Four Easiest Platforms To Design Your Website

Having a website or online presence gives you a big advantage to connect to your customers and market. With the tools below, you can get your website up and running quickly and simply.

Here are our favourite tools to get you started:

Squarespace

This is probably our favourite tool for building a website. The team at Squarespace have built a simple, yet sophistic product that lets anyone create a website with beautiful form and function.

We’ve used Squarespace for a few side-projects here at Honcho, and it plays a big role in helping us cut down on time and resources in getting a new site launched. Squarespace also have a wide range of great website design templates that can be easily customised to your needs.

If you need help at any point along the way, their customer support is a cut above the rest. Customer service can be easily reached by tweet, email or phone.

What is costs: You can access Squarespace from just $8 US/month.

Wix

Wix is very similar to Squarespace, with one exception. The service is free to use in exchange for ads being displayed on your site.

Wix is a great alternative for businesses that just want something simple and don't need a lot of the trendier design features of Squarespace. Wix do have options for online stores, but would be best suited to small stores with a few products. If you’re starting a business and need a professional e-commerce solution, we recommend Squarespace, Wordpress or Shopify. 

What is costs: The service is free to use in exchange for ads being displayed on your site.

Wordpress

If your business is growing and you’d like to expand the capabilities of your website in the future, Wordpress might be ideal for your needs. It's the best solution for tech–savvy entrepreneurs that aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and are familiar with basic coding.

Wordpress is simple and easy get started quickly, but as the software is open source and community managed, there is no dedicated user support.

Wordpress offer thousands of website templates to choose from, and due to it's open source nature, a large variety of website plugins are available to be installed.

What it costs: Wordpress is free (with the exception of some templates and plugins), however you will have to pay to host your website online. Must major web-hosting providers offer cheap hosting for Wordpress sites..

Shopify

Shopify is a website builder that focuses on online stores, and it does it amazingly well. Just Squarespace, it is a clean and sophisticated product that is simple and intuitive to use. The fact that Shopify specialises in E-Commerce means you get a whole range of tools and features to help run your online store. You can easily connect with payments gateways so you can start making sales right away. There is even a dashboard that tracks your sales and revenue.

What it costs: Subscription packages start from $29 US/month up to $179 US/month, depending on the features and support you need.

Shaun Meltzer