Build Your Digital Presence Quickly and Affordably
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Your Website is Essential To Your Success
Whether you run a business or just want to establish an online presence, a website is critical. However, not everyone is skilled in programming and not everyone wants to invest time and money into a custom-built website. That’s where no-code website builders come into play, allowing you to quickly and affordably create websites that rival their traditionally coded counterparts.
Most websites are built using these tools, so no matter the size of your business, you shouldn’t have any second-thoughts about using these tools. While offering slightly less customization and a more limited capacity for advanced functionality, no-code website editors generally fit all the primary requirements for a business of any size.
In this guide, we'll be covering some of the market's most popular tools to build your website and inform you of what each tool can and can't do for you and your business.
Only have a minute to spare? Here’s the list of the best website builders and how we categorize them:
Wix: An all-in-one solution with the best combination of ease-of-use, functionality, price and customization, making it our favorite.
WordPress: The king of content management and the most popular option, offering advanced functionality and customization.
Shopify: Your e-commerce ally, providing all-in-one solutions for online shops.
Squarespace: Great for bloggers and small businesses seeking basic functionality, offering a good balance between ease of use, customization and affordability.
Now let's dive into each of these platforms to provide a comprehensive overview of their strengths, functionality, and limitations
Wix: Where Creativity Meets Functionality
Wix has been my favorite no-code development environment. It’s a versatile platform that offers an ideal combination of ease of use, functionality and customization. Whether you’re starting from scratch or using their templates, Wix lets you craft professional and visually appealing websites with unparalleled ease - and it’s budget-friendly!
Functionality
Wix offers a wide array of built-in tools, including SEO and marketing features, plus a range of apps to embed anything to your site from job boards to maps. Its SEO capabilities are top-notch, helping your site climb the ranks on Google.
Wix also simplifies email marketing, supports Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads, and even lets you create a Google Business Profile, run social media marketing, design logos and revise your branding. With in-depth analytics, you can track user activity, billing, payments, and customer communications in real-time.
However, it's important to note that some third-party plugins may not offer the exact functionality you desire, limiting customization possibilities. If you're looking for advanced API integrations, Wix provides fewer native options and may require third-party services or coding.
Customization
Wix stands out in terms of customization. It provides an empty (or customized if you pick a template) canvas for you to drag and drop components and place them anywhere on the page. It feels like you are drawing a website’s user interface. Combined with the ability to embed custom code, Wix gives you unparalleled freedom on how your website looks.
However, it’s worth noting that this flexibility can lead to mistakes and misaligned elements. Wix provides the same level of flexibility for ensuring mobile responsiveness, placing the responsibility on the user to ensure the site functions well on mobile devices.
Ease of Use
Wix is incredibly user-friendly, and is a top choice for beginners. With over 800 free templates and an intuitive interface, you can create a website in a day or less without any coding knowledge. It makes the development process effortless and extremely intuitive to a point where you may not have to contact support or delve into documentation even once.
If you do not want to spend any time learning how to develop a website, and are looking for a quick way to get one, Wix is the solution.
Security, Stability & Support
Wix offers stable hosting with enterprise-grade security. This includes threat prevention, around the clock monitoring, HTTPS for all domains and rapid response of your site goes down. Although, it is very unlikely that your site goes down as Wix can handle tens of thousands of people on your website at one time. Plus, you can upgrade your plan to increase that bandwidth. Although their support is responsive, they are inconsistent at times. The documentation, however, is solid, and is valuable for solving problems experienced during the development.
Note: If you don’t have a domain name yet, Wix offers you a one year of free domain registration when you purchase a plan for the first time.
WordPress: The King of Content Management
Over 43% of websites run on WordPress. But it’s not just a website builder, but a robust Content Management System that offers unparalleled customization and functionality in building websites. Even though it requires a decent technical expertise to use, WordPress is a powerful tool to build a website tailored to your needs.
Functionality
WordPress's strength lies in its extensive customization through a vast library of over 55,000 plugins. These plugins add additional functionality to your website, enabling you to create anything from e-commerce platforms to social media integration. You can connect with marketing tools like MailChimp and Google Ads, connect to Amazon or Pinterest and even integrate essential software like Salesforce through APIs.
It has virtually anything you may need for your website with its plugins and built-in integrations. However, be prepared for the cost, as some of the best plugins are paid.
Customization
WordPress gives you complete control over your website through its own editor and Elementor to build fully customized pages. It allows you to code in HTML and CSS if you need to add extra customization. However, this flexibility comes with a learning curve and the need for technical expertise. On top of it, one of the biggest downsides of WordPress is that the auto-generated pages through plugins lack customization, and you’re left with the given design of the plugin that is adapted to your website’s style (color, fonts and more).
Ease-of-Use
WordPress is not an all-in-one solution like Wix but offers a wide range of templates, and plugins, both free and paid. Even though its page editor, Elementor, is a relatively easy drag-and-drop builder, navigating WordPress as a whole is complicated. So, learning WordPress can be a bit overwhelming for beginners, but there are plenty of tutorials and resources available.
Security, Stability, and Support
WordPress is incredibly stable and shows you site health for your information. It offers a wealth of documentation and resources. However, support for individual plugins or apps vary.
Shopify: Your E-Commerce Ally
If you're planning to start an e-commerce business, Shopify is your go-to solution. It offers an all-in-one package for online shops, from inventory management to marketing campaigns. Even though it is on the pricier side, it is a worthy investment if you sell products online (or even in person). Here's what you need to know:
Functionality
Shopify is tailor-made for e-commerce. It simplifies the entire e-commerce process by providing email marketing features, templates for e-commerce policies, order management, inventory tracking, in-depth analytics and more. It’s an all-in-one solution with hosting, security, and comprehensive payments processing through its own system, Shopify Payments.
You can also choose from a wide array of apps to enhance your store's functionality. While the SEO functionality is not as advanced as some of the other tools, and may require additional apps, Shopify is an excellent tool for online shops (even for ones with existing websites).
Customization
While Shopify offers numerous templates for your online store, customization is somewhat limited once you have a theme. There are a set amount of elements you can add for each section of the template, the locations of these items are predetermined, and the content can only be customised to a very small extent. You can adjust settings like colours, typography, and icons but more significant changes may require coding knowledge, especially if you want to create fully customised sections using their proprietary language, Liquid or even HTML for some templates. CSS is useful for additional customization, but is imperfect and buggy.
Note that the level of customization increases with the quality of the theme, so free themes have very limited flexibility. But the nice part of Shopify is that, even by using the free themes you can produce a great, professional-looking website.
Ease-of-Use
Shopify excels in making it easy for beginners to build a shop quickly. Select a theme, add images, text, and you're ready to go. However, for complex and fully customised websites, you'll need to invest some time in learning the software, including its coding language.
Stability, and Support
Shopify offers different plans to suit businesses of all sizes and is known for its stability. But note that better plans enable more users to visit your site at once. There's extensive documentation and an active community to seek help from. However, remember that the look of your store largely depends on the chosen theme, and the support for it will come from your theme’s developer.
SquareSpace
SquareSpace is an excellent choice for blogging and small businesses looking for an online presence. It’s relatively easy to use, not expensive and provides a decent amount of functionality.
Functionality
SquareSpace offers basic functionality with the possibility of adding more through custom code. However, the code is only client-side meaning you will not be able to interact with servers and APIs, but can get and transfer data to databases.
It's primarily designed for simple websites. Its SEO features are basic and include keyword integration and basic site settings. The marketing capabilities, as well as any additional functionality are limited, and may require its extensions. Note that it works really well with javascript code within HTML, and you can add as much functionality as you want using javascript in their custom code block in the editor.
Customization
SquareSpace provides more flexibility than some other platforms. With around 150 website templates across various industries you can find one that suits your needs and goals. Their drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to create your desired design. You can also use custom code for additional customization, although it may require disabling AJAX capabilities for a smoother experience.
Ease-of-Use
SquareSpace strikes a balance between flexibility and ease of use, making it a great alternative for bloggers and small businesses. It's user-friendly and simplifies content management without the need for extensive plugins.
Security, Stability, and Support
SquareSpace offers a stable environment with good documentation and ample online resources.
Each of these no-code website development tools has its unique strengths and weaknesses. Before making your choice, take advantage of their free trials and explore them thoroughly to ensure they meet your specific needs and goals. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned developer, there's a low-code website builder out there to help you bring your online vision to life.
Happy developing!
Kaan Dincer
Co-Founder & Executive
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