10 Best Free Online Banner Makers (also Without Watermark and Login)

WebBuildersGuide.com earns commission from some of the web builders and hosting providers listed on this website. Learn more
author avatar Written by Lesley Haught
Last updated:
2 Comments


Planning to create a free banner for your next advertising campaign, YouTube or website? Alright, take note of these top 10 best-of-the-best free online banner makers. What’s more, some of them don’t even require you to login. And yes, many of them won’t place a watermark on the banners you create. Indeed, we’re talking about 100% free software.

Traditionally, creating banners required specialized software and graphic design skills, but the rise of online banner makers has simplified this process. These web-based tools offer a range of templates, design elements, and customization options, allowing even those with limited design experience to create professional-looking banners.

Online banner makers operate in a user-friendly environment. Users can select from a variety of pre-designed templates or start from scratch, adding text, images, and other design elements as they go. Many of these tools offer drag-and-drop functionality, making it easy to arrange elements on the canvas. Once the design is complete, users can download their banner in various formats, such as JPEG, PNG, or GIF, for use in their digital campaigns or websites.

Free Online Banner Makers Without Watermark

You may have noticed that many free online banner makers include a watermark on the banners you create. This is often a strategic decision by the service providers. The watermark serves a dual purpose: it acts as a form of branding for the tool itself and encourages users to upgrade to a paid version for watermark-free downloads. By offering free versions with watermarks, these companies can showcase their design capabilities and attract a wider user base, some of whom may eventually become paying customers.

In this review, you’ll find free online banner makers without watermark.

How About Login?

Requiring users to log in before using many free online banner makers serves a dual purpose. Not only does it allow the service to collect valuable user data, but it also significantly enhances the user experience. Logging in actually enhances the user experience in several ways. For instance, when you’re logged into your profile, all your created banners are saved, making it easier to revisit or modify them later. Your chosen templates and design elements are also stored, streamlining the design process for future banners.

This personalized experience can make the banner creation process more efficient and tailored to your specific needs. If the banner maker allows you to create banners without the need to log in, this is indicated in its description.

Top 10 Free Online Banner Makers

Here is a list of the ten best online banner maker software that offer the ability to create banners for free. And yes, the order in which they appear on my list doesn’t signify anything. The last free online banner maker could be better than the first one, and vice versa.

Piktochart

Piktochart free online banner maker

Piktochart is essentially an infographic design website. The website’s interface and design allow anyone with an idea to create brilliant infographics. The reason Piktochart makes this list is the availability of many perks even with the free subscription. For example, you will have access to all the icons and images the website has to offer. You can create an unlimited number of designs and even download your designs for free.

The website offers over 600 professional templates that you can use for your designs. You can add your own touch to these templates by adding charts, animated icons, images and even videos. You can add your own colors and edit fonts and after you are satisfied with your work, download and upload for the world to see.

Use this tool

Fotor

Fotor

Fotor is an up and coming online banner designer. It is a design platform available for use even on the mobile platform. It also offers a unique tool called ‘One-Tap Enhance’. This tool was designed to help fix any creative blocks that designers might have. With cloning options and a plethora of templates to choose from, Fotor is a go-to place for quick banner design options.

Its photo editing tools are similar to that of Photoshop. Think of it Fotor as the online version of Photoshop. You can easily adjust the color, size, light and other attributes in the design and make it look professional. You can also find HDR effects for advanced editing. Apart from this, you get access to hundreds of fonts, choose from a wide range of icons, clip arts all under different themes and styles, to create better designs. The website also offers tutorials to help you design better and make professional banners.

Use this tool

Canva

Canva free online banner maker

Canva is a versatile online design tool that simplifies the banner-making process, making it accessible for both novices and experts. With its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, you can effortlessly create visually stunning banners for any platform. Canva’s standout feature is its ‘Design Suggestions,’ which offers real-time recommendations to enhance your creations.

The platform comes loaded with a vast selection of templates, graphics, and images, ensuring you never run out of creative options. Customization is a breeze, allowing you to adjust colors, fonts, and layouts to suit your specific needs. Canva also supports team collaboration, enabling multiple users to work on a project simultaneously. For those looking to up their design game, Canva provides a wealth of tutorials and design courses. With its user-friendly interface and extensive resources, Canva is your one-stop shop for all your banner design needs.

Use this tool

Postermywall

Postermywall free online banner maker

Easy and efficient, Postermywall is a great online tool to make quality banners. Apart from several templates to choose from, the design customization options are so easy to understand that you wouldn’t mind creating your own designs from scratch. It also gives you the option of adding videos to designs and save them as GIFs. Other editing options include the addition of shadows and making the image background transparent. Unique fonts are available, to make editing fun.

Use this tool

FotoJet

FotoJet

FotoJet is the ideal free banner maker for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and many other platforms. The templates are topic oriented, meaning you have specific banners for your specific requests. The website has easy to use editing options that give its user complete control over their design projects. Making a banner here is a simple three-step process.

First, you choose a template. Second, you edit the template to your required needs by adding photos and customizing the banner freely. And third, you save your banner or share it online. FotoJet offers you over 700+ templates that you can make full use of. With an abundance of resources, you can be sure that you will always find what you’re looking for.

Use this tool

My Banner Maker

My Banner Maker free online banner maker

My Banner Maker is one of the best free banner makers out there, and useful for everyone. You can create banners for social media, for ads, and for games, among other things. The website is useful even if you don’t have a particular idea in mind for your banner. It’s plethora of templates and professionally designed photos will give you the perfect start. You can use their stock images or you could design your own banner based on a template.

Whatever you choose to do, My Banner Maker will support you. The editing options are good and this website ensures that the size of the banner is appropriate for the platform you picked. So, you will not have to struggle to get the size right. This makes My Banner Maker the go-to tool when you’re hard pressed for time, and require well-designed banners in a jiffy.

Use this tool

Adobe Express

Adobe Express free online banner maker

Adobe Express is a web-based apps suite that lets you create amazing banners. With this free banner maker, you can be sure that all your requirement will be met effortlessly. The suite offers a wide range of preset image sizes for almost all the popular banner formats. This will save you the effort of searching through the upload requirements of different sites where you might want to post your banner.

Adobe Express is very easy to use and ensures top quality designs. You can bring together unique text fonts and images of your choice to make professional banners. With AAdobe Express, you can create and customize your banners so that they look good on every platform you upload them on. For example, a banner ad and a Facebook banner are two different designs, and they need to look different. With Adobe Express, managing these nuances is a walk in the park.

Use this tool

BeFunky

BeFunky free online banner maker

BeFunky is all about helping you gain recognition. You can create Facebook ads that draw the viewer to your website and also use the various banner formats to the best of their capacities. The banners coming out of these websites are highly compatible with Facebook’s targeting options. Creating a banner is an extremely simple process with Befunky.

All you have to do is select one of their highly impressive banner templates. Once you have decided on an image, all you have to do is transfer it to BeFunky photo editor where you can customize it to your liking. Add text, apply filters, add shapes – you’re done. Edit the font and color and preview your design. Your banner is ready to use.

Use this tool

Crello

Crello free banner maker

Crello is a free graphic design tool, perfect for web designers, marketers, and bloggers who need original, professionally-looking visual content. Here you’ll find thousands of pre-designed customizable templates and can adjust any of them for your needs via Crello’s intuitive, easy-to-use online editor.

What makes Crello different from other banner makers and visual element builders is that it gives you an option to create animated designs and use the premium content from their media library even if you sign up for a free account. (Video and audio files are also here.) Plus, you can upload your own illustrations to the editor and customize them via Crello for creating even more personalized banners for your website.

Use this tool

How Do I Make My Banners Stand Out?

Before you can go ahead creating a banner, there are certain things you need to keep in mind that will help you make an effective banner.

Research

This is the foremost step. Do your research. You need to know the trends in banner design. Consider your competitors’ banner designs, the style and personality of the platform you’re going to use the banner on, and your audience’s preferences. When you have this information, you can create great banners.

Choose The Right Size

Size of banners may not seem like a big deal initially, but you’ll soon understand its importance. The most commonly used banner size is the Leaderboard. Its size in pixels is 728x90px. This is just an example. Similarly, you will need to understand the banner size requirements of the platform where you’re going to use it on. Take time to explore the different sizes and use them appropriately.

Include A Logo

To make your brand known and to create awareness, your brand’s logo must shine on the banner.

Choose Colors Wisely

Colors add to the aesthetic beauty of the banner, if chosen intelligently. Bad choice of colors can completely destroy the banner’s appeal. Add a nice calm color to keep people calm or add a strong color to create a sense of urgency. Whatever you decide, don’t make your banner a rainbow of colors. Adopt a theme, and make sure your color choices complement the theme.

Keep Things Simple

The more complicated you make things, the harder it is going to be to get the point across. You need to remember that the people seeing your banner add will do so just for a few seconds. In that limited time, you need to get your thoughts across. So, keep the banner design simple and choose your words wisely.

Don’t Customize Your Font Too Much

If you use italic fonts, or extremely thin fonts and bold uppercase fonts – all in one design, then it’s unlikely that your banner will retain people’s attention. It just looks cluttered and chaotic, if you use too many font styles. Instead, use good spacing and a single font for the entire banner.

Include a CTA

CTA? A Call to action button. This is very important. Everything you have done to design your banner would be meaningless if a call to action isn’t present. You need to be able to direct your viewers to an action, and a call to action would do just that.

The Impact of AI on Banner Makers

Following the release of GPT-4 in March 2023, AI began a significant epoch of integration into various services and tools, including modern website builders and banner makers.

I have written a detailed review about AI website builders titled “Best AI Website Builders to Launch AI Generated Websites.” In it, you will learn how AI is integrated into website creation platforms and the capabilities they have gained from it.

Online banner makers have also started using AI extensively for a wide range of tasks. While AI hasn’t yet mastered creating professional banners on demand, leading online banner makers have significantly increased their efficiency through AI.

For example, you can change a banner’s background or a photo with just two clicks of the mouse. Or you can cut out an object from a photo. Forget about the Lasso tool and the tedious work involved with using it – even free banner makers now automatically cut out objects in seconds.

Don’t need a watermark? Want to remove it from a photo or image before using it? No problem! Thanks to AI tools implemented in some banner makers, you can remove a watermark from any image by simply outlining it. Yes, it’s that simple and effective.

The same goes for automatic color correction and image enhancement. Even some free online banner makers can now do this on a free basic plan.

What is The Best Online Banner Maker?

The online tools we’ve covered in this guide will help you design banners quickly and effectively. High quality templates, along with a wide range of customization options – that’s the perfect blend. All of these tools offer you this blend of features. Plus, you get to choose from a large number of layouts, appropriate for specific web platforms such as Facebook and YouTube cover pages, social media posts, website banners, etc. However, remember that these online tools can’t be compared with dedicated web design software such as GIMP or Photoshop. That said, these tools will get the job done for you most of the times.

The Best Membership Website Builders: Free and Paid Tolls

WebBuildersGuide.com earns commission from some of the web builders and hosting providers listed on this website. Learn more
author avatar Written by Lesley Haught
Last updated:

If you have ever visited an e-learning site like Udemy or an online community like Facebook, you know what a membership website is. In its simplest form, it is a portal with restricted access to its content, available to members only, although access can be paid, free, or a mix of both. Popular models include:

E-learning sites

E-commerce portals

Blogs/vlogs

Podcasts

News websites

Associations

Non-profits, etc.

Of, course you can use one of the best all-around website builder, bu specialized membership site platforms are the best way for thought-leaders to build their brand, develop an online community, and get paid for the knowledge transfer. This allows businesses with specialized information to set up a consistent revenue stream.

82% of the businesses adopting the “subscription economy” model claim it helped them become industry disruptors. But for every success story, there are dozens of others who have failed. One of the probable causes: choosing the wrong platform to build their portal.

The Top 8 Membership Website Builder

Wild Apricot

Wild Apricot is a fast-growing cloud-based software with a website builder platform to create membership sites. The standout feature? You get your own mobile app designed separately for customers and admins. You can also embed the Wild Apricot widget in other websites to promote an event you are managing on the Wild Apricot site.

Wild Apricot

Wild Apricot

For example, you can embed a calendar widget to a WordPress site for cross-platform publicity. Wild Apricot also offers a free version that can be used by organizations with 50 members or less. All plans include a 30-day trial period with full access to all features within the trial period.

Pros of Using Wild Apricot

Excellent database and event management tool.

Event coordination feature that lets you send promotions, discounts, and reminders to attendees.

Unlimited email campaigns.

Native mobile app for both Android and iOS that accepts payments and registrations.

Cons of Using Wild Apricot

The blogging platform is outdated and lacks basic features such as content moderation.

You can’t allot a membership ID within the software.

Create a site

 

Wix

Although not the most intuitive membership free website builder in the market, Wix is a strong contender because of the scalability it offers, along with an affordable pricing plan. The platform allows you to create a members-only area, add pages with restricted content, and process subscription payments.

Wix

Wix Member’s Area

You can integrate multiple Wix plugins to enhance the experience, including the Pricing-plan app, Wix bookings, Wix Events, Wix Forum, Wix chat, etc.

Pros of Using Wix

Membership areas can be created for free, although you can’t process payments with them.

Contacts are automatically synced in the back-end with the Wix email marketing tool.

Supports multi-platform registrations like Google, Facebook, or email.

Allows recurring payments.

The Pricing-plan app allows setting up a Paywall to grant restricted access to paid members.

Member roles restrict access to specific users on your site.

Cons of Using Wix

Has a steep learning curve, not suitable for novices.

New registrations have to be manually approved to send confirmation emails to users.

Doesn’t have a Learning Management System, so you can’t create online courses.

Doesn’t support content dripping and content locking.

Create a site

 

Memberpress

An easy-to-use WordPress membership plugin that allows you to create multi-tiered memberships, online courses, content-dripping, and integrating 3rd-party plugins to build communities.

Memberpress

Memberpress

One of the standout features of Memberpress is Paywall – a tool that allows non-members to access certain bits of content for free, a great bonus to attract initial users. With three different pricing options, you can choose to install it on a single website or across 5 different websites.

Pros of Using Memberpress

Integrates with existing WordPress sites.

Creates unlimited multi-level membership across all plans.

Users can have more than one membership at a time.

Good technical support.

Multiple access rules, including posts, pages, categories, tags, files, etc.

You can set content start and expiration dates.

Wide range of pricing options for subscriptions – recurring payments, monthly/yearly payments, free/paid trials, etc.

Customizable coupons and email marketing tools.

Analytics reporting dashboard.

Cons of Using Memberpress

Doesn’t support other CMS platforms.

Doesn’t offer a lifetime purchase plan.

Doesn’t have a built-in forum tool; you need to install an additional WordPress forum plugin.

You cannot customize registrations and login forms.

Create a site

 

Squarespace

Squarespace’s new Member Areas feature has remedied the one big issue that marred its utility as world class membership website builder – the software’s lack of integrated membership features necessary for creating members-only content. You can now create a membership website with Squarespace in two ways – use Member Areas, its very own membership software, or use MemberSpace, a third-party plug-in available with a business or higher plan.

Squarespace

Squarespace

The builder offers virtually every tool you can think of for creating, sharing and managing exclusive content.

Pros of Using Squarespace

It allows access to a wide range of high-quality, royalty free stock images, including the entirety of image gallery from Unsplash.

It includes a vast line-up of web fonts, including more than 600 fonts from Google and approximately 1000 fonts from Adobe.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) enabled web pages that allow for accelerated content delivery on mobile devices.

Cons of Using Squarespace

Squarespace blogs lack the Autosave feature, so you can lose your content in the event of a server crash or accidental post deletion. This makes the platform unsuitable for professional bloggers.

Limitations on organizing the static pages and blog posts make Squarespace ill suited for creating large, more complex websites

Create a site

 

Yourmembership

Here’s a premium paid membership website builder that strikes the perfect balance of design and functionality. Yourmembership is a comprehensive platform with excellent content, event and membership management tools. It offers efficient blogging and email marketing solutions, along with the ability to manage both members and events through a single, advanced dashboard.

Yourmembership

Yourmembership dashboard

Yourmembership excels at creating engaging, mobile responsive websites with futuristic features such as Microsites and expert website design assistance.

Pros of Using Yourmembership

Highly intuitive backend that makes updating and editing content a breeze.

It allows for seamless integration of the members’ registration pages and the events section.

It offers excellent accounting tools to help with invoice generation and delivery, tracking financial information such as the members’ donations and dues.

Cons of Using Yourmembership

The content editing and customization options are limited in comparison to other top membership website builders.

Yourmembership is one of the pricier software for building membership websites which makes it unaffordable for businesses with a limited budget

Create a site

 

Weebly

Weebly is one of the easiest to use website builders with membership features such as single click members’ login, different membership tiers, email newsletters and online store.

Weebly

Weebly membership area

With Weebly, you don’t need to traverse a learning curve to create your membership website. Simple, drag-and-drop mechanism allows you to select the desired elements and click on them to edit or include additional features. It’s an excellent choice for businesses who aim to quickly build a community and offer online courses.

Pros of Using Weebly

Websites built with Weebly are practically ad-free. Weebly’s personal and free membership website builder plans include a Weebly logo at the screen’s bottom. Even the logo is absent in Weebly’s paid plans.

Unlimited navigation levels which support the creation of large, complex website structures.

Cons of Using Weebly

Doesn’t support multilingual sites. Character sets for languages such as Arabic, Chinese and Russian aren’t fully supported.

Certain features are too pricey compared to other top membership site builders. Attaching an email address to your website’s domain, for instance, entails a monthly cost of $6.

Create a site

 

Thinkific

Thinkific is one of the most popular and powerful platforms for creating, promoting and selling online educational courses.

Thinkific

Thinkific

You can include high resolution videos, images and rich text in your courseware. In addition, you can offer downloadable content such as quizzes, tables and certificates. The free plan includes excellent customization options and is great for new instructors who’re just starting out selling online courses. The premium plans allow you to create unlimited courses.

Pros of Using Thinkific

Thinkific allows you to extend a monthly payment option for the pricier courses.

The excellent voice-over tool for creating PowerPoint presentations allows even beginners to create quality video content.

Cons of Using Thinkific

Thinkific lacks integrated features for email marketing, so you’ll have to rely on third-party email providers.

Doesn’t offer chat support.

Create a site

 

Kajabi

Kajabi enables you to create and market membership websites, online coaching programs and courses using single-click templates.

Kajabi

Kajabi dashboard

Kajabi Pipelines offers custom automations for optimizing and scaling your website and online courses which reduces your team’s workload. The platform specializes in building large scale, close-knit online communities based on your business’ terms and conditions.

Pros of Using Kajabi

It has an excellent mobile app that facilitates better connectivity and uninterrupted learning. The app is included in all of Kajabi’s plans.

The visual email builder features allows for creation of beautifully personalized messages integrated with countdown timers, videos and animations.

Cons of Using Kajabi

It has a limited library of landing page templates.

Doesn’t support key quiz elements such as randomization and question banks.

Create a site

What Is a Membership Website Builder?

Membership website builders allow you to create gated or members-only websites having features such as paid membership, discussion forums, knowledge-based webinars, courses or classes, ebooks, and newsletters, along with exclusive perks such as free or expedited shipping, early access, discount offers and more. These membership websites can be paid, free, or include a tier-based monetary system for their members.

If your goal is to create a membership website, even the most popular or highest rated regular website builders can turn out to be inadequate. While many top-rated generic website builders do include premium membership features, you can only access them via additional plugins. The act of adding membership features by scouring through dozens of plugins can be both time-consuming and ill-suited to individuals that lack prior coding experience and technical skills.

What Is a Membership Website Builder?

A good membership website builder offers powerful, built-in membership tools such as recurring membership payment, discussion boards, Q&As, and drip campaign management – definitely the best choice for building your online membership platform.

What can you do with a Membership Website Builder?

In addition to the necessary website building tools such as customizable templates, the ability to add and modify pages, graphics, and media, the best membership website builder will also help you accomplish these tasks:

Create an Intranet portal for your members

With a good membership website builder, you can set up a password-protected intranet portal and create secure pages where members can sign up for exclusive programs and courses, share their personal details and engage other members in the discussion.

Create and manage dedicated member directories

A members’ directory is a handy means of listing and categorizing members who’ve signed up for exclusive products or services. It’s also a much-sought feature among the members for searching and connecting with other members. A good membership website builder allows you to create and manage the members’ directories in an easy, efficient manner.

Create and manage dedicated member directories

Plan and run effective marketing campaigns

A good membership website builder can help you market your products and services by using efficient marketing tools that aid in creating and customizing microsites and promotional campaigns that target email addresses and the members’ individual profile pages.

In addition to these benefits, the right membership website builder can also help you manage the events calendar, allow for a mobile check-in facility and e-ticketing. The best builders offer extensive learning material and expert, round-the-clock customer support, so you can get quick responses and resolutions to your queries and complaints.

Criteria To Select a Membership Website Builder

How to build a website with user accounts? You have two options – either to opt for a hosted solution or to install a plugin to your existing CMS platform. Both options can work equally well so don’t get into the analysis-paralysis mode.

Choose a platform that offers multiple pricing options and fits into your budget constraints. Look for hidden costs that come in the guise of set-up, support, or additional features.

Your chosen platform should be easy to learn, with minimal steps for adding new users. Check if you can test the platform from the user’s perspective to better understand its intuitiveness and simplicity.

Most providers offer a basic security level to all businesses. If you are considering additional security levels in your website, for example adding a captcha or two-factor authentication, check your options with the service provider.

Know what are the learning and engagement tools provided by the platform. If you are an educator, you would probably want learning management software integrated into your website.

What are the options to create a forum or community? Does the platform have built-in forum features or do you need to add third-party tools?

Opt for platforms that have tiered membership levels so you can segregate members according to services offered.

You would probably have events that users can sign up for. Look for platforms that include tools like event calendars and online registrations.

The Best Membership Website Builder for You Is…

Different businesses have different needs, but a common thread across all membership sites is the membership base. Your membership base is dictated by the niche you have created for yourself in the industry. Hence, it would be wise to choose a website builder according to your business goals and the structure of your membership plans.

The Best Membership Website Builder for You Is...

For example, an e-learning site will need a website builder that has LMS software support. On the other hand, an e-commerce site will have to go for a platform that allows an online store. Some of your subscription models may need drip content to ensure recurring revenue. If your chosen website builder fails to provide any of the necessary integrations, your business model falls apart even before you begin.

It is also a good idea to keep the pricing constraints in mind while choosing a website builder with membership feature. What may fit an enterprise-level company may not be feasible for small businesses. Ideally, you should look for a platform that offers your users a rich set of features with a comprehensive and integrated experience, all under one roof.

What do you need to create a Membership Website?

Membership website builders such as MemberSpace have made the act of creating gated pages and websites easier than ever. The real challenge lies in converting your existing customer base into paying members and creating content that will invite new members to sign up. Creating the best membership platform for your business requires you to focus on these key factors:

Identify and target your audience

If you’re creating members-only pages for an established ecommerce business, you already have a customer base and need to focus on designing/presenting your products or services for a paid model. When creating a new members-only business from scratch, put some time into researching the current and recent trends, the competition, as well as the customers’ needs and unmet demands. Your members-only content needs to be tailored to the age, spending ability, and requirements of the target customer segment.

High-value content and services

Your membership website’s products or services need to be of high value in order to warrant paid member subscriptions. If, for instance, your product is online courses, you should look to ensure the course material is up-to-date, the curriculum description is accurate, and that the course has good accreditations. It’s best to incorporate popular content delivery methods such as video, email, and downloadable PDFs so you can target customers that favor different learning styles.

Decide on the type of membership and charges

One of the biggest decisions to make when creating a membership website is the cost and duration of the membership. If you’re offering a wide range of services, you may categorize them into different membership plans. If you stand to make money through sources such as displaying ads, affiliate marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, you can also consider offering a free membership plan.

What features should a Membership Website Builder include?

When you’re looking for the right membership website builder for creating your membership platform, make sure to look for these features:

What features should a Membership Website Builder include?

Efficient forum software

Make sure the forum software of your membership website builder enables the members to customize their profiles. The ability to customize aspects such as profile pictures and watch or reading lists empowers the members, enhancing their engagement and overall service experience.

The forum software should have a good text editor and allow private messaging between the members. Customizable comment signatures and achievement-based rewards are some of the most vaunted forum features of the day. Make sure your chosen membership website builder includes these.

Easy, secure membership payments

The website builder you choose should allow for seamless, secure recurring payment for the membership fee. It should allow the members to set up membership renewal via both manual and automatic means. If you’re interested in offering a time-based trial membership, the website builder should allow the member to cancel or pay for his/her membership at the end of the trial period.

Your membership website builder should be able to work with multiple payment gateways, including all the popular payment channels such as credit card, debit card, net banking, PayPal, and digital wallets.

High-end membership features

Your pick of membership website builders should ideally allow for adding unlimited members as well as creating a large number of membership levels. A membership level determines the range of content or services included within a certain membership plan. If you offer a wide range of paid services or have plans for future expansion, look for a website builder that offers a large number of, or unlimited membership levels.

A dedicated members’ welcome page, the ability to hide selected content, and automatic integration with your email list are some other essential features you should look for in a membership website builder.

Do Membership Sites make money?

Recent research has revealed that 70 percent of the world’s business leaders consider membership or subscription business models to be the path to future business expansion and commercial success. In addition, a staggering 82 percent of the world’s businesses are looking to adopt the membership model and utilize private websites to achieve greater financial output.

A membership website is a reliable means of creating a steady stream of revenue, typically with little start-up expenditure. It also involves a high margin of profit – if you launch your membership website with a monthly membership fee of $20, you can generate a monthly income of $1000 with just 50 members.

It’s obvious that now is the most opportune time ever to start or switch to the membership-based business model. If you’re an existing business, it’s best to transition slowly, with the goal of converting no more than 50 percent of your existing customers into paid members over a reasonable time frame. You can begin by offering newer products and services to the paying members while maintaining the traditional setup for the existing customer base, let the growth of your paid membership numbers and the quality of service attract the rest to sign up in near future.

Privacy Policy

WebBuildersGuide.com earns commission from some of the web builders and hosting providers listed on this website. Learn more
author avatar Written by Lesley Haught
Last updated:

Privacy Policy

Effective date: 01.04.2024

This Privacy Policy describes Our policies and procedures on the collection, use and disclosure of Your information when You use the Service and tells You about Your privacy rights and how the law protects You.

We use Your Personal data to provide and improve the Service. By using the Service, You agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Interpretation and Definitions

Interpretation

The words of which the initial letter is capitalized have meanings defined under the following conditions.

The following definitions shall have the same meaning regardless of whether they appear in singular or in plural.

Definitions

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy:

  • You means the individual accessing or using the Service, or the company, or other legal entity on behalf of which such individual is accessing or using the Service, as applicable.
    Under GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), You can be referred to as the Data Subject or as the User as you are the individual using the Service.
  • Company (referred to as either “the Company”, “We”, “Us” or “Our” in this Agreement) refers to WebBuildersGuide.com.
    For the purpose of the GDPR, the Company is the Data Controller.
  • Affiliate means an entity that controls, is controlled by or is under common control with a party, where “control” means ownership of 50% or more of the shares, equity interest or other securities entitled to vote for election of directors or other managing authority.
  • Account means a unique account created for You to access our Service or parts of our Service.
  • Website refers to WebBuildersGuide.com, accessible from https://www.webbuildersguide.com
  • Service refers to the Website.
  • Country refers to: California, United States
  • Service Provider means any natural or legal person who processes the data on behalf of the Company. It refers to third-party companies or individuals employed by the Company to facilitate the Service, to provide the Service on behalf of the Company, to perform services related to the Service or to assist the Company in analyzing how the Service is used.
    For the purpose of the GDPR, Service Providers are considered Data Processors.
  • Third-party Social Media Service refers to any website or any social network website through which a User can log in or create an account to use the Service.
  • Facebook Fan Page is a public profile named Web Builders Guide specifically created by the Company on the Facebook social network, accessible from https://m.facebook.com/Web-Builders-Guide-646531502067754/
  • Personal Data is any information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual.
    For the purposes for GDPR, Personal Data means any information relating to You such as a name, an identification number, location data, online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity.
    For the purposes of the CCPA, Personal Data means any information that identifies, relates to, describes or is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with You.
  • Cookies are small files that are placed on Your computer, mobile device or any other device by a website, containing the details of Your browsing history on that website among its many uses.
  • Device means any device that can access the Service such as a computer, a cellphone or a digital tablet.
  • Usage Data refers to data collected automatically, either generated by the use of the Service or from the Service infrastructure itself (for example, the duration of a page visit).
  • Data Controller, for the purposes of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), refers to the Company as the legal person which alone or jointly with others determines the purposes and means of the processing of Personal Data.
  • Business, for the purpose of the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), refers to the Company as the legal entity that collects Consumers’ personal information and determines the purposes and means of the processing of Consumers’ personal information, or on behalf of which such information is collected and that alone, or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of consumers’ personal information, that does business in the State of California.
  • Consumer, for the purpose of the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), means a natural person who is a California resident. A resident, as defined in the law, includes (1) every individual who is in the USA for other than a temporary or transitory purpose, and (2) every individual who is domiciled in the USA who is outside the USA for a temporary or transitory purpose.
  • Sale, for the purpose of the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), means selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a Consumer’s personal information to another business or a third party for monetary or other valuable consideration.

Collecting and Using Your Personal Data

Types of Data Collected

Personal Data

While using Our Service, We may ask You to provide Us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify You. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to: Usage Data

Usage Data

Usage Data is collected automatically when using the Service.

Usage Data may include information such as Your Device’s Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that You visit, the time and date of Your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

When You access the Service by or through a mobile device, We may collect certain information automatically, including, but not limited to, the type of mobile device You use, Your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of Your mobile device, Your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser You use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

We may also collect information that Your browser sends whenever You visit our Service or when You access the Service by or through a mobile device.

Tracking Technologies and Cookies

We use Cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on Our Service and store certain information. Tracking technologies used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze Our Service. The technologies We use may include:

  • Cookies or Browser Cookies. A cookie is a small file placed on Your Device. You can instruct Your browser to refuse all Cookies or to indicate when a Cookie is being sent. However, if You do not accept Cookies, You may not be able to use some parts of our Service. Unless you have adjusted Your browser setting so that it will refuse Cookies, our Service may use Cookies.
  • Flash Cookies. Certain features of our Service may use local stored objects (or Flash Cookies) to collect and store information about Your preferences or Your activity on our Service. Flash Cookies are not managed by the same browser settings as those used for Browser Cookies. For more information on how You can delete Flash Cookies, please read “Where can I change the settings for disabling, or deleting local shared objects?” available at this link
  • Web Beacons. Certain sections of our Service and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Company, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of a certain section and verifying system and server integrity).

Cookies can be “Persistent” or “Session” Cookies. Persistent Cookies remain on Your personal computer or mobile device when You go offline, while Session Cookies are deleted as soon as You close Your web browser.

We use both Session and Persistent Cookies for the purposes set out below:

  • Necessary / Essential Cookies

    Type: Session Cookies

    Administered by: Us

    Purpose: These Cookies are essential to provide You with services available through the Website and to enable You to use some of its features. They help to authenticate users and prevent fraudulent use of user accounts. Without these Cookies, the services that You have asked for cannot be provided, and We only use these Cookies to provide You with those services.

  • Cookies Policy / Notice Acceptance Cookies

    Type: Persistent Cookies

    Administered by: Us

    Purpose: These Cookies identify if users have accepted the use of cookies on the Website.

  • Functionality Cookies

    Type: Persistent Cookies

    Administered by: Us

    Purpose: These Cookies allow us to remember choices You make when You use the Website, such as remembering your login details or language preference. The purpose of these Cookies is to provide You with a more personal experience and to avoid You having to re-enter your preferences every time You use the Website.

  • Tracking and Performance Cookies

    Type: Persistent Cookies

    Administered by: Third-Parties

    Purpose: These Cookies are used to track information about traffic to the Website and how users use the Website. The information gathered via these Cookies may directly or indirectly identify you as an individual visitor. This is because the information collected is typically linked to a pseudonymous identifier associated with the device you use to access the Website. We may also use these Cookies to test new pages, features or new functionality of the Website to see how our users react to them.

For more information about the cookies we use and your choices regarding cookies, please visit our Cookies Policy.

Use of Your Personal Data

The Company may use Personal Data for the following purposes:

  • To provide and maintain our Service, including to monitor the usage of our Service.
  • To manage Your Account: to manage Your registration as a user of the Service. The Personal Data You provide can give You access to different functionalities of the Service that are available to You as a registered user.
  • For the performance of a contract: the development, compliance and undertaking of the purchase contract for the products, items or services You have purchased or of any other contract with Us through the Service.
  • To contact You: To contact You by email, telephone calls, SMS, or other equivalent forms of electronic communication, such as a mobile application’s push notifications regarding updates or informative communications related to the functionalities, products or contracted services, including the security updates, when necessary or reasonable for their implementation.
  • To provide You with news, special offers and general information about other goods, services and events which we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about unless You have opted not to receive such information.
  • To manage Your requests: To attend and manage Your requests to Us.
  • For business transfers: We may use Your information to evaluate or conduct a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which Personal Data held by Us about our Service users is among the assets transferred.
  • For other purposes: We may use Your information for other purposes, such as data analysis, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and to evaluate and improve our Service, products, services, marketing and your experience.

We may share Your personal information in the following situations:

  • With Service Providers: We may share Your personal information with Service Providers to monitor and analyze the use of our Service, to contact You.
  • For business transfers: We may share or transfer Your personal information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of Company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of Our business to another company.
  • With Affiliates: We may share Your information with Our affiliates, in which case we will require those affiliates to honor this Privacy Policy. Affiliates include Our parent company and any other subsidiaries, joint venture partners or other companies that We control or that are under common control with Us.
  • With business partners: We may share Your information with Our business partners to offer You certain products, services or promotions.
  • With other users: when You share personal information or otherwise interact in the public areas with other users, such information may be viewed by all users and may be publicly distributed outside. If You interact with other users or register through a Third-Party Social Media Service, Your contacts on the Third-Party Social Media Service may see You name, profile, pictures and description of Your activity. Similarly, other users will be able to view descriptions of Your activity, communicate with You and view Your profile.
  • With Your consent: We may disclose Your personal information for any other purpose with Your consent.

Retention of Your Personal Data

The Company will retain Your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We will retain and use Your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.

The Company will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of Our Service, or We are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods.

Transfer of Your Personal Data

Your information, including Personal Data, is processed at the Company’s operating offices and in any other places where the parties involved in the processing are located. It means that this information may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of Your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ than those from Your jurisdiction.

Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by Your submission of such information represents Your agreement to that transfer.

The Company will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that Your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of Your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of Your data and other personal information.

Disclosure of Your Personal Data

Business Transactions

If the Company is involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, Your Personal Data may be transferred. We will provide notice before Your Personal Data is transferred and becomes subject to a different Privacy Policy.

Law enforcement

Under certain circumstances, the Company may be required to disclose Your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g. a court or a government agency).

Other legal requirements

The Company may disclose Your Personal Data in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:

  • Comply with a legal obligation
  • Protect and defend the rights or property of the Company
  • Prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service
  • Protect the personal safety of Users of the Service or the public
  • Protect against legal liability

Security of Your Personal Data

The security of Your Personal Data is important to Us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While We strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect Your Personal Data, We cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Detailed Information on the Processing of Your Personal Data

The Service Providers We use may have access to Your Personal Data. These third-party vendors collect, store, use, process and transfer information about Your activity on Our Service in accordance with their Privacy Policies.

Analytics

We may use third-party Service providers to monitor and analyze the use of our Service.

  • Google Analytics

    Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualise and personalise the ads of its own advertising network.

    You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.

    For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

GDPR Privacy

Legal Basis for Processing Personal Data under GDPR

We may process Personal Data under the following conditions:

  • Consent: You have given Your consent for processing Personal Data for one or more specific purposes.
  • Performance of a contract: Provision of Personal Data is necessary for the performance of an agreement with You and/or for any pre-contractual obligations thereof.
  • Legal obligations: Processing Personal Data is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the Company is subject.
  • Vital interests: Processing Personal Data is necessary in order to protect Your vital interests or of another natural person.
  • Public interests: Processing Personal Data is related to a task that is carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the Company.
  • Legitimate interests: Processing Personal Data is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the Company.

In any case, the Company will gladly help to clarify the specific legal basis that applies to the processing, and in particular whether the provision of Personal Data is a statutory or contractual requirement, or a requirement necessary to enter into a contract.

Your Rights under the GDPR

The Company undertakes to respect the confidentiality of Your Personal Data and to guarantee You can exercise Your rights.

You have the right under this Privacy Policy, and by law if You are within the EU, to:

  • Request access to Your Personal Data. The right to access, update or delete the information We have on You. Whenever made possible, you can access, update or request deletion of Your Personal Data directly within Your account settings section. If you are unable to perform these actions yourself, please contact Us to assist You. This also enables You to receive a copy of the Personal Data We hold about You.
  • Request correction of the Personal Data that We hold about You. You have the right to to have any incomplete or inaccurate information We hold about You corrected.
  • Object to processing of Your Personal Data. This right exists where We are relying on a legitimate interest as the legal basis for Our processing and there is something about Your particular situation, which makes You want to object to our processing of Your Personal Data on this ground. You also have the right to object where We are processing Your Personal Data for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request erasure of Your Personal Data. You have the right to ask Us to delete or remove Personal Data when there is no good reason for Us to continue processing it.
  • Request the transfer of Your Personal Data. We will provide to You, or to a third-party You have chosen, Your Personal Data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Please note that this right only applies to automated information which You initially provided consent for Us to use or where We used the information to perform a contract with You.
  • Withdraw Your consent. You have the right to withdraw Your consent on using your Personal Data. If You withdraw Your consent, We may not be able to provide You with access to certain specific functionalities of the Service.

Exercising of Your GDPR Data Protection Rights

You may exercise Your rights of access, rectification, cancellation and opposition by contacting Us. Please note that we may ask You to verify Your identity before responding to such requests. If You make a request, We will try our best to respond to You as soon as possible.

You have the right to complain to a Data Protection Authority about Our collection and use of Your Personal Data. For more information, if You are in the European Economic Area (EEA), please contact Your local data protection authority in the EEA.

Facebook Fan Page

Data Controller for the Facebook Fan Page

The Company is the Data Controller of Your Personal Data collected while using the Service. As operator of the Facebook Fan Page (https://m.facebook.com/Web-Builders-Guide-646531502067754/), the Company and the operator of the social network Facebook are Joint Controllers.

The Company has entered into agreements with Facebook that define the terms for use of the Facebook Fan Page, among other things. These terms are mostly based on the Facebook Terms of Service: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php

Visit the Facebook Privacy Policy https://www.facebook.com/policy.php for more information about how Facebook manages Personal data or contact Facebook online, or by mail: Facebook, Inc. ATTN, Privacy Operations, 1601 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, United States.

Facebook Insights

We use the Facebook Insights function in connection with the operation of the Facebook Fan Page and on the basis of the GDPR, in order to obtain anonymized statistical data about Our users.

For this purpose, Facebook places a Cookie on the device of the user visiting Our Facebook Fan Page. Each Cookie contains a unique identifier code and remains active for a period of two years, except when it is deleted before the end of this period.

Facebook receives, records and processes the information stored in the Cookie, especially when the user visits the Facebook services, services that are provided by other members of the Facebook Fan Page and services by other companies that use Facebook services.

For more information on the privacy practices of Facebook, please visit Facebook Privacy Policy here: https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy

CCPA Privacy

This privacy notice section for California residents supplements the information contained in Our Privacy Policy and it applies solely to all visitors, users, and others who reside in the State of California.

Categories of Personal Information Collected

We collect information that identifies, relates to, describes, references, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular Consumer or Device. The following is a list of categories of personal information which we may collect or may have been collected from California residents within the last twelve (12) months.

Please note that the categories and examples provided in the list below are those defined in the CCPA. This does not mean that all examples of that category of personal information were in fact collected by Us, but reflects our good faith belief to the best of our knowledge that some of that information from the applicable category may be and may have been collected. For example, certain categories of personal information would only be collected if You provided such personal information directly to Us.

  • Category A: Identifiers.

    Examples: A real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, account name, driver’s license number, passport number, or other similar identifiers.

    Collected: Yes.

  • Category B: Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)).

    Examples: A name, signature, Social Security number, physical characteristics or description, address, telephone number, passport number, driver’s license or state identification card number, insurance policy number, education, employment, employment history, bank account number, credit card number, debit card number, or any other financial information, medical information, or health insurance information. Some personal information included in this category may overlap with other categories.

    Collected: Yes.

  • Category C: Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law.

    Examples: Age (40 years or older), race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, religion or creed, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, sex (including gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy or childbirth and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, veteran or military status, genetic information (including familial genetic information).

    Collected: No.

  • Category D: Commercial information.

    Examples: Records and history of products or services purchased or considered.

    Collected: No.

  • Category E: Biometric information.

    Examples: Genetic, physiological, behavioral, and biological characteristics, or activity patterns used to extract a template or other identifier or identifying information, such as, fingerprints, faceprints, and voiceprints, iris or retina scans, keystroke, gait, or other physical patterns, and sleep, health, or exercise data.

    Collected: No.

  • Category F: Internet or other similar network activity.

    Examples: Interaction with our Service or advertisement.

    Collected: Yes.

  • Category G: Geolocation data.

    Examples: Approximate physical location.

    Collected: No.

  • Category H: Sensory data.

    Examples: Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information.

    Collected: No.

  • Category I: Professional or employment-related information.

    Examples: Current or past job history or performance evaluations.

    Collected: No.

  • Category J: Non-public education information (per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. Section 1232g, 34 C.F.R. Part 99)).

    Examples: Education records directly related to a student maintained by an educational institution or party acting on its behalf, such as grades, transcripts, class lists, student schedules, student identification codes, student financial information, or student disciplinary records.

    Collected: No.

  • Category K: Inferences drawn from other personal information.

    Examples: Profile reflecting a person’s preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.

    Collected: No.

Under CCPA, personal information does not include:

  • Publicly available information from government records
  • Deidentified or aggregated consumer information
  • Information excluded from the CCPA’s scope, such as:
    • Health or medical information covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) or clinical trial data
    • Personal Information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FRCA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) or California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994

Sources of Personal Information

We obtain the categories of personal information listed above from the following categories of sources:

  • Directly from You. For example, from the forms You complete on our Service, preferences You express or provide through our Service.
  • Indirectly from You. For example, from observing Your activity on our Service.
  • Automatically from You. For example, through cookies We or our Service Providers set on Your Device as You navigate through our Service.
  • From Service Providers. For example, third-party vendors to monitor and analyze the use of our Service, or other third-party vendors that We use to provide the Service to You.

Use of Personal Information for Business Purposes or Commercial Purposes

We may use or disclose personal information We collect for “business purposes” or “commercial purposes” (as defined under the CCPA), which may include the following examples:

  • To operate our Service and provide You with our Service.
  • To provide You with support and to respond to Your inquiries, including to investigate and address Your concerns and monitor and improve our Service.
  • To fulfill or meet the reason You provided the information. For example, if You share Your contact information to ask a question about our Service, We will use that personal information to respond to Your inquiry.
  • To respond to law enforcement requests and as required by applicable law, court order, or governmental regulations.
  • As described to You when collecting Your personal information or as otherwise set forth in the CCPA.
  • For internal administrative and auditing purposes.
  • To detect security incidents and protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent or illegal activity, including, when necessary, to prosecute those responsible for such activities.

Please note that the examples provided above are illustrative and not intended to be exhaustive. For more details on how we use this information, please refer to the “Use of Your Personal Data” section.

If We decide to collect additional categories of personal information or use the personal information We collected for materially different, unrelated, or incompatible purposes We will update this Privacy Policy.

Disclosure of Personal Information for Business Purposes or Commercial Purposes

We may use or disclose and may have used or disclosed in the last twelve (12) months the following categories of personal information for business or commercial purposes:

  • Category A: Identifiers
  • Category B: Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e))
  • Category F: Internet or other similar network activity

Please note that the categories listed above are those defined in the CCPA. This does not mean that all examples of that category of personal information were in fact disclosed, but reflects our good faith belief to the best of our knowledge that some of that information from the applicable category may be and may have been disclosed.

When We disclose personal information for a business purpose or a commercial purpose, We enter a contract that describes the purpose and requires the recipient to both keep that personal information confidential and not use it for any purpose except performing the contract.

Sale of Personal Information

As defined in the CCPA, “sell” and “sale” mean selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by the business to a third party for valuable consideration. This means that We may have received some kind of benefit in return for sharing personal Iinformation, but not necessarily a monetary benefit.

Please note that the categories listed below are those defined in the CCPA. This does not mean that all examples of that category of personal information were in fact sold, but reflects our good faith belief to the best of our knowledge that some of that information from the applicable category may be and may have been shared for value in return.

We may sell and may have sold in the last twelve (12) months the following categories of personal information:

  • Category A: Identifiers
  • Category B: Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e))
  • Category F: Internet or other similar network activity

Share of Personal Information

We may share Your personal information identified in the above categories with the following categories of third parties:

  • Service Providers
  • Our affiliates
  • Our business partners
  • Third party vendors to whom You or Your agents authorize Us to disclose Your personal information in connection with products or services We provide to You

Sale of Personal Information of Minors Under 16 Years of Age

We do not sell the personal information of Consumers We actually know are less than 16 years of age, unless We receive affirmative authorization (the “right to opt-in”) from either the Consumer who is between 13 and 16 years of age, or the parent or guardian of a Consumer less than 13 years of age. Consumers who opt-in to the sale of personal information may opt-out of future sales at any time. To exercise the right to opt-out, You (or Your authorized representative) may submit a request to Us by contacting Us.

If You have reason to believe that a child under the age of 13 (or 16) has provided Us with personal information, please contact Us with sufficient detail to enable Us to delete that information.

Your Rights under the CCPA

The CCPA provides California residents with specific rights regarding their personal information. If You are a resident of California, You have the following rights:

  • The right to notice. You have the right to be notified which categories of Personal Data are being collected and the purposes for which the Personal Data is being used.
  • The right to request. Under CCPA, You have the right to request that We disclose information to You about Our collection, use, sale, disclosure for business purposes and share of personal information. Once We receive and confirm Your request, We will disclose to You:
    • The categories of personal information We collected about You
    • The categories of sources for the personal information We collected about You
    • Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information
    • The categories of third parties with whom We share that personal information
    • The specific pieces of personal information We collected about You
    • If we sold Your personal information or disclosed Your personal information for a business purpose, We will disclose to You:
      • The categories of personal information categories sold
      • The categories of personal information categories disclosed
  • The right to say no to the sale of Personal Data (opt-out). You have the right to direct Us to not sell Your personal information. To submit an opt-out request please contact Us.
  • The right to delete Personal Data. You have the right to request the deletion of Your Personal Data, subject to certain exceptions. Once We receive and confirm Your request, We will delete (and direct Our Service Providers to delete) Your personal information from our records, unless an exception applies. We may deny Your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for Us or Our Service Providers to:
    • Complete the transaction for which We collected the personal information, provide a good or service that You requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with You, or otherwise perform our contract with You.
    • Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
    • Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
    • Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
    • Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.).
    • Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if You previously provided informed consent.
    • Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on Your relationship with Us.
    • Comply with a legal obligation.
    • Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which You provided it.
  • The right not to be discriminated against. You have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising any of Your consumer’s rights, including by:
    • Denying goods or services to You
    • Charging different prices or rates for goods or services, including the use of discounts or other benefits or imposing penalties
    • Providing a different level or quality of goods or services to You
    • Suggesting that You will receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services

Exercising Your CCPA Data Protection Rights

In order to exercise any of Your rights under the CCPA, and if You are a California resident, You can contact Us:

  • By visiting this page on our website: https://www.webbuildersguide.com/contacts

Only You, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that You authorize to act on Your behalf, may make a verifiable request related to Your personal information.

Your request to Us must:

  • Provide sufficient information that allows Us to reasonably verify You are the person about whom We collected personal information or an authorized representative
  • Describe Your request with sufficient detail that allows Us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it

We cannot respond to Your request or provide You with the required information if we cannot:

  • Verify Your identity or authority to make the request
  • And confirm that the personal information relates to You

We will disclose and deliver the required information free of charge within 45 days of receiving Your verifiable request. The time period to provide the required information may be extended once by an additional 45 days when reasonable necessary and with prior notice.

Any disclosures We provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding the verifiable request’s receipt.

For data portability requests, We will select a format to provide Your personal information that is readily useable and should allow You to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance.

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

You have the right to opt-out of the sale of Your personal information. Once We receive and confirm a verifiable consumer request from You, we will stop selling Your personal information. To exercise Your right to opt-out, please contact Us.

The Service Providers we partner with (for example, our analytics or advertising partners) may use technology on the Service that sells personal information as defined by the CCPA law. If you wish to opt out of the use of Your personal information for interest-based advertising purposes and these potential sales as defined under CCPA law, you may do so by following the instructions below.

Please note that any opt out is specific to the browser You use. You may need to opt out on every browser that You use.

Website

You can opt out of receiving ads that are personalized as served by our Service Providers by following our instructions presented on the Service:

The opt out will place a cookie on Your computer that is unique to the browser You use to opt out. If you change browsers or delete the cookies saved by your browser, You will need to opt out again.

Mobile Devices

Your mobile device may give you the ability to opt out of the use of information about the apps you use in order to serve you ads that are targeted to your interests:

  • “Opt out of Interest-Based Ads” or “Opt out of Ads Personalization” on Android devices
  • “Limit Ad Tracking” on iOS devices

You can also stop the collection of location information from Your mobile device by changing the preferences on Your mobile device.

“Do Not Track” Policy as Required by California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA)

Our Service does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

However, some third party websites do keep track of You browsing activities. If You are visiting such websites, You can set Your preferences in Your web browser to inform websites that You do not want to be tracked. You can enable or disable DNT by visiting the preferences or settings page of Your web browser.

Your California Privacy Rights (California’s Shine the Light law)

Under California Civil Code Section 1798 (California’s Shine the Light law), California residents with an established business relationship with us can request information once a year about sharing their Personal Data with third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes.

If you’d like to request more information under the California Shine the Light law, and if You are a California resident, You can contact Us using the contact information provided below.

California Privacy Rights for Minor Users (California Business and Professions Code Section 22581)

California Business and Professions Code section 22581 allow California residents under the age of 18 who are registered users of online sites, services or applications to request and obtain removal of content or information they have publicly posted.

To request removal of such data, and if You are a California resident, You can contact Us using the contact information provided below, and include the email address associated with Your account.

Be aware that Your request does not guarantee complete or comprehensive removal of content or information posted online and that the law may not permit or require removal in certain circumstances.

Links to Other Websites

Our Service may contain links to other websites that are not operated by Us. If You click on a third party link, You will be directed to that third party’s site. We strongly advise You to review the Privacy Policy of every site You visit.

We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third party sites or services.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update Our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify You of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.

We will let You know via email and/or a prominent notice on Our Service, prior to the change becoming effective and update the “Last updated” date at the top of this Privacy Policy.

You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, You can contact us via Contacts

5 Best Church Website Builders for 204

WebBuildersGuide.com earns commission from some of the web builders and hosting providers listed on this website. Learn more
author avatar Written by Lesley Haught
Last updated:
1 Comment

Nowadays, having a church website is as much a necessity as having, for example, a church events calendar. In fact, the website for the church is an online newsletter where parishioners can find out the necessary information about upcoming events. In addition, donations can be set up directly through your church website. This is convenient for both parishioners and church leaders.

According to statistics, 33% of people in a survey said that they found about their Church through the Internet. So, to be able to bring people to Christ, you need to be found on the web first. Another 80% of people said that they visited the church website before visiting the church. And 64% of churchgoers mentioned the website as a factor that facilitated participation in the church.

Now, it is obvious that websites for churches should be welcoming for new and regular visitors alike. But if you don’t have the time, skill, and budget to build a religious website, it may seem like there is little that you can do.

However, church website builders are Godsends in such a situation. Unlike business website builders platforms for church website creating have special church themes and can offer unique feature for specially church website.

The Best Church Website Builders

There are a lot of website builders out there for building a church website. But only five can be called the best. Here they are:

Wix for a Church

church website builder

Wix is one of the most popular website builders on the market. It is fast, easy, and effortless. But it isn’t specifically designed for churches. However, it does have church website templates for you to choose from.

Pricing

Wix has seven affordable plans that you can choose from. The lowest plan costs $11/month (if paid annually). This makes it one of the most affordable options. You can create a free website first to analyze what Wix has to offer before financially committing to it.

Pros:

Wix comes with a drag-and-drop editor. You just need to select the elements you want on your site. And you can drop them where you want to see them. This makes it very simple to create a customized church website design.

When you create a website with Wix, it comes with hosting. This saves you from the hassle of finding another hosting service provider. With the paid plans, you also get to use a custom domain for your church website.

The church-specific templates let you add pages for events, donations, and contact. You can post sermons on your website and also share blog posts that interest your audience. And all these templates are responsive, which means your website will load perfectly on any device.

Not optimizing your website for search engines is a grave mistake. But with Wix, you won’t be making that mistake. It comes with plenty of SEO features ranging from the basic ones to even the advanced options. For starters, you can add meta title, meta description, and alt tags. You can also link your website to Google Analytics to keep track of your visitors.

Wix has a very informative Help Centre where you can find all the information you’ll need to get started. Also, you get intuitive prompts throughout the website building process. If you still feel stuck somewhere, you can contact support via phone or email. English on-call support is available 24/7.

Cons:

Wix’s only downside is that the free plan and the lowest paid plan both come with advertising. To remove the adverts, you will have to go with the $14/month plan. Also, for some users, advanced SEO with Wix can be a tough nut to crack.

Summary

If you want a professional-looking website customized to your church’s specific needs, Wix is the overall best website builder to go with.

Create a site

Squarespace

best church website builder

A study revealed that 94% of the reasons why visitors don’t trust a website relate to its design.

This means the content isn’t the only thing that needs to be up to the mark on your website. You also need perfect designs. And Squarespace is the website builder that lets you do that.

It is a generic website builder known for its extensive and exemplary collection of designs and templates.

And you can find templates suitable for church websites in the Community and Non Profit segment.

Pricing

The entry plan costs $12/month (when billed annually). With all the plans, you also get hosting and a custom domain name. While there is no free plan, you can take a 14-day trial to test the waters.

Pros:

Squarespace’s editor is made of blocks and segments. You can drag and drop different elements to the sections and create pages that have the right balance of images, text, and widgets. Also, Squarespace doesn’t just focus on ease. It is an intuitive builder that guides those who aren’t experienced.

Squarespace has robust blogging features. With a blog that is informative and engaging, you can build a regular readership. And with Squarespace’s features like RSS feed, customizable URLs, drafts, etc., creating a blog becomes very easy.

If you want to collect donations through your website, Squarespace is your best bet. Unlike other builders that just give you a PayPal button, Squarespace has a complete system in place. You get custom checkout, suggestions for donation options as well as customized email receipts to put your donation system in place.

If you would like to post sermons on your website in the form of podcasts, you can do that with Squarespace. It offers an option to syndicate the podcast, which is necessary for adding it to Spotify or Apple podcasts.

A lot of visitors to your website use mobile devices for browsing. And Squarespace supports Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). When you enable the AMP option, you can create lightweight pages that load fast on mobile devices. Also, the templates that you get with Squarespace are mobile optimized.

Squarespace has both a forum and a knowledge center that you can use. Also, you get 24/7 email support and a live chat option.

Cons:

If you are using one of the Business plans for your church website, Squarespace charges a 3% commission on donations. This fee is in addition to what your payment partner would charge. If you want to get rid of Squarespace’s commission, you’ll have to go with eCommerce plans, which are a little expensive.

Summary

While it is no doubt focused on design, Squarespace doesn’t skimp on other features. It is an all-round church website building solution.

Create a site

Ministry Designs

free church website builder

Each member of the Ministry Designs team has worked for a church ministry in the past. Their experience and skills make Ministry Designs a great pick for building Christian websites. Especially for those who want to get support and specific functionalities.

Pricing

Ministry Designs’ monthly hosting plan costs $20/month. Plus, you have to pay $1000 upfront as a one-time fee when you sign up.

Pros:

Ministry Designs comes with plenty of beautiful templates suitable for use by churches. No matter what kind of a template you are looking for, you’ll find it with Ministry Designs. Also, all these templates are responsive. This means your website will load perfectly on all devices and screen sizes.

You get a lot of features that are tailor-made for churches. You can create a calendar, add sermons, and also build an email list. These features are added, keeping in mind the need to bring in more viewers and keep them coming back for more.

Your Ministry Designs account will, by default, be a multi-user account. This helps you bring volunteers on board to help you with website building and maintenance. You can add up to three users for free. And for adding more users, you’ll need to pay extra.

Ministry Design also lets you add multimedia content to your website. You can add podcasts and video backgrounds. Plus, it comes with blogging tools as well that help you build readership.

When you sign up with the builder, you get an hour-long phone call as a welcome gesture. Then you are assigned a Ministry Success Representative who can help you learn how to build your website using screen sharing. Also, there is unlimited training available. And you can contact support as and when you need help.

Cons:

Ministry Designs’ hosting package is by no means cheap. And the one-time fee that you have to pay upfront makes it an expensive option.

Summary

If you need a lot of tech support, Ministry Designs is the website builder that will suit your needs. Customer support is where it shines brightest. But, be prepared to pay a hefty upfront fee and a high monthly charge.

Create a site

Sharefaith

free church website builder

Over 8,000 ministries have created their website with Sharefaith. And that says a lot about its efficiency and suitability. It is a dedicated church website builder that uses cutting-edge technology to spread the word of God.

Pricing

Sharefaith’s Web+Media package that you need to build your website costs $45/month. It includes free hosting and a donation system. It also comes with support for switching your site from another platform to Sharefaith.

Pros:

All the themes that you find in Sharefaith are suitable for churches. You just have to look for a theme that matches your needs. Also, you can get a demo of the templates without having to pay even a dime.

If you want to keep your audience engaged, you’ll need to add images, banners, and other multimedia content. And with Sharefaith, populating your website with graphics and visual content is a breeze. You can also add audio and video recordings of sermons on your website.

Sharefaith comes with a built-in calendar feature that lets you create a list of events, services, and more. This is a feature that you won’t easily find in generic builders.

To accept donations, you can use the Sharefaith Giving feature. There is no setup fee. Only a 3% transaction fee is charged. You can easily set up an online form and start receiving donations.

Sharefaith lets you add other users to your website. This is made possible using Advanced tools. You can use this feature to add volunteers to the website builder’s backend to update and manage the site. The level of access that additional users get can be controlled.

Cons:

Sharefaith’s expensive pricing is its biggest downside. You can get better features at a fraction of the price with the generic website builders.

Summary

If you don’t have budgetary constraints and would like to have a specific website builder suitable for churches, you can choose Sharefaith.

Create a site

Nucleus

church website builder reviews

If you want to make sure that your church has active participants and not just passive spectators, Nucleus is the website builder for you.

Well, that is what Nucleus says about itself. And with over 1,000 churches using the platform, it is evident that you can trust it too.

Pricing

The website builder in itself costs $99/month. But for the whole package, it will set you back by $125/month. This includes hosting. And you get a 30-day free trial to take it for a test drive.

Pros:

Nucleus comes with all the church-specific features. These include uploading sermons, beautiful and responsive templates, and an option for your users to get notifications and sign up for events.

Signup forms are at the core of Nucleus’s offering. You can create stellar signup forms and direct people to the forms. This helps you create a central hub for your church.

Nucleus comes with a lot of pre-created social media posts. The images come with a text overlay and suggested captions. You can use these posts on your social media channels to build a following there too.

Nucleus has a responsive support team and many informational resources that are helpful for first-timers. Also, you have an option to apply for scholarships. If you have a small church and the platform’s fee doesn’t fit your budget, you can inquire about the scholarship.

Unlike most other options in the market, Nucleus lets you test the website builder without the need to give out your credit card details. This significantly increases the trust factor. If you feel you want to use the test version for a couple of more days, you can contact the support staff for a trial extension.

Cons:

Nucleus’ support team is available only from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm EST. This can mean you have to wait for a couple of hours before your issue gets resolved. Also, the cost at which it comes is expensive when compared to other builders.

Summary

If you want your website to be the nexus of your church, Nucleus is the builder that lets you do that by centralizing control, though the facility comes at a cost.

Depending on your specific needs, you can pick the best church website builder from this list. And create a website that helps you connect existing and new visitors to your church and Christ.

Create a site

Guide for Building a Church Website

1. The Utility Of Church Websites – What Purpose Do They Serve?

A church’s website is its digital profile. It introduces prospective members to your church’s appearance, location, history and services. It also keeps existing members more connected. According to LifeWay Research, at least 80 percent of US churches have a website.

free church website builder and hosting

If you’re creating a church website, it’s essential you remember the purposes it’s required to serve:

Identify, Introduce And Promote Your Church

Your church website should be able to guide a new member to the church’s physical doorsteps! It must include photographs and videos, the church’s basic information and directions. It should act as a quick introduction to what your church is all about. The online visitor should be able to learn of your church’s leadership, vision, history and services.

Your website also needs to succeed as a digital poster for your church. It should speak in a clear, appealing way, highlight your church’s offerings and encourage people to come and visit the church.

Inform And Engage Your Congregation

The website’s interface and utility needs to be tailored to the needs and expectations of the congregation. As such, it can act as a digital platform to inform them of the church’s regular activities, future events and important updates.

Features like members’ directory, chat, blogs and online sermons are simple, effective ways of keeping the congregation engaged even on days other than the holidays and Sundays.

2. Importance Of A Competent Church Website

To help your church grow, you need a website that meets the current standards of technology and social engagement. Here’s why a competent website is important:

It Adds To Your Church’s Credibility

A competent website lends credibility to the church. It relays the church’s mission, past and present activities with the site visitors so they can develop trust in your church.

IT Is An Excellent Expansion Tool

A competent website can help your church grow monetarily and in congregation size. According to statistics, 24 percent church donations are done online. In addition, 57 percent donors prefer to donate through mobile apps. A mobile friendly church website allows users to make tithes and non-traditional donations online in a familiar, trusted and time saving manner.

3. Must Have Features Of A Church Website

What makes for a competent church website, sets it apart from the generic websites? It’s these essential features:

Easy To Find Information

Easy To Find Information

Your website must include your church’s address and contact information such as working phone numbers and email and the church service schedule. This information should be easy to locate on your website, preferably through the top menu on the website’s Home page.

Online Donations

Your church website should have an online giving option, so members can tithe and offer other donations in a quick, easy way. According to church giving surveys, online giving is the preferred mode for 26 percent of people that attend mass regularly.

Online Giving report of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) has revealed that 32 percent of working age Catholics have made online donations at some point of their life. A website using reliable contemporary online giving options can significantly improve your church’s finances.

Strategically Placed Video Content

According to cisco.com, by 2022, over 82 percent of all internet traffic will be driven by online videos. It’s clear having video content on your website is important to increase user involvement. Video related to recent events and live sermons should be embedded on the website’s home page.

A YouTube channel is a great way of promoting your church and draw in your congregation. Ensure the links to the church’s YouTube channel are strategically placed on the home page. You can also include a dedicated tab for sermon video library in the home page’s main menu.

4. Which Is Better For Your Church – General Website Builder Or Church Specific Website Builder?

The answer depends on your resources, needs and finances. A general website builder is a non-specific platform to create websites that won’t really stand out from other church websites. It’s cheaper than a Church Specific website builder that designs websites around your church’s specific geography, history and offerings.

A church website builder is a platform with existing design templates, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, site hosting, security and technical support features that enable you to build your website without having to start coding from scratch. When choosing a website builder, you have two broad choices – General website builders like Weebly, Squarespace and Wix, and Church Specific website builders like Nucleus and FaithConnector.

Church Specific website builders offer dedicated technical support to resolve any problems that may arise with your website. If you have a small budget and already have a web developer with you, you should opt for a general website builder. If, however, you’re looking to build a website around your church’s identity, speak to a target audience, and budget isn’t a constraint, a Church Specific website builder is right for you.

Criteria For Selecting A Church Website Builder

When searching for the best church website builder, make sure your choice meets these criteria:

Attractive, Flexible Design

The church website design needs to be simple, attractive and contemporary. Your website builder must satisfy these design needs. Look into the website builders’ customization options. The builder should have color schemes and templates that you like.

Dedicated Calendar

A dedicated events calendar is a must for church websites. The website builder you choose should enable you to create and easily update a calendar that relays the church’s yearly and day to day activities.

Easy Video Uploads

The website builder should allow you to easily upload videos. It’s advisable you take a close look at the website builder’s video editing options and compare these with other website builders’ before making a final decision.

Newsletter Feature

Your church’s own newsletter is a useful way of encouraging participation and promoting the church. Make sure the website builder you select has a newsletter service or allows you to add a newsletter registration form in future.

Essential Sections for a Modern Music Band or Artist Website

No matter which free music website template you choose, it can have any web design, be black or bright, or minimalistically strict. It’s all a matter of taste. But what is truly important is the structure of your music website – the sections that must be present on the site.

So, in addition to the Home page, a modern music website should have several main sections:

About

The About section is where the band or artist shares their story, influences, and background. Include a brief biography, high-quality photographs, and information about each band member or the artist. This section helps fans connect on a personal level and build a deeper understanding of the music.

Music

The Music section should be dedicated to showcasing the band or artist’s discography. Provide streaming options for fans to listen to the music, with links to popular platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, or Soundcloud. If the band or artist has released physical albums or merchandise, include an e-commerce store or a link to purchase the items.

Tour Dates & Events

Keep fans informed about upcoming concerts, tours, and events by maintaining a regularly updated calendar. This section should provide details such as dates, venues, ticket prices, and links to purchase tickets. Additionally, consider including past event highlights or reviews to give newcomers a sense of the band’s live performance.

For example, take a look at the Tour page on Metallica’s official website: https://www.metallica.com/tour/ On this page, you can not only see all the scheduled concerts of the Metallica band, but also purchase tickets right away. It’s indeed very convenient.

Videos

A Videos section allows the band or artist to showcase their creative side through music videos, live performances, or behind-the-scenes footage. High-quality videos can significantly enhance fan engagement and encourage sharing on social media platforms.

News & Blog

A regularly updated News & Blog section provides fans with the latest updates, announcements, and insights into the band or artist’s journey. This content can range from new music releases to personal stories and even fan spotlights. Keeping this section updated encourages fans to visit the website regularly and stay connected.

Contact & Booking

The Contact & Booking section should provide clear information for fans, event organizers, and media representatives to get in touch with the band or artist. Include a contact form, email address, phone number, and social media links for quick and easy communication.

Social Media Integration

Integrate social media icons and feeds directly into the website to encourage visitors to follow and engage with the band or artist on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Social media integration helps drive traffic and increases the chances of gaining new fans.

Conclusion

A well-designed and comprehensive website is an invaluable tool for a music band or artist to promote their work, engage with fans, and grow their online presence. By incorporating these essential sections into the website, bands and artists can create a cohesive and engaging digital experience that leaves a lasting impression on visitors.

TOP 10 Must Have Software Development Tools

WebBuildersGuide.com earns commission from some of the web builders and hosting providers listed on this website. Learn more
author avatar Written by Lesley Haught
Last updated:

Software development is not only a difficult task, but it is an impossibility without the right kind of software development tool. From managing and analyzing business processes to document the software development process, you will need the right tool for optimizing each and every process. In the following list we’ve collected thr most popular free website builder software tools which software developments experts, like Softarex, use in their everyday work.

CodeCharge Studio 5.1

software development tools

This is one of the leading software development tools which will enable you to visually create a database driven Web application with minimal coding hassle. This is a wonderful tool for beginners who do not like to tangle with too many codes.

A complete web development solution, CodeCharge Studio 5.1 can generate bug-free websites in ASP, PHP, Perl, ColdFusion, JSP, ASP.NET. You can even make use of the HTML editors available to modify the core designs of your website generated using CodeCharge Studio.

You will be delighted by its visual IDE and Code Generators which enable you to generate online stores, employee directories, online portals and forums and live bug trackers. A few of the new features that can take your breath away, include but not limited to Web Reporting, AJAX, Menu Builder, Online Calendar Builders, Gallery Builders, Menu Builders and Flash Charts.

Use this tool

ATOM

software development lifecycle tools

Atom is a next-gen hackable text editor for Windows, Linux and OSx platforms. Atom is modern and hackable to the core. It is a desktop application built on a HTML. JavaScript, Node.js and CSS integration that runs on Electron.

This framework enables app building for multiple platforms using more than one web technologies. Best thing about Atom, you can edit productively without touching a single config file.

Atom comes with its own built-in package manager which installs new packages you may need for software development purposes. It also comes with multiple panes for code comparison and file editing. And smart auto-completion for faster code writing and editing. You can even actively search and replace texts as you type across all your open projects. Atom also comes pre-installed with four UI and eight syntax themes.

Use this tool

Cloud9 IDE

best software development tools

Cloud9 IDE is a 100 percent online editor which combines online editing with a Docker UBUNTU workspace. The modified Language Tools can handle over 40 languages including Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Go and PHP.

With Cloud9 IDE you can create and test you WordPress, Meteor, HTML5 and Django websites on over 300 browser combinations. Compile SASS, check server output and Run the apps you are working on with the Terminals and Runners built-in for your convenience. Forget the days when you code only copy and paste codes, you can now clone your entire IDE (environment) using Cloud9 IDE.

You can even share your IDE, preview and workspace according to your wish, control what you share, replay edits and see your codes any time you wish with this complete online software development tool. The debugger enables the users to set breakpoints and inspect variables of any JS/Node.js app. You may as well use the app to jump right to the Immediate Window to execute code during a debugging session.

Use this tool

CodeLobster (Win) (Free)

software development tools list

CodeLobster is a free and portable PHP IDE which is supported by Drupal, WordPress, JQuery, Joomla, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Twig and Smarty. This amazing free IDE comes with an active HTML/CSS code inspector, CSS code auto-complete, JavaScript Auto-complete and PHP Advanced Auto-complete as well.

The PHP debugger is a package tool that comes with the CodeLobster which allows users to debug the programs during coding and before running.

Users can enjoy browser previews and file explorer facilities with CodeLobster. The same has a Lite version which supports all FTP/SFTP in file explorer and project publishing. A HTML, PHP, and CSS code validator is also included in the lite version of CodeLobster. SVN and Git are the main support for the version control system of the CodeLobster Lite.

Use this tool

Crimson Editor

free software development tools

More than simple code editing tools, this is one of the best software development tools for Windows. Crimson Editor is the current, professional source code editing tool which can easily replace any version of Notepad as well as offers amazing features like editing a score of programming languages including HTML, Java, C/C++ and Perl.

Most common and needed features include syntax highlighting for HTML, Java, C/C++, MetLab and LaTeX, multi-level undo/redo options, macros, spell checker, user tools and more. For a better understanding of this simplistic yet smart development tool you need to check out the efficient project management features applicable for clusters of related files and remote files. Crimson can also find and replace specified texts one by one and has multiple column mode editing versions.

Use this tool

Delphi XE3

tools for software development

Delphi is a free Object Pascal IDE for all kinds of cross-platform Native App development. Delphi XE3 is a single source software development tool with multi-device application development features powered by Firemonkey cross-platform user interface framework.

This entails a myriad of exclusive features including flexible Cloud Services and IoT connectivity. It provides wonderful VCL controls and also enables FMX development for windows, Mac and iOS platforms.

Delphi is 5X faster in creating Hyper Connected Apps with FireUI Preview on all kinds of integrated platforms including multiple desktops, mobiles and database platforms (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions).

The FireUI feature allows all users to code just once and deploy to multiple OSx. The apps thus created can access platform APIs and device sensors and deliver the best performance possible with the native CPU config.

Use this tool

Dreamweaver CS6

software development tools and techniques

This is a much lauded IDE from the Adobe family which is more than ideal for Windows and Linux devices. The new version of Dreamweaver allows you to build the most exclusive, responsive websites using a complete set of development toolset necessary for creating them. The front-end developer lets you code and manage websites for multiple OSx and browsers.

CS6 has a ready preview option which lets you preview your designed website on any device, both Windows and iOS. It draws support from multiple artboards and is one of the few free software development tools which allow real-time code checking supported by auto-completion of simple HTML and CSS code snippets with Emmet support and Lint support.

Use this tool

Eclipse PHP Developer Tools

open source software development tools

Eclipse is one of the most sought after open source PHP development IDE. It supports much more than the simple PHP editing and syntax highlighting. PHP code completion and auto-formatting is not at all farfetched with the new generation software development tool.

It comes with complete support for the local and remote debugging support for Zend debugger and XDebug. Enjoy remarkable content assist features, auto-complete features, code formatter, refactoring, code navigation, syntax validation and PHP debugging. Eclipse is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows systems and Linux.

The PHP Developer Suite is a complete solution for all your software developing needs. It includes fully optimized PHP stack, application code protection techniques, license management tools, easy to reach wizards, complete development facilitating IDE and a unique serving of debugging tools for the users.

Use this tool

DS-5 Development Studio for ARM

software development tools

DS-5 Development Studio is a complete solution from ARM Developers for C/C++ based programmers. A complete tool suite is difficult to come by and DS-5 is a glaring exception of the same. It features an easy to access and use editor, compilers, debugger and a system profiler.

This also features a system auto-detection to simplify the JTAG debug and trace via the CoreSight using an exclusive DSTREAM debug probe. It offers streamlining options for a visual approach to system optimization and performance analysis.

The ARMv7 and ARMv8 are fixed virtual platforms that come with DS-5 for wide-angle software development with a set hardware target. The Ultimate Edition of the same supports the latest ARM Processors and technology including the ARMv8 facilities. The Community Edition of DS-5 is free and enables it to access limited features of both Streamline and Debugger.

Use this tool

Gradle

software development lifecycle tools

This is a ubiquitous toolkit that should be present in every Java workman’s tool case. While Gradle may not be the most popular toolset available for Java based software development purposes, this is one of the simplest.

Pivoting on its simplicity, Gradle is quickly gaining popularity and has definitely become the default building tool for all Android versions. Currently, almost 64 percent of Java developers prefer Gradle since it carefully bypasses the XML Syntax used by Maven and Ant.

It heavily relies on Groovy programming language which is quite simple and easier to pick up. Gradle can be used to generate a Gradle build file, a directory free for all project files and bundle a portable Gradle wrapper with the current project with just one command. ($ gradle init –type java-library).

All versions of Gradle include additional plug-ins for inclusion of new languages, creation of project files for IDEs, checking for updated dependencies and building native binaries.

Use this tool

Linx

best software development tools

Linx is a low code development tool to create rich business and process-focused applications. Designed to reduce development time and costs, IT professionals use Linx for rapid integration and backend automation of business solutions, systems and databases. By removing the need for writing code on the server-side, Linx help developers focus more on the process logic and the client-side of the applications.

Linx consists of a desktop designer – a visual IDE that allows you to design complex processes without writing a single line of code – and a server, a windows service application which can fire events based on a trigger or host the web services defined in your solution. Linx is the perfect fit for developers wishing to create applications without the hassle of designing, building, and maintaining a custom backend technology stack.

Use this tool

How to Create a Forum? – Check Best Forum Software and Builders

WebBuildersGuide.com earns commission from some of the web builders and hosting providers listed on this website. Learn more
author avatar Written by Lesley Haught
Last updated:
1 Comment

Right from building an online community of likeminded people to dedicating a forum for customer queries clarifications, online forums can solve several problems in a quick, simple, and effective manner. Alongside with the best website builders the World Wide Web has some really special online forums catering to niches such as job exchange boards, college and university class discussion boards, customer support portal, and more.

As a webmaster managing a forum, you can leverage your content to attract the first few hundreds of members, and can then trust user generated content to take things on auto pilot. Once activated, a forum grows every day in terms of its content appeal, and of course, the member base. Monetizing a forum can be managed in several different ways. Also, you could make your forum double up as an online meeting place of subject matter experts, which can really make your reputation skyrocket.

Let’s learn about some more special features, functions, capabilities, and applications of web forums, after which we will guide you with a list of some of the best, time tested, and proven effective free and premium online forum building software.

Online forums are like magnets for great content, and the best part is that you do not have to invest time or money in getting this content, as experts in various subject matters will automatically create and reply to threads on your forum. This makes the forum swell quickly, fast tracking your success and growth strategy’s execution.

Sophisticated forums can double up as great sources of supplementary sales, as forum building software help you manage auctions, integrated payments, and fixed price sales easily through thread pages. At the least, you can redirect customers to sales pages through your forums.

Market analyses can be easily managed through a populous forum, as features like polls and surveys can be integrated with thread pages. This makes forums of great appeal for marketing consultancy services.

An online forum can be made to double up as a client support system, wherein customer queries are answered buy authorized personnel, as well as other customers. This proves to be a great boost to the marketing and customer support efforts of a firm.

Of course, managing online forums comes with some challenges also, such as effective moderation, differentiation in terms of interface and user experience, provision of advanced features without compromising security, etc. Though some best free website builders have opportunity to build forums with them – you should pay attention to specialized tools. Trust these best forum software to help you create, improve, and sustain your online forums, bypassing all these challenges.

PhpBB

forum software

PhpBB is among the most widely used bulletin board software, being used by millions of forums across the virtual globe. Right from personalized forums helping geographically separated families and friend circles stay closely knit to specialized massive forums pertaining to niches such as internet marketing, online job exchanges, etc., phpBB is empowering millions of such web forums.

Discerning coders can easily write their custom codes and insert at proper places in the master code, all this without even having to seek permission from the parent body governing phpBB; this facilitates the creation of truly unique and customized forums. Dozens of modules and modifications are freely available, which can be plugged into the phpBB files to add more features to the software.

Also, revamping the look and feel of the forum board is simple enough with several style databases. PhpBB is a perfect blend of efficient forum management, smart customizations, and all this for free!

Use this software

vBulletin 5

free forum website builder

Developed by vBulletin Solutions Inc., vBulletin 5 is an Internet forum website builder. The software is great if you’re looking to build a website using dependable community software. The vBulletin software package powers over 10,000 sites globally. vBulletin 5 in particular provides users with a easy to use engaging platform with a robust design, on a cloud based storage design.

This version comes with a newly developed UI that allows great social engagement. The new version of this site builder makes it easier for users to build their website, with customizable design templates. It is written in PHP and makes use of the MySQL database server.

vBulletin 5 is a great all in one package for those looking for an platform that allows for simple forum management, smart and easy customizations. It even features with mobile friendly version so you can build your website even when you are on the move.

Use this software

MyBB

best forum software

The MyBB forum builder software is a powerful, open source, intuitive and fully expandable software package that allows you to effortlessly build your own website, and is absolutely free. This forum builder comes loaded with all the high-end features that you would expect from a premium software bundle.

It supports everything including forums, threads, public posts, private messages, content and profile searches and everything you would expect from an efficient and engaging community website builder. MyBB also allows for extended functionality through the use of plugins and themes. This allows you to expand your community according to your preferences.

The software is so versatile that it even features a “Merge System”, which allows you to switch from your old forum builder or any other popular forum software, with ease.

Use this software

Simple Machines Forum

best forum creator

Simple Machines Forum is a professional-level, free, open-source forum site builder that is developed by hundreds of volunteers from communities across the world. It come preloaded with powerful custom made template engine that gives you complete control of the layout of your website or message board and it’s unique Server Side Includes function allows your forum and your website interact with each other.

Simple Machines Forum is an all in one forum building software package that gives you an easy to use forum building platform that comes built-in with many powerful features for you as well as your site’s users. Simple Machine Forum is a next generation forum building software that is written in the popular language PHP and uses a MySQL database.

Use this software

Vanilla

forum website builder

Vanilla is a cloud and open source-based community forum building software, which powers over 700 thousand sites, forums and threads. It is a highly flexible and integrative forum builder and is one of the most powerful community-developed software solutions in the world. Vanilla follows the design philosophy that all online communities should be spontaneous, engaging and should reflect the true values of your brand.

It is multi-faceted design that aims to provide you with all the features you could possibly need from a bulletin board based site, while at the same time, consuming the least resources from the server. The Vanilla site builder allows developers to create a customized community age that has and in-built rewards program for positive participation. It also has an auto-manage feature for content and even allows members to moderate the site.

Use this software

PunBB

best forum maker

PunBB is an extremely fast and lightweight forum building software that was released under the GNU General Public License code. Its primary goal is to the fastest, most compact and graphic-intensive site building software, compared to any other discussion board software. It is also optimized to be faster and a more efficient forum board design template. The pages created using this software are XHTML-compliant.

PunBB is written in the widely used PHP language and requires hypertext pre-processing tools. The software also requires a cloud-based database to store the forum data, which is done using the support of MYSQL, SQP lite, and so on. And in the rare case that you run in to any problems, there is an experienced support team that is ready to assist you.

Use this software

Invision Power

best forum website builder

Invision Power is an open source forum building software package and allows you to setup your community website according to your needs. It is a highly flexible and integrated set of applications that provide a great platform for building web-based communities. Invision Power Services allows for almost every aspect to be enabled or disabled at will, along with many other configuration options.

It also allows developers to monetize their community with advertisement support. You can also sell products or subscriptions by adding IP Nexus. Invision power allows you to customize their software with your own combination of apps, hooks and images.

Search Engine Optimization is a unique in-built feature of Invison Powers and assists search engines in indexing your content, so that users can find it faster.

Use this software

FluxBB

top forum software

Boasting of super quick installation and set up along with a remarkable simple and clean user interface, FluxBB is a perfect speedy solution for those with pretty simple forum creation requirements. GNU General Public License gives you all the flexibility to tweak the backend, permission systems are flexible, community modifications are easily and freely available.

Prevention of all kinds of clickjacking attacks, enabling of direct action links to notification emails, streamlining of the forum building process, and improvements in the default styles have made FluxBB all the more powerful. Recently, anti-spam and security features of the platform have been ramped up, and smarter membership access privilege features have been added to the mix.

Use this free forum builder for effortless and quick forum website building.

Use this software

Phorum

free forum creator

Phorum is among the oldest surviving forum creations software available today, so much so that the makers brand it as ‘the original PSP and MySQL software’. Using Phorum, you can manage all kinds of web forum projects, right from message boards receiving 2,000 messages a day to networks of forums hosted on a single server.

Customization makes Phorum a really special forum building tool for webmasters, as they can include external authentication, message personalization, user profile experience customization, and more with the tweaks that the platform is able to accommodate. With the HTML coded templates, changing the front end of the website is as simple as 1-2-3, especially for discerning coding experts.

The package is available for free trial, after which you can go for the paid version that doesn’t have an advertisements.

Use this software

Best Dating Website Builder Software That Simplifies Building Modern Dating Sites

WebBuildersGuide.com earns commission from some of the web builders and hosting providers listed on this website. Learn more
author avatar Written by Lesley Haught
Last updated:
2 Comments

In this review, I’ll explain how to select the appropriate dating website builder software to launch your own dating website. You’ll discover the best website builders for dating sites and find out which dating site software is preferred for starting a modern dating site nowadays.

According to a 2022 study by Statista, over 323 million people worldwide use dating apps and websites to find love, highlighting a significant shift towards digital matchmaking.

This surge in users reflects how deeply these platforms have woven themselves into the fabric of modern dating culture.

While our parents might have met in cafes, on dance floors, and in colleges, those days are long gone. This doesn’t mean that people don’t meet that way anymore. However, new technologies make the dating process more convenient, faster, and importantly, more predictable.

Why are Dating Websites still Relevant?

Modern dating websites (especially the best among them) offer a vast array of options for precise partner matching. Considering the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of profiles available on popular dating platforms, it’s easy to see how effective these dating services can be.

Despite the existence of well-known dating websites like Tinder, Match, and Bumble, people continue to create new online dating sites and apps.

Each new dating website caters to different preferences, lifestyles, relationship goals, and of course, regions. Thus, the demand for dating website builders and dating apps remains high.

Best Website Builders for Dating Sites

I must admit right off the bat – creating a dating website, even a small one, is no small feat. It’s not akin to developing a small business website or a easy WordPress blog.

In order to make your dating website a success, you need functionalities like advanced search options, payment gateway integration, profile creation, multimedia playback, instant messenger, match suggestions, memberships, and much more.

But let me assure you – there are specialized dating website builders that come equipped with all these dating options. Additionally, there are dating scripts, dating software and plugins that transform regular WordPress websites into simple dating websites.

Let’s take a look at which dating website builder software is the best.

SkaDate Dating Software

dating website builders and software

Positioned as a simple yet sophisticated dating website builder for portals, SkaDate is a top class solution for all your dating oriented ideas such as an out and out dating service website, chat based service, and what not. The dating website builder is without any tricky coding exercises for you, so you can enjoy your blog and web page creation experiences. Once your website is populated with profiles, finding the right one among them will be easy for users, because of the profile search settings.

The Speed Dating feature is a contemporary online dating method for adventurous users, and you can leverage text chat, video chat applications to provide the same to your website users. Completeness bar acts as a visual motivator for site members to add more information about themselves, and multiplayer games on the website provide ample incentives for them to stick with the website.

Watermarks can be easily added on to images, email implicit contact forms for effective communication, inventive smilies that make chatting fun, and flexibility of choice between free registration or invitation based registration for users – the world of options with this script is huge. You can monetize your website in multiple ways, including offering advertisements, affiliate programs, and others.

You can also offer secure usage to your visitors by using the several security relevant features such as criteria based IP blocking. SkaDate allows you to offer your content in multiple languages, making it a truly scalable and globally relevant online dating website creation script for you.

Create a site

DateMill

free dating website builders

Whether you wish to have a social networking website for singles to patch up, a full-fledged dating website with potentially thousands of profiles, or a bold adult content website, dating software DateMill will have your needs covered and provided for. This is an open source and unencrypted script that offers you advanced online dating website management features, along with the leverage of being able to tweak the code to achieve more from the your website.

The pool of general features is pretty impressive, encompassing image watermarking facility, support for adding captcha codes to forms, designing top class templates without meddling with the platform code, simple backing up of precious member profiles, cache based website access and CSS based design. User experience is top notch, and the functionalities here include unlimited photos addition, commenting on photos, saving of searches, preference based alerts from the website, advanced searching of profiles, easily manageable mailbox with labels, advanced site usage settings including privacy options, individual personal blogs with profiles, networking among limited number of members, and blocking of troublesome members.

Administrators can use the script in several ways to achieve their website goals; moreover, the range of features spreads far and wide, encompassing functionalities like multiple profile types, moderator profile creation and management, automatic approvals and rejections of profiles, bulk actions, payment gateway integration and a lot more.

Create a site

Chameleon

dating software

Strong admin features that can be conveniently used are hallmarks of a great online dating portal creation script, and Chameleon has it all to impress you. Admins can use the control panel to make site wide changes, configure settings, approve and ban users, keep a tab on the kind of content being uploaded, manage payments from the members of the website, and a world of other admin features.

The Smart Profile feature deserves a special mention here, as it allows users to create profiles they love themselves, which in turn is a huge retention factor for your website. Moreover, Chameleon empowers the user experience with some gripping games, which also helps retain members. The Chameleon script is unencrypted and open source, thus allowing you ample opportunity of tweaking your way to great functionalities.

Using your Chameleon empowered website will be easy as well as safe for your users, and the geo networking feature helps members find out the geography of other members. If you’re looking to migrate on to Chameleon from another script, think no more as transporting to this script is easy. Integrated payment gateways help you flexibly monetize your website, and video chat facility adds another feather to the cap of amazing features.

Create a site

Online Website Builders for Dating Sites

Dating website builders offer you the inimitable advantage of being single stop solutions for everything you want under one roof, sorting out all your concerns beginning from hosting to after implementation support. If you’re in favor of opting for a fully convenient end to end solution, look no further than these terrific dating website builders.

WordPress Dating Website Themes

WordPress hardly needs any introduction. The CMS empowers every 1 out of 4 websites on the World Wide Web today, and the craze is spreading like wild fire with every passing upgrade to the swanky platform. Creating your website is a piece of cake with WordPress, as you will be able to use the WYSIWYG styled editor to create a website quickly.

Adding multimedia is as easy as a clap of a hand, and then you have plugins to add to the functionality of the website. However, you’d need to realize here that WordPress as a platform is not sufficient to help you create a top class dating website. You’ll need to leverage some of the most amazing dating website themes to work in conjugation with WordPress for you to create a stunning online dating website.

We help you begin your search by telling you more about three of the most popular dating website themes for WordPress. These are premium themes, and you can have them licensed to you at pretty reasonable prices, which also makes this method dearer to those on a tight budget.

LoveStory Dating WordPress Theme – download

best dating website builders

LoveStory could hardly have been named any better! The interface evokes the feeling of appreciation for beauty and desire for soft love, and you can leverage the same for success with your online dating service based on this theme. User experience design is terrific, and creation of extended profiles is visually motivated.

Integrate WooCommerce plugin with this theme and begin inviting payment based memberships without any hassle at all. Providing different levels of access is easily achieved, and searching through user profiles based on criteria is also a breezy affair.

Dating WordPress Theme – download

dating site software

Another top notch dating website theme for WordPress, Dating Theme is the perfect amalgam of style and substance. Sending gifts and private messages, using in-built chat rooms, using status indicator for being online, and distance calculator to help users know each others’ geographical location better – all these tools help enhance the user experience of your dating website’s members.

You can monetize your website by using this theme as it allows you to implement a paid membership and ad revenue based business model. Moreover, this theme keeps users engaged with actionable inputs on how the site’s doing. Child themes are included in the package and help you change the appearance of different pages.

Sweet Date Dating WordPress Theme – download

online dating site builders

Your search for a fully responsive WordPress theme for your dating website ends with Sweet Date. Integrated payment gateways, level based membership controls, and the flexibility to the users of logging in using Facebook, all these features set the stage for what’s to follow from this theme.

A unique matching system will keep your dating website’s members engaged, and will also help them filter in on the most ideal match. Customized fields can be added to profile templates to make them more worthwhile. The profile page is swanky to say the least and brings together several essential elements of a great user experience.

If you need more themes we recommend to check Dating Website Templates and Themes.

Best Website Builders and Platforms for SEO

WebBuildersGuide.com earns commission from some of the web builders and hosting providers listed on this website. Learn more
author avatar Written by Lesley Haught
Last updated:

For a long time, I’ve been eager to highlight the importance of SEO capabilities in website builders through my site. I know from firsthand experience how important it is to choose an appropriate platform for your website from an SEO perspective.

I’ve not just promoted the website for my own web design agency, but also carried out search engine optimization on a lot of my client’s websites too.

And while doing all of that here is what I figured out – Not all website builders and platforms are good for SEO. Websites built on certain platforms are more likely to achieve better SEO results, whereas it is harder to rank higher in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) with the websites built on some other platforms.

In this review, I’ll tell you which website builders and platforms are ideal for SEO and why.

Best SEO Website Builders for Beginners

All web platforms can be divided into two categories – for beginner users and for experienced users.

Beginner users are those who don’t have any web design, HTML layout, or programming skills. But they can do basic tasks, for example, sign up for Facebook and create their own email.

Here, I have mentioned four website builders aimed at beginner users with different primary focuses but with great opportunities for SEO.

NOTE: The website builders in this list are not arranged in the order of their ratings and show no evidence that one platform is better or worse than another. Each of the website builders listed here has its own particular scope of application.

Wix – Free, simple, and universal

Wix is a leader among online website builders and all that is not for nothing. In view of most independent lists, Wix is a top choice when it comes to drag and drop website builders. And as for SEO, Wix is really good at it too, since it comes with dozens of useful options, tools, and widgets for SEO.

Wix – Free, simple, and universal

WIX SEO tools

Also, Wix was one of the first website builders to abandon Flash technology and switch to HTML5. Thanks to that, web pages on Wix get easily indexed on all search engines.

NOTE: In the past, Wix has had some problems with search engine optimization on its websites. But then the management reconsidered the importance of SEO for their clients and did a great job in this direction. Now, Wix is one of the most SEO-friendly online website builders. However, you might still see old-school SEOs hating Wix, recalling its past shortcomings.

Wix is suitable for SEO due to its following features:

More than 500 perfectly responsive templates

Wix does not just have the largest template library but all Wix templates are created by professional web designers and have a responsive web design too. This means that the templates display correctly on any device screen, whether it’s a mobile phone, a laptop, or a tablet.

Search engine optimized website infrastructure

Websites created on Wix have a simple search engine optimized infrastructure and thus search engine bots easily index webpages and pass on the links within a Wix website without difficulty.

Wix also has server-side rendering (SSR), which allows rendering website pages on the server and not in the customer’s browser. As a result, website page load speed increases, even if the customers have a slow internet connection.

Free SSL certificates with all plans

All Wix websites have HTTPS as Wix offers a free SSL certificate with all their plans, including the free one.

Automatic structured data creation

Wix automatically adds structured data to its website pages. You don’t have to make an effort to add schema markups. Though you do get the option to manually create schema markups and add them to certain pages and use specific schema types like products, ratings, FAQ, and also statistics.

Automatic robots.txt and sitemap.xml file creation

Wix automatically creates robots.txt and sitemap.xml files. Moreover, it also gives you the option to edit the contents of these files, if necessary.

Automatic canonical tags creation and management

Wix automatically creates canonical tags for all new pages (like WordPress does with installed SEO plugins). In the Advanced SEO tab, you can also delete the canonical tag for a certain page or add one, if it isn’t already there.

Integration with Google Marketing Tools

Integration with Google Marketing Tools

WIX Marketing Integration

One of the greatest advantages of Wix for SEO is the possibility to integrate every possible marketing tool from Google with your website. Primarily, the integration option with Google Search Console directly from the Wix dashboard makes it simple, quick, and convenient.

You can also integrate Google Analytics for getting expanded statistics, and add Google Tag Manager for launching your advertising campaign.

NOTE: In the near future Wix is looking forward to taking a decision on launching Wix managed solution to offer integration with Google Optimize. This will allow analyzing the efficiency of a Wix website SEO’s status with the help of A/B testing. Also, it is possible to integrate Google Optimize using Google Tag Manager. Here’s Google’s guidance for such integrations.

Integration with Google My Business

Your WIX website’s integration with Google My Business will be useful for local SEO. Thanks to it, you’ll be able to create and further edit your company’s profile directly through the Wix dashboard. Again, this integration can be performed in a few clicks, which saves time while delivering excellent local SEO results.

Personalized SEO Setup Plan

This is a unique Wix option that makes it much easier for beginners to perform search engine optimization on their websites. Wix takes into account the particularities of your website and business and then gives you a step-by-step SEO Setup Plan. Just implement the given recommendations as per this plan in order to carry out all the basic SEO activities for your website.

NOTE: In order to use Wix SEO Wiz you’ll need to connect the website to Google Search Console. After this, SEO Wiz will create a step-by-step plan for you to perform your website’s search engine optimization. You don’t necessarily need to carry out all the steps right in the order they are stated in the plan, but the steps you miss will be highlighted as incomplete. You just have to finish implementing all the Wix SEO Wiz recommendations in order to make your website SEO-friendly.

SEO apps in the Wix App Market

One of the greatest Wix advantages that makes it one of the best website builders is that it has a large app collection available in the Wix Apps Market.

These additional solutions can be added to a ready-made Wix website, which increases its SEO and other capabilities. This may be comparable to WordPress plugins.

Here are some of the best SEO and marketing apps offered by Wix App Market:

rankingCoach SEO – It analyses your website and the websites of your competitors, and then creates a step-by-step SEO strategy specifically for your website. All SEO guides are in the form of simple how-to videos.

Rabbit SEO – A comprehensive tool for searching the most appropriate keywords, analyzing competitors’ keywords, website page optimization, and many other things.

Site Booster – It will automatically register your website in business directories, review websites, and popular mobile apps and business listings like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Bing Maps, Business Data Index, FourSquare, SMB Home Online, Yelp, and some others.

Visitor Analytics – This is a multilingual SEO app that shows expanded statistics related to website attendance with a convenient interface. It allows performing user behavior analytics by using heatmaps and conversion funnels.

How much will Wix website builder with expanded SEO options cost?

Despite the fact that Wix is a free website builder, as you’d already know, with the free plan you won’t get any of those useful SEO options which were referred to above.

Advanced SEO options are available in the Unlimited plan (it costs $18 monthly) and the plans above it. As a free bonus for your first year, you’ll also get Visitor Analytics App, Site Booster App, and 3 free ads vouchers:

For Google Ads – $100

For Bing Ads – $100

For Local Listings – $100

As a result, by spending $216 yearly on Wix (Unlimited plan), you get free SEO tools and advertising vouchers amounting to $425, which is twice as much as your expenses.

These free bonuses and all those SEO tools and options described above make Wix the best online website platform for SEO for beginner users.

Create a site

 

Squarespace – more automatic SEOs options

Like Wix, Squarespace is another top website builder, with some wonderful SEO capacities. Squarespace is especially good for developing portfolio websites, websites for photographers, and online stores.

Squarespace – more automatic SEOs options

Squarespace

Squarespace is a well-designed website builder focused on beautiful website designs, elegant minimalistic templates, and lots of SEO features. Moreover, most Squarespace SEO options are fully automatic, which will especially please beginners by making the tasks simpler for them.

Let’s figure out what Squarespace offers in detail.

Automated Heading Tags

Despite the fact that Squarespace allows editing HTML code (I’m sure web developers have a smile on their face right now!), its webpage structure is designed in such a way that users don’t need to add tags <H1>, <H2> for subtitles in HTML manually. You just choose the headline style you want, and Squarespace will automatically create the correct Heading Tag. It is really user-friendly. Here is how Squarespace describes this.

Automatic creation of <alt> and <title> tags for images

Thousands of articles and instructional SEO guides are written about the importance of correctly stating the <alt> and <title> tags for images from an SEO perspective. And Squarespace automatically adds the <alt> and <title> tags to your images with its image description feature.

Automatic sitemap creation and update

Automatic sitemap creation and update

SEO Checklist

It’s difficult to overestimate the importance of having up-to-date sitemaps for SEO. As most SEO-friendly website builders, Squarespace independently creates a sitemap for your website in XML format. But that’s not all. It also keeps automatically editing and updating the sitemap as per the changes in your site’s structure.

For example, if you’ve added a new page to your website, then Squarespace will add it to the sitemap. And vice versa, if you delete a certain page, then it will be deleted from the sitemap. This saves manual efforts.

NOTE: Even though Squarespace automates the process of sitemap creation and updating, the updates to the site map don’t happen instantly. After you have changed something on the site, the update in the sitemap usually happens in about an hour. In some cases, this may require up to 24 hours or even more, especially for larger multi-page websites.

Automated mobile optimization

Automated mobile optimization

Automated mobile optimization

Like in Wix, all the websites developed on Squarespace have an inherently mobile-optimized design. For this, Squarespace saves text and visual content in a format that can be easily displayed on any type of device. You don’t have to take any action for mobile optimization, Squarespace does that for you.

Automated AMP creation

Squarespace supports Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). For all the pages on your website, it creates simplified mobile versions called AMP. These pages download faster and thus, positively affect site speed. This will be an undoubted plus point for SEO, especially if the majority of traffic on your website comes from mobile phones.

NOTE: AMP can be a really effective solution, but you should know that using AMP can sometimes lead to the reduction of website conversion. Similar results have been observed for some online stores, where webmasters noticed declining sales after AMP introduction. However, the organic traffic remained the same.

Management of Meta Titles for pages and posts

Squarespace allows assigning and editing the Meta Title both for the website as a whole and individual pages and blog posts. You can also edit Meta Titles manually and get the best SEO results for every single page.

NOTE: A good SEO practice is when the H1 title differs from Meta Title. It’s not necessary to have completely different titles, but it would be better not to have 100% copies. Moreover, it’s important to test Meta Titles. Perfect Meta Titles as per SEO standards may actually have fewer clicks in SERP positions (lower CTR). And prettier, user-friendly titles, are likely to be actively clicked by users but may appear not so effective in search rankings. It’s important to strike the perfect balance for every page – this is one secret of success in SEO.

Squarespace SEO consultations

Squarespace has a special Squarespace Select Plan with additional possibilities, including some SEO advantages too. If you choose this plan, you’ll get a dedicated manager for developing your website and online business.

And you can also get personal consultation about search engine optimization for your website from Squarespace’s SEO specialists. This is a unique offer that isn’t available with any other website builder.

How much will Squarespace with maximum SEO options cost?

All Squarespace plans include SEO features for website visibility. This means that you’ll be offered simple step-by-step instructions using which you can improve the SEO for your Squarespace website.

The most basic Personal plan will cost you only $12 per month if you pay for the entire year at once.

But if you buy the Business plan for $18 per month, you’ll get access to advanced site analytics and the possibility to edit CSS and JavaScript. This may help you with more accurate SEO optimization of the HTML code of your website.

In addition to this, you’ll get a bonus of $100 Google Ads Credits. This is a good start for launching your own PPC campaign with Google Ads.

Squarespace also offers the Basic Commerce plan for $23 per month specifically for online stores. In addition to all the things that you get with the Personal and Business plans, with this plan, you’ll also get access to Powerful E-commerce Analytics.

This is a more profound analytics system specifically built for E-commerce businesses. You’ll be able to monitor lots of additional parameters, for example, sales conversion as a whole or for selected products. Moreover, you can get insights about which products sell better than others, why, and much more.

I must admit that Squarespace has always been good at creating websites for online sales. And the Basic Commerce plan is a perfect solution in terms of the price-quality ratio. Besides that, unlike Shopify, the Basic Commerce plan doesn’t charge a commission for each transaction. Though the Squarespace Business plan charges a 3% commission on every sale. Once again, the Squarespace Basic Commerce plan proves to be a profitable proposition.

As for getting maximum SEO capacities, you’ll have to go with the Squarespace Select plan, which I referred to earlier. Its main feature is that it comes with personal SEO consultation. It’s up to you to decide how important it is for you, but generally speaking, Squarespace Select is the same Advanced Commerce plan but wrapped in an “individual package”.

Create a site

 

Shopify – Ideal for E-commerce

When it comes to E-commerce, the importance of SEO gets multiplied manifold. This is primarily because E-commerce websites often have a more complex semantic core and have not one or two landing pages, but lots of them. In fact, every product’s page is a landing page. The same is true for category pages too as they all are optimized for certain search queries.

Considering such a large quantity of pages, working on off-page SEO optimization for every page is nearly impossible. And in this case, what comes to the forefront is technical SEO website optimization that, in turn, depends directly on the SEO possibilities of a chosen website builder or platform.

Among all E-commerce website builders, Shopify is the best adapted for SEO. Being the absolute leader among online E-commerce platforms, Shopify couldn’t help but give due consideration to SEO and marketing tools.

Let’s take a closer look at Shopify’s SEO advantages:

Lots of search engine optimized themes

Lots of search engine optimized themes

Shopify templates

Shopify has a large library of free (about 100) and the largest library of premium themes (thousands). By default, you have access to all the free themes, which is fine for most users. However, if you are interested in a website with a more unique design or you have a specific niche business, then I recommend checking out the premium themes to find suitable options.

The largest collection of premium Shopify themes is available on the ThemeForest platform. Here you can find every kind of Shopify theme for selling various goods, relating to various niches, and designed in different web design styles. The prices of these themes are also quite affordable and range from $20 to $90 per theme.

And of course, these themes have great opportunities for search engine optimization. The features of these themes include SEO-friendly HTML/CSS layouts, accelerated page loading speed, and various SEO tools and plugins.

For example, most premium Shopify themes already include Google’s Rich Product Snippets, and some of them are tentatively checked by the MOZ SEO tool or equivalent SEO tools.

Adding Meta Title and Meta Description for every page

Adding Meta Title and Meta Description for every page

Adding meta title and meta description for every page

Like all SEO-friendly website builders, Shopify allows adding Meta Title and Meta Description for every page, whether it’s a page from the main section, product subcategories, or product cards.

As a result, you get the possibility to attract organic traffic to all pages of your website. The main requirement from your side is to just optimize the content on your website based on popular and relevant search queries.

Advanced features for robots.txt editing

All websites designed using Shopify have automatically-created robots.txt files that already meet SEO requirements. But you can additionally edit it using the special robots.txt.liquid template.

With this, you can prohibit or allow indexing the pages you need, manually add some extra URLs to sitemaps, add crawl-delay rules, and much more.

NOTE: Despite the fact that having robots.txt.liquid template creates considerable SEO advantages, be very attentive while editing it. If you make a mistake, you can lose organic traffic for certain website pages or even the whole website. Meanwhile, the Shopify Support Team is unlikely to help you as editing robots.txt.liquid isn’t included in basic Shopify possibilities, and that’s why it isn’t maintained by the Support Team.

Automatic sitemap.xml creation

Shopify automatically generates a sitemap.xml file. It is a record containing the links to all the pages on your website that must be indexed on search engines. Shopify also automatically sends the XML sitemap file to Google Search Console in order to let the pages of your website get indexed as soon as possible.

NOTE: Basic Shopify plan allows the automatic creation of sitemap files only for primary domain names. But this will be unavailable to international and region or country-specific domain names. In this case, you’ll need more advanced plans like Advanced Shopify. You can learn more about this here.

Numerous other useful SEO functions

Shopify was initially planned in order to save the clients from the problems that arise while getting organic traffic.

Here are some important Shopify SEO features:

SEO-friendly structure of page URLs

Compliance of logical hierarchy of categories for online stores

The absence of iFrames in pages code, which accelerates their loading speed

Possibility to optimize navigation throughout the site

Possibility to optimize blog pages

Possibility to integrate Google Analytics

Indication of canonical webpage addresses

301 redirect configuration

Possibility to use descriptive image names to search engine optimize images

Additional SEO apps in the Shopify app store

Additional SEO apps in the Shopify app store

Shopify App store

Shopify has a large selection of apps for increasing the possibilities and performance of Shopify websites available in the Shopify App Store.

Wix and Squarespace also have such apps, right? Well, Shopify boasts of an extremely large collection of apps – about 2700 free and 2400 premium ones. And of course, Shopify has got apps for more successful online store SEO promotion too.

Here are the most powerful of them:

Booster SEO & Image Optimizer – A complex SEO solution for automatic online store optimization. It contains lots of built-in tools, and it can scan your website for SEO compliance and fix critical SEO issues. The app comes with a free plan.

Plug In SEO – One of the most popular universal SEO plugins for Shopify, Plug In SEO allows editing lots of Meta Descriptions and Titles at once, implementing Structured Data/JSON-LD Schema, finding and fixing broken, links and a lot more. The plugin allows performing SEO optimization of Non-English language pages as well.

About Bulk Image Edit & Image SEO – A shareware app, offering a full suite of image optimization features – from reducing the size while maintaining the same quality to adding Alt and file names.

SEO Manager – It scans the website to find SEO errors and provides opportunities for their removal. It contains step-by-step SEO instructions and reference materials for independent online store technical optimization.

How much will Shopify with maximum SEO options cost?

Shopify is definitely aware that it is the best E-commerce website builder in the market. That’s why it doesn’t offer a free plan, you have to pay to access their best-in-class services. However, they do offer a 14-days free trial version.

The cheapest Basic Shopify plan will cost you $29 per month. It includes all SEO options and tools except for those relating to International domain name support and International pricing.

As a result, Basic Shopify is likely to be a perfect solution for a small US or UK-based online store. But if your website has several language versions, then you’ll need the higher Shopify plan that comes at a price of $79 per month. It allows performing International SEO and is not limited to only English language webpages.

Create a site

What features should an SEO-friendly website builder have?

SEO has always been an important criterion for determining the best website builder. You can check out my previous guides on choosing website builders and you’ll see that SEO has always been a factor in consideration. But today, I’m going to bet on SEO as the fundamental determining factor.

So, then what features should a website builder have to be liked by Google crawlers? Check them out.

Perfect webpage indexing

The HTML code on a page should be easily identifiable by search engines. And as for the website architecture, it must be simple and without complex elements and technologies that are hard to index.

NOTE: About 10 years ago most online website builders used Macromedia Flash technology. The websites built using Flash looked pretty and had spectacular animation. But it was very difficult for search engines to index them, and they were unlikely to rank higher in Google. Due to that, website builders started getting a bad reputation in SEO communities. But since then, a lot has changed. Today, website builders have completely abandoned Flash in favor of HTML5, and the problems with webpage indexing are now long gone. Moreover, website builders began coming equipped with built-in SEO tools, SEO widgets, and SEO tutorials, which radically changed the situation for the better.

Ability to add Meta Descriptions and Headings

Website builders must allow users to add some MetaData, such as Title, Meta Description, and headings (H1, H2, and H3) separately for each page. It should also be possible for users to specify Alt attributes for all the images on the site. All these options allow accurate search engine optimization for every single page.

SEO-friendly URL structure

SEO-friendly URLs are those which have a simple and clear structure that search engines can easily understand. Such URLs contain the basic keyword or webpage title (most often a fragment) and a minimum amount of enclosures.

Some examples of non-optimized URLs:

1) https://www.yoursite.com/news/?p=637
2) https://www.yoursite.com/articles/2022/09/25/sample-post/
3) https://www.yoursite.com/blog/archives/637

Some examples of SEO-friendly URLs:

1) https://www.yoursite.com/best-seo-friendly-platforms/
2) https://www.yoursite.com/seo/best-platforms/
3) https://www.yoursite.com/best-platforms/seo/

Availability of SSL certificate

The best website builders in the market offer SSL certificates with all their plans, even the free ones. They understand that having a website with HTTPS is not only a security issue but also an important factor for SEO. Moreover, the Chrome browser marks all the websites without HTTPS (that is the ones that don’t have SSL encryption) as ‘isn’t secure’ in the URL tab. This may have a negative impact on your website traffic as well as your reputation.

Responsive web design

After Google launched Mobile-First indexing across the web, having a mobile-friendly website design became a crucially important factor. If a website does not display correctly on mobile devices, then it is unlikely that it will rank higher in Google SERPs.

That is why the website builders targeting SEO must ensure that their templates are as responsive as possible so that they are displayed well across all device types and sizes.

Robots.txt and sitemap.xml creation and editing

The robot.txt file gives search engines the information about which pages have to be indexed and which don’t. As for the sitemap.xml file, it is used to specify the URLs of all pages on your website in the order of their priority to be indexed.

The best SEO website builders can automatically create robots.txt and sitemap.xml (like Tilda). You don’t need to take any efforts to get these files, but at the same time, you have the option to edit them if necessary.

Rapid webpage load

Page speed has been an important SEO factor, as officially announced by Google officials. So, the faster your website loads, the better it is for SEO. And a rapid webpage load speed can be achieved in several different ways. The most effective ways include reducing the page size and optimizing the images on the website.

Moreover, the most advanced SEO platforms also use CDN technology, image conversion into WebP format, and delayed image download (Lazy Loading). All these can significantly accelerate the speed of website operation.

Integration with marketing and analytics tools

Most website builders come with their own built-in analytics systems. But almost always their capacities aren’t sufficient. That’s why you need a possibility to add external marketing tools, A/B Tests, and marketing analytics systems.

In most cases, having the option to add Google Analytics and Google Optimize (for A/B Tests), and Google Search Console is enough.

Common SEO Mistakes That Prevent The Growth Of Your Website

Setting up a pretty-looking website is not enough. You need to ensure that the website ranks well on search. This is more easily said than done. The launch of a site is the beginning of the long battle to reach the top of search engine rankings. You need to resort to search engine optimization or SEO techniques.

However, SEO practices evolve constantly as Google and Bing fine-tune their algorithms. Here is a primer about what to avoid.

4 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid In 2024

1. Not implementing HTTPS

HTTP or HyperText Transfer Protocol comprises a set of rules that govern how data is exchanged between your computer and others on the internet. Think of it as traffic rules for the web that governs the exchange of packets of data.

In recent years it has become obsolete since HTTP is not secure. The data transmitted using the system is not encrypted. This allows others who choose to eavesdrop on a computer to find passwords, user names, phone numbers, and credit card information.

HTTP has been replaced by HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure or HTTPS. Unless you use it, your site will rank lower on Google. In fact, since 2019, the Chrome browser warns users about proceeding to a site that is not HTTPS certified. Chrome has a 70% market share and you do not want to show up as unsafe to such a vast number of users.

2. Posting duplicate or plagiarized content

There are two ways to look at this SEO mistake. The first is information that is plagiarized. Google cannot decide which page to place higher since the same information appears on both sites.

The other is duplicate content published by mistake. This can happen on product pages and blogs. Two product pages that describe the same exact product are to be avoided. Not only scrutinize the description on the pages but pay attention to URLs as well. They need to be unique.

Most websites host a blog for disseminating information. Since a blog contains a series of posts, a topic might get published twice by mistake. Duplicate content on the blog can prove to be vexing for the search engine to rank.

3. Keywords strategy that is sub-par

A search engine cannot actually read and understand content from a page as humans can. That is why every page carries keywords in descriptions and content. Incorrect keywords are a top SEO mistake.

The keywords allow the search engine to understand if the page is meant for someone looking for information about dental braces or an online store for potted plants.

Keywords are available through Google Keyword Planner and other similar tools. Not only must you place keywords correctly, but choose those that accurately describe your site and the page.

Image source: staticflickr.com

4. Not fixing errors in H1

Header tags or H1 tags are the first and largest tag of a webpage.

Think of it as newspaper headlines. When you want to find the score of a soccer match, you locate it by glancing through the headlines on the sports page.

A search engine does something similar. Wrong header is among the most common SEO mistakes made by a rookie site owner.

For this reason, the H1 tag has to be descriptive and give a summary of what is on the page.

For this page, the H1 is <h1> Common SEO mistakes that prevent the growth of your website</h1>

If instead, the tag read <h1>How to optimize web pages</h1> it tells the search engine nothing about the actual content. It is an SEO issue you need to avoid at all costs.

5. Publishing content that is too concise

Search engines prefer lengthy blog posts.

Posts that are about 1000-2000 words are the norm. In some cases, such as buying guides, content can be 4000 words long.

Shorter posts that contain less than 500 words do not get much attention from search. A longer post contains more details and therefore provides greater value. Ensure that you avoid the most common typos that plague low-effort content.

At the same time, pepper the writing with as much data as possible. This is very attractive to other writers who love to find someone who has done the hard work for them and would gladly provide a backlink to your site.

6. Neglecting SEO-friendly meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are the short snippets that appear below the URL and H1 in the search result.

They have two purposes. The first is to describe the page for the search engine and the second is to inform the visitor about the page.

The meta description has to be no more than 160 characters. Many site owners do not bother with a meta and as a result, the search engine shows the first 160 characters of the webpage content.

To fix it, generate a meta description for every page in 1-2 sentences. Your search ranking would skyrocket.