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Best Website Builders
July 9, 2020
3 top choices for your business
Chances are your company already has some sort of website. But if it’s looking a little dated, or it lacks the functionality that your company needs to grow, it may be time for a redesign. You may be responsible for that activity, or you may be asked to weigh in on choosing the best website builder for everyone’s needs.
There are a lot of website builders out there—and fortunately, many of them are very good. But they also look very similar at first glance, which can make it harder to narrow down your top pick. We took a closer look at some of the best website builders and highlighted their different features so you can decide which one is right for your business.
Best website builder for small businesses
Business plan pricing: Starting at $23/month
With more than 150 million users across 190 countries, Wix is the juggernaut of website builders—and with good reason. Whether you’re a solopreneur or work at a company with hundreds of employees, you can find a way to configure Wix to your needs.
Reasons to use Wix:
- Wix has a ton of template options—more than 500. There’s a pretty good chance one of them will be a good fit for your business.
- Wix offers entry points for a wide range of experience levels. If your company has no design team (and no budget to hire one), you can utilize Wix ADI (short for Artificial Design Intelligence), which asks you a series of questions about your business and uses that information to design a website for you.
- If you’re on the other end of the spectrum and want a lot of control over your website’s design and backend functionality, you can choose Wix Corvid, an open development platform that has its own IDE you can work in (or you can use your own). It lets you connect your site to any external database using their external database collections SPI. And it’s serverless—all your work is hosted on Wix’s cloud services.
- If you’re a smaller business that wants to integrate your customer emails with your site, Wix offers some great email marketing options, too.
Possible drawbacks:
- Unlike other website builders, Wix doesn’t let you switch your website’s design if you’re halfway through and decide you don’t like it. You have to start over with a new template.
- Likewise, it’s hard to toggle between Wix ADI and Corvid (as uncommon as that probably is). Most users say it’s best to pick a lane and go with it.
- Wix’s tiers do have data limitations. If you expect your site to be highly trafficked or need space for a large amount of media (such as photos and videos), it’s important to estimate your needs before you make your decision.
Best Website Builder for Design
Business plan pricing: Starting at $18/month
If design cred is important to you and you don’t want to spend hours on the back end customizing your site, Squarespace is the natural choice. It regularly gets kudos from prominent tech podcasters for its responsive, good-looking designs.
Reasons to use Squarespace:
- Your choice of templates is limited to a few dozen designs. And yes, we’re putting this in the pro category, because it’s clear every Squarespace design is carefully thought through. They’ve prioritized quality over quantity and given users a handful of really good options instead of hundreds of pretty good ones.
- Squarespace’s templates are some of the best-looking ones we’ve seen on mobile. They are entirely responsive and don’t require any additional design work, unlike some competing website builders.
- While design is great, it isn’t everything. If your business is ecommerce-based, Squarespace has some robust features that you may like, such as Shopify integration. And the two upper-tier “Commerce” plans have 0% transaction fees, which can add up to significant savings.
Possible drawbacks:
- Squarespace’s design interface is a little less intuitive than some of its competitors. Options are nestled within folders in the sidebar instead of being instantly apparent, so you have to go digging to get the hang of it.
- Squarespace doesn’t have phone-based customer service. That said, we have found their online customer reps to be extremely knowledgeable and helpful. (And who likes getting on the phone anyway?)
- Squarespace doesn’t allow you to store images after you’ve inserted them into a page. If file storage in your website builder’s cloud is important to you, this one might not be the right fit.
Best Website Builder for Collaboration
Business plan pricing: Starting at $22/month
Duda was our second choice for the best website builder for small businesses, because it’s specifically designed with small businesses in mind. It has many of Wix’s business-minded features but not quite as many bells and whistles (like Wix’s AI integration). What sets Duda apart is its collaboration tools, as well as detailed site stats.
Reasons to Use Duda:
- Duda is popular with agencies that design sites for lots of clients, so it has a permissions system that allows different team members to work on different aspects of a site without overwriting each other’s work.
- The Site Comments feature allows clients and stakeholders to add comments in bubbles directly over the design elements. It’s a much more intuitive way for multiple people to add their thoughts to a website that’s in process.
- It also has some fine analytics tools that businesses who prioritize stats will like. You’re not just limited to page views—you can view time on page, bounce rate, how many form submissions you get, the geographic location of your viewers and more.
Possible drawbacks:
- Duda’s templates are named by their specific business uses (car dealer, law firm, real estate). For businesses with a brick and mortar element, this is extremely helpful. If your company is more software or tech-based, Duda does have some open templates, but they are limited.
- Websites designed on Duda have to stay on Duda—you can’t export your coded design to another platform. This is a common issue with website builders (with Squarespace being one of the rare exceptions).
- Duda doesn’t support email newsletter integration or third-party widgets. If those are features you need now or down the line, you may want to keep looking.
Honorable mentions:
Easiest Website Builder
Business plan pricing: Starting at $12/month
Weebly’s design interface is one of the simplest and most intuitive we’ve seen. And like Squarespace, you can also port your site to a new platform if your needs change in the future.
Best Ecommerce Add-on
Business plan pricing: Starting at $29/month
If your business is ecommerce based, Shopify is one of the most powerful sales tools you can use. It integrates with other website builders (such as Squarespace), or you can use the drag-and-drop store builder on their own platform.
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