Webflow
Webflow was launched in 2013 as an all-in-one option with a visual editor for designing, building, and ultimately launching websites. Webflow's company is based in San Francisco. Over the past nine years, the software-as-a-service platform has garnered 2 million users.
Strengths
One of Webflow's greatest strengths is just how versatile it is. Webflow isn't just for creating simple webpages with a few photos or videos and a contact form. Webflow is chock-full of features that allow you to build a variety of online, multimedia destinations, ranging from online stores to immersive sites and membership-based, gated experiences. Webflow is also a highly capable tool when it comes to creating interactions and animations, which adds to the custom feel of the business branding.
Webflow's templates also help jumpstart your design process. Webflow has over 1,000 templates that fit a variety of niches and use cases, including templates for businesses, personal use, blogs, and more. Best of all, each template is responsive to mobile devices and various operating systems, browsers, and screen sizes. This ensures that your users have a great experience however they choose to engage with your content.
Weaknesses
Although packed with valuable features, Webflow comes with a somewhat steep learning curve for new users. It is definitely easier than learning how to code, but it is not as easy to master as some of the other options in this article.
Some users also complain about Webflow's technical support, which leaves a bit to be desired. That is something to consider if you're the type of person who likes to be able to interact with another human to walk through certain issues you may be facing with a new software tool.
Target Market
Due to its high customization, Weblos is widely used by Graphic Designers and UI designers who want to develop their websites as close as possible to their designs.
Business owners will also get a lot from using Webflow, thanks to its tiered approach to web development which allows users to build their website, optimize their site for growth with SEO (search engine optimization), and scale up their business with security and hosting tools. From agencies to the finance industry and food and beverage companies, small to large businesses can all benefit from Webflow's focus on flexibility and creative freedom.
Price Range
Webflow's pricing for 2024 is structured as follows:
- Basic: $14/month (billed annually) or $18/month (monthly), ideal for simple sites.
- CMS: $23/month (annual) or $29/month (monthly), perfect for blogs or content-driven sites.
- Business: $39/month (annual) or $49/month (monthly), suited for larger sites with high traffic.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for enterprise-grade needs
Ease of Use
Webflow's "Designer" platform does come with a learning curve for new users due to its ample range of customization options. However, it also comes with an easy-to-use "Editor" side, which is tailored toward clients that need to update content easily for their already developed site. Another benefit of Webflow's editor is that it produces clean code on the backend. While this isn't something most users will to know much about, it is reassuring to know that Webflow's code is streamlined and won't cause problems on other devices due to extraneous snippets of HTML. To ensure you feel comfortable using Webflow, you can check out a free trial before buying.
Customizability
Webflow is highly customizable. You have the option to use a template as a starting point, or you can build your site from scratch. With Webflow, you are essentially putting lines of code together using a drag-and-drop feature without actually writing code. You also have the option to add custom code to your site if their standalone features do not suffice.
Framer
Framer is part of a new wave of design tools that focuses on interactive and high-fidelity prototyping, catering to modern web and mobile app designers. Here's what you need to know about using Framer for your design projects.
Strengths
Framer stands out for its emphasis on interaction and animation. It's particularly powerful when used to prototype interactions that feel real, making it invaluable for user experience designers. With its code-based design capabilities, it allows for more sophisticated animations and interactions than what's typically possible with purely visual design tools. This makes it excellent for testing and presenting dynamic user interfaces.
Weaknesses
The primary challenge with Framer is its learning curve, especially for designers unfamiliar with coding. While it offers a visual interface, getting the most out of Framer often requires at least a basic understanding of JavaScript. This can make it less accessible for traditional designers used to more visually oriented tools.
Target Market
Framer is ideally suited for UI/UX designers and product teams that prioritize interactive design and prototyping. Its advanced features cater to professionals looking to create detailed, highly interactive prototypes that closely mimic the final product.
Price Range
Framer's pricing for 2024 includes several plans:
- Free: $0, ideal for hobby sites.
- Mini: $5/month, suitable for simple sites.
- Basic: $15/month, designed for personal sites.
- Pro: $25/month, for larger sites.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing, tailored for enterprise needs.
Ease of Use
While Framer's interface is clean and modern, the tool's full potential is unlocked through code, which can be a barrier for some designers. However, for those willing to delve into its more technical aspects, Framer provides a powerful platform for creating dynamic, interactive prototypes.
Customizability
Thanks to its integration of design and code, Framer is highly customizable. Designers can tweak every aspect of their prototype's behavior and appearance, from animations to interactions, offering a level of detail and control that is hard to match with other tools. Combined with the ability to import graphics and assets from other design tools, Framer is a versatile choice for designers who want to push the boundaries of digital product design.
Wix
Wix is an easy-to-use, web-based tool for hosting and building your own website. Here are the features that make it shine—as well as some of its shortcomings.
Strengths
Ease of use is a major benefit of Wix, which is designed with a simple user interface and a variety of templates to make web design fast and easy. Its user interface is straightforward and even includes helpful grid lines to help you align elements for a balanced, symmetrical design. Wix is also a solid choice as an all-in-one option for designing, hosting, and updating your website, particularly if you want to take advantage of the tool's eCommerce features.
Weaknesses
Due to its popularity, sometimes Wix can be a bit slow to load or pass through updates you've made on your website. Wix's support is also not the greatest (unless you pay for the VIP price tier), although they do have a variety of helpful tutorials and guides as part of their help section.
Target Market
Beginners will get the most out of using Wix. However, with VIP and Pro pricing tiers, small and midsized businesses will also be able to reap the benefits of a Wix-based website.
Price Range
Wix's pricing for 2024 is structured into several plans to accommodate different needs:
- Light Plan: Starting at $16/month, suitable for most small business needs.
- Core Plan: Priced at $27/month, offers ecommerce functionality for online stores.
- Business Plan: At $32/month, designed for extensive business requirements.
- Business Elite Plan: The highest tier at $159/month, for advanced reporting, ecommerce, and marketing features.
Ease of Use
While it is possible to be overwhelmed by the number of features and options with Wix, unlike Dreamweaver, Wix's templates and more approachable UI make it a much better entry-level platform for people looking to quickly and simply create a website.
Customizability
Although there are plenty of templates to help jumpstart your design in Wix, there is more to the platform than making a cookie-cutter site.
WordPress
WordPress is primarily a CMS and website builder created as an open-source platform that initially focused on bloggers and has expanded to host quite robust websites. Here's what you should know about the platform.
Strengths
While WordPress began as a platform for personal blogging, thanks to various widgets and plug-ins, you can quickly make fully featured websites using the tool. WordPress has a mixture of free and paid templates to help you quickly get the ball rolling.
Weaknesses
WordPress has made strides in recent years (especially with the newest Gutenberg release) to improve its visual editor. However, its blocks layout and various modules that make up its user interface leave a bit to be desired. Those who have used the platform for a decade or more are likely comfortable with the more post-based editing tools on the backend. Still, newer users may prefer a tool with a more flexible and intuitive user interface. Also, unless you've got an understanding of how to code CSS or HTML, you'll need to focus on finding a template that works for you as far as design goes.
Target Market
Businesses can do a lot with WordPress, but it's definitely something where you need to think through the kind of website you're planning on making before you start using the tool. This is because WordPress does a lot better with, as the name suggests, text-heavy websites that don't need a lot of extra flashiness from animations or video.
Price Range
WordPress's 2024 plans include:
- Free: $0/month, 1 GB storage.
- Starter: $9/month, 6 GB storage, free domain for one year.
- Explorer: $18/month, 13 GB storage, advanced design tools.
- Creator: $40/month, 50 GB storage, plugin and theme installation.
- Entrepreneur: $70/month, 50 GB storage, comprehensive ecommerce solutions.
Ease of Use
The visual editor isn't the most intuitive on this list, but when it comes to writing your posts, if you've used Microsoft Word, you'll be very comfortable using WordPress.
Customizability
Thanks to a bevy of third-party plug-ins, you can do many things with WordPress. This means that while it might seem a bit limited on its surface level, with the right add-ons, you'll be able to make multifaceted websites with ease.
Shopify
Many of the platforms on this list come with eCommerce options, but Shopify is designed with retail in mind. Here are some things to help you evaluate if the tool is right for you.
Strengths
Shopify scales well, meaning that even if your sales volume is quite high, you can keep up without breaking a sweat. From hosting your site to managing customer orders, Shopify is designed with commerce in mind, making it easy to take your retail presence online. They also frequently earn high marks for their customer service.
Weaknesses
Even though Shopify is designed from the ground up for eCommerce, its tools for managing purchase orders and shipping integrations with services like FedEx leave much to be desired. Exporting reports could also be smoother.
Target Market
For online retailers, Shopify is pretty much the gold standard. If you want to create a website to sell your goods online, Shopify is the tool to get it done.
Price Range
Shopify's 2024 pricing plans are:
- Starter Plan: $5/month
- Basic Shopify Plan: $39/month
- Shopify Plan: $105/month
- Advanced Shopify Plan: $399/month
- Shopify Plus: Starts around $2000/month
Ease of Use
Everything about Shopify is very straightforward and easy to use. If you've set up a Facebook profile, you'll be able to use Shopify.
Customizability
Shopify doesn't integrate with all plug-ins and add-ons, but it does interface with enough extra tools that you can fill in some of its gaps.
Squarespace
If you've listened to a podcast in the last decade, you've heard of Squarespace. This is what you should know about the tool.
Strengths
Of the drag-and-drop editors on this list, Squarespace might be the most intuitive, particularly when it comes to creating mobile-responsive websites. From portfolios to personal blogs and eCommerce sites, Squarespace has plenty of attractive, easy-to-edit templates to leverage as you create your own site. Squarespace also pushes out security updates automatically, so you never have to worry about whether or not your site is up to date and secure.
Weaknesses
Unlike some of the other platforms on this list, Squarespace doesn't offer a ton of extra plug-ins or add-ons. Squarespace also has multiple versions. If you make a website in one version, it can be difficult to port it into a newer version once it's been created.
Target Market
Creatives will primarily respond to the artistry and aesthetic details in Squarespace's templates. As such, it's an excellent option for artists, designers, portfolios, restaurants, and other creative endeavors or businesses.
Price Range
Squarespace offers tiered pricing based on your needs:
- Personal - $25/month
- Business - $36/month
- Basic Commerce - $40/month
- Advanced Commerce - $72/month
If you pay annually, you can also save anywhere from 25% to 30% on your Squarespace plan, depending on which you choose.
Ease of Use
While some people may struggle to get the hang of the user interface at first, once you understand the ins and outs of Squarespace, it's one of the easiest and fastest website creation tools on the market.
Customizability
As was mentioned earlier, there isn't a lot of customizability offered with Squarespace through extra plug-ins or add-ons. Some templates do allow for additional HTML or CSS code to be edited; however, that defeats the purpose of being a no-code option.
Weebly
Weebly offers basic website design, content management tools, and eCommerce features. Here's everything you should know about this no-code web design tool.
Strengths
Weebly makes a lot of things simple, which is its major strength. Its drag-and-drop user interface is straightforward and easy to use. Weebly prioritizes transparency around pricing and makes it simple to buy a domain. Page management is also quite streamlined, so if you're looking for an introductory website design tool, Weebly is a great option.
Weaknesses
Weebly's themes are limited, and some of its functionality regarding extra media like documents or PDFs leaves a bit to be desired. While Weebly does offer a mobile app, if you want to get the best user experience, you'll need to use the web-based editor on a desktop or laptop computer.
Target Market
Weebly is best for personal use or small businesses that don't need too many bells and whistles on their website.
Price Range
Weebly offers a Basic version of its website editor for free. However, you won't be able to connect to a personalized domain unless you pay for one. Here are the pricing tiers offered by Weebly:
- Free - $0/mo
- Personal - $10/mo, connect to a custom domain, $13 month-to-month
- Professional - $12/mo, connect to a custom domain, added customization, $16 month-to-month
- Performance - $26/mo, connect to domain, with added growth and operational tools, $29 month-to-month
Ease of Use
Weebly is probably the simplest website editor on this list, making it an excellent introductory option for those who need to make a website but have minimal technical experience.
Customizability
Weebly's templates are a bit limited. You'll need to subscribe to their performance package for $26/month to get the most customization power. That's not the best approach to customizability, especially when platforms like WordPress give you many ways to customize your website with extra add-ons and plug-ins.
Zyro
Zyro is a lesser-known no-code web design tool, but it is still worth considering if it can fit your needs. Learn more about Zyro below.
Strengths
Zyro is super affordable, which is one of the best things about it. One thing Zyro has that some competitors don't is AI-powered tools. These include AI-powered writers, slogan generators, and image background removal tools. Especially if you're working with a small team or a tight budget, these features, alongside its easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, make it an ideal choice for the right person. Zyro also integrates with a few different web tools, such as Google Analytics and HotJar.
Weaknesses
Zyro isn't a big name (yet), so its customer support is definitely lacking. Beyond that, connecting your website to an external domain can be tricky, something other tools make simple.
Target Market
If you're looking to build a personal portfolio or are a small business with limited resources, Zyro is definitely a good platform to consider.
Price Range
I apologize for any confusion, but it seems I made an error in my previous response. Zyro's pricing information is not available in a bulleted format. However, I can provide you with the information in a clearer format:
Website Plan:
- Monthly: $11.99
- Annual: $3.29/month
Business eCommerce Plans:
- Monthly: Starting at $14.99
- Annual: $4.99/month
Ease of Use
Zyro's drag-and-drop editor feature is on par with other platforms on this list. Ultimately, whether you respond better to Zyro's UI or prefer something like Squarespace or Wix is somewhat a matter of taste.
Customizability
Once you've chosen a template, you can't switch to a different one, which is a big bummer in terms of customizability. Especially with a smaller collection of templates, this can make it challenging to feel like your website is genuinely distinct.
