Do you want to create a website? These are the best website builders

Publishing a website is even more complicated than it has any right to be, but the best website builders streamline the process. Instead of juggling a bunch of files on a server and learning the ins and outs of networking, website builders do exactly what it says on the tin. Piece by piece, using a drag-and-drop interface, you can design your website the way you want with immediate feedback rather than spending time buried in code and hoping it comes out the other end.

There are dozens of website builders, and most of them range from good to bad. Every ambitious web host has a website builder, even if it’s slow, clunky and lacking in features. I focused on finding the best tools for building your website that go beyond a simple add-on, and these are my favorites. If you’re looking for something simpler than a full-fledged website, check out our list of Best Portfolio Websites.

Updated February 2026: We’ve added details about new AI features in existing choices like Squarespace and Wix, and have also added Webflow, Framer, GoDaddy, Shopify, and WordPress.

Best website builder for the most part

You’ve heard about Squarespace over and over again, I’m sure, and that’s no coincidence. This is an inviting website builder that has made a name for itself with bold and striking designs. Beneath the guise of attractive, yet seemingly simple websites, you’ll find one of the most capable website builders on the market. This balance of power and usability is what sets Squarespace apart.

It looks like a creative tool. Where other website builders lag and stutter to get a new element onto your page, Squarespace feels smooth. Your dashboard gives you quick access to edit your site, and around every corner, Squarespace seems designed so you never need to search for a tutorial. I launched a simple photography website, and within an hour I had a custom course page created, an appointment calendar with automated confirmation emails, and services (with pricing and the ability to accept payments) set up.

Like many companies, Squarespace recently moved into AI with several new features, including planan AI website design tool, and Squarespace GPT, which enables website design via an AI chat interface. These tools are arguably overly ambitious, as it is possible to generate designs, images and video backgrounds, which can leave you with a website detached from reality. Still, these tools can be useful if you have a vague idea of ​​what you want but no idea how to implement it.

Squarespace isn’t cheap, but it doesn’t dabble in restrictive, low-cost plans either. Even with the Basic plan, you get access to e-commerce tools, AI design help, and space for multiple contributors.

Best Cheap Website Builder

Hostinger is best known as a web hosting provider, but it has a surprisingly robust website builder that you can use on its own or for free as part of a hosting package. You don’t get the same world-class template design and dense feature set from a more expensive builder like Squarespace, but that’s okay. Hostinger’s website builder will only cost you a few dollars per month, and from my testing it seems heavily geared toward newcomers.

You sacrifice some power for convenience, but there’s a lot you can accomplish with Hostinger. Integrations with PayPal, Stripe, and Square let you quickly set up e-commerce. Add-ons with WhatsApp give you live chat features, and Printful support means you can sell printed products on demand. And, if the website builder is beyond your control, Hostinger allows you to export your website content to WordPress.

These days, almost every website builder incorporates AI in one way or another, but it’s present on every corner at Hostinger. Unfortunately, some tools (like the logo generator) are not included in the subscription and require the purchase of credits. But given the huge price gap between Hostinger and Squarespace, you’ll still save a ton unless you lean very hard on AI.

Ideal for small businesses

Wix is ​​undoubtedly Squarespace’s biggest competitor, and I had a hard time putting one above the other. Ultimately, Wix found itself in the backseat due to higher prices and a slightly less intuitive interface. This is partly due to the power of Wix. Rather than locking you into a sleek (albeit restrictive) website building workflow, Wix gives you a ton of options.

First of all, the models. You get a few hundred elsewhere, but Wix has over 2,000 templates. At the time of writing this article, there were 223 pages of it on the Wix website. Not all of them are winners, but I was able to create a quick photography portfolio website in just a few minutes by browsing the templates and uploading a few photos.

The other area where Wix Nails is in is plugins. Squarespace and Hostinger offer plugins, but Wix offers hundreds. This reminds me of the flexibility and accessibility of WordPress as a platform. Even without any technical knowledge of a website’s backend, you can choose plugins as needed, rather than cobbling together a half-baked solution.

Wix has a new AI website builder called Harmony. It has a quick and easy interface inspired by mood coding tools such as Lovable. You type in a text description and build from there. Harmony is free to start and you can even publish the website to a Wix subdomain, although you will have to pay to access other Wix features. The website designs it generates won’t blow you away, but they are usable and complete because Harmony can generate multiple pages at once.

Ultimately, you get what you pay for, and Wix is ​​proof. It’s robust and incredibly powerful, but even the cheapest plan will cost you $17 per month and doesn’t include any e-commerce features. Fortunately, Wix allows you to design and publish a website for free if you want to try the service, but with strict limitations.

Best Free Website Builder

Strikingly doesn’t come close to the other website builders on this list, at least when you pay for a subscription. But if you’re looking for a simple website builder that lets you publish a website for free, Strikingly is the way to go. Not only does it offer a solid free plan, but it’s also transparent about the limitations of that plan.

You get 500MB of storage, 5GB of bandwidth per month, and a Strikingly branded domain on the free plan. You can even take advantage of the e-commerce features of paid plans with just one product, but with a 5% transaction fee.

Like its competitors, Strikingly has an AI website builder. Although it’s not as attractive as Wix’s Harmony, I was able to start my portfolio website by answering a few questions. Strikingly generating a full website with placeholder copy and images, all without spending a dime.

You can upgrade to a paid plan to unlock more storage and bandwidth, as well as custom domain support, but it’s not worth it for most people. You’ll pay about the same as Squarespace or Wix unless you commit to purchasing five years in advance, and Strikingly doesn’t offer the same wide range of design tools, or plugins, that Wix and Squarespace do.

Other website builders we tested

Cloth offers great design tools, and using them to create a website is a treat. You can design a website for free and publish it with a Canva-branded domain, as well as contribute your own if you’re a paid subscriber. With over 3,500 templates available, you can literally create a website in minutes. However, you’re trading a lot of power for this convenience. Canva is extremely limited, with few plugins and no e-commerce features to speak of. It’s a great tool if you need to build a website for a specific purpose, such as a wedding or a landing page, but it doesn’t scale beyond that.

Framer is a website builder focused on dynamic designs. Websites are created as JavaScript applications built with React. This appears to have advantages, as Framer websites often include many moving elements and look fluid while doing so. Framer also provides an optional desktop app (a rare perk!), which is much smoother than any browser-based editor. That said, Framer is aimed at web design professionals, not people who need to create a basic but attractive website. It’s a bit complex and also more expensive than competitors. Even the basic plan costs $10 per month (billed annually) for a narrow feature set. If you need more, you pay at least $30 per month for the Pro plan.

Shopify is more of an e-commerce platform with a website builder attached. The website builder is basic and easy to understand, but it doesn’t offer much help with designing your website and isn’t designed to support more elaborate designs. However, if you want to create and host a website for e-commerce and don’t want or need a modern, attractive design, this can work. Because they’re geared toward ecommerce, all Shopify plans let you list thousands of products and have all kinds of important features, from automatic sales tax calculation to a shipping manager. But Shopify plans cost $29 per month (billed annually).

Web Feed is a website builder that seems more specialized. It’s less of a web design tool and more of a low-code website builder. Changes are more difficult to make and require a better understanding of the design on your part, but precise changes seem easier. Webflow also has an AI website builder, although I don’t I wasn’t happy with the results, because he seemed to imagine each project as an e-commerce website.

Good dad has an AI website builder called Airo. However, I was not impressed with the generated websites and the tools available to customize the generated website are both limited in scope and seem slow. Skip it.

Weebly has been a popular website builder for years due to its generous free plan. However, Weebly was purchased by payment processor Square in 2018, and while Square says Weebly continues to have support, it urges users to use Online place– a website builder focused on e-commerce – instead. Square says it will continue to support Weebly and I have always been able to create an account, design a website and publish it. But it’s probably not the best choice given the difficult terrain Weebly finds itself on when it comes to future support.

WordPress is a proprietary option for creating and hosting WordPress websites. It focuses more on traditional websites than modern business or portfolio sites, and in fact, the eCommerce tools aren’t bundled together at all until you shell out for the $45/month Commerce plans (even then, it’s offered in partnership with WooCommerce). WordPress offers AI website building tools, and while they create passable WordPress sites, they aren’t as attractive as the results generated by Squarespace or Wix.

How we tested

There is no one-size-fits-all template for a website builder. For this reason, I avoided forcing the website builders I tested to take a particular path; instead, I focused on ensuring that the website builder lets you do what you want to do with your website. That means lots of options, but it also means organizing those options in an accessible way.

For testing, I created a website with a photography portfolio – a hobby of mine in my free time – taking advantage of the upload and layout features, as well as form capture and appointment booking where applicable. I don’t have web design experience, so each website builder had to empower me to build a website with their tools. If I have to touch a line of code, it’s a deal breaker.

In addition to its main function, I focused on a few other areas:

• Price. Price is always important, but especially with website builders. The contract length can vary from monthly to five years at a time, with prices varying widely. Worse yet, most website builders don’t know exactly what the price is for anything below the longest term limit. For this guide, I standardized all website builders to the price of an annual subscription.
• Scalability. Your website needs to grow with you, and relying on a single website builder to meet all your needs won’t be enough. All of the services I’ve selected offer you either the ability to extend your website’s functionality with plugins or, in the case of Hostinger, export your website to WordPress.
• Availability and bandwidth. You don’t have the option to switch to another web hosting service with a website builder. You get what you get. This puts a lot of emphasis on availability. I used my time to test each of these website builders, along with the uptime history of the past few months, for my evaluation.
• Ease of use. You sign up for a website builder because you don’t know how to build a website, plain and simple. While flexibility and scalability are important, the core of a website builder should be getting you online with ease.
• Support. Run a website long enough and you’re bound to run into problems at some point. Servers go down, requests aren’t routed correctly, and pages don’t render correctly after publishing. It happens, but it’s important to have resources to help you. In addition to direct support, I also reviewed the self-help resources of each website builder I tested.

Website Builders and Web Hosting

There are many discrepancies between website builders and web hosting services, and it’s important to separate the two. Web hosting is part of a website builder, but a website builder is not always part of web hosting.

A host stores all of your website data on a server and allows others to connect and load that data, thereby displaying your website. It doesn’t matter how your website was designed or what purpose it serves. If you have the right know-how, you can gather the files needed to display a website and host it from your own PC or server.

A website builder gives you the tools to put these files together without any coding or web design experience. You start with a template and design your website with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface. Once your website is designed, you publish it and it is hosted on your website builder’s servers.

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