The Best Website Builders for All Types of Users in 2023

The best website builder is Wix, thanks to its super intuitive interface, bounty of business features, and over 1,000 customizable templates. On top of that, you get access to a robust free plan and a 14-day free trial for all premium plans, so you can test it out before making a financial commitment. 

However, the right builder for you will depend on your needs. Based on our research, the best website builders available right now are highlighted below, so you can make the right decision for your business. Here are the top three picks you really need to know about:

Scroll down to find the best website builder for your particular needs or skip straight to our website builder comparison page to weigh up the top solutions at a glance.

In this guide:

• What Is a Website Builder?
• Best Website Builders
• How to Choose a Website Builder
• How Did We Rate the Best Website Builders? 
• Verdict: The Best Website Builder Overall 
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Is a Website Builder?

A website builder is an online tool used by businesses and individuals to create, design, update, and maintain websites online. They require no coding knowledge and generally make the website building process as easy as possible, so even beginners can get a page online fast and easy without help from a designer.

What Is the Best Website Builder?

Here’s a breakdown of all the best website builders. Click the links for in-depth reviews and pricing information for each website builder.

1. Wix — Best overall website builder
2. Squarespace — Best for creative businesses
3. Shopify — Best for ecommerce businesses
4. GoDaddy — Best for easy setup
5. Hostinger — Best for beginners
6. Jimdo Creator — Great value for money
7. WordPress.com — Best for blogging sites

1. Wix

• Best overall website builder
• Pricing from: $16 per month

Wix is an all-in-one website builder that excels in most major areas. From front-end design options to digital marketing, the software offers every feature you need to build a successful site. With a near-perfect website feature score of 4.9/5, Wix is the most versatile website builder we’ve tested, beating the next best options, Squarespace and GoDaddy by quite high margins.

Thanks to Wix’s improved blogging and multilingual capabilities, its feature score has surged by an impressive 18% since our last round of testing too, showing that the tool is improving year-on-year. And if your site needs are more complex or specific, you have access to Wix’s 300+ strong App Market, allowing you to seamlessly integrate the product with a range of free or paid add-ons — from ecommerce to design.

With an ease-of-use score of 4.4/5 (joint top with Duda), Wix is one of the easiest solutions to get started on, and you can use Wix ADI or Wix Editor depending on your skill level. However, despite Wix Editor’s intuitive interface and excellent drag-and-drop feature, its abundance of features can make the software can feel a little cluttered at times, and leads to slower site speeds than GoDaddy.

On top of all that, Wix is also evolving constantly based on customer feedback. In fact, a recent update integrated AI features into the platform, which will allow you to provide basic content and Wix will completely create the site for you.

Wix Pricing

Wix offers four main plans: Light ($16 per month), Core ($27 per month), Business ($32 per month), and Business Elite ($159 per month).

With a very respectable 4.2/5 value score, the website builder is great value but isn’t quite as cost-effective as GoDaddy (4.4/5). Still, you can get 10% off with code GET10! at checkout, so that makes it a bit more attractive for businesses on a budget.

Check out our guide to Wix pricing for more information

2. Squarespace

• Best for creative businesses
• Pricing from: $16 per month

Squarespace is another website builder that’s strong across the board. In fact, Squarespace only marginally missed out on the top position, falling 1% short of Wix in our product research and testing. The tool is easily the best option for creative entrepreneurs though, because of its strong design features (4.7/5) and high-quality templates.

While the platform doesn’t offer as many templates as Wix, every one of Squarespace’s 100+ options is completely customizable and have been crafted by professional designers. This means that sites are easy to build, design, and edit, and it’s virtually impossible to make the end result look bad.

Thanks to Squarespace’s minimalist layout, it’s been able to achieve a solid ease of use score of 4.5 with this rating increasing by 14.6% since our last round of testing. This makes the software a great choice for users building a site for the first time, especially compared to solutions like Shopify, which don’t excel in user experience.

However, while Squarespace excels in aesthetics and usability, the software itself is slightly less customizable than Wix, and site speeds can run a little slower than competitors like GoDaddy due to its weighty designs.

Check out our guide to Wix vs Squarespace for a full comparison

Squarespace pricing

Squarespace offers two web building packages, Personal ($16 per month) and Business ($23 per month), and two ecommerce plans, Commerce Basic ($27 per month) and Commerce Advanced ($49 per month).

Squarespace pricing packages aren’t quite as competitive as Wix, but with a value score of 4.1/5, Squarespace is still a better deal than its rivals Shopify, Hostinger, and Duda. Take a look at our table below to learn more about Squarespace’s different plans.

3. Shopify

• Best for selling online
• Pricing from: $29 per month

Shopify is a powerful website builder, but it really shines when it comes to ecommerce. With a range of sales tools under its belt, from wholesale channels to advanced inventory management, Shopify should be your top pick if you’re looking to build a site that sells. In fact, our research suggests it’s the best ecommerce web builder on the market right now.

But while Shopify prides itself on its selling features, it’s more than equipt to build a high-quality, specialized website. From drag-and-drop tools to mobile responsive design, Shopify’s site-building toolkit has earnt it a respectable website feature score of 4.1/5 — and its site speeds are faster than frontrunners Wix and Squarespace too.

Despite Shopify’s competitive features, it’s one of the less intuitive platforms on this list, only securing an ease-of-use score of 3.5/5. This is because its design capabilities are limited compared to other platforms, and the software can be a bit fiddly to use. For this reason, users with less tech experience are probably best opting for solutions like Wix and GoDaddy because they fair much better in this category.

Shopify has also gotten on the AI bandwagon recently, announcing a new collection feature called Shopify Magic, which include Sidekick — an AI-powered assistant that responds to user-generated prompts — and instant content generation functionality for emails and blog posts.

Check out our Wix vs Shopify guide for more information

Shopify Pricing

While businesses can use Shopify Starter to start selling on social media for $5 per month, if you’re looking for a full online store, you’ll need to fork out $29 per month for Shopify Basic. Shopify’s other plans, Shopify ($79 per month), and Advanced ($299 per month) are all priced quite steeply as well, contributing to the solution’s less-than-impressive value score of 3/5. Still, Shopify offers a special $1 per month for the first three months, so you can start off at a low price, even if they increase after that.

Shopify’s pricing structure is a little hard to get your head around though, so read our guide to Shopify pricing or refer to our table below for more information:

4. GoDaddy

• Best for an easy setup
• Pricing from: $9.99 per month

GoDaddy is another popular website builder that prides itself on lighting fast site speeds. While the software is a bit less feature-dense than Wix and Squarespace, it contains all the necessary tools needed for smaller businesses like independent cafes or retailers — from drag-and-drop capabilities to mobile optimization.

Achieving a great ease of use score of 4.1/5 in our independent research, the platform is simpler to navigate than lots of other builders on this list like Squarespace and Shopify. Its design functionality has improved by 14% since last year too. However, its reliance on artificial design intelligence (ADI) makes it less suitable for users looking for a distinct website that stands out from the crowd.

While GoDaddy also lacks advanced SEO features like canonical tagging, which can be found in builders like Wix, its search engine tools do most of the heavy lifting for you, picking out specific elements of your site to optimize.

Read our GoDaddy website builder review for an in-depth summary of the product.

GoDaddy pricing

All of the GoDaddy pricing packages, Basic ($9.99 per month), Premium ($14.99 per month), Commerce ($16.99 per month), and Commerce Plus ($29.99 per month), are all fairly generous, featuring website hosting, custom domain options, and round-the-clock support. This, combined with the solution’s affordable entry price, has helped GoDaddy secure an excellent value score of 4.4/5 — beating our frontrunners Wix and Squarespace to the punch.

To learn more about GoDaddy’s different pricing tiers, take a look at the table below:

5. Hostinger for Small Businesses

• Best for beginners
• Pricing from: $2.99 per month

For users that are fond of Wix’s software but not its price tag, Hostinger will be a great alternative. The website builder is competent and cost-effective but doesn’t overwhelm users with choices like our frontrunner.

The solution is extremely easy to navigate too, with its user experience of 4/5 topping notable contenders Shopify. This makes the website builder a great choice for users with less software experience.

Unfortunately, this does come with a trade-off. With a dismal website feature score of 2/5, Hostinger’s site-building tools aren’t as strong as its rivals, and the product doesn’t have its own app store either. This limits the software’s potential and makes it less suited for larger businesses.

Read our full comparison of Hostinger vs Wix if you’re stuck between the two web builders.

Hostinger pricing

Hostinger offers one website building plan, Hostinger Website Builder, at $11.99 per month, if you choose to pay monthly. However, if you sign up for any subscription between a 12 and 48 months in lengths, you’ll only pay $2.99 per month for your first term.

Plus, you can get an exclusive 78% off using the code: “TECH“, bringing the price down to $2.79 per month at checkout.

Renewal prices vary depending on the length of your subscription. Plans renew at $8.99 per month for a 12-month subscription, $7.99 per month for a 24-month subscription, and $6.99 per month for a 48-month subscription.

Hostinger’s pricing packages are reasonable, but our research suggests they’re still worse value than other options like Wix and GoDaddy.

6. Jimdo Creator

• Great value for money
• Pricing from: $9 per month 

Jimdo Creator may not come with extra bells and whistles like Wix and Squarespace, but it offers the best cost-per-feature option on this list, making it a suitable pick for budget-conscious entrepreneurs.

Thanks to Jimdo’s slick ADI functionality, which combines Squarespace’s minimalism with GoDaddy’s functionality, the builder does most of the hard work. This allows business owners to build a site within minutes, with little brunt work. With a low starting price of $9 per month, Jimdo is one of the best value builders we’ve tested too.

If you’re looking to build a large or complex site, however, you’re better off choosing a web builder with more features. Scoring a pretty dismal 2/5 for website features, Jimdo lacks some fairly standard capabilities like blog and marketing options.

Read our guide to the best cheap website builders to discover more cost-effective solutions. 

Jimdo Creator Pricing

Jimdo offers two paid plans, Start ($9 per month) and Grow ($15 per month). There’s also a generous free plan, Play, which can get you started at no cost to your business.

7. WordPress.com

• Best for blogging sites
• Pricing from: $4 per month

WordPress is currently relied on by 500 million users, and while it may not fit the needs of everyone, if you’re building a blogging or publishing site we think it’s your best option.

WordPress.com provides users with a block-based editor and open-source access to give them full control over their content layouts, no matter their level of experience. Users can also preview their site as they build, so they can keep an eye on the progress of their site.

If you’re using a builder to create any other type of website, however, we wouldn’t recommend using WordPress. The software is quite overwhelming to get started on, only contains a limited selection of templates, and the connection between its front and back end is quite disjointed. While it does have a better toolkit than Hostinger and Jimdo, it lacks lots of fairly standard web-building capabilities — earning it a disappointing site feature score of 2.5/5.

Check out our complete WordPress vs GoDaddy guide for more information

WordPress.com pricing

WordPress pricing offers four plans, Personal ($4 per month), Premium ($8 per month), Business ($25 per month), and eCommerce ($45 per month).

With a value score of 3.2/5, WordPress isn’t the most cost-effective web builder on the market. Refer to our table below to see how the solutions plans compare.

How to Choose a Website Builder

Your online site has the power to make or break your brand, so it’s important to select your website builder wisely. There are a lot of factors to consider when it comes to choosing a website builder, and we’re here to breakdown some of the most important ones.

Purpose of Website

Are you trying to launch an online store or just need an informational page? Do you want to write a blog or are simply setting up a portfolio. You absolutely need to answer these questions before embarking on your search for the best website builder. Each provider offers a different set of features for these particular website types, and you won’t be able to pick the right one until you know exactly what you need.

Budget

Obviously, understanding how much you’re going to pay for a website builder is one of the most important things to consider before making your decision. Prices range pretty dramatically from provider to provider and, more important, from pricing plan to pricing plan, and the features you get with each can vary dramatically. Subsequently, be sure stick to your budget, as you should be able to find something that works for you.

Ease of use

If you’re a beginner when it comes to website builders — or business software in general — ease of use should absolutely be a factor you consider. Some website builders are very intuitive, while others offer advanced features that can get confusing for newbies. This can be hard to discern from feature listings and price plans, which is why we’ve done some extensive research on the topic to give you some help.

How Did We Rate the Best Website Builder?

Frequently Asked Questions