7 Best Website Builders of 2024

The best website builders make it easy for individuals and small businesses to have a professionally designed website without paying a top dollar to a developer. Since they are particularly easy to use, you can also get your website up and running in record time.

However, with hundreds of website builders on the market, finding the right website creator can be challenging. Website builders aren’t one-size-fits-all. Read our review of the top website builders to choose the builder that best fits your needs. Check out our comparison charts that also reveal all the hidden pros and cons so you can see what each builder offers.

What is a Website Builder?

A website builder is a tool that allows the user to construct websites without any manual coding. Website builders make it easy for anyone to create a website. It typically has a drag-and-drop interface so users with little or no coding experience can easily create professional-looking websites.

Website builders can be offline or online; offline website builders are software you download and build websites with, while online builders are installed in the backend or cPanel of your live website.

Most hosting services now offer website builders to attract customers. Some also provide advanced tools such as SEO analytics tools, custom email addresses, domains, and third-party integrations to go with those builders.

How to Choose the Best Website Builder For Your Needs?

Some basic questions are essential when looking into website builders. The most important factors are what type of website you want to build, your budget, and ease of use. Here are some tips for selecting the best website creator for you:

• Check your budget: This is the first thing you should do. It would be best if you only went for what you can afford, so always consider the costs involved in building and maintaining your website going forward. If the total costs (including domain registration, hosting, and all) exceed your budget, then check this list for more affordable options.
• Identify Your Priorities: What do you value above all else in a website? Is it speed or design, or UI? What kind of website are you building (blog, eCommerce website, forum, etc.)? You must have definite answers to these questions to avoid choosing the wrong builder and having to start over.
• Consider The Themes and Templates Available: Your website is a product of the templates, themes, and features offered by the website builder. Some builders give you only a handful of theme customization options, which can be very frustrating. Make sure whatever site/builder you choose has an abundance of templates and tools so you can make further tweaks in the future if you need them.
• Consider The Ease of use: Though you don’t need any coding, some website builders may give you a harder time than others. Luckily most website builders are designed for the general public with some knowledge of how websites work.

Full Overview Of Our Top Best Website Builders

1. Hostinger – Best AI Website Builder

If you’re keen on AI and want to use its help while building your website, then we recommend you try out Hostinger. It has an AI website builder that works on a drag-and-drop basis, suitable for both newbies and more experienced users. With Hostinger’s website builder, you can get your site up and running in a matter of minutes, with no coding necessary.

• Overall Score: 4.6
• Pricing: 4.6
• Features: 4.6
• Performance: 4.6
• Support: 4.7
• User Friendly: 4.7

Pricing: Hostinger offers one website-building plan that you can pay on a monthly, annual, biannual, or quadrennial basis. If you pay monthly, the plan will cost you $11.99/month with a $4.99 setup fee. The plan includes hosting for 100 websites, unmetered traffic, a logo maker, AI features, and marketing integrations.

Features: Some of the features you’ll get include 100 websites per account, unmetered traffic, unlimited free SSL certificates, weekly backups, a free domain for the first year (not included in the monthly plan), Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, a logo maker, AI features, and more.

Performance: Hostinger comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and offers data centers in the USA, Lithuania, Singapore, Brazil, the UK, and the Netherlands. So, no matter where you are, you’re sure to get great performance.

Support: This provider offers round-the-clock customer support, available to you via email and live chat. There are also numerous guides and tutorials on its websites.

User Friendly: Building a website with Hostinger involves four simple steps, and during all of them, powerful AI technology will assist you and make things even easier. There are many pre-made templates to choose from, and the interface is intuitive and easy to navigate.

Pros & Cons

2. IONOS – Best Website Builder with Low Prices

IONOS is primarily a web hosting company. However, like most web hosts, it also comes with an intuitive website builder, which you can use to create a professional website for as low as $1/month. Also, IONOS’ website builder is easy to use and requires no prior cod ing knowledge or skills. So, both beginners and pros can use IONOS for their sites.

• Overall Score: 3.9
• Pricing: 3.9
• Features: 3.5
• Performance: 4.3
• Support: 4.0
• User Friendly: 3.8

Pricing: IONOS allows you to either build your own website or have a professional do it for you. The cheaper option is to do it yourself, and it starts at $1/month. This plan includes a free domain for one year, a 12GB professional email inbox, 50GB of web space, and 200 web pages.

Features: With IONOS, you’ll get a free domain for the first year, professional email, a free Wildcard SSL certificate, statistics & analytics, GDPR compliance, professional website templates, an AI text generator, over 6 million royalty-free photos, pre-designed color schemes, sections, layouts, and more.

Performance: IONOS’ data centers are all ISO 27001-certified and come with a 99.99% uptime guarantee.

Support: IONOS offers excellent customer support, which you can reach via phone and live chat. Also, there are many tutorials and guides that show you how to complete various tasks and tackle issues, and you can find them in the provider’s extensive knowledge base.

User Friendly: Building a website with IONOS is very easy and takes three simple steps. You’ll get pre-designed templates, layouts, and an AI text generator that can help you with your content.

Pros & Cons

3. Wix – Best For Building Free Sites

• Overall Score: 4.7
• Ease-of-Use: 5.0
• Design and Templates: 5.0
• Help with Building: 4.3
• Tech Support: 4.4
• Check Platform Policies: 4.8

Wix’s website builder offers complete user control while making the interface beginner-friendly. So if you are looking to build a website with maximum creative freedom, then Wix is probably your best option.

Wix’s website builder also provides a wide range of website editing tools and features to allow you to create highly interactive websites. It doesn’t make our number one list because, for many beginners, too many options can be distracting. For instance, some newbies complain that the visual editor seems cluttered.

If you are willing to spend more than 10 minutes designing your website and plan to integrate cool features such as video backgrounds, you should give Wix’s website builder a trial.

Pros & Cons

Wix is famous for its Photoshop-like interface, eCommerce options, and total creative freedom.

Pricing Table

Unique features

Initiative website building tools

Wix offers a potent yet straightforward website builder. The interface comes with drag and drop tools to help you add or remove features from your website. Since it is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website builder, your published website will look as it appears in the editor.

Easy to use

As with most website builders, you don’t need coding knowledge to create a website. Wix goes the extra mile by giving you significant customization options and flexibility. You can include all the latest trends in web design on your website. So if you’re not a fan of static websites, you can add video background or animations without programming experience.

The Wix app market

You can access over 250 apps, add-ons, and extensions to add functionality and usefulness to your website. These apples include Wix Pro gallery to help display your images and Site Booster to help you get more traffic from search engines. Many apps are free, although you might only be able to access some of them on the premium plan.

Themes and designs for specific industries

Wix provides over 500 tastefully designed website templates. You can sort through these templates by industry or hobby to find the one layout for your best site. Many of the templates are free, but you will need to subscribe to the eCommerce plans to access all of the free templates. The templates are themed around categories such as restaurants, online stories, photography, fashion, blogging, and education.

Wix is perhaps the best website builder for artists in general. It is an excellent option for just about anyone who wants a professional-looking website either for their business, personal portfolio, eCommerce store, or blog. It might also be perfect if you want to promote a hobby or sell physical or digital products. The wide range of customization allows you to create a website that aligns with your preference. Check out our full Wix review here for more.

What Is The Best Website Builder For Your Industry?

Weighing the pros and cons of top website builders is no easy task. To keep it simple, choose a website builder that best suits the niche/industry. For instance, if you’re making a photography website, you’ll need a website builder with unlimited storage for photos and great server speeds for loading images. Here are the best website builders for some popular industries:

• eCommerce

A good eCommerce website builder should allow owners to process orders easily, accept payments, manage logistics, and provide excellent customer care. The best eCommerce website builder currently is Shopify. It allows anyone to create a plug-and-play website that provides all the tools and resources you need for your eCommerce business.

• Photography

Photography websites are like the personal portfolios of photographers. They must be highly professional and allow certain customizations (such as password-protected photos, watermarks, image categorization, etc.).

Squarespace is the overall best for photographers. It has very attractive templates photographers can use for their images. However, if you’re on a lower budget, you can use Wix Website Builder.

• Small Businesses

Wix is the number one website builder for small businesses. The ease of use with Wix is another level, and it provides a wide range of design options. There are also tools for SEO, email marketing, social media posting, and even Facebook advertising. The low costs associated with getting a Wix plan make it all the more perfect for small businesses.

• Real Estate

Real estate websitesneed to be SEO friendly, support contact forms and bookings, and need to be able to connect to home listing services. Pre-designed templates also make the process faster if you don’t have a developer. Hence, WordPress is a great fit.

• Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing websites could use detailed analytics and SEO features more than anything else. Some website builders aren’t affiliate marketing-friendly so you must ensure you’re within the builder’s Terms of Service. If you want to build affiliate marketing websites, you should check out Shopify or WordPress if you’re on a budget.

Next Steps When Choosing A Website Builder

Here are the next things to consider when choosing a website builder:

Mobile Responsiveness

Most of your visitors will be accessing your website from their phones.. If your site is not mobile-responsive, there’s a risk that they’ll leave.. Try viewing a site hosted by the web builder you intend to use on your phone first, so you know how your site will perform. If you want to create a website optimized for mobile check out our Mobile Website Builders recommendations.

Payment Terms and Conditions

If you’re one of those who don’t read “terms and conditions,” now might be a good time to start. You wouldn’t want to have harsh sanctions or an outright closing of your site after years of hosting due to one or two things you ignored while signing up.

Support

It’s pretty obvious that any builder that doesn’t provide ample support for its users isn’t reliable. If you’re a first-time website owner, you need all the help you can get. Therefore, only choose a website builder that provides 24/7 support.

Integration

Does your website allow easy Integration of other sites/platforms? If not, then you should probably reconsider your choices.

Hidden costs

One important area to check in terms and conditions is that of payments. Several website builders are fond of making hidden charges to customers. Read reviews from other users to know for sure if the web builder you’re using has any hidden charges or not.

Provision To Move Your Website

Not all website builders allow users to move their sites to a new domain/host. However, this becomes a necessity in the long run, especially when your site has grown to a high rank, and you have the money to build a better site. It’s essential you confirm whether or not your host allows for this.

How Much Does It Cost To Build A Website?

Building a website can cost anywhere from $200 to $10,000 or even more, depending on the type of website and the Integrations and features. Thankfully, most website builders have free trials and free plans you can try out before committing fully.

What Are The Benefits Of A Website Builder?

• Reduced costs

Instead of spending up to $500 on an eCommerce website, a website builder allows you to create your own site for as little as $15 per month. Website builders make owning a website very cheap and affordable.

• Instant website creation

It usually takes days or even weeks for programmers to write the code and develop the front and back end of websites. With website builders, however, websites can be made in under a few hours or a few minutes with the right template

• Personalization

Website builders allow you to build your website precisely the way you want it. From templates to color, design, and every other stuff, it’s all in your hands.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Website Builders?

• Limited design options

With website builders, you’re limited to what you’re given. So, you can’t copy a Web Design from anywhere or use any attractive features that your host provider doesn’t allow.

• Ownership

So long as you use a website builder, your site is not truly your own. You’re still under your host, and if something should happen to the host servers or the company should close up, your site will be lost forever.

• No Uniqueness

With website builders, it’s possible that your site will look similar to that of someone else using the same host as you are. This scenario mainly occurs with web builders that only provide a few templates.

• SEO

There are certain SEO features that website builders just can’t provide. They try to provide as many SEO elements as possible, but some skip important elements like website schema.

Summary

Building a website can be very demanding, and having all the work done for you by these website builders is a big help. HostPapa is perfect for individuals who want a straightforward, no-hassle solution without learning code. And a solution like Shopify is one of the best website builders for eCommerce stores.

Feel free to use any of our recommendations here, as they were carefully selected through in-depth research and customer feedback. Finally, when choosing a web builder, go for higher plans if you can afford them to enjoy its full capabilities. Those plans give you the level of professionalism you might need, while the smaller plans may appear somewhat basic.