Website Basics - DIY Website Builders

The days when you have to spend months learning code or hire a coder to develop and publish your website are gone. Many DIY website builders are now available that enable an average person to create their own simple website, and do a decent job of it.

Most of these website builders provide you with the necessary hosting service, building tools, as well as customer support so you can easily create your very own website without having the need to invest a lot of money and time.

Popular Do-It-Yourself Website Builders

These days, you have a variety of website builders available at your disposal, most of which offer a slew of free features with an added opportunity to upgrade to paid premium services and subscription plans.

Since most of these builders are free to try, this gives one a chance to test their features before deciding on the one to use.

Some of the top website builders include but are not limited to the following:

1. Wix
2. Jimdo
3. Squarespace
4. Weebly
5. Shopify (for ecommerce)

The key features that are common amongst these website builders are:

• The ease-of-use they provide
• Flexible designs to suit your preferences
• A variety of pre-set themes to give you a head start
• Paid premium features
• Search engine optimization options to ensure your website is search engine friendly
• Some level of customer support services
• A few of them also offer the option to export website files

Limitations of Website Builders

Limited Creative Freedom – DIY builders are essentially “closed source” web-based programs, so they all have a limit to the level of customizations you can make.

Shared Hosting – Most DIY website builders host on shared servers, so you may not have complete control over your content. Also, since you’re sharing server bandwidth and resources with many other websites, your website may suffer from slow loading speeds, with nothing that can be done on your end to fix them.

Lack of Backup – Most DIY builders, except IM Creator and Weebly, don’t allow full backup of your websites. So, if you wish to take your entire website elsewhere, it’s going to be a difficult task.

Cost – Even though costs may start low or even be marketed as "free," be aware that just like most other applications, there will typically be additional fees to upgrade services. In some cases, you may spend more in total due to monthly fees than if you had hired a professional web designer.

Functionality – A DIY website builder might be easy to outgrow. For example, while many might include basic e-commerce abilities you will likely find that these are limited and prevent you from growing your business as-needed.

DIY website providers can be a good fit for many clients, but always take your time thinking about future needs too, so that you don't get stuck in a system that is not a good fit.

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