Best website builder?

As others have suggested, it really depends on your interest in your own skill development.
If you just want to get something done, leveraging/customizing pre-designed templates, Unbounce and other landing page offerings can be pretty good. Carrd helps you keep things nice and simple, if its functionality suits.

If you're more of a designer type, and want to implement something you've sketched up in Photoshop/Sketch/Figma/etc then Webflow or Wordpress+Elementor are good options. They help designers begin to understand CSS controls without getting lost in the the actual code.

If you want any complex functionality and your builder doesn't include it, the question starts to become more complex. You could jump into Wordpress… tricky because there are a million ways to build a messy slow website with Wordpress, but on the other hand, there's an easy-to-implement plugin for almost anything you want to accomplish in your site.

carrd.io and boomla.com

Hey @Remold

There's tons of website builders, I have tried most of them and then I came across versoly.com

Majority of website builders solve the same problem, but I prefer Versoly because:

1. Easy & Fast to build
2. HTML/CSS/Bootstrap/JS browser editor
3. Fast pagespeed
4. No plugins
5. Amazing support
6. Built by an indie hacker

Once you try versoly.com, there's no going back :)

• design/prototype things in Figma.
• mockup/develop in Webflow trying to use proper syntax and naming conventions (it spits out html/css/js)
  • you could study that HTML and CSS that you've just built visually in webflow, thusly
    you'll better understand the code syntactically
• build out a fully coded site if the webflow one isn't scaling or has backend constraints.

You can check out https://www.sitebuilderreport.com for a in-depth review of a bunch of website builders. It doesn't have all of them but it's a good place to start if you're not sure what the landscape looks like.

Carrd.co, webflow, duda

Hi Remold! I would highly recommend landen.co if you're looking to build a landing page. We used landen to build orgstack.io and the experience has been very pleasant. It comes with a fantastic interface for adding common elements (pricing / hero / features), and it has built-in support for analytics and blog hosting. I've been a software engineer for years, but I would recommend using one of these tools because you can iterate more quickly. Good luck!

I'd been loving Stackbit.com recently - super fast and secure static sites in minutes!

Check out Versoly, he is a indie hacker as well.

I am deeply in love with webflow. As a designer at heart, it gives me the ease of use and flexibility I need to build all ranges of website and (using other tools like Zapier) even complex webapps.

A lot of answers here are from the standpoint of people answering someone who doesn't write code. Since you're asking developers and since you plan to build your own platform, I'd suggest buying an HTML template. Theme Forest has some great ones ( https://themeforest.net/category/site-templates ). So do Envato Elements ( https://elements.envato.com/ ) and Wrap Bootstrap ( https://wrapbootstrap.com/ ).

Or you can do what I do: Pick up a WordPress theme and use the WP2Static plugin ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/static-html-output-plugin/ ) to generate a static HTML version of the site, which you then use as a template for integrating with your code. (Requires a little adjustment to work.)

Hey @Remold

Being someone who does not know how to code, I had the exact question as you have a few years ago. I leveraged a few existing platforms to build sites and then to even sell them as a service.

I recently put together a list of ways for marketers to create landing pages or websites without writing a single line of code. I am sure that would make the process faster for you, even as a developer. It is a growing list, so it is accessible here

Here's a few of my favourite site builders

Clearly, my builder is the best, that ever existed - motionstoryline.com. I am also definitely not biased in any way, and if I am I don't see it...

Check out https://boomla.com/ which is both powerful and free.
Drag-n-drop editor, quality theme, hosting, HTTPS, CDN, server-side programmable, version control, backups, 1GB storage limit, web based IDE and quite a bit more. You can even host static sites there if you want. Disclose: I'm working on this.

Let me add that another tool I have immense respect for is https://webflow.com/ . Use it if you know HTML+CSS and need a fully customized design.

For your first question, I think there are thousands of builders. But the biggest names are Wix, Webflow, Unbounce etc.. They are a bit complicated and there can be a steep learning curve, so it's why I created Landly :) (If you want to check it out, reach me from twitter(@ozgurrgul) and I'll give you 1 year of the paid plan for your startup)

For your second question, you are right. Using a builder is a faster, better, and sane way to go. We live in 2020, no need to write code for landing pages anymore.

Webflow is also great

loveyourlanding.com

If you are specifically talking about data rich sites (not static sites), our product should help build one.

https://nocodesheets.carrd.co

Recently built something for a client with PageCloud, and found it easy and really intuitive to use. +1 to that.

Have also used Wix and like that one as well.

I would check nocode.tech for some but what come to mind are carrd.co, wix, godaddy website builder, and even several that others have made and posted on IH (don’t remember the names).

Yes, it can be faster to use them, however if familiar with HTML/JS then it could also be easier to download a template like the wonderful https://uselander.xyz which is free or buy a professional one.

It can be overwhelming to select which service to use so there are two things to consider. First, what is features do you need and second, cost. With those two thoughts in mind in can be easier to select which tool to use.

My favorite flow for a landing page that is more custom than what some of the sites offer is to do the following:

Find a premium template for $10-60 and then use an AWS S3 Bucket to host it for like $1-5 a month at most.

If not building something too custom then

Using any of the ones on nocode.tech will get the job done.

Google has his own website builder. Probably is not the best, but it free.
https://sites.google.com/new

Webflow... best in the game hands down.

It all depends on what website you are trying to build.
What do you want to do?
Is it a Landing\Portfolio or something more complex?
What are the features, functions, and sections needed?

It's a good problem to have, since there's almost too many good options out there, so it all boils down to what exactly do you want to be built right now.

We at https://zeroqode.com are big fans of https://bubble.io, but definitely there can be scenarios where there are other options.

I've used a few different Web builders and by far the best one for me and by a country mile was divi https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/. They have loads of great templates that you can use, you can add css to any module to further customizer. Theyre the only Web builder to my knowledge with full integration with woo commerce. There is also loads of great templates on the Internet that you can use with divi as well.

I started Web dev with Wix and found wix to be very slow for development and limited in what you could do so I wouldn't suggest to use Wix. I also tried elementor before which is very similar to divi but divi had way more features and a really helpful YouTube channel.

Hey,
I would say Wordpress + Elementor

I'm pretty biased but for your use case https://versoly.com/

We have a HTML/CSS/JS editor and also use Bootstrap (freeCodeCamp does as well)

I learnt very basic HTML at university and was put off for years because my websites looked so ugly :)

Versoly fixes this as you can use blocks to make pretty pages and then edit them with the visual editor or the code editor.

If you're just looking to make landing pages using a website builder, then webflow.com and wix.com are pretty good options.

And honestly, as far as landing pages go, I'd agree that it is indeed faster. But nowadays, when a company gets to a point where they can afford to have a firm take over and design / develop their website, speed isn't a factor.

If you're new to this, you should definitely learn the other tools to make stuff from scratch (or using the various great frontend frameworks out there), but as far as putting something up for a startup, the tools I mentioned are great!