It seems that website builders are on the rise lately. These sites boast the capability of helping anyone create a professional website, with no technical experience at all. While not all website builders are all that they claim to be, many do provide everything needed for even those with a blind design eye to end up with a fairly nice-looking website. Some of the more flexible web builders - those with more advanced features - are attracting web designers, since they can create almost any website they imagine without needing to know code.
Some pretty impressive websites have started to emerge from web builder sites, which is what the following round-up attempts to reveal. You can probably tell which of the ones below were designed by creative professionals and which were created by those with little to no creative experience. However, even the lesser designs below reveal just how much can be accomplished with a web builder site, no matter the level of design or development experience.
WebStartToday.com
Created with small business owners in mind,
WebStartToday is an easy drag-and-drop web builder with SEO content already built in to each template. With thousands of designs and 72 industries from which to choose, small business owners have quite a few options for customization. All content is customizable and each template comes with tips and suggestions for SEO as well. My favorite part of WebStartToday is that you can launch a site right away and it's free for an entire year.
Reed Grey Woodworking
AquaVie Day Spa
Electrify Fitness
Intuit.com
Another web builder that is easy for business owners to use,
Intuit comes with hundreds of designs from which to choose. Plus, they have e-commerce options, excellent tech support, and Facebook and Twitter widgets. You also have the option of trying Intuit for free, but only for 30 days.
Coco Lassial Apron Co.
Gentle Hands Canine Care
Elk Mountain Rentals LLC
Wix.com
As a completely free website builder,
Wix is hard to beat. While design options are a bit limited, you can still produce a beautiful site - if you know how a beautiful website should look. Some website designers have even used Wix for their own business website. Many websites created with Wix are blogs, organization websites, or portfolios.
Sue-Sue's
The Punch and Judy Show
Richard Overton
Breezi.com
For web design professionals wanting to avoid coding,
Breezi is one of the better options available. Breezi gives users complete control over the design, so unique websites are completely doable. It also comes with tons of apps and it is mobile responsive. One of my favorites is that it comes with "skins" so that if you don't like the look of a site, you can completely change it in seconds simply by trying on a new skin.
BlackStoneIndonesia
Katherine Morgan Design
Fragments of Winter
Christine Brizendine
Design Printworks
Mint Wedding Cinematography
Weebly.com
As a free, basic website creator,
Weebly is a popular one for organizations and others looking for a clean but standard website. Recently, Weebly became even easier to use with iPhone and Android apps for keeping up with your site. All designs are search engine optimized, include social media links, cloud hosting, and even analytics. And their designs now include mobile-friendly options as well.
Arancini Bros.
Zestwishes.co
Kaylee's Education Studio
IM-Creator
Another free website creator,
IM-Creator is perfect for both designers and small business owners with no web building experience. In fact, freelance designers are the creators of many of the designs found on IM-Creator, so businesses who use this site builder have lots of unique designs from which to choose.
Wiggley Bottom Farm
Alex Steenfeldt
Chikin and Fish
Quails in the Nest
TheDigitalArtist.com
MoonFruit.com
MoonFruit is another free website builder that comes with lots of original designs, giving a non-technical user quite the advantage when creating a company website. This one also offers lots of ecommerce possibilities, so goes beyond other free site creators.
Shortlaunch.com
Emma Illustration
In Your Dreams
Re-loved Vintage
Raw Xclusive
Webydo.com
As a free website builder that also gives designers full control,
Webydo is a great site builder for web designers with no coding experience. It comes with ecommerce options, cross-browser capabilities, web fonts, and lots of professional tools.
Stella and Lori
Yoav Gurin
Gallery Born
Punko
The websites above hopefully reveal just how incredible website builders can be, and especially in the hands of an experienced designer. As a professional, you can cut down on your design time and avoid the need for learning complicated code. As a disclaimer, though, I must point out that site creators do have their limitations. In order to build highly customized websites, you will of course need to know code.
(dpe)
Thanks Tara for including Webydo in your list of the top 25 sites using website builders. At Webydo, we strive to give our community of professional designers the features they need to create beautiful, pixel perfect websites.
Best!
Jackie
Community Manager at Webydo
99 incredible by hammer driven screws…
“Yoav Gurin” model it’s simply amazing, I love the background image.
Like Emma Illustration very nice
Hey Tara, nice list. My favorites here are Breezi, IM Creator and Webydo. They’re lookers!
Thanks for including my website!
Thanks for the great article. We are launching a new site soon hopefully you can review it.