Website builder: full comparison

How do you choose the best website builder for your business?

So, you need a website? You now have 3 options:

Option 1 - you can pay somebody to build if for you like a web agency but that costs money.

Option 2 - you can learn to code and build the website yourself but that takes time, lot’s of time.

If you pull it off, the satisfaction of building everything yourself is awesome but you’ll definitely develop some deep headaches along the way. Also, you’ll quickly realize that even if you go down this route, you’ll still need to host it somewhere and that costs money.

Option 3 - you can save time and money by using a website builder.

As most websites have the same format. Website builders were created to make it easy for anybody to create a website by simply adding text, choosing colours and using your mouse to move blocks around a page.

5 questions to help you choose the perfect website builder

Let's say that you decide to go with option 3. You find that using a website builder is probably the easiest way to get started. Now, you're faced with tens of offers and so many options to choose from. How do you move forward?

These next questions will help you understand the comparison table that we’ve created on startupmag.co.uk and help you choose the website builder the most suited for your business.

Q1 - Do you have your own domain name?

If you need a website you will definitely need a domain name. And if you already have your own domain that’s great. If you don’t, you’ll see in the column “free domain” which website builders include a domain name in their package. It’s a great way to quickly save £10-15/year on your domain costs.

Q2 - How big is your website?

If you will be using a website builder to recreate an existing website, you may already have hundreds or even thousands of pages. The column “Storage” will show you how many pages you can store in each package.

Q3 -How many visitors do you have or are you planning on having?

This is where the “Bandwidth” column is useful. If you already have traffic or are planning on launching your website with a marketing campaign, you want to make sure that you have enough Bandwidth available in your website builder package.

Q4 - Will you be selling products directly on your website?

If you’re selling products online, you will need an Ecommerce solution. Ecommerce is basically the option to add products and accept online payments on your website.

Q5 - Are you planning on making your website bigger in the future?

If you’re in a purely offline business and you only need a basic portfolio type website, you don’t need to worry too much about this. However, if you’re planning on growing online by adding further pages and/or including ecommerce in the future, you may want to choose a website builder with several more expensive packages. You will then be easily able to upgrade when you’re ready. Transferring a website from one builder to the next when it’s already up and running is quite the hassle.

That’s it for now, make sure you answer these 5 questions before you choose your website builder and you’ll be on track to building a fantastic website for your business.