I don’t know about you but I was never fond of learning to code. I tried, but failed miserably! Still, I wanted to be able to build a website for myself, mainly to share photos and post articles.
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Eventually, this need for an easy-to-use website tool led me to find my first website builder, which was Weebly. This was in 2009, and since then, website builders have exploded in popularity.
I started WebsiteToolTester to help beginners just like you (and me!) find an easy way to create your own website. Funnily enough, for a very long time, we used the Webnode website builder to run this site. But when it grew to more than 200,000 monthly visitors and 7 different languages – bigger than any website builder could support – we made the switch to WordPress.
However, to this day, we still use website builders like Wix, Weebly, and Jimdo for a number of our projects.
What kinds of sites can be created with a website builder?
The great thing about website builders is that they offer templates for a range of different industries (check out these templates by Wix, for example). You pick the one you like and just add your own text and images. You don’t have to start from a blank slate, which makes it super easy to achieve impressive results in no time.
Website builders are perfect for small businesses, portfolios, photographers, online stores, restaurants, and hotels, as well as clubs and associations.
On the other hand, sites that require a database (real-estate listings, job boards) aren’t so easy to create. They require a different tool and more time. Your best bet in this case: WordPress.
And since we get this question frequently: No, hypercomplex sites like Airbnb, eBay or Facebook are completely out of reach. You’ll need to hire a development team to build a website like that.
So which are the best website builders, and which ones should you avoid? Here are our rankings, based on our own extensive testing:
