Best website builder for 2020: Wix, Squarespace and more compared

WIx

Wix is the clear front-runner in the race for website builder dominance. It’s the biggest player, with over 110 million websites built, and 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 Wix Corvid, 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 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 you 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 $13-per-month “Combo” plan that covers most needs for a personal website. If you need an ecommerce website builder for your ecommerce store,  Wix offers a $49-per-month “Business VIP” ecommerce website plan for your online store. Those prices do not include a domain, so you’ll need to account for that

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 more than 5,000 visitors a month to your site, make sure you do the math before choosing a plan.  

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 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, though it did get consistently positive marks from reviewers for the quality of design. Where we think it really might shine is for small- to medium-size 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 won’t be able to make mobile-specific edits like with Wix or Duda. We also found consistent high marks for helpful and responsive customer support, which should put business owners’ minds at ease.

Squarespace starts off with a $12-a-month Personal plan, which includes unlimited storage, bandwidth and a domain, and offers an $18 Business website plan that includes unlimited contributors, a Gmail pro account, and e-commerce store builder capabilities. If you go for an “Online Store” plan, you can choose between $26 and $40 a month, the latter of which includes a few final touches like abandoned shopping cart recovery and gift cards. It’s important to note that the $26 online store plan, while maybe slightly above the market rate for an e-commerce site, comes with no transaction fees. So 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

Weebly flies under the radar relative to Wix with 50 million websites created, but offers some excellent options depending on your needs. If you want a simple and easy-to-use do-it-yourself website editor, a large site (more than 25 to 30 pages), unlimited storage, site portability and affordable yet powerful online store capabilities, Weebly plays a good David to Wix’s Goliath.

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, though, 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 $5 a month you can get up and running with your own domain name (albeit with Weebly ads). Its $12-per-month plan will give you an ad-free site with analytics and commerce capabilities, while the $25 plan gets you more store tools, like tax and shipping calculators, inventory management and discounts.

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

Duda is a smaller player compared to the other builders above with around 15 million websites built, and it focuses on a specific market segment: designers and design agencies. It caters to individuals and groups that make a lot of sites, but with a powerful and easy-to-use builder and a number of differentiated offerings, it’s emerged as a good option for anyone looking to develop an online presence.

Duda’s builder boasts a number of features that set it apart, including mobile site customization, 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 a little bit higher than its main competitors like Wix and Weebly, starting off at $14 per month for the Basic plan. At $22, you can add up to four editors for your site (instead of only one with Basic), access advanced analytics, and begin using Duda as a white-label/custom-branded builder, another one of Duda’s selling points. Its “Agency” plan at $74 per month is geared toward web designers who are building pages for multiple clients, and includes eight websites and the ability to download site files for portability.  

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

GoDaddy

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 problem is that it very much feels like an ancillary service — it doesn’t seem like it’s put in the development time and effort that some of the mainstream website building players like Wix, Duda and Weebly have. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for simplicity, and a user-friendly interface, GoDaddy could be a good option.

The GoDaddy “GoCentral” builder is one of the simplest tools available, but it’s also the most restrictive. You can build a website and get it live in an hour or two, and the rigid structures and lack of customization options means it will look good, if not dramatically unique. It is challenging to make specific site edits to the pre-made templates, as with pre-made templates you’re generally restricted to adding a content “block” that has preset text, image and formatting, instead of being able to add, drag or drop individual elements. The editor is more of a Madlibs-style fill-in-the-blank instead of a responsive, free-flowing experience.

It’s slightly ironic that it doesn’t include a domain name in its prices, given its core product offering, but other than that there aren’t too many surprises. The $6 monthly plan is straight-up basic; $10 gets you a PayPal option and SEO help; $15 tacks on email marketing and social media integration, and its $20-per-month plan is for online store capabilities, which are actually pretty impressive. You get abandoned cart recovery, inventory management, discounts and promotions, and Amazon, Etsy and eBay integrations — most of which are usually only available for an online store at higher prices.

GoDaddy is a well-known name, but not for its website builder. Still, we like that there’s a super simple and not-too-expensive option out there for those who don’t care about specific style placements and nuanced themes.

WordPress

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 WebsiteToolTester 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.

Its pricing is fairly cheap, starting off at $5 per month to remove WordPress ads and giving you 6GB of storage. From there it goes to $8 for 13GB of storage and online selling capabilities, and finally a $25 option that allows you to use custom WordPress theme options and add-ons. The $8 option seems like the best deal if you’re setting up a blog and thinking about monetizing it at some point.

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.

Shopify

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,” though 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. Fortunately 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. And if you still have a question, Shopify offers 24-7 phone and chat support and an active online community forum.

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 Shopify” plan is $29 a month and covers most of the basic needs for an online store, while the $79-a-month plan offers gift cards and more staff accounts. From our perspective, it was hard to rationalize the $50 jump from basic to standard, 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. And the many apps available are enticing, but can also add up if you’re using those 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

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 overwhelming for newcomers. If you have a little experience, however, 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 $29 (Standard), $79 (Plus), and $249 (Pro), but what you get at each level differs. Even the lowest BigCommerce plan at $29 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, Google Shopping and Amazon. 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 $150,000 and Pro up to $400,000. So 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 — they even have a discount deal worked out with PayPal where you can save an additional 0.5% to 1% — strikes 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.