Best Website Builders In Canada For May 2024

Weebly gets the top spot for one of the best website builders because of its low cost, flexibility and ease of use. In 2018, Square acquired Weebly, which combined the power of Weebly’s drag-and-drop editor for site building and Square’s e-commerce prowess. Now you have the option to create a small business website with Weebly’s popular editor, or choose an online store and build it using Square’s no-frills e-commerce site builder.

Even if you choose to build a website with Weebly, you can add shopping cart functionality later. Plus, Weebly gives you hundreds of stylish theme designs (that are mobile-responsive) to get you started. You can choose a design based on industry, or simply choose one you like. Adding elements, such as text boxes and buttons, is easy enough, but you’re locked into designing on a grid, so you’re limited on how much you can customize your site.
Weebly is generous with its storage and bandwidth, and it includes features to help you build an audience through email and social media marketing tools.

Standout feature: If you decide you don’t like your Weebly theme, even after adding your content, you can switch themes and your content stays. It’s an uncommon feature for most website builders.

Who Should Use It: Weebly is one of the best website builders for small businesses, entrepreneurs, bloggers, creatives and e-commerce sellers. Put plainly: It’s a great choice for anyone—especially beginners. Its intuitive site editor takes little time to learn, and the themes it includes ensure your site will look like a pro designed it.

Learn more: Read our Weebly Review

Weebly’s free plan gives users a good way to test its site editor without the time constraints of a free trial. However, its free plan does not allow you to connect to a custom domain. Instead, sites on the free plan use a Weebly subdomain, such as yoursitename.weebly.com. While the $9.15 CAD per month Starter plan allows users to connect a custom domain, it displays Weebly ads, so it is unsuitable for business use.

Those looking for a professional business website will need to choose the $13.99 CAD per month professional plan at a minimum. This allows you to connect a custom domain without Weebly ads. Although it’s more expensive than its personal plan, it is competitively priced and provides a good value with a free domain name and several e-commerce features that are not widely available at such a low monthly price.

Designing a site with GoDaddy’s website builder requires zero technical skill—all you have to do is answer a few questions about the purpose of your site and you’ll get a prebuilt site that’s ready for customization. Or you can choose a template you like and start adding your content through the drag-and-drop editor. GoDaddy doesn’t offer as many design options as some of its competitors, but the templates are clean and professional.

The all-in-one domain registrar, web host and site builder includes features to help you with marketing and SEO. Upgrading to an e-commerce site is easy too, and starts at $27.99 CAD per month with a long-term contract.

Standout feature: GoDaddy website builder stands out for its appointment booking tool. This enables service-based businesses to accept online bookings easily. Plus, GoDaddy uses its technology to design a site based on your needs. It will even add stock images related to your site or business theme.

Learn More: Read our GoDaddy Review.

Who should use it: GoDaddy offers features specifically for small businesses and online stores. Many of the marketing and SEO tools are built into the editor or dashboard, but not all come with your monthly plan.

GoDaddy’s feature-rich basic plan is suitable for most businesses looking to build a professional website. The biggest difference between the plans is the number of emails you can send per month. All plans come with built-in email marketing that enables you to capture leads on your site and automatically send email campaigns. However, the basic plan has a maximum of 100 email sends per month, whereas the standard plan has a maximum of 500 and the premium plan allows for 25,000.

IONOS is better known as a web host, but its website builder MyWebsite competes with some of the most popular standalone builders. The interface is intuitive, and the drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy for anyone to use.

What isn’t immediately apparent is that the lowest-priced plan still includes IONOS ads (that’s usually done on free website builder plans). So, you’ll have to upgrade to the Plus plan to get rid of them. The low-priced plan is fairly limiting with features—you don’t get the multilingual translation feature, parallax scrolling or photo galleries. No business apps for added functionality either, so you’ll have to upgrade if you want to add apps for reviews or booking, for example.

Standout feature: On IONOS’ Pro plan, you can create personalized content for specific visitors. So, first-time visitors will see something different than return visitors. You can also set it up to display content differently based on sales, holidays or other specific events.

Who should use it: If you’re willing to pay a bit more for the mid or top-tier IONOS plan, this website builder could work well for a small business website.

What isn’t immediately apparent is that the lowest priced plan still includes ads that are usually found only on free website builder plans. So, you’ll have to upgrade to the Plus plan to get rid of them. The low-priced plan is fairly limiting with features—you don’t get the multilingual translation feature, parallax scrolling or photo galleries. There are no business apps for added functionality either, so you’ll have to upgrade if you want to add apps for reviews or booking, for example.

Squarespace is one of the most popular and best website builders because it’s packed with useful features. You can create an online store, blog, portfolio site, a small business website or a membership site. The editor is user-friendly, but it may take a while to learn the location of menus and features. It’s kind of a cross between a drag-and-drop editor and a point-and-click editor.

Squarespace is known for its templates—the website builder has won awards for design. Most of the templates are minimalistic, bold and modern, and they’re all created by professional designers. They’re also mobile-responsive, so you don’t have to design a whole other site just for mobile users.

Standout feature: Squarespace lets you enable accelerated mobile pages (AMP), which lightens the load of blog pages. Reducing the size of images, using a specific font and removing custom code speeds up loading time on mobile phones.

Learn More: Read our Squarespace Review.

Who should use it: Squarespace is one of the best website builders for creatives—photographers, designers and other artists would do well with a Squarespace design. It’s also a good choice for an online store, especially with specialty features like the limited availability of labels.

Though Squarespace isn’t the cheapest website builder on the market, every plan is suitable for professional use. That said, many businesses will find that even its entry-level plan is a good value as it is packed with features from an extensive template library to a free domain and SSL certificate. Businesses looking to sell online will find its Commerce plan worth the price as it has zero transaction fees, which can save a good deal of money.

HostGator is one of the most affordable options of all the best website builders. The editor itself is simple to use. The true drag-and-drop editor is intuitive and allows you to drag an element anywhere on the page you’d like.

There’s no need to get separate marketing tools for your site, as HostGator includes email marketing campaign features and lead capture forms. You can even add an online store to your site with the lowest-priced plan, but you’re limited to three products.

There’s something about HostGator’s templates that seem decades older than its competitors. Many of them are too minimal (large image with a button in the centre) with very little actual design. Another take on this is that it gives you a blank slate to make it uniquely yours.

Standout feature: HostGator includes a helpful tutorial to get you started using its editor. Although many other website builders have the same feature, HostGator’s is particularly detailed, so you likely won’t need to contact customer support.

Learn More: Read our Hostgator Review.

Who should use it: We’d suggest HostGator for personal projects, blogs or a simple small business website. It’s affordable and offers an easy-to-use editor, but it’s lacking in template options.

Wix is one of the most popular website builders because it offers something for everyone. You can use the free plan to create a website, but you’ll be on a subdomain and have Wix display ads. The lowest-priced plan is a bit limiting, but you have access to lots of free apps to extend your site’s functionality.

On the higher-tier plans, you’ll get SEO and analytics tools, an events calendar and a logo maker. E-commerce plans offer even more, but they’re also a bit pricey.

Standout feature: Wix offers one of the biggest template libraries for an all-in-one website builder. There are more than 900 designer-created templates. Not all of them are winners—some look very dated—but most are modern and fit for multiple industries.

Learn More: Read our Wix Review.

Who should use it: Wix is a great option for new small business owners, especially those that want to try running an online store. Although the e-commerce plans seem pricey, Wix’s plans are comparable to competitors.

Shopify is primarily an e-commerce website builder. All of the paid plans come with built-in shopping carts and marketing features to help you sell online. There are only nine free e-commerce templates from which you can choose. If you don’t mind paying, there are dozens of premium templates available, but they cost about $100 USD ($136.27 CAD) on average.

The editor isn’t a true drag-and-drop editor, which may add to the learning curve a bit. It’s more point-and-click navigation, but it’s easy enough to figure out and use after you spend some time with the tools.

Standout feature: Shopify Starter costs $7 CAD per month and allows you to sell products through social and messaging apps. Plus, after your free trial, you will receive an additional month for just $1.

Who should use it: Only serious e-commerce small businesses should consider Shopify. It’s meant for building online stores, not just websites. It’s an ideal solution for brick-and-mortar businesses that want to sell inventory online too.

Zyro is a website builder with one of the lowest introductory prices we’ve seen. To take advantage of the low cost, you have to agree to a four-year contract. You’ll get your choice of more than 100 free templates to get you started on your website. The designs are clean and rely on hero images to anchor the designs.

The drag-and-drop editor is simple to use and includes basic elements you need to build a website for personal or professional use. Keep in mind that the low-tier plan is fairly limited. You only get 3 GB of bandwidth for data transfer and 1 GB of storage for your site files. There’s no shopping cart feature for the low-priced plan, but Zyro offers e-commerce plans as well.

Standout feature: Zyro offers a new tool that allows you to import an existing website to its platform. It’ll pull in the content from the site to its site builder, so you can essentially plug the content into a new design quickly and easily.

Learn More: Read our Zyro Review.

Who should use it: Zyro seems like a good fit for first-time website creators that don’t plan to add a lot of content. Its editor is very easy to use, and the price is attractive. You’ll have to register your domain on your own, and it’s a long commitment to get the low price.

First, we’d like to be clear that the WordPress we’re recommending here is the open-source free content management system (CMS) from WordPress.org, not the site builder of the same name at WordPress.com. The popular CMS is also one of the best website builders because of how much flexibility and freedom you get with the platform.

It’s important to know that if you choose to use WordPress to create a website, you need to secure web hosting separately. There are several (more than 8,000) free WordPress themes available, and many paid themes you can find.

On its own, WordPress’ site builder is easy to use, but it sticks to the bare minimum elements. There are tens of thousands of plugins you can add to extend functionality of your site, and many are free to use.

Standout feature: You won’t find a more customizable website builder than WordPress. The only caveat is that you may need to hire a freelancer to help code your website to make it do what you want, or learn how to use the right combination of plugins to get what you want.

Who should use it: WordPress isn’t difficult to use by any means, but it isn’t as easy as the all-in-one website builders. If you have some tech know-how and you want a customized website with web hosting of your choice, then WordPress is good for you—whether you want an info-only site or an online store.

WordPress is a free open-source content management system (CMS), however, that does not mean it won’t cost anything to build and maintain a professional WordPress website. Not only do you need to secure web hosting from a third party, but you also need to purchase a domain name and an SSL certificate. On top of that, businesses also often end up paying for premium themes and plugins. Get more details in our guide to WordPress pricing.

Although Duda is an outlier in this list of the best website builders, it earns its spot with its simplicity, flexibility and unique features. The lowest-priced plan is $14 USD ($19.14 CAD) per month with no introductory discount. To add on an e-commerce store, you’ll pay an additional $7.25 USD ($9.91 CAD) per month, making this one of the pricier options of the top website builders.

Like most site builders for small businesses, Duda doesn’t limit bandwidth or storage. The editor is easy to use with drag-and-drop functionality. Most of the elements are basic with a few advanced features. Duda offers more than 100 pre-built templates that you can customize however you’d like. All designs are mobile-responsive, and most of them are modern, clean and professional.

Standout features: You can create rules for visitors to your site and it gets fairly granular. For example, you can have specific content shown to site visitors who are geographically near your business. There’s also a content library that makes it easy for you to import content from a client’s existing website into a new design you’re creating.

Who should use it: We only suggest Duda for freelancer web designers or agencies. It’s a bit too expensive for personal projects, and it’s really made for specific use cases. So, if you have multiple businesses that require multiple sites, or you run a design or development agency, Duda could be a good fit for you.