What are the advantages of using a website builder vis-à-vis working with a website designer?
1. You choose a great template and work from there. The top website builders have hundreds of pre-built templates that you can choose from so you will know roughly how your site will look before you dive into the details. You won't need to code at all as you can just add and remove content by pointing and clicking. There are also setup wizards, forums, videos and customer support staff that will guide and help even the most un-techy site creator.
2. It is way cheaper than a website built by a designer. The cost of a designer-built website usually starts at around $5,000, but every time you change your mind, your bill can get larger. Using a website builder is much less expensive. With the best website builders you will have plenty of choices. You can easily change fonts, colors, buttons and templates as many times as you want, without incurring extra costs.
3. It is often faster than working with a designer. You won’t have to wait until your designer is available to make the changes you requested.
4. You get an end result that you are actually happy with. You can always tweak things until everything is perfect for you. Working with a designer on the other hand, there is a risk that you'll end up agreeing to a website that you're not actually happy with, just because you don't feel that you can afford to make another change.
5. You can make changes as your business changes. Even if you do find an amazing designer who is not expensive, your business might change in the future. So then you will need to contact her again, send her the changes, wait for her to deliver and then bill you. Using a website builder gives you increased flexibility, now, and in the future. Need to add a blog to your site? No problem. Want to add stuff to the ‘About us’ page - easy. As you learn to edit the website you built, you will easily be able to control everything. Now, and in the future. If you can use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, you can build your own website!
What do I need to consider before choosing a website builder?
It mainly depends on which kind of site you want to build and what kind of functionality you require. Will you be selling a product or do you want to attract potential customers for your services? Are you a photographer or artist looking to showcase your portfolio? While there are generalist website builders such as Wix that cater for pretty much anyone, there are also specialist site builders with incredible pre-built templates such as Squarespace that may be more suitable for photographers and artists. Wordpress is probably best for bloggers and Carrd offer the best one page websites. Check out our
detailed reviews that feature the pros and cons of each service to decide what is most suitable for your needs.
Do website builders have feature limitations?
The best website builders boast features that put them in the top tier of what is currently technically possible with any website. They offer SEO tools for ranking your website in the search results, marketing tools, email collectors, analytics and visitor stats, payment processing, inventory tracking, social media integration and much more. For a full feature list of each individual site builder, check out our
reviews page.
How long does it take to create a decent-looking website?
While ads promising you can “build a stunning website in minutes” are probably exaggerating a little bit, you can probably get decent results for most simple sites within only a few hours. Of course this mainly depends on a number of factors, including how complex the site you want to build will be (a fully functioning eCommerce site with hundreds of products will be a bigger challenge than a one page site for a local Yoga studio), how experienced you are navigating the software, how easy to use the website builder of your choice is and much more.
The nice thing about using a website builder is that you will be able to tweak your project as you see fit and take as much time as you want without running up a hefty bill with an external designer every time you want to make changes to your site.
Should I start with a free website builder?
It all depends what you want to achieve. By all means try the free version if you want to get a feel for how complex it is to build your own website, but bear in mind that as with everything in life, you will get what you pay (or don’t pay) for.
The companies that develop website builders are obviously trying to make money. They offer their free versions to start you off, but then limit you in some very vital ways. Mainly, you will not be able to connect your own domain, meaning that rather than a website with the address www.yourcoolsite.com your domain will look like this: www.yourcoolsite.wixsite.com. This is not merely a cosmetic issue - your site will not easily get organic traffic from Google and other search engines. This also looks cheap and unprofessional to potential customers. Other limitations of free website builders are intrusive ads, limited storage, slower load times and many functional limitations that are all designed to get you to upgrade to the paid version.
If you are serious about owning and designing your own site, paid builders are definitely worth the investment. You get more storage, bandwidth, functions and add-ons. You will be able to show-off your own domain name and your site will be clean of pesky 3rd party ads.
What about Hosting and buying a domain name?
Hosting is like the land that your house (website) is built upon. So instead of paying for 500 square meters, you’re paying for X gigabytes of storage that will “hold” all of your images and videos and enough bandwidth to make your site run smoothly when hundreds or thousands of people visit it. All of the website builders featured on this page offer various hosting services for your website. You will be able to adapt your chosen hosting package according to how much traffic you get and how much storage you will need. They also allow you to connect your own domain name easily and intuitively.
Top tips for getting started
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Read our reviews of the top website builders and decide on a few that most suit your needs.
- Then try out the user interface of your chosen few by using their free trials. This will quickly give you an idea of which one is most suitable for your needs without having to commit any money or wasting too much time.
- After you have played around with your own shortlist of builders, and have decided which one suits you best, get the paid version, unlock all features and take your time building the perfect website for your needs.
Disclaimer
Disclaimer: Top10Site.Builders is a free service. We receive commissions from the website builder companies we recommend on this page if you click our links and make a purchase. We try to keep the info on this site as up to date and fresh as possible, but cannot guarantee that this will always be the case.
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