5 Best Website Builders for Making Your Own Site in 2018 A list of the top website building software (both free & paid) for a DIY small business website. Find the best website builder for making your own website. A website builder is a great option for beginners who have no experience in web design, yet want to make a website themselves. ![]() ![]() If you've decided to take the DIY route and build a website yourself, it's important to choose the right website building software. In this article, we'll cover the top 5 best website builders for making your own website. In our guide,, we recommend using Wix. Wix is a great choice for small businesses and one of the most popular website builders on the market. It's still our favorite choice, however, there are many different website builders you can use and we’ve listed some other great choices as well. Each website builder offers a unique approach to designing, building, and editing a website and you will need to decide on which one best fits your requirements. The Best Site Builders at a Glance (Updated January 2018) Listed below are 5 of the best website builders that we recommend to our readers: Website builder Pricing: Recommended for: Learn more Free to $25.00/mo Small business websites w/ fully customizable templates Free to $9.99/mo Simple & easy to use for basic, informational websites Free to $25.00/mo Well-known brand & strong platform for eCommerce $12 to $18.00/mo Artistic templates for those in a creative profession $3.49 to $7.49/mo Professional sites that need powerful functionality & features. Is our overall favorite choice and in our opinion, one of the best website builders on the market. It's easy to signup with, easy to use, and easy to build a website for your business. They have a large selection of templates with over 70 different categories to choose from. Their user-friendly drag and drop site builder is intuitive and lets you fully customize your website without spending too much time to learn. Wix is great for beginners who want a managed, easy solution to make their own website. Wix is also one of the largest website builders with over 63 million users world wide. You can start using Wix for free, but as with any website builder, will most likely need to upgrade to one of their paid plans which range from $5 to $25/mo, depending on the features you need. Is one of the simplest, most intuitive site builders on the market. They make it easy for anyone to build and publish their own website without having to be a computer whiz. If you're looking for the easiest and simplest option, this is the one to choose. It offers all the tools you need to get a simple website up and running, including a basic eCommerce store through ECWID. They also offer one of the largest selections of pre-made templates so you have plenty of designs to choose from. Once you've chosen a template for your site, you need to make it your own. Most site builders lets you tweak the color scheme, fonts, and page layouts, as well as adding new pages. A good site builder offers sub-templates for the most commonly used page types: about, contact, products, galleries, FAQ,. Mar 24, 2017 WebsiteBuilderPoint is here to review the best website builder software. Both are based on a freemium model and offer great templates. Acquired by EIG, the editor is actually used across various EIG owned brands and you'll find this same service used under several different names (for example: websitebuilder.com, sitelio.com, and sitey.com). Although the editor itself is really pretty good, their management unfortunately seems to be the main downside. We've noticed questionable billing issues, confusing branding, and poor customer support. ![]() Essentially, they have a great tool, but need better management in place. If you can put up with this, their website builder is a pleasure to use. Is a popular choice among website builders and is well-known for their powerful & feature-rich eCommerce capabilities. They are a great choice for businesses who are looking to sell products/services online. Their business plan is pricey at $25/mo, but does offer everything you need to setup a professional online store. Their website builder feels a bit more challenging and less intuitive than Wix or SiteBuilder and it will take some time to learn how to use. It can be frustrating, but once you get the knack of it, you can build a really great website. They also have a limited number of themes to choose from, but have been slowly adding more to their collection. Is a website builder geared towards anyone in a creative profession. SquareSpace has a lot of great website templates for photographers, artists, restaurants, musicians, weddings, and bloggers. Their designs are typically simple, yet elegant and very visual with large images. Like Weebly, their templates are less customizable, but do include clean URLs and truly responsive designed templates. SquareSpace starts at $12/month for a personal plan and $18/month for a business plan. You can start a 2 weeks free trial with no credit card required, but will need to upgrade to a paid plan at the end. Squarespace also has a great community knowledge base where you can ask questions and get help on how to use their website builder. Last but not least, is BoldGrid. BoldGrid is a website builder that uses WordPress. While technically a CMS (Content Management System), WordPress is arguably the best choice for building a website. It’s used not only by beginners, but by professionals as well. WordPress is such a powerful platform & has so many features, that most web designers & developers love to use it. In fact, over 28% of all websites on the Web are now built with it! WordPress is unfortunately a little more complex and has a steeper learning curve than most website builders, however, BoldGrid does attempt to fix this problem. BoldGrid is a website builder that is added to WordPress as a plugin that attempts to make WordPress a bit easier to use for beginners. Using BoldGrid, you can harness the power of WordPress and build your own professional website more easily. BoldGrid has hundreds of templates to choose from and offers the most professional choice on our list for building powerful websites with advanced functionality. The website builder itself is actually free, but you will need to pay for web hosting, recommended through InMotion Hosting. This is another reason why it's a little more complex than most website builders, as you will need to manage your own web hosting. Key Features: • Uses WP (WordPress) • Makes WP easier to use • Powerful & feature rich • Exportable & transferable • 100% ownership of your site • Editable HTML/CSS code • 200+ templates • Great 4 advanced users • SEO & mobile friendly • Choice of hosting • Free domain name Understanding Which Website Builder You Should Use Most website builders are meant for beginners who have no experience in web design and development. That being said, there is still a little learning curve involved. Most of you reading this guide are small business owners who want to build a website yourself. It’s definitely a doable thing – and anyone with a little patience and determination can do it using the help of website building software. You just need to spend time familiarizing yourself with the website builder you choose. And for those of you who have problems turning on a computer, is going to be your best choice! What to Look for in a Website Builder It's important to choose the best website builder for your needs. Although most website builders do allow you to sign up for free, as a business owner, you don't have the time to play around with multiple different ones to figure it out. It's important to research first. Below are the relevant factors to consider when looking for a website builder. Functionality This is probably one of the most important areas to look. Even if at the moment, all you need is a one page, informational website, you'll want to be open to the possibility that your website can grow in the future to include features like eCommerce and blogging. Think about what features and functionality your website will not only currently need, but also in the future. Most website builders have an App Market where you will find useful widgets and apps to extend functionality. Wix has an extensive app market with a mix of Wix apps and third party apps. Some are free and some are paid, but the selection is huge. This will significantly add to the functionality of your website. Some other points to note are storage, bandwidth, and speed. Clean Semantic URLs A clean URL will look like “ yoursite.com/about-us” but unfortunately not all website builders are capable of producing clean URLs. With some, you can end up with ugly URLs like “ yoursite.com/?locID=23&?tag=gobbledegook?pricemax=?sessionID=as8ss889“. Therefore, it is important to make sure that your website builder produces websites with clean URLs. This feature is not just good for appearance but it is also good for search engine optimization (SEO). Clean semantic URLs ensure that each page on your website will rank well and not just the homepage. Accessible Customer Service Having a website builder that offers great customer support via multiple channels is a big plus for obvious reasons. A number of things could go wrong while you are creating your website, especially if you are new to the whole process. For example, Hostgator is known for their helpful customer service team which you can access via phone, live chat, and email. You need immediate answers from knowledgeable customer service representatives and they make that possible. It’s also good if the website builder that you choose has a support forum where other customers ask questions and give input. This can be very helpful to you as well. Fully Responsive Website Templates This is very important because people view websites on multiple devices. Mobile smartphones are growing even more in popularity, but tablets are also very popular. And of course, people still use laptops and desktops as well. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the templates that your website builder offers are fully responsive and not just mobile-friendly. Responsive means that your website automatically adjusts to fit whichever device it is being viewed on (desktop, mobile, tablet ect.) while mobile-friendly means that you have a mobile designed version of your website that will show up whenever your website is being viewed on any device other than a desktop. The look of your website on tablets is something that is often overlooked. Having templates that are fully responsive also cuts out some of the work for you. Traditionally, after a website was built for a desktop or laptop computer, then a whole new website had to be coded to look good on mobile devices. Many website builders have cut a lot of the extra work out for you, but it’s still important to find out which ones offer fully responsive templates versus just mobile-friendly ones. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Friendly SEO is probably the most important area to focus on after the design of your website. Correctly executed SEO ensures that your website will rank highly for specific keywords on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. You want to ensure that your website builder allows you to optimize every piece of content on your website. Simbla is very good with this because their website templates are built with Bootstrap 3, a great framework that is very SEO friendly. Ease of Use The whole reason for website builders is that they make the process of building a beautiful website so easy that anyone can do it with no coding knowledge required. There is a good chance that you’re not a professional web designer or web developer, so “ease of use” is very important to you. Wix has one of the most user-friendly interfaces and an intuitive website editor. You can place content and objects anywhere on your website with little to no restrictions. Free of Banner Ads Even though many website builders offer free plans that allow you to design and publish a website without any cost, it is also important to note that these free websites often come with banner ads that promote the company. Regardless of how good your website is designed, it looks unprofessional to have banner ads appear on it. You will want to look at what it will cost to have a banner free website and use this a comparison point. Ability to Export Your Website Your website is your property – with your images and your text, so you should be able to move it to another company if you wanted to, right? Well many website builders don’t think so. In many cases, if you want to switch to another one, you would have to cancel your old website and re-build it on the new one from scratch. This can be a very tedious process, especially if you have a blog with a large number of posts. Exporting your website means that you will be able to extract the data from your old website and import it to your new website in a relatively easy process. BoldGrid easily allows for this since it is built on top of WordPress. Weebly also allows for exporting your website. It may not be a huge deal breaker when deciding which website builder to choose right now, but you never know what could happen in the future. Having full ownership of your content and website is very important. Clean & Well-Written HTML/CSS Code HTML and CSS are important for separating the design from the content of your website. Ideally what you want, is a combination of great design and content that is optimized for search engines, so that your website can actually be found and looks great once it is found. Simbla, BoldGrid, and Weebly are great examples of website builders that that employ well written HTML5 and CSS3. Monthly/Annual Cost & Refund Policy Without question, cost is an area of concern for most people when selecting a website builder. You want to make sure that the cost is something that can comfortably fit into the budget for yourself or your small business as this is going to be a recurring charge either monthly or annually. On an annual plan, the cost may seem like quite a lot to pay upfront – especially if you’re on a tight budget – but luckily, most website builders offer monthly plans which make it easier to afford. Another thing that you’ll want to look at is whether or not your website builder has a refund policy, just in case after using it, you decide that it’s not for you. Each company has different policies. For example, Wix and Simbla have 14-day money back guarantees while SiteBuilder and Weebly offer 30-day money back guarantees. Template Customization One of the things that makes website builders easy to use is templates. Templates act as a guide to help you build a stunning website in a matter of minutes, versus building it from scratch. But it’s important to look at how customizable these templates are to meet your needs. Some templates are a bit restrictive and only allow you to edit/replace content within the set design. Other templates are truly drag and drop, allowing you to move any object or piece of content to any area on the page. For example, Wix is fully customizable while Weebly has more restrictive templates. Both kinds of template options can be beneficial to you depending upon your needs. Additional Goodies & Extras Look at what additional offerings your website builder provides to its customers, such as SEO help or credits for Ads and marketing. If they do offer these extra goodies, it’s a sign of a good company that cares about its customers and that they are willing to go the extra mile for you. If a website builder offers the bare minimum, it may be a sign that the customer service you’ll receive will be the bare minimum as well. Even if it costs a little bit extra, it will serve you well in the long term to go with a company that shows deep interest in making their customers happy by offering extras like this. Custom Code/Script Implementation While website builders are typically known for being drag and drop only, some do offer the capability to add your own custom HTML code or script into your website. This may not be necessary if you’re a complete beginner to web design, but if you’re more advanced and have some coding experience, then this capability will be very useful in helping you to fully customize your website. Wix, Weebly, and Simbla are known for having this feature. + VAT for EU Always up-to-date Please get a Company license if you're buying Pinegrow for a company. Choosing the best license type for you: Review the and buy the license. You'll receive email with the serial number after checkout. Launch the app and input your serial number under '3. Enter the serial number'. Do you prefer? VAT will be added for EU customers. If you are registered for VAT enter your VAT ID during the checkout process to buy without tax. Are you a student or an educator? We have a for you. Download Pinegrow:. We do our best to resolve any issues and make you happy with Pinegrow. Still, sometimes things don't work out. We'll refund the full amount of your purchase under the following conditions: • Money back guarantee applies only to one-time license payments, upgrades and yearly subscriptions, not to recurring monthly subscriptions. • We might ask for a chance to resolve the issue before refunding the purchase. But the decision to take this or not is completely up to you. • We can only process refunds for orders within 30 days of the purchase date. • You agree to immediately stop using refunded products or services. How is Pinegrow different from other website builders? Pinegrow is a desktop app that works with regular HTML and CSS files. We believe that a standalone app fits into a web development workflow much better than cloud solutions. Pinegrow has unique features like editing multiple pages at the same time, complete range of Bootstrap and Foundation components, live CSS styling with SASS and LESS support, WordPress theme builder, Atom integration and more. Pinegrow doesn't add any abstraction on top of HTML and CSS. It simply helps you to work with HTML and CSS more efficiently, either visually or through code. Pinegrow is tailored to professional web developers and designers. Read a user review about how. What are the license terms? A separate license is needed for each individual user who is using the app. Exception is made for your family members - it makes no sense requiring your kids to buy a separate license if they want to play with Pinegrow on your computer. You can install your copy of Pinegrow on up to 3 of your computers (at home and at work, Windows, Mac or Linux) as long as you are the one using the app. If you are buying Pinegrow for a company, you need the company license. You need one company license for every person in your company who will be using Pinegrow. What is the difference between one-time payments and subscriptions? Each one-time license purchase gives you a license to use the current version of the program forever and includes one full year of free updates to your edition of Pinegrow. After the one year of free updates expires you may wish to renew your license - for just half the price of a new license - to obtain an additional year of free updates. If not, you can just keep using your current version. With subscriptions, you always have access to the latest version of Pinegrow, but you won't be able to continue using Pinegrow after your subscription ends.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2018
Categories |