Beautiful themes, an intuitive editor and powerful themes— Squarespace is an excellent website builder and my top recommendation.

Wix is all about freedom: the editor is a blank canvas, there's a huge library of elements and you can even design your own theme from scratch— occasionally Wix can feel disorganized and chaotic.

Weebly is an excellent, easy to use website builder but it's also going through a transition.

GoDaddy is really easy to use but limited. It’s not for power users who want to tweak the details of their website.

Pages are built by dropping Content Blocks into pages and dragging them into columns and rows. You can’t just drag anything anywhere— instead there are thoughtful limits.

Wix’s editor is all about freedom. You can drag any element any where on the page— it’s up to you. This can lead to unexpected issues (especially with responsive websites) but will work for users who want freedom.

Weebly offers two different editors: Square Editor and Weebly Editor— though they are prioritizing the Square Editor. Unfortunately the Square Editor is often too limited

GoDaddy's sections editor is really easy to use but it doesn't allow for much customization.

Squarespace is easy to use but among website builders it’s not the easiest. Instead I’d describe Squarespace as intuitive. Everything is thoughtful. If you were to think of Wix as Microsoft Windows, Squarespace would definitely be Apple.

Wix is overall easy to use but the editor can become overwhelming and disorganized at times. It can be difficult to know where to look for specific options.

Weebly has always managed to stay easy to use— even as they've added new features, the interface has stayed simple and clean.

GoDaddy’s website builder is really easy to use. I would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t feel tech savvy.

Squarespace offers the best templates of any website builder. This is admittedly subjective— but there's honestly no other website builder that can compare to the clean, modern templates of Squarespace.

Wix has a large selection of themes— though the quality can be inconsistent. Some themes are clean and modern while others feel outdated.

Theme customization is limited. For example, customizing the colors of your website is surprisingly limited— you’re limited one color that’s applied in several different places (you don’t get to choose!)

Themes are good but you're not able to customize them in any meaningful ways.

Excellent style customization. Squarespace's style editor is the best theme customization tool of any website builder— it’s intuitive and powerful.

Customizing themes can be tedious— especially if you’ve spent a lot of time individually styling elements. But Wix is highly customizable so you can make just about any change you want.

Theme customization is limited. For example, customizing the colors of your website is surprisingly limited— you’re limited one color that’s applied in several different places (you don’t get to choose!)

Little meaningful theme customization. For example you choose one primary color but are not able to apply where that color is applied. You're also occassionally not able to adjust font sizes.

You can’t design your own theme from scratch without coding.

Wix provides enough flexibility to let you design your own website from scratch.

You can’t design your own theme from scratch without coding.

You can’t design your own theme from scratch without coding.

• Personal · $16

  Good enough for most websites.

• Business · $26

  Adds marketing tools, integrations and ecommerce with a transaction fee.

• Basic Commerce · $30

  Good for most online stores.

• Advanced Commerce · $46

  Adds gifts cards, real-time shipping rates and other features..

• Combo · $17

  Limited to 2 GB of bandwidth— may not be enough for some websites.

• Unlimited · $22

  First plan with unlimited bandwidth— good enough for most websites.

• Pro · $27

  Includes Wix logo maker.

• Business Basic · $28

  Good enough for most online stores.

• Business Unlimited · $33

  Ecommerce + Wix logo maker.

• VIP · $47

  Ecommerce + priority VIP support.

• Business VIP · $56

  Best for small business.

• Free · $0

  Quite good for a free plan.

• Personal · $9

  Includes an ad on your website— not ideal.

• Business · $16

  Solid plan.

• Business Plus · $46

  Adds specific ecommerce features: gift cards, real-time shipping rates..

• Basic · $10

  Good enough for most websites.

• Standard · $15

  Adds more social media media accounts.

• Premium · $20

  More powerful appointment scheduling.

• Ecommerce · $25

  Adds ecommerce.

Squarespace has the best ecommerce of any website builder— but remember, there's an entire class of ecommerce builders like Shopify that have more features.

Wix has included everything you need for ecommerce: you can create coupons codes, set shipping and tax rules, products options and much more. The only thing missing? There's no way to edit the email receipts customers will receive— which both Squarespace and Weebyl let you do (and is important).

Weebly has aggressively moved into ecommerce over the last few years— and the results are impressive. The only other website builder with a comparable package is Squarespace. Weebly has managed to keep the interface easy to use even though ecommerce usually requires sophisticated, abstract interfaces.

GoDaddy falls short on some important features— for example your website checkout is hosted on a seperate domain name. Not ideal.

Google Docs and Mailchimp integrations, 19 different form field options, custom post-submit HTML and lightbox mode— a way to create a button that loads your form in a lightbox.

By default, Wix only includes the Contact Form element— which is not a full form builder. To access Wix's full form builder, you need want to install Wix Forms from the App Market: it includes a wide variety of fields and submission options.

Plenty of field options, form submissions can be confirmed with a message or by sending the user to another URL and results are sent to an email address— though a database also stores results (so you don't have to worry about accidentally deleting a form submission).

There's a Contact Us section that has an email form but it's not really a form builder. Instead it just lets you add single-line or paragraph text inputs— no file uploads, radio buttons or checkboxes. Existing GoDaddy users may find this frustrating as older versions of the website builder included a full form builder.

There are a suite of beautiful apps: Commerce lets you manage your store. Blog lets you compose blog posts and manage your blog. Metrics gives you website analytics. Portfolio lets you manage photos and galleries— but it's iOS only. Having a suite of apps is great— rather than stuff everything into one app, they're able to make a beautiful interface for each use case.

The Wix Mobile App (iOS and Android) let's you manage your website on the go in three main ways: you can chat live with visitors, manage products and manage bookings. It doesn't let you make changes or add content to your website.

Weebly has iPhone, Android, iPad and Apple Watch apps. The tablet and phone apps are fully featured— meaning you can design your entire website using them. This is awesome— no other website builder offers this on both phones and tablets.

GoDaddy has outstanding iOS and Android apps for their website builder.

Squarespace itself doesn't offer membership sites but Memberspace is a 3rd-party company that lets you build Squarespace membership sites.

The Member Login App lets members login and register to access hidden content. It was launched 4 years ago and the most recent reviews from users all ask for things that users were also asking for 4 years ago. This may not be a critical feature for Wix.

The best membership features of any website builder. If you need to build a membership site, Weebly has you covered. You can create private pages that require people to register with your site (this is handy for creating an intranet, or a conference portal for registered members). Other helpful features include: groups and email customization.

GoDaddy offers a membership system.

Squarespace has the best donation system in any website builder. It’s not even close. They’ve done the hard work to understand the fundamentals of a great donation system: customizable email receipts (donors shouldn't receive the same email as an ecommerce customer after all— a detail too many website builders over look), suggested contributions and a customizable donation checkout.

Technically there are two apps you can install for donations: Paypal is a simple Paypal button that lets donors give directly to your Paypal account and Get Funding is a crowdfunding tool. Neither is a real donation system.

Despite having a full ecommerce system Weebly doesn't include official donation support— instead they suggest users create a donation "product"" in their store... which is not a real donation system. Otherwise users can install the DonorBox app. The app has received strong reviews and lets you accept recurring donations, set suggested amounts and collect donor information. (I don't consider this donation support as DonorBox requires you to register seperately with them.)

You can add a Paypal donation button but this is not a full donation system— it sends visitors to checkout on a different website and doesn't allow you customize email notifications.