4 questions to find your best website builder

Introduction

When trying to find the best website builder, you should clearly define what kind of website you want to build. Today there is a multitude of website and e-commerce store builders. Each has its own advantages, specialties but also disadvantages.

Before making your choice, it is advised to take these differences into consideration. 

We defined 4 questions that can help you in your decision process

1. What flexibility do I need?

In your selection process of a website builder, you should think about how many functionalities, plugins, tools, etc. you need. The bigger the variety of plugins and customisability, the higher the flexibility and professionalism of your website. Nevertheless, always keep in mind that a higher number of custom plugins or tools can be problematic (security-wise) when they break down.

Research from Sucuri – the website security firm – showed that around 75% of infected websites in their research were built with WordPress, with 50% of them being out of date. This showed that the increased customisability of WordPress also has its pitfalls. Especially if you do not keep the plugin up to date. So when you build a website, you need to include in tasks “the management” of the website when it is online.

2. How easy to use do I want it to be?

Website builders or Content Management Systems (CMS) with high flexibility and complexity may have a great number of possibilities but also come with a steep learning curve.

On one hand, there is WordPress with almost 50.000 plugins. So whenever you want, you can keep investigating on how you could improve/personalise your website. On the other hand, you can quickly set up a website using only drag-and-drop features (such as Wix). In our case, we prefer to use WordPress because of the flexibility that the platform offer and the low price that we had to pay. Of course, it takes more time but at least we fully control what is displayed on our website.

3. How important is user support?

User support is important, but here the exercise is also to determine your preferences/needs. Do you like to be active in forums and search for previous cases where people encountered the same issues? or do you want a support service that solves your problems within 24h? As a general rule, the bigger the customer base of the website builder, the bigger the forums and FAQs.

In our case, we choose WordPress because it is an open-source platform and its powers 34% of the internet. In most of the cases, the support is positively correlated with the price you pay. 

4. How much can I invest in (maintenance of) the website?

Pricing influences, of course, our decision-making process. While looking for a good price-value ratio, you should also take into account the different qualities and features that come along with it: The speed of your website, the email service, the design flexibility. We could also mention the SSL certification, ease of use and other factors that impact the ratio. Prices should therefore not directly be compared without taking into consideration the different features and services that are offered by the website builder.

Also, be aware that these prices are most frequently based on annual plans. In case you would like to compare all the website builders, we suggest the following website websitebuilderexpert.com. Which offers an updated comparison of the different established website builders like WordPress, Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace as well as upcoming competitors based on pricing as well as other relevant features.