The website builders I always recommend
This is a topic I find pretty touchy and complicated, so I want to preface this article by saying that the best platform is the one that works for you. At the end of the day, these are tools and anyone can make great things with any tools.
That being said… some tools will make your life a lot easier!
How should I pick a website platform?
Good question! There are loads of factors that will impact which website builder will be the best for your business. Your business model will make a great difference in the tools and functions you might need. It’s also important to consider how your business might grow in the future. If you know you want to expand your business into a large e-commerce site in the future, it’s much better to pick the right platform from the start rather than building it all and having to do it again in a few years.
There are three website builder platforms that I recommend to the large majority of my clients. I’ll discuss with them about their needs and their experience with websites in the past. Here’s the run down of everything going through my mind and affecting my decision.
Squarespace - Best for Service-Based Businesses
I love working with Squarespace because I find their platform very intuitive to use both for me and for my clients. Everything is easy to find and if clients need to make a change it will be very easy for them.
Why you should pick Squarespace to build your website
Ease of use, Squarespace is incredibly easy to use and maintain. No need to worry about plugins and compatibility issues.
Squarespace is very customizable in terms of design and layouts you can use.
Their system works well for small e-commerce inventories.
Their scheduling system is very flexible and powerful.
Why you shouldn’t pick Squarespace to build your website
They lack the bulk editing functionality that Shopify has for products, so I would avoid if you have a large inventory.
They lack more complex e-commerce functions and compatibility that larger businesses will need.
If you plan to scale your e-commerce business.
Shopify - Best for E-Commerce Businesses
Shopify is to e-commerce what Squarespace is to service-based businesses. It’s an all-in-one platform that is very easy to set up and maintain for clients. They can integrate with countless apps that provide very targeted commerce functionalities and can allow you to scale how you want. Shopify does one thing, and does it very well.
Why you should pick Shopify to build your website
It’s the best platform for e-commerce.
Perfect if you have a large inventory of products.
You can sell subscriptions and memberships.
They provide and integrate with Point of Sale systems to combine inventories.
Easy to maintain for business owners.
All in one platform for e-commerce.
They have a lot of plans with functions that will scale with your business in the future.
Why you shouldn’t pick Shopify to build your website
The design is somewhat limited to their templates.
Custom-designed elements require custom coding.
Their plans are a little more pricey, and you need to pay for apps and plugins.
If you don’t have an online shop (Had to be said!)
Wordpress.org - Best for blogs and specific functionality
WordPress has been around for a long time and is well-known by a lot of people. It’s great for its flexibility as you can build pretty much anything with the right knowledge and plug-ins. That being said WordPress is not an easy platform to use at all.
Why you should pick WordPress to build your website
The primary goal of your website is to be a blog, their blogging platform is the best there is.
If you want to display ads to get revenue, you can integrate that easily.
You can build anything like directories, learning platforms, etc.
If you’ve used it before or are tech savvy
It CAN be cheaper, but not always.
Why you shouldn’t pick WordPress to build your website
It’s not user-friendly at all.
It’s not a one-stop shop, you need to get hosting, domain, theme, plugins, all separately.
A WordPress website requires regular maintenance (a lot more than on other platforms).
If you have an issue, it’s a lot more difficult to get support.
Some of the themes are terrible for accessibility.
What about all the other website platforms out there?
There are more website builders than I can count! It would be impossible to use them all. I again want to mention that the best platform is the one that works for you. There are great designers and developers who work on the platforms I don’t use. I want to be fully honest and transparent with you though so here my reasons for not using or recommending some of the other platforms:
Wix - I don’t think it scales very well. On paper it looks good but from feedback I’ve heard of other designers and business owner there can be issues down the line.
ShowIt - A very popular platform, that I haven’t tried. When I was comparing pricing plants, I found that ShowIt didn’t compare with the other ones my list and didn’t offer as many integrations apart from their great Wordpress integration.
WordPress.Com - It’s very easy to mix them up, but this isn’t the same as Wordpress.Org. This is an “all-in-one” solution by a different company who uses the wordpress.org engine. The customization options are very limited and it doesn’t scale well at all.
Webflow - This is one of my favourite platforms to design on! But I think their advertising of “no-code” is wrong, I love it because I understand code and it’s easy to visualise with Webflow. Their content management system is seriously lacking though so I can’t imagine using this for content-heavy websites, and their pricing is high and has limitations.
GoDaddy - It’s tempting to build your website where you buy your domain. But companies are usually best at what they do the most. They’re a good domain registrar but they don’t compare to platforms all about building websites.
So how should you decide what website platform to use?
You probably should talk to the person who will be building it for you first. I like to have conversations with my clients about this because there are a lot of factors involved and migrating an existing website also takes time and money. If you want to build one yourself though, definitely look at the points I mentioned above. Ask yourself how you want your business to grow and what kind of features you might need.
