish your brand if it is small. Square space also offers a lot of features, and there are hundreds of pages of support and tips on how to navigate it – which comes in handy.
So what are the cons of Squarespace?
- They don’t offer a free version. Although this isn’t a massive issue, we also feel like the 14-day trial could be upped to 30 as two weeks sometimes isn’t enough to establish whether this is going to work for your brand.
- It’s quite tricky to navigate. we have been building sites for years, but I must say, it took a little while for me to fully get a grasp. Once you figured it out though – it’s a breeze.
There is of course your 14 days free trial to see if this is the builder for you, then pricing after that is fairly low and most definitely affordable. If you’re not a complete beginner, and you have a love for great responsive and sleek designs, then we would highly recommend Squarespace.
WordPress- the best for blogs and heavy content-based sites
We absolutely love WordPress, it’s a really powerful CMS system that allows you to create totally bespoke and responsive websites. WordPress is best for blogs or heavy content-based websites. It can also be a powerful e-commerce platform when paired with plugins such as WooCommerce.
We would recommend that you know the basics of coding, especially HTML and CSS for you to be able to get the best out of the system. A staggering 43% of websites that are on the internet run on WordPress!
If you want to be able to create stunning websites with a drag-and-drop feature, there are plenty of builders out there that you can install on your site. Our two favourites are Divi and Elementor, who are direct competitors of one another. Both offer the same sort of thing, but it is all down to user and pricing, a bit like Apple and Android, same thing, different fans.
Another great feature of WordPress is that there is a plug-in for just about anything, and usually, these plug-ins have free versions, and you just pay if you want premium features. Don’t get me wrong though, depending on what functionality you want, the price might start to rise. There are plenty of free themes out there also, but like anything free, it comes with the creator’s branding and you would need to know how t change this in the themes files, which I don’t recommend for anyone who has little coding experience.
The cons of WordPress?
- It can be expensive. if you’re wanting a site that is fully customisable and branded to you and our business, you need to be prepared to foot the bill of additional plug-ins and coding you need to achieve this.
- You have to keep your site healthy. With the addition of all these plug-ins, your site will need regular maintenance to keep it updated. You must also have the knowledge to get it out of its pesky maintenance mode error that sometimes happens in the back-end code.
- Speed – sometimes all these themes and extra customisation add code that slows the speed of the site down. This isn’t too much of a con as there are tutorials and plug-ins everywhere that help combat site speed.
Overall, we love WordPress. It’s the main system we use when building our client’s websites. It’s definitely worth the try if you’re prepared to get stuck in with learning and coding.
Weebly – The best website builder that offers a free plan
Weebly is a middle-of-the-market kind of website builder. It isn’t too expensive and it has a really good range of features. The free plan of course comes with Weebly branding, but if you don’t mind that, Weebly offers the best free plan. It is really generous with what features it includes in the free plan so you really have an unlimited amount of time to get to grips with it and. decide whether the paid plans are worth going for.
it has a 0.4% stake in all of the websites online today, and we really thought that it would be more. There is also a massive amount of support, so if you’re still new to web designing, then this platform is for you.
They also have a fantastic mobile app so you can manage your website on the go, which we thought was a nice idea, and perfect for those on-the-go days.
Cons of Weebly:
- The all-inclusive approach may not be to every user’s liking, there are definitely better drag-and-drop builders out there.
- Lack of server file access can make adding custom tools more difficult. this is fine if you’re not wanting to get into that side of things.
Go Daddy – the fastest way to build a website.
Now, we used to think that GoDaddy was the Vistaprint of websites, bad quality, and not at all professional, but we were wrong. It is extremely user-friendly and is so quick to set up. You can have your website up and running within minutes. We would go as far as to say that this is possibly easier than Wix. We did not expect that at all.
Pricing is great too, and they even have an option for e-commerce, it really is a great way for someone starting out to get online. Plus there is a tonne of support on there and is so easy to get to grips with. I hate to say it, but I was kind of blown away at how much they have come along, well done GoDaddy.
Of course, GoDaddy has cons:
- there isn’t much personalization you can do, these quick websites are often off the shelf, and don’t allow much room to stand out.
- It cant hold much content – if you have a website that is going to need a lot of information on there, we wouldn’t recommend GoDaddy.
overall, if you’re a small business or start-up that just needs a fast website to begin your online journey, then give it a try.
And there you have it! The top five best website builders we could find. If you have any problems with using any of these, give us a shout, our team will always be happy to help you and your business. If you think that maybe building a website isn’t for you, then, of course, let’s have a chat about that. We love working with all kinds of businesses and were pretty good at growing an online presence if we do say so ourselves.
Do you have a website builder that is not listed here? let us know if you think you’ve found something better.
If you are looking to build your website yourself, have a look at our blog about the top design trends we predict in 2023, it’s going to be a good year for web design.