The 6 Easiest Website Builders for Beginners | Summer 2023

Based on our testing, the easiest website builder for beginners is Wix, as it's easy to use while still offering an impressive feature set. What's more, Wix provides hundreds of dollars in savings if you opt for longer plan terms, as well as a nice-and-easy 10% discount with the code “GET10!”

Short on time and need to find an easy, beginner-friendly website builder now? Get matched to your ideal website builder in just one minute using our quick and easy web builder quiz created by our in-house team of industry experts and product testers.

In this article:

• Which Is the Easiest Website Builder for Beginners?
• How We Rated the Best Website Builders for Beginners
• Building a Website For the First Time: What Beginners Need to Know
• Verdict: Easiest Website Builder for Beginners
• Frequently Asked Questions

As the cost of living increases, outsourcing web design to a third-party professional isn't an option for every business. Thankfully, WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) website builders allow anyone to create a polished site for a reasonable price — and with a high level of control over your site's layout, design, and core functions.

Here are the top three easiest-to-use website builders for first-time builders rated on the factors you told us are the most important — including features, pricing, and customer support:

Wix — Best website builder for beginners
Squarespace — Best design templates
GoDaddy — Best for a quick initial setup

These are reviewed in detail, along with more easy-to-use builders, below.

Which Is the Easiest Website Builder for Beginners?

If you've never built a website before, then you're sure to want a tool that makes the whole process effortless. Based on our extensive testing, we believe that the best website builder for beginners is Wix, closely followed by Squarespace.

Both of these tools can help you create a brilliant, professional-looking website in minutes – and that isn't an exaggeration. Thanks to simple question-and-answer automatic development tools, you can set yourself up with a sophisticated website template in less than the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

You're then free to customize the template with your own images, words, and creative preference. Many first-time builders are blown away by just how easy the process is, and how professional your self-built site can look.

Here's the full list of our top-rated website builders for beginners:

1. Wix — Best website builder for beginners
2. Squarespace — Best design templates
3. GoDaddy — Best for a quick initial set up
4. Hostinger — Lowest cost option
5. Shopify — Best for ecommerce
6. Weebly — Great for “what you see is what you get” editing

1. Wix – Best Overall Website Builder

Wix Ease of Use score: 4.4 

Wix is our favorite website builder and scores highly across the board in our testing. It’s super-fast to get started with Wix, and brilliantly simple to create a website using one of its top-class templates.

Creating a website from scratch is incredibly daunting, especially for beginners. Fortunately, Wix has more than 800 templates on offer which will give you the perfect steer to create your site rather than starting from beginning. Once you've picked your favorite template, you're then free to customize as you see fit with almost total control of all the elements and colors on your pages.

Should that sound like too much work, however, Wix also has its artificial design intelligence (ADI) system. The ADI system will ask you some broad questions about the type of website you want to create from its name to the industry you're going to operate in. By answering these questions, Wix will then spit you out a website shell specifically tailored to your needs.

Thanks to Wix's partnership with keyword database Semrush, users can access SEO keyword data directly through the web builder's dashboard. This, in tandem with Wix’s new SEO settings that give users greater control over important technical SEO set-up on a granular page level, cements Wix's place as the best builder for advanced search engine optimization.

Once you’ve created the basis of your website, you’ll have access to a plethora of apps and features which will give you the ability to create loads of different types of websites — whether you need to build a slick online shop, a simple promotional website, or even a blog. Adding these apps and features is easy as well — it's just like downloading an app for your phone but doing it for a website instead. And Wix keeps improving as well: Our testing ranks its features higher than ever, scoring a 4.8/5 in our research, thanks to better blogging tools and internationalization.

And remember, if you want to give Wix a try, you can get a 10% off deal by inputting the code GET10! at checkout on all available plans.

Is Wix easy to use?

Wix earned a 4.4/ 5 stars for the category “ease of use” in our testing — tied with Squarespace with the highest score for that category. The difference between Wix and Squarespace is slight but noticeable. Wix has more features, but Squarespace has more design functionality, scoring a 4.5/5 compared to Wix's 4.1/5 in our research.

With Wix, you won’t need any experience with website builders, or even web development in general. Its simple but detailed editing system means you’ll be able to create a completely original website without any stress — perfect for people who want their business to have a distinct, highly branded presence online.

It really is simple to add words, images, and videos thanks to the easy menus and user-first principles that make everything feel straightforward. Changing them or moving them around the page is a piece of cake with Wix's drag-and-drop editor. One word of caution, however, is that once you've picked your Wix template, you'll be unable to swap it out for a different template once your site has been published.

However, while Wix is easy to use as a whole, after testing the product ourselves, we found some aspects of the builder had a steeper learning curve. For example, if you're not an expert in search engine optimization you may find its SEO Hub a tad overwhelming as the platform doesn't automatically format subheadings or remind you to add alt text.

You can get started with Wix for free today — make sure to use code “GET10!” when you end your free trial to get 10% off a monthly or yearly billed plan.

Want to know more about Wix? Check out our full Wix review.

2. Squarespace – Best Design Templates

Squarespace Ease of Use score: 4.4 

If you're not artistically inclined, building a great-looking site can seem like a tall task. However, Squarespace has the capability to make your website look fantastic, no matter your level of creativity. It might only have 110 templates to choose from, but since they’re developed in-house by Squarespace themselves, all of them are beautifully designed.

As such, you'll find yourself wanting to leave them alone for the most part — only adding your own images and changing the text. Thanks to Squarespace's Fluid Engine drag-and-drop builder which relies on a malleable grid system, users are able to customize their site heavily to fit their needs, too.

Is Squarespace easy to use?

Our research found that Squarespace is tied with Wix for the easiest to use website builder, scoring a 4.4/5. Squarespace is a great platform for running a blog, thanks to its aesthetically pleasing template designs and intuitive text editor. In addition, Squarespace's product updates have helped push it higher than ever in our ease-of-use testing, improving its ranking significantly in our latest round of research. Most notably, Squarespace has add onboarding questions that can guide business accounts to the correct template for their business, streamlining one of the most difficult decisions in website building: choosing the right template.

Using Squarespace to create an online store is just as easy as creating a blog. It has templates designed specifically to work as online stores, and a really straightforward product management system that will let you manage prices and track stock. PayPal, debit/credit card, and Apple Pay payment options are also built in.

Thanks to Squarespace's integrations, users are able to unlock more capabilities than meet the eye – from offering merch alongside orders to customizing the layout of the checkout page. When testing them out, we were impressed with their usability and versatility.

Changing the overall layout of your pages isn't as easy with Squarespace as it is with rivals such as Wix. However, given its overall design excellence, you'll be slightly more reticent to change them. Our main issue with Squarespace, though, is its slightly confusing system of sub-menus for navigating pages — it's pretty easy to get lost in the maze of menus, particularly when you start using it.

With that being said though, you will get used to Squarespace pretty quickly and an initially confusing navigation system shouldn't deter you from a very strong website builder.

Find out more about Squarespace in our pricing guide or take a look at its templates and start building your site today

GoDaddy's page editor lets users add elements to the page by clicking a big plus button in order to pull up a list of options to add which are tailored to the type of site you're trying to build. After giving the software a spin ourselves, we found its side menu particularly convenient, as it allows you to easily keep track of each part of the process from one screen.

Design flexibility still isn't as great as with Wix, but it's simple to build a site with GoDaddy. For example, block elements are fairly restricted, so users won't be able to resize or move image blocks beyond certain parameters.

GoDaddy's website builder is completely focused on building websites for businesses and online stores — to the point that it makes no sense to try and build a different type of site. GoDaddy's focus on these types of sites makes it one of the best website builders for small businesses.

Another perk is the Hostinger logo maker, which can help users create their own logo branding for a new storefront. The results are similar to the AI writer tool, but with visual flair. It's worth noting, however, the Wix also has a logo maker, so don't let that feature sway you if the limited features are a dealbreaker.

Finally, there's a heatmap analytics feature, which lets Hostinger's users figure out what pages draw more website visitors, and how interested those visitors are in hanging around.

Check out our Hostinger review for more information

Is Hostinger easy to use?

Hostinger's greatest weakness could be its greatest strength – the service's reduced functionality in comparison to big website builders like Wix and Squarespace does make it easier to use. Users can build a website faster and quicker when their options are more limited, which netted it a 3.9/5 in our ease of use research.

Check out our Hostinger vs Wix comparison guide for more info

If that sounds like damning the site with faint praise, we can also confirm that Hostinger's interface is also easy on newbies, with a grid-style layout that our researchers found comprehensive and usable. When we used the software we found its AI automation features straightforward to get to grips with, which is ideal for users looking to create a site in little time and with minimal effort.

There is one ease-of-use issue that we have to ding Hostinger for, though: There's no onboarding process, which would have gone a long way towards reducing intimidation as a new user settles into understanding the website builder and how it works.

One extra perk for saving money with the already low-priced service: You can save on the monthly price with our exclusive code “TECH” and get online for just a few dollars per month if you're getting an annual plan. You might be eligible for an extra four months free hosting, a free SSL certificate, three months of free business email, and a domain all thrown in for free.

The biggest problem for Shopify, however, is that the price is pretty intimidating. The starting price comes in at $29 per month, which is much higher than most others on this list, and it hides a lot of valuable features behind the more expensive plans, which get as high as $299 per month. All that to say, make sure you actually need all this ecommerce functionality before you bust out the big bucks for this website builder.

Check out our Shopify pricing guide for more information

6. Weebly – Great for “What You See is What You Get” Editing

Weebly Ease of Use score: 3.7

Weebly isn’t quite as good as some of the options on this list, but it has gotten better in our testing across the last year. It doesn’t have as many website templates to choose from as competitors, and its ecommerce functions are expensive compared to top-rated options like Wix. The server response time was also the worst of all the website builders we tested. All that combined for a lackluster overall score of 3.7/5, which puts it firmly in the “good enough” category.

However, it does have a great range of SEO tools and it is a functional website builder, armed with features to guide new users in their website construction. The templates are flexible, and you can change between them at any time — even if one user comment from our tests called them “really bland.”

Is Weebly easy to use?

Like Wix, Weebly also has a drag-and-drop editor, allowing for customization of your site. You’ll also have access to over 300 apps and plugins which will help make your site work brilliantly for all of your visitors. Wix's is a lot easier to figure out, though, which is why Weebly only received a 3.7/5 for ease of use compared to the 4.4/5 from Wix.

Weebly's main benefit is a truly what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor — what you see on the back end of your website is exactly what you'll see when your site is published and live. This makes everything to do with editing your site, from small changes to site-wide overhauls, far easier.

Weebly will also let you chop and change your website templates at will, unlike Wix, meaning it is easy to start over should you want to. You should expect slow platform updates, however. Weebly's overall editor isn't the most powerful on the market but it is still a competent service and is worth your consideration.