Tips for Choosing a Website Builder in 2022

As a startup or small business, you have a great business plan, a dedicated team ready to give it your all, and a brand with enormous potential. However, all of these aspects would be useless if your business does not have an online presence. Unfortunately, not every business owner has the skills, experience, or budget to build a website from scratch.

This is where website builders come in. It allows you to create beautiful, functional and highly creative websites without technical knowledge. There are many good website builder tools available in the market, and hence, choosing a good one among them would be quite a challenge. This blog will provide you with a checklist and tips to select the best website builder tool in 2022.

Checklist for Selecting the Best Website Building Tools for You

If the tool is easy to use and understand?

One of the first things you would look at in the website builder is how easy it is to use and understand. We also mean that the website builder should be suitable for beginners or non-technical users. The website builder should also come with lots of ready-to-use components. In these criteria, Wix and WordPress.com are the best match.

Does the tool offer many ready-to-use templates?

When choosing a website builder tool, you want to make sure that the tool gives you plenty of ready-to-use components. A good amount of professional templates and features like Google Analytics, CRM, third-party marketing tools, etc., would make the tool the best possible candidate. WooCommerce and Shopify are the tools that best match these criteria.

Does the tool provide customer support?

Customer support is another important criteria that you should consider while selecting the website builder tool for your organization. Although you will find many website building tools that offer a user-friendly interface, there will be very few that offer dedicated and 24/7 customer support. BigCommerce and Squarespace are two tools that easily fit into these criteria.

Does the tool offer good value for money?

When you choose the best website builder tool, it won’t be free. You need to pay some amount of money to enjoy good quality features. However, you should measure the value for money when selecting the website builder tool. If the tool gives you a lot of extra features, it is worth spending. HubSpot and WordPress.org fit these criteria.

These are essential things you need to consider when choosing a website builder tool. So, considering these factors, let’s analyze the best website builder tool for 2022.

Tools to check out to start your website without hiring a developer

1. HubSpot Website Builder

HubSpot is a rich and powerful content management system designed for small and medium businesses. Moreover, the tool provides a personalized experience for all customers.

Advantages

• Default responsive web design
• Integrated installation for CDN and SSL

The inconvenients

• Steep learning curve
• No backup and restore guarantee

Pricing

Beginner: From $45/month
Professional: From $800/month
Business: From $3,200/month

2. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce website builder tools that helps you build an online storefront. The open source tool can work seamlessly with WordPress.

Advantages

• Reliable and dependable customer support
• Provides access to powerful blogging and SEO tools

The inconvenients

• Specific to WordPress only
• Limited option for customization

Pricing

WooCommerce is available for free, but you will need to purchase a domain name and hosting. For example, Siteground will charge $3.99/month for hosting, Bluehost WoCommerce premium plan costs $32.95/month, and WP Engine charges $30/month.

3.WordPress.com

WordPress.com is one of the most popular blogging platforms that provide hosting services. The custom hosting solution mainly focuses on creating a blog website or a web application.

Advantages

• Backup and restore are supported
• Allows high-level customization

The inconvenients

• Cannot use custom plugin unless using business plan or higher
• No option to make core or infrastructure-level changes

Pricing

Personal: $4/month
Premium: $8/month
Enterprise: $24/month
E-commerce: $45/month

4. WordPress.org

WordPress.org is one of the first names that comes to mind when you think of the best website builder tool. The open source tool gives you maximum control over the website.

Advantages

• Thousands of ready-to-use plugins and themes
• Allows you to integrate popular business tools

The inconvenients

• The slightly steep learning curve as you have to know everything
• You must take care of your accommodation

Pricing

A WordPress website builder is available for free, but you need to purchase hosting and a domain name. After that, it will cost you around $14.99/year on average, depending on the best hosting deal you can get that meets your compliance and technical requirements.

5. Wix

Wix is ​​an easy-to-use website builder tool that has made building websites enjoyable for users. It has become a giant eCommerce website builder with storefront related tools and features.

Advantages

• Fully Hosted Website Builder
• Lots of ready-to-use design templates

The inconvenients

• Moving away from Wix is ​​complicated
• Free and Connected Domain Plan Shows Wix Branded Ads

Pricing

VIP: $4.37/month
Unlimited: $2.48/month
Handset: $1.68/month
Connect domain: $1.07/month

6.BigCommerce

BigCommerce is one of the most widely used website builder tools for creating e-commerce websites. Businesses that need to scale can opt for this website builder.

Advantages

• The server and the technical part are taken care of
• Integrates with all major payment gateways

The inconvenients

• Not an industry standard that could be restrictive to the use of integrations
• Private platform, so migration becomes difficult

Pricing

Basic: $29.95/month
Plus: $79.95/month
Professional: $299.95/month

7. Square Space

Squarespace is a popular website building tool among the business community for its ease of use and beautiful designs. Most artists and creatives use Squarespace to build their sites.

Advantages

• Enterprise-grade infrastructure for website hosting
• Secure and robust website builder

The inconvenients

• Limited integrations with third-party services
• Only supports Stripe, Apple Pay and PayPal as payment gateway

Pricing

Website: $12/month and $18/month
Online showcase: $26/month and $40/month

8.Shopify

Shopify is one of the leading website builder tools for developing e-commerce websites. The web-based CMS comes with all the necessary tools to help you create an online storefront.

Advantages

• Fully hosted all-in-one e-commerce website builder
• It comes with an integrated payment solution

The inconvenients

• A lot of work is required to update store inventory with a dynamic product portfolio
• Bad content management system

Pricing

Basic: $29/month
Shopify: $79/month
Advanced Shopify: $299/month
Shopify Light: $9/month

9. Zyro

Zyro is one of the most influential and affordable website builders built by Hostinger. The website builder tool offers customers a drag and drop feature and a free hosting plan.

Advantages

• Affordable prices and many ready-to-use components
• Access over a million images for free

The inconvenients

• Not easy to change template
• Lack of third-party integration facility

Pricing

Released: $2.61/month
E-commerce: $8.01/month
E-Commerce Plus: $14.31/month

10. Shift4Shop

Shift4Shop is another website builder that helps businesses increase their web presence. It’s a great choice for seasonal businesses because it only charges for transactions that occur.

Advantages

• Multilingual support
• Easily scalable and customizable

The inconvenients

• Poor site availability
• Difficult to make price adjustments

Pricing

Basic: $29/month
Plus: $79/month
Pro: $299/month

11. Gator by Hostgator

Gator by Hostgator is one of the most used website building tools you will ever see. The tool harnesses the power of Hostgator, so you don’t have to worry about hosting providers.

Advantages

• 200+ professional website templates
• Built-in photo library

The inconvenients

• No free plan or free trial
• Unable to add new feature or change web design

Pricing

Beginner: $3.46/month
Premium: $5.39/month
E-commerce: $8.30/month

Criteria for website builders

The definition of the best website tool varies from company to company. However, all companies have their set of defined criteria and expectations. Thus, the tool that matches these criteria would become the best choice for that particular business.

There can be no clear winner here, but we advise you to keep some important criteria in mind when selecting the tool. The essential criteria would be budget, ease of use, design, security, out-of-the-box components, third-party integrations, etc. Then, based on these criteria, choose the tool that will accompany you in the development of web applications.

Conclusion

Building a good website or web application takes hard work and dedicated effort. You should also have the technical expertise and web development knowledge. However, website building tools have made this task easier for business owners all over the world. They can choose the tool according to their needs and start building a visually appealing website without needing to know how to code or technically host websites on the internet.

Photo credit: The presentation image was produced by Redpixel.

This guest post was submitted by Hardik Shah. We appreciate all guest contributions, but the opinions expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the views of TechAcute.