Web pages are your ticket to success. Professionals, hobbyists, teachers, students, innovators, technicians, writers, volunteer workers – everybody can benefit from a personal or business website. This is the best way to broadcast information, leverage very specific value adding technical functionalities, and create brand equity. The era of hiring web development experts for even a single page website is over. Today, website creation is much simpler, and much more enjoyable experience than it ever was.
Website building software has evolved rapidly. The clunky interfaces of the past are best forgotten. Today, website builder software are fully integrated, take care of the end to end website building process, are visually appealing and easy to work with, and available online without requiring you to download anything. Most importantly, many of these offer you free website creation experiences! These software packages bring you everything you need to create a website, packaged in an intuitive interface, and decked up with add-ons that help you achieve more.
Why Free Website Builders Is TheBest Solution For Creating Simple Web Pages?
The best part of using a web page builder software is that you don’t need to have any experience or knowledge of working with web development and coding languages such as HTML5 and CSS. Also, these online web page builders make sure that you don’t have to take confusing design related decisions, as you get beautiful pre-set templates to choose from. Then, you don’t need to get lost in the measurements related to content placement on the layout, as you get drag and drop based website editing interface. Changing critical design elements such as backgrounds, colors, typography, etc. is a breezy affair with these online page builders.
Next up, let’s introduce you to 8 amazingly useful web page builder software.
WIX
If you’re looking for a flaunt-worthy business website, consider Wix. Its templates are genuinely beautiful, covering categories such as small business, photographers, restaurants, designers, and many more. All these templates are mobile responsive.
Wix is among the very few pure drag and drop powered website builders; you can simply drag any content element on the builder interface, and place it anywhere you like on the canvas (unlike in most website builders, where you can drop the elements in a few fixed blocks on the screen. This lets you create ‘pixel perfect’ websites. One thing to remember – because Wix’s backend code is highly proprietary, you don’t get HTML or CSS editing access. This also means you will lose your work if you switch from one Wix template to another.
For those who don’t want to spend time making design choices, Wix’s Artificial Design Intelligence is a great help; it helps you with a ready-to-use version of your website without you doing any real designing or editing!
Because most of Wix website builder’s on screen components have help text available, it’s very easy for beginners to create their websites without any help. For all your queries, there’s phone, email, and chat support.
Note that Wix offers you hosting on its own domain in the free version, and shows advertisements on your website. This might force you to move to a paid plan sooner than you’d want to. Read Wix Review.
Weebly
Weebly is a super strong competitor to Wix in the free web page builder marketspace. For starters, it’s website templates (categories such as business, portfolio, personal, event, etc) are almost as good looking, and certainly responsive. Better still, Weebly allows users to access the HTML and CSS codes, and customize their website to any possible extent. Moreover, you can switch from one theme to another, without losing your work.
With more than 40 preset page layouts, Weebly gives you a tremendous head start for your web page creation. The website builder interface of Weebly is intuitive, letting you drag and drop content elements to different positions on the screen. Weebly’s drip email helps educate new users, and there are useful on-screen helpful nuggets that assist you during the website creation process.
In the free Weebly package, you get hosting on Weebly domain, but must live with the footer advertisement on your website, which only goes away when you move to a paid plan. That, we must mention, is worth your time and money, because of the terrific functionalities it offers.
Weebly’s App Store helps you add specific functionalities to your website (via free and paid apps). You also get phone, chat, and email support. Read Weebly Review.
Google Sites
Yes, Google offers website building services too. The latest update to Google Sites has made it an option worth considering for anyone looking to create a basic web page.
Once you sign up, you can select one of the 6 ‘styles’ (instead of templates that most website builders offer). Though the styles won’t blow your mind away, they’re all neat enough. The WYSIWYG builder is very basic, intuitively designed, and without any frills.
You get a sidebar to the left, from which you can choose different content elements and drag and drop them where you want. On the top, there are basic website builder options such as undo/redo, preview, etc.
Integrating Google service related widgets such as maps, Google Calendar, and YouTube videos is easy enough. Thankfully, the websites you create using Google Sites are mobile responsive. Since Google Sites is pretty simplistic and intuitive, you don’t really need customer support (and there’s none available. Of course, there are online resources such as FAQs and a user forum.
Use Google Sites for a very basic website; this isn’t something you can use for creating a business website though.
WordPress.org
Wordpress.org is a content management system, and WordPress.com (referred to as WordPress in the rest of this article) is a blogging platform that lets you build a website. Of course, it offers much more customization ability than traditional online website builders; however, that comes at the cost of a steep learning curve.
Note that WordPress is not a drag and drop enabled website editor, though it offers you a WYSIWYG interface to make things easier. Arguably, the number of themes you can find for WordPress is nothing that any other website builder can match.
Wordpress website builder offers you all the basic tools you need to create a website quickly. Creating and scheduling posts is pretty easy, using the WYSIWYG mode of the editor. You can also leverage your HTML5 and CSS knowledge to customize the website template. Featured images, custom permalinks, saving drafts, letting multiple writers contribute to the content – all these are included in the core product.
The biggest success factor for WordPress – the ability to add 3rd party plugins. The range of plugins and add-ons for WordPress is so huge that you can achieve practically anything possible with the core platform, by only adding a plugin (a matter of a few clicks).
Jimdo
Jimdo’s template library has undergone a massive overhaul recently; instead of 100+ basic templates, it now offers 15 mobile responsive and stunningly beautiful templates that you can use for a wide range of websites in different niches.
Jimdo’s drag and drop website builder is easy to use, and super quick. You get the exact view of how the website will look after publishing, which is a great help. You can drag and drop content elements on different screen areas, and customize them further. Jimdo also offers you HTML and CSS access, so your website developers can customize the design to a deep level.
Site wide changes, such as color and font, are very easy to make with Jimdo. Jimdo’s mobile app for Android and iOS lets you create mobile ready websites super quickly. Jimdo’s free plan comes with Jimdodomain based website hosting. There are advertisements shown on your free website, though.
Jimdo’s customer support teams are spread across the globe, which makes it a good option for users without English as their first language. If you intend to ultimately convert your website into an advanced e-store, Jimdo is a recommended option for you. Read Jimdo Review.
WebNode
Whether you want a personal, business, or professional website, WebNode has the features you need. It’s aimed at enabling beginners to create a website within minutes, and exceeds at it. The best part – even in the plan, your website is not peppered with any advertisements. Also, WebNode hosts your website on its domain.
WebNode offers you 100s of website templates, each created by design professionals. Most of these templates are mobile responsive. After choosing one, you can use the WYSIWYG and drag and drop based editing interface to create a unique and customized website. Note, however, that the experience is not 100% drag and drop, as you essentially get different on-screen content blocks, which can be dragged and dropped. A preview button helps you get a clear look at how the website will look once published.
Multi-lingual support lets you create your website in 20+ languages. Integrated SEO tools with Google Analytics support make it easy for you to manage the search engine visibility of your WebNode website. The customer support is available via email. WebNode also offers ecommerce support as a part of one of its paid plans. Read WebNode Review.
IM Creator
IM Creator is a website builder aimed at busy professionals who want to create a customized and professional looking web page without investing their time and money. For students, artists, and non-profits, IM Creator is the perfect choice, because the free package comes without any advertising on your website, access to all templates, and the ability to connect your own domain (not one based on IM Creator sub domain).
IM Creator offers you a wide range of responsive templates to use. The business categories range from service to fashion, and you also have ‘5 min websites’ templates aimed at those looking to literally set up a one-page website within a few minutes. Using Add Pages and Manage Pages, you can add duplicates of existing pages, or add blank pages to the website.
On the editor interface, you will see the template with pre-populated content, which you can edit and customize to quickly finalize the design of your website. The drag and drop interface makes it easy enough to customize the look and feel of the website. One caveat – switching the template from one to another will means the data will be lost, and you’ll need to start from scratch.
The Settings button opens up options to manage the SEO features and analytics features of IM Creator. You get ticketing-based support for your free plan.
WebStarts
WebStarts positions itself as a free to use website builder with lots of design options, lots of customization, and lots of functionalities. So, of you want to truly explore every aspect of online website creation, WebStarts is a good option.
There are 40+ categories of well-designed web templates on offer. With the free version, you can create unlimited pages on your website. Once you choose a template, the drag and drop editor lets you customize every aspect of it (you can even delete everything and design it from scratch). Add custom headers and footers, move the navigation menus around, add content blocks where you want to, create custom heading styles, and use global settings to apply styles across website, for quick and coherent designing.
The free package gets your website hosted on the WebStarts domain, and there are advertisements shown on your website. Live Chat is available, though, which is a great help, as you get almost real time help from the customer support. WebStarts also offers an iOS app where you can manage your website content and settings.
Concluding Remarks
Creating a website doesn’t have to take a lot of time. And, it doesn’t even have to cost you any money to create a basic functional web page. All these website builders discussed above let you create good looking, feature rich, and free websites quickly. Once you have a monetization plan, you can upgrade to a premium plan and start using all the amazing features of these website builders.
