6 Best WordPress Alternatives to Create a Website in 2022

WordPress is versatile, but it’s not the easiest way to create a website. The best WordPress alternatives are more user-friendly, affordable, and full of features—from robust optimization, ecommerce, and online booking to third-party apps for even more functionality. Weighing the pros and cons to find out which of these WordPress competitors you should use depends on your budget, intended design, and feature needs.

Based on our evaluation, here are the six best WordPress alternatives:

• Squarespace: Best WordPress alternative for small business websites overall
• GoDaddy: Top WordPress competitor for service businesses and sales teams wanting built-in appointment booking tools
• Wix: Great alternative for small business owners who want to build a custom-looking site
• Bluehost: The most beginner-friendly alternative for building a WordPress-backed website using a custom domain
• Weebly: Best for small ecommerce businesses that need a free or low-cost alternative to WordPress
• IONOS: WordPress alternative with the cheapest paid plans in general

Best WordPress Alternatives at a Glance

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*Billed annually; Squarespace also offers monthly billing at a higher rate
**Reflects first year introductory pricing, billed annually, and renews at a higher rate
***Monthly cost of first ad-free paid plan, billed annually

Squarespace: Best WordPress Alternative Overall

Squarespace tops our list of the best WordPress alternatives. It offers over a hundred visually rich templates, an easy-to-use section-based editor, and tons of useful built-in tools like a search engine optimization (SEO) guide. If Squarespace’s tools don’t quite cover all your business needs, it also has a third-party application marketplace (though it’s not as comprehensive as Wix’s), as well as extensions and add-ons.

If you’re picky about having a modern website, Squarespace’s capabilities won’t disappoint. Aside from being the best WordPress alternative, it also tops our list of the best website builders for small businesses. In addition, Squarespace is a great WordPress competitor for beginners who need a professional and beautiful website up quickly, with enough customization in both design and features.

Ease of Use

As an all-in-one site builder, Squarespace is inherently easier to set up and use than WordPress. For example, creating a WordPress website generally entails purchasing web hosting, buying a domain, paying for an SSL certificate, installing WordPress, and uploading and activating themes and plugins. In contrast, upon purchasing a plan on Squarespace, you don’t have to worry as hosting, domain, SSL certificate, and themes are already included.

You can set up Squarespace and customize a template for your business’ website in minutes. For this type of easy setup and Squarespace’s top-of-the-line design and features, learn how to build a Squarespace website in five steps.

Squarespace also has a slew of marketing tools at your disposal. One newer feature is the Video Studio mobile app included in every Squarespace plan. Video studio uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help you keep your videos on brand, such as by providing a color palette that matches your website. The app also provides a step-by-step guide and templates to help you create effective video content to engage your audience and increase conversions.

However, as far as all-in-one website builders go, Squarespace’s editor is not the most beginner-friendly. We found that it took quite a while to get used to the minimalist interface and point-and-click editor, but once we got the hang of it, it was smooth sailing.

If you’re an absolute beginner or just want to get your site up and running as quickly as possible, use a sectional editor like GoDaddy instead. For even more options, check out our list of the best Squarespace alternatives.

Squarespace Pricing

*On an annual billing cycle, monthly billing is also available at a higher cost

Top Reasons to Choose Squarespace

Squarespace’s well-rounded features make it our top WordPress competitor. Here are some of its standout features:

• Versatile, modern templates: Squarespace’s modern templates are diverse, applicable to most industries, and visually impactful. You won’t have a problem building a beautiful website with any of Squarespace’s templates as a starting point. In addition, unlike WordPress and most site builders, it’s easy to swap templates in Squarespace without having to rebuild all your content.
• Advanced SEO features: Squarespace is on our list of the best site builders for SEO. All plans have built-in SEO tools that take little to no prior knowledge of optimization to make use of and a checklist to make sure you don’t miss anything.
• All the capacity you need: Squarespace includes unlimited storage and bandwidth on all of its plans. This makes it a great option for media-heavy websites like portfolios, which is why we also named it the best website builder for photographers.

Want to learn more about Squarespace before signing up for a 14-day free trial? Read our full Squarespace review now.

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GoDaddy: Best WordPress Competitor With Free Online Booking Tools

GoDaddy’s all-in-one website builder is intuitive and designed for absolute beginners. It doesn’t have a true drag-and-drop editor, so sites are less design-customizable than WordPress or Wix. However, this can also be a good thing as you can create and publish your website far more quickly, covering all the website basics in the process.

GoDaddy really shines for its online appointment and booking system. Multiservice and provider one-time appointment booking is even available in the free version. This makes it a great WordPress alternative for small businesses offering services (e.g., salons, spas, coaches, and so on) or sales-forward operations wanting prospects for booking demos or sales presentation meetings online.

Also available starting from free are chatbots that can welcome site visitors, field basic questions, and forward information to you for follow-up. For all these reasons, GoDaddy is also one of the top free site builders.

The free version offers a great way for you to see what’s available in both the free and paid plans and access additional built-in features. For example, you can post to social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and manage your Yelp and Google Business Profile listings from the site builder’s interface. However, it’s not optimal for long-term use for a business website as it’s housed on a subdomain and includes GoDaddy branding.

Ease of Use

GoDaddy is one of the easiest site builders to use and is perfect for beginners. It only takes five easy steps to build a GoDaddy website.

Since it’s a sectional editor (i.e., choose from premade sections to flesh out your page), you won’t get the design freedom you’ll have with a drag-and-drop editor like Wix. However, this means that there’s less room to make design mistakes, which can be a good thing for beginners who have never designed a site before.

Still, the design limitations may be frustrating to more experienced website builders. For this reason, we recommend GoDaddy as a top WordPress competitor to beginners, those who want a professional website up quickly, or those who want to make use of GoDaddy’s all-inclusive plans (along with its booking system).

GoDaddy Website Builder Pricing

*On an annual billing cycle

Top Reasons to Choose GoDaddy’s Website Builder

The GoDaddy website builder is one of the simplest ways to get your small business website up and running. It’s one of the most beginner-friendly among WordPress competitors, and affordable since you can start for free. Here are other features that make GoDaddy stand out:

• Affordable prices: GoDaddy website builder premium plans start at $6.99 per month for the first year; it’s one of the cheapest ways to build a website with no limits as to storage and bandwidth.
• Inclusive plans: GoDaddy’s plans are all-inclusive and unlike Squarespace or WordPress, GoDaddy doesn’t have any add-ons that drive up the cost. Instead, you simply pick the plan most appropriate for your business’ needs.
• Online booking and appointment scheduling tools: GoDaddy is known for its robust appointment scheduling system. It’s built-in and easy to use and available on all GoDaddy plans (including the free plan). Because of this, we recommend GoDaddy as the best WordPress alternative for service-based businesses.

Read our full GoDaddy review to learn more about the builder.

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Wix: Best WordPress Alternative for Site Design Customization

Wix is a beginner-friendly site builder with extremely flexible design thanks to its true drag-and-drop builder. It also has a robust third-party app marketplace with hundreds of plugins for customizing your website’s features. For these reasons, it’s the best WordPress alternative for anyone wanting to create a visually unique website or add specific functionality.

Although its prices for paid plans are on the steeper side, Wix’s design capabilities are more than worth it, especially if you want an alternative that’s nearly as customizable as WordPress without having to take the time to learn how to do it yourself. Plus, Wix’s base tier costs about the same as Squarespace’s, but with more design freedom.

Ease of Use

As an all-in-one website builder, Wix is easier to use than WordPress. For instance, it’s easier to add functionality available through Wix’s prebuilt features and third-party apps, and the drag-and-drop builder rivals the ease of any WordPress page builder.

With that said, having so many design tools and options can hinder beginners with absolutely no site-building experience. The sheer amount of customization available makes it more complicated than WordPress competitors like GoDaddy, IONOS, and Squarespace.

Wix’s design capabilities can make you prone to mistakes. Fortunately, this is mitigated by intuitive functionality—for example, you can press Ctrl-X to undo a series of changes, similar to other types of software. To take a closer look, check out our step-by-step instructions for how to build your Wix website and take advantage of their free plan to test the site builder for yourself.

For the less adventurous or true beginner, thankfully Wix also has an ADI option. The Wix artificial design intelligence (ADI) is a separate editor that builds a website for you using artificial intelligence. This website is edited with a sectional editor and is easier to use than its drag-and-drop builder. The downside is that you don’t get to choose your own template and you sacrifice the customizability Wix is known for.

Wix Pricing

*On an annual billing cycle

Top Reasons to Choose Wix

Wix’s editor makes it the top WordPress alternative for customizability. Here are some of its best features:

• Drag-and-drop editor: Wix is known for its powerful drag-and-drop editor that provides almost unlimited design customization without any coding knowledge required. It even beats out Squarespace when it comes to how much design freedom you can attain via the Wix editor.
• Template selection: Wix far surpasses any builder on our list when it comes to the variety and selection of templates. Although its templates aren’t all as sleek as Squarespace’s, Wix has over 800 templates for different industries to choose from.
• App market: To further enhance your website, Wix has an app marketplace with hundreds of third-party plugins. It doesn’t compare to how many plugins WordPress has, but it’s a very comprehensive selection for an all-in-one site builder.
• Industry-specific ecommerce store features: With the $27 per month Wix Business plan comes ecommerce, including industry-specific tools for restaurants (online ordering, reservations, and custom menus), companies needing online booking tools, ticket and event management, hotel and short term rentals, fitness professionals, and artists.

Take a look at our in-depth Wix review before creating your small business website on Wix.

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Bluehost Builder: Best Alternative to Easily Build a WordPress Website

As a popular web hosting provider that’s on WordPress’ recommended list of hosting companies, not all are aware that Bluehost plans also come with a free WordPress site builder. In fact, Bluehost’s website builder isn’t exactly a direct WordPress alternative, but rather the best alternative for small businesses wanting a WordPress website.

The Bluehost Builder works hand-in-hand with WordPress to give you the best of both worlds. The site builder integrates with WordPress, giving you the customization of WordPress with the easy editing tools of a drag-and-drop website builder.

Ease of Use

Bluehost Builder should be first on your list if you’re looking for exactly what WordPress gives but without the steep learning curve. Although it’s a drag-and-drop builder, it also has Smart artificial intelligence (AI), a feature that helps you build your website effectively. Its one-click WordPress access means you can jump back and forth between Bluehost Builder’s interface and your WordPress website.

Though Bluehost’s editing capabilities make it extremely easy to use, beginners may still have trouble deciding how best to add specific functionality to their sites. That’s because the majority of the functions of a Bluehost site need to be downloaded as plugins through WordPress (and not all plugins are compatible with each other). For an easier time, we recommend an all-inclusive builder like GoDaddy instead.

Bluehost Builder Pricing

*On an annual billing cycle
**Through WordPress

Top Reasons to Choose the Bluehost Builder

The Bluehost Builder is the best alternative for WordPress beginners who don’t want to learn how to set up, configure, and manage WordPress but still want all of the functionality that comes with WordPress themes and plugins. These are just some of Bluehost’s best features:

• WordPress integration: Bluehost Builder is powered through WordPress. With this builder, you can access almost all of WordPress’ plugins and build a fully customized website.
• Drag-and-drop editor: Though Bluehost is built on WordPress, it has its own interface. Its drag-and-drop editor is perfect for beginners who don’t know how to customize a website through WordPress or want to build a WordPress site more quickly.
• Affordable prices: Bluehost Builder plans start at $2.95 per month for the first year. While this isn’t as cheap as IONOS, it’s still more affordable than Squarespace, even on renewal, and includes up to five free email addresses, or unlimited emails when you upgrade to any higher tier.

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Weebly: Best Alternative to WordPress for Retail & Ecommerce

Weebly is another popular and beginner-friendly website builder. It currently has two editors: the Weebly drag-and-drop editor and the Square Editor. Both are intuitive and make it easy for anyone to build a professional website.

What sets Weebly apart from the competition is its free ecommerce features. It’s owned by Square and incorporates Square’s payment processing tools into all plans. This makes Weebly a great WordPress alternative for small sellers looking to expand their offerings online.

Ease of Use

Like Wix and IONOS, Weebly has two different editors. The original Weebly editor is a drag-and-drop that’s much easier to use than WordPress.

Weebly’s original editor relies on dragging blocks of content and editing them to flesh out your website. Its drag-and-drop system is the perfect mix of design freedom and intuitiveness; we found it slightly more customizable than WordPress, but still far less complicated to use than Wix.

The Square editor is a sectional editor (similar to what both GoDaddy and IONOS have), and is even simpler to use. Beginners will have no problem using either, but the Square Editor is just a little more intuitive. On the other hand, the Square Editor has a steeper learning curve than GoDaddy, and requires more clicking around to get where you want to go.

Again, both are still great options for beginners. It only really depends on whether you prefer the freedom that a drag-and-drop builder gives or the ease of a sectional editor. Learn how to build your website on Weebly now.

Weebly Pricing

*On an annual billing cycle

Top Reasons to Choose Weebly

Weebly is known for its affordable ecommerce plans, making it a top WordPress competitor for those looking to sell online. These are just some of the standout features Weebly provides:

• Ecommerce-enabled plans: Weebly has some of the most affordable ecommerce capabilities for any site builder, with online selling available on all of its plans (including the free plan).
• Affordable prices: Weebly’s prices are affordable, even if you upgrade to the second-tier premium plan to get a free domain to host your website ad-free. This mid-tier plan also comes with unlimited storage, bandwidth, and even more ecommerce features, making it great value for money.
• Third-party integrations: Weebly’s original editor for personal sites comes with a variety of third-party integrations, just like Wix. With these integrations, you can expand on the functionalities of your website. You can also add integrations for shipping, taxes, and even dropshipping, further enhancing your site’s commerce abilities.

Before building your website, read our Weebly review for more information.

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IONOS: Best Cheap WordPress Alternative for Small Businesses

IONOS is a top web hosting provider offering plans that include a built-in website builder. It’s known for its super-affordable plans with prices starting at $1 per month for its website builder plans, making it one of the cheapest alternatives to WordPress. IONOS is also one of the providers included in our list of the best drag-and-drop website builders.

Unlike Weebly’s cheapest plan, all IONOS plans enable you to build a professional ad-free website with added value such as a free domain (for one year), a free SSL certificate, and unlimited storage and bandwidth. Another standout feature with IONOS is the inclusion of a professional email account for the life of the contract, as many site builders only include this the first year.

Like Wix and Weebly, IONOS has two different site editors. The best option for the fastest and easiest site-building is the MyWebsite Now editor, which comes with the Starter plan. Customization with this editor is limited, however, as are the number of available templates.

IONOS’ Plus and Pro plans come with the far more sophisticated MyWebsite Creator editor. You also get more templates and far more design customization options in a section-based editor, comparable to GoDaddy or Squarespace. Like Wix, you can start with a blank template with the Creator editor for full design freedom out of the gate.

Ease of Use

Customizing templates in the basic site editor that comes with the Starter plan is easy (if not very flexible). For example, you can edit each section through content blocks, but you can’t change the layout of the sections themselves.

The upside to this is that there’s very little room to make mistakes, which is great for beginners building a website for the first time. It’s also great that for an additional fee, any plan can include an online store with ecommerce capabilities.

The main difference between the Plus and Pro plans is the number of products you can feature. All plans (including the Starter plan) include features you often pay more for with other website builders, such as integrated email marketing, booking tools, an events calendar, and search engine optimization (SEO) and site-boosting tools that help your site rank on Google and other search engines.

IONOS Pricing

*On an annual billing cycle

Top Reasons to Choose the IONOS Website Builder

IONOS may not be the most well-known website builder, but we found it to be one of the best WordPress alternatives. Here are some key features to focus on from IONOS:

• Very affordable plans: With introductory pricing starting at $1 per month (which only jumps up to $5 per month on their regular rates), IONOS is one of the cheapest WordPress alternatives you can use to build a professional website for your startup or small business, especially for the long term.
• Inclusive plans: Not only are IONOS’ plans ultra-cheap, but they also come with inclusions such as no-limit storage and bandwidth, free domain names, no ads, free SSL certificates, and free professional emails. If you’re looking to build a small business website on a budget, you can’t go wrong with IONOS.
• Beginner-friendly interface: Though IONOS isn’t the most powerful all-in-one site builder (try Wix or Squarespace for that), its sectional interface makes it easy for beginners to build a professional website in just a few hours.

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How We Evaluated WordPress Alternatives

In looking at WordPress competitors, we considered the customization capabilities that each site builder offers for both design and functionality. We also looked at how easy it is to use each of these site builders, and the affordability of pricing. The best WordPress alternative for your business will have a good combination of the three.

Our top WordPress alternative is Squarespace. Squarespace makes it easy for anyone to build a professional and sleek website for an affordable price. It’s overall extremely intuitive, with a great drag-and-drop editor and tons of built-in features and third-party plugins. Plus, unlike WordPress, it’s an all-in-one solution with hosting, domain, and site builder all in one price. Take advantage of the 14-day free trial to see if it’s the right option for your business.

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Click on any of the tabs for more information about how we evaluated these Wix competitors.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is there a reason not to use WordPress?

WordPress is popular as it gives virtually unlimited customization for both website design and functionality. It can be budget-friendly; however, when you start adding up the cost of hosting, domain, email accounts, themes, and plugins, the price can escalate quickly. Plus, it’s not the easiest, especially for beginners, as there is a significant learning curve. Fortunately, there are great all-in-one website builders out there you can use to build your website more easily.

Is Wix or WordPress easier?

Wix is far easier to use than WordPress. Before you can even start building a WordPress website you’ll need to get hosting, a domain, an SSL certificate, and install WordPress. It’s not intuitive to use, so you will need to buy a page builder or premium theme to get any visual drag-and-drop type of editing ability.

With WordPress, you’ll have to sort through thousands of plugins for tools like web forms, appointment booking tools, and so on, and then you have to update and maintain all of those elements over time. Get more details in our list of the top WordPress tips and tricks. If you do go with WordPress, top web hosting providers like DreamHost and WordPress-recommended Bluehost have hosting plans with WordPress site builders, which does reduce some of the hassle and learning curve.

With Wix, it’s all built in, including an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder and hundreds of plug-and-play app integrations. You can literally build a professional business website with Wix and get it online in a matter of hours, and paid plans include your domain and SSL certificate.

What is the cheapest alternative to WordPress?

Several of the WordPress competitors listed here offer free-forever plans, making it possible for entrepreneurs and startups to get online at no cost. However, this isn’t optimal for small businesses as the website resides on a subdomain and displays ads. IONOS offers the cheapest alternative to WordPress with ad-free site builder plans that start at $1 per month for the first year.

Bottom Line

WordPress may be the gold standard for building a fully custom website, but its steep learning curve makes it difficult to build a website quickly, especially if you don’t have experience. Using an all-in-one website builder can help you set up a small business website quickly and easily. We recommend Squarespace for its overall great design capabilities, robust third-party plugins, useful built-in features, and fairly affordable pricing.

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