Find the best website builder app for your needs
There is no single best solution. Move the sliders on the left according to your priorities, and the list will reveal your personal winner. You may also compare the apps head-to-head and see all the arguments for each contender.
Website Building Software: Characteristics and Important Criteria to Consider for your Decision
Website building software provides users with a number of tools to create and maintain an online presence. Typically these apps will also provide hosting and domain names, sometimes for nominal fees. Others don’t offer any kind of hosting at all. This makes pricing pretty segmented. That is why, finding the right balance between price and features is key. When looking for a website builder app it is important to consider the following criteria:
PRICING
The wide array of options provided makes pricing vary greatly between apps. It is important to know what kind of site you want to create first, so that you can choose apps with all the right features for your website. These apps often charge a little more for extra capabilities, such as eCommerce or extra hosting space. Most of the time you can get a discount if you pay on a yearly basis. Otherwise, there will be monthly charges.
DESIGN
All of these apps will allow you a large degree of customization over your website design. Some, however, will allow you more freedom than others. This section will describe the various different design options that are available in each app. If you want to get your website off the ground quickly, then an app with better design options and more fully featured templates will be the best option.
FRONTED FEATURES
The fronted features describe what your website will look like to visitors, and also what kinds of features you can include. This is where you will find out about embedding videos, blogging capabilities, and other similar features.
BACKEND FEATURES
This section is all about the user interface. How easy it is to navigate, and what kind of features you will find there. Many of the dashboards will include reports sections, the design interface, and account settings.
HOSTING AND SECURITY
Hosting is all about how generous various website builders are with their bandwidth and storage space. It can range from unlimited hosting to none at all depending on your website builder. Security is all about how secure your website is, not just for you, but also for your visitors. This will tell you more about the platform security and also whether or not the websites support SSL encryption and certificates.
REPORTS AND STATISTICS
Statistics are invaluable when trying to improve your website traffic. A good statistics dashboard will show your most popular pages, unique visitors to you site, and the overall number of page views. It is very hard to improve your website traffic without a good reports section.
EXTENSIBILITY
Many of these websites will have enough features to satisfy the average user, but if you find there are features missing that are essential to your business, you might not be totally out of luck. Most of these apps provide a number of extensions and add-ons that will dramatically increase the features of your website.
SUPPORT
When getting a site up and running you are bound to have questions. That is where a good support section comes in. Support can be offered live via online chat or phone, but many companies also provide knowledge bases, eBooks, videos or online forums. These are invaluable when setting up your website for the first time.
To select the best website builder software for your specific needs, simply adjust the sliders on the ranking page. If a criteria is important to you, move the slider to the right. If a criteria is not as important to you, move the slider to the left. The ranking will re-order accordingly. Once you’re done, the app that will best suit your needs will be at the top of the list. The comparisons are quite detailed, and you’ll find arguments for each app, for each criteria. For example, check out this comparison between Squarespace and Weebly.
