Best free and paid website builders

Not everyone wants to hire a company or a programmer to make their website for them. Some of us want to DIY this thing. Whether you’re on a budget and need a simple website, or you’re rolling in cheddar and want the most BAMF website on the planet, we’ve got the list for you. We tried to select a range of website builders, from easy and simple ones to feature-heavy, highly customizable options. Whether you just want a blank page with your name and phone number on it, or an intense website that looks like it was designed by nerds at Google, we’ve got you covered.

Free Website Builders

Wix

Wix is one of the best free website builders on the web. The templates are extremely user-friendly and almost make you feel like you’re making a PowerPoint presentation. You’ll be doing a lot of dragging and dropping and text-box editing. While Wix offers more flexibility in terms of customization over many other website builders, this could leave less experienced page builders vulnerable to sloppiness, especially those with untrained eyes. Templates are also free. Unfortunately, Wix doesn’t allow you to switch templates if you’ve already started a project. In order to change your template with Wix, you have to start all over. It also has 500MB of storage and a 500 MB bandwidth limit.

Weebly

Weebly is an old favorite among those who use template-based website builders. It’s easy to use, clean-looking, and has a lot of customization options. Drag and drop features are stored on a side bar to the left, though you can only put the elements you add in into certain areas of the page. However, keeping the options limited could help novices grasp Weebly faster. Weebly’s features include free templates, the ability to add maps and in-store items that you can sell directly from your website. Weebly also allows you to seemlessly add audio and video to the site. Weebly offers additional options with paid plans in case you want to invest your green in your site. Weebly has unlimited storage space, but each file can only be up to 10MB (unless you upgrade). Weebly also has unlimited bandwidth.

WebStarts

WebStarts is a good fit for those who wants to build very simple, elegant websites. If having a multitude of features at your disposal can make you feel overwhelmed, WebStarts could be your cup of tea. It is very easy to use, straightforward, and is something akin to a trimmed down version of Weebly. One of the things this website builder doesn’t have, which Weebly does, is a huge selection of fonts. WebStarts includes basic fonts like Times New Roman, Arial and Comic Sans, but templates look sleek. Though you only get 10MB of storage, WebStarts allots you 5GB of bandwidth.

WebNode

WebNode has a limited number of fonts, but it does have welcome features like the ability to add social media buttons and maps. The templates look generic, but they all work well and look pretty decent. One of WebNode’s best features is its insert images tool, which was easy to use compared with some of its other features, like font switching. WebNode has a learning curve, but using it should come naturally to you in no time. WebNode offers 100 MB free storage and a 1 GB bandwidth limit.

WordPress

WordPress is the website builder we’re based upon–to a degree. Now, it’s not exactly fair to use our own website as an example, considering it’s the premium version with paid programmers, but it seemed strange to make a fake website on the website builder that we actually use. WordPress is very customizable and has over 100 free themes (tons of paid ones too).  Arguably the greatest things about WordPress are its 3GB of storage space and its lack of a bandwidth limit. The free themes aren’t quite as customizable as they are on Wix, but a lot of the free themes look pretty good already. WordPress will also give you traffic information, which can help you cater your website to your audience.

Paid Website Builders

Squarespace

Squarespace gets a lot of attention, and for good reason. It’s sleek, full of features, pretty, and inexpensive. Squarespace will run you eight dollars a month for the basic package, with rates topping out at $24.00 a month for the “Business” package. $8 a month nets you 500 GB of bandwidth, a mobile website, up to 20 pages, 2 GB of storage, a custom domain, and 24/7 customer support. For $24.00, you get unlimited bandwidth/storage, and more. Like WordPress, Squarespace will also provide you with traffic stats. If you ever develop an affinity for WordPress, Squarespace allows you to export your website into WP. This means you’ll be able to add on features to your website that WordPress has and Squarespace does not, like tag clouds.

Light CMS

Light CMS is a favorite among websites that sell products. Light CMS has great cloud hosting and eCommerce features, including shopping cart/checkout. Galleries re-size and adapt images based on what device you’re using to view a Light CMS webpage. The basic $19.00/month plan you get 10 pages, 1 GB storage, and you can list 100 products. With the $99.00 monthly plan, you get unlimited pages, storage, and product listings. Through Light CMS’ usage of cloud hosting, there’s no bandwidth limit, regardless of what plan you opt for. Font selection is sparse, but Light CMS lets you implement Google web fonts.

Yola

Yola (no, not YOLO) offers free and paid plans. Yola is really simple to use and looks clean. For just $4.95 you get unlimited pages, 2 GB storage, a custom domain (.com), and unlimited bandwidth, making Yola one of the better deals out there. The Gold Plan, which costs $16.66 a month, gets you 3,000 stock photos to use, advanced editing, mobile sites, unlimited store, and more. The only downer here is you have to at least use their Silver plan to remove the Yola branding from your site. It also has a really convenient help screen that expands from the bottom corner. It’s not the most customizable site builder out there, and there are some features we would have liked to see like more templates, but it’s a solid option.

Jimdo

Jimdo has one of the better user interfaces out there. One of the first things we noticed about Jimdo is its Dropbox integration, which makes using photos from your Dropbox account simple. Jimdo’s eCommerce features are strong and include inventory tracking, the ability to make coupon codes, and automatic generation of purchase confirmation e-mails that get sent directly to customers. Jimdo Pro offers unlimited storage and up to 20 custom email addresses.

Breezi

Overall, Breezi is easy to use and very customizable. Breezi’s $9 monthly plan gives you hundreds of fonts to choose from, eCommerce features like the ability to display Yelp reviews on your site, along with completely customizable layouts, Dropbox integration, site stats, no storage or bandwidth limits, and more. One of our favorite things this builder does is allow you to edit content, like images, quickly and easily with simple adjustment buttons that pop up.