Whether you’re a small business owner, artist, photographer, writer or consultant, there's a website builder out there for you.
All in all, Weebly has a far simpler pricing structure compared to WordPress. The $12 Pro plan includes a free domain, premium themes, and built-in eCommerce capabilities. WordPress can be cheaper from the get-go: but with premium themes, renewal prices, and other possible expenses, you may very quickly go over budget
Wix combines ease of use with total creative freedom, making it easy for beginners to create professional-looking websites. Squarespace isn’t far behind though, delivering the best template designs on the market, making it perfect for creatives. GoDaddy sits comfortably in third place, thanks to its time efficiency and great value for money. Take a look below to see our full list of the 11 best website builders, and compare them against each other.
11 Best Website Builders of 2022
- Wix – Best overall website builder
- Squarespace – Best template designs
- GoDaddy – Fastest way to build a website
- Shopify – Best for selling 10+ products online
- Weebly – Fantastic free plan
- Zyro – Best for those on a limited budget
- Jimdo Creator – Best value for money
- Duda – Best for pure, polished web design
- WordPress.com – Best for blogs and content-heavy sites
- Strikingly – Easy to use
- 1&1 IONOS – Best for its cheapest pricing plan
We’ve used our own independent and unique research process to create this list. This means that all of our ratings are backed up by hours of hard work, so you can be sure that our recommendations are accurate and reliable. We always aim to be as honest and transparent as possible – after all, our primary aim is to find you a website builder that’s going to help you fulfill your goals.
That’s why we’ve rigorously combed through the 100+ website builder options out there on the market, picking out the 50 biggest hitters and measuring them up against our high standards. In this way, we’ve been able to narrow it down to a list of the best 11, each of which we felt answered our readers’ needs. Because of this, we’re confident that you’ll be able to find the ideal website builder to suit you and your website-building aims.
Wix Overview
Wix is an extremely beginner-friendly website builder that gives you total creative control over your site. Unlike some other builders, it doesn’t sacrifice power or customizability for ease – instead, it combines simple drag-and-drop editing tools with a huge range of features.
With an 18% increase in its ‘Features’ score in our pre-2021 research – driven largely by improvements to its blogging, and internationalization – Wix has proven itself to be the platform that, quite literally, does it all. Not only is it a fantastic website builder, but it’s also an excellent choice if you’re looking to open an online store, offering three ecommerce-specific plans, and a score of features to boost your sales. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be right for everyone – particularly because of its higher price point and cluttered visual editor.
It has a free plan, and eight premium plans starting at $16 per month. You get over 800 templates to choose from, but choose carefully – you can’t switch your template once your site goes live.
In our testing, Wix received the highest “likely to recommend” score from our users – so our advice is, if you’re unsure about which website builder to use, give Wix a spin for free and see how you get on.
GoDaddy Overview
GoDaddy is very user-friendly and is the fastest outright website builder for creating a website. It’s also great value for money, so much we awarded it a 4.3 out of 5 in our research. Combined with its design assistance, GoDaddy makes it easier than ever. Just enter your details and GoDaddy creates a tailored website for you to customize.
Simple layouts and guidance on adding elements to your site make for an extremely straightforward and speedy building process. And the results of our latest round of research bore this out – GoDaddy’s score has seen an overall 11.6% increase from our pre-2021 evaluations.
However, GoDaddy isn’t the best choice for powerful or complex websites – it may offer speed and simplicity, but this also means it’s not the best choice for building a truly personalized website. That said, GoDaddy should tick all the boxes for smaller site offerings and businesses, particularly because of its simple layout and user-friendly, design-assisted format.
In fact, GoDaddy has transformed itself somewhat since our pre-2021 rankings, enhancing its design functionality score in our latest research by 14%. This increase was driven mostly by the platform’s improved templates and superior customization, turning GoDaddy from an underwhelming ‘Plain Jane’ into one of the highest-rated (and nicest-looking) builders on the market.
GoDaddy may be the best website builder for speed, and its prices are similarly impressive – plans range from $9.99 to $29.99 per month. Luckily, GoDaddy has a free plan, as well as a very generous one-month free trial, so you can make sure it’s right for you before signing up
Shopify Overview
When it comes to selling online, you won’t get much better than Shopify. Founded in 2006, the platform has since become the go-to builder for businesses wanting to establish an online selling presence.
And its popularity is well-earned. Shopify stands out when it comes to sales features, scoring an impressive 4.5 out of 5 in our research. It’s packed with a ton of high-quality sales tools that will help your online store grow in all the right ways.
In particular, we were impressed by the effectiveness of its security tools, as well as the number of multi-channel integrations it offers and the wealth of payment options available.
But that’s not all – Shopify also shines for its ability to handle large and complex inventories in addition to its checkout customizability, shipping options, and the ease with which you can add promotions to your pages and offer discount codes to your customers.
It’s no wonder Shopify proved so popular in our user testing, and is fully deserving of its customer score of 4.5 out of 5. But you don’t have to take our word for it – Shopify offers a 14-day free trial so you can try it out for yourself!
Weebly Overview
Weebly is a simple website builder that nevertheless packs a powerful punch when it comes to features – especially in terms of blogging and ecommerce.
This website builder is pretty easy to use, but is also more limited than its competitors in terms of design and customizability. What’s more, Weebly was the most recognized website builder we tested to see the largest reduction in scores across all categories in our 2021 research.
Most notably, Weebly’s ‘Design’ score saw a whopping 36% decrease – a drop that indicates the platform is not only outdated vis a vis the rest of the market, but has been largely forgotten about by the industry at large.
That said, it does have a free plan, as well as three paid plans ranging from just $6 up to $26 per month (billed annually). These cheap starter plans makes Weebly one of the most affordable website builders on the market. But ultimately, Weebly is a platform which will work for someone new to website building – not longer term growth or expansion.
