Last Updated April 14 2022
Wix and Squarespace Have 55% of the Market — There are tons (and tons) of no-code tools for building a website but Squarespace and Wix are by far the market leaders.
Webflow and Carrd Are Growing Fast — Most website builders sell a similiar package: hosted, drag-and-drop editor, multi-page templates with plans that start at around $150 / year. Carrd and Webflow are 2 of the 3 fastest growing website builders and they deviate from the traditional website package. Carrd is priced significantly lower and powers one page websites, while Webflow offers a fundamentally different approach to no-code websites.
No one can predict the future. These are just my thoughts. Take them for what they're worth.
The A.I. Web Design Trend Is Over — The hype began with The Grid. But when The Grid turned out to be vaporware, website builders saw an opportunity to capitalize on the hype: Wix, Jimdo, Constant Contact and others launched "AI" website builders that were big on marketing but in practice felt more like personalization wizards.
Website Builders Move Into Online Presence — The bigger website builders have been expanding their product lineup beyond websites and into online presence. This is why Square bought Weebly, GoDaddy bought Sellbrite, Wix bought Flok and Squarespace bought Acuity Scheduling and Unfold. It's also why each of these companies launched email marketing products in the last few years. It's like a hub and spoke model— the website is the hub and the spokes are add-on products.
Shopify’s Lead In Ecommerce Will Only Grow — Among ecommerce websites, Shopify is the clear market leader and continues to fortify their position by building out an ecosystem. For example, Shopify's app store now has more 3rd party apps than all competitors combined. And now Shopify is leading the way again by moving into fulfillment.
Is Wordpress A Website Builder? No. It's a CMS. My working definition of a website builder is a hosted, no-code tool for building a website. While Wordpress doesn't require you to code, it is self-hosted.
Top 20 website builders by total websites powered. Source: BuiltWith
Website builders with the highest growth rate between January and February. Source: BuiltWith
30,052 → 34,233 Websites
6,202 → 7,007 Websites
80,438 → 90,292 Websites
Although Wix powers more total websites than Squarespace, Squarespace powers more websites in the top 1m Comscore websites. Webflow (2.67%), Bubble (2.36%) and Tilda (2.36%) have the highest percantage of websites in the top 1m. Source: BuiltWith & Comscore
Top 15 ecommerce builders by total websites powered. Source: BuiltWith
Shopify's app store grew by 30% from 2018 (2,653 apps) to 2019 (3,808)— a faster growth rate than any other ecommerce app store. Source: BuiltWith
Anyone can fake social media followers. An active subreddit is harder to fake and a sign of a vibrant community. Source: BuiltWith
Ten years ago Paul Graham wanted "to fund easy website builders for specific markets". It seemed like an obvious prediction— website builders would go vertical (realtor website builders, restaurant website builders). In practice this is sort of happened with wedding websites (The Knot) but really only happened with portfolio builders. Portfolio builders have a healthy number of website builders dedicated to the niche. Source: BuiltWith
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