How to choose a website builder

Jun 4

Written By Ed Stevens (New Classical Design)

If you spend way too much time staring at Facebook like I do you may notice a trend. There are two types of posts that tend to generate the most comments: A) political posts (which usually just involve a 50 comment exchange with a member of your extended family you haven’t seen in 7 years) or B) posts that ask for recommendations on which website builder to use for your website. Everyone will chime in on the latter question with enthusiasm: “I built my site on WordPress and love it!!” “I used to use Weebly but now use Wix” “If you aren’t using Webflow you are doing it wrong!!” and so on.

So what is right for you? I think you have to answer this question first:

How much time do you want to commit to your website?

Are you the type of person with the patience to figure things out? Or do you just want to get something up there as quickly as possible and not worry about it?

Most site builders offer out of the box templates where you can change out some pictures, update the content to info that is relative to yourself and maybe make a few style tweaks and you can get something up and ready within a matter of hours. I think for a lot of businesses this works just fine. But performing artists aren’t like a lot of businesses. If you want to stand out then you may have to take some extra steps to make your site look like it reflects who you are as an artist.

Here is a quick overview of a few popular website builder choices out there:

WordPress.com:

Experienced designers love WordPress because there is an endless sea of possibilities when it comes to what you can do with it. There are also countless plugins to help customize your experience further. But where does it fall short? For a layman, or even a skilled novice, you might get stuck trying to get a bunch of different plugins to talk to each other, running into paywalls on the 12 different plugins you are trying to use, and getting lost in making more customized changes through dealing with your sites sftp directory and the like. I personally worked for awhile in WordPress on a site recently and was frustrated at what I wasn’t able to do out of the box. Pro tip: if you go this route check out the Elementor or Divi plugins.

Weebly:

Ease of use gets high marks for Weebly, with some built in SEO tools and a pretty straightforward drag and drop editor you can get up and running without too much sweat. Now advanced users can go in and edit the templates with custom code, but Weebly doesn’t make this super easy. You have to understand their file structure pretty well if you want to get into anything more interesting such as adding in animation or JavaScript functionality. I found myself giving up trying to push through anything extra on their templates. But I was able to get a halfway decent looking site together in a fairly short time with their basic editing tools. Also I did not find any good way to manage events without paying for an extra plugin through this platform.

Wix.com:

From what I have seen this is definitely one of the more popular choices out there. At first glance their interface can seem a bit overwhelming, but that is because it does so much without the use of code. Plus you can switch to the developer mode pretty easily if you want to get very specific in your site build, but usually not necessary with a Wix site. It may take you some extra time to put together your site because there is so much to sift through in their editing tools, but your end result will likely be something closer to what you want.

Squarespace:

Full disclosure, I am currently a Squarespace affiliate and will earn a commission if you click through to their site and purchase their services. However, this relationship has not influenced my review of them and for what its worth I would not be using them for my site if I did not see value in their product. To be honest, I prefer working in Squarespace if only because I am most comfortable with their interface. If you want a decent looking site without much knowledge, Squarespace can give you that. Why I have decided to build my own business with the platform is how easy they make it to go in and do more. The newest version of Squarespace (version 7.1) has moved away from the typical “theme” or “template” starting points and instead has given you an interface that gives you a decent amount of control that you can take and run with. It takes a little bit of time to get the handle of how to edit what you want and where, but once you get it I have been able to recreate just about anything in a fairly short amount of time. Also, Squarespace has some decent built in SEO tools, an out-of-the-box event management page great for musicians, and some low cost ecommerce options for those looking to actually try and make money with their site. Oh, and of course, blogging features are a selling point if you like communicating with your audience in that way.

So what is the right answer?

Well if you are used to working in a certain platform I would likely stick with it, the time involved in learning these is not insignificant and you can generally get most of these sites to do what you want. However, for those getting started as per my experience I found Weebly’s basic editing tools the most limiting and WordPress the most daunting. Wix will get it done if you have the patience to sift through everything while Squarespace provides a happy medium of form and function. Cost-wise they are all pretty close with the difference being negligible when you factor in how much time you will take building it and using it. I would also factor in that WordPress and Weebly may require additional paid plugins to get you the features you need. In other words, don’t compromise on a platform to save a few bucks as you may get stuck with a site that doesn’t work great for you or takes considerably longer to develop.

Why do I use Squarespace?

Themes or templates (whatever your website builder calls them) are meant to do a lot of heavy lifting out of the gate. They are built to be mobile responsive to a point, and to provide all sorts of plugins like summary posts, event listings, etc. However, for most website builders the second you want to go in and add some customized content you tend to have to start from scratch and thus lose all of that built-in functionality your theme gave you. But Squarespace offers something really nice in this regards: they have designed their tools to be easily targeted with CSS so you can make changes to them without having to start from nothing. Also their events interface is pretty nicely setup (and also customizable with CSS) compared to other services that often make you pay for an additional plugin to use.

So if you are going on your own, don’t want to mess with code, and have some extra time on your hands you might get the most out of Wix (although Squarespace can also likely give you a decent looking site in this regard). But if you really want to take your site to the next level, drop me a note and I can set you up with a Squarespace site that does exactly what you want but doesn’t require months of your time to figure out how to do.

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