What’s the best website builder for marketers? The answer depends. But we’re here to help.
There are dozens of platforms to choose from, but the best one for your marketing business depends on budget, resources, and needs.
This guide will dive into the best website builder platforms and help you decide which choice is right for your business.
Table of Contents
The 10 Best Website Builder Platforms
- Weebly – The best budget-friendly website builder for marketers
- Wix – For marketers that want custom designs without coding
- GoDaddy – Best for building a simple website, fast
- Squarespace – Best website builder platform for creative marketers
- WordPress– For the tech-savvy that want the most site flexibility and control
- Shopify – Best e-commerce website builder for marketers to sell products
- BigCommerce– Best for larger e-commerce marketing businesses
- ClickFunnels – Best for marketers that need landing pages and sales funnels
- Kajabi – The website builder for marketers that create online courses
- Podia – The most affordable for online creators with a range of digital products
Weebly
Weebly was created in 2006 to help non-coders build a website. Its “What You See Is What You Get” interface makes creating a website almost as easy as a PowerPoint presentation.
In 2018, the payment processing company Square acquired Weebly. One advantage of the acquisition is that Weebly users can access Square’s online and in-person payments.
Weebly may make sense for you if you have a brick-and-mortar and e-commerce business.
There are better options if you need a lot of design customization or advanced e-commerce features.
Standout features
● What You See Is What You Get editor
● Impressive free plan
● Seamless Square integration for online or in-person shopping
Pricing
It is important to note that most website builder platforms structure their pricing based on two payment schedules: annually or monthly. Generally, the annual plans cost slightly less than the monthly.
Weebly has one of the best free website plans. You get e-commerce tools like inventory management, a shopping cart, and unlimited items.
The major downside to the free version is that it does not include a custom domain, and it has ads for Square (Weebly’s parent company) on the site.
To get custom features for your brand, you need to upgrade to a paid plan. They start at $9/month or about $72/year when billed annually.
Wix
Wix is a popular choice for many marketers. According to Wix, it has over 200 million users worldwide.
It is the best website builder for marketers who want more design features.
The platform has over 500 customizable website templates. The templates cover a range of industries, so it is easy to get started.
The level of customization that you can do without coding is impressive. For example, you can edit navigation elements, animations, and more to make a website unique.
Wix also has basic e-commerce options. It has the most features marketers need to sell products, schedule appointments, and more.
Wix has been working on its SEO features for the last few years. For a website builder, it has some helpful SEO features like Google integration, structured data, and image optimization. However, even if you’re not an SEO expert, the platform automatically handles a large portion of the SEO considerations for a site.
Standout features
● 500+ easy to customize website templates
● Powerful SEO features for a website builder
Pricing
You can create a website for free, but the features are limited, and the site will have Wix ads and a Wix domain.
Wix’s pricing can be confusing. It breaks down the pricing based on the user. There are various plans for personal websites like portfolios, small business and e-commerce sites, and larger enterprises.
For a personal site, the tiers start at $14/month. For business and e-commerce sites, pricing starts at $23/month.
Above is the pricing based on annual billing. If you want to view the month-to-month cost, you have to go through the checkout process.
You’ll need at least a business plan to accept payments if you sell any product online.
GoDaddy
Founded in 1997, GoDaddy is one of the earliest website platforms. The company started primarily as a domain registry service.
In recent years, GoDaddy has been investing in its website builder tools. So if you aren’t tech-savvy and don’t need many features for your website, GoDaddy might be for you.
GoDaddy lacks when it comes to design and customization. As a result, it is difficult to customize a website on GoDaddy, and you are limited by the templates.
Standout features
● Fast and easy to get started, website builder
Pricing
GoDaddy lets you create a site for free. But, like other platforms, the features are limited.
On the downside, GoDaddy is pricey over time. The advertised pricing is a little deceptive. For example, in the first year, its basic plan is $6/month. That price increases to $9.99 when you renew.
You must also upgrade to the e-commerce version if you want an online store. It is $17.49 per month, only for the first year. After that, the price again jumps to $24.99/month when you renew.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a favorite among bloggers and marketing creatives. It is also one of the best website builder platforms for marketing consultants because of its top-notch designs and affordability.
Squarespace has over 100 website templates, and they are all visually appealing.
It has a drag-and-drop editor that is similar to Wix and Weebly. However, Squarespace is not as easy to use for beginners. The editor has limits to where you can place content and images. Content is often constrained to rows and columns in a template.
Rows & columns help ensure the website is structured, but it has drawbacks. Because of this, it is not as intuitive as Wix or Weebly.
Luckily, they have a vast library of tutorials and resources to help you get started. Once familiar with how the platform works, you can customize your site the way you want.
You might need to know or learn a little CSS to customize your site. However, if you have some technical confidence, there are few limits to what you can create.
Standout features
● Stellar design
● Budget-friendly
Pricing
Squarespace does not have a free plan, but there is a 14-day free trial. The four paid plans are reasonably priced.
The lowest tier, Personal, starts at $12/month when billed annually or $16/month for month-to-month. It covers the essentials you need for a professional site, a portfolio, or a blog.
If you want a site with professional email and e-commerce abilities, a business plan is better. Annually, it is $18/month.
As your business grows, you may want to upgrade to one of their commerce plans. They have more advanced e-commerce features and 0% transaction fees. However, the business tier has a 3% transaction fee, besides the fees you incur from payment processors.
WordPress
WordPress is considered the premier choice of website platforms because of its flexibility and control. WordPress powers nearly 40% of websites.
If you’re new to WordPress, it can be confusing. There are two different options: WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
WordPress.org wasn’t designed to be easy to use without coding knowledge. Initially, it was intended as a free, open-source software and content management system.
For a website to be live on the Internet, you need a website host, which is not free. A hosting provider ensures your site is live and running on the Internet.
WordPress.org allows you to build your site exactly how you want it from the ground up, but you also need the technical knowledge or resources to do that.
This is where WordPress.com comes in. It is WordPress’ website builder. It has features that have made WordPress so popular.
WordPress shines with its plugins. Plugins are software that you “plug into” your site to easily add a specific function or feature. There are thousands for SEO, e-commerce, website design, and more.
If you don’t have a website developer or coding expertise, it may take time for you to get used to WordPress.org. However, many WordPress themes come with drag-and-drop editors.
Standout features
● Most flexible website platform
● Thousands of plugins
Pricing
WordPress.org is free, but remember, you need to pay for your site’s domain, hosting provider, and other third-party services.
WordPress.com has a free plan that will have a WordPress subdomain and ads. The paid options start at $4/month billed yearly, and go up to $25/month.
Shopify
Shopify is considered the best website builder for growing e-commerce companies.
Shopify is an “all-in-one” solution for e-commerce. Many direct-to-consumer companies rely on it to power their businesses. Setting up an online store with Shopify can be quick and easy using one of their free online store themes.
Not only does it provide a website, but it offers tools specifically useful for e-commerce. For example, it helps manage inventory, shipping, and marketing.
It also has an in-store point of sale (POS) system that syncs your online inventory.
The catch is that Shopify’s useful add-ons are not always free with a subscription plan.
The POS system has a free lite version that is useful for pop-up shops and markets. It doesn’t have advanced inventory or other features for a more permanent storefront location.
The pro version of the POS system is an additional $89/month. If you have retail locations, it is more than worth the investment.
Some businesses also report that Shopify’s transaction fees can be higher than other platforms.
Standout features
● Useful online and in-store e-commerce tools
Pricing
Shopify doesn’t have a free tier but a 14-day free trial.
Compared to other platforms’ pricing, Shopify is on the higher side. It starts at $29/month for Basic and increases to $299/month for Advanced.
BigCommerce
Another e-commerce favorite is BigCommerce. The platform is designed to drive sales to your site or online store.
As its name suggests, BigCommerce is built for big companies. As a result, the landing pages and built-in features are more advanced than other platforms.
Fast-growing e-commerce companies may want to use BigCommerce because it has almost every e-commerce feature and reporting tool an enterprise-level company could need.
If your marketing business isn’t growing fast, you don’t need all that BigCommerce offers.
And if you have a WordPress site, you can still use BigCommerce features by installing the BigCommerce plugin.
Standout features
● Polished landing pages and CTAs
● Advanced built-in sales features like one-click Google Shopping integration
Pricing
BigCommerce does not have a free plan. However, it has a 15-day trial.
Paid options start at $29.95/month and go up to $299.95/month. The Standard plan has all the features a marketer needs to sell products online.
Unlike other platforms, BigCommerce advertises yearly revenue limits for each plan. Standard goes up to $50K a year. Then, a subscriber will have to upgrade to the next tier, with a yearly revenue limit of $180K.
ClickFunnels
A click funnel is a series of landing pages that users click through, eventually resulting in the user taking a specific action—often referred to as a conversion funnel. In most cases, conversion is making a sale.
ClickFunnels is named for this concept but can be used as a standalone website. If you are primarily interested in creating sales funnels and generating leads on your site, you can quickly build a website using ClickFunnels. On the other hand, if you have extensive product and content needs, make your site with another platform.
Many marketers add ClickFunnels to their existing website builders like Shopify, WordPress, and more.
Standout features
● Build a site fast
● Easy to build sales funnels
Pricing
ClickFunnels has a 14-day trial. The service starts at $97/month and can go up to $2,497/month.
The price may give some sticker shock, but many users praise ClickFunnels for its ability to convert into sales.
Kajabi
If you focus on creating online courses, then you’ll want to consider Kajabi.
Kajabi is one of the best website builder platforms for online course creators and coaches. Kajabi makes it simple to create and manage paid content, memberships, and subscribers.
It is not ideal if you plan on selling products outside of online courses and materials.
Standout features
● Designed for selling expertise through coaching or online courses
Pricing
The Basic plan starts at $119/month when billed annually. Basic only includes three digital products and 1,000 members. It also has Kajabi branding on the site.
Plans go up to $319/month, billed annually. It can be expensive. If you have a large community, Kajabi could be right for you.
Podia
Podia also caters to the online creator community, but many consider it a more affordable option than Kajabi.
With Podia, you can easily create paid memberships, online courses, and digital product downloads.
The affiliate marketing feature lets you set up commissions for members that refer new customers. It is not available with the basic plan.
Like Kajabi, you can only use Podia to sell digital products. For anything else, it is lacking.
Standout features
● Useful affiliate marketing feature
● An affordable option for online creators
Pricing
You can try out Podia for 14 days free. After that, there are three paid tiers: Mover, Shaker, and Earthquaker. Mover is the lowest cost option at $39/month.
Unlike Kajabi, Podia doesn’t limit the number of digital products you can have on your site. Instead, it is unlimited, even with the lowest package.
There are tons of website builders that cater to marketers. Chances are that one of these platforms will perfectly suit your needs.
