The Best Paid and Free Website Builders of 2019

• Wix – Best Free Ecommerce Website Builder
• HostGator – Best Pricing Options
• Constant Contact – Best Website Builder for Small Businesses
• WordPress – Best for Blogging and content management
• Weebly – Best Website Builder for Musicians

Before website builders came along, the only way to create a website was to either learn to code or hire someone to do it for you. Now, thanks to site builder tools, anyone can create a website. Website builders do a lot of the hard work for you. They let you focus on design and content instead of the technical tasks. If you’re a small business or someone who wants a personal website, website builders make it easy to quickly get a simple website online. The best part is, you won't have to spend a fortune on a team of developers.

There are many website builder tools out there, and each one comes with its own pros and cons. Over the last 7 years we've built dozens of sites, and in the process we've identified the best tools for the job. Below is an overview of the 5 best website builders, which you can use to get started.

A Detailed List of the Best Website Builders of 2019

1. Wix – Overall Best Site Builder

Wix is currently one of the more popular website builders. In fact, it’s currently being used by over 100 million people across 190 different countries. The reason it is so popular is because it allows just about anyone to create a great looking website, without having to know anything about web design or web development.

Is Wix Beginner Friendly?

Wix is practically the definition of beginner friendly. It uses a drag-and-drop system so that anyone, no matter how much knowledge of computers they have, can design a website. It also comes with plenty of templates, so that you don't have to do much customization. However, there are so many different customization options, that some may find it overwhelming.

Turnkey

Wix is easy to setup fairly simple to go from nothing to a full operational website. Wix does most of the work for you, providing you with templates and a drag-and-drop system. Users can get their website up and running in under an hour, making it great for people and businesses who are on a tight schedule. But one word of caution - once your website goes live, you can't change your template choice, so make sure you get one you like before finishing.

Speed and Uptime

The bottom line is that Wix has great site speed. For most users and business, Wix site speed is more than sufficient. Since the wix page builder relies heavily on Java, sometimes it may take longer to load the actual page builder, but once it does it's rather responsive. This doesn't impact the site speed your front-end users will experience. All Wix websites are hosted on Wix servers, and they have a dedicated team in place to ensure fast speeds and high uptime. Currently, Wix boasts an uptime of 99.8%.

Wix pricing

Wix offers several pricing plans, ranging from free to $39 per month. The cheaper plans come with ads, and limit some of the features available. The more you spend, the better Wix experience you'll get. One the the biggest drawbacks of the free plan is that it doesn’t offer an option to use your own, custom, domain name.

Wix review Summary

If you are looking for a simple way to make a website, that can online quickly, Wix is a great choice. It comes packed with features designed to make the process easy while still delivering a great website, and there are enough pricing options that you can find one that suits your budget. Read our editors Wix review here.

---

2. Hostgator - Best Pricing Options

HostGator provides several services, including web hosting, domain registering, and a website builder called Gator. What makes HostGator so popular is that anyone can use it - from absolute beginners to experienced designers looking for more advanced options.

Is Hostgator Beginner Friendly?

HostGator itself can have a slight learning curve, but its website builder, Gator, is easy to use. This is another drag-and-drop system which allows users to design their website just by dragging elements around on the screen. To make it even easier to understand, HostGator provides an onboarding video which explains how everything works.

Is Hostgator a Turnkey Solution?

It's easy to get started with the Gator website builder and have a completed website in a short amount of time. Once you've signed up, you simply pick a template that you like (they're organized by industry for ease), drag the elements you want onto the page, then customize the text and content however you want. From there you can publish your website.

Speed and Uptime of Hostgator

HostGator guarantees 99.99% uptime, which is essentially the best you can find. In terms of speed, HostGator also scores very high. The average response time, no matter where you are in the world, is under 1 second. Most users will find themselves on a shared server, which in some cases can result in slightly slower load times. However, unless you are picky, your website will load quickly with HostGator hosting, especially if you keep the site optimized.

Hostgator Pricing

As HostGator provides many different services - from web hosting to WordPress hosting to cloud hosting - there are several pricing options. Plans start at $2.95 per month for the first year, and then increase after that. You can see all of HostGator's pricing options here.

Hostgator Summary

If you're looking for an all around service, HostGator is a good choice. With it you can register a domain of your choosing, have reliable hosting, and a great website builder. Pricing is also relatively affordable for the first year, so you can test it out and see if you like it.

---

3. Constant Contact - Best Website Builder for Small Businesses

Constant Contact is known primarily as an email marketing service, but it also provides a great website builder. What separates this tool from the pack is that when you build a website with Constant Contact, they do a lot of the work for you through the use of Artificial Intelligence.

Is Constant Contact Website Builder Beginner Friendly?

Constant Contact’s website builder is extremely beginner friendly. You simply answer some questions about your business or niche, and Constant Contact will build a complete website for you. Or, if you have a Facebook Business page, you can sync them up, and Constant Contact will pull information from the page, including images, to build your site.

How Quick Is it to start a website?

Because all it takes to start a website is either answering some questions or syncing to Facebook, it’s easy to publish a finished website with the Constant Contact website builder.

Uptime and Pagespeed of Constant Contact Website Builder

Constant Contact utilizes a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve site speed. A CDN essentially works by connecting the user to the nearest server, of which there are hundreds all around the world.

Constant Contact Website Builder Pricing

The website builder comes with several pricing plans. The first plan is completely free, but you’ll have ads on your website from Constant Contact. If you want to remove these ads, and get other features like your own domain name, advanced analytics, and the ability to sell more items in your store, you’ll want to upgrade to either the Starter or Business Plus plan, which cost $10 and $20 per month, respectively.

Summary

If you’re looking for a quick way to build a website, Constant Contact may be the way to go. This is especially true if you have a completed Facebook Business page already. Some users may find a lack of customization options but the speed of going from 0 to a complete website makes up for it.

---

4. WordPress – Best for Blogging and content management

One of the most popular choices for building a website is WordPress. It’s so popular in fact that it is currently used by more than 33% of all websites. With WordPress you can create practically any type of website you want, and best of all, the software is open-source and completely free to use.

Is Wordpress Beginner Friendly?

There is a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to building a website with WordPress. Many hosting provides make it easy to install the software, but even once it’s running, you still need to figure out how to do things like create pages, change your theme, or add new plugins. Once you get the hang of it, the software is easy to use and is very customizable and comprehensive.

How Turnkey of a solution is Wordpress?

With WordPress it’s easy to put up a simple website in just a matter of minutes. However, to get to a fully realized website that has all the features you’re looking for can take a little more effort. WordPress itself doesn’t come with many advanced features - you need to add them in through WordPress Plugins or customized themes. This requires you to find the plugins you need, install them, then customize them or in some cases, you may need a developer to custopmize plugins if you are after specfic features.

How long it takes you to get your website running will largely depend on how complex it is. If you want a lot of features or customization, it will take a little longer with WordPress as it is a more robust website builder and website content management system.

Wordpress Speed and Uptime

WordPress itself is a fairly light weight software, which affords your website plenty of speed. However, your website speed largely depends on the theme and plugins you use. As for uptime, WordPress gets installed with your hosting provider, so your uptime will depend on them.

Is Wordpress free?

WordPress is free to use. You simply download it to your hosting provider, most of which offer Wordpress installation for free. However, you do have to pay for hosting and purchasing your own domain

Wordpress Summary

WordPress is more of a Content Management System (CMS) than a true website builder. It’s perfect if you plan on starting a blog or if you want to build a business website, due to its numerous customization options. If you’re a beginner it may take a little while to master, but it’s easy to use once you get the hang of it.

---

5. Weebly – Best Website Builder for Musicians

Weebly is another website builder that uses a drag-and-drop approach. It’s currently operating more than 40 million sites, making it one of the more popular site builders on the market.

Is it Beginner Friendly?

If you’re looking for a website builder that is easy enough for beginners, but also comes with plenty of advanced features, Weebly is a good choice. Like the other drag-and-drop systems on this list, it’s easy to design the type of site you want just by moving things around on the page.

Is Weebly Turnkey?

When creating a website with Weebly, they walk you through the entire process. They even offer some great guides on things like SEO, so you can take your website to another level once it’s complete.

How fast does a Weebly site load?

The speed of your Weebly site will depend on a few factors, including which template you go with or the size of the images your page loads. However, across the board the speed is quite good. You'll notice that Weebly's sites are a little quicker to load on a desktop computer, but a little slower on mobile. In terms of uptime, Weebly is considered one of the better services available - at the time of this writing, it had a 100% uptime for the past 90 days. You can see more about Weebly’s current uptime stats here.

Weebly Pricing

Weebly has 4 different pricing options, ranging from completely free up to $25 per month, paid annually. As you move up the pricing plans, you get additional features like a free domain name, more storage space, and even a Google Adwords credit. You can learn more about Weebly’s pricing options here.

Weebly Summary

Weebly is one of the best website builders for small businesses. It’s easy to get started thanks to their drag-and-drop approach and there are enough templates and features you can add to make your site feel like your own. It comes with all the tools your small business will need, including the ability to create an online store.

---

Each of the website builders above has their own strengths. Which one you go with will ultimately depend on the type of site you want to build, how quickly you want to build it, how much work you’re willing to do, and how much you want to pay. If you’re unable to decide though, our best three selections would be:

• Wix
• HostGator
• Constant Contact

Each of these website builders comes with a free option, so you can test it out to see if you like it. We hope this guide was able to shed some light on the best website builders, and that you’ll be able to create your perfect website with ease.