One Stop Place To Find The best Website Builder - UK 2020

A complete list with reviews of the best website builders of 2020. Find a provider with the best uptime, features and customer support for your business/hobby.

You cannot vote twice for a website!
Rank
Vote
Website
1.

580
  • Easy to use
  • Highly customizable templates
  • A huge amount of templates
  • Numerous SEO features
  • Good support centre

WiX is running very quickly to stay on the spot of the #1 website builder. Its impressive collection of over 400 modern responsive themes sees new additions regularly. Fully customizable, stylish and interactive, they are backed up by an even greater choice of apps.

Check out WiX with their free plan.

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2.

575
Site 123Compare
  • Special 10% Off
  • Free & Very easy to use
  • No design and coding skills required
  • Ready-made styles and layouts
  • SEO friendly

SITE123 is a website builder that’s exceptionally easy to use. It provides an advanced wizard with tools and premade styles and layouts so people with no design and coding skills can effortlessly create their own website. The end result will be a scalable, mobile-friendly, SEO-ready website!

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3.

224
123 reg website builderCompare
  • Extremely usable, with outstanding drag-and-drop
  • Great website performance, from desktop and mobile versions
  • Requires extra payments for ecommerce features, and SSL security

The 123-Reg website builder offers a very easy to use, drag and drop system that allows even the most novice of customers to build their own website. If you’re looking to build an online business presence, or an online store, 123-Reg has excellent and powerful eCommerce. This site builder comes in four forms: Website Builder, InstantSite, eCommerce, and WebWorx24.

Go ahead and give any of these options a test drive with the 123-Reg 14-day trial period

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4.

463
WeeblyCompare
  • Incredibly user-friendly, with excellent drag-and-drop functionality
  • Class-leading App Center; adding integrations is simple
  • Missing key features, compared to its rivals
  • Questionable customer support
  • Good free SEO tools

Weebly offers a fair priced and easy-to-use website builder. With exceptional speed and security, the website building process is top notch and is also accompanied by a solid onboarding and educational system. What Weebly lacked in the past was modern and varied template selection. Well, that’s in the past, as Weebly have upgraded their selection with lots of cutting-edge options.

You can begin with the free pricing plan and, if you like it, upgrade to one of their four pricing plans.

 

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5.

263
  • Smooth creative process
  • Excellent interface
  • Lifetime package
  • Good plugins
  • WooCommerce integration

Divi is a beast of a site builder disguised as a real beauty. Powerful, intuitive and constantly growing with new features, this site building platform will tap the deepest reserves of your creativity. Easy navigation, logical shortcuts and flexible design blocks allow the creative juices to flow seamlessly toward the World Wide Web.

Divi is a WordPress theme with a spectacular drag-and-drop site builder.

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6.

358
StrikinglyCompare
  • Beautiful, intuitive single-page websites
  • Excellent customer support
  • Lacklustre feature set

Strikingly is specifically created for making one-page websites. Seeing as how that is not the goal of the other website builders, they are nowhere near as good as Strikingly in this department. Specializing in one-pagers has allowed Strikingly to have the most compact, precise and varied website builder for the task, with a mobile first approach in website building. Aside from what they are the best at, Strikingly also offer the ability to create multi-page sites as well.

All the Strikingly plans come with a 14-day free trial period!

 

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7.

409
UcraftCompare
  • User-friendly editor with drag & drop functionality
  • Affordable plans
  • A great number of templates
  • Great customer support
  • Missing some basic features

Ucraft offers an extremely simple and intuitive content editor. There are some free options but they are heavily limited so it’s best to opt for one of their affordable plans. The Ucraft website builder can be perfectly convenient for creating responsive sites, even if you’re a beginner. Their customer service is active 24/7 so they can help you with anything related to the website building process with Ucraft. Although the webmail option is not supported, Ucraft features make up for it as you’re going to see for yourself in this Ucraft review!

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8.

208
  • Easy to Use
  • Fully integrated blog and e-commerce solution
  • Stunning design templates
  • Custom Design option
  • True multilanguage site options

Voog is positioning itself as the website builder to beat. It offers the best solutions for those wanting multilanguage site options. This builder offers a simplified interface to make things as easy as possible for newbies, but also the option for more advanced users to take things up a notch.

Why not see for yourself using the free trial?

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9.

364
Big CommerceCompare
  • Extensive set of eCommerce tools
  • Modern and professional-looking templates
  • Sale growth options thanks to different social channels
  • App store with extra tools for maximum customization

Out of all the eCommerce builders, BigCommerce offers the most comprehensive tool-set. It helps out with your sales growth by giving you a lot of options in regards to where you want your store to be. For the absolute best at designing eCommerce stores, there’s the BigCommerce app store where you can shop for even more tools, some of them as advanced as they come.

You can head on to the their site and start your free trial to see what’s what before you commit to it.

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10.

322
EnjinCompare
  • Easy to use
  • Endless customization possibilities
  • Free server hosting
  • Various shopping integrations
  • Highly Secure

For the purposes of this Enjin website builder review, our team of researchers has built an entire website using this effective tool. Simple and intuitive, Enjin really impressed the whole Websitebuilder.org.uk team. There are quite enough features and themes to satisfy most users, but the main focus of this website builder is on guild sites and Minecraft servers.

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11.

331
JimdoCompare
  • Highly intuitive content editor
  • An extensive number of tools available with the free plan
  • The option of adding various apps and services via Jimdo Widgets
  • Inexpensive plans
  • Limited ecommerce capabilities

Jimdo makes creating a website easy, which is perfect for those who still haven’t entered the DIY website building world. There’s even the option of letting Jimdo create a website for you with the AI website builder – Jimdo Dolphin. Jimdo is also one of the few website builders that provide free users with so many tools for creating a website. The lack of live chat support is a minus for Jimdo, as well as somewhat limited ecommerce capabilities. As you’ll see in this Jimdo review, the choice of templates is not the most extensive one, but if you want to make a highly functional site for free, the website builder is up to the task.

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12.

144
  • Specifically designed for mobile websites
  • Excellent feature set
  • Unimpressive themes

Duda is a website builder that can do a lot of different things. It can be used to create elaborate desktop websites while its InSite triggered-customization feature can be used to push your website to the next level. What makes it one of the the best in the business is its mobile approach to website building. You can either convert an already existing desktop website, or you can build one from scratch with the most qualified mobile website builder.

Alongside the Business+ and the Business+ eCommerce plans, there’s also the Free plan which is perfect for testing this website builder out.

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13.

107
Web.comCompare
  • Many templates
  • Drag-and-drop interface
  • Stock images

Web.com can get you going in no time. Their team of professional designers can make things even easier, if you are ready to cover their fees.

While not the most powerful platform out there, the Web.com site builder has the basics well-covered. Point-and-click interface and a hefty number of templates give you all the tools necessary to create a professional website quickly.

Web.com site builder has no trial period.

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14.

78
  • Built in SEO Support
  • Easy to use drag & drop editor
  • 165 fully customisable templates

Build a website with a UK2 website builder in just a few clicks. No need to be a technical genius, their drag and drop tool makes it easy to set up your new site in a couple of minutes.

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15.

176
SitejetCompare
  • Customer Portal and CMS
  • Highly flexible templates
  • Integrated Hosting with CDN and SSL

An easy-to-use, intuitive website builder with a predefined set of hotkeys that will reduce the time of site creation to a few seconds.

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16.

147
Novi BuilderCompare
  • Use dozens of clearly-coded HTML templates without limitations
  • Add custom code or functionality
  • Save development time, use ready presets, plugins and scripts

Novi Builder is a really powerful drag-and-drop HTML constructor. It is perfect for beginners who plan to launch their own sites, as well as for experienced web developers.

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Rank
Vote
Website
1.

388
Big CommerceCompare
  • Extensive set of eCommerce tools
  • Modern and professional-looking templates
  • Sale growth options thanks to different social channels
  • App store with extra tools for maximum customization

Out of all the eCommerce builders, BigCommerce offers the most comprehensive tool-set. It helps out with your sales growth by giving you a lot of options in regards to where you want your store to be. For the absolute best at designing eCommerce stores, there’s the BigCommerce app store where you can shop for even more tools, some of them as advanced as they come.

You can head on to the their site and start your free trial to see what’s what before you commit to it.

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2.

383
Wix StoresCompare
  • Feature-rich
  • Excellent value for money
  • Gorgeous looking sites
  • Extremely user-friendly

Since being founded in 2006, the Israel-based Wix have grown to become a dominant force in the field of website builders. In fact, with an estimated 737,000 websites having been built using Wix, their market share of 22.6% makes them the number one website builder on the market.

Wix have subsequently expanded their offering, as you would expect from such a successful company. In addition to a basic website builder, they now offer an eCommerce solution, called Wix Stores.

Wix websites are known as being great-looking, but they draw some criticism when compared to the powerful features of a WordPress-powered site, for example.

Does Wix Stores follow the same pattern?

How does it compare to the big established eCommerce solutions like Shopify?

All this, and more, shall be revealed in my Wix Stores review!

(Note: this review of Wix Stores is based entirely on my own experiences)

 

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3.

347
Site 123 EcommerceCompare
  • Special 10% Off
  • Supports selling of digital goods
  • Lots of customisation options
  • Offers 80 different currencies
  • Various payment methods available

SITE123 Stores is a robust e-commerce website builder. It offers numerous online store-specific features, including gateway integration, inventory management, PayPal payments, and many other ones. Plus, even without any website building experience, you can easily create a top-notch online store for your businesses.

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4.

327
Weebly eCommerceCompare
  • Easy to use
  • Many pictures per product
  • Zoom-in function
  • Product variants
  • Digital goods
  • SSL encryption
  • Reasonable monthly fee

Weebly Business plan put in your hands a diverse and powerful website builder with top-notch ecommerce functionality. Unlimited products, digital goods, discount coupons, advanced inventory management – you name it, Weebly has it. Even if it is not there by default, there would be a handy app to remedy this. Cheaper than other comparable offerings, Weebly eCommerce is value.

Weebly has a free plan to demonstrate the platform; the Business plan is the one you need for ecommerce.

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5.

357
ShopifyCompare
  • Easy to use
  • Automation of the shop management
  • Good theme design
  • Numerous apps
  • Excellent support

You can hardly find a better solution for your online store. With impressive templates, great in-built toolset and over 1,500 available apps Shopify can power all kinds of stores. Unprecedented functionality and possibilities for customization come together with all the necessary tools to manage your Shopify store to perfection with minimal effort.

Shopify has a 14-day trial.

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6.

242
Volusion eCoomerceCompare
  • A good number of in-built functions
  • Volusion API

Volusion can help you create a decent web store quickly. The design process is assisted and streamlined, enabling a simple and quick initial setup. While there are not many external apps, the in-built functionality is impressive in its own right, covering all the needs of a modern e-shop manager.

Volusion has a 15-day trial.

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7.

156
123 reg ecommerceCompare
  • Extremely usable, with outstanding drag-and-drop
  • Great website performance, from desktop and mobile versions
  • Requires extra payments for ecommerce features, and SSL security

Best By Category

15 Best Website Builders UK

Hi, I am Nick. Writing is my passion and web design is my profession. Together with my friend Munni, a web developer, we started this webpage after reading a disheartening stat: “2 million businesses in the UK still don’t have websites”. This struck us as odd as there are hundreds of website builders out there helping millions of small business owners without any technical knowledge build their own websites.

Researching the issue deeper made us realise that a few misconceptions might be standing between those 2 million business owners and their first professionally looking website.

Misconception 1:  Website is not needed

Misconception 2:  Website building is hard

Misconception 3:  Website building is costly

Misconception 4:  To build a website I should be a developer

We decided to dispel these common delusions. We put to work our combined expertise in the field of web design and web development, poured in many hours of research and found out how all top website builders work and how they can be useful for small business owners.

For all those business owners without a website and for those enthusiasts who want to start a website on their own but don’t know how: all research and work on this website is for you

As it is a huge topic to explain, we have divided this comprehensive guide into chapters:

Chapter 1:  Why You Need a Website and How Easy It is to Build One
Chapter 2:  Not All Websites Need Custom Coding
Chapter 3:  How to Choose The Best Website Builder Software—?
Chapter 4:  Our Pick on Top Website Builders
Chapter 5:  Website Builders and E-commerce Platforms are Different

If you are not keen on reading all of that, click on these website builders to know more about them. I am quite sure one of these should have all the features you are looking for.

The Best Website Builders for 2024

  1. Wix – Cheap and Best website builder for beginners
  2. Duda– Mobile-friendly website builder
  3. Weebly– Best for ease of use and cheap plans
  4. SiteBuilder.com– Very User-Friendly and has great support
  5. Godaddy Central – An expensive choice with all basics covered

 

Chapter 1: Why You Need a Website and How Easy It is To Build One

Some 89% of the adult population in the UK use the internet on a regular basis, and this percentage is bound to grow even higher.

I hope business owners read this carefully: 89%. And still increasing.

You might be running a small store or a local service and might be thinking that you are doing reasonably well without a website — this is the first misconception. The thing is that if you haven’t had a web page, you have no real basis for comparison.

A recently published study provides an insightful perspective: a website could boost the revenue of businesses with one employee or with a sole proprietor with over £30,000 per annum. The situation is, even more, promising for businesses with ten or more employees.

I know, word of mouth is important and builds a loyal client base. However, today mostly everybody’s pocket is beaming with connections to the global network. Reading reviews online, instead of asking neighbours, feels more and more natural and it becomes easier by the minute.

What is also much easier nowadays is the building of a website. Let me rephrase that:

“Building and maintaining a website today requires no technical knowledge, nor is it costly.”
Here comes misconception 2: the myth that you have to be a techie to run a website is probably older than the one that a site is not necessary to grow your business. Admittedly, hiring a developer and dealing with webmasters still is a thing, but it is far from necessary, especially for small and medium businesses and personal websites.

Thanks to one website builder or another, millions upon millions business owners, photographers, designers, artists, and bloggers have established a successful online presence without an ounce of technical knowledge or a line of code.

Not convinced yet?

Allow me to dispel your belief in myths from the past with facts from the present. Facts, which, if embraced and understood, could have unforeseeable positive implications on your immediate future.

Are Website Builders People Who Come and Build Sites?

Website builders are not quite like real-life builders or developers. The people who build sites are called web developers or web designers.

The website builders provide you with all the tools necessary to make a web page by yourself, though.

As long as you have an internet connection and can launch a web browser, you can construct your website.

There are no additional requirements.

(At least no technical ones. Most website builders have a monthly fee.)

If you think that all of the 100 million registered Wix users have a technical background, I’d have to counter with incredulous laughter.

It’s more likely that none of them knows how to code, and that’s one of the reasons why such platforms are so popular. Elementary scripting skills could prove useful with some website builders like Weebly, but familiarity with HTML or CSS is an added value and not a necessity.

All site builders discussed below come with a good selection of templates and themes. They would allow you to flesh out your website exactly as you imagine it.

Website builders make the website building process very easy

With website builders, you can enjoy virtually limitless creative power through simple drag-and-drop or point-and-click interfaces. Editing and modifying the existing templates is easy and pleasant and so is adding the desired functionality. Well-developed, tested and optimised apps are waiting there, ready to mould any interaction you can think of. Not just that, every builder has extensive guides on how to build your own websites using their apps.

More importantly, the industry-standard dictates that any self-respecting and easy-to-use website builder must provide responsive designs, i.e. templates optimised for mobile devices. This feature alone saves a lot of manual tweaking and increases the reach of any website.

Statistics reveal that 23% of the sites in the UK are yet to adapt to modern times and are not mobile-friendly.

This might be due to the fact that many websites on the internet are built on open source website building platforms like WordPress. Such websites often need a lot of manual refinement to get started and to become mobile-friendly. But with website builders, even with absolutely no experience in web design, you could establish a mobile-friendly online presence within a day or two.

Just to be clear here, the best website builder reviews and feature comparisons speak about the ease of use of one platform or another, but you should approach them with an open and inquisitive mind. However simple and well-designed it may be, a new interface inevitably requires some time to reveal all its secrets. The learning curve of any online website builder is much lower than that of all other site building tools, but it exists.

The people developing website builder software take this into account, and the good platforms have informative tutorials, which help you learn their functionality while actually designing your web page. Armed with curiosity and desire to learn you could experiment freely and use any website builder the way that suits you the most. Most of them have a free website builder option or a trial period that lets you acquire a very good idea of what you are getting into.

This brings up the most important question: Which is the best site builder for you? There are hundreds of them, but how many free website builder versions are you going to try before zeroing in on one?

Read on a find the answer in the next chapter.

Chapter 2: Not All Websites Need Custom Coding

Technically speaking, there are three ways to develop a website.

You could actually code it from the ground up, or you could design and customise it using an open-source solution, or you could just use a website maker to drag and drop elements and construct your website.

A custom-coded site can take months before launch; mastering a CMS also requires some serious time investment and a degree of technical knowledge.

I work closely with to web developers, who share the sentiment and are quick to point out that any drag-and-drop website builder is a great solution for a vast number of websites.

If you consider the time to be the most valuable resource and then calculate the actual resources necessary for the maintenance of custom coded websites and open-source platforms, then it becomes obvious that these two solutions are unsuitable for many people.

Ordering a custom-built site makes sense only if the expected profit from the web page surpasses a certain amount and if you are ready to deal with designers regularly.

For small to medium businesses, blogs, portfolios and even for small e-commerce websites, Weebly and Wix are among the best free website builders in UK. They are all-around solutions that are very easy to learn and manage.

Those interested particularly in selling products online should consider the likes of Shopify and BigCommerce. They are more narrowly specialised and compete for the title of the best UK ecommerce website builder.

Certain sites need this extra customisation and technical optimisation, and solutions like WordPress, Magento or another open-source website builder would be the way to go. This is especially true for big sites, with numerous and constant content updates or a huge gamma of products.

Indeed, these open source solutions – WordPress, Magento, Drupal, Joomla, etc. – have way more features than even the best website creators, but this versatility comes at a cost. It takes considerably more time to learn and to manage these systems. They require updates, their plugins require updates, their themes require updates. Some of these operations are automated but by far not all.

Their steeper learning curve and the need for extensive maintenance are two of the things that can spell a technical nightmare for a small businessman who knows nothing about building websites. It is not always easy to find adequate support when things go wrong with any part of the CMS, whereas the support of the Top 10 website builders is quite comprehensive.

The other option, paying a developer for an entirely custom-built website costs much more than a CMS or website builder. It also entails continuous payments for further maintenance and updates of the page.

These are some general considerations, a set of loose guidelines to help you understand better the role website building platforms can perform. They are easy to use and tend to provide excellent solutions in their areas of specialisation.

In many, many cases, thanks to the website builders, UK business owners could bring their ventures to the next level thanks to the unparalleled ease of use and multiple features.

Now that we know website builders can be better website building solutions for most of the small and medium businesses, the question remains: how to choose the best website builder, DIY?

At the end of the day, the answer differs according to the individual needs, but there are several factors to consider before making the final decision.

In the next chapter, you will get to know the key points of evaluation. Luckily, there are a few platforms with free plans and many with a trial period, so testing out a free website builder or two is always an option.

Chapter 3: The Best Website Builder — How to Choose It?

The number of site building platforms is huge.

Before you can make an informed decision and create your own website using a website creator, you must understand what the different platforms offer, what actually hides behind the flashy marketing terms, and how their pricing structures work.

Getting the right best website builder for you is important, as one of the main restrictions nearly all DYI site builders face is the inability to transfer a site from one platform to another.

There are some key factors I check extensively when testing new website building solutions. They provide a solid ground for evaluation of any type of builder; still, for an online shop, a closer look at the features of each ecommerce website builder is necessary. You can check more details about a few store builders in Chapter 5.

Ease of use is the first thing to consider. It should be paired with the functionality of the platform because having a user-friendly interface that can do nothing is not particularly helpful.

Take for example BoldGrid, the platform with the most templates. This particular website builder software runs on top of WordPress and transfers the immense functionality of the CMS in its entirety. Only that BoldGrid is anything but an easy website builder to use. Granted, you can do amazing things with this WordPress website builder, customise and change absolutely everything, but the steep learning curve and the time investment are not to be underestimated.

Speaking of Bold Grid and its 3000 designs, the number of templates is another thing to consider.

Jimdo is on the other end of the spectrum. With its meager 17 themes, it is the very definition of an easy website builder, but it is also a limiting platform for people who don’t want to waste time fiddling with blank layouts.

A good collection of templates is important as it gives you more options and helps you create unique sites. The quality of the templates plays its role too, though. Squarespace doesn’t have the most designs, but each theme is a real beauty.

Starting off with a high-quality layout makes everything much easier, especially if you have no distinct skills in design.

Another major factor is the responsive design, the optimisation for mobile devices. You do not want to join this 23% of UK websites in their parallel reality where smartphones are yet to be invented.

Every “best website builder UK” reviewed on this website comes with responsive designs.

All characteristics of the templates are closely related to other key factors, like speed and SEO.

Well-executed templates contribute to the site’s speed and performance. Checking website builder reviews and running benchmark tests allows me to compare the different platforms and acquire a good idea of how fast a web page might become.

Fast pages see a much lower bounce rate (people navigating away without checking the content of the page) and better ranking with Google and other search engines. Nobody likes slow pages.

SEO is another major contributor to better visibility and exposure. Most site builders have the basics well covered, but some platforms go the extra mile and provide a really extensive set of SEO tools.

Integrations and applications could also help a lot with traffic generation and retention. Being able to establish a serious presence on social media and allowing the visitors to interact with your page however they want is the way to go.

In any case, a responsive website builder with great SEO strategy and awesome functionality would generate no traffic if it is offline. Reliability and uptime are crucial for any web endeavour. Outages and technical issues are bound to happen at one point or another. How such unsavoury moments are handled is what really matters. Having a strong, knowledgeable and friendly support team and an extensive knowledgebase can turn a potential disaster into a hardly noticeable hiccup.

Cost

Probably the trickiest part of evaluating an online site builder without actually subscribing is the pricing.

The so-called free website makers or builders can give you a good idea of what they are about, even though their free plans are rather poor in features. All the same, testing many platforms is time-consuming.

How can you get to know the multitude of site builders without actually signing up for all of them?

First and foremost, come up with an idea about what your site should be, create a concept. Decide how much time you are ready to put into mastering the platform and roughly how much money you are ready to invest.

Then read the features of each platform carefully. It is not an uncommon marketing strategy to advertise a certain price and then to pile on top of it a bunch of fees attached to paid but necessary applications and tools. Whenever you encounter an unclear point, finicky wording or incomplete information, contact the support team and ask for clarifications.

Most commonly, site building platforms charge unreasonably high fees for email accounts. When you are a business owner, an email is quite necessary for branding purposes and smooth operations. Usually, it is much more feasible to set up an email service with a third-party provider.

Spending some time researching can save you lots of headaches down the road. Professional reviews are always there to help and so are the opinions of the end-users.

Read both as critically as possible because many website builder reviews tend to be exclusively praiseful and many user accounts are isolated cases, which often don’t tell the whole story.

In Chapter 4 you can get acquainted with some of the best the general-purpose site builders. Chapter 5 covers ecommerce solutions, which have their specifics. This theoretical advice is all good and dandy, but in order to give you a better idea of how website makers are evaluated, go through the next two chapters.

Chapter 4: Our Pick On Top Website Builders

In-depth reviews are useful but before narrowing down your search, a nice overview could give you an idea of whether it is worth to invest more time in researching and testing.

  1. Wix


    Pros: Arguably the best option for beginners, Wix website builder comes with unmatched functionality, great ease of use, decent SEO options, many templates with nice, modern and responsive design. On top of that, there are many third-party applications, which can boost the functionality and productivity of your website.

    The Wix monthly fees are among the lowest in the industry, technically making it the cheapest website builder.

    Cons: The sheer size of Wix (nearly 110 million users) increases the support reaction time; cannot switch templates once you have picked a design.

    Recommended: Highly, especially for beginners. If you want to know more details and how real WIX users rated it, check my detailed WIX review page

  2. Duda


    Pros: Duda was designed with mobile-friendly websites in mind and it delivers. Fully optimised templates with many features and embedded functionality can get your site going in no time. For greater optimisation, you can dive into the HTML code, too.

    Duda is a particularly sound choice if you want your website to have multilingual versions. The plans include numerous nice perks, with the multi-language support standing head and shoulders above the competition.

    Cons: Plans are rather pricey; no apps store; not that suitable for e-commerce.

    Recommended: Excellent choice, especially if you want to have a multilingual site. Check my extensive research on Duda review page

  3. Weebly


    Pros: Weebly is one of the most famous website creating software for a number of good reasons. Economic plans and great ease of use are the first two to come to mind, but the great templates are not that far behind. They are plenty and have an excellent base design.

    All Weebly websites can be edited on the go via the respective Weebly Android and iOS apps, which is an awesome perk. The rich application store adds unprecedented functionality, allowing you to create any type of website you want.

    Cons: Somewhat limited template customisation options for non-coders; plans are a bit more expensive than the average.

    Recommended: Highly.

    Amongst all the best website builders UK, Weebly alone is having UK specific page and with pricing in GBP (£).

  4. SiteBuilder


    Pros: A platform as straightforward as its name suggests, SiteBuilder is simple webiste builder to use, versatile and diverse. It has improved a lot since its first iterations, which were quite clumsy and limiting. At the moment, SiteBuilder offers over 10,000 templates (more than any other website builder), drag-and-drop interface, fantastic SEO toolset, good loading speed, and excellent support.

    Its pricing is leaning toward the low end of the spectrum, but before you prepare your credit card you can check its free plan

    Cons: No third-party apps, backend could be a bit faster, billing could be much better.

    Recommended: An OK choice.

  5. GoDaddy GoCentral


    Pros: GoCentral is the revamped version of the GoDaddy website builder. It is very easy to use, with all the basic functionality covered.

    Cons: A rather expensive choice, GoCentral’s functionality is too bare-bones to contest seriously with more popular site builder options out there. Yes, everything is included and yet so much is lacking. The customisation of the templates could be better, especially since it is needed – the designs are uninspiring.

    Add to the mix the questionable GoDaddy support, and you get a product you have no reason to pick up.

    Recommended: No. Too many drawbacks.

Chapter 5: Website Builders and eCommerce Platforms are Different

Evaluating online shop builders is a touch harder than comparing general-purpose platforms like Wix website builder with Weebly. A functional web store has many more characteristics to consider than a blog or a portfolio site.

You should always take into account the characteristics listed in Chapter 3, but also the features specific to the actual shop management.

Key factors are the number of products listed and the transaction fees, but there are many other details to go through like: product management, shipping options, abandon cart management and SSL certificate.

Top eCommerce Platforms UK for 2024

  1. Shopify – Best hosted ecommerce platform
  2. BigCommerce –  Easiest and Versatile ecommerce platform
  3. Volusion – No transaction fees and has over 50 templates
  1. Shopify

    Pros: With over 140 excellent templates (24 free ones), over 1,500 applications and a good SEO toolset, Shopify is one of the best ecommerce website builders out there.

    All their plans include an SSL certificate and do not limit the number of products you can display. Only their smallest plan does not include abandoned cart recovery, but all plans include fraud analysis and 24/7 support.

    The Basic Shopify plan costs $29, the most popular one $79 and the biggest package comes at $299 per month. The main difference between the plans is the reduced transaction fee when customers pay with credit cards.

    For the Basic Shopify plan it is 2.2% + 20p, while for the standard plan it drops to 1.9% + 20p. It might not seem like a lot but with a hefty number of transactions, this difference really matters. As long as you use their payment gateway for online payments, there are no transaction fees.

    Overall, most ecommerce website builder reviews agree that Shopify is a very reliable and versatile platform, which can accommodate the needs of online shops of any size.

    Cons: Transaction fees included in all plans; Liquid, the language Shopify templates are coded on, is not exactly user-friendly.

    Recommended: Highly recommended for ecommerce.

  2. BigCommerce

    Pros: BigCommerce store builder is the easiest and most versatile ecommerce solutions out there. It comes with a great number of inbuilt features, no transaction fees, unlimited products, unlimited staff accounts, integration with Amazon and eBay, Facebook, Pinterest, Google Shipping and encrypted connection over HTTPS from the get-go.

    The Standard plan comes at $29.95/mo but does not feature an abandoned cart saver. The Plus ($79.95/mo) and the Pro ($249.95/mo) include this useful feature and increase the limit of annual turnover from $50,000 to $150,000 and $400,000, respectively.

    BigCommerce is easily one of the most comprehensive ecommerce solutions out there. Its pricing structure is very reasonable for the huge amount of features and shipping options included.

    Cons: The main downside is the limited number of free templates but the 15-day trial period would allow you to gauge whether this is the best ecommerce site builder for you and whether the additional investment is justified. BigCommerce has only 7 free templates and 76 paid ones, making its initial setup costly.

    Recommended: Highly; BigCommerce gives Shopify a run for its money.

    NOTE: Although Shopify and Bigcommerce have their UK specific domains for their Ecommerce platforms in UK market, their pricing is in dollars ($) instead of pounds (£).

  3. Volusion

    Pros: Volusion users can choose among 50 templates, but about 40 of those cost $180, making many design choices rather costly. Add to that the limited selection of only 60 plugins (and nearly 50 of them are paid too) and you begin to understand how the feeling of limited creative freedom intensifies.

    Volusion does not have any transaction fees.

    Cons: Their ecommerce platform attempts to streamline the design process, but it can feel a bit restrictive instead. None of their plans includes SSL, which is a must for any online shop and would burden your budget further.

    There are four plans to choose from, but only the Premium ($135/mo) allows you to feature unlimited products. It still puts a cap on your monthly bandwidth.

    The Pro plan ($75/mo) allows you to have 10,000 products, with 10GB of bandwidth. These restrictions become tighter with the other two plans.

    The smallest plan ($15/mo) doesn’t even allow you to import and export products.

    Recommended: despite the 15-day trial period, all these plan limitations scream “hidden fees”, making Volusion a rather shady platform for serious ecommerce intentions. Best avoided.

These overviews of top site builders and store builders should give you an idea what to look for when searching for the ideal website or store building platform.

Finding the right solution might take a while, but this initial research is crucial for your future success. Take your time to research to save time spent on maintenance!

Getting to work with the most suitable website builder would make running your site a pleasant and meaningful experience, which can enrich your life in many different ways.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is a hosted platform?

A: Hosted is a platform, which provides you with the tools to build a website and then takes care of hosting it. All site builders are hosted platforms.

Q: How can I use a third-party email service provider?

A: Once you have a registered domain name, you can point its MX record toward the servers of your email service provider. Ask the support team of your domain registrar and email service provider for help.

Q: What’s the difference between an online payment and credit card payment?

A: Credit card payments typically involve an extra fee to be processed. Online payments are made through an e-wallet like PayPal and often don’t include extra processing fees.

Q: What’s the best website builder, UK for shops?

A: That depends on how big your shop is and which interface you find the easiest to use.

Q: What is a responsive website builder?

A: Any site builder with templates optimised for mobile devices can be considered responsive.

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