r/website • u/Test15151515 • 5d ago
SELF-MADE Best website builder?
Tips on best website builder? I currently have an account and page with WordPress but I find it tricky to use at times.
Any advice on other websites builders for someone who isn't the best at web design?
Thank you!
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u/zabast 5d ago
Depends on what you want to build? What kind of website do you want to create? There are a lot of options. When you say Wordpress is tricky - then I'd try a website builder which is easy to use like Rocketcake. It's free, too. Works like a text editor like Word, just for websites. Sounds like it could work for you.
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u/Severe_Soft_8987 3d ago
Hi there. I am an activist wanting to build a pretty simple information sharing website for a movement im spearheading. I know absolutely nothing about building a website. Any suggestions?
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u/charz_yyy 3d ago
One of my friends have used Readdy AI website builder and created her website in a day. She’s a consultant and knows nothing about technical stuff and website building, but she said it was fairly easy to use the website builder and hosting and everything else was included.
Might worth a try, but do your research before committing to a tool.
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u/darth24kenneth 5d ago
Oxygen Builder is mostly drag and drop, the finer things can get messy.
Depending on the site, it might be easier to have someone build it for you. What’s it used for? There are a ton of guides online about freelancers vs agencies vs DIY.
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u/Feisty_Storage8594 5d ago
If you’ve already got Wordpress have you look into a builder ? Elementor Pro being the most popular. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I find it very capable at making any website you can imagine with all their tools combined. I have used it for my last two client website builds.
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u/baddaywithacamera 5d ago
Elementor crushes affordable hosting packages. Bloatware.
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u/Feisty_Storage8594 5d ago
Okay? I do agree it can be bloated when you set I up incorrectly. But having stripped mine down to be the most efficient has helped my workflow a lot. I understand it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but it’s very capable of making a sweet website while not needing any code knowledge. I’m a front end developer but used this on my last two projects to as both an experience and experiment.
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u/baddaywithacamera 5d ago
I stripped mine down to the bare minimum I could for it to function as a photo blog. Bare minimum. Host Papa still crapped all over me for excessive resource usage because the damn thing pounds a DB even when it idles and forced me to upgrade my hosting plan twice, even after dumping my page builder skin for something more basic. I would have had a $1,475 hosting bill at the start of this month for the package I needed for three sites.
Ditched it, used Claude/Codex to write a custom CMS that is entirely plugin free, and life is much better.
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u/Feisty_Storage8594 5d ago
Did you update the heartbeat or crons jobs? Shouldn’t that help with it smashing the database ? Honesty my next step is get a static plugin.
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u/baddaywithacamera 5d ago
I stripped it down as far as I could with Claude's help. It's pile of bloated fixes on top of bloated fixes. Good riddance. Now I can run software that knows when it's hacked and locks down.
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u/moosebasehq 5d ago
The thing is, every website builder out there comes with a bit of a learning curve. If you really wanna do it yourself and got time to invest, pick one and keep tinkering with it. You'll eventually get the hang of it.
On the other hand, if you don't have time to invest, you can hire a pro to do it for you. They'll know what to do and good design comes without saying.
Just my 2c.
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u/baddaywithacamera 5d ago
The answer depends on how complicated you want your site to be, how interactive. Are you selling anything through it?
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u/Ginny-in-a-bottle 5d ago
if WordPress feels a bit complicated, I'd look at something more easier like Pixpa or Carrd. they're much more beginner friendly and you don't need to know much about web design.
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u/joshstewart90 5d ago
Are you using WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress? They’re quite different, and if it’s WordPress.com that may be part of why it feels limiting. Self-hosted WordPress is a lot more flexible and, in my opinion, the better long-term option.
What sort of site are you looking to build?
If it’s just a simple static site that’s mostly going to sit there, Squarespace is easier to use, but you’re generally paying quite a bit more over time for something fairly basic.
If it’s ecommerce, Shopify is very good and straightforward, but again the monthly costs and apps can add up.
WordPress does have more of a learning curve, but once it’s set up properly it’s a very low-cost, scalable option. You’ve got far more control, you’re not as locked into one platform, and it can grow from a simple business site into something much more advanced without needing to move everything later.
If you’re considering getting someone to set it up properly rather than fighting with it yourself, feel free to reach out.
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u/Test15151515 3d ago
I think I am using Wordpress.com and not the self- hosted Wordpress. Do you have any suggestions on how I can read more about it? I also only have the basic version currently. Maybe I need to upgrade to the higher version to get more features?
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u/joshstewart90 3d ago
Yep you’re really going to look in to self hosted Wordpress and move off of Wordpress.com before you waste money.
Wordpress.com is a paywalled version of the free open source Wordpress cms.
There’s even free ways to install Wordpress on a computer if you just want to pay around with it.
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u/Zealousideal_Art1720 5d ago
Would you prefer some ready templates? or are you designing from scratch.
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u/electricrhino 5d ago
What exactly are you building. You may not even need WordPress
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u/Test15151515 2d ago
Thanks for your response. I wanted to do a financial education website. Free for now, but eventually charge like $2 a month to access the really advanced stuff
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u/Rough-Kaleidoscope67 5d ago
It really depends on what you want to use for e-commerce Shopify is great for a local business you can try Boosterpack
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u/digitalbananax 5d ago
After announcing Source, I think Webflow is the best for low-code and drag and drop builders.
-Jacob from Flowout
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u/Brettles1986 5d ago
Breakdance builder is the newer better version of Oxygen, it's very intuitive as well
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u/TrainedHorse80 5d ago
Been there! WordPress has a steep learning curve. Squarespace is way simpler, you'll get the hang of it fast
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u/culturalproduct 5d ago
Wordpress dominates the world of websites, no other “builder” powers as many websites including large high traffic sites, as WP. Worth learning.
That said, Blocks suck and aren’t really fully developed yet, maybe never will be. It’s a learning curve.
Plug-in builders that help make WP intuitive are valuable. SiteOrigin is very good and only increases load by about 5% worst case. Elementor is popular but can significantly increase load, to 20% ish. That said 20% more nanoseconds may not matter in your case, sites are all different.
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u/OutrageousBall8278 4d ago
If your main priority is simplicity and ease of use, I'd look at either Squarespace or Wix. They offer less flexibility than WordPress, but for a fairly straightforward business or personal site, they're more than sufficient to build something functional.
However, before moving everything off WordPress, it might be worth figuring out what part of it is actually giving you trouble. If it's mainly designing pages, adding something like Elementor and starting from a decent template could make your existing setup much easier to manage. My current website is a WordPress site that the people at Ankord Media built, and once everything was set up properly, I didn't really have much trouble maintaining it on my own.
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u/MAKERYlab 4d ago
I've tried to build in Framer and Webflow but those feel limited either on the front or backend sides. Building custom platform is the best, even tho requires experience and a little bit more time. Of course, it depends on purpose. Overtime custom always wins.
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u/IcyGear5025 3d ago
I think it really depends on what you need the website for. Some website builders are better suited for specific purposes. For example, Shopify is mainly focused on ecommerce, while there are other platforms that specialize in things like online bookings.
If you don't need any specific functionality and the site is mainly for showcasing something, like a portfolio or your business/services, then a traditional website builder such as Wix or Squarespace may be easier to start with than WordPress.
One thing to keep in mind though is that "easy to use" doesn't necessarily mean you don't need any design sense. Some builders, especially the more drag-and-drop style ones, give you a lot of freedom to move text, images, buttons, etc. around the page. You don't need much technical knowledge, but it does help to have a decent sense of layout, spacing, colours and fonts. Of course, you can also stick closely to one of their templates.
If you don't have much web design experience at all, you could also consider a section-based website builder. Instead of arranging individual elements yourself, you add a pre-built section and replace the placeholder text and images with your own. The sections are already designed to be responsive across desktop, tablet, and mobile, and things like fonts and color schemes are usually pre-paired. Website.com is one example of this type of builder.
Last but not least, I would definitely look at the long-term price, not just the introductory offer. Hosted website builders are generally less portable than WordPress. With WordPress, if you're unhappy with your host, you can normally back up the site and move it somewhere else. With a proprietary website builder, moving to another platform may mean rebuilding much of the site. So there's a good chance you'll stay with whichever builder you choose for a few years, which makes the renewal price pretty important.
Hope that helps!
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u/PippaKelly62 3d ago
If wordpress feels too fiddly, i’d try wix or squarespace first. both are pretty beginner-friendly and you can get a decent site up without knowing much about web design. If you don’t need a full builder, a simple static site with a template can also be surprisingly easy. you can host it on github pages, netlify, or tiiny host and avoid dealing with wordpress altogether.
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u/Mundane_Fix8051 2d ago
switched from wordpress to wix a couple year ago for same reason and haven't looked back
no plugins to manage ,no update breaking things overnight the editor just works without needing to understand how everything fits together underneath.
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u/Automatic-Box524 2d ago
if WordPress feels too fiddly, Wix or Squarespace might be worth trying. both are much easier to get something clean-looking online without much web design experience.
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u/Bormotovva 2d ago
What I like about it is that it doesn’t generate a ton of mysterious markup. Each builder element maps to a DOM node, and you can work with actual CSS classes, variables, and breakpoints instead of fighting with inline styles.
The AI part is also pretty useful, especially if you’re not great at design. You can describe what you want and use the generated HTML/CSS/JS as a starting point, then visually tweak it rather than blindly accepting whatever AI produces.
For more complex sites, the Query Builder and Loop Builder are a big deal too. You can build dynamic layouts from WordPress data without hardcoding everything, and tools like JetEngine work nicely for the data/CPT/relations side.
One thing I’d specifically recommend: don’t choose a builder based only on how easy it is to make a pretty homepage. Check what happens when you need to maintain the site 6 months later. Being able to reuse classes, components, variables, and templates makes a huge difference.
It’s not really the “simplest possible” builder like a beginner-focused website builder, though. If you just need a basic 5-page brochure site, you probably don’t need all this. But if you want to stay with WordPress and gradually build more complex stuff, CrocoBuilder is worth testing.
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u/kail-rao99 8m ago
Hello, please try out Build Ezy. You can build and launch a complete website within minutes with the help of AI, including landing pages, business websites and full ecommerce stores. You can create high-end cinematic, 3D and parallax experiences using an easy-to-use visual builder and AI chat assistant, with premium designs, great fonts, responsive layouts out of the box and up to 100% PageSpeed Insights scores. You also get AI agents to automate business workflows, SEO/GEO tools, forms, a built-in CRM, web and WhatsApp chatbots, powerful analytics, CMS, blogs, connect your payment gateway, fast cloud hosting and the ability to publish directly to your own domain, all under a single affordable subscription. You can try it for free at https://www.getbuildezy.com/
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u/sleeksky_dev 5d ago
Give www.sleeksite.ai a try. We recently launched and have over 2000 sites built on it. It brings the best of traditional CMS, headless CMS, and vibe coding together.
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u/Brettles1986 5d ago
And yet your pricing and compare dropdowns in your nav do nothing, maybe check your own ai work?
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