Website Builders

Five best website builders: estimating and comparing

Thanks to the emergence of quite an impressive number of site builders on the market in the recent decade, it has become very simple to build a site for everyone – from teenagers thinking about fun to serious suits thinking about effectiveness per unit of time. No matter to what category of users (or their gradations) you belong, you are likely to have the sole similarity to all of them – you don’t know anything about coding, hosting, and other technical processes that are inherent to any modern site (like payments, subscription to the newsletter, registration, password protection, and others).

The good thing is that today you can create a site of nearly any complexity using site builders not knowing the listed stuff at all. Just use your head, hands, and a computer mouse. The bad thing is that you have to choose the right site builder first to make the work fun, not tiresome, and productive. Choosing a tool has become a real problem. But worry not! We’ve done some deep research and now have the answer in the form of 5 cheap website builder for your attention. We’ve positioned these website makers from the best to worst on the first-fifth places to largely save your time and make your decision about the selection weighed.

 

What website builders are on our today’s list

We present to your attention the 5 top website builders on the market:

1. ukit.com builder

2. Wix builder

3. Weebly builder

4. Shopify builder

5. Squarespace builder.

 

uKit premium website builder’s overview 

This site builder considered currently as the best on the market because of the tremendous power of functionality it offers and low price even in the most advanced plan. It is slightly above 10 dollars a month (when paid for 2 years) in the costliest solution and there is – literally – no other site builder, which would cost so little as uKit, giving in return so much amazing capabilities. That’s why your journey into the world of site builders shall always start with learning uKit first and then – if you want to pay 2-3-4 bigger money a month, you definitely can opt for some other builders. But you should know that any of its closest competitors do not give so many advantages as uKit does – as some limit you in storage and bandwidth, some others don’t have a backup or a possibility to change HTML, etc. So, to never be mistaken – choose uKit to cover all necessities in all types of sites you are planning to create and run.

 

Website builder’s strong sides:

• SSL and HTTPS in every package

• Connect a custom domain

• Change the template of your site at any time, risk-free (not losing any data or previous modification)

• Backup and restore at any time in a manual mode and it does it for you automatically once a week

• No limitations in storage space or bandwidth

• Create any number of pages you want, with any number of any type of elements located on one page

• Upload as many files as it is necessary for you

• You can have any number of visits to your pages 

• SEO is strong and indicates what actions need to be done to make it as max as possible

• Mobile and tablet screens friendliness and automated adaptability

• Integrate with AmoCRM to better keep in touch with your clients and get more revenues from your business

• Drag-and-drop is fabulous to work with

• Powerful blogging, along with many possibilities and tools for it

• Flexibility is high.

 

Website builder’s weak sides:

1. There is no ADI – Artificial Design Intelligence, which can create a site for you in seconds.

 

Website builder’s price for usage:

You can start with $3.50 a month – just select the 2-year subscription. If you pay monthly, it’s $5 a month – in the initial package of subscription. You can pay the same for 3, 6, and 12 months in one go, receiving an increasing discount each time (from -5% to -30% depending on the term). 

Four existing plans of this best website builder (Minimal, Basic, E-Store, and Pro) cost from $3.50 to $15 a month, which make this site builder the most low-cost on the market. And, looking at its advantages, it is the best in the ratio of price and power.

 

Wix interactive site builder’s overview

Wix site builder is one of the long-livers on the market and today, it is gradually fading. The number of its cons has become much bigger than the number of pros but still, millions of people use this site builder on a monthly basis. That is why it is worth to look at.

Wix limits its users in bandwidth and storage space (these guys obviously don’t know anything about the cloud storage and limitless capabilities it offers). Also, some subscription plans, even paid, still give banners on the pages of your site, which is a very uncommon thing on today’s market of website builder software. And if you aren’t afraid of slow work with a slow Internet connection – you can proceed with this site builder.

 

Site builder’s strong sides:

1. ADI of this website maker allows users to make a site within seconds. Just enter your data that the builder asks from you and click to make the job done.

2. Drag-and-drop option is of power.

3. The visual interface of this website creator offers many capabilities to work with pages.

4. Backup and restore are possible literally at any time.

5. Own app store to choose many apps to integrate with.

 

Site builder’s weak sides of performance:

1. Not every template has mobile and tablet friendliness.

2. 2-3 levels of depth of navigation are good for some part of sites but may not be the best solution when it comes to big sites with hundreds of pages. 

3. Its website creation services are not well for sites over 25-30 pages because it becomes hard to work with this number.

4. There are too many limitations in bandwidth, space of storage.

5. Not every paid plan frees you from huge banners of the site builder all over the pages.

6. It is not the easiest website builder, as the number of options of adjustment of pages can be overwhelming for a novice.

7. Too basic SEO of this simple website builder.

8. Though it has over 500 templates, when looking through all of them, after some time, a feeling occurs, that the most part of them is similar.

9. According to many website builder reviews, people often are unhappy that there is no export of the entire site (to migrate it to another site builder or to work with its adjustment offline, thus, is impossible).

10. You can’t select another template of this website builders company for the ready site not losing completely every personification and entered information.

 

Site builder’s price for usage:

There are 3 plans for e-stores from 17 to 35 dollars a month, and there are 4 other plans, which cover personal and business sites, from $4.50 to $24.50 a month.

 

Weebly site builder’s performance overview

Weebly site builder is a nice platform to build a website, which should cover nearly every demand of its users. It is a quick website builder, simple to work with, having great customization abilities and lots of templates to choose from. 

 

Rated site builder’s strong sides:

1. There is a free usage opportunity.

2. Good e-store as for a non-specialized e-commerce solution.

3. Switching between the themes in this site builder does not mean losing all data, as it is the case with Wix.

4. Drag-and-drop is nice and intuitive to use.

5. SEO is good.

6. Templates are different and have a lot of power.

7. You can go into HTML to personalize even further.

 

Site builder’s weak sides

1. No backup and restore functions make you really worry about the treatment of your site without errors and mistakes and to hope that there will be no malefactor who would want to erase your site.

2. Picture management is not an easy one.

3. There is no ADI.

 

Site builder’s price for usage:

1. Free usage – for as long as you desire. Very limited in functionality.

2. For €5 a month, receive just a simple site with the possibility to connect a custom domain.

3. For €10 a month, get an online store to sell some merchandise.

4. For €20 a month, breathe more power into your sales.

5. For €30 a month, you receive a possibility to manage the abandoned carts.

 

Shopify website builder software overview

Shopify was born in 2004 and was commercially launched in 2006 by a regular guy programmer from Canada. For the past 13 years, the company has grown into 41-billion-sales business (this is the amount of money of turnover of goods in 2018 through all sites that are created using Shopify). The company has 800,000 online stores operating at this platform as of 2019. 

Shopify is loved by many users who wish to start e-commerce with the maximum effectiveness for a number of advantageous pluses of this site builder like the simplicity of templates, effectiveness in every aspect of sales management, all types of payment channels, which embrace almost all currencies of the world with international rotation, and many electronic money (for instance, it is possible to pay even in Bitcoins if this is your way of development). This is a very effective way to keep in touch with your customers, thanks to wonderfully tailored financial, sales, and visual solution perfectly workable in every region of the world.

Shopify has a vast number of gateways (over a hundred) to accept payments:

• All types of bank cards

• Bitcoins and other ‘coins’

• PayPal and own payment system ‘Shopify Payments’, through which it is possible to accept payments from cards of the world so that they are automatically credit to the seller’s account 

• Bank transfers

• Cash On Delivery, and others.

 

Website builder’s strong sides:

• The number of excellent mobile-friendly themes and ease of their adjustment (around 200 themes to choose and much bigger to buy additionally if you don’t like any of the presented)

• Many Shopify apps in its app store to integrate with

• A huge number of payment options

• Support is great, as well as FAQ is simple and covering everything one needs to know

• Coupons, discounts & promos

• Powerful SEO

• It is possible to sell physical and digital products

• HTML adjustment 

• A high ease of use of the interface

• Automatically generate product varieties (in colors, sizes, etc.).

 

Website builder’s weak sides:

• The URL structure is not very SEO friendly and you can’t change the URL of pages manually

• A multilingual store is impossible to make with standard methods – one only has to use apps of third parties but there is still no elegant solution

• Transaction fees – from 2.4% and bigger depending on the payment methods and conditions (but this is not applicable if you use payments through their payment gateway, which still costs some money).

 

Website builder’s price for usage:

• for $9 a month, start sales without the store in Shopify site builder – just through social media

• for $29 a month, get a really cool store with many embedded possibilities

• for $79, scale up the power of your store 

• for $299 a month, get the entire offered power of this site builder.

Paying annually in one go, get -10% discount in price. Paying for 24 months, get -20%.

 

Squarespace site builder’s overview

Squarespace site builder is known for high beauty of its pages, where literally every pixel is so good that you wanna lick it. Users of this web page builder receive modern, powerful, and beautiful online sites, which are able to largely boost up their personal and business image. Using website creation services of Squarespace is wise for people connected with video or photography: creators, editors, content makers, and others. 

 

Site builder’s strong sides:

1. Excellent beauty, thanks to which gallery or portfolio showcase sites gain big power.

2. Many modern and functional templates.

3. Nice discounts on payments when paid for the long term.

4. No bandwidth or storage space limits.

 

Site builder’s weak sides:

1. The ‘Business’ subscription plan takes 3% commission for each sale. So opt for a higher plan than ‘Business’ to make the commission disappear.

2. Only offers 1 level of navigation under the main page, which requires resorting to non-standard solutions of pages hierarchy for sites with a big number of pages.

 

Site builder’s price for usage:

$12 a month will be charged for personal and business sites. A web store costs $18, $26, or $40. 

The website builder – what is it?

A site builder is an online tool in most cases, to use which, a user has to have:

• Connection to the Internet (preferably, a fast one)

• A PC with nice power (preferably, manufactured not before 2017)

• A mouse and a keyboard.

In addition to these platforms, you are advised to have several ideas of how your future site should look like. If you have good examples of sites of competitors, please, open them to have in front of your eyes to scoop ideas of the final look from them during the work. You do not have to have any special knowledge (coding, hosting, security, backup, certification, password management) to work with modern site builders – they all propose ready-made solutions, which you can simply insert in a template of the pages. By the way, you also don’t have to start to work from scratch – all site builders offer hundreds of templates to initially choose from (based on your industry), where the work is practically 95% done. All you left to do is to input your textual variables and choose your pictures to personalize pages.

After you let the site go live, depending on the type of your subscription (paid or free), the site will be indexed in the Google’s search engine (within some time) and you will be able to showcase this site to all users of the Internet. If they have a direct link to it – it becomes possible immediately. Or when your SEO works organically to put your site into the search database and the content you offer is of high quality and relevance – then your site is indexed fast and shown in the search results when people search for it in Google. Sometimes, other search engines (like Yahoo or Bing) work too.

The list of sites one can create using site builders is the following:

• Archive

• Author’s site

• Biopic

• Blog

• Brand-building site

• Brochure

• Business and business directory

• Celebrity site

• Classified information site

• Click-to-donate site

• Community forum

• Comparison shopping site

• Corporate

• Crowdfunding

• Dating

• E-commerce

• Educational

• Entertainment and humor site

• Games

• Gripe site

• Infopreneur

• Informational

• Media

• Microblog

• Mirror site

• Mobile apps site

• Non-profit

• 18+

• Of governmental body

• Personal

• Photo and data sharing

• Political site

• Portal

• Portfolio

• Religious site

• Resume

• Web portal

• Webcomic

• Wiki.

 

Unreachable types of websites for builders:

• Webmail

• Warez

• TV or video streaming

• Social media

• Social bookmarking site

• Search engine site

• Q&A with many contributors

• Phishing

• P2P/Torrents website

• Job portal

• Gambling website

• Affiliate marketing.

 

A developer (person) versus the website builder (tool): comparing

A person builder:

+ Is able to make any type of website, even those which are marked as unreachable for site builders in the previous paragraph. 

+ Has knowledge of website building tools and languages, and can make any complexity of a website, including integration with databases (like MySQL) and other hard-to-do functionalities. 

+ Will take into account all your desires and wishes.

- Shall have a thoroughly elaborated specification to make the work done, which shall describe everything a website must look like and function. Specifications for large and complex websites can take tens and even hundreds of pages.

- Is not going to be cheap – the price tag starts with 1,000 dollars for a simple website (like the one anyone can build in a site builder online for $0… $5 a month) and can end with millions of dollars for complicated portals like booking.com. Average tasks that are solved by site builders online for $0… $50 a month, will cost several thousand dollars in a man builder.

- Will take a lot of time to complete the job – somewhere between week and months, depending on the complexity.

- Will take a lot of bureaucratic work like negotiations, conversations, payments, agreements, contract signing, user testing, education and so on.

- Once you hire a person to do the job, you can’t just fire him and hire another one with ease if you don’t like the work’s result. It is complicated, long, and tiresome.

 

A web builder tool:

+ Can help you out with creating any website from the list of those that previously were mentioned as ones, which can be done using a site builder.

+ Is fast and effective in the delivery of the final outcome – the entire process of creation takes from minutes to hours. Sometimes, days if the task is really serious.

+ Cheap – from 0 to several dozen bucks a month to operate and no money to create one.

+ If you don’t like the result, you can abandon one site builder and opt for another.

+ Users don’t have to know anything about the technical part of functioning of a website – as WYSIWYG builder allows building everything based on visual picture, not digging into the code as the source of the outcome (which normal regular users of all over the world find convenient, opposite to IT guys who hate site builders because they have taken their jobs away and so they don’t seem clever anymore if anyone can do what they’re doing, only hundreds of times faster and cheaper).

- You can’t build just any type of website.

- There are creativity limitations; no site builder is able to give you 100% freedom, as 100% freedom means the absence of rules and automation, whilst it is exactly the rules and automation of site builders that actually make it possible to create websites fast.

- Sometimes, when there is a need to bypass the limitations, it is needed to get into the HTML / CSS / JS source code to personalize website even further. That’s not common knowledge for everyone.

 

Modern website builders’ clients – who are these people

1. People who dislike the current website they’re using and want to make another one or to change some specific pages or parts of pages.

2. Owners of outdated websites, which are not cool anymore, so they need to redo.

3. Ones who think that making a website should not take so much money and time as studios or freelancers tell it is.

4. People who think that building a new website is not a hard thing (and they’re right) so they undertake to make the job done using own head and hands.

5. Users who think that making the technical specification for a studio for a new website is a too hard task for them as they can’t write everything correctly or just don’t know what and how shall be written.

6. People who really don’t want to pay as much and don’t have so much time to wait, as well as those who don’t want to deal with the attached bureaucracy.

 

What should you pay attention to when looking for a website builder

1. Uptime. This indicator denotes how much time (in %) from all timeline all the websites hosted by this or that site builder’s server are online. The normal indicator is considered 99.9% and above.

2. Load times. Means how fast the pages of your website load on the users’ screens. Normally, for good SEO and visitor’s satisfaction, they should render no longer than 5 seconds from start to finish.

3. The number of templates, their categorization, modernity, and ease of changes. The more themes you will find in a site builder, the better it is for the further personalization and obtaining the result faster. A good site builder’s catalog should have at least 5-10 themes of your industry to start with (ideally, more).

4. E-commerce solutions – if it is relevant for you – to sell your goods or services effective, secure, and meeting people’s needs.

5. The number of apps, widgets, add-ons – tools, which are able to give extra strengths to your pages and the website in general. For instance, installing an app of fonts, you can broaden the number of used fonts on the website from 5 to 50. Or, installing the widget of tracking the ordered goods, you can make sure people know at what stage their shipment currently is. 

 

Website builder’s features you shall look at

1. Form builder. You may need to add extra windows, buttons, checkboxes, and other visual components to have on your page. Availability of functionality of making new forms and looks of pages significantly improves your satisfaction with this or that site builder and meets a number of needs, including legislative ones (for instance, to continue using the website, a visitor shall tick a checkbox of agreeing with the Policy, personal information handling, and cookies).

2. Image galleries and editors – it is okay to have a gallery of free to use pictures (or paid ones) to put on your website, with the further adjustment of size, hue, transparency, and other parameters. The bigger number of actions is allowed inside of a site builder, the lesser time and efforts you will have to spend making the same elsewhere.

3. Tools, which are of use for you – blog, connection to social media, scheduled posting, calculators, table sheets, instant shares, and other possible things.

4. Analytics and reporting. You wanna know how many visitors see your website and its pages, how many time spent on this or that page, what are user’s devices, screen resolutions, cookies consents, and other stuff. How much goods have you sold during a period of time is another example of reporting. The more reporting you have, the better it is for you to know your business.

5. Subscription and newsletter – to stay in touch with your clients and prospects.

6. Domain name – the custom one is a good one. And for what money it is offered to you by the site builder.

7. Email hosting of this domain – how many ‘branded’ emails are offered.

8. Mobile friendliness. Mobile friendliness is a must, without which using a site builder is not expedient.

9. Ease of use and speed of work. For you, not for someone else. Try it first.

10. Integration powers – with outer databases, with reporting and analytical tools, with social media…

11. Backup and restore – are super important if you don’t want to lose your website one sweet day.

12. Reliability and security of hosting – it must provide protection from DDoS attacks, hacking, password selection, and others.

13. SEO optimization – if it is important for your business. 

 

Best industry options of website builders

Small business of all sorts will find uKit and Squarespace two great leaders. Bloggers love to choose Squarespace and uKit because they are beautiful and provide much useful stuff for them like the scheduled posting (in uKit), as an example. For photographers, we recommend Squarespace for visual excellence of templates and powerful galleries. E-commerce gains the biggest power together with Shopify. Professionals opt for uKit because they can alter the HTML code and have tonnes of useful integration and reporting abilities. Mobile and tablet friendliness is another great strength of uKit, where every template is automatically adjusted to these screens. Drag-and-drop is of high versatility in Weebly.

 

Website builder reviews of customers

1. Jacob from Turkey about Shopify: When I started my brick-and-mortar store, I didn’t think about the online solution – I didn’t like the Internet pretty much and didn’t think that it is of any goodness. However, when half of my fellow salespeople in city migrated online and people I know started telling me that sometimes their online turnover of goods is bigger than the offline, I started my store too. I put all the things I had in my antique store online and in sixth months, my sales online were 50% of the offline, which made my business grow 1.5 times thanks to Shopify.

2. John from Minneapolis, the US, about uKit builder: At first, I started a blog. When it became popular in a year, I launched an affiliated store – to sell products about which I write (own and of my clients, for a commission from sales). I am able to easily follow the stats and financial data and it takes me just minutes to make updates in uKit.

3. Julian from Indonesia about Wix builder: A powerful tool but I had to redo my website from scratch two times – first when I chose a template, which didn’t suit me on a hundred percent so I switched it to another. As no data was saved, I had to redo. The second time I had to change the previously selected template because this one did not support mobile adaptability. I hope that there will be no third time, as I will simply switch to another site builder.

4. Declan from Uruguay about Weebly builder: This site builder is amazing – it helped me launch a big website of informational exchange just in two weeks (with hundreds of pages). The changes are manual but they aren’t hard and I don’t spend much time to the maintenance of the website.

5. Giovanni from Rome about Squarespace builder: A lovely nice picture of every page of my website is close to the piece of art. My clients (ones who write feedback about the usability) also leave only positive opinions. I am happy about the selection of this tool and I hope to continue using it in the future.

 

FAQ about website builders

What are the real chances to create a site on my own?

You have 100% chances to do that because modern site builders all destined to allow people all over the world to create a website without any technical knowledge at all. To make a website, just use drag-and-drop functionality and WYSIWYG visual builder, where you just operate with your mouse and keyboard.

If you haven’t been using any site builder before – it is still simple to make a website in it, as the modern site builders on our list tend to design the working interface as simple as possible. They all differ in nuances of work but even if the work online is too hard for you, it is quite realistic to master it for 1 or 2 days. On the other hand, if you are a pro user of the Internet and have seen and used many other apps and tools before (and things like Word & Excel), you can master the new interface in meager minutes.

 

What’s the total price of making a website from the ground in a builder?

Launching the website can cost you nothing – as it is highly likely that you will be able to complete the site within the trial period (which is free and can last from 2 to 4 weeks – this term is the most widespread on the market). Running it can cost you some money, though, which can be from a few bucks to $299 a month depending on:

• the selected site builder

• the functionality you subscribe at

• the need of yours to have a custom (not branded with the name of your site builder) domain name 

• the number of paid features you will use additionally every month (widgets, apps, tools, integration).

 

Mobile friendliness in site builders

Because the majority of Internet users in 2019 uses only mobile phones (or a mobile phone + some second device) to browse the Internet, it is simply unallowable for a modern owner of a website not to have mobile responsiveness. Not having it means cutting off a half of users, which simply won’t be able to see your website on their small screens and use it normally. So it is even considered a good practice today to start with building a mobile version of the website first – and then to make a PC one. In the case with site builders, these two are created simultaneously.

 

The functioning of drag-and-drop in site builders

Drag-and-drop is the thing, which makes it possible to build a website fast. Without knowledge about coding, it would be extremely hard to make a decent website not having a drag-and-drop. Click your mouse to capture the object from the list, drag it to the place you need and drop – thus, creating a new copy of an element.

 

The domain names in site builders

Good domain names have the name like this: ‘yoursite.com’, not like this: ‘www.thefreewebsitebuilder/free/superfree/yoursitename_forfree/this-guy-does-not-pay-us.com’, which may be rendered to your website by builders when you opt for a free or trial subscription.

 

SEO in site builders

SEO is only of importance to you when you are starting a website in a highly competitive environment. If you don’t plan to be found online on the first page of Google, then SEO might not be important to you.

 

What are the types of site builders?

There are many types of site builders, which can be differentiated like this:

• free and paid

• modern and outdated

• require coding skills from their users and not

• easy and hard to work in

• pricey and not

• allowing download of a website entirely and not allowing

• with and without mobile friendliness.