Weebly Alternatives

Squarespace is known for its clean, modern, and mobile-friendly templates. They have nearly 160 of them—all free, all beautiful. I think Squarespace has the best templates of any DIY website builder— \*\\\[look at them](https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/templates/)\\\*

It’s not just beauty! Squarespace has lots of features—many of which are better and more powerful than competitors. For example, Squarespace has the best template customization, blogging, scheduling software, donation system, photo galleries, restaurant menus, podcasting features, and more. Squarespace also has Squarespace Extensions, a marketplace where you can find a select few third-party extensions to add functionalities to your site.

The new Squarespace editor, Fluid Engine (launched July 2022), lets you drag and drop blocks anywhere in a section. The blocks snap to an underlying grid. It’s much more customizable than its predecessor yet equally intuitive and easy to use. You can also edit the mobile website using the same editor (just switch to mobile view when editing)

Beyond websites, Squarespace also includes marketing and business tools for managing your online presence. For example: scheduling software, email marketing, social media tools, SEO tools, memberships, and more. Having all these tools managed by Squarespace means the integrations work seamlessly.

The most powerful ecommerce website builder is \\\[Shopify](https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/best-ecommerce-builders)— but Squarespace is easier to use. Squarespace’s ecommerce is a good alternative for users intimidated by Shopify and looking to build a small-mid-sized online store. \\\*\\\[Read our Squarespace vs Shopify comparison](https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/squarespace-vs-shopify)\\\*.

Squarespace is like the Apple of website builders—it is intuitive and thoughtfully designed. There’s a certain focus on user experience, even with the tiny things. For example, Squarespace includes a handy tool that lets users adjust the focal point of an image. Another example: Squarespace elevates the page by placing the toolbar below, ensuring you have a full view of the web page when editing.

One way to make software easy to use is to make it simple and not very customizable. That’s not Squarespace. While Squarespace is not “difficult to use”, it does have too many features to be the \\\[“easiest” website builder](https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/easiest-website-builders)— the easiest website builder is \\\[Square Online](https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/best-website-builder#square) which is more simple but also less powerful. You should expect a small learning curve with Squarespace— similar to learning Microsoft Word or Google Docs for the first time.

Ecommerce happens across many different channels today: Facebook, Google, Etsy, TikTok, or even in person through a point of sale system. Shopify is the ecommerce platform that brings these channels together in one place—so you can have one store that sells across all these different platforms.

If there’s specific ecommerce functionality you need, Shopify probably provides it. Shopify includes email marketing, live chat, local delivery route planning, point of sale systems, product reviews, dropshipping, and much more.

The Shopify app store has over 10,000 plugins from third-party developers that you can use to customize your store. For example: <ul> <li>Etsy Integration crossposts your Shopify products to Etsy.</li> <li>One Click Upsell lets you add upsells (like gift wrapping) to your shopping cart.</li> <li>Floating Widgets lets you add banners to your online store.</li> <li>DSers helps you to dropship from AliExpress.</li> </ul>

Shopify is extensible and customizable—so long as you’re a developer or can hire a developer. Want a specific look for your website? You can hire a developer to code a custom template.

The official Shopify Theme Store includes 12 free themes and 129 paid themes—all optimized for performance and ecommerce conversions. However, you can also choose from thousands of themes from a theme marketplace—for example, Theme Forest has over 1,700 Shopify themes available!

Shopify removes many of the obstacles that stand in the way of starting an online store. Here are two examples: Shopify Payments, you don’t need to connect to a 3rd party payment processor because Shopify includes a payment processor called Shopify Payments. But, of course, you can also connect to your own payment processor if you’d like—Shopify allows integration with 100+ third-party payment processors. Shipping Rates & Taxes, Shopify includes smart defaults for shipping rates and taxes (which you can change later). I’ve found the automatic shipping rates to be pretty accurate—though mileage may vary!

It’s not correct to call Shopify easy to use—it’s too powerful to be simple—instead, Shopify is intuitive. Shopify’s interface is always organized and clear. This is really, really nice—especially when you compare Shopify to competitors like WordPress/WooCommerce and Volusion, which have disorganized interfaces.

Shopify has the most comprehensive collection of articles, help docs, and videos to familiarize you with their platform and ecommerce in general. Their community forum has tens of thousands of Q&As that likely answer almost all your questions. And they also offer live chat, email, and phone support if you need additional help. I raised support tickets twice and got helpful answers both times in 2-3 hours.

Shopify claims Shopify Checkout is the best-converting in the world. They partnered with the Big Three management consultancies (McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, and Boston Consulting Group) to run independent studies. They found Shopify's overall conversion rate outpaces the competition by up to 36% and by an average of 15%.

Shopify has often been at the forefront of ecommerce innovation, whether with the launch of Shopify Payments or their app store. They are also building for AR and VR right now!

Shopify is powerful, but make no mistake, it has a learning curve. It will almost certainly intimidate less tech-savvy users. I’d recommend Squarespace or Square if you want an ecommerce website builder that’s less intimidating.

Shopify does not have a drag and drop editor. Instead, it has a WYSIWYG page editor that works more like editing a Microsoft Word document. It’s not user-friendly. I’d suggest Squarespace or Wix if having stylish content pages or blogging is important to you.

Wix’s unstructured editor lets you drag and drop elements anywhere you want on a page— without constraint. You can see a \\\video explanation here. Almost no other website builder provides a drag-and-drop interface like this— every other website builder has constraints. \\\[Wix also has two other editors: Wix ADI — a very simple editor that builds your website by asking you questions (it’s sort of like a setup wizard), and Editor X — a complex editor made especially for designers and agencies]

Wix has more features than any website builder: ecommerce, forums, ticket sales, restaurant ordering, music distribution, appointment scheduling, multilingual websites, and more.

Wix offers more themes than most website builders—though the quality is inconsistent. But if that’s not enough, you can also create your own theme from scratch — Wix’s unstructured editor means you can make significant changes to your Wix template.

Wix has an app store and a huge selection of 500+ widgets and plugins to add to your website or ecommerce.

Wix includes several small business and marketing tools for managing online presence: CRM, social posts, SEO, email marketing, live chat, and more.

Unlike the top two on this list, Wix has a free plan. And it is the most featureful \\\free website builder plan. However, there are quite a few limitations regarding bandwidth, ads, storage, etc.

Notice what I did here? Wix’s drag-and-drop editor is listed as both a Pro and a Con. Here’s why: while the unstructured editor gives users freedom, it also introduces bugs and workarounds that can get very frustrating. This is a complicated issue, so I’d suggest you read my \\\Wix review or look at the videos \\\comparing the Wix editor to the Squarespace editor to learn more.

This is a question of tradeoffs. Wix isn’t as difficult to use as Shopify and WordPress, but you should still expect learning Wix to take some time. There are easier website builders out there— but those website builders don’t have as much functionality and freedom as Wix.

A portion of your bandwidth is used up every time a visitor comes to your website. Wix’s cheapest plan (Combo, priced at $16/month for an annual subscription) puts a 2 GB limit on your monthly bandwidth—which is unfortunate. You shouldn’t have to worry about bandwidth in 2024, and every other website builder on this list includes unlimited bandwidth. To put how much 2 GB bandwidth is in perspective, assume Scott Snyder (whose story we featured in the Squarespace section) makes the same 5 MB+ homepage with Wix’s Combo plan. It’d mean the website will reach the bandwidth limit if 400 visitors load the homepage.

Hostinger Website Builder is among the cheapest website builders, starting at just $2.99/month (for a 1-4 year commitment, renews at $9.99-$6.99/month afterward). And it’s better than many website builders that cost 2x that!

NOTE: See ‘Tricky Pricing’ in Cons section.

This is the biggest plus of the Hostinger Website Builder. The editing experience is a blend of Wix and Squarespace editors—you can choose to use a grid layout like Squarespace, where you can drag and drop elements in a grid; or you can turn the grids off and use it like the unstructured Wix editor wherein you can drop elements anywhere, and they’ll stick there to pixel perfection.

Hostinger offers a selection of 140+ templates across categories like fashion, photography, portfolio, services, etc.

The Hostinger Website Builder falls short compared to platforms like Squarespace and Wix in terms of advanced features. A few examples: you can’t add a comment section to your blog; ecommerce is limited to 500 products; you can’t add a background video; there’s no option for password-protecting certain pages; the templates are basic; the editor blocks and sections are basic: you can’t add multimedia, menu, calendar, etc. On top of that, there’s no app store to extend the builder’s functionality.

The cheaper website builder plans of Hostinger use shared hosting, which isn’t the best for performance, scalability, and security. In comparison, website builders like Squarespace use cloud hosting for all plans, ensuring great performance and uptime no matter the traffic bumps. Hostinger also offers cloud hosting plans, but those start at $9.99/month (renews at $19.99/month).

Hostinger Website Builder always has the $2.99/month “deal” on, which I find is a bit deceptive — they create a false sense of urgency.

Then, the renewal price written on the landing page is $6.99/month, but it only applies if you buy & renew the 4-year plan.

Also, we can never know when they’ll start charging the base price (which gives subpar value for money). It’s important to consider this because it’s a closed system — i.e. if you want to move away from Hostinger Website Builder, you’ll need to create your website from scratch on whatever new platform you choose.

Webflow is basically a user interface for HTML & CSS code. So if you can do something in HTML & CSS, you can do it in Webflow—which means Webflow offers far more customization options than any other website builder!

Webflow is the only website builder with a full CMS. This is powerful! A CMS lets you create custom collections with fields like rich text, images, files, and more. Plus, they’ve \\\Logic, a feature that allows visitors to make submissions to the CMS!

Webflow includes a separate, friendlier interface (called Editor) that you can hand off to clients and teams. They also allow white-label client billing. Webflow also announced Webflow Apps, their plugins/app store, in November 2022—which already has 28 apps for ecommerce, content management, workflows, etc.

Webflow has some of the best Youtube tutorials around. \\\Seriously. This is great because you will need some tutorials to get up and running with Webflow. \\\[Webflow University is the same thing]

You can choose from over 2000 modern, well-designed third-party templates (paid & free) from the \\\Webflow Website Templates marketplace. And most of them are stunning—many even better than Squarespace templates.

Webflow does not shy away from complexity. Understanding the fundamentals of web design (HTML and CSS) will give you a head start. Someone I know took over a month to learn the basics of HTML, CSS, and then Webflow from Webflow University, only to make a website inferior to what you’d be able to make with a simple website builder.

I wouldn’t recommend building an ecommerce store in Webflow right now. Webflow’s ecommerce plans with no transaction fees start at $79. That’s way too expensive—especially compared to Shopify (which starts at $29) and Squarespace (which starts at $27). Also, Shopify is a much more robust ecommerce platform with assumably lower complexity than Webflow—so the only time Webflow ecommerce makes sense is when you want to use its design interface and the store is secondary.

Some essential features are missing from the cheaper plans. For example, CMS isn’t included in the $14/month Basic plan; the first few plans don’t get the best security; the global CDN access is only available from $39/month Business plan; etc.