In a world where we are all connected, the digital world is as important as the physical world. And your business presence in the digital world relies on a website to represent your brand, sell your products, and offer your services to people near and far. Today, there are many website builders you can use to grow your business and make money online. But which website builder is the best for your business?
Whether you talk about building a website or building a sales funnel, the two terms are now used interchangeably. After all, traditional websites are dead. That’s because websites overwhelm visitors with an array of choices. Menus and submenus lead to various pages. Endless pages of text and information spill out across screens leading people to click tirelessly and eventually ends in frustration.
You don’t want that, right? That’s why the modern website builders are designed to not just build websites but to build sales funnels. Sales funnels are like magic little money-making machines. And when you understand the difference between a website and a sales funnel, that’s when the real aha moment happens.
Best Websites Builders to Grow Your Business
The big difference between a website and a sales funnel is focus. Websites lack focus. Think about it yourself. What happened the last time you visited an actual website? Sales funnels have just one distinct path forward. It could be a lead generation path, a sales path, or a customer ascension path. Websites lack that distinct focus. That’s why, on average, sales funnels have a 137% higher conversion rate than websites.
Whether you call them websites or sales funnels, the two terms are sometimes used to reference one another. The point here is that you need a solid website builder to grow your business. So where do you turn? While there are many of these so-called website builders (or funnel builders) out on the market today, only a select number will actually help you grow your business online.
Whether you’re on a budget or not, it’s important to invest your time and money in the right software to help you grow your business online. Some website builders simply lack the features you need for true business growth. So where does that leave us? Don’t just look at building a website. Understand the mechanics of sales funnels and how to use these magic little money-making machines to exponentially fuel business growth.
What is a Website Builder?
Before we look at the best website builders for your business, let’s take a step back. What is a website builder? And what does it do? Most website builders are designed to help you create internet-hosted pages that are accessible to your customers. The best website builders help you create pages that are focused on one specific path forward. We sometimes call these sales funnels.
A website builder features an easy-to-use interface that doesn’t require knowledge of complex coding, server configuration, or any technical knowledge whatsoever. These website builders help you make money by configuring pages designed to either extract contact information or generate sales from visitors to your websites and sales funnels.
The best website builders allow you to build the website and host it in the same place. They allow you to use custom domains, have drag-and-drop editors and premade templates, and are simply just easy to use. While your online presence is important, so is your time. You’ll want to use your time wisely and not waste it away. That’s why these factors play into each of the best website builders listed below.
#1: ClickFunnels
We’re partial. Obviously. But ClickFunnels is certainly the best website builder on the market today. It’s by far the most robust, feature-rich, easy-to-use software platform for building websites and sales funnels today. ClickFunnels has received numerous awards for our platform. Most recently, USA Today ranked us as one of the best website builders. But the accolades have been coming for years on end now.
The truth is that ClickFunnels is not just the best website builder because it allows you to create web pages. It’s because our platform is designed to help you make money by turning your website into a powerful sales funnel that helps you generate leads, make sales, increase revenue, and get your customers to spend more and buy more often. That’s why ClickFunnels is the best website builder on the market today.
#2: Shopify
Shopify is by far one of the best website builders. It is distinctly designed around selling products. Not services. Shopify is used by some of the biggest brands in the world to sell their products and make money online. It integrates with many of the most popular shipping platforms, logistics providers, and payment gateways.
Shopify is easy to use and allows you to host custom domains and even make additional pages for your site beyond just your product pages and the shopping cart experience. Shopify also allows for apps that can enhance the experience by adding features that are not regularly available in the off-the-shelf Shopify experience.
#3: WordPress
WordPress is one of the original website builders. It’s been around for ages. WordPress is ideal for bloggers and sites where content takes center stage. However, WordPress can also be used to build optimized content for any traditional website. It makes content creation and the overall design of the website easy to build by implementing themes. Some themes are free. Others can be purchased.
WordPress is best for ranking on search engines because the code is highly optimized. It gives you flexibility for optimization that most other website builders don’t. You can optimize things like caching, page rules, security features, SEO metadata, and more. WordPress is best when hosted on a dedicated server controlled by you as opposed to hosted in a shared hosting environment.
#4: Wix
Wix is a website builder originally founded back in 2006. It’s been around for a long time and offers robust features for building websites to help you promote your company, brand, products or services online. Wix offers premade templates and an easy-to-use interface to help you build websites without any tech skills, coding, or design know-how.
Like other website builders, Wix is feature-rich and is used by hundreds of millions of websites around the world. Wix is also a leading eCommerce platform that allows you to sell your products online by building out a shopping cart online. The company has also baked in many features such as a photo editor, video maker, and marketplace. It includes several AI tools to build websites that make money fast.
#5: Squarespace
Squarespace dates back to 2003 and offers both hosting and website-building features. Squarespace has premade templates you can use to quickly build your website using a drag-and-drop editor. That means you don’t need any technical skills or coding knowledge to use the Squarespace website builder. Simply sign up and start building.
Squarespace positions itself as a website builder you can use to build a website in just minutes. This bucks the traditional trend of paying thousands of dollars to hire an expensive web developer. Having a web developer is good but it requires you to rely on that website developer to do any changes or upgrades to the site.
#6: Webflow
Webflow is a website builder that provides a little more flexibility and power under the hood. While this is a no-code platform, it boasts features that other platforms lack. Webflow provides features for designing sites for different devices, much like ClickFunnels does. Webflow is great for flexibility in the visual appearance of a site, but learning the platform may take a bit longer and more time.
However, once you get the hang of Webflow, you can build a website incredibly fast. Webflow was originally founded in 2012 and primarily grew through building strong content and doing search engine optimization.
#7: Weebly
Similar to Squarespace, Weebly is a website builder and hosting platform all in one. The company was originally founded back in 2007 so it’s been around for a long time now. It positions itself as a platform for websites and online stores. Meaning that Weebly provides eCommerce features to sell products through its platform.
In 2018 a company named, Square acquired Weebly. Square made a big splash in payment-processing technology when it launched its small square device allowing business owners to process credit card payments from their phones and tablets.
#8: Bigcommerce
Bigcommerce is a website builder that has been around since 2009 and is focused heavily on ecommerce. As the name indicates, Bigcommerce has online shopping features that are similar to Shopify. Although it hasn’t been around for as long as Shopify, it does provide all the essential features you need to build and launch an online store.
Bigcommerce has two levels of service. They do offer a more managed solution for already-established businesses through an enterprise offering. They also offer the standard “essentials” services for businesses that are just starting or that expect a low volume of sales.
#9: Duda
Duda is another feature-rich platform that helps you build out websites through simple and easy-to-use builder features. It includes premade templates and a drag-and-drop editor for placing elements on the page with ease. There is no coding or technical knowledge involved with this. Like other platforms, it is simple to build and launch your website.
Duda has a unique selling point because it focuses heavily on speed, which impacts search engine optimization. Not only is the software easy-to-use. It also prioritizes speed and accessibility, which is important to search engines today.
#10: Strikingly
Strikingly is a website builder that focuses on allowing you to launch premium, high-quality designs in just minutes. Like the other platforms, Strikingly does not require you to have any coding or technical knowledge to build and launch a website. They have premade templates and an easy to use drag-and-drop editor.
Strikingly also bakes in many eCommerce features, so it is not just focused on pretty-looking websites. With the eCommerce features in Strikingly, you can launch beautiful websites that also allow you to sell and make money.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the Average Cost to Hire a Web Developer?
On average a web developer can cost you between $3,000 and $10,000 depending on the complexity of the website you need to build. It also depends on the location of the web developer. Some overseas developers are more cost-effective. You can use platforms like Upwork and Freelancer to find and hire web developers from around the world.
How do Website Builders Work?
Most website builders are SaaS platforms. SaaS stands for software as a service and it’s the typical way that these companies make money. You pay a monthly fee for access to their software. There are website builders that do not offer SaaS features. They are open-source platforms but require more technical knowledge to build a site with them. These are platforms like Drupal, Joomla, and others.
Do You Have to Pay to Create a Website?
You always have to pay to create a website. Especially if you want to create a website on a custom domain. For example, WordPress has features that allow you to create a website for free but you do not get a custom domain. Custom domains are important for ranking on search engines and for giving your business a more professional look.
How do You Connect a Custom Domain to a Website?
Domains are usually purchased separately from hosting accounts. However, some platforms do have domains included in their service. Typically, you would purchase a domain and point the DNS settings to your hosting platform. Website builders bake hosting into their platforms. And they’ll provide you the custom DNS settings required to build out a site on their platform using your custom domain.
Are Websites Easy to Build?
Website building typically requires HTML and CSS for simple, information-rich sites. This doesn’t include any database-driven features such as custom logins, forms, and so on. If you’re attempting to build from scratch, creating a website is simply not worth the time it takes. However, if you are a developer, creating a website from scratch has many speed optimization benefits because it often lacks bloated code that piles in unnecessary, slow-loading functions.
What’s the Difference Between a Website and a Sales Funnel?
Sales funnels and websites are different. But also very similar. Websites have many options. There are so many menu choices, sub-navigation items, sections, pages, and so on that it can get overwhelming. Since we have such a short attention span, most people choose to build sales funnels instead. Sales funnels are like websites but with much more focus. They offer just one specific pathway forward, which leads to 137% higher conversion rates on average.