Hi! We do professional reviews of website builders

Top 10 Website Builders of 2019

To have a website is a must for those who have their own organizations, businesses, or simply want to create an original and attractive platform for some specific aim. Having been tested, the following website builders appeared to be the best of their kind, as all of them are easy-to-use, mobile-friendly and affordable.

A Simple Way of Building a Website

Nowadays it is not enough to involve social media only in order to send a message to your consumers. They do not do well in meeting all the requirements to the full extent. To reach success and take the lead, creating an original website is essential. As compared to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, a website provides its users with the possibility of creating your own design and content. Such an approach is likely to become a competitive edge as it makes people closer to a brand, business, or organization. It is not a secret that almost all Facebook pages look similar and that will not make much impression. At the same time, a personal website will help you to stand out from your competitors and prove that your products or services are the best. In this case, a user owns a great possibility to organize everything from the personal perspective.

A few years ago it was a real challenge to create an attractive website. Luckily, today it is not a problem at all because there are a number of so-called helpers. Such website builders as Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix do their best in order to satisfy their users even more. However, the number of website builders is extremely increasing and new competitors appear on the market. For example, such newcomers as Simvoly, Strikingly and uCoz, are on their way towards taking on a market due to their innovative and interesting methods and peculiarities.

A Website Is What You Are Looking For

Why a website is a necessity despite the abundance of social networks? The answer is rather simple. You will hardly impress your potential employer, if you redirect him to the Facebook page of your organization. A personal website, conversely, is quite a different story. Another point worth noting is the possibility to implement all the ideas you want, even the craziest ones. What is more, product-related issues are totally in your hands.

On top of that, a business with its own good-looking and user-friendly site is more likely to enlist the respect and trust of its customers.  However, it helps to remember that social media are a great part of customer relation. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and others are an integral part of customer-oriented businesses, and they should go along with a website, as a complement. It is the best way to promote your company.

To create a website used to be a difficult task, almost beyond the bounds of possibility. You definitely had to have some prior knowledge in computer science. As well, you had to be aware of such things as servers, FTP, HTML, website registrars, and web hosting services. Fortunately, today even a tech newcomer can easily set up a website because various tools are at anybody’s disposal. Easy-to-use, well-developed and mobile-compatible online website builders have facilitated the burden connected with creation of sites. Moreover, creating a website with the help of the following website builders will not only attract the customers to your product, but will also enable getting a profit.

Undoubtedly, big businesses are ready to spend a fortune on a professionally created website, but it is just the waste of money for small businesses and individuals. Approximately $10 per month (or $25 if you sell a product) for the website builder services a little of your time will bring you a nice website for your goals.

While using these website builders, you do not need any external assistance as the sites are user-friendly. It does not require you to have a kind of in-depth knowledge. Everything you need is a desire, fantasy and time. The following website builders provide you with a possibility of using social share buttons, image galleries, blogs, and multimedia players. Some of them allow you to establish a password access control and let people join up to your site as its members (see the table).

Free-Of-Charge Website Builders

A few website builders presented in this rating have some free offers. They will definitely help you to create a site but the range of tools is not that wide in this case. Free options have different storage and bandwidth volume, that is why it is recommended that you read a piece of information on what gives what. Wix, WordPress.com, and Weebly provide more free-of-charge options than other website builders, so you may consider using them.

Register your domain

You need an address for building your home on the web. The majority of website builders presented here can register a unique domain for you, and provide you with a web address using the provider’s domain. A custom domain name and a domain from a third-party registrar often have to be paid for.

Tools For Creating a Decent Website

Firstly, you will have to choose the template of your future website. Usually, such services as Duda, Gator, Wiz, and Squarespace make your site mobile-compatible by default. If your site is meant for a unique aim, then these website builders will offer you some topic-specific templates.

After a decision concerning a template is made, your next task is to adjust this template to your own needs and preferences. You are free to reset a bit the color gamut, fonts, page layout, and the number of pages. Top-notch website builders provide you with the standard templates for frequently used page types. The pages may be as follows: About, FAQs, Products, Photos, Blog, Contact, and others.

You might want to add some custom content to your site. If so, you simply may add some text areas, images, buttons, or widgets. For example, well-developed website builders, like Duda or Wix, are interested in attracting new users. As a result, they offer such a tool as third-party widgets, which serve for forms, chat, feedbacks, or reservations.

If you don not have an eye for design yet, that is not a problem at all, as you have a range of great helpers. Undoubtedly, it is the icing on the cake that some website builders like Strikingly, Virb, uCoz, and Squarespace do not allow you to use too many elements on the inappropriate areas of you site, thus helping it looks neat, stylish, and decent. Website builders like Wix and Gator give you more independence and do not interfere in what you do.

Instant Sites

Wix’s ADI tool, which goes for artificial design intelligence, as well as some other ones let their users enter social accounts, business and personal information, and then you get a no-work website. The same may be offered by Jimdo and Simvoly, although they are less impressive than Wix.

Mobile Site Design

If a website builder wants to be a hit with its users, then having a decent mobile version is a must. It is very comfortable as you do not need to have a laptop at hand all the time. You may work on your site or bring about some changes just on the spot. All the website builders presented here are mobile-compatible. For example, Weebly and Squarespace use a responsive-design approaches which allow you to adjust the placement of design elements to fit in the available space. Thus, a user has an opportunity to enjoy as much of it on the mobile phone as he would on a massive monitor. However, as far as SEO is concerned, which goes for search engine optimization, the search engines think only about the display of the site on mobile screen sizes. Google as well as Bingo offer you the pages where you can check whether your site plays on mobile in an appropriate way. Everything you need is just to enter your URL and Presto!

Simvoly, Weeby and uCoz’s responsive-design approach allows you to get n control over the mobile-only view. When it comes to Wix and Gator, they appear to be a bit different as compared to the previous ones. They give you an opportunity to preview a mobile version of the site and allow you to make customizations which are only applied to mobile browsing.  For instance, you may be looking for a welcome page to greet mobile viewers. As well, you may omit some elements if they do not work appropriately on small screens.

Images and Galleries

It is not a secret that looking at images is one of our favourite things as far as the web is concerned. All the site builders listed here have some image and gallery display. The range of images provided by Gator, Squarespace, and Wix is great and rich.  A lot of website-building platforms even give you an opportunity to edit the images available. Such tools as filters, cropping, resizing, brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows and others are at your disposal. At the same time, Gator, uCoz, and Simvoly do not provide any photo editing except positioning and resizing.

Gallery options also differ from site to site.  Weebly platform has a wide range of styles and templates for online galleries. On contrary, Duda and GoDaddy platforms do not offer the abundance of options.

How To Make Money Out Of Your Website

Surely, Shopify or other shopping cart services would be essential if you have a mind to sales. However, if you do not have a desire to pay for such a platform, the majority of website builders give you an opportunity to sell products from your site just with the help of PayPal. Unfortunately, not all of the platforms provide this option for.

You may process credit card payments as well as add your own cart and checkout pages. Product promotion, email and digital marketing, inventory and shipping tools are available on more developed and prestigious sites. There are not many of them, so just a few may offer you to place an advertisement on your site. More website builders allow inserting some custom HTML codes.

Social and Site Statistics

Such buttons as Follow and Like are available on your page if you use one of the website builders listed here. Some even provide the opportunity of showing feedbacks from the social media sites. A couple of website builders even may help you in creating your Facebook page and adjusting it to the design of your site. Some SEO tools often sere just as a form on which it is possible to enter meta tags. So, it would be your task to hunt down a question of SEO. Dealing with search engines may be quite challenging, but if you manage to submit and verify your site to one of them, it would be easy to find and use your site.

The website builders presented here provide you with the information on the website traffic. However, there are many details concerning this function, and the options available vary. In many cases only a premium description, which costs more, will give you access to site traffic data. Let’s take Weebly as the first example. So, this platform shows the number of your page views and unique visitors for each day of the month, search terms for getting to your site, referring sites, and top-visited pages. Then, Wix and uCoz give you an instruction to set up your own Google Analytics account, and so you still have to have a paid account. There is one more downside as you are only able to see traffic from the preceding day and earlier, thus immediate information is unavailable.

What About WordPress?

WordPress has always been familiar to everybody as one of the best website builders. However, you should bear in mind that very often people misunderstand the main aim of WordPress and take for something it actually is not. WordPress is a free, open-source platform for blogging. It comes from WordPress.org. To use it you have at first to find website hosting service of yours. The WordPress.org software is a very widespread platform for website building. What is more, a lot of web hosting services offer managed WordPress hosting plans. WordPress.com brings that software into action for you, that is why you have no need in searching for your own hosting service.

All in all, WordPress is a management system for blog-focused content. Plug-ins and themes which it accepts widens its capabilities concerning commerce and other aspects.  JetPack is a plug-in used be WordPress which offers a lot of its features. It is essential to know that WordPress is not that easy to use as other website building platforms in our overview. Another aspect worth noting is that WordPress will be of great use if blogging or site transferability is your priority. Using WordPress demands efforts, perseverance and diligence, but if you excel at this sphere then this experience will lead you to something great.

Is It Easy To Move To Another Site Builder

Actually, moving to another website building platform may appear to be not as easy as it seems. The main reason for that is a custom code which is used for displaying your site. Very few platforms allow you to take your site to another web hosting service, while others forbid such a transfer.  Weebly is one of the platforms which belong to the first group. It gives you an opportunity to download the standard site server folders. On the Squarespace site outputting your site in standard WordPress format is available.WordPress.com has similar approach.

Getting Support While Building a Site

In terms of support, different site builders offer different options. For instance, being a WordPress.com user you have only community support at your disposal. Jimdo provides you with email support, Wix offers phone support, no matter if you are a user of a free or paid account. Almost all of these website builders have pages with FAQs and there you may find a solution for some of you problems. To check the quality of support on each website builder, a couple of some specific questions were asked.

A Great Variety To Choose From

Obviously, today there are a lot of various website builders. Here appears a problem which one to choose. First of all, it is necessary to consider all the pros and cons, and then judging from your own preferences and aims make a decision. By the way, there are at least 20 more website building platforms apart from listed in this overview. Moreover, they are constantly improving and new ones enter the arena.

As a matter of fact, you may start from the platforms below and you will definitely find something to your liking. Read about the positive and negative sides of the following site builders, compare them, and leave the feedbacks about your experience, if you have any.

Overview Of Top-10 Website Builders

Wix

Upsides: User-friendly. Lots of useful tools. Free account available. A great deal of templates for business and personal aims.

Mobile-compatible. Quick and high-quality support.

Downsides: No statistics option. Not very well-developed responsive-design approach.

Conclusion: Wix is considered to be one of the best website builders as its pros far outweigh the cons. It is perfect for creating a site from which you may further earn money.

Duda

Upsides: Simple interface. Mobile-friendly. Free subscription available. Cooperation with social networks. Developed site traffic option. Variety of site-creating tools. Opportunity to sell products and services not even paying for subscription.

Downsides:  No email support. No transferability.

Conclusion: Duda is exactly what you need if easy interface and variety of options allowing to sell your product are your priority.

Gator

Upsides: Good-looking interface. Stylish templates.

Domain name and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate included into a yearly plan. Online commerce available. Good site statistics options.

Downsides: Paid subscription only. No email marketing, No photo editing available. Poor app store.

Conclusion: Not very expensive and quite appropriate for website creation, especially for a new entry.

GoDaddy

Upsides: Comfortable for massive monitors as well as for the devices with small screen. Decent interface.

Downsides: Scarce layout and templates. No tools for photo editing. No option for getting traffic statistics. Online shop needs improving.

Conclusion: It would be easy to use GoDaddy because of its clear interface. Generous bandwidth and storage would also become a competitive edge. However, it may disappoint you if design is the thing you are looking for.

Squarespace

Upsides: Mobile-friendly and nice-looking.

SSL certificate is available for free. Ambitious sales options. Supportive service.

Downsides: Relatively complicated interface. Limited template stock. Free subscription not available. No third-party widget marketplace. Poor mobile site customization.

Conclusion: Squarespace is good at setting up a decent, stylish, and modern website. It uses a responsive-design approach. Its developers have the intention to offer the extensive commerce.

Weebly

Upsides: User-friendly. Responsive-design approach.

Extensive commerce opportunities. Website statistics available. App for the editing of a site available for iPads.

Downsides: Poor image storage. Mobile site customization not available.

Conclusion: You may use Weebly for free, especially that it is user-friendly and mobile-compatible.

WordPress

Upsides: Perfect options for blogging. Opportunity to save drafts. Stylish and modern templates.

Free subscription available. Affordable prices. Transferability available.

Downsides: No WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) approach. Scarce layouts. Complicated interface. No email marketing available. Photo editing not available. No phone support.

Conclusion: WordPress is a cheap and nice website building platform for blogging. However, to creat a customized website will not be that easy.

Strikingly

Upsides: Easy-to-use. Site preview opportunity available. Responsive-design approach.

Downsides: Limited template stock. A lot of tools and options are not for free.

Conclusion: Strikingly would be a good choice for those users who are searching for easy-to-use website builders. However, customization options is the one of Strikingly’s strengths.

Simvoly

Upsides: WYSIWYG interface. Good-looking and modern templates.

Responsive-design approach. Onlina sales available. Website statistics at your disposal.

Downsides: Photo editing not available. Lack of opportunity for mobile site customization. No widget marketplace.

Conclusion: Simvoly is one of the best website builders on our list as far as all the criteria are concerned. It is user-friendly, with responsive-design approach and high customization level.

uCoz

Upsides: Enjoyable interface. Uploaded images can be saved for reuse. Powerful tools for blogging. Rather affordable.

Downsides: Control over the positioning of elements on your site. Limited mobile site customization. Image editing not available. No site statistics.

Conclusion: uCoz is a website builder offered by the Russian developers. It is mobile-compatible and attractive. What is more, commerce is one of the site’s strengths. It is a pity, but it does not provide its users with site statistics and photo editing.