WHICH WEBSITE BUILDER SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?
Did you ever want to build your own website- whether for a small business, your hobby or just for blogging? Building an impressive website do take time, whether you love coding or don't know a single thing about it. Nowadays, with all the tools made available, it's never been so easy to create your own DIY website. In this blog, we're going to look at a few popular options, their pros and cons, and why pick them for your website.
WordPress
Popular among bloggers and website designers, WordPress has been the CMS of choice for many of them for years. WordPress has been around for nine years now, and still holds up as powerful and versatile. WordPress allows you to do a lot, even without knowing how to code.
The Pros
WordPress has a huge user base and developer community. The platform is not only easy to use, but it also has everything you might think you need, and even more. If there's something your chosen theme can't do, you'll probably find a plugin, or 10 to solve that problem. WordPress also offers you a massive selection of templates for your website. Some cost money, but many of them are free.
With WordPress' open source status, you can choose to install the software on your server or opt for a sign up version at WordPress.com or any other hosting provider. For as low as $US100/year, you get a range of features along with a custom domain name.
The Cons
WordPress is highly customizable, but you still need to know how to code a bit to be able to have full control over the design. Basic coding might come in handy if you want to create tour own theme.
The huge amount of plugins and themes available may be a little intimidating. Having so many options might make it difficult for you to find exactly what you're looking for. WordPress tries to help you with a rating system, but that doesn't mean that a good plugin will do everything you want it to do. Ultimately, some plugins become outdated when WordPress updates.
Because of WordPress' popularity, it is sometimes a target for hackers/spammers. This can actually be avoided if you keep your updates up-to-date.
Squarespace
If you want a hassle-free site design option, Squarespace is the website builder you need. It Squarespace sites are customizable and incorporates a drag and drop tool which makes site building easier. Squarespace tends to be more popular among photographers.
The Pros
Squarespace has 40 modern templates that are probably the highest quality designs, each one of them as contemporary and beautiful as the other. Why choose squarespace for your photography website? It offers free domain name and privacy. It allows you to create a blog, website or e-commerce site without limitations. Squarespace is a sophisticated and is great for SEO.
The Cons
Squarespace is one of the most expensive website builders on the market, costing around $18/month for a fully loaded site. Another downside of squarespace is that it can be hard for newbies to edit. It offers great themes and the website builder is pretty good but it requires some learning to get around Squarespace. It also requires the photography to look right, which is perfect for people in visual businesses, but not great for people lacking high-quality images.
Wix
Like Squarespace, Wix is a drag-and-drop site builder. It's easy to use and easily customizable. If you know how to code, you can add and edit your own HTML codes and integrate social media to your pages. Wix offers six different plans, including the free version, each revamped to fit different users needs. The plans offer generous storage and bandwidth, allowing small businesses to get the best use out of Wix.
The Pros
Wix offers more than 280 amazing templates for your customizing pleasure. Most of them are HTML5 based, making them search engine friendly.
Wix also has a diverse App Market with premium and free add-ones to your site. Whether you want a survey, for, Google Maps or even a shopping cart on your website, the App market has various options to set up your website.
The free version of this website builder offers you full access to all the tools you might need to build a website. With it's intuitive drag-and-drop tool, Wix is incredibly easy to use.
The Cons
Most complaints Wix receives comes from the fact that, once you choose a template, you're stuck with it. You can't simply switch to another template whenever you feel like a new design. If you want a different look, you'll have to start completely from scratch.
Wix does not come with a native blogging app. If you're a blogger, you'll have to install a third-party application. You can install Tumblr or Blogger through the App market but the lack of native blogging is a huge gripe by many.
If you opted for a free subscription, Wix comes will ads and no access to ecommerce tools. The idea that everything comes at a price in life is true with most website builders, but with Wix, you end up with loud ads in both your header and footer.
Weebly
Weebly is quite similar to Wix, but more e-commerce friendly. It is another great drag-and-drop site building options. Weebly has an application available and you can use it to edit on the go.
The Pros
Weebly in simple to use. It would be hard to find create/find a more intuitve and simple user interface that Weebly. It is a good choice for newbies as well as anyone with technical knowledge.
Weebly lets you build a high quality site for free. Most free web hosting is limited compared with what you can do on Weebly. It also has a good selection of templates, allowing you to create a professional looking website.
The Cons
Your site will be hosted on Weebly's domain- meaning that if you want to optimize your site for search engine and build your brand, that might not be the best option. You can upgrade to the starter premium plan at $4 per month but other web hosts might charge less.
Blog options are limited- Weebly does have a blog tool, but it's far less customizable than using a blogging application such as WordPress.
