With Reddit being the second most trusted social platform for news and information, it’s understandable why the search query best website builder Reddit is exceedingly popular with aspiring site owners [1].
As a Redditor myself, I too admit that the platform is a great resource for authentic recommendations on web builders, web hosting solutions, WordPress plugins, and so forth.
The only problem is it takes hours of combing through mounds of web development threads to find insightful recommendations. Even Google itself won’t help you much – as searching for the best website builder Reddit doesn’t always generate the most contextual results. The search engine only suggests a couple of forum threads and then leaves you to piece together information from all the fine print.
Well, I’ve been in that position too. And to quench my curiosity, I had to painstakingly dig through thousands of Reddit comments on website builders for genuine references. This research eventually led me to sub-Reddit forums like r/webgeeks, r/webdev, r/UXDesign, r/web_design, r/Entrepreneur, and r/smallbusiness, where I camped and discovered the following…
What does Reddit recommend as the best website builder?
Upon sampling a wide range of heavily upvoted reviews, filtering out subjective sentiments, and comparing notes across various sub-Reddits, the following four solutions ultimately emerged as the most recommended website builders:
- Squarespace is the most user-friendly website builder according to Reddit.
- WordPress is Reddit’s best free website builder.
- Shopify has been voted by Reddit users as the best page builder for small businesses and ecommerce.
- Webflow is Reddit’s top choice for designers.
📢 Here’s a breakdown of what Reddit users are saying about each one, along with the accompanying key features, pricing plans, plus the pros and cons.
Best website builder Reddit recommends (free and premium page building tools)
1. Squarespace – Reddit’s best user-friendly website builder
If there’s one website builder you’ll find being upvoted over and over again by Redditors, it’s Squarespace. And while the platform has been praised for many things, the most widely applauded attribute is its intuitiveness and ease of use.
Quite a number of Redditors agree that Squarespace is the best website builder for anyone who wants an easy and seamless website creation experience, without sacrificing their customization capabilities. Everything on the platform is seemingly configured to give both novices and professional web developers a smooth and well-streamlined journey.
Redditor CelebrationOk9910 has attested to this through an outstandingly upvoted comment. He applauds Squarespace because of “how freaking easy it is to use” and the fact that it takes care of all the basic website essentials. This is confirmation that you’ll be getting an all-inclusive suite that caters not only to web building but also to web hosting and site management.
The website creation process itself is facilitated by an intuitive drag-and-drop page editor, which allows you to customize your site layout, design, and functionalities without touching a single line of code. You just need to choose a suitable website template from Squarespace’s rich collection of elegant mobile-optimized themes, and then visually tweak its appearance attributes.
In the words of Redditors:
Otherwise, if you ever need to add any functionalities to the website, Squarespace further provides an array of customizable extensions. This is what you use to integrate third-party tools for powering social media, ecommerce, marketing, order fulfillment, accounting, live chat, etc.
To learn more about how it works, you can check out our full Squarespace tutorial.
⚙️ Squarespace website builder features
- Drag-and-drop editor.
- Image galleries.
- Video blocks.
- Markdown block.
- Automatically responsive designs.
- Stylized headers.
- Image effects.
- Accordion blocks.
- Marketing tools.
- Social selling.
- Custom product forms.
- Flexible product variants.
- Inventory management.
- Image editor.
- AMP integration.
- Pre-built layouts.
- Customizable templates.
💳 Squarespace website builder pricing plans
The monthly pricing for Squarespace website builder starts at $23, while a business package will cost you between $33 and $65.
For more details, we have a full breakdown of Squarespace pricing.
👍 Pros of Squarespace website builder
- The interface is seamless and easy to use.
- Includes ecommerce capabilities.
- Comes with customizable website templates.
- Optimizes sites for both desktop and mobile.
- Comes with a marketplace of compatible extensions.
- Has a built-in image editor.
👎 Cons of Squarespace website builder
- Not versatile enough to serve an enterprise website adequately.
- Sites created by Squarespace website builder cannot be exported to other hosting platforms.
- Your website customization capabilities are limited.
- Offers only a handful of add-ons.
2. WordPress – Reddit’s best free website builder
For people who are in the market for a free website builder, Redditors insist that while Wix and Weebly are both great options, they are nowhere near as customizable as the free, open-source WordPress software.
WordPress.org is not your regular website builder, though. It is, instead, a content management system (CMS) for setting up, powering, and managing all sorts of websites.
You might also want to keep in mind that although WordPress itself is a free CMS, deploying and running it comes at a cost. That’s because it’s a self-hosted system that operates entirely from the servers of third-party hosts such as SiteGround, Bluehost, DreamHost, Kinsta, Hostinger, etc.
Once you pay for the hosting service, you get to deploy WordPress via its installer – and only then can you embark on the website creation process. You can check out our in-depth comparison of WordPress vs Squarespace.
Now, the good thing about WordPress is, it comes with thousands of free and premium themes that you could use for site building. Web design and editing, on the other hand, is performed with the help of WordPress page builders, such as Elementor and Gutenberg. They allow you to visually customize your site layout, colors, fonts, media, etc.
Then to expand your website’s functionalities, you just need to find appropriate plugins and then add them to your WordPress system. The platform already comes with over 60,000 options, all of which you can explore right from your dashboard settings.
Web developers, on the other hand, will appreciate working with WordPress open-source architecture. It allows them to edit the underlying code extensively based on their design and system needs.
⚙️ WordPress web-building features
- Custom content types.
- Application framework.
- Search engine optimized.
- Built-in comments.
- Media management.
- Content publishing tools.
- Open-source framework.
- 60,000+ plugins.
- 30,000+ website themes.
💳 WordPress pricing
WordPress.org is a free open-source content management system.
However, you will need to pay for WordPress hosting to run the software. This can cost a few dollars per month if you’re using cheap WordPress hosting, but it can also be more expensive for more high-quality hosting providers.
👍 Pros of web building with WordPress
- Can be customized visually or through coding.
- Offers thousands of compatible plugins.
- Comes with an extensive array of free and premium website themes.
- Supported by an active community of developers.
- It’s built on open-source code.
- Works with a wide range of free page builders.
- Supports ecommerce sites.
- Easily installable.
- Can be migrated from one hosting provider to another.
- The CMS is 100% free.
👎 Cons of web building with WordPress
- Had to be run from third-party hosting servers.
- The customization process has a steep learning curve.
- No technical support.
3. Shopify – Reddit’s best website builder for small businesses and ecommerce
Out of the numerous ecommerce platforms that Redditors have sampled, Shopify is the one that stands out as the best website builder for small businesses and ecommerce.
It comes as part of an all-in-one tool suite for creating, customizing, hosting, and managing online stores. You can think of this entire ecosystem as a blend between a content management system (CMS) and an online selling platform.
That said, Shopify’s principal selling point can be said to be its satisfyingly simple framework for setting up full-fledged ecommerce sites. You just need to select an ideal template from Shopify’s Theme Store and then customize its design using a website builder.
Reddit users who’ve had the chance to try it out explain that they were able to create online stores without any technical experience. Shopify’s page builder provided them with a well-organized drag-and-drop interface – with which they managed to seamlessly tweak their page attributes while, at the same time, tracking the changes visually in real-time through a WYSIWYG window.
The platform additionally tries to accommodate web developers by providing a means of editing HTML and CSS files. This has been made possible by the Liquid template language, an open-source engine that streamlines custom dynamic rendering.
Shopify doesn’t stop there, though. Redditors further commend the platform for topping all that off with an expansive App Store, in which you’ll find over 8,000 fully compatible third-party plugins. This is where you obtain integrations for powering any extra functionalities you might need in order to grow your small business.
⚙️ Shopify website builder features
- HTML and CSS coding.
- Drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor.
- 8,000+ app integrations.
- Mobile-optimized.
- Liquid programming.
- Content management system.
- Free and premium ecommerce templates.
- Built-in SEO features
💳 Shopify website builder pricing plans
Shopify’s monthly pricing starts at $24 for basic features.
For more enterprise use cases, there’s also a Shopify Plus plan that starts at $2,000 plus for high-volume enterprises.
👍 Pros of Shopify website builder
- Offers the full stack of website building, hosting, and management tools.
- Simplifies the whole process of creating fully fledged online stores.
- The website builder is an intuitive WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor.
- Supports HTML and CSS coding.
- The Liquid language streamlines custom dynamic rendering.
- Comes with a collection of pre-built website templates.
- App Store features over 8,000 fully compatible third-party plugins.
- Facilitates all the core ecommerce functionalities.
👎 Cons of Shopify website builder
- You can’t export the website code to an external platform.
- Not ideal for non-business sites.
4. Webflow – Reddit’s best website builder for designers
In Reddit’s web design communities, Webflow continues to tower above the rest in both mentions and recommendations. This makes it the best website builder for designers – a fact that more than 3.5 million designers in its user base would probably agree with.
Webflow has grown into a dominant force by giving web designers a highly intuitive system for setting up professional websites. Users don’t even have to know how to code, as Webflow manages all that on their behalf.
In essence, Webflow is a visual web development platform built around what it calls “smart codelessness“. This means that what you’ll be getting here is not your regular everyday non-coding website editor – Webflow, instead, focuses on maintaining a favorable balance between the intuitiveness of visual design and the customization freedom of coding environments.
At the center of all, that is a website builder that accommodates both coders and non-coders. Web designers can extensively control all sorts of site attributes without ever touching the source code, while web developers subsequently pick up from there by using the same system to generate and export the site designs in the form of clean HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code.
As a matter of fact, Reddit users add that the system even includes controls for managing client projects. Webflow grants freelance designers, web design agencies, and large enterprises the ability to stage and collaborate on their client projects securely throughout the design process.
The site builder’s interface, as you’ll notice, closely resembles Adobe Photoshop’s canvas. This is where you get to customize Webflow’s responsive templates visually, add ecommerce functionalities, and track your design changes.
It’s worth noting, however, that it’s not a drag-and-drop editor. Webflow, instead, uses what it calls a “Box Model“. Each page element is basically treated as a distinct “box,” very much like WordPress block editor. You’re supposed to customize each of the boxes separately and then overlay them on top of each other to create a logical website layout.
If you want to learn more about how it stacks up, you can read our in-depth Webflow vs Squarespace comparison.
⚙️ Webflow site builder features
- Intuitive visual editor.
- Search engine optimized.
- Free cloneable websites from the Webflow community.
- Content management system.
- 100+ customizable site templates.
- 2,000+ web font families.
- CSS grid–powered layouts.
- Online store elements.
- Free website builder
💳 Webflow website builder pricing plans
Webflow site builder starts you off for free but you’ll be limited to 50 CMS items and a webflow.io domain with 1 GB bandwidth. You can upgrade for as little as $14 a month or $29 a month for a standard online store, while advanced ecommerce sites are charged as much as $235 per month.
👍 Pros of Webflow website builder
- Supports both coders and non-coders.
- Gives web design professionals tools for managing client projects.
- Your website code can be exported to other platforms.
- The site builder is free until you’re ready to launch.
- Comes with a content management system (CMS).
- Can design ecommerce sites.
👎 Cons of Webflow web builder
- Beginners may find the learning curve a little steep.
- A limited selection of website templates.
- Limited integrations.
Should you go with Reddit best website builder recommendations? 🚧
Well, going by our recently updated comparison of the best website builders, it’s safe to say that Redditors are certainly onto something here. Three of their top recommendations made it to the list of the nine best website builder solutions.
💡 Don’t make up your mind just yet. You might want to compare these notes with our findings on those 9 top site builders, along with:
- The best mobile website builder tools,
- The best web design software,
- The best drag and drop website builders,
- The best free website builders,
- The best online store builders,
- The best cheap site builders,
- The best website builders for non-coders,
- The best website builders for writers,
- The best website builders for musicians,
- And the corresponding comparison chart of the best site creators.
At least then, you’ll be able to make a more informed decision on the best website creator tool for your business.
Do you still have any questions about which is the best website builder on Reddit? Let us know in the comments below!
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