6 Best Drag & Drop Website Builders in 2022
This article is part of a larger series on Small Business Websites.
Drag-and-drop website builders eliminate the need to learn code or master a complex content management system to create a well-designed, fully functional website. The best drag-and-drop website builders are easy to use, offer free and low-cost plans, and provide modern premade templates to speed up your design process. We rank the top site builders below to help you find the right one to build your business’ website.
- Wix: Overall best drag-and-drop website builder for small businesses and best for custom visual site design
- Squarespace: Drag-and-drop site builder with the best templates and integrated ecommerce tools
- GoDaddy: Best drag-and-drop editor with built-in appointment booking and marketing tools
- IONOS: Site builder with the most affordable paid plans
- Bluehost: Best drag-and-drop builder for WordPress websites
- Webnode: Great drag-and-drop site builder for creating multilanguage websites
Best Drag & Drop Site Builders at a Glance
Provider | Free Plan | Free Trial for Paid Plans | Intro Cost Monthly of Paid Plans* | Key Features |
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✔ | 14 days | $16 |
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✕ | 14 days | $14 |
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✔ | 14 days | $6.99 |
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✕ | 30-day money-back guarantee | $1 |
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✕ | 30-day money-back guarantee | $2.95 |
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✔ | 15-day money-back guarantee | $3.90 |
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*Based on 12-month subscription with annual prepayment
Take our quiz to find out which drag-and-drop website builder works best for you.
Which drag-and-drop website builder is best for you?
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Wix: Overall Best Drag & Drop Website Builder for Small Businesses
What We Like
- True drag-and-drop site editor
- Maximum design freedom—full customizability
- Forever free plan to get online or use it just to test the platform
- 800+ templates to get you started
What's Missing
- Can’t change templates without starting over
- Having so many customization options could slow you down
Key Features
- Beginner-friendly
- Hundreds of modern templates and premade content blocks to help you build and customize quickly
- 250+ paid and free integrations available to extend functionality and capabilities
- Sell online, accept bookings and reservations, and create a membership site
Starting monthly cost (billed annually)
- Free (Wix subdomain and ads)
- Ad-free plans with a free custom domain and SSL from $16
- Ecommerce from $27
Wix is the best overall drag-and-drop site builder for small businesses. It tops our list because it’s the one that allows for the most customizations, offers a free forever plan, and packs a bunch of functionality into the platform with both native features and available integrations.
To start, Wix guides you to choose an industry and what type of functionality you want for your site (e.g., membership, online store, blog, portfolio, bookings, and more). You then have a choice to design your own site or letting the Wix ADI design a site for you based on a few questions.
If you choose to design your site yourself, you can then make a selection from a list of suggested drag-and-drop templates based on your industry. Alternatively, you can start with a blank template (with preformatted sections), or choose from templates that are most popular with Wix users. IONOS’ MyWebsite Creator is the only other site builder offering the option to start with a blank template.
Start with a premade template, blank template, or sort Wix templates by industry or popularity.
With Wix, you can drag elements anywhere within your web pages, giving you maximum design flexibility within a very user-friendly platform, especially compared to section-based editors. There are premade page blocks to choose from, as well as elements like buttons, menus, and galleries, and even more functionality, such as adding a store, blog, or content sections.
Having so many options could be overwhelming to a true beginner or someone just wanting a basic website, in which case Squarespace or GoDaddy’s section-based, drag-and-drop site builders could be more user-friendly options. On the other hand, it’s nice to know all the additional features will be available to you as your business grows when you use Wix to build your site.
Wix has four general professional website plans, three business and ecommerce plans, and a fully customized enterprise-level option. This gives a sense of the range of business types and sizes Wix can serve. All paid plans include 24/7 support, which will come in helpful if you need help designing your site or setting up any of the more than 250 integrations from the Wix app marketplace.
The Business plan is the plan you’ll need to sell products online and includes a slew of ecommerce features. For the value included, $27 a month is a bargain and lines up with the ecommerce plans of other providers, including Squarespace, which is one of the best ecommerce platforms.
Let’s take a closer look at the basic professional plans and the lowest-tier business (ecommerce) plan that make Wix one of the top all-in-one site builders. When comparing plans, keep in mind that the lowest-tier business plan starts at the same price as the Pro professional website plan, but includes a lot more functionality at the same cost.
Wix Pricing & Features
Combo | Unlimited | Pro | Business Basic | |
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Price per Month* | $16 | $22 | $27 | $27 |
Storage Limit | 2GB | 5GB | 50GB | 50GB |
Unlimited Bandwidth | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Free Domain & SSL Certificate | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Site Booster for Search Visibility | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Events Calendar App | ✕ | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ |
Accept Online & Recurring Payments | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✔ |
Video Capacity | 30 minutes | 1 hour | 2 hours | 5 hours |
Key Features Added per Tier |
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*12-month subscription, paid annually
Unique Wix Features
Wix offers the best of both worlds by combining functionality you’d normally need to use WordPress to obtain with the ease of use of a traditional site builder. Unless you need features requiring developer-level coding, Wix is the best drag-and-drop website builder for those needing a fully customized business website. Learn more in our Wix vs WordPress head-to-head comparison.
Wix is likely to have all major features and capabilities you could want in a small business website, especially when you upgrade to a Business plan. It allows you to:
- Sell physical and digital products online
- Accept recurring payments
- Create gated content (e.g., membership sites)
- Accept online bookings and reservations
- Set appointments and sync them to your calendars
- Sell tickets and manage events
- Sell artwork or stream video and music
- Take orders online
Using the Wix Drag & Drop Site Editor
The Wix drag-and-drop site editor is beginner-friendly and intuitive.
The Wix site editor is intuitive and beginner-friendly. While it requires zero coding, there is still a small learning curve involved with using it simply because it’s packed with features.
Something we loved while using the site builder was that you can use command keys you’re used to with other software (such as Ctrl-X) to undo items step-by-step. This is the kind of thoughtfulness that leads to intuitive user experiences.
Add just about any business website functionality you want, from selling subscriptions and accepting recurring payments to creating membership sites with gated content. To get started, follow along with the steps outlined in our article detailing how to build a website using Wix in five steps.
In previous reviews, we mentioned that Wix didn’t allow duplication of pages, which could result in design inconsistencies. However, that feature is now included as you can now easily duplicate any page of your website. Within the pages and menu tab, you will also find basic and advanced search engine optimization (SEO) settings so that you can fully optimize every page of your website, even on the free version.
As if the native functionality in Wix wasn’t enough, there are over 250 ready-made app integrations to add even more capabilities to your website. Notable among these is a PayPal integration that allows you to accept payments, including subscriptions and donations, which essentially enables ecommerce with the free plan. Integrate with Mailchimp for email marketing, add pop-up coupons to your site, and even display Google Ads on your site.
Our Expert Opinion
If you’re looking for the overall best drag-and-drop website builder for small businesses, choose Wix. It’s not only the best in terms of its site editor with maximum design freedom, but it’s also designed to be easy. It doesn’t matter whether you have web design experience or not—you can build a professional business website with all the functionality you desire.
Pro tip: The best site builders make it easy to quickly build a website. But you can fast-track the process by hiring a freelance web designer on Fiverr for anywhere from under $100 to just a few hundred dollars. You’ll find freelancers skilled in building on your preferred platform who can create your site quickly, optimize it for search, set up your store, and integrate third-party apps.
Squarespace: Best Templates & Ecommerce Tools
What We Like
- 7.1 version brought many improvements related to design, including the ability to switch themes without starting over
- Modern, award-winning templates, including industry-specific designs
- Built-in SEO tools and tips
What's Missing
- Not as fully customizable as Wix and fewer templates and integrations
- Getting to various SEO settings takes a bit of clicking compared to the ease of this with Wix or IONOS
- No free version and few third-party integrations
- Add-ons can get expensive
Key Features
- Beginner-friendly
- Annual plans include hosting, SSL certificate, and a free domain name
- Multiple contributors
- Google Workspace account with Gmail business email free for 12 months (Business plan or higher)
- 30+ plugins to extend functionality, including email and text marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), shipping, accounting, and order management tools
- Add-ons for membership sites, appointment booking, email marketing, and restaurants
Starting monthly cost (billed annually)
- Ad-free plans with a free custom domain and SSL from $14
- Ecommerce from $23
Squarespace consistently ranks as one of the best website builders for small business, and stands out for its modern, impeccably designed and industry-specific templates. These enable you to easily build a professional website with very little customization. Your site will look like you spent thousands of dollars to have it professionally designed, and yet its all-inclusive plans start at just $14 per month.
Using Squarespace’s drag-and-drop editor starts with choosing a template, and there are more than 100. The platform guides you to the templates that would be best for your business based on industry (restaurant, fashion, photography, and so on) or you can filter designs by functionality: online store, portfolio, memberships, blog, scheduling, or one-page site templates. Unlike Wix, we didn’t find an option to start with a blank template.
Browse the library of Squarespace templates by industry, functionality, or popularity.
While the previous version of Squarespace (7.0) was fairly limited in terms of design capabilities, 7.1 addressed many of those concerns. Squarespace users can now switch out templates and themes more easily, and the section-based design editor is easy to use (if somewhat limited in terms of what can be customized, especially compared to Wix). However, this is also typical of most section-based editors.
For example, while you can add premade content blocks with columns, it’s not intuitive as to how to change the number of columns in the section. Column-based sections also use spacers rather than settings to define the amount of space between columns or the section edge. Once you start trying to move and change spacers, it’s easy for the section’s design to run amok, especially for beginners.
If you’re OK using the content section blocks more or less as is (and they are impeccable), you will be able to quickly build and customize a one-page website or multipage website with a portfolio, blog, and even an online store very quickly. However, don’t expect the visual variety of selections with the prebuilt sections and elements that you get when customizing with Wix.
Squarespace makes it easy to connect payment processing through Square, PayPal, and Stripe. It’s easy to access your site’s analytics to see how much traffic your site is getting and where your traffic is coming from, and set up keywords relative to your site.
You can also add page-level search engine optimization (SEO) settings such as SEO title and description. If SEO is a top priority for your site, check out the best website builders for SEO.
Squarespace Pricing & Features
Personal | Business | Commerce | |
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Price per Month* | $14 per month | $23 per month | $27 per month |
Unlimited Storage & Bandwidth | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Free Domain Name | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Free SSL Certificate | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Free Google Email & Workspace Account for 1 Year | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ |
Premium Integrations | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ |
Ecommerce With Unlimited Products | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ |
Transaction Fees | N/A | 3% | 0% |
Key Features Added per Tier |
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*With a 12-month prepaid contract. Monthly billing is also available at a higher cost.
Squarespace Add-ons
There are also add-ons you can purchase in addition to your Squarespace subscription which offer specific functionality:
- Member Areas: From $9 to $35 per month to create a membership site with gated content—find out why Squarespace is our top pick for the best membership website builders.
- Scheduling: From $14 to $45 per month for appointment booking with calendar syncing, custom payment settings, reminder emails and texts, and bundled client deal packages with gift certificates and multi-appointment or recurring appointments.
- Tock: From $199 to $699-plus per month for restaurants, wineries, and others as a complete reservation, table, take-out, event, and guest management system.
Unique Squarespace Features & Add-ons
Squarespace offers some unique native and integrated features as far as website functionality and marketing. Many are geared toward ecommerce, such as inventory, order management, payment processing, and shipping. In addition, there are paid add-ons appropriate for membership-based sites, service and sales-forward companies needing built-in appointment booking, and hospitality businesses. For example, Squarespace allows you to do the following:
- Easily add an online store to any drag-and-drop page template
- Use pop-up banners and promotions to engage site visitors and drive subscriptions
- Check your site and sales analytics from anywhere and any type of device
- Easily display content from your social media channels on your website and auto-publish content from your website to social channels
- Create shoppable posts on Instagram from your website
- Let visitors save your webpages and media to their Pinterest with the click of a button
- Hire a Squarespace expert to build or perfect your site directly from the platform
- Expand the capabilities of your site with Squarespace extensions for third-party customer relationship and order management, dropshipping, accounting, and marketing apps
Using the Squarespace Drag & Drop Site Editor
You can drag-and-drop or point and click to add prebuilt content blocks to add sections to your Squarespace webpages. While it doesn’t offer the complete design freedom of Wix, the limitations can be ideal for web design beginners as it’s really difficult to break (aka ruin) a template.
In other words, you’ll be hard-pressed to mess it up and it’s unlikely to turn out homemade-looking—so it’s great for those with limited skills who want a beautiful site. For more insight, check out the step-by-step instructions on how to build a website with Squarespace.
Our Expert Opinion
Squarespace is a good choice for users of all skill levels who need a high-quality site that both looks and functions as if it were built by a web design expert. Beyond the build, it also provides tools to drive traffic to your website, build your online presence through social media, and set up a fully functional ecommerce, membership, restaurant, or service-based business website.
Find out more in our expert Squarespace review or take advantage of the 14-day free trial to test the capabilities of its drag-and-drop website builder.
GoDaddy: Best Online Booking & Marketing Tools
What We Like
- Visual site editor
- Swap out templates any time
- Ultra-easy-to-use and intuitive
- Connect and post to social accounts and manage Google and Yelp listings—even in the free version
- Ability to use the free drag-and-drop website builder version indefinitely
- Free version includes chatbots and online booking tools
What's Missing
- Section-based editor vs a true drag-and-drop editor like Wix
- A template is chosen for you based on your industry (no access to full library to choose a specific template)
- Domain isn’t included
- Costs increase on renewal
Key Features
- Great choice for true beginners
- Easily build a site and get online in one day
- Built-in booking and reservation tools make it a great option for service-based businesses
- Online booking tools including ability to choose service and provider
- First paid plan allows you to sell via online pay links and a virtual terminal
Starting monthly cost (billed annually)
- Free (GoDaddy subdomain and ads)
- Ad-free plans and free SSL from $6.99
- Online stores from $14.99
- Memberships with recurring payments from $13.99
GoDaddy offers one of the easiest drag-and-drop website builders—see just how easy in our GoDaddy website builder review. The visual site editor is intuitive, simple, and beginner-friendly, and comes standard with built-in booking tools. Not only is this helpful for any service-based business, but it also makes it a good choice for sales-forward companies that want to make it easy for clients to schedule a demo or presentation.
To start, GoDaddy will ask what the primary goals of your site are: selling online, letting customers book appointments or meetings, basic website, informational, or to promote yourself. Based on your answers to the initial questions, it will build a site for you. This is in contrast to other drag-and-drop website builders, which let you pick a template first. But don’t worry—you can change your site’s template and theme going forward.
Preview or publish your site, review next steps to make sure your website is ready to go, change the theme or settings of your site, or choose a premium plan for more features.
Once it’s served up your site design, you’ll see a pop-up for “Suggested next steps” to guide you through the essentials of setting up your site. There’s also an option to “Hire an Expert” and a menu for customizing your site. If you click on “Theme” and “Try a new look,” you’ll get to choose from a selection of templates based on your business type.
After your site is set up, you have the option to change templates when using GoDaddy’s drag-and-drop site builder.
GoDaddy Site Builder Pricing & Features
Free | Basic | Premium | Commerce | Commerce Plus | |
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Price per Month* | $0 | $6.99 | $13.99 | $14.99 | $29.99 |
Renews At* | N/A | $11.99 | $21.99 | $24.99 | $44.99 |
Unlimited Storage & Bandwidth | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Connect Your Domain | Subdomain | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Free SSL Security | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
One-time Appointment Booking | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Online Store | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ |
Key Features Added per Tier |
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*With annual billing
Unique GoDaddy Site Builder Features
GoDaddy is a great option for those looking for built-in marketing tools. For example, with any paid plan, you can send a certain number of promotional emails to your contacts. It also has built-in booking tools, allowing customers or clients to schedule appointments (with any plan) and process booking payments directly from your site (beginning with the Premium plan). Its features allow you to do all of the following:
- Easily sell services and accept bookings online
- Templates are interchangeable, so you can swap them out any time
- Boost sales with integrated social shopping and advertising tools with upper-tier plans
- With any plan, automate social posts to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter by scheduling them from your dashboard
- Create branded content in the GoDaddy Studio to post on your social channels
- Send 100 to 25,000 emails to your customers from the dashboard (depending on plan)
- Segment emails with tailored content (any plan)
- Create and manage your Google Business Listing and Yelp business listing (any plan)
- View all your transactions from the GoDaddy Payments Hub
- Get paid easily using Pay Links and GoDaddy’s virtual terminal with any plan
Using GoDaddy’s Drag & Drop Site Editor
GoDaddy’s drag-and-drop builder is one of the most intuitive section-based editors. Edit content visually and quickly customize a template.
Like all the best drag-and-drop website builders, GoDaddy makes building a website quick and painless. The interface is very user-friendly and intuitive, even for beginners. Edit your site’s content visually and click “preview” to see what it will look like online. Use our step-by-step instructions for how to build a GoDaddy website as you evaluate whether it’s the best option for your business.
Note that it doesn’t come with the complete design flexibility you get with Wix, so while you can drag-and-drop content blogs into your web pages, you can’t necessarily move elements anywhere. Granted, this can help ensure your site looks professional, so it’s not a bad thing for web design beginners to have to color inside the lines, so to speak.
Our Expert Opinion
GoDaddy is one of the best drag-and-drop website builders for small businesses thanks to a forever-free plan and intuitive editor. Its native features make it especially appropriate for service and sales-oriented businesses that want to make it easy for clients to book an appointment. In addition, the built-in marketing tools are useful for any business looking to build an online presence and communicate easily with subscribers and followers.
IONOS: Most Affordable Paid Plans
What We Like
- $1 per month plan pricing for the first year is budget-friendly—especially for startups—and renews at just $5
- Ecommerce from $1 per month
- Easy to add SEO content
- Includes a professional email address and free SSL certificate
- 99.99% uptime guarantee
What's Missing
- No free version or trial
- If you need to switch templates, you lose everything
- No blank template option to start with
- Not as fully customizable as Wix
- Costs increase on renewal
Key Features
- Beginner-friendly
- MyWebsite Now editor (Starter) for fastest build time
- MyWebsite Creator editor (Plus or Pro) for customization and more functionality
- 17,000+ royalty-free graphics
- Email newsletter, booking forms, and calendar tools
- Integrations, animations, parallax scrolling, and video backgrounds with Plus or Pro plan
- High level of customer support 24/7, including chat, email ticketing, and phone callback
Starting monthly cost (billed annually)
- $1 per month for the first year includes hosting, 1-year free domain, SSL security, and one email account
- Online store plans from $1 per month the first year
Like GoDaddy, IONOS (formerly known as 1&1 or IONOS by 1&1) started out in the realm of domain registration and hosting. It has long offered low-cost bundled solutions that are great for small business and startup websites. While there is no free version for the IONOS website builder, there is a money-back guarantee and you can essentially “test” the site builder for 12 months for $1 per month.
IONOS actually has two different drag-and-drop editors for building websites. Both are beginner-friendly. The most basic one is MyWebsite Now, which is recommended as the best option to get a site up quickly. MyWebsite Creator is the more customizable site builder.
We’ll take a look at both of them below, beginning with the more basic MyWebsite Now site builder, which comes with the Starter plan. To start, you will choose the Starter plan for a site with a store or a site without a store. This has no impact on introductory plan costs, but does affect renewal price.
Then you can either jump right into the site editor or add some details such as project name and goals, or connect your domain and create your (included) professional email address. Once you open the site builder, you can browse and choose from 18 industry-based templates.
Choose from IONOS website templates before using the site editor.
The MyWebsite Now drag-and-drop website editor that comes in the Starter plan is section-based, similar to Squarespace and GoDaddy. It’s easy to add a new section, and there are prebuilt designs for various types of sections, such as about, articles, galleries, testimonials, headers, text, video, and so on.
It’s also easy to add a new page to your site or duplicate an existing page. IONOS further simplifies SEO as whenever you add a page or select one from the menu, it shows you important SEO fields to update, including the headline, SEO title, and description.
A view of SEO settings when adding or editing a page in the IONOS MyWebsite Now site builder.
IONOS’ more customizable drag-and-drop site builder is called MyWebsite Creator. With this version, you get features like animations, parallax scrolling, and more creative design freedom in general. After your site is set up, you can begin customizing right away or choose a template to start with. The first screen makes it easy to add social buttons, your business phone number, email and physical address, hours of operation, and a contact form.
Alternatively, you can start by choosing from more than 400 templates or limit selections by industry, color scheme, or popularity. Like Wix, you can also opt to start with a blank template, which gives you basic layout options vs a predesigned template with colors and images.
IONOS’ MyWebsite Creator drag-and-drop editor offers more templates and customizations.
There are far more customization options with IONOS’ MyWebsite Creator drag-and-drop builder, but with that comes more complexity in navigating the interface. For example, while SEO settings are readily available when adding a page in the basic editor, you have to go to a page’s settings to add SEO content with the Creator version.
With Creator, you can change global settings for text, buttons, images, and backgrounds as well as set custom spacing for rows and columns. A host of widgets are also available with this version, and they feel similar to those you may have seen with WordPress site builders.
Among the more sophisticated options with Creator are the rules under “Personalization,” where you can set up a variety of rules to engage site visitors. For example, you can create a custom pop-up offer or notification bar to display to specific types of site visitors, set a welcome video to be displayed to first-time site visitors, set special effects for holidays, or display a special message to returning visitors.
Within site settings, you can also customize various aspects of your site. You can add a favicon, set up redirects, add code to your headers (such as Google Analytics site tracking), set up backups, add a custom 404 error page, and designate the default language for your site among about two dozen options.
IONOS Site Builder Pricing & Features
Starter | Plus | Pro | |
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Intro Price per Month* | $1 | $5 | $10 |
Renews At* (No Store) | $12 | $10 | $15 |
Renews At* (With Store) | $15 | $20 | $35 |
Site Editor | MyWebsite Now | MyWebsite Creator | MyWebsite Creator+ |
Unlimited Storage & Bandwidth | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Free Domain, SSL Security & Email Account | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Free SSL Security | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Web Apps, e.g., bookings, reviews, customer accounts | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ |
Online Store (Optional With All Plans) | 500 products (expandable) | 5,000 products (expandable) | 10,000 products (expandable) |
Key Features Added per Tier |
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*With annual billing
Unique IONOS Site Builder Features
IONOS’ drag-and-drop website builders are beginner-friendly. Every plan includes unique features for site optimization, speed, and site visitor experience, such as image optimization to ensure large images you upload won’t slow down your site. Having two versions allows you to opt for a super-beginner-friendly editor to get your site up quickly, knowing that you can switch to the more robust drag-and-drop site creator as needs change.
- A professional email is included with your plan, and not just for the first year
- Optimization features include Google PageSpeed, image optimization for speed, and built-in SEO
- Set rules to automatically display pop-ups, banners, videos, and other content to specific site visitors (first time, returning, behavior-based, etc.)
- About two dozen default language options with Plus or Pro plan
- Multiblogger access with Plus and Pro plans for content marketers
- Add an online store to any plan, including 500 to 10,000 products (which can be uploaded by a comma-separated values (CSV) spreadsheet), set up flexible shipping and collection options, flexible payment options, and store management tools
- Sell on Facebook, Instagram, or Google Shopping
Using the IONOS Drag & Drop Site Editor
Edit or add sections to your IONOS website easily with prebuilt selections in the MyWebsite Now version.
IONOS’ more basic drag-and-drop website builder doesn’t offer nearly as much customization as Wix. However, as with other editors that offer less in terms of design freedom, this makes for quick website creation and keeps your design from getting muddled. If you prioritize fast site creation and publication over full customizability, it’s a good option, especially given the low introductory price.
The MyWebsite Now editor is very beginner-friendly. It’s easy to change site-wide settings for colors (individually or with preselected palettes) and fonts, add shapes to increase the visual interest of your site, or set the spacing to small, medium, or large, depending on how much white space you like between elements.
The MyWebsite Creator site editor is also beginner-friendly but allows you much more design freedom. Which to use depends more on your budget and what functionality you want from your website. The budget-friendly Starter plan comes with the basic editor, while the Plus and Pro plans include the Creator version.
Unfortunately, if you decide you want to switch templates, you have to start all over with building your site. So when using IONOS’ site builder, be sure to spend some time checking out the templates you like best before building out a lot of pages or content. For an option where you can change themes and templates any time, choose Squarespace.
Another thing notably absent from IONOS’ site builder is a marketplace with add-ons, extensions, and third-party integrations like you get with Squarespace and Wix. However, there was a section in the Creator version for apps that said “Coming soon!” so this may be addressed in the future.
Our Expert Opinion
IONOS offers great value for the money in two different beginner-friendly, drag-and-drop website builders. Retail and ecommerce sellers that want to greet site visitors with special offers and information will especially love the personalization rules in the MyWebsite Creator version. Choose the Plus or Pro plan for the most customization, or begin with the Starter plan to get your website up more quickly.
Bluehost: Best Drag & Drop WordPress Website Builder
What We Like
- Unlimited websites
- All-inclusive hosting plans with affordable introductory pricing
- 300+ templates with the base plan, more than 1,000 design options with higher tiers
- WordPress is installed and core updates are managed for you
- Free domain and email addresses
What's Missing
- No free version or trial
- Base plan doesn’t include subscription forms to build your email contact list
- Can’t change your theme after it’s been added, just the styling
- Costs increase on renewal
Key Features
- Beginner friendly
- Visual drag-and-drop site editor
- All the benefits of WordPress in terms of plugins, widgets, and customizability—but without the learning curve
- Jump back and forth between the site builder and WordPress interfaces
- 24/7 support
Starting monthly cost (billed annually)
- $2.95 all-in-one hosting with free domain, SSL, email addresses, and WordPress website builder
- Ecommerce from $9.99
- Online stores from $24.99
Bluehost is one of the few WordPress drag-and-drop website builders available. It’s a great option for small businesses that want the versatility of WordPress with the intuitiveness of a site builder platform. This could be an especially great option for anyone who has struggled to get the custom look they want for their WordPress site through Gutenberg blocks or even premium themes and templates.
In addition, you can move between the Bluehost WordPress website builder and WordPress administrative dashboard easily. This enables you to expand your site’s functionality through plugins, which may mean you don’t need to access higher tiers with Bluehost to get the capabilities you want from your site, such as the ability to accept payments.
However, this also assumes that you have a basic working knowledge of WordPress. In that case, have no fear, as you don’t have to know how to use WordPress to get a fully functional website, including an online store, using Bluehost’s site builder.
Add and customize a section using Bluehost’s WordPress website builder.
As with other site builders, it’s easy to add a new section and customize the background, image, buttons, and other functionality. Likewise, you can easily add a page and assign it to the menu. Similar to WordPress (and unlike some of the other site builders), you can add pages to your menu as submenu items vs simply designating whether to show or hide it in your site’s navigation.
Add a page to a navigation menu (Source: Bluehost)
Bluehost Site Builder Pricing
Basic | Pro | Online Store | |
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Intro Price per Month* | $2.95 | $9.95 | $24.95 |
Renews At* | $10.99 | $14.99 | $39.95 |
Unlimited Storage & Bandwidth | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Unlimited Websites | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Free Domain & SSL Certificate | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Free Email Accounts | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Accept Online Payments | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ |
Accept Recurring Payments | ✕ | ✕ | ✔ |
Key Features Added per Tier |
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*Billed annually
Unique Bluehost Site Builder Features
Bluehost is unique in offering a WordPress-based, drag-and-drop website builder. It bridges the gap between WordPress page builders and all-in-one site builders like Squarespace and Wix. It allows you to create a fully functional WordPress website in far less time, without having to learn the ins and outs of the WordPress dashboard, the plugin ecosphere, and the inevitable moment in the life of a WordPress developer when they need to touch code.
- Landing page templates to optimize lead generation and sales campaigns
- Templates for a variety of ecommerce pages and content after the base tier
- An online store with unlimited products beginning with the Pro plan
- Smart artificial intelligence (AI) ensures your site looks good no matter what device it’s viewed on
- Built-in email marketing
- Smart templates to jump-start your website building process
Using the Bluehost Drag & Drop Website Builder
As with other site builders, before you can start using Bluehost’s drag-and-drop WordPress site builder, you will answer some basic questions. Smart artificial intelligence (AI) will evaluate your input for industry, colors, and business information and choose a template for you. As you can’t change your theme afterward, be sure to take some time exploring the templates before choosing one that will work for your business’ website.
While you can’t change your theme, you will still be able to change the look of your website when you want a refresh. Through the appearance tab, you can change settings for headlines, choose a light or dark interface, and customize the colors and fonts of your site.
Our Expert Opinion
If you’ve been waiting for someone to make building a WordPress website easy, your day has come. Thanks to Bluehost, you can use a drag-and-drop website builder to build a WordPress website in a fraction of the time. Read our Bluehost review to find out more about the quality of offerings and customer care of this provider, or start building your WordPress site today with the intuitive drag-and-drop site builder.
Webnode: Best Drag & Drop Website Builder for Multilanguage Websites
What We Like
- Two-language multilingual sites with the Standard plan and unlimited languages with the PROFI or Business plan
- Ecommerce from $12.90 per month
- Highly developed modern templates come packed with what you need
What's Missing
- Free plan is only enough to get a feel for the site editor
- SSL certificate isn’t included
- Can’t change templates without starting over, unlike GoDaddy
- Sites have ads until the Standard plan
- Bandwidth and storage is limited regardless of tier
Key Features
- Beginner-friendly
- 100+ templates available
- Easily build a membership site
- Built-in tools for ecommerce and membership-based businesses
- Up to 1,000 professional email accounts for your domain, depending on plan
Starting monthly cost (billed annually)
- Free plan (limited use)
- $3.90 (displays ads)
- Ad-free plans with free domain, email addresses, memberships, and ecommerce from $12.90
Webnode stands out for being one of the most beginner-friendly editors, enabling just about anyone to build a high-quality website in a very short period of time. Part of how it does this is by having well-developed templates. So, if you choose a template that suits your industry, it will come with everything your site needs. All you’ll need to do is customize photos and text.
Webnode has hundreds of templates to make it easier to envision and build your site.
To start, create a free account (no credit card required) and then choose whether you want a website or an ecommerce site. From there, choose a template from among several hundred sleek, modern designs. Templates are sorted by business type, and you can also filter by newest and most popular. You can preview a site to see what it looks like “live” before choosing the template.
You can then enter your business’ contact information and get your site set up with your chosen template. Upon landing at the editor, it’s not readily apparent all that you can do to customize it. However, as you hover over various sections, you’re shown where you can edit items on the page, add or delete sections, and so on.
Edit and add sections using the Webnode drag-and-drop website builder.
As with IONOS, when adding a section, there are widget-style options that feel very similar to items you can add in WordPress page builders. It’s easy to upload images, add products, and edit your site’s global settings. Site settings is also where you will configure store settings and connect your Google Analytics for tracking and site metrics (plan-dependent).
To get to SEO settings, you need to go into the Pages tab at the top of the screen. From there you can choose a page and then select the drop-down to view or add a page title, meta description, and keywords to better help search engines find your content.
Webnode Pricing & Features
Limited | Mini | Standard | PROFI | |
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Price per Month* | $3.90 | $7.50 | $12.90 | $22.90 |
Storage Limit | 100MB | 500MB | 2GB | 5GB |
Bandwidth Limit | 1GB | 3GB | 10GB | Unlimited |
Free Domain | Connect to domain only | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Online Store | ✕ | ✕ | ✔ | ✔ |
Email Accounts | ✕ | 1 | 20 | 100 |
Memberships | ✕ | ✕ | 100 members | Unlimited |
Multilingual Sites | ✕ | ✕ | 2 languages | Unlimited |
Key Features Added per Tier |
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*Billed annually; save by agreeing to even longer-term contracts
Unique Webnode Features
There’s a lot you can do with Webnode thanks to its range of unique features. Whether you’re looking for an easy way for your team to collaborate and manage your website, or trying to build a multilanguage site so that you can connect with your audience, no matter which language they speak, Webnode offers features to help.
- Invite collaborators to give editing access to other users
- Get one professional email account beginning with the Mini plan and up to 1,000 at the highest tier
- Create a multilanguage website by adding languages (Standard and above)
- Site backup and recovery included in the three uppermost plans
- Connect Google AdSense to turn your site into a money-maker (Standard and above)
- Multilingual websites from two languages (Standard) to unlimited (PROFI and Business plans)
Using Webnode’s Drag & Drop Editor
Webnode gives users the ability to duplicate pages as well as add prebuilt pages to your theme (e.g., a member’s area page for membership sites). This makes it easy to quickly build out multiple web pages in addition to the standard pages included with the template. Like Bluehost, you can then easily add pages as submenu items in the drag-and-drop menu editor.
As with most drag-and-drop website builders, while you can change colors, fonts, and other stylistic elements, you can’t easily swap out templates. Take your time to find the right one for your website before you spend a lot of time customizing a template or adding content.
It’s important to note that your site will display Webnode branding until you upgrade to the third-tier Standard plan. This is a bit disappointing, as few drag-and-drop website builders display their branding on your site when you subscribe to a paid tier.
Another area where Webnode isn’t keeping pace with competitors is storage and bandwidth. Even at the top tiers, storage is limited, which could hamper use among photographers, graphic design firms, and other businesses that want to build an online portfolio without sacrificing quality. Squarespace, IONOS, and GoDaddy all offer unlimited storage straight out of the gate.
Our Expert Opinion
While Webnode’s starting prices are attractive, most businesses will need to upgrade to the Standard tier at a minimum. Keep this in mind when comparing Webnode to other drag-and-drop site creators as apples-to-apples, another might be a better choice. If you love a clean, modern interface, want multilingual site capabilities, and love the idea of having email addresses included, this could be ideal for you.
How We Evaluated the Best Drag & Drop Website Builders
All-in-one site builders enable users of any experience level to build a professional site with little to no learning curve. They should be affordable, provide a good value for your money, and include everything needed to build, launch, and manage a small business website. We analyzed about a dozen site builders and narrowed our list to the top six.
When it comes to the best drag-and-drop website builder for small businesses, Wix is our top pick. It’s affordable, intuitive and easy to use, fully customizable, and provides integrations and native features that make it a universally adaptable site-building platform. You can try it without risk using the free version—so get started today and create the website you envision for your business.
Click the tabs to learn more about how we ranked the top drag-and-drop website editors:
25% of Overall Score
The best drag-and-drop website builders offer competitively priced plans for professional-use websites. We compared plans not only by price alone but also by price for plan type and contract length. We also considered whether a free version was available as well as the length of free trial periods and money-back satisfaction guarantees.
25% of Overall Score
One of the biggest reasons to use a drag-and-drop editor is the ease of use in building and publishing your business website quickly, so this was one of our top concerns. We ensured that users wouldn’t need prior web design or development experience, that no coding skills were required, and that the interface was generally intuitive and easy to use.
25% of Overall Score
In addition to the quality of the site editor, we also evaluated the quality and quantity of prebuilt drag-and-drop website templates and themes, which set users up for building great sites. Since each platform offers standout features, we looked for niche features or unique functionality that might make a site builder better in some business use cases.
15% of Overall Score
In addition to the essential ease of use and features we expect from any drag-and-drop website builder, we looked at the total value provided in feature sets. We also gave extra points for money-saving bundled extras such as a free domain name, free SSL certificate, and free business email.
10% of Overall Score
After many hours of firsthand experience building sites with these drag-and-drop site builders, we also took our own expertise into consideration. We analyzed each to give you our expert opinions and top picks, including the amount of customer support available should you need help building your site.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Which is better: Wix or Squarespace?
Wix and Squarespace are both leading all-in-one website builders, but are not without their differences. For example, Squarespace is more predesigned to ensure that no matter what your experience with web design is, your site will look professional. However, if you have an eye for design and are looking for the most design flexibility, Wix will be your better choice. Get the complete breakdown of Wix vs Squarespace.
Are there any website builders that are free for nonprofits?
Yes, the premium version of IM Creator is available to nonprofits, students, and artists for free. The free version includes unlimited storage and bandwidth, but you will still need to purchase a domain name to connect to your site. To get started, click on the Pricing tab and click “Apply now” to see if you qualify for a free account.
How much does it cost to hire a web designer?
The cost to have a website professionally built varies greatly from as little as a few hundred to thousands of dollars. Two major factors that influence how much websites cost will be how you source your web designer (e.g., freelance or a web design agency) and what your site specifications are.
If you just need a basic business website, you can get an experienced web designer to build your site for under $500 from places like Fiverr. If you are looking for a more fully optimized, branded, strategy-based, audience-oriented website, we recommend a digital marketing agency like Hibu.
Bottom Line
Getting your brand established online is easier than ever with the best drag-and-drop website builders. Starting from free, there are options for every budget, platforms that provide any type of functionality your website needs, and scalable plans to add features as your business grows. Not only will you save money building your site, but you will also continue to save going forward by being able to manage your website in-house.
Take Your Small Business Website to the Next Level…
- Download our free website basics checklist to make sure your new site has everything needed to succeed.
- Need inspiration? Check out our list of the best small business website examples.
- Drive traffic to your website using these easy website marketing strategies.