Product | Brief | Pros | Cons | Pricing | Score for your needs | Conclusion | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
XPRS | A new solution | Great new method to buid a pro-grade site fast. Great pricing. | Limited theme selection. Still bit buggy. No drag'n'drop for fine-control. Lack of apps/widgets | Free for artists, students and non-profits. $99/year for others, including ecommerce. | 4/5 | Great new solution | |
WIX | Popular entry-level drag'n'drop DIY web-design | Many apps, big community, a vast templates collection. Full drag'n'drop flexibility. | Bit amature result, Need vast design skills to make it look professional | $99/year to connect your own domain. $194/year for ecommerce. | 3/5 | Entry level freedom | |
SquareSpace | Stylish solution for creative show-cases | Modern sharp-looking results. Great blog support. | Lack of flexibility in styling. Results look quite the same. | $96/year to connect your own domain. $216/year for ecommerce. | 4/5 | Winner if you like its specific modern style. | |
Cargo | Minimal portfolio at its best | Professional looking portfolio | Only good for portfolios. Requires an invitation. | $66/year to connect your own domain. No e-commerce. | 4/5 | Only for portfolios | |
Shopify | Popular solution for simple DIY online shop-creation | Great ecommerce. Simple & fast. | Only good for online shops. Expensive. | $349 / year for ecommerce | 3/5 | Only for shops | |
WordPress | Powering most of the web. Almost a default for bigger sites. | Huge community,great for SEO, themes, plug-ins. | Coding skills needed for theme-modifictaion. Expensive customization | Free to install. Themes ~$50 / theme. Hosting ~$99 / year. Modify theme ~$500 |
3/5 | Complex & expensive to customize, but - still a standard. | |
Webflow | Visual responsive-site editorfor professionals | Powerful, gaining community and popularity | Coding & design skillsare a must. No ecommerce. | $168/year to connect your own domain | 3/5 | Only for pros |
You don’t need a large site at the start. A good one-pager can do better work for you than a website with a dozen pages. Keeping it small enables you to go live faster and cheaper. Go live as soon as possible and develop it later: enhance the design, add content, and grow your site organically. It will even produce better SEO results, as Google likes to see rapidly growing and updated sites.
Do you want potential clients to call you? Send you an email? Leave their details? Buy a specific product? Good sites have a very focused, basic function, which is supported by the whole website. I’ll give you an example: If you've got a restaurant, your main purpose is probably getting people to call you and reserve a table. To accomplish this, make sure you've got a huge "call us" button on the first page and above-the-fold (meaning no need to scroll to view it). After the call button you should probably place a map and after that - some pictures of your food. Establishing your goals right upfront can help you understand the layout of your website.
Build a website that you can update easily. A website without an easy way to scale and to grow over time will lose its relevancy sooner than you think. Try to think ahead, of what content you would like to add to your site in the future, and consider that when comparing site creation tools.
Make sure your site is responsive and looks great on all devices, to include desktops, small laptops, tablets, and iOS and Android-powered devices. There are many differences between iOS and Android - make sure you test them both!
Make your site notable by providing some real value: A free coupon for a restaurant, free patterns you created for graphic designers, or a royalty-free soundtrack if you’re a musician. Giving stuff away for free is the best way to get organic links and traffic that will improve your position in Google.
When building a website, most people have a goal in mind, whether it’s promotion a business, or raise awareness about something, or just spreading your ideas. No matter the reason, you have to keep in mind that building your website is just the first step in your overall marketing strategy. Having a website is not enough and usually you will need to spend some more money on ads or content. When choosing a website building tool, keep your yearly budget in mind. Think how much you are willing to spend on the goal you are promoting and don’t spend too much on building the website. Our rule of thumb says that a website shouldn’t cost more than 1 month of marketing budget. That means no more than 1:12 of the yearly budget you allocated for your goal.
Most website builders claim they offer a free website - but charge around $100 annually when you connect them to a domain. Keep that in mind. But despite this cost, it’s still most likely to be cheaper than other options.
A custom site made by a web developer will probably cost more than $1,000, no matter how you look at it. If the initial offer is extremely low, that’s probably because your service provider knows your current request is not complete and some functions and features are missing. Adding those missing functions and features will come as an added expense later on.
Your local designers and programmers will most likely charge you more than other evenly skilled service providers located in other parts of the world. Post your job description on one of the popular freelancer sites (Upwork, freelancer.com, etc.), and have designers from all over the world bid on your project. Don’t choose just based on price. Take a good look at the freelancer’s past work, their portfolio, and the reviews left by their previous clients. Make a smart decision - not a cheap one.
Many designers and programmers prefer to work on WordPress because they are used to it. They also know they can charge more for WordPress sites because if you need them at first, you’ll need them always. You can’t really customize WordPress without the right theme or coding skills. WordPress is awesome for a simple blog that doesn’t require special features or design. It’s also the best option if you have tons of features in mind, but in this case you can’t really DIY. In all other cases website builders would probably do better.
Conclusion, Having a good website can change your entire business and open it to huge new markets. It’s a complex task, but an achievable one. Follow our tips, use our service-comparison system, and go for it. We wish you the best of luck in building your website and getting tons of visitors and clients :)