Once upon a time, building a website was nearly a black art, requiring an alchemy of design, project management, and arcane coding skills. But in the last decade, web development has completely changed—much to the benefit of small business owners. Drag and drop site builders eliminate the need to learn code or master complex software to build a functioning, custom-looking website.
The best drag and drop website builders are easy to use and offer plug-and-play functionality for business needs like ecommerce, appointments, lead generation, events, and marketing. Most hosting plans offered with these tools are also very affordable to get you started and can expand with your business needs.
We compared and tested dozens to find the best drag and drop website builders and ranked them below.
- Best for custom site design: Wix
- Best for creatives and luxe brands: Squarespace
- Best for online stores and restaurants: Weebly
- Best for appointment-based businesses: GoDaddy
- Best easy-to-use WordPress site development at a great value: Hostinger
- Best search engine optimization (SEO) guidance: HubSpot
- Most beginner-friendly builder: Webador
- Best for WordPress hosting: DreamHost
- Best for quick-and-easy AI website generation: Dorik
- Best for agency or team–client collaboration: Duda
- Best for selling on social media: Jimdo
- Best Drag and Drop Website Builders at a Glance
- Wix: Best Drag and Drop Website Builder for Custom Site Design
- Squarespace: Best for Creatives & High-end Brands
- Weebly: Best for Online Stores & Restaurants
- GoDaddy: Best Website Builder for Appointment-based Businesses
- Webador: Easiest Drag and Drop Site Builder for Beginners
- HubSpot: Best SEO Guidance
- Hostinger: Best Easy-to-use WordPress Site Development at a Great Value
- DreamHost: Best Website Builder for WordPress Hosting
- Duda: Best for Agency or Team–client Collaboration
- Dorik: Best for Quick & Easy AI Website Generation
- Jimdo: Best for Selling on Social Media
- How We Evaluated the Best Drag and Drop Website Builders
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Bottom Line
Best Drag and Drop Website Builders at a Glance
| Site Builder | Score Out of 5 | Free Plan | Starting Cost Per Month | Ecommerce Starting Cost | Free Domain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 4.98 | ✓ | $16 | $27 | ✓ |
| Visit Wix | |||||
 | 4.88 | ✕ | $16 | $23 | ✓ |
| Visit Squarespace | |||||
 | 4.64 | ✓ | $12 | Free | ✓ |
| Visit Weebly | |||||
 | 4.39 | ✕ | $2.99** | $2.99** | ✓ |
| Visit GoDaddy | |||||
 | 4.39 | ✕ | $7 | $12 | ✓ |
| Visit Webador | |||||
 | 4.3 | ✓ | $23 | $23 | ✕ |
| Visit HubSpot | |||||
 | 4.27 | ✕ | $2.99** | $2.99** | ✓ |
| Visit Hostinger | |||||
 | 4.21 | ✕ | $2.59* | $16.95* | ✓ |
| Visit DreamHost | |||||
 | 3.94 | ✕ | $14 | $21.25 | ✕ |
| Visit Duda | |||||
 | 3.91 | ✓ | $4 | $4 | ✕ |
| Visit Dorik | |||||
 | 3.45 | ✓ | $9 | $18 | ✓ |
| Visit Jimdo | |||||
*Starting cost per month with annual billing
**With annual billing and renews at a higher rate after the first year
Wix: Best Drag and Drop Website Builder for Custom Site Design
Squarespace: Best for Creatives & High-end Brands
Weebly: Best for Online Stores & Restaurants
GoDaddy: Best Website Builder for Appointment-based Businesses
Webador: Easiest Drag and Drop Site Builder for Beginners
HubSpot: Best SEO Guidance
Hostinger: Best Easy-to-use WordPress Site Development at a Great Value
DreamHost: Best Website Builder for WordPress Hosting
Duda: Best for Agency or Team–client Collaboration
Dorik: Best for Quick & Easy AI Website Generation
Jimdo: Best for Selling on Social Media
How We Evaluated the Best Drag and Drop Website Builders
Design-friendly site builders have intuitive tools that enable users of any experience level to build a website with little to no learning curve. They’re affordable, provide good value for the money, and include everything needed to build, launch, and manage a small business website. We analyzed about 20 site builders and narrowed our list to the top options overall based on the use case.
Our multifaceted evaluation methodology uses several approaches to provide you with the best possible advice on which website builders you should consider:
- Industry experts: We consider the opinions of a number of other high-authority experts who review the product space.
- Fit Small Business’ research and editorial teams: We give considerable weight to the prior opinions of our research and editorial staff who have reviewed and tested these products, while also accounting for product updates and changes.
- Hands-on testing: This allows us to get a feel for functionality and quality of user experience. Here, I used a fictional business called Mont Chevre Farms to test the drag and drop features for each provider, as well as AI design and content creation capabilities.
- Expert opinion: I factored in my own expert opinion, based on my 20-plus years of experience with web design, graphics, and content creation.
- Scoring: We used a proprietary numeric scoring rubric that averages scores for the following criteria:
- Cost
- General Features
- Advanced and Niche Features
- Support
- Expert Score
Click the tabs to learn more about how we weighted the rankings for our top picks:
Our Scoring Methodology
How we weighted each factor in this evaluation.
The best platforms offer competitively priced plans for professional-use websites. We compared plans 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.
We looked at the total value provided (e.g., storage, bandwidth, domain, and so on). We also compared features that would matter to someone wanting good design tools, such as the availability, quality, and variety of templates. Plus, we looked into whether a free image library is included, and the level of drag-and-drop capabilities (i.e., full, limited, or none).
Platforms were awarded higher scores for niche functionality and tools, like unlimited blogging, built-in AI site and content generation, and tools for appointment booking and social selling. We also checked their ability to sell digital products and rated each platform’s SEO tools and features since getting found online is a must-have, not just a nice-to-have.
Most platforms here are 100% beginner-friendly, but it’s nice to know that support is available should you need it. Providers were rated on the hours that support is available as well as the channel types (e.g., phone and chat) and whether a help center and tutorials are available online.
After many hours of first-hand experience building sites with these drag and drop site builders, we also took our own expertise into consideration. We tested each site builder to determine our top picks, verify the claims made about the editors and platform features, and even answered the toughest question of all: would we recommend it?
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
To a degree, all drag and drop website builders simplify the process of building a website. Even true beginners can build a fully functional website to establish their brand presence and grow online. However, our testing found that Webador and Hostinger were the easiest to use. Wix is also very easy to use, and you don’t have to sacrifice design freedom, if that is one of your objectives.
Wix is the best free drag and drop website builder, with Weebly coming in a close second. Wix offers the most extensive freedom in both site design and functionality in a free website builder. It also has robust SEO features to ensure your site gets found online. However, we don’t recommend using either of these free site builders if you need to use a custom domain—HubSpot allows you to do this 100% free.
Wix and Squarespace are both leading all-in-one business website builders, but they 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. Whereas, if you have an eye for design and are looking for the most design flexibility, Wix will be your better choice.
Even if you’re not a web designer, you may have heard about WordPress since it has been around for over 20 years. WordPress is considered a CMS similar to HubSpot and powers 810 million websites worldwide, or about 43% of the internet (Colorlib). The ecommerce system WooCommerce, which is built on WordPress, is the most popular ecommerce platform, with over 36% market share.1
This popularity means lots of web designers and developers can support you if you need it. However, WordPress typically takes more technical expertise to use than drag and drop builders, which is why hosts like Hostinger and DreamHost that add a drag and drop builder to a WordPress backend give you the best of both worlds.
Bottom Line
Getting your business established online is easier than ever before with the incredible range of site builders available on the market today. You can find options for every budget (even free) with intuitive and beginner-friendly editing tools, any type of functionality your website needs, and scalable plans to grow with your business.
While Wix may have taken our top spot for its overall design experience and functionality, these are all great options, especially if greater ease of use in the design tools and niche features and your comfort and familiarity with an established hosting provider or specific platform are factors in your decision-making. Many of these builders are easy to try and free with no obligation, helping you decide which one will best suit your needs and is most comfortable to use.
References:
[1]WordPress Statistics | Colorlib
