Website Builder Comparison: Top Platforms Side-by-Side
Choosing the right website builder can be a daunting task. With so many platforms available, how do you determine which is the best fit for your needs?
Choosing the right website builder can be a daunting task. With so many platforms available, how do you determine which is the best fit for your needs?
In this blog, we’ll provide an in-depth website builder comparison, analyzing Flipsite, Squarespace, Wix, Figma, Framer, Webflow, and WordPress. We have also prepared individual pages for each platform so you can dive deeper into their differences. By comparing pricing, ease of use, performance, SEO features, and overall capabilities, we aim to help you make an informed decision.
DISCLAIMER: You are reading this on flipsite.io. This is the result of an internal study on our closest competitors, and we have tried to stay objective but are cognizant it is hard to communicate that. We welcome any feedback, from all competitors e.g. in our Discord or social media channels or directly through the contact form on the site.
Before diving into the platform-specific details, let’s outline the key criteria used to evaluate these website builders:
Let’s now compare these top web platforms side by side.
Squarespace is a popular choice for creatives and businesses, known for its stunning templates and all-in-one solution.
Squarespace plans start at $11/month, with the Business plan priced at $17/month. All the way to $36/month, making it a more premium option.
Squarespace offers a clean and user-friendly interface. While it’s beginner-friendly, some users may find the platform slightly rigid in terms of design flexibility. It is heavily built around templates and amateur or just starting website developers. An agency building and managing professional sites will quickly find limitations in terms of flexibility.
Squarespace’s performance is solid, though not the fastest. Websites built on Squarespace load reliably, but the litmus test of loading squarespace’ own website gave it a solid 86% which is definitely not from the worst end but also not premium either.
Squarespace provides excellent SEO tools, including clean URLs, customizable meta descriptions, and built-in mobile optimization. It does not offer image optimization or speed optimization out of the box, but you’d have to benefits of using WebP yourself or the size of the images to offer so that you don’t load too large images e.g. on mobile. Because speed is a leading factor in SEO, squarespace falls short on some parts of technical SEO although it scores well on the easy to implement parts. At the end of the day it’s a medium strong choice for those prioritizing search engine visibility.
Creatives and businesses looking for aesthetically pleasing websites. With Squarespace you are hooked into hosting your site with squarespace – they hook you with the website builder, but you end up paying for hosting on their side for life and are unable to transfer your site to another hosting service.
Wix is one of the most well-known website builders, offering extensive features, an AI-driven site builder, and high customization options.
Wix plans start at $17/month for personal sites, with Business plans all the way to $159/month. These prices are competitive, though add-ons will increase costs.
In Wix case the website editor doesn’t take center stage, but you start from templates and edit webshops, forms, connections etc. Wix’s drag-and-drop builder is however highly intuitive. The platform offers good design freedom from a design point of view, but the sheer number of options can be overwhelming for beginners and it’s not really web specific. It’s as if you’re designing anything, and not for the web in particular – which has its upsides but for power users and professional web developers it’s limiting what can be done with its guardrails.
Wix performs really well, though sites with extensive customizations or plugins may experience slower load time. In our previous tests of wix own frontpage it scored a solid 92% on page speed.
Wix offers robust SEO features, including an SEO Wizard that guides users step-by-step. Advanced users may find the level of control slightly lacking compared to for instance WordPress.
Users who have an easy to get started site, especially with their AI chat helping build the site in the beginning. Wix is a website builder for personal blogs, galleries and hobby sites. Wix sites need to be hosted by wix. Just like squarespace, they hook you with the website builder, but you end up staying with them forever, with diminishing returns as you don’t need the website builder as much as in the beginning but are still paying the same price as long as you want to have your site alive.
Figma is not a website builder, but a collaborative design tool. It’s included here for its role in designing prototypes and handoffs for developers. And because many still view it as a website designer with export functionalities to other website builders.
Figma’s free plan is suitable for individuals, while professional plans start at $15/editor/month.
Figma is geared toward designers and requires some expertise to use effectively. It’s not beginner-friendly for building live websites. And the disconnect between design and website builder, usually results in designs that look good at initial sight, but end up being a nightmare to implement, especially on desktop, mobile and different form factors.
As a design tool, Figma’s performance is top-notch for prototyping but irrelevant for hosting or speed testing.
Figma doesn’t include SEO features, as it’s not a publishing platform.
Designers creating prototypes and working collaboratively with developers.
Framer blends design and development, offering a unique platform for creating responsive, interactive websites.
Framer’s free plan allows for basic projects, while paid plans start at $5/month for hobby sites, the smallest business plan starts at $75/month. The pricing is also heavily gapped in terms of localization, CMS collections and pages – which will limit its usage to professional agencies. Framer's pricing has been regarded as controversial by the community, as they've changed it upping the price for several sites, especially agencies and multilingual sites having to pay several magnitudes more per month.
Framer requires some knowledge of design and development. It’s ideal for users comfortable with coding and advanced design tools, i.e. professional or aspiring professional website developers.
While Framer’s website talks about speed optimization pages built with it tend to be on the slower side of all the compared platforms. Framer’s own website scored the lowest score of 60% on speed tests out of all the compared platforms.
Framer offers solid SEO tools, including metadata management, sitemaps, and fast-loading designs optimized for search engines.
Designers and developers looking for a seamless way to bring interactive designs to life. As with others you are bound to framer’s hosting, which is the main way of them cashing out on your commitment. You are unable to develop your website without framer, and you’ll pay for the website editor even for the months you don’t use it because otherwise your site won’t be hosted.
Webflow combines the creative control of design tools with the power of a website builder. It’s a favorite among professionals who need flexibility and scalability.
Webflow’s plans start at $14/month for basic sites, with CMS and business plans beginning at $39/month. Adding localization or more pages or content will however ramp up the price significantly.
Webflow has a steeper learning curve compared to platforms like Flipsite or Wix. However, it’s powerful once mastered, offering near-limitless design freedom.
Webflow’s performance is very good – even their own frontpage is optimized for speed. Sites are generally fast, reliable, and optimized for mobile and desktop users alike.
Webflow in general provides clean code with customizable meta tags, schema markup and other SEO that are close to on par with Flipsite. As a SEO or accessibility platform it is the one to challenge Flipsite.
Professionals and businesses that need advanced design capabilities and performance.
WordPress powers over 40% of the web, making it the most popular CMS. It’s highly flexible but requires more hands-on management than most website builders.
WordPress itself is open source and free, but hosting costs vary. Managed WordPress hosting plans typically start at $10/month, with additional costs for premium plugins and themes. Out of all the competitors this pricing model is the one that makes the most sense from a logical point of view – where the editor is where you build and is in principle separately priced from hosting the end-product. And with a Wordpress site you can always (depending on the plugins you use) host your site without being hooked to a specific vendor.
While user-friendly for those familiar with CMS platforms, beginners may find WordPress’s interface less intuitive than Flipsite or Wix. Wordpress is really an “old school” way building sites without much support for designers, but more for the website builders – where most modern competitors combine the designer features from Figma with website builder tools and features.
Performance depends heavily on your hosting provider and site optimization. Well-managed WordPress sites can be extremely fast, though poorly configured sites will struggle. The catch is to not use plugins as even the SEO or speed plugins add more Javascript to the site, not only making it harder to maintain but also slower for the end users.
WordPress shines in SEO with the help of plugins, offering extensive plugins like Yoast SEO and All-in-One SEO. These tools provide unparalleled control over optimization, but because the basic HTML is mostly clutter, it loses in speed and accessibility which gets penalised in SEO.
Blogs, large-scale sites, and users requiring extensive customization and plugin support.
Flipsite is a modern website builder that prioritizes simplicity and performance. Designed for small businesses and professionals, it combines ease of use with powerful tools for customization.
Flipsite’s pricing starts at $0/month for small businesses in one language. The commercial packages start at $9/month and its pricing is not limiting localization, CMS collections or content. It’s an all in package for managing several projects even as an agency.
Flipsite excels in simplicity. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows users to build a website without prior experience. The learning curve is minimal compared to more advanced platforms like Webflow, but you can get to every detail with just a click.
With a focus on lightweight designs, Flipsite delivers exceptional performance. It is built on a custom compiler that builds the most light weight sites in the market that are accessible and SEO optimized. Speed tests consistently rank Flipsite sites among the fastest, making it a reliable choice for user experience and SEO.
Flipsite includes all the needed SEO tools such as meta tags, alt text for images, and sitemaps. While new on the market, it has a significant upper hand in technical SEO due to performance, meta tags and accessibility.
Everything from hobby sites to small business and all the way to agencies that want to host their sites on a separate server, without the fear of a price hike eating their margins.
Each platform excels in specific areas, so the "best" choice depends on your goals:
By evaluating your needs against this website builder comparison, you can select the top web platform side by side that aligns with your project goals and budget.
Also check out more detailed comparisons of Wordpress, Wix, Figma, Framer or Webflow.
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