Top 10 Web Design Software

A few decades ago, web design was done by HTML, CSS, and Javascript experts. Today with web building software, you can create an impressive site without coding knowledge. But this doesn’t mean that web designers are out of work. On the contrary, businesses are keener on having an online presence, so web designers are in greater demand.

On the bright side, starting web design as a career or hobby has never been easier. As a newbie mastering web design or an oldie keeping up with trends, there are many resources to help you along.

Here’s a guide on the best web design software and how they compare in features, ease of use, and pricing.

Best Software for Building Websites

Wix

Wix is a popular web design software with over 150 million users. It helps individuals with minimal web design experience to create stunning sites using web templates and an array of design tools. Instead of coding, you’ll use intuitive drag and drop editor. And if you are feeling creative, you can play around with their animations, scroll effects, and video backgrounds.

With over 500 professionally designed templates to choose from, you’ll have an easy time landing a good template. To make the template search easier, Wix has loads of filters that help in narrowing down the search. You can choose a template from different industries, including Beauty and Hair, Fashion and Style, Health and Wellness, and more. If you don’t have time to tinker with the platform, Wix can create your site based on some questions.

You can build a simple site for your business, a blog, or an eCommerce store with a blog. Speaking of blogs, Wix allows mobile optimization and offers custom SEO plans based on target location and keywords.

However, the SEO plans are nothing fancy and you’ll still need an SEO service provider to help your site rank better.

Pros

Easy to use
Over 500 templates to pick from
Fast load times
Professional logo maker
You can assign roles to other designers for project collaboration
Provides free images from its built-in media gallery and Unsplash

Cons

Limited customization since you cannot access site code
Functionality is limited for online stores and blogs
Loses content when you switch themes

Pricing

There’s a free plan and paid site plans. The premium website site plans start from $8.50 per month, and Business and eCommerce plans start from $25 per month.

Web.com

Web.com is a good solution for people who wants software that accomplishes desired tasks efficiently. With this DIY site builder, you can build a website from scratch without prior experience. It has a good database of templates to pick from to set up your site faster.

However, if you prefer leaving the design process to an expert, they’ll handle it for you. Their customer support is great and with features available are impressive.

Aside from all this, Web.com can handle your hosting, marketing, and security. All these make Web.com an excellent all-in-one website builder.

Pros

Customer support is available 24/7
Provides a free domain with every plan
Has industry-specific themes
Can get experts to design your site

Cons

Limited customization
After the first month, the price is expensive

Pricing

The payment plans are $5.95, $7.95, and $9.95 billed monthly. However, after the first month, the price automatically changes to the current plan rates, which are $14.95, $20.95, and $36.95.

Squarespace

Squarespace competes with Wix and Squarespace. Like Wix, Squarespace provides users with a drag-and-drop interface for site creation. It’s best for creative freelancers and entrepreneurs looking to build a beautiful portfolio and gallery sites for their work.

Although it’s similar to Wix, Squarespace isn’t as intuitive. For instance, it only allows sections in web pages instead of being a complete drag-and-drop editor. But on the bright side, Squarespace has a range of customization elements than Wix.

You can easily build a blog or online store and download third-party apps from the vast library to increase site functionality.

Other great features it boasts about include:

Audio collections – allows artists to upload albums and soundtracks with art displays
Typekit fonts – Squarespace has collaborated with Typekit to offer users quality fonts at no extra charge.
Chart blocks – this help to display data in beautiful formats through responsive and interactive bar and line graphs and pie charts.

Pros

Users can add sections to their web pages using page builders
Has designer color palettes for unique customization
Changes site content layout in a few clicks
Easy to allocate roles to team members for site design collaboration
Has a mobile app for web design on the go
100+ professionally designed templates to pick from
Built-in SEO tools

Cons

Has a steep learning curve compared to some competitors
Sometimes template page speeds are low
Doesn’t have a free plan but has a 14-day trial

Pricing

You can pay for your desired plan annually or monthly. Starting costs are $14 and $19 respectively.

Webflow

Webflow is a comprehensive site builder that boasts loads of features. The platform positions itself as a WordPress alternative since they provide users with front-end coding without actual coding.

Compared to WordPress, it’s a little complex to use and takes time to get the hang of the features. Mainly because Webflow requires you to have a basic understanding of web design concepts. But this is nothing a short YouTube tutorial cannot help with. But if you are familiar with style hierarchy, box models, and relative and absolute positions, you’ll have a blast using it. Professional web developers will notice a close resemblance between Webflow’s style panel and CSS rules.

Unlike its competitors, Webflow design doesn’t start with a template. Instead, you have free reign and fewer restrictions. This is perfect for designers and artists to show off their creativity. But this means you need to understand basic web design concepts.

Pros

More design freedom than other platforms

Great SEO for keyword optimization and ranking
Allows design collaboration with a team
Has prebuilt interactions and animations
You can link animation and movement to cursor position to capture user attention

Cons

It can be a little hard for newbie web designers
The pricing structure is different and confusing
No phone or live chat support

Pricing

Webflow allows users to start building their site for free. However, you’ll need to have a site plan before going live. The site plans start from $12 per month for a simple site billed annually.

WordPress

About 43.4% of all websites online use WordPress. It’s different from other website design software because it’s a CMS (content management system). The platform allows users to set up and create sites in minutes. Even better, most web hosting platforms feature a one-click WordPress install on their control panels. But even without this, WordPress is easy to install.

After installation, you’ll notice the backend is user-friendly. You can use already existing templates to design your website. But since they are basic, you’ll want to install premium or free WordPress templates.

Even with a downloaded theme, you might benefit from drag-and-drop functions. This function allows you to build a professional site without coding. If your theme lacks some features, you can install plugins and widgets easily.

Overall, WordPress is easy-to-use software. It has a vast library of templates and an active community that keeps adding to it.

Pros

Thousands of themes, widgets, and plugins are available to pick from
You have control over the aesthetics and functionality of the site
Has an active community continually adding to its library
Boasts of powerful SEO and blogging features
Easy to install
WordPress versions update automatically
Has a wide range of mobile-friendly designs

Cons

You need to find a separate hosting service
Not all themes have drag and drop functions

Pricing

Using the WordPress platform is free, and there are tons of free themes to use. For custom domain names, personal branding, and other features, you’ll need paid plans starting from $4 per month. However, this plan is highly limited in functionality. WordPress recommends Premium and Business plans for freelancers and small businesses, respectively.

Weebly

Like Wix, Weebly is a hosted platform which means users can design, host, and manage websites on the platform. It’s ideal for newbie designers, especially those looking to build eCommerce platforms. Despite being easy to use, it’s a sophisticated platform with boatloads of excellent features.

Additionally, for those interested in more advanced eCommerce solutions, Weebly’s compatibility with headless eCommerce platforms offers an avenue for greater customization and scalability.

It’s popular with HTML experts as it allows you to alter the code directly. It allows widget installation for added functionality and offers built-in analytics and SEO.

Overall, it’s an intuitive platform albeit less powerful than WordPress and Wix.

Pros

Professional pre-designed templates
eCommerce function is available
Budget-friendly
Beginner-friendly
Allows code alterations, unlike Wix

Cons

Isn’t as powerful as other CMS or site builders

Pricing

Weebly has a free plan and three paid plans starting from $9 billed monthly or $6 billed annually.

Tilda

This is another intuitive WYSIWYG platform that doesn’t require programming or coding. It was started as a platform to create basic one-page portfolios and sites, but it has changed over the years. Today, you can create any website, including blogs and online stores.

The platform is available in multiple languages, including French, German, Spanish, and Ukrainian. It has about 200 templates to pick from. While this is a decent number, many of the templates in different categories are similar. They feel like they were built using a similar layout, so they don’t feel unique. And although you can edit the templates, the functions are limited, especially on the free plan.

Tilda offers users everything they need to build beautiful and functional online stores, including:

Promo code management
Automation of order confirmation
Price calculators
Third-party delivery integrations
Free lead management tool

Overall, it’s an easy-to-use page builder, but it could use more features and better customer support.

Pros

Excellent SEO compatibility
Has a 14-day trial
Has a built-in stock image library
Block editor comes with animations

Cons

Customer support is available by email only

Pricing

There’s a free plan and paid plans that start from $10 per month.

Best Software for Prototyping and Interfacing

GIMP

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It’s free and open-source web design software used for image editing on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Although the interface feels a little old, the platform packs a lot of editing power. In fact, GIMP can do almost as many quality photo and color manipulations.

It works with Python, Perl, C++, C, and Scheme. To make it easier to use, you can customize the working environment as you please. For example, you can change widget spacing, colors, and icon sizes.

With its cool photo enhancement features, you can easily create quality images for your site.

Pros

Converts the images to various files types, including jpeg, pdf, pcx, png, tga, svg, xpm, tiff, ps, and mng.
Users can scale the images from the menu bar
Supports multiple languages, including Python, Perl, C++, and C
Allows customization of the work environment

Cons

The interface is a little messy and difficult to learn

Pricing

It’s free

Figma

Although it’s relatively new, Figma is a powerful and feature-filled tool for prototyping and interface design. It sports powerful features including:

Arc tool
Vector networks
Modern pen tool
Easy to use vector-based interface

Figma uses a cloud-based collaborative approach which allows teams to work efficiently. Different people in the team can comment and copy code to make collaboration easier. You can use animated prototypes that resemble real elements. Also, you can study different user insights and test different design concepts.

Figma also offers loads of beautifully designed and ready-to-use templates. Aside from this, users have access to plugins for flow diagrams, colors, and stock imagery.

Other good to mention features include:

Observation mode – this feature allows users to shadow presenter moves to track edits and changes
Tag team members – using @Mention, you can notify team members of comments, tasks, and project completion
Inspect files – you can view and grab portions of code for Android, iOS, and CSS.

Pros

Can draw using vector networks in any direction without merging or connecting original paths
Provides fonts to create immersive and unique designs
You can create and share plugins with team members
It has a free plan

Cons

Figma only does design. You’ll still need to hire a web designer to recreate the design aspects through code on a different software

Pricing

It has free and paid plans starting from $12 per month per editor (paid annually) or $15 billed monthly.

InVision Studio

InVision started by offering a cloud-based prototype service integrated with Photoshop, Sketch, and other similar software. Today, it has grown into a fully-fledged screen design tool for prototyping, collaboration, design systems, and animation.

The platform allows users to design, scale and adjust designs to fit different layouts and screens perfectly. Using advanced pinning, percentage-based geometry, and relative positioning to build a responsive design to scale.

Some prominent InVision Studio features include:

An adaptive layout that helps in creating compatible pages with different devices
Fast vector drawing tool
Built-in animations with advanced motions
Interactive design for fast prototyping
A synced workflow

InVision Studio provides global syncing, real-time updates, and component swapping.

Pros

Accessible and simple
Has a free plan
Ideal for feedback collaboration
It’s scalable
Offers users greater control over designs
Has version history

Cons

It’s expensive for large teams
The integrations can prove unreliable
It’s not completely collaborative

Pricing

It has free and paid plans that start from $9.95 billed monthly or $7.95 billed annually.

Which One Should You Pick?

The tools listed and reviewed can help you build a professional-looking website for your business. However, not every platform or software has the design requirements to accomplish your goal. So, before picking a software, evaluate your business requirements against the platform’s features and ability.

For instance, if you need a basic business site, Wix is ideal. But if you need an advanced blog, WordPress is the best choice.

Top 10 Web Design Software

Best Software for Building Websites