The Best Website Builders for Small Business (and not only)

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In this review, I will discuss choosing the best website builder for small businesses. You will learn how to select a website builder, which factors are most important to consider first, and which are less critical. I will also share my observations and conclusions from testing over a hundred different website builders.

Before diving into the review, I’d like to explain why, when we talk about a website for a small business, using website builders is a more rational and generally more successful solution than offline CMS or any custom solutions.

The key reason is that most modern business website builders are not just limited to website creation software. They are genuine online business platforms. By using them, you not only create a website but also populate it with content, edit the design, upgrade its functionality, and enhance it with additional apps.

But the main thing is the system – an online system for managing your business where you track visitors, analyze which of them convert to customers and which do not, what products they buy, and much more.

You might argue that many CMS and custom solutions can do this too.

Absolutely true. However, modern business website builders can do this much more affordably than if you were to seek web development from a design agency or freelancers.

Moreover, using website builders, you can manage all these processes yourself because modern website builders are user-friendly, unlike many programming engines.

So, let’s get started.

NOTE: To write this piece, I’ve spent tens of hours on research and personally tried more than 30 website builders. As a result, I was able to come down to the 7 best website builders, which are ideal for small businesses. You won’t have to settle with or even try out mediocre solutions thanks to this review. In the final part of this listicle, I have also given my recommendations for choosing a website builder and pointed out the common mistakes made by business owners when selecting a website builder. So do read on till the end.

What is a website builder?

Website builder is software that allows you to design, edit and subsequently fill websites with content. Most modern website builders are online platforms that include a visual website design editor, hosting and domain name. The best ones have drag and drop editors, which makes it much easier to create website pages without having to react HTML/CSS code. Thus, a modern website builder is the easiest and most affordable way to create a website.

Top 10 Best Website Builders

Below I have collected and described the most powerful, convenient and functional website builders. Each of them has its own specialization – some are good for small business websites, others are only for ecommerce, others for doctors, etc.

WIX – Ideal for Small Business

Wix is probably the best universal website builder. And more than 62 million websites all over the world have been created using it, that’s more than 200M users (according to official data for 2021). And that is the highest record for all online website builders, both in the free and premium segments. Despite its versatility, Wix’s capabilities are fully revealed in the development of small business websites. For this, Wix has hundreds of all kinds of templates – for a wide variety of business categories. Thanks to this, Wix can be used to build great restaurants websites, websites for real estate agencies, travel businesses, hotels, beauty salons, law firms and many other small businesses. Well, why is it that people like Wix and use it? Let’s find out.

Very Simple

Wix is easier and more user-friendly when compared to most other website builders. Very few website builders have the same intuitive interface as Wix does. Even without any knowledge of web development, you can successfully create a website using Wix. You don’t need to know anything about web design, HTML layout, or programming.

Wix drag&drop editor

Universal

Wix can be used to create many different kinds of websites. From simple blogs to comprehensive websites with forums, membership options, online stores, etc. – everything is possible with Wix.

Wix website templates categories

Moreover, it has more template categories than other website builders. This means you can find the website templates for even some rare niches like driving schools, yoga instructors, farm produce delivery, and many others.

More than 700 Quality Templates Available

Wix is one of the leaders among website builders. And the claim is further substantiated by the fact that it has more than 700 template options. And these options cater to a wide range of color preferences and design tastes. Also, the template options that you get with Wix don’t compromise on quality. All the templates are fully responsive and created by professional website designers.

NOTE: Having great, up-to-date business templates is one of the most important things to look for when choosing a business website builder. To make it easier to choose the right business templates, check out this collection: 50 Best Free Business Website Templates and WP Themes. Here are the best free business templates that are currently available on the web.

Free

Wix’s free plan comes with better functional capacities as compared to other platforms. Most builders limit their free plans to nominal features so that you can just try out the builder. But Wix offers a full-fledged, feature-loaded plan for free. Of course, the premium plans offer several more features. But for simple blogs and personal websites, Wix’s free plan usually suffices.

AI Availability

Wix has recently started to use AI. And the use of AI makes website development even easier. If you choose the Wix Artificial Design Interface (ADI) mode, you can create a website by just answering simple questions about your site’s purpose and your preferences (color scheme, style, font, and the like). AI will do the heavy-lifting for you. And your website will be ready within 10 to 20 minutes. This is a perfect option for beginners.

Wix ADI

More than 300 additional Apps

In addition to built-in functional capacities, Wix offers access to more than 300 different apps through the Wix App Market. These specialized apps allow you to perform even more detailed website customization and open up new functional avenues. And the best part is that all these apps are available for free.

Embedding Codes and Custom Elements

For more experienced users, Wix allows embedding custom code, widgets, and custom elements to the websites. You can use the Velo by Wix option for this. And this is what significantly improves the standard Wix editor experience. While it doesn’t give you the freedom to change the existing HTML code of the website, you can certainly add some more elements that you may need.

Wix Embedding Codes and Custom Elements

If you’re a beginner webmaster, this feature won’t matter much to you. But, for advanced users, it is a huge plus.

Security

All the websites created with Wix have SSL security certificates. It also applies to free Wix websites. Most free website builders don’t offer an SSL certificate with the free plan. As opposed to WordPress and other CMS with open code, your Wix website won’t need frequent system updates. That’s why you needn’t worry about security. Hackers won’t get access to your website because you forgot to update it. No upgrades – no problems with website cracks.

Automatic Backups

In my opinion, Wix’s automatic backup point creation is a perfect feature. It gives you an option to return to your website’s previous version, that is, the one before your latest changes. It reminds me a bit of the “History” feature in Adobe Photoshop – just click on the latest save and go back.

Wix revisions history

For whom will Wix be the best solution?

Those who have minimum knowledge of website development;

Those who want to develop a small website (up to 30 pages);

Those who want to create a free website;

Those who want to build a website for unusual and rare activity;

Those who want to set up small online stores;

Those who need a website for selling “virtual” products (photos, graphics, music, and so on).

How much does Wix cost?

Wix is a free website builder without any time restrictions on use. This means you can use a free Wix website for as long as you need. For more advanced functionalities, there are several paid plans that you can consider.

Create a site

Shopify – Best for Online Stores

Shopify is the absolute leader among ecommerce website builders. A lot of website builders allow you to run online stores, but no one does it as professionally and thoughtfully as Shopify. And you’ll soon realize why. Unlike most business website builders, Shopify doesn’t try to be a universal solution. Instead, it specializes in helping users set up online stores.

Sell with Shopify

And in time, Shopify has developed many functional options and extra capacities for online sales and drop shipping that it has left all its competitors way behind. However, in this process, it turned out to be more complicated to use. And, of course, more expensive. Although, this is not an issue given the sheer amount of capabilities it has. So, why is Shopify the leader among ecommerce platforms?

NOTE: Perhaps for small businesses, this website builder may seem too expensive, and some of its options are superfluous. But when you gradually develop your small business and start introducing more and more new additions to the website, you will understand how good Shopify is. No other business website builder has as many ecommerce features as Shopify. You just find what you need and turn it on in your website.

Highly specialized platform

Shopify isn’t trying to please everyone. It just aims to become the best online sales and drop shipping solution. And this specialized focus resulted in lots of functional options and extra ecommerce apps. Plus, there are all sorts of free and premium ecommerce themes. All these were created with a great understanding of how ecommerce businesses operate.

More than 100 free themes and thousands of premium options

Shopify has both free and premium themes from third-party developers. For example, there are more than 1200 premium themes for Shopify sold on ThemeForest alone. Premium themes allow making your online store’s design more unique. Thanks to so many options, you’ll able to find appropriate themes even for selling products in rare niches.

Shopify templates

Hundreds of useful apps and plugins

Shopify has lots of free and premium apps and plugins. These were created to significantly improve the functionality of Shopify online stores. I’ve highlighted this in red for a reason. And it is that these apps can provide an important competitive edge for your ecommerce business.

Shopify app store

Here are some examples of Shopify apps and plugins and what they do:

Judge.me – You get automatic client mailing that requests to leave a comment about a purchased product. You can either send the request via email, push notifications, or SMS. You can quickly collect real client reviews on your e-store and increase conversion through this.

Oberlo – It a great pick for drop shipping. This app interacts with your suppliers, and orders are serviced semi-automatically. Shipping tracks are automatically entered. And the shipment of the order by the supplier is automatically confirmed.

ROI Hunter – It integrates with your Shopify site and sets up dynamic Google and Facebook ads. For Google ads, this plugin independently creates a product feed and remarketing tag. And for Facebook ads, the plugin creates a product catalog and Facebook remarketing pixel. Moreover, ROI Hunter can configure dynamic remarketing ads. It shows ads to visitors who expressed interest in your store but left without making a purchase.

Ali Hunter– it automates the analysis of drop shipping products and stores on AliExpress. It aids in finding new products and also analyzing and tracking competitors’ stores. This plugin can save you several hours.

Shopify Shipping

Shopify Shipping is a unique offer that helps save money on goods delivery within the USA. You can buy and print discounted shipping labels when filling an order. At the expense of Shopify and DHL’s partnership arrangements, UPS and USPS, you can extend delivery discounts to your clients up to 75%.

Shopify Payments

With Shopify, you can use PayPal, Stripe, Square, and other payment intake solutions. But there is also a built-in solution – Shopify Payment with several advantages:

Financially beneficial: With Shopify Payments, there are no extra Shopify fees.

User-friendly: All the tools are accessible in a single Shopify account. You don’t need to shift from the payment system account to your Shopify store account.

Shopify Fulfillment Network: a possibility to use Shopify warehouses for goods storage and delivery to clients. It is similar to the Amazon Fulfillment service.

Shopify dashboard

Integration with trading platforms

Shopify has several options for integration with some popular marketplaces and trading platforms like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google Shopping, Instagram, and more. This allows store owners to sell goods on their site as well as on other popular trading platforms at the same time. This is a convenient feature and helps save a lot of time.

For whom will Shopify be the best solution?

For drop shipping salesmen who already sell their goods through Amazon, Instagram, and Facebook and now want to broaden their market by setting up their online store.

For those who wish to set up medium-sized or large online stores.

For quick ecommerce business startups within the USA.

Shopify drop shipping

How much does Shopify cost?

Shopify doesn’t have a free plan. But it offers a 14-day free trial (no card required). After this period, you’ll get the option to switch to one of the premium plans. The plans are Basic Shopify ($29 per month), Shopify ($79 per month), and Advanced Shopify ($229 per month). More details about Shopify plans.

Create a site

Squarespace – Perfect Website Builder for Photographers

Being a professional website designer, I personally like Squarespace. It is one of the few website builders that help you make beautiful and aesthetically flawless websites in a minimalist style.

Squarespace

Squarespace was initially created as a website builder for photographers and artists to create great portfolio websites. This platform is for people and web developers with artistic taste, to summarize it briefly. The latest Squarespace 7.1 version comes with more functional capacities than ever before. But truth be told, most of them are far from perfect. Now let us understand Squarespace’s peculiarities in detail.

Dreams Come True for Photographers and Artists

Betting on visual content demonstration, Squarespace can satisfy the tastes of even the most demanding photographers, designers, artists, and other creatives. Website visitors need to be shown photos, graphics, and videos from the best perspectives. And Squarespace is one of the best website builders for such purposes.

Squarespace editor

Moreover, you’re can easily get sales with the help of visual content. For this, you’ll need the Business tariff plan, though. (Check its price here.)

Excellent Template Design

Squarespace has the most beautiful website templates in the market. Of course, there aren’t too many options (about 100 templates are available). And not all categories are available either. But the templates that are available are beautiful, of high quality, and fully responsive.

Squarespace website templates

NOTE: Squarespace templates often use a minimalist style, complemented with large beautiful images and big yet simple design elements. It’s well-suited for small sites that aim at showcasing their photos or their products’ photos in the best light. However, don’t expect your Squarespace website to look spectacular if you, for example, are a lawyer and your site is focused on legal services.

Greater Opportunities for Blogging

Squarespace is perfect for creating a blog. It has a lot of valuable functions that include a simple way to edit posts, deferred publication planning, rich customization of the comments system, AMP support, RSS, tag adding, the possibility to add several authors for one post at a time, iTunes podcasting integration possibility and many more.

Squarespace blog option

Drag-and-Drop Editor

Squarespace has a built-in drag-and-drop editor for easy customization of your website. It allows you to change the design by simply dragging and dropping the required elements at the required place on a page.

NOTE: Squarespace’s drag-and-drop editor isn’t bad. But my personal experience suggested that it is not so intuitive and requires some getting used to. Unlike other top website builders, Squarespace’s drag-and-drop editor comes without a traditional dashboard on the left side of the screen. Instead, all the options appear after clicking on template design elements. That’s why if you have already used technically advanced website builders like Wix or Weebly, then you’ll need some extra time getting used to Squarespace’s drag-and-drop editor.

Free SSL Certificate

There is no free plan in Squarespace, but the monthly plan charges that you pay include the cost of an SSL certificate, which is a great thing.

Squarespace Analytics Tools

Squarespace offers its own solutions for website visitor analytics through the built-in Squarespace Analytics App. Integration with Google Analytics is also possible in case you need more data.

Squarespace analytics tools

Unlimited Bandwidth and Storage Space

Squarespace offers unlimited bandwidth and storage space for all plans starting from the most basic one. There is also no limit on the number of web pages your website can have.

For whom will Squarespace be the best solution?

For photographers, designers, artists, and anyone else who needs a stylish portfolio website;

For bloggers who are looking for an alternative to a WordPress blog;

For those who wish to build a small ecommerce website that sells designer things, handmade goods, posters, photos, or graphics;

For those looking forward to developing a personal website, like public figures, musicians, sports persons, and show-biz stars.

How much does Squarespace cost?

Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan (but there is aa 14-day trial) and it can hardly be called affordable. The lowest-prices Squarespace plan starts at $12 per month (paid annually) and is commensurate with the top competitors’ plans.

A more functional Business plan costs $18 per month. The Basic Commerce plan allows online sales without any transaction fees and will cost you $26 per month. Advanced Commerce, the most powerful plan, requires you to shell out $40 per month. It includes all the capacities that Squarespace has on offer for its clients. Check out a more detailed view of Squarespace plans.

Create a site

Webnode – Best for Multilingual Websites

Webnode is one of the oldest website builders (created in 2008) that is constantly developing and making its clients happy. And today, there are over 40 million websites all over the world that are powered by Webnode. Now I’ll tell you exactly why people trust Webnode and what it’s got better than its competitors. Though it has some cons, too, the strong pros make Webnode a value offering.

Beautiful and Responsive Templates

In 2016, Webnode rolled out an important update with its drag-and-drop editor and website templates. At the moment, it’s got a collection of more than 200 beautiful and responsive templates. All of which are available for free.

Webnode website templates

Easy-to-Use

Webnode is far from being a leader in functional capacities since it falls behind Wix and Weebly. Nevertheless, it is intuitive and user-friendly. Webnode is convenient even for beginner users.

Ideal for Multi-Language Websites

Webnode allows for multi-language website development as it supports 20 languages. That figure is higher than what any other website builder supports. And that’s what makes Webnode the best website builder for launching multi-language websites.

Option to choose any language

NOTE: To create a multi-language website with unlimited language support, you need the Profi plan ($22.90 per month). With the Standard plan ($12.90 per month), your website would support only two languages.

No Limit On The Number Of Pages In The Free plan

Webnode is a free website builder. With the free plan, you can develop a fully functional website, get free hosting (100MB storage and 1GB bandwidth), and a free third-level domain name. Also, there is no limit on the number of pages that your website can have.

Free SSL Certificate for All Plans

Webnode takes responsibility for your website’s security and offers free SSL certificates for all websites built using it. (Including those that have been developed for free.)

Website Backup and Recovery

Webnode allows creating backups and recovering previous versions of your website. This function will especially please beginner webmasters who can easily correct mistakes using this feature. Backup creation is possible in two ways – online and offline. With the offline option, you can save your website’s backup directly on your computer. Find out how to do that here.

Adding HTML/CSS Code

Webnode makes it possible to easily add HTML/CSS code and extra widgets. You can add your HTML code to the header, footer, or anywhere else on your website.

Option to add HTML/CSS code

Visit here to know how it can be done.

Affordable prices

Another great advantage of Webnode is its affordable premium plans. As compared to other top website builders, Webnode has the lowest prices. Like Wix, Webnode also has a simple Connect Domain plan that costs $3.90 per month (against $5 for the Wix plan). The most basic premium plan, Mini, costs $7.50 per month. A similar plan with Squarespace costs $12, and as for Wix, it’s $14.

However, note that, unlike competitors, Webnode’s Mini plan doesn’t remove Webnode ads from your website. The basic eCommerce plan (Standard) is available for only $12.90 per month. Wix’s minimum ecommerce plan costs $23, and for the basic Squarespace eCommerce plan, you’d have to pay $26. Shopify’s basic plan costs $29. The price advantage is obvious – you’ll have to pay much less with Webnode.

For whom will Webnode be the best solution?

NOTE: Despite the available free plan, I don’t recommend Webnode for creating a free website. Webnode free plan possibilities are considerably limited compared to Wix or Weebly. You can try other builders if your aim is to develop a free website.

But I recommend using Webnode in the following cases:

For multi-language website creation. Webnode is the best solution in the market;

For beginner webmasters who want to develop a personal website;

For making small online stores, since the cost of starting up an online store is low with Webnode;

For creating small business sites (using the Mini or Standard plans).

How much does Webnode cost?

Webnode offers a free plan without any limits on use and four affordable premium plans. The most basic Limited plan costs $3.90 per month. It is the same as the free plan but with the possibility to use your domain name. Mini plan ($7.50) has got broader capacities but doesn’t remove Webnode ads. Standard Plan costs $12.90 and has got even more options, not to mention the possibility to make online sales. The top Profi plan costs $22.90. It’s got maximum capabilities and supports all 20 languages for multi-language website creation. Here are more details about Webnode’s plans.

Create a site

Pixpa – Good for Portfolios and Selling Art Works

At first glance, Pixpa doesn’t look like a small business website builder. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Squarespace – just like Squarespace, it’s designed to develop portfolio websites. But it has its own advantages that Squarespace doesn’t have. And it’s not just more affordable prices.

Pixpa website builder

Pixpa is betting on the development of three types of sites – portfolio websites for photographers, artists and illustrators, blogs and an online store. Of course, all this can be packaged in one website.

Easy Portfolio Website Creation

Simplicity and convenience are the distinguishing features of Pixpa. Pixpa has a simple yet functional drag and drop editor with an intuitive interface. You should not expect super-wide features from it (like Wix, for example), but they are quite enough to customize the template you like the way you need.

Minimalist and Responsive Templates

Pixpa has about 40 website templates on topics: Photography, Design, Art & Illustration, Graphic and Web, Architecture, Music and Performing Arts, Fashion, Models & Actors, Beauty & Style, Health & Wellness, Personal & Lifestyle, Wedding, Health & Wellness, Blog, Business & Services, Consulting & Coaching, Food & Restaurants, Real Estate & Properties.

I specifically listed them all so that you can be convinced of their diversity. In terms of category selection, Pixpa outperforms most other portfolio website builders. Because Pixpa is more about business than just building a portfolio website.

Pixpa templates

All Pixpa templates are responsive and automatically adjust to any screen resolution. Without additional actions on your part, which of course will greatly simplify the life of beginners.

NOTE: What I personally like about Pixpa as a web designer is the easy change of website template. Most website builders don’t allow you to easily change the template of a live website (Wix – hello!). With Pixpa, this is possible with just one click – you simply select a new template and Pixpa will automatically adapt the content to fit it. Very simple and fast. And that’s pretty cool for me!

Advanced SEO Features already in basic plan

Pixpa has built-in SEO tools for advanced website SEO customization. Remarkably, this option is already available in the Basic plan, unlike most website builders.

NOTE: Pixpa has fast loading pages due to progressive loaded images on the pages. This works similar to lazy loading in WordPress. Images are loaded on the page not all at once when it is opened, but as the page is scrolled. The benefit is especially noticeable for websites with long pages with lots of images, such as photo galleries or blogs.

Adding and editing CSS, HTML, Javascript already in the basic plan

Adding your own CSS code and manually editing the HTML code of pages is a feature of many advanced website builders. But not many builders offer this opportunity in the basic plan. Pixpa is one of them. This, no doubt, will be appreciated by more experienced web masters with the appropriate skills.

Sell without a transaction fee

Pixpa allows you to not only create various image galleries on your website, but also sell them. And at the same time with zero commission, which favorably distinguishes Pixpa from many other online stores (Squarespace and Shopify, hello to you!).

In fact, on Pixpa, you can create not the usual portfolio website, but a fully functional online store. For example, selling paintings or posters. Or even printed T-shirts. In short, any product where the visual component is of primary importance. In this case, the benefits of Pixpa will be fully revealed.

Pixpa has many more features than I have listed here. Check them all on the official website.

For whom will Pixpa be the best solution?

For photographers, illustrators, graphic and web designers who want a minimalist portfolio website at an affordable cost.

For those who would like to create an online store without transaction fees to sell photos, art works, posters, paintings and any other creative products and more.

Anyone who needs a small website with good functionality at a cheap price.

NOTE: want to see what websites built with Pixpa look like? Check out these 20+ Pixpa website examples to see what your website might look like with this website builder.

How much does Pixpa cost?

Cheap prices is another Pixpa plus. Pixpa has a 15 day trial period, after which you will be prompted to choose one of four plans as standard: Basic, Creator, Professional, Advanced. Pixpa allows you to have additional discounts when paying yearly (50% Off!) and 2 yearly (63% Off!). Thus, the already affordable prices have become even more profitable.

Judge for yourself:

	Basic	Creator	Professional	Advanced
Pay monthly	$5/mo	$10/mo	$15/mo	$25/mo
Pay yearly	$2.50/mo	$5/mo	$7.50/mo	$12.50/mo
Pay 2 yearly	$1.88/mo	$3.75/mo	$5.63/mo	$9.38/mo

NOTE: you can get an additional 50% off any Pixpa plan if you use our 50% Off Pixpa coupon code.

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Weebly – Best Free Website Builder

Weebly was the first website builder I ever used. It’s one of the oldest online website builders that began operation in 2007.

Weebly website builder

Being one of the best free website builders, Weebly has lots of advantages, some of which you’re unlikely to get with other website builders. What I like about this builder is that it’s got a good balance (between functional capacities and simplicity of use) and has ample opportunities for creating larger sites. With regards to the latter, Weebly is second to none.

Easy To Use

Weebly is really easy to use. You’ll have to spend the least possible amount of time and effort to master its interface. Weebly’s drag-and-drop editor is extremely easy and intuitive, but I must say that it appeared to me not that flexible when compared to Wix.

Weebly editor

I would have liked more capacities for changing templates and editing them. However, the ease and user-friendliness of this builder are still worth appreciating.

Perfect for Larger Websites

Most of the good website builders are aimed at small website development. They are limited in terms of pages, sections, categories, and subcategories. Moreover, managing larger projects using such platforms isn’t as easy as you’d like. But all this isn’t true for Weebly. Weebly, perhaps, is the best online website builder if you want to build a sizable informational website. It has a well-considered website architecture that is great for multi-page websites with a big enclosure of sections and subsections.

Website made on Weebly

Also, it is as easy to handle a larger website with Weebly as it is to handle a smaller one.

Unlimited Depth of Navigation

Weebly allows creating an unlimited enclosure of categories, sections, and navigation menus. That’s what I felt lacking in Squarespace, where you can create categories for only first-level enclosures. Weebly automatically creates a drop-down menu for you in accordance with your multilevel website structure. It’s really wonderful!

Membership Site Creation

Using Weebly, you can build membership sites with the possibility of showing certain content to only a certain group of users. It’s possible to give them personal access passwords or let them independently register on the website to gain entry to the membership area.

Weebly membership options

Learn more about Weebly membership features here.

NOTE: Creating a membership website is possible with the Pro plan and plans above it. With the Pro plan, you can have up to 100 members. With the most expensive plans, the limit on the number of members gets lifted.

Adding and Editing The Website Code

It’s been my long-held observation that experienced webmasters (especially web developers) consider Weebly to be the absolute leader among all online website builders. And that’s not for nothing. The point is that Weebly, unlike most of its competitors, allows editing the HTML/CSS code of your website. It can be via the Embed Code element. And it is really comfortable to work with. You can edit the CSS code and see how your website has changed in the preview section. (Select the Auto Preview option in the settings.)

Weebly HTML/CSS editor

As a result, you can perform more accurate customization of your website as per your needs.

NOTE: Be very careful while manually editing the HTML website code. Ensure that you don’t accidentally make changes that may hurt your entire website’s operation. Given that Weebly hasn’t got an automatic website backup creation option (like Wix and Webnode), wrongly editing the code can create major problems for you. You’ll have to contact Weebly support in order to restore your website. That’s why you should edit the code only if you have the required skills and experience.

Apps and Widgets

Weebly has the Weebly App Center, where you’ll find a great collection of apps, widgets, and tools to integrate with your Weebly websites. Judged based on the number of additional apps available, Weebly is the third-best platform (after Shopify and Wix).

Weebly editor

Using apps and widgets allows making your website even better. For example, you can add complicated tables or text animations to attract your users’ attention. What’s remarkable about this is that the Weebly App Center can be accessed on all plans, including the free version.

For whom will Weebly be the best solution?

For creating bigger sites with a large number of pages and sections;

For creating free websites;

For beginner webmasters without any experience in site building;

For making business websites;

For webmasters with HTML layout and programming skills;

For making eCommerce stores.

How much does Weebly cost?

Weebly has one free and several premium plans. Note that Weebly has different plans for users from the USA and Europe. There are 3 premium plans for the USA: The Personal plan, available for $6 per month, allows adding your custom domain name. There is also a plan for $12 per month and the Performance plan for $26 per month. For European countries, there are 4 premium plans:

Connect (Similar to the personal plan, available for €6 per month);

Pro (Positioned as a plan for groups and organizations, available for €10 per month);

Business (For small businesses and online stores, available for €20 per month);

Business Plus (For larger eCommerce sellers, available for €30 per month).

Find out more details about Weebly’s plans.

Create a site

Jimdo – Good for Simple Small Business Sites

Jimdo belongs to the category of older website builders (it exists since 2007) that keep on evolving and getting better.

Jimdo website builder

In 2017, Jimdo released an artificial intelligence-powered version of its website builder – Jimdo Dolphin. Jimdo Dolphin is now one of the best AI website builders at a very affordable price. For the most part, it was Jimdo Dolphin’s existence that made me put it on the best website builders list. Jimdo Creator, a version for more experienced users, appeared to me not functional enough. It contains more advanced settings than Jimdo Dolphin, but it’s obviously a weaker variant than Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace. That’s why when I’m talking about Jimdo, I mean Jimdo Dolphin.

Very Fast

Jimdo Dolphin is the fastest website builder among the ones that I have used. You can develop a simple but high-quality website in only 3 minutes. Literally, in just 3 minutes! If you spend about an hour on its final customization, you’ll get a perfect simple website.

Very Simple

Jimdo’s simplicity and user-friendliness are commendable. It was more comfortable and easier for me to edit a website using Jimdo Dolphin than using Wix ADI. The reason was that Jimdo allows editing websites in real-time. This means you can immediately see the results of your actions.

Jimdo editor

Free

Jimdo has a free plan – it’s an undeniable pro, but in my opinion, its possibilities are very restricted. It’s fair to say that there are some free website builders that have fewer restrictions and more functional options in their free plans.

Quality Website Templates

Jimdo offers beautiful and quality website templates. They look equally good on different devices like smartphones, older mobile phones, tablets, or PCs.

Jimdo website templates

NOTE: Keep in mind that if you choose Jimdo Dolphin, you cannot switch to Jimdo Creator and vice versa. What is more, you should know that Jimdo doesn’t support the possibility of HTML website code editing. Website editing is limited to what you can do using the visual Jimdo drag-and-drop editor.

For whom will Jimdo be the best solution?

For beginner webmasters with minimum skills;

For immediate website creation (when you need a website right now);

For developing simple websites for small businesses.

How much does Jimdo cost?

Jimdo offers 2 kinds of plans – for creating standard websites and for online stores. For standard websites:

Play – A free plan that is good for nothing but testing Jimdo;

Start – A basic premium plan without ads and with your custom domain for $6 per month;

Grow – Recommended for business websites (for $15 per month);

Unlimited – As obvious from the self-explanatory name, the plan has no restrictions. The cost of this plan isn’t stated on the website.

For online stores:

Basic – Similar to the Start plan, but aimed at ecommerce (for $15 per month);

Business – For more advanced online stores (for $19 per month);

VIP – The top ecommerce plan, the price for which isn’t mentioned on the website.

More details about Jimdo plans.

Create a site

My expert tips for choosing website builders for businesses

Finding a good website builder is a challenging task. Not because there aren’t enough of them. But rather because there are too many different website building platforms, and the choice gets overwhelming.

Now even though website builders are great, choosing an unsuitable website builder can be extremely detrimental to your business.

You cannot put off or avoid the choice either because an effective website is essential for any business in the modern world.

In this section, I’m going to clearly explain how to choose a website builder for small businesses and what criteria should be taken into consideration.

Where to start choosing from?

To begin with, you should decide on the challenges that your website is going to solve for your business and what is going to be the goal of the website.

There are usually three main kinds of business websites.

eCommerce

These types of websites are online stores that sell different products and services. Their main purpose is to sell physical or digital products and directly receive payment.

If you want to find an eCommerce website builder with all the relevant features for ensuring and facilitating online sales, check out my article on the best eCommerce website builders.

Business Representation

These are the websites that are a company’s official address on the Internet. They are not directly linked to making sales or earning revenue. The purpose of these websites is to inform the audience about a company’s activities and the goods and services it offers.

Specialized business websites

These are the websites, which have certain (often peculiar) functionalities specific to a certain type of business. For example, a website for a hotel with the possibility of booking rooms online. Or a restaurant’s website with the ability to look through the menu and book a table.

In this guide, I’ll be focusing on choosing website builders for developing the second and third types of business websites.

Now let’s move on.

The first question that beginners struggle to find answers to is…

NOTE: For a better understanding of what high-quality and modern business websites can look like, check out this review: 30 Modern Small Business Websites Examples for 2024. All of the presented websites are related to different business niches and are made on different website builders and CMS.

Free or premium?

To be honest, you can build a business website at no cost using free website builders. But you should be ready for certain restrictions.

Usually, it is in the form of having the website builder’s banner ad (or a button). All free website builders place their advertisements on the sites built using the free versions.

The second thing is that you don’t get the option to use the domain name of your choice. There are only 2 website builders, which allow using a custom domain name in the free plan.

The third restriction of free website builders is the limitation related to bandwidth, storage space, and sometimes even the number of web pages that can be created. Yes, you read it right – your website can have only as many pages as allowed by the chosen plan.

In my opinion, thus, if we are talking about business, small businesses specifically, a free plan’s capabilities will never be enough. Even if the chosen website builder is the best in the market.

Thus, it is always better to choose a low-cost premium plan and create a professional website using your own domain name and without ads or hard limits.

Which website builders are reliable?

It’s a reasonable question to ask, considering the fact that a website builder is a visual editor, web hosting, domain name registrar, and email sender all rolled into one. All these things together are packed in the integrated SaaS service with unified technical support.

Now, how reliable these services are going to be and how well they’ll function together depends on both the technical support and the coherence of the work of the entire website builder team.

It is especially important to emphasize the age of the website builder though. Website builders that have been constantly offering their services for 10+ years, improving their drag-and-drop editors, creating more contemporary templates, and adding new options are, of course, more reliable. Such companies have served hundreds and thousands of clients. And thus, it won’t be a ‘worth considering’ option for them to stop their business or not offer proper services.

Meanwhile, a lot of newly launched website builders don’t have the hassle of preserving their reputation. Further, many of them go bankrupt shortly after the launch, leaving those who chose the builder in a major fix.

Here are the most reliable website builders for businesses (and even individuals):

There are also Shopify and BigCommerce, specifically suitable for building online stores.

All these website builders have been operating successfully for several years and aren’t going to curtail their activities.

What points should be first taken into consideration?

The key point to be considered while selecting website builders is whether it has quality templates relevant to your business. The more such templates will be, the greater choice you’ll have.

Why is this important?

Well, some website builders offer universal templates suitable for any industry/niche.

And let me be clear here – it’s not the best solution.

It’s always better to find a specialized template that is designed to your industry-specific requirements.

By “quality templates” I mean not only stylish and contemporary designs but also responsiveness. And not all website templates are inherently responsive. This means that most of them will face problems while displaying on mobile phones or other devices.

Is having a drag-and-drop editor mandatory?

Yes. Your website builder must definitely have a drag-and-drop editor. It allows building a website without having HTML and programming skills. You just drag the website elements using your computer mouse and drop them where you want them to be. Easy!

Even if you know how to edit the CSS code manually, the absence of a built-in drag-and-drop editor should be a red flag.

All (without exception) leading contemporary website builders have a drag-and-drop editor.

NOTE: Not all drag-and-drop editors are alike. Some website builders have outdated drag-and-drop editors, which allow only slight edits in the template. The other, more contemporary ones are much more flexible. For example, Wix’s drag-and-drop editor allows dragging content blocks and design elements with 1-pixel precision. What is more, it contains options for setting up the website color scheme too.

What other parameters are important when choosing a website builder?

Every website builder has several plans. There are normally 3 to 5 plans that you can choose from. They vary in terms of the prices and the features that you’ll get.

Always make sure that your chosen plan does not have restrictions on the number of pages that your website can have.

Alert: Also, be sure to verify that you’ll be able to use a custom domain name instead of being confined to the one offered by the website builder. Not all premium plans allow this!

Pay attention to the storage space and bandwidth too.

And it isn’t necessary for website builders to have unlimited storage space and bandwidth. For starting small business websites it will be enough to have 1GB Storage space and 2GB Bandwidth.

Best Mobile Website Builder for Android and iOC

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Before we begin talking about choosing an appropriate mobile website builder among the best website builders, I’m going to make a small digression. (A jog down the memory lane, to be honest.)

I first learned about mobile websites about 15 years ago. Back then I was an SEO and the main web designer at a small website design agency. Back in those days, online website builders weren’t a ‘thing’. And working with WordPress was considered ‘bad’ in the professional web development circles.

The first orders for mobile website development were seen as clients’ whims. What is more, those mobile websites didn’t look like the contemporary ones. In fact, they were single mobile website versions, and users were able to switch between mobile and desktop versions through a link in the header.

Most people at that time had standard mobile phones (like Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola). Those devices couldn’t be used for browsing websites. People could surf the Internet only if they had a smartphone. And actually, we only develop websites for smartphone users.

A lot has changed since then. Smartphones have become commonplace, everyone has one in their pockets today. And smartphones are frequently used for browsing websites and social networks. According to data from Statista, the share of global website traffic coming from mobile devices is 54.8%. This means that on average every second user visits websites from their mobile devices.

Moreover, in some niches, the share of global website traffic from mobile devices is over 70%. And if your website isn’t optimized for mobile traffic or lacks at being mobile-friendly, you lose at least 50% of your traffic.

Now let’s turn to an important question: What solutions should you use for creating mobile websites?
Before that…

Why Is It Better To Develop Mobile Websites On Desktop Software?

There are hundreds (!) of mobile website builder software that allow developing a website exclusively from a mobile phone. No matter what you prefer – Android or iOS – you can run the software on your smartphone and immediately start creating your website.

But I don’t advise doing that. Here’s why

When you develop your website on a mobile app you only get access to reduced capacities as compared to when you use the same website builder from your laptop or PC.

The reason behind this is the fact that even the most contemporary and advanced website builders can’t deliver all their functional capacities on the interface of a small phone screen. Consequently, it becomes extremely difficult to use a mobile website builder. And eventually, no one really benefits from those.

Also, while you can develop a website from your phone, don’t expect to be able to choose a template or change the blocks or reorder the elements on your website.

Another important point of consideration is that the preview modes can only help you see how your website looks on a mobile screen. You won’t be able to see how it looks on the desktop.

To give you some perspective, you won’t be able to do this:

Switch to Mobile

This is how Wix’s visual editor interface looks on a desktop. By clicking on the desktop or mobile option (as shown in the image above), you can immediately (while developing) check how your website is going to look on both PC/laptops and mobile phones. You can switch between the previews for the two versions in real-time.

But if you decide to build your website using the Wix mobile interface, you won’t get this feature.

What About Using Website Builder Apps On Mobile?

Using a website builder app on your mobile is close enough to developing a website from a mobile browser. You get fewer opportunities than you’d get with the desktop counterpart.

I have compared the Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace mobile apps with their basic online versions for desktops. And let me tell you that the mobile apps were nowhere near as convenient as the desktop versions.

That’s why even if you are an avid mobile amateur, I recommend that you develop a website using your PC or Mac. And after designing and developing the basic structure of your website, you can manage it and fill it with content exclusively from your mobile phone.

What Are The Criteria That I Used For Choosing Mobile Website Builders?

Okay, now let us turn directly to the question you are itching to ask: Choosing the best mobile website builder.

There are some specific nuances to the process and it’s better to learn them before beginning mobile website development.

What features must a good mobile website builder have?

1. Mobile Responsive Templates

Most popular website builders have beautiful templates. But not all of them are responsive. Some of them can be outdated and not have an adaptive web design. Developing responsive layouts using such templates is not possible. So the first thing you need to look for is mobile responsive templates.

2. Powerful But User-friendly Drag-and-Drop Editor

A drag-and-drop editor is, perhaps, the most important part of any website builder. This is also true for a mobile website builder. Thanks to a drag-and-drop editor, you can easily edit and customize your website without having to manually edit the HTML/CSS code.

Also, the simplicity and user-friendliness or otherwise of the website builder depend on whether or not its drag-and-drop editor is well thought out. The best website builders are those that have powerful yet intuitive drag-and-drop builders that minimize web development hassles for beginners.

3. Apps That Work Well On Mobile Interfaces

Most of the top website builders have additional Mobile App libraries. These apps and widgets can make your website even better by letting you add special options that website builders don’t have by default. For example, an online ticket reservation system or the option to receive charitable donations directly from the website.

Additional mobile apps

But not all such apps operate perfectly on mobile interfaces. The reason for this is that most of these apps are created by third-party developers and not the internal teams of these platforms. But some website builders, such as Wix and Shopify, have a stricter quality control towards apps acceptance. So you are more likely to get mobile-friendly apps with these platforms.

4. Mobile Ecommerce Options

Mobile ecommerce sales in the USA in 2022 made up over 53% of the total ecommerce sales. However, most ecommerce stores don’t support sales through mobile browsers. And those that do, make multiple mistakes along the way.

And if we talk about ecommerce website builders, then too, not all of them allow building really user-friendly mobile ecommerce websites. Moreover, some websites are so complicated for mobile users that they just bounce off the site and turn to competitors.

Top 5 Mobile Website Builders

I have tried out and worked with several website builders. But today I’d be talking about and highlighting the features of the most mobile-friendly ones. The website builders discussed below allow building mobile responsive websites that will look the same on Android or iOS, or any other mobile device.

Wix – The Universal Mobile Website Builder

To state it briefly, Wix is really good. It’s the most popular free website builder in the market today. And it comes with the largest template selection, a built-in drag-and-drop editor, and its own App Market. To top it all, using the basic versions of these features is free forever.

Want to know what exactly makes Wix so popular and so good? Read on.

The Largest Selection Of Responsive Templates

Wix has the largest template selection among all website builders. It has more than 500 free templates. And all of them are fully mobile responsive.

Collection of responsive templates

So you don’t even have to edit the design, since the templates are anyway going to be perfectly displayed on mobile browsers on Android or iOS devices.

Perfect Mobile Editor

Wix has a built-in smart mobile editor that, according to them, is as effective as its desktop version. Wix automatically creates a mobile version of your website and you don’t even have to lift a finger for that.

WIX mobile editor

Another great aspect of Wix is the fact that you can configure the mobile version of your website separately from the desktop one. This means that your website can look differently on PC and smartphones. It is especially convenient when you don’t want to overload your website with extra information in the mobile view (in contrast to the basic desktop version).

NOTE: Despite Wix having such capacities, I would advise against making mobile website content completely different from its desktop version. This may cause negative SEO effects. This is due to Mobile-First Indexing where Google primarily indexes a mobile website version and then later turns to the desktop version. Having more content on the desktop version might be incorrectly interpreted by Google. This may lead to a loss of website positions in the Google search engine results. If your website has different desktop and mobile URLs, then you won’t have to deal with such a problem, since these pages will be ranked on Google separately.

Any Type Of Content

Just like desktop versions, Wix allows uploading any type of content to the mobile version too. You can add videos, PDF presentations, plain text content, or images in different formats (like JPEG, PNG, WebP, or GIF), and all these items will be accessible for viewing in mobile mode.

Add image

Mobile Apps in the Wix App Market

Unlike the overwhelming majority of website builders, Wix has its own collection of additional apps and widgets in the Wix App Market. These apps help in adding complementary and sometimes specific options for Wix websites.

Mobile Apps in the Wix App Market

Some Wix apps are specifically designed and developed for improving mobile websites. Some of them include:

My Mobile App – Based on your Wix website, this free app will automatically create an app for Apple App Store and Google Play.

Poptin: Smart Popups & Forms – This app allows creating popups and forms with advanced settings that will work perfectly both on desktop and mobile websites.

Pricer Ninja – It is a free app that allows the creation of flexible, customizable, and responsive pricing tables for mobile websites.

Wix is a free Mobile Website Builder

In addition to all the above features, Wix is a free website builder. Of course, its free capacities are diluted as compared to the features you get when using the Wix premium plans, but it will be enough to launch a simple mobile website for beginners.

NOTE: The Wix free plan includes a Wix ad on your website and there will be some limitations on using a domain name. Your free mobile site will also have restrictions on Bandwidth (1GB) and Storage Space (500MB). As for the rest, you’ll have access to all Wix templates and customization capacities (like premium plans).

Create a site

Webflow – Dynamic Creator for Crafting Mobile Websites

Webflow is a professional website builder renowned for its extensive customization options and powerful design tools. Ideal for creatives, perfectionists, and those detail-oriented individuals, Webflow puts you in the driver’s seat to craft stunning websites.

Unmatched Design Freedom

Webflow’s standout feature is its advanced visual editor. Unlike many other website builders, Webflow allows you to create complex layouts with precise control over every element. The platform introduces concepts from web development like HTML and CSS into a visual interface, allowing users to create and manipulate elements in a highly customizable way.

Webflow drag and drop editor

High-Level Customizability for Mobile

One of Webflow’s distinguishing features is its high-level customizability, even for mobile designs. You can precisely control the layout, sizing, and positioning of elements on the mobile version of your site. This provides a level of detail and precision that’s rarely seen in other website builders, ensuring your mobile site is as refined and engaging as its desktop counterpart.

Powerful E-commerce Capabilities

Webflow is not just for portfolios or business websites—it’s also a robust platform for online stores. It offers a range of e-commerce features that let you manage products, customize shopping carts, and even set up automatic tax calculations.

If you’re a small to medium-sized e-commerce brand, Webflow provides you with the same level of design capabilities without any transaction fees. Its ecommerce capabilities are fully responsive, ensuring your online store looks great and works seamlessly on mobile devices.

SEO for Mobile

Webflow offers robust SEO tools that are fully functional for mobile websites. You can optimize your site for search engines by editing meta titles, descriptions, and URLs, creating 301 redirects, and generating sitemaps. All these features make your mobile site more discoverable and help it rank better in search engine results.

Webflow SEO settings

Comprehensive Integration

Webflow’s integration capabilities are extensive. It works with major services like Gmail, HubSpot, Mailchimp, SoundCloud, and Zapier, among others. Though setup requires a bit of effort, the potential for a fully integrated website makes it worthwhile.

Security and Support

Webflow takes security seriously. All Webflow sites come with a free SSL certificate and DDoS protection. Unlimited site backups mean your work is always safe. It’s important to note, however, that customer support is not available 24/7, so it’s best suited for those who can work within their support hours.

Webflow Plans

Webflow offers a range of plans to cater to different needs. From free plans that let you explore its features, to professional plans with more advanced capabilities, there’s a pricing tier for everyone. For those who need it, custom enterprise site plans are also available.

Webflow SEO settings

In essence, Webflow is a comprehensive and powerful website builder that offers a high degree of control and customization. It’s a fantastic option for those who want to dive deep into the design of their website and create something truly unique.

Create a site

Weebly – Perfect for Small Businesses

Like Wix, Weebly is one of the oldest website builders and it also allows building perfect mobile websites.

After a payment giant Square bought Weebly in 2018, a lot of changes have been done in order to fine-tune this platform for business use and making ecommerce sales. And Weebly has indeed succeeded in these areas.

But what about creating mobile websites? Keep reading to find out.

Weebly Drag-and-Drop Mobile Editor

Thanks to a built-in drag-and-drop mobile editor, Weebly allows creating websites directly from your touchscreen smartphone, irrespective of whether it is iPhone or Android-based. You can also develop your website using the Weebly Mobile App. But as I have already mentioned, it is good only for developing quick and simple mobile websites.

Weebly Drag-and-Drop Mobile Editor

If you are aiming to develop a feature-rich business website, then I recommend using the Weebly drag-and-drop editor on your desktop.

Mobile Responsive Themes

Weebly has tons of professional-looking themes, and all of them are responsive. As for the size of the theme collection, it is smaller than that of Wix but the quality is at par.

Weebly mobile responsive themes

While creating a website Weebly will automatically create a mobile version as well. But you won’t be able to edit the mobile version’s content separately (like you could in Wix).

Simplicity of Use

Weebly is really simple to use. You won’t need to look at instructional videos or study tutorials beforehand. You can create a Weebly mobile website while you are stuck in a traffic jam in your car or on the subway and have nothing but your phone with you.

NOTE: Weebly’s simplicity can partly be explained by the fact that it has fewer functional options as compared to Wix. In comparison to Wix, Weebly’s drag-and-drop editor falls a tad bit short on flexibility. And I must admit that Wix’s mobile templates have more customization capacities than Weebly.

Weebly App Center

Weebly, as it befits any top mobile website builder, has a large collection of additional apps for website improvement available in the Weebly App Center. And the good news here is that most of them are free.

Weebly App Center

And of course, there are certain apps for improving the functionalities of mobile websites. Here are a few of them:

My Mobile App – It allows creating a mobile app with automatic content synchronization with your Weebly website.

Hide if Mobile – This app allows hiding a part of the content or the whole content when viewing from a mobile device.

Mobile Converter – A free app, it can be used for raising mobile conversion rates for ecommerce market players.

TextBee – It is an app for boosting sales by sending personalized mobile messages to online store visitors.

Weebly Is A Free Mobile Website Builder

Weebly has got a basic plan that is entirely free – without any hidden payments or tricks to get access to your credit card (it’s sometimes true for dishonest SaaS services).

Notably, you will also receive SEO options and subsidiary SEO guidance for your Weebly website for free.

The lowest Weebly premium plan starts at $6 per month and will allow you to use your own domain name. You can check the cost of other Weebly plans on the official website.

Create a site

Squarespace – Mobile Websites for Photographers

While Wix and Weebly are similar in their purposes, Squarespace is markedly different. Squarespace shines in all its glory when you need to develop a contemporary website for photographers, artists, musicians, and other creative professionals.

This doesn’t mean you can’t use Squarespace for creating a common business website though. However, there are more suitable website builders for such a purpose. As for showcasing photos, graphics, musical compositions, and any other artworks – Squarespace is just perfect.

Is Squarespace mobile-friendly? Of course, it is. Check it out for yourself:

Marvelous Mobile-Friendly Themes

Above anything else, I like Squarespace for its marvelous themes. They have got plenty of detailed and beautiful designs. Being a designer myself, I understand their value. And in my opinion, they offer the most beautiful themes among all website builders.

Squarespace mobile-friendly themes

Moreover, all Squarespace themes have an adaptive web design. They automatically adjust to any browser, whether it is a PC browser or your smartphone. Also, no matter what OS you use – iPhone or Android phone – your Squarespace website will always be perfectly displayed.

Responsive themes

NOTE: Despite having a positive attitude towards Squarespace, I must admit that Squarespace doesn’t allow you to configure the mobile version of your website separately. To be honest, Squarespace developers have sweated over making their full-sized websites automatically adapt to any screen size. And it must be acknowledged that it works well. But if you want to change something in the mobile website version, you don’t have an option for that. An alternative way is to make minor adjustments in the Squarespace Style Editor. Also, those having better design skills will be able to better configure Squarespace for mobile devices.

Displaying High-Resolution Photos On Mobile Websites

It is very important for photographers and artists to have high-resolution photos on their websites. Squarespace allows uploading high-resolution images to websites and viewing them both via desktop and mobile devices.

It’s a pretty rare thing among website builders since the image size and quality usually tend to worsen when using mobile browsers.

Ample ECommerce Possibilities

Squarespace is one of the best website builders for creating small online stores. In addition to the fact that the store would look perfect, there is no limit to how many goods you can upload to your online store.

Ecommerce options of Squarespace

Plus, you don’t have to pay transaction fees and you get lots of additional ecommerce options too. All this, put together is enough to explain why Squarespace is so popular.

NOTE: It is important to know that Squarespace doesn’t allow any additional app installations. It has no App Store (like the Wix App Market or Weebly App Center). You must rely solely on the existing built-in tools. This is one of the main reasons why I’ve placed Squarespace at the third position on this list.

Allows Managing Multiple Websites

Squarespace is well suited for managing multiple websites. You can edit and manage several websites at the same time using one Squarespace user account. It’s an indispensable option for businesses with multiple online stores or web design agencies with a lot of client projects.

Squarespace Isn’t Free But Comes At An Affordable Cost

Unlike Wix and Weebly, Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan. But you do get to try it out for free with the 14-day trial.

Squarespace premium plans also have decent enough prices. The Personal plan will cost you $144 a year or $16 if you pay monthly. It is the basic Squarespace plan, but its capacities are greater than the starting plans of most other website builders.

For example, you’ll get unlimited bandwidth and storage, free custom domain, free SSL certificate, and SEO tools. It’s good enough for a basic plan, right? You can get more pricing details on the official Squarespace website.

Create a site

Shopify – The Best Option For Building Mobile Ecommerce Sites

Shopify is one of the most popular website builders in the world. This is true even with the fact that it isn’t free, and its premium plans are one of the most expensive among website builders.

That’s because Shopify is an incredibly powerful ecommerce platform with a huge number of options for creating and managing online stores. This also includes some options for electronic commerce through mobile devices. And Shopify has succeeded in the sphere like no other online website builder.

Let’s find out more thoroughly why Shopify is in high demand, despite its high costs.

More Than Just An Ecommerce Website Builder

For a long time, Shopify has gone beyond a common website builder, whose only purpose is website development. It is a feature-loaded business platform that allows not just creating online stores but also managing the whole ecommerce business using a single Shopify App.

In addition to that, with Shopify, you also get powerful marketing tools, options for accepting payments through Shopify Payments, goods delivery via Shopify Shipping, and integration with Amazon, eBay, Instagram, and Facebook.

Actually, you get a ready ecommerce business on a single platform. Moreover, you can manage your business from anywhere in the world with just your mobile phone. And it really works as well as it promises.

More Than Just An Ecommerce Website Builder

Ecommerce options of Squarespace

NOTE: A quick word about Shopify Shipping. Shopify Shipping makes it cheaper to deliver goods across the USA by banking on Shopify’s partnership arrangements with USPS and DHL. The savings on delivery can amount to up to 88% in some cases. That’s why if your clients are from the USA, then using Shopify can be particularly beneficial for your business.

The Shopify App Allows Convenient Management Of Purchase Orders, Products, And Their Delivery

Shopify has a single mobile app that makes it easy to manage your entire ecommerce business directly from your iPhone, Android smartphone, or any other mobile device.

Shopify mobile app

The Shopify App allows you to add new products to your online store from your phone, delete the unnecessary ones, edit the product descriptions, and add or delete the product photos.

And that’s not all. You can also approve purchase orders, arrange refunds, control delivery, monitor attendance, conversions, and sales for any period of time, and even manage your staff. Yes, all this is possible with just a single app on your mobile phone.

Excellent Mobile-Friendly Shopify Themes

Shopify has a number of free mobile themes. More than 100 actually. And it isn’t surprising, given that Wix has got more than 500 themes.

Mobile-Friendly Shopify Themes

But what about premium mobile themes? Third-party developers create premium responsive mobile themes for Shopify that can be bought individually. More than 1300 such premium themes are sold on ThemeForest, the largest Shopify themes library on the web.

These themes not only have a mobile-optimized layout but also have several other advantages in comparison to the free ones, including:

Fast loading speed

Flexibility (they consist of flexible content blocks)

Multiple headers and footers

Multiple headers for mobile version

Support for video content

Support for 3D models

Quick mobile shopping

Quick update cart

Multiple languages

Multiple currencies

And the main advantage of premium themes is that they are used less frequently than free ones. That’s why if you go with a premium theme, your website is likely to have a more unique design, which is an important factor in many niches.

Upgrade Your Mobile Site Using Additional Apps

Like other top website builders, Shopify has its own library of additional plugins and apps – the Shopify App Store. There are both premium and free apps that can be used for adding more functionalities to your Shopify site.

The most spectacular options for mobile sites include:

Vajro – It is a mobile app builder for Shopify websites aimed at creating full-featured apps for Android and iOS.

ShipHero – A complete mobile solution for warehouses and 3PLs management in real-time.

Mobile Menu & Navigation – It allows making a fully configurable and professional-looking mobile menu with lots of additional options.

Robin PRO Photo Gallery – The app lets you create quick and mobile-friendly image galleries for a more convenient view on Android and iOS devices.

Superior Mobile Experience – It allows increasing mobile conversions and sales by introducing more refined navigation, bottom bar, and sidebar.

Accelerated Mobile Pages – It allows creating Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) so that your online store loads faster on mobile devices.

How Much Will It Cost To Launch A Mobile Website On Shopify?

It’s not difficult to guess that such a powerful platform like Shopify won’t have a free plan. The most affordable Basic Shopify plan costs $29/month and will be good for creating a simple, small ecommerce website.

NOTE: I must admit that there are more affordable solutions for creating a small online store. For example, it’s possible to create a marvelous responsive online store on Squarespace for $20/month, and in so doing, you’ll get more functional capacities than with the Basic Shopify plan.

But Shopify is the best option when it comes to creating large online stores with an assortment of goods in numerous categories. For this, Shopify has a more powerful plan, which is priced at $79/month. And trust me, the cost is nothing in comparison to the advantages that your online business will get thanks to Shopify.

People who make millions of dollars from online sales have long realized Shopify’s advantages and the benefit it gives in the long term.

Create a site

Jimdo – The Simplest Mobile Website Builder App

Jimdo isn’t my favorite tool, since this builder is inferior to Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace in terms of possibilities.

But Jimdo has one of the easiest website apps – the Jimdo Creator. It’s so simple to use that, I guess, my dog could have built a website on it (if he weren’t blind because of old age!).

And yes, it’s free. Here are the links to download Jimdo Creator for Android and iPhone.

What else is remarkable in Jimdo for creating mobile websites? Take a look.

Jimdo Mobile Website Templates

All Jimdo website templates are responsive. They adapt to any screen size automatically and you don’t need to take any extra steps for that.

In fact, the website you are going to build on Jimdo will also be displayed on mobile devices by default. There’s nothing new in that, just a good-to-have feature.

Like Wix, you can switch between desktop and mobile versions while you are building your website. It’s a very user-friendly solution that will allow you to see how your website will look on mobile phones even before you launch it.

Jimdo Mobile Website Templates

It Is Very Simple

Obviously, Jimdo understands that it will be hard to compete with other builders, so it bets on offering maximum simplicity and user-friendliness. Just like Jimdo Creator App, the desktop drag-and-drop editor is also simple. This is also because it uses AI (We’ll talk about this later!)

While using Jimdo, I couldn’t help but feel like I was dealing with a lite version of Wix. The similarity was striking but there were fewer customization opportunities, settings, and templates. Also, the flexibility of the drag-and-drop editor was low.

Easy-to-use Jimdo editor

But that’s why Jimdo turned out to be even simpler than Wix (though Wix is one of the leaders in the simplicity of use).

Taking into account my experience in website development (not just with website builders), I was not satisfied with Jimdo Creator. It is only my subjective opinion, though.

The hundreds of positive user reviews on Google Play and the App Store are the best confirmation of the fact that non-designers and business people do need such simple solutions. This is true even if they get simplicity at the expense of functional capacities.

Jimdo user reviews

Jimdo Dolphin – Build A Website In Three Minutes

Jimdo turned out to be one of the first website builders that created a website builder with AI – Jimdo Dolphin. It is a smarter Jimdo version aimed at virtual website development without the user’s participation. Users only have to enter the data about the website they want, answer some questions, and choose the style and design, and color schemes. After that, Jimdo Dolphin will give you a ready website. And all this requires only a few minutes.

Jimdo Dolphin

Like Jimdo Creator, Jimdo Dolphin is fully responsive for mobile devices. The website will look perfect not only on PC screens but also on tablets and smartphones.

Another Jimdo Dolphin advantage is that it can automatically fill the website with content. Of course, AI won’t do your job and write articles for your blog, but it can find some information about you or your company, and let’s say, fill the About Us page.

The same is true for searching appropriate images for your website – just leave it to AI. If you won’t like something, you can always edit it afterward.

Jimdo Is A Free Mobile Website Builder

Jimdo is a free website builder by default, without any limits on usage. Of course, you won’t get to use your own domain name, but it will be enough to develop a small website, that is available for users on desktop and mobile browsers.

Another Jimdo pro is that it has got very low premium plan prices. For example, the “Start” plan will cost you only $9/month. It will solve the problem of Jimdo ads and allow you to choose a custom domain. But you can only add up to 10 pages.

If you need more pages, then you can go with the “Grow” plan for $15. It allows up to 50 pages for one website. Moreover, you’ll get much more bandwidth (20GB) and storage (15GB). This will be enough for making a medium-sized business website.

What is remarkable is that all Jimdo plans (including the free one) are mobile-optimized. And that’s why I’ve placed Jimdo on this review.

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Best Real Estate Website Builders with IDX

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In the 21st century, buyers don’t drive through the suburbia looking for appropriate real estate. The Internet is where they go. A majority of buyers find real estate on the web on Real Estate broker websites. And only after an online inspection, do they arrange physical meetings to take a closer and careful look at the property they are interested in. That makes the importance of a website pretty clear for real estate businessmen.

And if you are a Real Estate agent or represent a certain Real Estate company and need a modern real estate website with IDX and CRM integration, you have landed on the right page. In this guide, I’m going to walk you through the best real estate website builders and explain how a ‘good’ real estate platform differs from the ordinary ones.

And, of course, I’ll ensure I pour in enough examples so that you get a practical idea of things.

The traditional way for real estate businesses to get their website developed

NOTE: Before I sat down for my search for the best real estate website builders, I had a little chat with my friend Alex, who is a Real Estate agent in London. And here is some insider information he shared with me about the traditional (and inefficient!) way of getting a real estate website development.

Most of the real estate website builders that you can find on the web are not actually website builders but web development companies that specialize in developing websites for real estate businesses.

If those companies would have been efficient or effective, it wouldn’t have mattered. However, the problem arises from the fact that almost all of them are outdated and function more or less like they used to do in the 90s.

Here’s how:

Mandatory apply request

These “real estate website builders” you’ll find online follow the same pattern as regular web development companies, except that they now have websites where you can fill in their contact forms or get their email and phone details.

Most of them don’t even disclose prices on the website. You’re just given an option to contact them or request a callback.

“Manager will contact you and discuss your future website” – this is what one of these real estate website builder sites said.

The usual course of operation looks something like this:

Apply request – Get a phone call – Request a demo – Schedule the demo → Get stuck with an obsessive service

Extremely high prices

Alex tells me from experience that business managers are unlikely to tell you the price until they have complete details about your real estate business. Also, your location influences the price that is quoted for you. So if you get a website developed for your London-based business it would cost you way more than what it costs for someone from Chester. Unfair, but that’s how it happens!

All this is for when you are availing turnkey solutions.

There are, however, some platforms that follow the SaaS pattern and use readymade templates. After you make the payment, you are given login details and you can create your website yourself. And of course, for pretty much similar functionality you pay more than the prices for regular website builders that aren’t specifically targeted towards the real estate market.

For example, one of these SaaS real estate website builders I checked, comes in at a minimum cost of $129 per month. That’s without IDX. For IDX integration, you’ll have to dish out an extra $50 each month.

Another popular Real Estate platform has the following prices:

CRM – $299.95/mo

CRM+site – $399.95/mo

The lowest price that I found was $59.95/month for a website + CRM but without IDX. That’s almost twice as much as the Wix Pro plan ($23/month) which comes with numerous other options, including online branding and a $300 ad voucher.

Outdated website designs

You could compromise with a lousy onboarding process and even justify the high prices, but what you absolutely cannot deal with is poor website design.

Most real estate website builders offer an outdated lot of website designs that would go nowhere with your contemporary business. That’s why these website builders don’t display templates or example websites.

In some cases, constant nagging and customer dissatisfaction have pushed these real estate website builders to offer “custom designs by professional designer” (no more than 2-3 variants, though!). But this costs plenty of extra money.

You have to make additional payments for IDX

Despite the fact that most of these real estate website builders position themselves as turnkey solution providers including IDX and CRM, you will inevitably have to pay extra money for IDX integration.

To give you some perspective about the cost, IDX integration for a WordPress website costs an average of $50.

Now, because WordPress comes in at a pocket-friendly price and doesn’t limit itself to the real estate market and thus, the integration cost is more likely to fit your budget.

The same is true for most online website builders that can help you build a contemporary real estate website without being labelled as an industry-specific solution.

What is IDX Integration and What is it For?

IDX integration, or Internet Data Exchange, is a technology used in the real estate industry to facilitate the sharing of property listings between brokers and agents through their websites. IDX integration enables real estate professionals to display up-to-date, comprehensive property information from a Multiple Listing Service (MLS) on their websites, providing a seamless experience for home buyers and sellers.

IDX integration offers numerous benefits for both real estate professionals and their clients. For agents and brokers, IDX integration helps to attract potential clients by providing them with valuable and relevant property information directly on their website.

This not only saves time for both parties but also helps to establish the agent or broker as a reliable source of information in the market. For home buyers and sellers, IDX integration allows them to access and browse through a wide range of property listings, filter search results based on their preferences, and easily connect with real estate professionals to facilitate the home buying or selling process.

The Best Real Estate Website Builders

Now let’s take a look at what is better to use in the end? What website builders will cost not much (or even free) and at the same time will allow you to create a really good real estate website?

Wix – The best free real estate site builder

Wix is one of the best small business website builders and the most popular website builder across the globe. More websites have been created via Wix than through any other online website builder.

And the case is the same even for the real estate niche. Wix allows building modern websites for real estate agents, firms or investors with great ease. You can also check out the examples of some of the websites created for realtors and real estate firms with the help of Wix.

Wix – The best free real estate site builde

To begin with, Wix has a collection of perfectly responsive real estate templates that you can use absolutely for free. And it has a lot of specific options and features for real estate businesses, which we will discuss now.

Perfectly responsive real estate website templates

Wix offers you 21 free real estate website templates to choose from, These templates are divided into the following subcategories:

Real Estate Firms – Check example here

Real Estate Firms

These templates are for developing websites for real estate companies. They usually contain the following sections:

“Sale” – A real estate gallery with properties offered for sale with the possibility of arranging a viewing.

“Agents” – A section listing real estate agents that work with the company and their contact details.

“Contacts” – Phone numbers, emails, office addresses and a contact form to get in touch with the concerned managers.

Real Estate Consultants – Check example here

Real Estate Consultants

These templates are for developing websites for solo realtors and real estate consultants. There contain sections like:

“About” – A section containing information about the realtor or consultant.

“Services” – A description of the services offered and their prices.

“Contacts” – Phone numbers, emails, physical addresses, and a contact form.

Real Estate Landing Page – Check example here

Real Estate Landing Page

Templates are also available for developing landing websites for the sale of real estate. These landing pages can be created for a few or all of the property listings you might have.

The section included in such templates are:

“Home page” – This page is a photo gallery with a brief description of the real estate sold. They usually specify the number of rooms, living space, address and price.

“Gallery” – There are more photos of real estate’s exterior and interior.

“Info” – More information about real estate, planning, furniture in place and other important things.

“Video Tour” – Video is the best way to attract potential buyers. And these templates have a dedicated section for that.

“Contact” – Phone numbers, emails, and the contact form.

With all these feature-loaded templates, Wix allows getting a real estate website ready and running almost immediately.

And you don’t even have to put in much effort, just add the name, text content and photos to appropriate segments on the website, and your real estate website will be ready to receive visitors.

Simplicity

Wix is an incredibly simple-to-use platform. It’s designed in a manner such that even beginner users can independently create websites without anyone’s help. The Wix visual editor’s interface is intuitive and isn’t overloaded with options. Lots of additional options can, however, be unfolded by clicking or hovering the mouse over the menu items. Moreover, there are tooltips popping at the right times, which makes using this website builder even simpler.

SEO-friendly

Wix is an SEO friendly website builder. Its team understands how important it is in our time to have SEO for promoting real estate websites among others. That’s why all the websites created via Wix come with a responsive design, free SSL certificate, SEO-friendly URL structure, and allow creating and managing robot.txt, sitemap.xml, and many other things.

Thanks to the complete set of SEO options, Wix websites are perfectly indexed by search engines.

Wix IDX (MLS) integration

At the moment, Wix doesn’t have a direct IDX (MLS) integration, but there’s voting going on the Wix website, and it’s possible that in the near future this option will be developed and added to the list of standard Wix options.

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any possibility to integrate IDX into the Wix real estate website right now. Here are two ways to do that:

1. The way recommended by Wix – Use Velo by Wix for integrating IDX from an external server. This will require some web and programming skills on your part.

2. Using additional IDX widgets (for example, IDX Broker). These instructions right here will explain everything you need to know about using the additional IDX widgets on Wix.

NOTE: If you don’t have programming skills, you can hire freelancers from Fiverr freelancers for IDX Broker integration into your Wix website.

For example, you can contact this freelancer. It would be a one-time job and the cost isn’t very high – about $20–$60. As a result, you’re likely to get a perfect real estate website + IDX at a very affordable price.

Additional Real Estate Apps

Wix has a large collection of apps that offer greater modernization, additional features, and better control, which ultimately improves the overall website experience. A lot of these apps are available specifically for real estate businesses. You can install these additional apps on your website and get greater functionality, form, and ease.

Here are some apps that will significantly improve your real estate website:

Real Estate – Allows creating and managing real estate listings on your website. This app supports external MLS database integration and allows translating listings into 20+ languages.

Virtual Tours – A perfect free app for creating 360° virtual tours for real estate on sale and adding them to your website. These virtual tours can prove really effective for attracting the attention of real estate buyers.

Simple Maps – Allows adding maps with pins for certain real estate locations to your real estate website. This lets your clients fully understand where the property actually is.

Calendar – A simple but effective event calendar app, this can be used for accepting applications for viewings of your real estate listings and arranging them by time. It will allow making your work with potential buyers comfortable and simpler.

Cost of building real estate website on Wix

Wix is a free website builder, but, of course, the free version comes with some restrictions.

The basic premium plan is called Combo and costs $14/month. You can build a simple real estate website without ads on it. Moreover, you also get a free domain name for a year, a great gift from Wix!

But I still recommend using a more powerful plan – Unlimited, which costs $18/month but opens up many more possibilities for business websites.

In addition to increasing Storage space from 3GB (for Combo plan) to 10GB, you’ll get the possibility to install a Visitor Analytics app for a year for free. This allows more accurate monitoring of the attendance on your website, and also collects various useful statistics necessary for developing your business.

The Site Booster app (free for one year) and $300 ad vouchers (each $100 for Google Ads, Bing Ads and Local Listings) are also included in this plan. All this combined is much more than what you pay to get the Unlimited plan, even if you make the annual payment at once.

Site Booster App

You can also check out other Wix plans.

VIDEO Tutorial – How to build a free website on WIX? Step-by-step guide

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Squarespace – with simple IDX (MLS) integration

Squarespace is a website builder which competes on an equal footing with Wix, Weebly, and Shopify. Undoubtedly, Squarespace has several advantages that make it a plausible choice against the other website builders.

One of those advantages is its collection of cool design templates. As a professional website designer myself, I can vouch for the fact that Squarespace’s templates are one of the best when pitted against other builders – they are stylish, UI/UX friendly, and have well-considered details.

Squarespace – real estate templates

The second Squarespace advantage is especially important when it comes to building real estate websites. Squarespace offers an extremely simple option for IDX integration.

Now let’s check out the real estate-specific features of Squarespace.

Adding MLS search to a website

Squarespace allows adding MLS search to a real estate website using a special code provided by IDX services. You just have to copy this code from your IDX service and paste it into the code block on your website. Here’s a step-by-step Squarespace guide for doing that.

NOTE: This simple and useful option isn’t included in the standard Squarespace options. That’s why you’re unlikely to find support for it. In case of some troubles with MLS search inclusion, you’ll have to handle it on your own. You can, of course, consult remote professionals that are experts at IDX addition and configuration from freelance portals, like this service provider on Fiverr. Moreover, you’ll need to get on a business plan or higher to get access to the option of adding advanced code on your Squarespace site.

Perfect real estate templates

Squarespace has several perfect real estate website templates for you to choose from. The might not be as high as that of Wix’s, but they are really good. And you can rest assured about one thing, these real estate templates have a minimalist design and will not distract users from the main thing – real estate. You get big photos, large and readable fonts, and a simple and user-friendly menu. Plus, no useless design elements which other website builders tend to love so much.

For example, take a look at this real estate template.

Perfect real estate templates

Even as a website designer myself, I am tempted to use this one and not bother designing one from scratch.

Also, pay attention to the device switch in the upper left corner. Using that toggle, you can check how your website is going to look on a PC, tablet, or smartphone screen.

Simple and user-friendly

As a top website builder, Squarespace has also taken care of simplicity of use. You wouldn’t expect any less from the top players, right? It has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and mastering it won’t take too much time or effort.

Can you sign up and create a profile for yourself on Facebook? Then you’ll be able to build your Squarespace website too. It’s that simple.

NOTE: Despite the fact that I like Squarespace, I must admit that Wix’s drag and drop editor seemed more flexible and user-friendly. There were some additional features that I missed in Squarespace’s drag and drop editor. But it has got nothing to do with its simplicity of use – it’s just my own observation.

Promotional pop-ups

When used right, promotional pop-ups can be a valuable feature for real estate websites. Thanks to Squarespace, you can now easily use pop-ups to advertise the real estate listings you want on the preferred pages.

Promotional pop-ups

For example, if users are searching for houses by the ocean, a perfectly placed pop-up with a photo and description of a similar offer that you may have would create a great impact. This could be another house by the ocean with a better view or one available at a more affordable price.

In the same way, you can show options that have had a recent price drop. Generally speaking, it is a very effective tool for attracting a website visitor’s attention. All that you’ll need to do is to use your imagination, keep testing the options, and then count your money.

The cost of building a real estate website with Squarespace

Squarespace isn’t a free website builder. Neither is it a low-priced one. But it is 100% worth what it costs.

The basic plan starts from $12 monthly (if you pay annually) or $16 (if you pay monthly).

For creating a worthy real estate website, though, I’d recommend buying the more expensive, Business plan. It comes in at $18 a month, when paid for annually, or $26 in monthly payments. The best advantage of this plan is that you’d be able to add your code-to-code blocks, which will allow integrating IDX (MLS) into your website.

Additionally, you’ll get the option to customize the CSS and JavaScript. Now it might not look important to you right now, but in the future, when you have enough resources, it can open great opportunities for modernizing your real estate website.

Learn more about Squarespace’s plans on the official website.

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Jimdo – ideal for beginners

Jimdo is also one of the oldest website builders. Though it isn’t as popular as its contemporaries, Jimdo really offers something special which can help you develop a great real estate website.

To begin with, Jimdo’s operation principle differs from most website builders. You don’t have to pick a certain template from a pool of options. You just have to answer a few simple questions and Jimdo, thanks to its built-in artificial intelligence (AI), builds a ready-to-use real estate website for you. Within a minute.

Jimdo – ideal for beginners

Jimdo Dolphin – that’s what the AI editor is called – can not just build a website for you, but also populate it with content that it finds about your business on the Internet.

Sounds intriguing, isn’t it? Let’s learn what else it has on offer.

Artificial intelligence at its core

Jimdo Dolphin is one of the best AI website builders. And it definitely promises to make website building simple.

Artificial intelligence at its core

And the promise seems fair too. After all, to create a real estate website, all you have to do is answer a couple of questions. You choose the functional options, color scheme, website style, and fonts that you need. Then Jimdo does everything else for you and you get a website within 60 seconds.

You choose color scheme

Of course, you do get the option to manually customize what Jimdo creates for you.

And, as I have already stated, Jimdo can fill your website with content, without any effort being required on your end. How’s that possible? Jimdo fetches all the information about you and your real estate business from the web and adds it to the relevant pages.

Artificial intelligence at its core

NOTE: I strongly recommend checking the content that Jimdo automatically fills on your website. Some content fragments might be placed in the wrong sections or could use a little editing. You might also not want all the photos available in the public domain being used on your website. So it is better that you check and change that before launching the website.

Four types of Real Estate Websites

Jimdo allows developing four different types of real estate websites depending on your preferences and business requirements.

Real Estate Agency Site

You can add real estate galleries, details about the conditions, a list of your agents, reviews of your former clients, and much more.

Real Estate Agent Site

If you’re an independent real estate agent, with this one you can create a personal real estate website. The results are pretty similar to the website you’d create for an agency, aside from the fact that it would be an independent website, for just you.

Single Property Site

Attract more attention to your property for sale by creating a standalone website for its sale. Such websites can accommodate more detailed descriptions and more photos than any other page from your real estate agency portfolio.

Luxury Real Estate Site

With a greater focus on photos, more sophisticated designs, and classy color options, such websites have everything to show your luxury properties in a better light.

Simple integration with online booking options

Jimdo has a simple and intuitive online booking option. You just have to add the booking calendar to your real estate website and get requests from clients willing to look through the listed real estate. All at your own convenience.

Simple integration with online booking options

Thanks to the online booking option, you won’t have to deal with a constantly buzzing phone and clients calling to schedule visits.

Mark real estate locations on Google Maps

Another great way to minimize unnecessary phone calls is to specify not only the property’s address but also pin its location on Google Maps. With that, your clients will be able to better understand the location and see if it is a suitable option for them or not.

NOTE: Integrating with Google Maps is a really simple and user-friendly task with Jimdo. However, not many builders support it as a built-in option. Jimdo offers it out-of-the-box, but with other builders, you might have to install a certain plugin or widget.

What about Jimdo IDX (MLS) integration?

One of the key downsides to using Jimdo is that it doesn’t directly support IDX (MLS) integration. But there is a workaround that works just fine too. You can connect your Jimdo website to a third-party IDX service (for example, IDX Broker) and show MLS listings on your website.

Real estate website building at affordable costs

While you do have to have to rely on an external IDX service with Jimdo, the innovative AI editor does make up for it by freeing you from the burden of choosing a template. For those who want the job done with minimal effort, it is a great advantage.

Others who lean more towards the DIY approach should rather go with Wix or Squarespace.

NOTE: If AI website builders interest you, then I recommend you also take a look at Wix ADI. It is an AI platform by Wix, which in my opinion, is more advanced than Jimdo Dolphin. Wix ADI has more functional options and also harnesses Wix’s classic drag-and-drop editor, which makes it more flexible.

For those who decide to stick by Jimdo, its low prices are a cherry on the top. The most affordable Jimdo plan – Start – will cost you only $9 a month. And even in the basic plan, it lets you do more than the contemporary plans of competing website builders.

The most feature-loaded Jimdo plan (without an online store) – Grow – costs $15 a month and includes everything you’d need or want.

A free plan is also available, but I am not a big fan of that. It has got several limits and I’d say it is great only for testing waters. If you need a truly free real estate website, then consider Wix or Weebly. Their free plans have fewer restrictions and you can build a decent site on those plans.

Explore all of Jimdo’s plans here.

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Webnode – The Versatile Choice for Real Estate Professionals

Webnode is a website builder that may not be as renowned as Squarespace or as beginner-friendly as Wix, but it holds its own with a unique set of features tailored for real estate professionals. With a focus on flexibility and customization, Webnode offers a robust platform for creating a real estate website that stands out.

Webnode – the versatile choice for real estate professionals

One of the standout features is its multilingual support. If you’re a real estate agent operating in a diverse market, Webnode allows you to create a website in multiple languages, making it easier to cater to a global audience.

Let’s look at what else Webnode brings to the table for real estate professionals.

Multilingual Support for a Global Reach

Webnode’s multilingual feature is a game-changer for real estate agents who want to tap into international markets. You can easily add multiple languages to your website, and the platform will automatically translate the content. This feature is particularly useful for agents who deal with clients from different linguistic backgrounds.

NOTE: While the automatic translation is a great starting point, it’s advisable to manually review the translations for accuracy and cultural appropriateness. You don’t want to risk miscommunication when dealing with property transactions.

SEO-Friendly Design

Webnode offers SEO-friendly templates that are not just visually appealing but also optimized for search engines. This is essential for real estate business, as strong SEO can significantly increase organic traffic to your real estate agency’s website. The platform provides easy-to-use SEO tools that help you rank higher on search engines like Google.

SEO tools

Customizable Property Listings

Webnode offers a variety of widgets and modules that allow you to display property listings in a customizable format. You can add slideshows, image galleries, and even integrate Google Maps to show property locations. This level of customization ensures that you can present each property in the best possible light.

NOTE: While Webnode offers a lot of customization options, it does require a bit of a learning curve. If you’re not tech-savvy, you may need to spend some time getting used to the platform’s features.

Integrated Blogging Platform

Webnode comes with an integrated blogging platform, allowing you to share valuable content related to real estate. Whether it’s market trends, home improvement tips, or neighborhood guides, a blog can be a powerful tool for engaging potential clients and establishing yourself as an industry expert.

IDX (MLS) Integration – A Mixed Bag

Webnode doesn’t offer native IDX integration, similar to other real estate website builders from our list. However, you can still integrate IDX listings through third-party services. This workaround is effective but may require some technical know-how.

Affordable Pricing Plans

Webnode offers competitive pricing plans that cater to various needs and budgets. The basic plan starts at $11.95 per month, which offers a decent set of features for a starter real estate website. For more advanced features, including the ability to add custom code and widgets, the Profi plan is available at $19.95 per month.

Webnode Premium Plans

NOTE: If you’re serious about your real estate business, it’s advisable to opt for the Profi plan. The added features and customization options are well worth the investment.

In summary, Webnode offers a versatile platform for real estate professionals looking for a customizable and SEO-friendly website builder. While it may not offer the simplicity of Jimdo or the design prowess of Squarespace, it makes up for it with its unique features like multilingual support and customizable property listings.

Check out all of Webnode’s plans on their official website.

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Know What a Working Real Estate Website Needs to Look Like

What do successful real estate websites have in common? They cover the basics: intuitiveness, multi-device compatibility and good SEO. Then there are industry specifics: maps, advance search, excellent photo and video content.

Look up some of America’s top real estate websites. They all have these obvious similarities:

1. They have a high-quality background image with high resolution and large pixels.

2. The background image instantly introduces the website and its key business focus; for instance, Zillow’s home page immediately explains that the website focuses on anyone looking to move homes.

Zillow's home page

They all have a catchy, distinct and descriptive website tagline. The tagline is typically short, no longer than a couple of sentences.

The tagline can focus on different aspects — from the company’s vision and approach towards the customers to its specialties. Some examples:

Zillow : Change starts here

Trulia : Discover a place you’ll love to live

Realtor : To each their home.

3. The business’ offerings: properties for sale, rent, cheap houses, mortgage assistance etc. are evident. They’re either part of the homepage image or included above or under it. The site visitors don’t have to scroll down or search for it.

4. The best property websites usually include a search bar within the background image. The placement is immaculate. It offers a necessary, useful service without impacting the image’s visual appeal or obscuring key details.

5. The interface is never flashy or cluttered. The choice of fonts, font colors, images, the color scheme, animations and other visual elements is deliberate. The goal is clear – for the website to look attractive, but never unprofessional.

6. The company’s contact and ‘about us’ information, terms and conditions and members’ sign in button are easy to locate on the homepage.

7. Site visitors will find the information they seek at the expected locations on the homepage. The “sign in” button is situated at the right hand side of the navigation bar. The terms and conditions can be viewed at the bottom. No unnecessary surprises anywhere.