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Updated: Feb 9, 2023, 9:29am
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Thanks to website builders, it’s easier than ever to create your own website without having any coding knowledge. There are even site builders meant for specific uses, such as e-commerce stores and blogs. The best website builders are easy to use, affordable and allow room for growth.
The most popular options include templates or themes, so you have a design starting point. This makes it much easier for you to add your own images or content and then publish quickly. Most of the website builders that made our list are all-in-one solutions that include web hosting, domain registration and a built-in editor for one monthly fee.
To select the best website builder for Australian users, we analysed dozens of options based on cost, ease of use, features, storage and bandwidth allowances, user reviews and more. Follow our guide to find the best option for your unique needs and budget.

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Featured Partners
1
Wix
On Wix’s Secure Website
Starting price
From $15 per month
Drag-and-Drop Editor
Yes
Standout Features
Free plan available, 900+ designer-made templates
2
GoDaddy
On GoDaddy’s Website
Starting Price
$US7.95 ($12 AUD) per month
Drag-and-Drop Interface
Yes
Standout Features
Email included, multiple payment options
3
IONOS
Starting price
$1 per month (for the first year, then $15 per month)
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
E-commerce in entry-level plan
Yes, as an add-on
$7 per month

Yes

No

$7 per month

Yes

No

Weebly gets the top spot for one of the best website builders because of its low cost, flexibility and ease of use. In 2018, Square acquired Weebly, which combined the power of Weebly’s drag-and-drop editor for site building and Square’s e-commerce prowess. Now you have the option to create a small business website with Weebly’s popular editor, or choose an online store and build it using Square’s no-frills e-commerce site builder.
Even if you choose to build a website with Weebly, you can add shopping cart functionality later. Plus, Weebly gives you hundreds of stylish theme designs (that are mobile-responsive) to get you started. You can choose a design based on industry, or simply choose one you like. Adding elements, such as text boxes and buttons, is easy enough, but you’re locked into designing on a grid, so you’re limited on how much you can customise your site.
Weebly is generous with its storage and bandwidth, and it includes features to help you build an audience through email and social media marketing tools. Plans start at $7 per month  for a custom domain.
Standout feature:If you decide you don’t like your Weebly theme, even after adding your own content, you can switch themes and your content stays. It’s an uncommon feature for most website builders.
Who Should Use It: Weebly is one of the best website builders for small business, entrepreneurs, bloggers, creatives and e-commerce sellers. Put plainly: It’s a great choice for anyone—especially beginners. Its intuitive site editor takes little time to learn, and the themes it includes ensure your site will look like a pro designed it.
$1 per month (for the first year, then $15 per month)

Yes

Yes, as an add-on

$1 per month (for the first year, then $15 per month)

Yes

Yes, as an add-on

IONOS is better known as a web host, but its website builder MyWebsite competes with some of the most popular standalone builders. The interface is intuitive, and the drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy for anyone to use.
New users get a deep discount on the six months with IONOS on their cheapest plan, and renewals aren’t that pricey ($9 per month without an e-commerce store). There’s also a $1 per month deal for the first 12 months of IONOS’ Plus plan, with renewals going to $15 per monthafter the first year.
What isn’t immediately apparent is that the lowest-priced plan still includes IONOS ads (that’s usually done on free website builder plans). So, you’ll have to upgrade to the Plus plan to get rid of them. The low-priced plan is fairly limiting with features—you don’t get the multilingual translation feature, parallax scrolling or photo galleries. No business apps for added functionality either, so you’ll have to upgrade if you want to add apps for reviews or booking, for example.
Standout feature: On IONOS’ Pro plan, you can create personalised content for specific visitors. So, first-time visitors will see something different than return visitors. You can also set it up to display content differently based on sales, holidays or other specific events.
Who should use it: If you’re willing to pay a bit more for the mid- or top-tier IONOS plan, this website builder could work well for a small business website.
From $16 per month

Yes

No

From $16 per month

Yes

No

Squarespace is one of the most popular and best website builders because it’s packed with useful features. You can create an online store, blog, portfolio site, a small business website or a membership site. The editor is user-friendly, but it may take a while to learn the location of menus and features. It’s kind of a cross between a drag-and-drop editor and a point-and-click editor.
Squarespace is known for its templates—the website builder has literally won awards for design. Most of the templates are minimalistic, bold and modern, and they’re all created by professional designers. They’re also mobile-responsive, so you don’t have to design a whole other site just for mobile users.
Standout feature: Squarespace lets you enable accelerated mobile pages (AMP), which lightens the load of blog pages. Reducing the size of images, using a specific font and removing custom code speeds up loading time on mobile phones.
Who should use it: Squarespace is one of the best website builders for creatives—photographers, designers and other artists would do well with a Squarespace design. It’s also a good choice for an online store, especially with specialty features like the limited availability labels.
From $US3.84 per month (entry discount) on an annual plan

Yes

Add-on

From $US3.84 per month (entry discount) on an annual plan

Yes

Add-on

HostGator is one of the most affordable options of all the best website builders. The editor itself is simple to use. The true drag-and-drop editor is intuitive and allows you to drag an element anywhere on the page you’d like.
There’s no need to get separate marketing tools for your site, as HostGator includes email marketing campaign features and lead capture forms. You can even add an online store to your site with thelowest-priced plan, but you’re limited to three products.
There’s something about HostGator’s templates that seem decades older than its competitors. Many of them are too minimal (large image with a button in the centre) with very little actual design. Another take on this is that it gives you a blank slate to make it uniquely yours.
Standout feature: HostGator includes a helpful tutorial to get you started using its editor. Although many other website builders have the same feature, HostGator’s is particularly detailed, so you likely won’t need to contact customer support.
Who should use it: We’d suggest HostGator for personal projects, blogs or a simple small business website. It’s affordable and offers an easy-to-use editor, but it’s lacking in template options.
From $9.96 per month

Yes

No

From $9.96 per month

Yes

No

Designing a site with GoDaddy’s website builder requires zero technical skill—all you have to do is answer a few questions about the purpose of your site and you’ll get a prebuilt site that’s ready for customisation, or you can choose a template you like and start adding your content through the drag-and-drop editor.
GoDaddy doesn’t offer as many design options as some of GoDaddy’s competitors, but the templates are clean and professional. The pricing pageis, mercifully, easy to find, too.
The all-in-one domain registrar, web host and site builder includes features to help you with marketing and SEO. Upgrading to an e-commerce site is easy too, and starts at $24.95 per month with a long-term contract.
Standout feature: GoDaddy uses Artificial Design Intelligence to design a site for you based on your needs. It will even add stock images that relate to your site or business theme.
Who should use it: GoDaddy offers features specifically for small businesses and online stores. Many of the marketing and SEO tools are built into the editor or dashboard, but not all come with your monthly plan.
From $15 per month

Yes

No

From $15 per month

Yes

No

Wix is one of the most popular website builders because it offers something for everyone. You can use the free plan to create a website, but you’ll be on a subdomain and have Wix display ads. The lowest-priced plan is a bit limiting, but you have access to lots of free apps to extend your site’s functionality (and for a reasonable $15 per month).
On the higher-tier plans, you’ll get SEO and analytics tools, an events calendar and a logo maker. E-commerce plans offer even more, but they’re also fairly pricey, starting at $32 per month.
Standout feature: Wix offers one of the biggest template libraries for an all-in-one website builder. There’s more than 900 designer-created templates. Not all of them are winners—some look very dated—but most are modern and fit for multiple industries.
Who should use it: Wix is a great option for new small business owners, especially those that want to try running an online store. Although the e-commerce plans seem pricey, Wix’s plans are comparable to competitors.
From $US39 per month

No

Yes

From $US39 per month

No

Yes

Shopify is primarily an e-commerce website builder. All of the paid plans come with built-in shopping carts and marketing features to help you sell online. There are only nine free e-commerce templates from which you can choose. If you don’t mind paying, there are dozens of premium templates available, but they cost about $100 on average.
The editor isn’t a true drag-and-drop editor, which may add to the learning curve a bit. It’s more point-and-click navigation, but it’s easy enough to figure out and use after you spend some time with the tools.
Standout feature: Shopify’s Basic plan costs around $40 per month (when billed on a yearly plan) and allows you to add a buy button to a site you already own, a Tumblr blog or sell in person with the Shopify point-of-sale mobile app.
Who should use it: Only serious e-commerce small businesses should consider Shopify. It’s meant for building online stores, not just websites. It’s an ideal solution for brick-and-mortar businesses that want to sell inventory online too.
Learn more: Read our guide to using Shopify.
$3.99 per month (discount rate)

Yes

No

$3.99 per month (discount rate)

Yes

No

Zyro is a website builder that often offers low cost introductory plans. At the time of writing, its website plan is 68% off, with a starting monthly plancoming in at $3.99 a month. With Zyro, you’ll get your choice of more than 100 free templates to get you started on your website, with clean designs that rely on hero images to anchor the pages
The drag-and-drop editor is simple to use and includes basic elements you need to build a website for personal or professional use. Keep in mind that the low-tier plan is fairly limited. Plus, while there’s no shopping cart feature for the low-priced plan, but Zyro offers e-commerce plans as well.
Standout feature: Zyro offers a new tool that allows you to import an existing website to its platform. It’ll pull in the content from the site to its site builder, so you can essentially plug the content into a new design quickly and easily.
Who should use it: Zyro seems like a good fit for first-time website creators that don’t plan to add a lot of content. Its editor is very easy to use, and the frequent discounts make it an attractive choice.
Free

Yes

Add-on

Free

Yes

Add-on

First, we’d like to be clear that the WordPress we’re recommending here is the open-source free content management system (CMS) from WordPress.org, not the site builder of the same name at WordPress.com. The popular CMS is also one of the best website builders because of how much flexibility and freedom you get with the platform.
It’s important to know that if you choose to use WordPress to create a website, you need to secure web hosting separately. There are several (more than 8000) free WordPress themes available, and many paid themes you can find.
On its own, WordPress’ site builder is easy to use, but it sticks to the bare minimum elements. There are literally tens of thousands of plugins you can add to extend functionality of your site, and many are free to use.
Standout feature:You won’t find a more customisable website builder than WordPress. The only caveat is that you may need to hire a freelance developer to help code your website to make it do what you want, or learn how to use the right combination of plugins to get what you want.
Who should use it:WordPress isn’t difficult to use by any means, but it isn’t as easy as the all-in-one website builders. If you have some tech know-how and you want a customised website with web hosting of your choosing, then WordPress is good for you—whether you want an info-only site or an online store.
$US14 per month

Yes

Add-on

$US14 per month

Yes

Add-on

Although Duda is an outlier in this list of the best website builders, it earns its spot with its simplicity, flexibility and unique features. The lowest-priced plan is $US14 per monthwith no introductory discount. To add on an e-commerce store, you’ll pay an additional $US7.25 per month, making this one of the pricier options of the top website builders.
Like most site builders for small business, Duda doesn’t limit bandwidth or storage. The editor is easy to use with drag-and-drop functionality. Most of the elements are basic with a few advanced features. Duda offers more than 100 pre-built templates that you can customise however you’d like. All designs are mobile-responsive, and most of them are modern, clean and professional.
Standout features: You can create rules for visitors to your site and it gets fairly granular. For example, you can have specific content show for site visitors who are geographically near your business. There’s also a content library that makes it easy for you to import content from a client’s existing website into a new design you’re creating.
Who should use it: We only suggest Duda for freelancer web designers or agencies. It’s a bit too expensive for personal projects, and it’s really made for specific use cases. So, if you have multiple businesses that require multiple sites, or you run a design or development agency, Duda could be a good fit for you.
A website builder is a platform that offers a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to create a website for users with little to no coding experience. These platforms generally offer integrated storage for photos and videos, options for adding a custom domain, hosting capabilities, pre-built themes and more. Third-party integrations are often available as well, allowing you to add elements such as shopping carts and lead capture tools. Advanced plans may even include custom email addresses and SEO analytics tools for next-level marketing campaigns.
Note: There are two different types of website builders: online and offline. An offline website builder is software that you download to create the website on your personal computer. Online website builders are web-based and allow you to create and edit your website directly on the company’s server. This article focuses on online website builders such as Squarespace, Wix and Weebly.
A website builder converts your drag-and-drop commands into code. Your website can either be hosted by the company or connect to your hosting provider. Most website builders offer a selection of themes or templates that are suitable for different types of websites.
For example, a portfolio would use a different template than an e-commerce store. Once you select a template, you’ll be able to customise many of the features. Depending on the website builder, this includes elements like typeface, the layout and the size of the text and images. You may also be able to add contact forms and embed videos.
While coding is often not required for many of the most popular web builders, most platforms do allow users to customise HTML and CSS to suit their needs.
There is no magical one-size-fits-all approach to choose the best website builder. You need to find the right balance of cost and features to fulfill your needs.
Ask yourself some questions to help narrow things down:
Consider these elements when comparing products and you’ll soon find a service that fits the bill.
A website builder makes many of the complicated aspects of running a website simple and intuitive. Here is a list of some of the most common features.
When building a website, choosing a platform is only one piece of the puzzle. You also need to consider hosting costs, domain names, SEO analytics, custom email options, graphic design and more. You may even want to hire a content manager to make sure your site is updated regularly, keeping it fresh for new visitors. You should research prices of all web design costs in order to get the full picture of how much your site will cost.
Australian users should also note whether the pricing is in US dollars or AUD. Some companies have dedicated AUD pricing plans, which gets top marks from us, but many will offer a flat fee in US dollars, so be aware of currency conversion rates.
If your business is new and money is an issue, there are a range of free website builders you can choose from. Check out our guide to the Best Free Website Builders for Australian Businesses.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the cost to build a website per year:

If you’re a web designer, staying on top of design trends can ensure you deliver your most demanding clients’ dreams on the first try instead of the fifth.
Here are some major 2023 web design trends we anticipate will spearhead the market in 2023.
The number one trend we’ve noticed is a shift towards designs that integrate motion in some form. Incorporating active design elements is a great way to capture visitor attention and spark interest, and with a multitude of ways to add them to your site, you’re sure to find something meaningful and even fun to use.
A study by Google discovered that more than half of mobile users will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. Ensuring ultra-fast download speeds will provide a better user experience, encourage the consumer to stay on your site and increase sales potential.
A website can either load in its entirety upon arrival, or only load the content the client is accessing—also called smart or lazy loading. By using smart loading, it is possible for a company website to run faster and more efficiently than non-smart loading competitors.
Utilising user data trends and location services can help web developers create a more personalised online experience for a consumer base, thus increasing the company’s conversion potential.
The demand for creating digital content accessible and usable for everybody is on the rise. For example, when designing a web page, it is important to consider accommodations for neurodivergent individuals, consumers with disabilities and consumers with visual or auditory impairments.
Here are a few important tips to help you create a successful site:
A mobile-responsive site automatically adjusts images, text and design elements to show up quickly and appropriately for a mobile phone. According to Google Analytics stats, more than 60% of traffic is mobile, so it’s important that your site is mobile-responsive.
Most modern site builders are mobile-responsive, but even those that are may not be 100% perfect. Be sure to always preview your designs on both desktop and mobile screens of different sizes. If you notice any errors, you can adjust your designs by changing up element sizing or even removing certain elements on specific screen sizes.
The terms theme and template are usually interchangeable. They are pre-built page designs that usually include menu navigation with the most common pages (home, about, contact, blog), a header and a footer. Most themes will include sample imagery and text, which you can replace with your own content. You can often customise the global template to best meet your needs as well.
Most site builders will have a variety of free and premium themes to choose from. Using these can help you get a well-designed site up and running much faster than if you were to build the site from scratch yourself. That said, not all themes are created equal. Be sure to preview all your pages to make sure there are no inconsistencies or errors as you add your content.
A secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate is a file that encrypts data transfers to and from a website. So, when someone visits your secure website or enters information in any fields on your site (forms, username, password, credit card details), the SSL certificate keeps that data private. It’s important to have that security on your site for the end user, and having an SSL certificate can also help to improve your ranking in search engines.
If you want to create a website and don’t have experience coding, a website builder is the easiest way to do it. The other option is to build your website yourself, but this requires knowledge of coding or hiring a professional. The benefit of hiring someone is that you have complete control of how the website looks.
When you are working with a website builder, you will likely come across design challenges that the website builder does not support. For example, let’s say you want a drop-down menu, but the theme you’re using doesn’t offer that feature. Or, you may love a particular template but find you’re not able to change the color theme.
Each website builder and each theme within it has different limitations, and you often only learn what they are as you go. If you don’t need complete creative control, you’ll find that the best website builders offer more than enough features to build a professional website.
To compile our list of best website builders, Forbes Advisor gathered thousands of data points on the top website builders—and their several plans—and categorised the data into five core categories and 43 subcategories.
We paid special attention to the pricing of the various plans, using Australian currency as the default currency when the provider offered the option to do so. We also considered factors such as storage, bandwidth, tools, templates and mobile responsiveness, customer service, and user reviews. Additionally, we included an expert rating to account for qualitative things such as popularity and stand-out features or policies.
Featured Partners
1
Wix
On Wix’s Secure Website
Starting price
From $15 per month
Drag-and-Drop Editor
Yes
Standout Features
Free plan available, 900+ designer-made templates
2
GoDaddy
On GoDaddy’s Website
Starting Price
$US7.95 ($12 AUD) per month
Drag-and-Drop Interface
Yes
Standout Features
Email included, multiple payment options
3
IONOS
Starting price
$1 per month (for the first year, then $15 per month)
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
E-commerce in entry-level plan
Yes, as an add-on
The top three web builders available today are Weebly, GoDaddy and Squarespace. These platforms feature prebuilt themes and drag-and-drop interfaces, making it easy and affordable to create a functional, well-designed website.
You can create a website for a personal project for free, if you don’t mind a subdomain and display ads. To make a small business website, you should expect to pay about $200 to $300 as an initial investment, and maintenance will likely range from $5 to $50 per month, depending on whether you have an online, e-commerce store.
Other than the free options that are available, the cheapest way to get a website is to download WordPress, get a free theme, and build the site yourself. You’ll still need to register a domain for about $15 per year and find the best cheap web hosting, which ranges from $1 to $10 per month.
A website builder is the easiest way to build a website. Website builders often have design limitations, as they use templates, but many people find the capabilities and features are more than enough to create a professional website without investing in professional web development services.
Website builders are highly scalable, and your plan can be easily modified to meet the needs of your growing team. If you outgrow even the top-level package of your service, many vendors offer enterprise-level functionality with customised pricing. It may be worthwhile to get in touch with your system’s customer service team to learn more.
Yes, many leading services offer tools to help you boost your site’s visibility on search engines. Most builders are designed with an infrastructure that helps search engines easily find information. Additionally, many platforms come with tools to customise your site’s meta descriptions, automated data markup and easy social media integration to help share your content across platforms.
Because most website builders offer cutting-edge technology, they are usually ahead of the curve when it comes to keeping their sites secure. They do this by keeping their customers’ websites protected by using top-end technology. Because of this, most website building companies offer some of the best security options available on the internet.
Yes, many website builders offer free plans. These include Wix, SITE123 and Ucraft. However, these free website builders do not allow you to create a website that only includes your branding. Their brand names, for example, may appear in the form of watermarks, in the free website’s domain or in the footer of the website. They also often have limited storage and other needed features for building a fully developed website.
Leeron is a New York-based writer with experience covering technology and politics. Her work has appeared in publications such as Quartz, the Village Voice, Gothamist, and Slate.

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