Pricing falls within industry standards with a $14-per-month 'Combo' plan that covers most needs for a personal website. If you like what you see with the free website builder, you can spend up for a premium, ad-free site. Like many competitors in this space, Wix offers a basic free website builder plan that lets website owners create a free website starter site with ads. To maximize the experience, we do recommend choosing one lane (e.g., Wix ADI, specific templates or design-from-scratch), since it can be difficult to maintain consistency across your landing page & website design if, for example, you start with a template but then decide you want to totally customize it. Wix covers the full ease-of-use spectrum by offering an AI-fueled automatic website creator on one end ('Wix ADI') that requires minimal effort from the user, all the way to Wix Corvid, an open development platform for advanced applications like Javascript, databases and data-driven dynamic pages. This popular website builder also boasts the greatest quantity of tools, capabilities, and freedom.

It's the biggest player with over 110 million websites built. Wix is the clear front-runner in the race for website builder dominance. Jump to: How to choose the best website builder Finally, if you already have a basic website and just need a host or you're interested in building a self-hosted WordPress site, check out our list of best web hosting services and our list of the best WordPress hosting services. If, by the end of the list, you're still not sure which direction to go with your web builder, we've included a guide at the bottom, including key questions you should be asking yourself as you start your online venture. We paid particular attention to the categories that not only differentiate one site from another, but that actually matter to business owners, artists and creators such as SEO features, creative cloud, mobile-friendly website builders, available plugins, live chat options, eCommerce feature, pricing plan and customer support. We also surveyed the CNET staff and ultimately spent time building some test sites using the tools below (if we weren't already members). To compile this list, we researched the plans, prices and features of over 12 different website builders and scoured reviews from several sites (including PCMag, Wirecutter, SiteBuilderReport, WebsiteToolTester, WPBeginner and more) to see where there might be any consensus. Some vendors offer free domain hosting for the first year on some plans as well. *Starting price doesn't include cheaper plans if they are ad-supported.

Best overall website builder (and best for free)

Best website builder for photographers