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Published: Aug 3, 2023, 3:41pm
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When it’s time to introduce your business to the world, you need a high-quality website. With many varying solutions on the market, finding the best website design software for your needs is no easy task. To help make your decision easier, Forbes Advisor analyzed the leading options to discover which are the best in class based on a variety of factors and use cases. So, no matter your skill level, needs or budget, we found web design software that will work for you.
Featured Partners
1
Wix
On Wix’s Website
Starting price
$16 USD ($21.88 CAD) per month
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
E-commerce in entry-level plan
No
2
BlueHost
On Bluehost’s Website
Starting price
$2.95 USD ($4.05 CAD) per month
Storage and bandwidth
Unmetered bandwidth, and SSD storage starts at 10GB
Extras and inclusions
Free domain name and SSL for a year, free CDN
3
Squarespace
On Squarespace’s Website
Starting price
$16 USD ($21.88 CAD) per month
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
Standout Features
Free domain and SSL certificate, no transaction fees, award-winning templates
Free
Yes
Basic e-commerce features included in all pricing plans
Free
Yes
Basic e-commerce features included in all pricing plans
Weebly was picked by Forbes Advisor as the best website builder because it’s accessible, easy to use and it’s reasonably priced. These lower barriers make it a great choice for small businesses or solo entrepreneurs just getting started, or for those who aren’t sure they want to build a site and just want to play around.
Weebly keeps your content in place when you switch themes, while some of its competition doesn’t (such as Wix). This gives you the space to try a few different styles before settling on your website design identity.
Even on the free plan, you’ll have an SSL certificate and the ability to create a basic storefront. As your business grows, you can scale with ease. Individuals and businesses who have never worked on a website before will find a lot of capability with Weebly. It’s the perfect stepping stone for getting comfortable with web design software.
Learn more: Read our Weebly review.
$16 USD ($21.22 CAD) per month
Yes
Easy-to-use site editor, Award-winning templates
$16 USD ($21.22 CAD) per month
Yes
Easy-to-use site editor, Award-winning templates
Squarespace has one of the best content management system (CMS) editors for people who are new to websites. Its drag-and-drop style of editing and thousands of templates make it a great option for designing a clean, appealing website.
Squarespace also has a ton of features that you can integrate into your website, from e-commerce to blogs to videos. The fully integrated e-commerce plan for Squarespace is available on the Business plan ($23 USD ($30.50 CAD) per month if billed annually) and above. You can list unlimited products and the templates from Squarespace make it easy to edit. If you want reliable web design software, Squarespace is a great choice.
Learn more: Read our Squarespace review.
Free
Yes
Large number of free templates
Free
Yes
Large number of free templates
Wix is well known for its user-friendly platform that doesn’t require any coding skills. You can create a website using one of the hundreds of templates available or start from scratch with the Wix Editor. The Wix Editor gives you full creative control over your website and also comes with features such as 300-plus third-party integrations, inventory management, SSL certificates, API, email tools and built-in SEO tools.
Learn more: Read our Wix review.
$7 CAD per month
Yes
Built for e-commerce
$7 CAD per month
Yes
Built for e-commerce
Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms and has everything you need to create an online store. If you understand Liquid, you’ll be able to customize your Shopify theme even further with JavaScript, JSON, HTML and CSS.
Shopify offers a 3-day free trial so that you can test out the platform and see if it is the right fit for you before making a commitment. Some features available include a customizable checkout process, automatic tax calculations, abandoned cart recovery and support for over 70 payment processors.
$27.99 CAD
per month
No
Access Code intuitively assists
$27.99 CAD
per month
No
Access Code intuitively assists
If you have experience with coding (HTML, CSS and JavaScript), this is the ideal web design software for you. You can integrate with other Adobe Creative Cloud products, such as Photoshop and its stock image library.
Adobe Dreamweaver’s access code learns quickly and makes suggestions to help speed along the process of building the website. Although you need coding knowledge to get started on Dreamweaver, you’re not building totally from scratch.
Dreamweaver is a higher investment per month and might even be better if you have more Creative Cloud services, so it should be used by someone with more dedicated coding knowledge. Having the flexibility to build your own pages is a key feature of web design software for businesses that have custom content they want to show off.
Free
No
Context-aware auto-complete features for code make building/editing faster
Free
No
Context-aware auto-complete features for code make building/editing faster
Sublime Text is the best code editor for experienced coders to design websites. The new tab multi-select view lets you look at multiple tabs at once and switch between them easily. You can set the user interface to dark or light mode based on your preferences, and experienced coders will appreciate the split view tab organization.
It also features support for all of JavaScript’s newest features so your website design can have the most up-to-date features. Available for Linux, Mac and Windows, this is an ideal coding engine for a variety of website designers.
Free
Yes, but most are not in English
Forum with a community of coders who can help with answers
Free
Yes, but most are not in English
Forum with a community of coders who can help with answers
For experienced coders, openElement is a great free option for website design. In addition to all the code you need to build a functional website, various integrations are available through Code Blocks.
Since it’s free, building websites with openElement means starting from scratch. You can optimize the website through the interface for high search rankings, and also optimize all the images. For coders familiar with building websites, openElement is best. As it’s free web design software, it’s not as visually accessible to new coders as other web design software.
Free
(but you must pay a host)
Yes
Tons of support, completely customizable and open source
Free
(but you must pay a host)
Yes
Tons of support, completely customizable and open source
WordPress is popular for good reason. It’s one of the most versatile pieces of web design software available to businesses, and it’s open source. You can use WordPress to create anything from a simple blog to a full-fledged e-commerce website. Over 43% of all websites on the internet are built with WordPress.
As it’s open source, there is a community of developers who contribute to WordPress and create themes and plugins for the software. This also means that if you want something specific for your website, chances are someone has already made it and it’s available as a plugin.
$71.99 CAD
per month
Yes, templates and UI kits
Layout and design features available, Connection to Creative Cloud libraries
$71.99 CAD
per month
Yes, templates and UI kits
Layout and design features available, Connection to Creative Cloud libraries
Adobe XD is an invaluable resource for user interface and experience design. Prototypes and animations are also available in Adobe XD. You can test various designs with unlimited editors and the basic plan also gives you 100GB of storage.
Even if you’re not working with editors who have access to the application, you can also share links and export PDFs for review for your team. If you’re working on designing mobile applications or responsive, design-focused websites, this is the best software to use.
Free
Yes
Visual canvas, Over 400 free tutorials on how to use and scale your business with Webflow
Free
Yes
Visual canvas, Over 400 free tutorials on how to use and scale your business with Webflow
Technically, Webflow can fall under the best code-free web design software, but it does such a good job at website mock-ups, we chose to include it here. If you’re not interested in diving into code but still want a website that looks like it was professionally made, Webflow is for you. You can use premade templates or create your own custom designs with the drag-and-drop interface.
The visual CSS editor is also available if you want to get your hands dirty with code. One of the best features about Webflow is that it generates clean code in the background as you design, so if you do decide to hand off your project to a developer, they won’t have any trouble understanding your vision.
• Layout and design features available
• Connection to Creative Cloud libraries
• Visual canvas
• Over 400 free tutorials on how to use and scale your business with Webflow
Now that you know about the various types of web design software available, as well as their key features and pricing, it’s time to decide which one is right for you. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
The most important facet of choosing web design software for your solo venture or small business is assessing your existing capabilities. If you’re an experienced coder and want more customization options, Dreamweaver or Sublime Text are better choices.
If you need a website up and running quickly, Weebly or Squarespace are better options. If there are bugs affecting Squarespace and Weebly sites, you’d have to go through customer service instead of being able to fix them by yourself. Make sure you have someone dedicated to website maintenance, no matter what web design software you’ve chosen.
At the end of the day, the best web design software is the one that helps you create the website you need, within your budget and with as little hassle as possible. So, take some time to explore your options and choose the software that’s right for you.
To find the best web design software available, we analyzed over a dozen of the leading solutions on the market. We considered a variety of factors that matter most to those looking for an easy and effective tool to assist with their web design—from features that matter to web design beginners, such as easy-to-use site editors and pre-built templates, to e-commerce capability and code-based UI design. Additionally, we factored in pricing, customer support and user reviews.
Canadian specific spelling and research (including pricing) by Anna Rey.
Featured Partners
1
Wix
On Wix’s Website
Starting price
$16 USD ($21.88 CAD) per month
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
E-commerce in entry-level plan
No
2
BlueHost
On Bluehost’s Website
Starting price
$2.95 USD ($4.05 CAD) per month
Storage and bandwidth
Unmetered bandwidth, and SSD storage starts at 10GB
Extras and inclusions
Free domain name and SSL for a year, free CDN
3
Squarespace
On Squarespace’s Website
Starting price
$16 USD ($21.88 CAD) per month
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
Standout Features
Free domain and SSL certificate, no transaction fees, award-winning templates
The best website design software is the one that helps you create the website you need within your budget and with as little hassle as possible. However, our top picks include WordPress, Adobe Dreamweaver, Sublime Text and openElement.
It depends on your previous coding experience. Although Squarespace and Weebly are overall easiest to use, coders might prefer something with more customization options.
Although HTML is the basis for all static web pages, most websites now use CSS for style and JavaScript as well as other enhancements. Web design software can have these features already made for you with templates.
Yes! Most web design software does not require coding. However, if you want to add more complex features, you might need some coding skills. If you want to try your hand at coding, check out WordPress, as 43% of websites are powered by it. It’s open-source software and there are tons of tutorials. Otherwise, consider a drag-and-drop website editor, such as Wix or Weebly.
Yes, you can. However, keep in mind that free website builders usually have limited features and storage. If you need more features or storage, you’ll likely have to upgrade to a paid plan.
Learn more: How To Make A Small Business Website
If you’re looking for a website builder for small business, we recommend Shopify. It’s an e-commerce platform that offers a wide range of features, such as abandoned cart recovery and automatic tax calculation. Plus, it has a three-day free trial and plans that grow with your business.
Like most software, the best website design software offers many levels of security. When choosing this type of software, you want to look for security features like two-factor authentication (2FA) or multifactor authentication (MFA), documentation that shows frequent security updates and patches, intrusion detection, the monitoring of user activities, data encryption and privacy protection.
Kathy Haan, MBA is a former financial advisor-turned-writer and business coach. For over a decade, she’s helped small business owners make money online. When she’s not trying out the latest tech or travel blogging with her family, you can find her curling up with a good novel.
Cassie is a deputy editor, collaborating with teams around the world while living in the beautiful hills of Kentucky. She is passionate about economic development and is on the board of two non-profit organizations seeking to revitalize her former railroad town. Prior to joining the team at Forbes Advisor, Cassie was a Content Operations Manager and Copywriting Manager at Fit Small Business.