ToolsUpdated
Seven groups · thirty-five tools
Tools for building your first website
To earn a place here, a tool has to work without a developer and show plainly what it costs after the first year.
Website builders
A builder handles hosting, security and updates for one bill, and the template you start from sets most of the look.
Squarespace
Our pickTemplates built around type and photography, plus a store, scheduling and domains in one place. Every site starts with a 14-day trial, no card needed.
Basic $19/month, billed yearly
Visit SquarespaceWix
Drag-and-drop editing over 2,000+ templates, and an AI tool that drafts a site from a prompt. The free plan keeps Wix branding and a Wix web address.
Free plan
Visit WixWordPress.com
WordPress without running your own server, from Automattic. Every paid plan can install plugins, and yearly plans include a domain free for the first year.
Free; Personal $4/month, billed yearly
Visit WordPress.comFramer
A visual canvas like a design tool, with templates, a CMS and hosting built in. Suits portfolios and studios after a custom look; a domain needs a paid plan.
Free; Basic $10/month
Visit FramerCarrd
One-page sites for a portfolio, a launch page or a link-in-bio. Three sites are free with Carrd branding; Pro Standard adds your own domain and forms.
Free; Pro Standard $19/year
Visit Carrd
WordPress themes and page builders
Choose the theme for the look, and add a page builder only when the theme’s own blocks cannot get you there.
Kadence
Our pickA free theme with header and footer builders and site-wide color and font settings. Pro, now sold by Liquid Web, adds 200+ starter templates and store tools.
GeneratePress
A lightweight free theme that stays out of the way. GeneratePress One adds 80+ starter sites, a theme builder and GenerateBlocks Pro, with a 30-day refund.
Ollie
A free block theme made for the WordPress site editor, with ready-made patterns for whole pages. Ollie Pro adds more patterns, with a 14-day refund.
Elementor
A drag-and-drop page builder that works with most themes. The free plugin covers simple pages; Pro adds the Theme Builder for headers, footers and templates.
Divi
A theme and visual builder in one, with 2,600+ premade layouts. One membership covers unlimited sites, and there is a 30-day refund.
Shopify and store themes
Start with Shopify’s free theme, and buy a paid one only when you need a layout it does not have.
Shopify
Our pickThe all-in-one store builder: products, checkout, payments and shipping in one place, with hundreds of themes to choose from. Starts with a free trial.
Basic $29/month, billed yearly
Visit ShopifyHorizon
Shopify’s own free theme, with large product cards and modern type. A clean start for a first store; try it on your own products before buying a theme.
Prestige
A paid theme by Maestrooo in five styles, made for fashion, jewelry and beauty brands after a high-end look. Bought once, with free updates.
WooCommerce
A free, open-source store plugin for WordPress: you choose the host, the theme and the payments. Paid extensions add features as you need them.
Big Cartel
A simple store for artists and makers selling prints, ceramics or merch. There is a free, limited plan; Platinum adds your own domain and shop design tools.
Free; Platinum $15/month
Visit Big Cartel
Hosting and domains
Hosting prices here are what you pay after the first-year discount, because that is the bill that keeps coming.
Porkbun
Our pickA domain registrar with WHOIS privacy, SSL and email forwarding included free. A .com renews at the price it cost to register, and phone support runs daily.
$11.08/year for a .com
Visit PorkbunCloudflare Registrar
Registers and renews domains at the price the registry charges, with no markup and free WHOIS redaction. You manage it from a Cloudflare account.
At cost, no markup
Visit Cloudflare RegistrarDreamHost
Shared hosting for a first WordPress site. Launch hosts up to 25 sites, with a domain free for the first year and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
$34.68 first year, then $131.88/year
Visit DreamHostSiteGround
WordPress hosting; StartUp covers one site. The intro price needs 12 months paid upfront, and renewal costs six times as much, so budget for year two.
$35.88 first year, then $215.88/year
Visit SiteGroundFastmail
Email at your own domain, with no ads, from an independent company. Individual covers one person, and every plan has a free trial of up to 30 days.
Individual $60/year
Visit Fastmail
Fonts, photos and design assets
Free fonts and photos are fine on a website; read the license before you put one in your logo.
Google Fonts
Best freeFree, open-source font families you can use on any site or host yourself, most under the SIL Open Font License. An easy place to find a heading and body pair.
Unsplash
Free photos you can use on a business site without asking or crediting, though credit is welcome. Unsplash+ adds members-only images and extra legal cover.
Free; Unsplash+ $48/year
Visit UnsplashPexels
Free stock photos and videos with no credit required. Not allowed: selling unaltered copies, or using people in the images to suggest they endorse you.
Free
Visit PexelsCoolors
Generates color palettes, pulls colors from a photo and checks text contrast. Free accounts save up to 10 palettes; Pro lifts the limits.
Free
Visit CoolorsEnvato
One subscription for fonts, photos, graphics and design templates, with unlimited downloads. Cancel and you can no longer use items in new projects.
From $16.50/month
Visit Envato
Email and newsletters
Most free plans stop at a subscriber limit, so check the next tier’s price before your list grows.
MailerLite
Email campaigns, sign-up forms and a landing page in one tool. The free plan covers 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month; yearly billing saves 10%.
Free; Comfort from $12/month
Visit MailerLiteKit
Best freeA newsletter tool for creators, free up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited forms and landing pages and one automation. Paid plans add more automations.
Free; Creator from $39/month
Visit Kitbeehiiv
A newsletter platform with a website builder and an ad network. Free up to 2,500 subscribers; the Lite and Pro plans take no cut of paid subscriptions.
Free; Lite $49/month, billed yearly
Visit beehiivButtondown
A small, independent newsletter service where you write in Markdown. Free for your first 100 subscribers, and sending from your own domain is included.
Free to 100 subscribers
Visit ButtondownGhost
Open-source platform for a site, newsletter and paid memberships, backed by a nonprofit foundation. Ghost(Pro) hosts it; Starter allows no custom themes.
From $18/month, billed yearly
Visit Ghost
SEO and analytics
Set up Search Console on launch day; the rest can wait until people start visiting.
Google Search Console
Our pickGoogle’s free reports on which searches show your site, which pages are indexed and what is broken. The place to submit your sitemap first.
Google Business Profile
A free listing on Google Search and Maps for local and service-area businesses, with your photos and customer reviews. Set it up before any SEO tool.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Free site audit, backlink and keyword reports for websites you verify, with 5,000 crawl credits per project each month.
Plausible Analytics
Simple visitor stats without cookies, open source and hosted in the EU, from a small self-funded team. The 30-day free trial needs no card.
From $9/month
Visit Plausible AnalyticsYoast SEO
A WordPress plugin for page titles, meta descriptions and sitemaps that checks each page as you write. One Premium subscription covers one site.