Picking a website builder can be a painful experience, but it really shouldn’t be. In fact, it isn’t. Depending on your intent and designated use of the website, recommendations of website builders will vary. In order to find out, it is worth taking a few minutes to read our in-depth reviews in detail. Along with general fact checks, we recommend trial versions where possible, testing the product or service never hurts prior to committing. Either of the below options will work perfectly for either business or personal use, these are merely suggestions.
Ideal options for those wanting to host personal sites or starting blogs are:
- Weebly – Incredibly simple and user-friendly;
- Wix – Many preset options for a quick set-up;
- Jimdo – Low-cost platform with multi-language support;
- Yola – Decent website builder with easy to use features.
Should you be looking to start an online shop, alternatively a professional website for your business, check these out:
- Shopify – E-commerce theme, ideal for an online store extension;
- BigCommerce – Market leading E-commerce platform;
- Weebly – Incredibly simple and user-friendly;
- Wix – Many preset options for a quick set-up;
- Squarespace – Complex, yet effective website builder with tons of features.
Depending on the quality of the service you settle for, the overall price of building your website from the ground up will vary. You can build a blog with no unique name and little to no unique features for free, however, this is only recommended to get a feel for things. Taking the basic standard of good quality services into account, your absolute minimum costs for a high security, a unique website would break down as follows:
- Wix Premium Plan – Website Builder – from $7 USD per month;
- HostGator – Web Hosting – from $3.95 USD per month;
- NameCheap – Domain Name Purchase – One-off cost from $0.49 USD.
All in all, you are looking at a one-off cost of $0.49 USD, along with $10.95 per month, for a fully functional, professional website.
Bear in mind, this is aimed at personal use, alternatively, small businesses since the packages do have their respective capacities in terms of allowance and memory. Even so, a very fair deal to run your own website for a total of just over $10 USD per month.
Similarly to personal recommendations, the best website builder for you as an individual entirely depends on your needs. Since building websites is a very intimate process, personal preferences often determine the best option for you as a user.
As a general rule of thumb, we recommend you keep the following in mind:
- User-interface – What do you consider user-friendly? Be realistic as to what you can handle and use competently.
- Features – What features do you really need? Keep it minimal;
- Perks – Which perks incentivize the success of your website or project the most? Be logical;
- Priorities – What can you afford, what do you need? Be realistic as to what capacity your website is aimed to reach, as well as what you can afford.
Taking all of the above into account, you should have a clearer idea of what the best website builder is for you as a future webmaster.
Following 30 years of adaptation by the general public, the internet has become a place where we’re truly spoilt for choice. As a newcomer to website building, you may be confused as to what the differences are in domain vendors.
When buying a domain name, one must take a few basic and obvious factors into account:
- Pricing – Realistically, could we get the domain name cheaper elsewhere, if so, where?
- Source Reliability – How reliable is the vendor in terms of support and simplicity of purchase or management?
- Perks – Do you get free WhoIsGuard protection or any similar perks for a limited time, if so, who gives the best freebies?
- Flexibility – Should you wish to transfer your domain in the future, how easy will it be? Always check for limitations.
Luckily, there are plenty of providers you can choose from. Some of our favorites are listed below:
- Namecheap – Intuitive site, simple to use and extremely cheap domains. Great perks;
- Hover – The third largest domain registrar online – fairly recently launched but very reliable;
- Chosen Hosting Service – Alternatively, you can use your chosen hosting service to purchase a domain name upon selecting a hosting pack, such as Bluehost, HostGator or GoDaddy.
We often recommend you to buy from your hosting service provider, purely in terms of simplicity. As far as trust goes, registrars such as Namecheap are brilliant to work with from all aspects of price, reliability, and flexibility.
As a result of user-friendliness becoming a compulsory feature in website development, anyone is able to learn how to build a website. In contrast to two decades ago, resourcefulness and common sense are now enough to get your website building journey started.
By familiarizing oneself with the basic features of website builders and their tools, the skill of building a website is acquirable. While relying on usability and simplistic interfaces are possible, it is recommended that you learn the following basics:
- Basic HTML – Programming language created for website development. Primarily focusing on content;
- Basic CSS – Programming language created for visuals and presentation.
By learning the basics of HTML and CSS, you place yourself ahead of the game in terms of error spotting and correction. Should you not be interested in learning any of the above, you still have the toolset to build an awesome functional website.
So you’re looking to launch an online store? You’re in the right place, we have a solid handful of tested platforms reviewed, pick wisely. Prior to diving into the online store website builders section, ask yourself a few questions:
- What essential features do I need in my store? List them;
- How many visitors am I expecting per month? Be realistic and think ahead;
- How much support do I need? Be honest.
With Shopify and BigCommerce usually leading the pack, it is a no-brainer as to what the best options are. Regardless of trends, it is worth looking into traditional website builders such as Wix or Weebly; Platforms as such offer extravagant plugins, making it available for you to sell at the click of a button.
Absolutely not. Building a website requires no other human being, other than yourself. In order to address this question, we have created a page on How To Start a Blog – do check it out. As a simplified process, we broke down the step-by-step of building a website from scratch.
Until your website has gained enough traction and has enough regular maintenance tasks in the pipeline, you are totally adequate to run it as a webmaster yourself. Spending funds on developers can be a painful financial experience, therefore the longer you wait, the more money you save. Alternatively, doing things yourself by using tools within website builders creates a brand new learning curve of valuable web knowledge.
In the event of increased workload which you can’t handle as a webmaster, it is worth hiring a competent virtual assistant, rather than a developer. Virtual assistants often have competent basic knowledge of website builders, as well as basic programming languages. Save your money.
Heavily dependant on your past experience, the process of building a website can largely vary. For someone with little to no programming knowledge, but established experience with a known website builder, setting up a website from scratch can take less than a day. Should a veteran programmer attempt to set-up a professional looking agency site with pure code, it would take them a week.
Time frames vary entirely depending on the combined experience and approach of the individual. The beauty of using website builders as a novice is the rate of learning. Getting the hang of these tools within a few hours is not uncommon, allowing you to start building and experimenting to then become an expert with the tool itself.
While working hard is important, working smart is vital.
Upon launching your website, the traction from your audience entirely depends on a few key factors. Stating the obvious, us as webmasters want readers to visit our sites, to read our quality content. For visitors to find us, we need to rank for search results for certain phrases in search engines. While this is more of an intermediate topic, it’s worth taking note to come back to at a later stage. Some of the factors to rank are:
SEO & Content Quality – The quality of content can depend on style, ease of reading, structure and search engine friendliness. Google ranks websites based on the quality and prominence, in which Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has a large part to play;
Backlinks – Another important aspect of ranking, when visitors search for relevant phrases online. As a major part of SEO, having quality links leading to your site from authoritative domains is essential for Google or other search engines to recognize you as a contender;
Domain – The name and age of your domain will play a huge part in relevance. Possibly an irrelevant factor for some of you buying new domains, however the older the domain, the better. Think of it as a sign of respect from the search engines for now.
These factors are only a handful of ingredients to ranking and gaining traffic, they are useful to learn about at an early stage. New websites often take a while to rank, however with an optimal content plan in place, you can get a head start in terms of quality amongst your newbie competitors.