WordPress is the biggest Content Management System (CMS) on the market. Although it comes with its own set of website building tools, many opt for one of the best WordPress website builders to unlock great ease of use, design flexibility, and support.
Our team of experts has spent thousands of hours getting hands on with 140+ of the best website builders. We have compared and assessed everything from templates and features to usability, configuration options, pricing, and support - now we have created this list, to help you find the very best WordPress website builder for your site.
Bluehost takes the top spot thanks to its easy-to-use nature, vast range of templates, and ability to work on the Bluehost website builder and WordPress at the same time. Hosting plans come with the standard website builder and start at $1.99/mo (renews at $7.99/mo). However, for advanced ecommerce tools you will need one of the online store plans, starting at $6.25/mo (renewing at $18.99/mo).
Have you considered hosting? Upgrading your WordPress hosting can improve site speed and usability. Check out our guide to the best WordPress hosting.
Best overall WordPress website builder
Bluehost website builder is a cleverly designed tool with plenty to offer everyone, from total design newbies to the most experienced WordPress users.
We found it very easy to build our first site. There's absolutely no design experience required: we just answered questions about our site's purpose, the design, fonts, colors, and layout we preferred, and within seconds the website builder generated a stylish and professional site, complete with sample images and content.
Customizing our site was almost as simple. We clicked on headers and blocks of text, and typed to replace Bluehost's content with our own. The default website images were good, but we found it easy to replace them with our own or Bluehost's high-quality stock images. You can extend the site with forms, videos, maps, image galleries, blogs, and more, along with all the elements of a web store.
Bluehost’s website builder comes with quality web hosting, including fast SSD storage, free SSL, and Cloudflare's free speed-boosting CDN.
There's no free website builder plan and although prices start as low at $1.99/mo you will want to keep an eye out for big price hikes after you initial term is up. You can save on your Bluehost subscription by checking out our Bluehost promo codes.
Read our full Bluehost Website Builder review here.
Best free WordPress website builder
One of the most popular downloads from WordPress.org with over five million active installations, Elementor website builder delivers slick designs and easy-to-use functionality. What's more, Elementor's free plan is laden with features and includes over 40 widgets and more than 30 templates.
Add-ons include essentials like video, text editor, headings, button and image boxes, but also more sophisticated choices including alert boxes, accordion content display, and an escalating progress bar.
Naturally, the Pro version—which starts at $59 per year—delivers a ton of bonus features, which is likely to be better for users building larger websites or those with commercial requirements (WooCommerce Builder comes with Pro). But as a basic, out-of-the-box option, Elementor's free plan is ideal for those getting to grips with website building. It even comes with templates for landing pages and maintenance mode, and the ability to preview your site on both mobile and desktop.
Read our full Elementor review here.
Best WordPress website builder for marketing
Visual Composer has four pricing models, including a free version, which will give you a flavor of the builder's functionality, with 30 elements and 10 templates available. But to harness Visual Composer's full selection of tools, you'll need the premium option starting at $49 per year.
This immediately removes the limits of the free version, providing over 200 elements, more than 100 templates, and the ability to edit wider parts of your website, including the header, footer, sidebars, and even the theme itself.
What's more, for those looking to build a website for commercial purposes, Visual Composer's Premium version comes with effective sales tools that include a popup builder, WooCommerce Support, and SEO optimization.
Although the drag and drop can feel a bit wonky, the builder's tools are easy to understand and use and creating your own layouts feels like a breeze.
Best WordPress website builder for visual editing
Those wanting to use Divi website builder will need to sign up for an Elegant Themes subscription at $80.40 per year. However, it's worth adding that this will also include access to the entire Elegant Themes range of tools and themes.
With an impressive 4.9 rating on Trustpilot (from 23,000+ reviews), Divi is certainly tried and tested among WordPress users, with its standout feature being the intuitive front-end visual editor. You can edit your site in real time, meaning the changes you make will be reflected exactly as seen. The global elements and styles editor also allows users to make site-wide design changes without needing to tweak each individual element or section.
Pre-designed layouts number over 800, with new layouts added each week along with royalty-free imagery, icons, and illustrations. Layout packs can also be filtered by theme, ranging from restaurant to wedding, and yoga studio to florists.
Best WordPress website builder for landing pages
Sign up with the website and landing page builder SeedProd and you'll immediately get access to 200+ customizable themes, layouts, page and block templates. These aren't random designs you'll never use, either: attractive and engaging landing pages include essentials such as Coming Soon, Sales, Opt in, Webinar, Login and Thank you, as well as system pages such as Maintenance Mode and 404.
Visual style is important, but SeedProd has very practical benefits, too. It can track your subscribers over time, for instance, showing running totals and new subscribers, no external service required. But if you need more, it integrates easily with top marketing services providers such as MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, Sendy, Zapier and more.
Clever low-level features give you options rarely seen with other providers. You need a landing page on a new domain, for instance? Normally you might have to buy hosting for the domain, install WordPress, add and use your builder. SeedProd's Domain Mapping allows you to create multiple landing pages and point them to as many other domains as you need, no extra WordPress installs required.
Best WordPress website builder for developers
Like the above website builders, Oxygen can be used by non-programmers, with a drag-and-drop editor, flexible layouts, and a custom header builder. But Oxygen also brings developer-friendly elements to the table, with opportunities for those well-versed in HTML, CSS, PHP, and JS to take even more control of the design process. This opens up more avenues for bespoke building than some of the others listed here, though it also adds a layer of complexity that could alienate complete newbies.
Also unique in relation to its competition is the one-off price which starts at $129 rather than an annual cost, which comes with a promise of lifetime support and lifetime updates. You can also use the builder on as many sites as you wish, thanks to an unlimited license.
What's more, Oxygen's creators are so confident in their offering that they provide a 60-day full refund guarantee for anyone not entirely happy with the website building capabilities.
Note: According to Oxygen they will soon be moving to an annual fee, so now is a great time to sign up for the service.
How to choose the best WordPress website builders for you?
There are several things to consider when choosing the best WordPress website builder for you.
Start by assessing your own knowledge, experience, and ability with website builders. If you have very little, then you will want to look for a website builder that is beginner friendly for WordPress newbies. On the other hand, if you want greater flexibility and have the skills, a more advanced option could be right for you.
It is also important to consider what you want to achieve and which tools you will need to do that. For example, if you want to start an online store, then you may need advanced ecommerce tools such as the ability to manage stock or dropshipping functionality.
Reading the marketing materials is a good way to get a rough idea of whether a website builder is right for you. However, a free trial is a much better way to make sure your website builder of choice can do what you want. So, look out for trials and money-back guarantees when picking your website builder.
Price also plays a role. Many platforms provider an enticing introductory offer that goes away after a set period (usually 12 months). So, make sure the renewal price will still be affordable to you. You should also check their higher tiered packages to assess whether they will provide you what you need (at a reasonable price) as you grow.
The best WordPress website builders: How we test
When testing the best website buiders we start by signing up for the platform and creating sites using every WordPress website builder that's on our line-up.
Our experts test and compare the overall performance, ease of use, speed, pricing, as well as useful customer support help and information. Our tests are thorough, as we aim to get an accurate picture of the service you'll experience should you commit to one of the WordPress website builders on our list.
We have a full guide to how we test website builders if you want to find out more.
Best WordPress website builders: FAQs
What is a WordPress website builder?
WordPress website builders are usually plugins for WordPress that can be used to quickly and easily create website and webpage designs, typically with a drag and drop tool or AI interface. As WordPress offers its own built-in website builder that can be used for the same purposes, this can be a little confusing.
Businesses and creatives often opt for a third party such as Elementor or Bluehost due to the ease of use, greater design flexibility, and additional tools and features. This approach allows users to benefit from the power of the WordPress CMS whilst unlocking better website building capabilities.
For more insight into why you should choose a WordPress website builder, we asked the experts.
Do WordPress website builders affect website performance?
Most website builder plugins will add more code to your site, potentially impacting performance.
However, most of the best WordPress website builders have taken the time to optimize anything added to your site, helping ensure that it has no or minimal impact on performance. That being said, it is well worth regularly monitoring your website performance to ensure your website builder, or other plugins aren’t impacting speed.
WordPress.org vs WordPress.com: What is the difference?
In many ways WordPress.com and WordPress.org are very similar. This is because they offer the same Content Management System (CMS) and website builder.
When you sign up for WordPress.com you get website hosting as part of your plan, along with access to the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) and a free website address. WordPress.com offers a free plan (with limitations) and premium plans with improved features.
WordPress.org is an open-source software, which means is can be downloaded, used and modified by anyone for free. With WordPress.org, you just get the software (CMS and website builder), so you will need to purchase website hosting and a website address separately.
Read our deeper dive into the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
Why use WordPress?
WordPress is the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) in the world and for good reason. Building a website on WordPress is easy for beginners, especially when you use one of the best WordPress website builders we have listed above.
Unlike some of its competitors, WordPress also offers a great level of flexibility, allowing you to easily upgrade certain aspects of your website such as website hosting as your website grows. It also offers an extensive marketplace of website ‘plug-ins’ that allow you to quickly and easily add functionality to your website such as ecommerce and marketing tools.
