Best Website Builder for 2024: Reviewed by Our Experts

Wix is the clear front-runner in the race for website builder dominance. It’s the biggest player with over 8 million live websites according to Built With. This popular website builder also boasts the greatest quantity of tools, capabilities, and freedom.

Wix covers the full ease-of-use spectrum by offering an AI-fueled automatic website creator on one end (“Wix ADI”) that requires minimal effort from the user, all the way to Velo by Wix, an open development platform for advanced applications like Javascript, databases and data-driven dynamic pages. To maximize the experience, we do recommend choosing one lane (e.g., Wix ADI, specific templates or design-from-scratch), since it can be difficult to maintain consistency across your landing page & website design if, for example, you start with a template but then decide you want to totally customize it.

Like many competitors in this space, Wix offers a basic free website builder plan that lets website owners create a free website starter site with ads. If you like what you see with the free website builder, you can spend up for a premium, ad-free site. Pricing falls within industry standards with a $17 per month “Light” plan that covers most needs for a personal website. If you need an e-commerce website builder for your store, Wix offers a $36 per month “Business” e-commerce website plan for your online store. Those prices only include a free domain for one year, so you’ll need to account for that separately beyond the first year. If you’re interested in stats and analytics, Wix has limited analytics tools available for all plans above the light plan. If you only need the basic plan, you can always get a Google Analytics paid plan in addition to your Wix site.

Despite being the clear favorite among most reviewers, Wix does have a few drawbacks. Wix was one of the few builders that has data limitations for each of its plan tiers, so if you want to upload endless photos and videos, or expect a large amount of monthly visitors to your site, make sure you do the math before choosing a plan. It’s also worth noting that if you choose to use Wix for free there will be a banner at the top of your site promoting Wix.

Also, the editor’s freedom and range of options can be overwhelming for folks who don’t have the time or inclination to make lots of little decisions and the web design flexibility means you’ll need to be more hands-on with the format and layout, as opposed to more structured or limited editors where you can’t draw too far outside the lines.

Squarespace strikes us as being the cool kid in high school: flashy and hip on the surface but lacking substance underneath. We found it to be in between Wix and Weebly in terms of ease of use, although it did get consistently positive marks from reviewers for the quality of the design options. Where we think it really might shine is for small- to medium-sized businesses who want a nicely designed page and room for e-commerce growth with lower transaction fees.

The Squarespace editor isn’t as intuitive as Wix and Weebly, requiring a little bit of work until you get the hang of it. It has a fair amount of add-ons, website templates and tools, and the universal style editor and strong photo editing are helpful. The responsive website editor means that your site will always look good on a mobile device, but you can only make mobile-specific edits on areas of your page that use their Fluid Engine feature. We also found consistently high marks for helpful and responsive customer support, which should put business owners’ minds at ease.

Squarespace starts off with a $16-a-month Personal plan, which includes unlimited storage, bandwidth and one year of a free domain if you pay annually ($16/month), and offers a $36 Business website plan ($23/month with annual plan) that includes unlimited contributors, one year of a free Google Workspace account, and e-commerce store builder capabilities. If you go for a “Commerce” plan, you can choose between a $36-a-month basic or $72-a-month advanced plan ($28 or $52/month with annual pay). The advanced plan includes a few final touches like abandoned shopping cart recovery and subscription products. It’s important to note that the basic commerce plan, while maybe slightly above the market rate for an e-commerce site, comes with no transaction fees. Depending on your sales volume on a given month, those savings for our online store could really add up.

Overall, Squarespace’s website is a good analog for what you get with its products: clean, professional and inviting design, but without the layers of design power or freedom you get from other builders. 

Weebly flies under the radar relative to Wix with over 800,000 live websites, but offers some excellent options depending on your needs. If you want a simple and easy-to-use do-it-yourself website editor, plus a large site (more than 25 to 30 pages), unlimited storage, site portability feature and affordable (yet powerful) online store capabilities, Weebly may be a good fit.

The editor is one of the easiest website builder options to use and the low learning curve still nets great-looking sites. That ease of use means the editor is more limited in terms of add-ons and design flexibility and it doesn’t have the range of options or mobile customization that a builder like Wix has. Still, in our testing, we never came to a point where we found those constraints to be limiting. For a high-octane web designer, it could come up.

Weebly’s prices are similar to competitors like Wix or Squarespace, but its free plan option is one of the most generous among free website builders and for just $13 a month ($10 a month when purchased annually) you can get up and running with your own domain name (albeit with Weebly ads). Its $16 a month plan ($12 a month when purchased annually) will give you an ad-free site with analytics and commerce capabilities, while the $29 a month plan ($26 a month when purchased annually) gets you more store tools, like PayPal payment, item reviews, and abandoned cart emails.

Weebly is a good option for those who may be more limited in terms of their time investment and its commerce options outshine competitors like Wix and Squarespace. For those who are wary of committing to a website builder knowing that you won’t be able to pick up and leave later on, Weebly also offers the ability to download site files so you can move to another host, a rarity in the site builder landscape. 

Duda is a smaller player compared to the other builders above with around 900,000 live websites and it focuses on a specific market segment: designers and design agencies. It caters to individuals and groups that make up a lot of sites, but with a powerful and easy-to-use builder and many differentiated offerings, it’s emerged as a good option for anyone looking to develop an online presence.

Duda’s builder boasts several features that set it apart, including detailed data analytics (e.g. advanced metrics like form submissions, time on page and bounce rate) and user personalization so you can easily display specific messages or offers to users based on the time of day, their location or their browsing history. It’s also known for its multilanguage support and a free e-commerce add-on that allows you to sell up to 10 products.

Duda’s pricing is fairly close to its main competitors, Wix and Weebly, starting at $19 per month for the Basic plan. At $29, you can add up to three additional team members to your site (instead of only one with Basic), add dynamic pages, access client management tools, plus get AI assistance for content and SEO. Its “Agency” plan at $52 per month is geared toward web designers who are building pages for multiple clients and includes four websites and the ability to download site files for portability. With “White Label” at $149 per month you can make your sites completely using their White Label website builder. This comes with a custom domain, branding options and access to the white-labeled support portal. If none of these fit what you’re looking for, there’s also the option to contact them for a custom plan.

Duda is a little expensive, but it fills some of the voids that the main players have like analytics, multilingual capabilities, and better personalization.

GoDaddy is best known for its custom domain names and web hosting services, so it makes sense that it also offers website builder software. The name is a mouthful — “Websites + Marketing” — but it’s a similar templatized experience like the other options on this list, designed to get a basic site up and running in under an hour.

The free tier includes such niceties as email and social media marketing, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Square and Stripe payments and an SSL certificate. The $11 monthly plan is straight-up basic; the $15 premium plan tacks on extended support for appointments and social ad support and its $21 per month commerce plan is for online store capabilities, including some impressive product listing and shipping options for your store. These prices reflect the standard monthly costs, but new users can save a bit each month by opting for an annual term.

Even though GoDaddy is better known as a domain seller, a domain isn’t included in those prices — you’ll need to add that separately. All in all, GoDaddy’s current website creator is a nice start. If you choose to start with the free tier, there’s no timer on your experience, so you can take your time kicking the tires to see if GoDaddy is right for you.

When most people talk about WordPress, they’re usually referring to the free open-source software available through WordPress.org. That’s very powerful, but it takes some time to learn and still requires that you find a website host and domain name. If you’re interested in going the advanced route of WordPress.org, we recommend you check out a tutorial or guide such as those you can find on WPBeginner or ToolTester to learn how it works.

The WordPress.com website builder is something else. It’s similar to the other builders listed above and is primarily geared toward bloggers and writers. The WordPress website editor is fairly limited compared to other services but is easy to set up and has everything you need for blogging. We should also note that it’s not an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder like Wix or Weebly and to use drag-and-drop you will need to get a plugin that adds it.

While there is a free option, it’s a pretty bare-bones package offering only 1GB of storage. For $25 or $45 per month, the “Creator” and “Entrepreneur” plans respectively bump storage up to 50GB of storage. They also give you access to a slew of helpful features including over 50,000 plug-ins like forms and calendars, safety features like one-click restores and real-time backup, expert support and the ability to sell products with WooCommerce.

Between these levels are the “Starter” and “Explorer” plans. The $4 a month “Starter” plan removes ads and adds SSL. You also get email support for your site. With “Explorer” you pay $8 per month and it adds 4K videos and automatic social media shares, and you can see your data with advanced stats and the activity log for your page. Your support options are also improved with live chat availability. Personalization comes into play at this level to with unlimited premium themes and style customization.

Overall, WordPress caters to bloggers who don’t want or need to spend a lot of time on website design, but it feels very limited for most other use cases. That said, anyone who’s looking for more robust off-the-shelf CMS (content management systems) options should consider Joomla and Drupal. Both are arguably less user-friendly than WordPress but offer more customization options. At least one CNET editor also felt that Drupal and Joomla also offered faster page loading speeds.

If Wix is the clear favorite for most website-building needs, Shopify fills that role for an e-commerce store. The platform offers an easy and user-friendly way to get an e-commerce website store up and running online, and it supports business owners throughout the process with their e-commerce tools. Shopify is a safe place to start for most “e-tailers,” although similar to Wix, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect for every scenario.

Like most other commerce-focused builders, Shopify’s platform is geared toward your product and sales details. For those without a ton of experience setting up a retail operation, Shopify’s process ensures you won’t miss an important step as it guides you through inventory, customer information and tax and shipping rates. If you still have a question, Shopify offers 24-7 phone and chat support and an active online community forum. There is an AI bot to help track down the appropriate resources for your problem, and if they aren’t the right match, then it will provide support options.

Given that its user base is fairly defined, Shopify doesn’t offer a plethora of plan options, and its prices come in above the market average. The “Basic” plan is $29 a month and covers most of the basic needs for an online store, while the $79 a month “Shopify” plan offers more staff accounts as well as shipping discounts and insurance. From our perspective, it was hard to rationalize the $66 jump from basic to Shopify, but if you factor in the reduced transaction fees and shipping discounts, it might make sense. If you’re running a bigger operation, they also offer a $299-a-month plan.

The main drawback of Shopify is probably its pricing model. If you want the support, guidance and a builder that will take care of most of the technical details, the extra costs are worth it. The many apps available are enticing, but can also add up if you’re using those custom apps that cost extra. If after considering the different e-commerce features you’re still on the fence, we recommend you calculate the total cost of additional add-ons and transaction fees based on your sales, and then compare with competitors like BigCommerce, which offers more product variants and combinations and lower fees. 

BigCommerce lives up to its name — it’s best for medium- to large-scale online stores that can cash in on the lack of added transaction fees and unlimited product variants. The store site builder might not be quite as easy to use as Shopify’s, but the amount of time you spend getting used to it could save you a lot of money down the road.

The editor has a lot of features and flexibility when you’re getting set up, but similar to Wix, that can be too much for newcomers. If you have a little experience, those features and tools — like product variants and tax rates — will probably come in handy as you grow or if you’re already at scale.

BigCommerce’s price tiers are identical to Shopify’s at $39 (Standard), $79 (Plus) and $299 (Pro), but what you get at each level differs. Even the lowest BigCommerce plan gives its clients unlimited users, unlimited bandwidth and storage, unlimited products and no added transaction fees. You can even link your e-commerce site to eBay, Amazon, and Walmart. Where the pricing gets a little tricky is with the sales thresholds: The Standard plan only supports annual sales of less than $50,000, while Plus supports up to $180,000 and Pro up to $400,000. Basically, you save a lot of money on transaction fees the more sales you rack up, but if you have enough sales, you have to upgrade to the next plan tier.

As with all the online store builders, it’ll be worth it to do a little math based on your product inventory and expected sales. No transaction fees strike us as a major deal-maker depending on your size, so if you’re a bigger operation, take advantage of the 15-day trial and give BigCommerce a shot.