Website Builders' Overview

emyspot 4.5/5

One of emyspot’s selling points are the many tools it has to implement a variety of business features.  You can sell up to five items free of cost on your store page, which automatically implements a purchasing page and shopping cart.  Emyspot also lets you create popups on your page that prompt the user to subscribe to your newsletter (and this popup will only appear once every 24 hours).  You can choose to send out newsletters to everyone or specific member groups, and you can view your list of subscribers.  For a fee, you can even send out SMS messages to users that have provided a phone number upon sign up.  It is very easy to personalise all aspects of your theme without any knowledge of HTML.  You can also create up to two language versions of your page (you must translate it yourself), edit the footer on your page (often not a free feature), and redirect old web pages to your new emyspot page using their 301/302 tool.  The paid plans are catered to different business types and grant even more incredible features.

The main drawback of emyspot are its template options.  With no template builder, you’re limited to editing the given templates.  Some templates are clearly more aesthetically appealing than others, but when compared to other website builder options, they feel a bit lacklustre.  In addition, a lot of the features that make emyspot unique require a paid plan, so it may not stand out that much if you’re building a free website.

The different plans each come with unique features.  Domain NamePRO is $40 a year, and includes your own unique web address and personalised email for your site (instead of having the subdomain emyspot.com).  VersionPLUS is $70 a year, and allows you to remove ads and the emyspot link from your page.  With this version, you can also create paid subscription groups if you wish to offer some kind of online subscription plan.  It also allows you to accept PayPal payments for purchases on your page.  This plan also lets you allow advertising on your site for which you make a profit through Google AdSense.  BookingPRO is $85 a year, and allows you to accept online payments for booking.  This is especially helpful if you are running some kind of property rental business, or if you want to require payment in advance for online appointments.  RestaurantPRO is $80 per year, and allows you to create a menu page that displays items and prices.  You can also input daily specials or other special offers.  Finally, StorePRO is $200 a year, and allows you to create a fully functional web store.  You can upload as many products as you want, create customer groups, enable customer comments, enable a loyalty system for repeat customers, and create discount codes for promotional sales.

IM Creator 5/5

IM Creator makes it easy to create beautiful, professional-looking websites with their innovative XPRS editor.  Content can be placed into sections, which automatically arranges elements in a way that is aesthetically appealing and highlights important aspects of your business.  These can include a list of services your business provides, testimonials, your business team, your current projects, and more.  This provides customisable suggestions for content you may wish to include on your web page.  Another powerful feature of IM Creator is that you can create a fully functional web store where all features are available free of cost.  Also, you can implement beautiful, customisable popups that prompt users to sign up for your newsletter.  Finally, the addition of various apps also permits you to implement unique features like OpenTable reservations, a Google calendar display, and a PDF viewer.

One downside of IM Creator is that there isn’t as much freedom with where your content can be placed on your web page as other website builders.  Elements must be placed within sections, and you can only place elements in certain locations.  In addition, the subdomain included with the free plan is very difficult to remember (imxprs.com/free/username), and IM Creator doesn’t sell you a domain with paid plans, and instead only lets you connect ones you have purchased elsewhere.

If you have a premium plan ($9.95/month if you pay twice a year, or $7.95/month if you pay annually), you can connect a purchased domain, as well as get up to ten email addresses associated with that domain.  The only way to remove IM Creator branding and ads is to purchase a pro plan for $350 a year.

Jimdo 4/5

Jimdo offers a ton of features for you to create your website, the strongest of which include its social media implementation.  It offers sharing to 18 websites, as well as several unique options for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ implementation.  It also gives you instructions on implementing a variety of elements not available through the website itself.  These include newsletters through Mailchimp, a search box through Google, and appointment booking through Setmore.  It also offers instructions on how to use POWr plugins, which include everything from digital downloads to popups on your web page.  The premade templates are of high quality, and the page builder is very intuitive.  By entering the “style by element” menu, you can click on anything to easily change its appearance.

The downside, however, is that since it outsources so many of its features, it requires you to learn a whole new interface each time you try to implement one, and since these pages require new user registration, they are all managed in separate locations.  Additionally, since elements can only be added in stacked blocks, the customisation options are limited.

The default subdomain is .jimdo.com, but for $7.50 a month, you can have a JimdoPro account which includes a free domain, an email account for that domain, mobile device optimisation, and the removal of ads.  The business plan is $20 a month, and allows you additional store options (unlimited products, discount codes, weight-specific shipping, and additional payment options).

Moonfruit 5/5

Moonfruit offers an amazing, in-depth website builder that allows you to modify as much or as little of your web page as you want.  You can drag and drop elements to where you want them to be on a page, or have the builder automatically distribute your element based upon various parameters.  There are a variety of gorgeous templates, and a large number of fully customisable elements to add to your page.  You can change just about everything, even the menus and how your shopping cart appears.  It comes pre-loaded with a variety of common icons you might wish to implement on your website, such as an arrow, a phone, an envelope, a pencil, and all kinds of social media icons.  Similar to Jimdo, Moonfruit gives instructions on how to implement features not offered by the website itself, such as newsletters through MailChimp, or chat through Chatango.

The main drawback of Moonfruit is its lack of a free plan, although you can utilise a fifteen day free trial to see if it’s a website builder you’d like to invest in.  The minimum cost for Moonfruit is $6 per month ($4.50 a month if you pay for a year at once), although this still lacks some features.  And again, it is unfortunate that newsletters and chat are outsourced to different websites, requiring a new account to manage them.

All plans are free of ads.  Any plan standard and above come with a free domain if paid annually (starting at $9 per month).  Domains can be purchased for $15.99 a year, and come with 5 email addresses included.

Page Cloud 3.5/5

Page Cloud has an extremely intuitive website builder.  Not only can you drag and drop your content anywhere on the page, but you can uniquely drag and drop content from other pages like images and videos onto your Page Cloud page.  The beautiful themes available for the site make it easy to create a stunning web page, or you can start from scratch with a blank template.  The editor on the side of the page makes it easy to modify anything you’ve added as well.

One problem is that Page Cloud itself doesn’t offer many features on its own.  It thrives on the full integration of widgets.  As such, it lacks many of the common features most other builders offer like menu bars, forms, and a web store.  Although widgets are easily incorporated, it can be frustrating to have to manage most of your features off-site.

There is no free version of Page Cloud; the only plan is $24 per month, or $20 per month if you pay annually.  If you pay annually, you can also get a free domain.

uCoz 3/5

Unique benefits of uCoz are the ease with which your website can be promoted on social media and mass email, and the ability to manage users into groups.  Customized social media buttons can easily be applied on your website, and you can promote your website on your own social media with up to ten posts a day in the free plan.   Allowing visitors to register for your site allows means by which users can post to forums on your site.  Forums can be used as a means for you to supply rapid customer support, or as a means for users to give support to one another.  You can also use these membership groups to send out emails to specific groups.  Emails can even be customised to include the name that was entered when signing up for the email address, giving a much more personalised feel to your newsletters.  Another huge benefit of uCoz is the ability to store backups of your website, in case you get ambitious in trying to overhaul your website and decide you liked a previous design better.  Finally, a nice feature is that you can add a shopping cart icon to your page that links back to the user’s cart at any time.  Other helpful features of uCoz include a mobile version, a default 400MB of storage space for images, the ability to add blogs and photo albums, an option to implement a search engine for your site, and the ability to create “site news” entries.

However, there are quite a few drawbacks to uCoz.  First of all, you can’t create a store to sell items online unless you pay at minimum $1.99 a month.   In addition, a lot of the customisation options for your page require a working knowledge of HTML.  The template options that are provided for you appear relatively outdated, and greatly decreases the professional appearance of webpages built on this platform.  In addition, the social media publisher maxes out at 25 posts per day for even the most expensive premium plan, which is a disappointing limitation on one of their best features.

There are several typical features one might wish to pay for in order to add legitimacy to your business website.  To get your own domain (a “.com” instead of a “.usite.pro”), uCoz offers custom domains for $14.58 per year.  You can also connect a domain already purchased to uCoz free of charge.  If you want to remove advertising placed by uCoz on your webpage (ads that make the website host money), you will need a basic plan of $5.99 per month.  To remove the uCoz copyright (located in the footer of each web page), you’ll need an optimal plan of $7.99 per month.  The optimal plan (and all plans more expensive than it) includes a free custom domain if you purchase twelve months up front.

Webflow 4/5

Webflow is an in-depth website builder that allows a vast amount of customisation.  It combines the two types of website builders into one comprehensive unit (drag-and-drop and customisation blocks).  It allows you to drag and drop items above or below other content on your page, and then snaps them to a location on the grid in order to evenly space them relative to your other content.  However, if you don’t like this forced positioning, you can use the style tab to fine-tune the item’s location.   This allows you to create the precise positioning you want while maintaining a formulaic distance between elements so Webflow can easily transform your website for viewing on any mobile device or tablet.  Webflow also makes it easy to enable a business team to work together in order to create a website, because you can easily set which content is open to editing to all users versus content that only the main administrator can modify.

The main downside is that all of the customisation possibilities make the website builder a bit complex.  It is a lot less intuitive than other builders on the list.  The means by which Webflow organises content also draws heavily upon programming, relying on things like classes, collections, states, and attributes.  It may be difficult to achieve the effect you want when so many complicated variables are in the way.

Hosting on Webflow costs $15 per month per site, which does not include the cost of the domain.  However, with a paid plan, hosting is only $5 per site per month.  If you wish to remove Webflow branding (and achieve cheaper hosting), you’ll need to purchase a professional plan for $35 a month.

Webnode (4/5 for website, 2/5 for store)

One of the most unique features about Webnode are that it has support in 20 different languages, and (if you have a premium plan) you can also build a website in any of these languages (although you’ll need to do translation yourself).  This is an amazing opportunity for those who are (or have access to individuals that are) multi-lingual and want to reach out to users around the globe.  Additionally, Webnode has absolutely beautiful templates available that are easy to use, very customizable, and look like they were made by an expert in web design.  It’s easy to use Webnode to create a beautiful and impressive business page.

However, if you’re looking to build an online web store, Webnode is a terrible choice.  Although it does allow you to sell up to five items in your store for free, Webnode stores use the old version of the site builder.  All of the templates are extremely outdated, and since there’s no template builder for either version of Webnode, it’s impossible to change.  The store looks so outdated it makes it unlikely that people would trust the page to be a legitimate web store.  And there is no way to integrate both versions of the site builder, so if you wish to sell items on your store, you can only use the old version of the website builder.  Finally, a minor drawback is that you also are unable to craft a version of your site specifically for mobile devices in either form of Webnode.

There are several typical features one might wish to pay for in order to add legitimacy to your business website.  To get your own domain (a “.com” instead of a “.webnode.com”), Webnode offers custom domains for $18.95 per year.  You can only use a custom domain if you have purchased a premium plan.  All premium plans also come with one year of custom domain for free.  Premium plans are priced differently for the different versions of Webnode.  If you want to be able to have your own mailing address for your website through which to send out newsletters, as well as the option to build your own forms that users can submit, you’ll need a mini plan ($5.95 a month for the normal site version, and $7.95 per month for the store version).  The store version of the mini plan also offers the ability to process credit card payments.  If you want to have a custom footer (so you can remove the Webnode branding), backup and recovery for your web page, and/or if you wish to enable multiple language versions of your site, you’ll need a standard plan ($11.95 per month for a normal site, and $19.95 per month for a store site).  The store site version of the standard plan also allows the option to import and export products, and the ability to add product variations (such as different sizes or colours).

Webs 2/5

Webs.com is a very intuitive website builder that anyone can use with ease.  One feature that stands out is that Webs has very good social integration.  You can add links to twelve different social media sites, as well as add additional features for Twitter and Facebook.

However, Webs.com has very outdated templates, and with no template builder, you’re limited to what they provide.  In addition, where you can place items on your website are very limited.  Everything has a formulaic location, and each “App” has to be in its own page.  The options for customisation of elements on your page are also rather limited.  Additionally, Webs.com is notorious for poor customer service.

The starter plan allows you to remove Webs branding and get a custom domain name, and costs $5.99 per month.  To get an email address associated with your page, you’ll need the enhanced plan, which costs $12.99 a month.  Finally, if you want the ability to add unlimited items to your store, you’ll need the pro plan for $22.99 a month.

Webydo 4/5

Webydo allows you to start your website with the choice of a design template, a wireframe (a layout without any content filled in), or a completely blank page.  This unique flexibility lets you choose how much of your website you wish to build yourself, with as much or as little customisation as you desire.  It has a website builder layout similar to Adobe Photoshop, which lets you fine-tune all of the individual elements of your page with ease.   The intuitive layout uses different boxes (“design” and “properties”) to allow maximal customisation with minimal clutter.  There are also unique tools that allow you to utilise images in order to create nice headers.  It allows you to choose an image effect, the color of that effect, and set lines and text within your image.  Finally, Webydo offers a variety of Facebook and Twitter social media integration options.  It also lets you integrate widgets on your page for those services not offered by Webydo (these include implementing a store via Ecwid or PayPal, commenting via Facebook or Disqus, chat via Olark or Tido, and mailing lists via GetSiteControl).  Webydo is also unique in that, for most of these tools, you are presented with multiple widget options for the same function.  You can also implement a variety other widgets using POWr plugins.

The biggest drawback of Webydo is the lack of a free plan, although you can use a seven day free trial to experiment with the builder and see if you wish to invest in it.  However, the least expensive plan is $90 per month (the lowest is $75 per month but requires annual payment), a very steep price.  You’re essentially paying for the website builder itself, as Webydo doesn’t have unique features other than the widgets from other websites.  Finally, many design features are for web design professionals and won’t be used by the typical website builder.

The only feature not included with the main plan is the ability to add HTML code to your site, for which you’ll need a team plan.  A team plan is $180 per month.

Weebly 4.5/5

Weebly has an extremely intuitive website builder that makes it easy to create the professional website you need.  The beautiful themes make it easy to start your website out with a professional appearance, and the drag and drop format makes it easy to place content on the page.  The most unique feature of Weebly is its app store.  Users are constantly adding apps that can be easily integrated into your page.  These apps add feature like social media integration, online booking, and chat, although the possibilities are limitless.  Because the app store is constantly being updated with user-created content, there are limitless possibilities for content that can be added to your page.

The main downside of Weebly is that content can only be placed in specific locations on your page, limiting the freedom of appearance.   The most you can do to customise appearance is to drag content next to each other, creating columns, and to add spacers to further separate two items.  Additionally, some apps in the app store come at a cost, meaning that even if you have a paid plan, you may not have access to all features on Weebly.

If you want to remove Weebly branding from your store, you’ll need the starter plan for $8 per month.  This plan also allows you to add an online store and get a free domain.  If you want an optimal webstore, you’ll want a business plan for $25 per month.  This allows you to create unlimited webstore items, no longer has Weebly take a cut of your profits, lets you sell digital goods, and includes tools like coupons, shipping and tax calculator, and inventory management.  Finally, if you feel like something is missing from your store, for $49 per month you can have gift cards, automatically calculated shipping rates, and email campaigns to promote your store.

Wix 4/5

Wix has by far one of the best website builders on the market.  You can drag and drop content to anywhere you desire, but there are also buttons that automatically align and distribute the elements on your page.  It allows full freedom to place content and the ability to modify any aspect of any element while maintaining an extremely intuitive interface.  The default templates are very aesthetically appealing, but Wix also offers the option to have a completely blank template if you don’t want any outside influence on your site design.  The same builder can be used to create beautiful newsletters to send out to subscribers, called ShoutOuts. There are pre-made layouts to suggest ways to create your newsletter (such as promote your site, announce a sale, and send out a daily special).   Wix also offers a vast number of tools to promote your site on various forms of social media, with the more popular social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, and Google+) having additional options for further integration.  They also have stellar e-commerce implementation, where you can personally modify not just your store page, but also your cart page, your thank you page, and the individual product page.  Finally, Wix offers an app market that is constantly being updated with new user-created content.  There are apps created by Wix and apps created by users of the site.  This allows potentially limitless content to be easily integrated onto your page.  Some of these apps include booking (if your business is renting out a property or booking appointments), menus (if your business is a restaurant and you want to display your menu on your site), and events (if you are trying to promote an event that your business is involved in).

The main drawback of Wix is that the free version of websites created with its builder tend to lack a professional appearance.  The Wix banner is predominately displayed at both the top and bottom of the page, scrolling with the user as they view it so the viewer can never dissociate the site from Wix branding.  Additionally, the free URL is difficult to enter; it requires typing username.wixsite.com/sitename.  Again, it appears unprofessional to have your business site be a subpage of a subdomain.  Finally, not all apps are free, meaning that even with the most expensive plan you won’t have access to all features of Wix (although you do get some Wix premium apps for free with premium plans).

If you wish to remove the Wix branding, it costs $9.75 per month for a combo plan.  This plan also provides you with a free domain if you purchase the plan annually.  If you wish to fully implement an online store, it costs $16.58 per month for an eCommerce plan.

WordPress.com 4.5/5

WordPress is a well-known website builder that is easy to manage and comes with beautiful templates.  It’s easy to add new updates to your site with content posts, which are useful if you want to keep visitors up to date with your current business news.  If you’re planning on creating a blog, there is no site better equipped for it; WordPress makes it easy to create posts and display them in various ways (including sorting them by tags and categories), and it fosters a great blog community where users can follow one another and display who they communicate with on their own site.  This allows for easy and unique ways to promote your website.  Additionally, the cost to remove ads and get your own domain is by far the lowest offered on the web.

However, because WordPress is so well-geared towards blogs, it doesn’t really function well for other types of websites.  It is possible to create other types of pages, but it certainly isn’t easy.  You can only add content to Widget sections, the locations of which are dictated by your theme.  Most items must be changed for the entire page, and can’t be modified by section (for example, fonts and colour palette).  Additionally, a lot of customisation is prevented without having a premium plan.

If you wish to remove ads and receive a custom domain, it is only $2.99 per month for the personal plan.  If you wish to unlock full customisation of your site, as well as have free access to premium templates, you’ll need the premium plan for $8.25 per month.

Yola 3/5

Yola lets you build websites quickly and efficiently using an intuitive builder.  You just drag your widgets from the top and place them above or below other elements on the page.  To modify any element’s appearance, click on it and select the “edit” link.  You can also use the design feature to change the appearance of individual elements by clicking on them, or you can use it to change features for the entire page (like font and text colour).

However, the placement of items on your site is forced within subsections of blocks on your page, resulting in very limited customisation.  The templates are lacklustre, and the builder itself appears a bit outdated.  There also aren’t many features offered by Yola that aren’t offered on every standard website builder.  Finally, some features must be purchased even if you have a paid plan, such as a web store or an email address.

To remove Yola branding, it costs $14.95 a month for a silver plan.  You can get a custom domain with the bronze plan, which costs $6.95 a month, or you can purchase your own domain from Yola for $11.95 per year.  Email addresses can be purchased if you have a domain for $9.96 per year.  You can also create an online store on your page for $10 per month.