Everything is online nowadays. Whether it be your very own business, an online store, or a personal portfolio, there’s a whole host of reasons that you might want to create your very own website.
But programming can be difficult and time-consuming. Luckily, there's a wide range of online services that take the difficulty out of website creation. Here are some of the best.
1. Squarespace
Squarespace is a robust and powerful website creation and hosting service. No matter what your needs are, you’re likely to find exactly what you’re looking for with Squarespace.
Squarespace uses a powerful online website builder featuring customizable templates and layouts. Any content type you can think of is supported, such as images, text, or audio. Squarespace even includes a wide range of custom color palettes, various fonts, and free high-quality images through Unsplash integration.
If you’re looking to dip your feet into something more complicated, Squarespace also lets you use custom CSS to edit the appearance of your website. Markdown is another option for those of you who want more complete control over your work.
Squarespace is available at a number of price points depending on how much you’re willing to pay and what features you’re looking to have access to. Customizable CSS and JavaScript only become available at slightly higher price points, for example, though all plans come with a custom domain and unlimited bandwidth and storage.
2. Duda
Next on the list comes Duda. Duda is another online website creation and hosting service with an emphasis on ease of use for businesses of all kinds.
Editing your website with Duda is easy. Thanks to Duda’s drag and drop editor, even those of you without any experience should find yourselves creating in no time. You can even customize every element on a device-to-device basis, which gives you full control of how your website will appear, no matter who’s viewing it.
Duda also features what they call DudaFlex sections. These responsive, easy-to-use sections take the difficulty out of some of the more complicated CSS designs, though don’t worry if you’re looking to customize everything down to the nitty-gritty yourself. Duda also supports HTML and CSS controls for those of you who want them.
There are a number of different plans available for Duda, though all plans include at least one website and your website hosted on the Amazon Web Services. If you’re looking for client management or more advanced tools such as Duda’s widget builder, then you’ll be looking at one of the more expensive plans, however.
3. Shopify
If you’re a small business owner or simply looking to spruce up your online shopping platform, then consider Shopify. As the name suggests, this website builder and hosting service aims to simplify shopping sites for all those who need them.
Shopify is easy and straightforward to use. Their website builder is entirely web-based and features over 70 different themes from a wide variety of designers.
Templates also allow you to choose just how you want your online store laid out and come with intuitive controls so that make customization easy. If you’ve already got a domain name, swapping over to Shopify is easy as you’ll be able to keep it.
Shopify’s biggest strength is that it handles everything to do with the shopping side of things for you. Things like carrier shipping rates, credit card payments, abandoned checkout recovery, and automatic taxes are only some of the features that Shopify brings to your online store.
Customer profiles, accounts, and refunds are all also handled. Anything that you might need to run an online store, Shopify takes care of for you. Shopify comes in at a variety of price points depending on your needs. For more advanced needs and international selling, you’re likely to need the more expensive plans, but most features are available across the board.
4. GoDaddy
If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, GoDaddy is a great starting place. GoDaddy allows you to get started with their website builder completely free, with the option to upgrade to a paid plan if you have need of some of its more advanced features.
Like many of the other options on this list, GoDaddy features a wide variety of designer-made templates, all of which come with a variety of theme filters that alter the colors, layouts, and fonts found in each template.
Ecommerce and social media options are also available in the website builder, all of which GoDaddy will host for you. The interface is easy to reorder and alter with click and drag features, and with a wide variety of extras such as drop-down menus, contact forms, and promo banners it’s easy to get the website exactly how you want it.
5. Weebly
Finally, Weebly makes it onto this list. Weebly, too, allows you to get started for free, and with a wide variety of features there’s little reason not to.
Weebly features a drag and drop builder, so you can create your website without effort, with everything you would come to expect from a website builder. Weebly also includes advanced animation effects such as parallax for those of you who want it, and dynamic video backgrounds to make your website truly stand out.
If you’re more hands-on, Weebly lets you use custom HTML, CSS and JavaScript however you like. Other features such as integrated analytics, e-mail marketing, and SEO tools are all also included. If you’re looking for an ecommerce platform, Weebly supports that as well.
All these features are available with Weebly’s free plan, though more features such as a free domain, advanced site statistics, and ad removal all become available at higher price points.
Create Without Programming
You don’t need to know anything about programming in order to create a website. There’s a huge variety of options out there, and one of them is bound to match your needs.
No matter if you’re looking for domain hosting or an online ecommerce platform, there are nearly endless possibilities if you keep your mind open. Hopefully, one of the website creators on this list is right for you, but if not, don’t fret. The perfect service exists out there for you.
