Building a website appears to be an indispensable requirement nowadays not only for businesses but also for individuals who want to express their thoughts. With the internet becoming the norm for disseminating information, expressing ideas, and selling goods, the difference of having a website and not having one will give a big impact of how successful your online activity will be.
There are many tools to build a website, giving the opportunity to even the most illiterate in the internet business to build their own website. If you need an intuitive tool to build your first website, here are some tools that you can try.
Blogspot and Google Sites
Blogspot is perhaps the easiest and the cheapest tool to build a website. This blogging platform provides you everything necessary to build your website, to design it, to fill it with content, and even to monetize it. There is nothing in Blogspot that requires you to pay. You get a free Blogspot domain if you use this platform, but you need to buy a domain name from a third-party provider if you want to use your own domain for your website.
Google Sites is another free tool provided by Google that allows you to build a fully functioning website for free and to maintain it. Google Sites is a friendly tool for beginners and a versatile tool for more advanced users. With Google Sites, you don’t need to write any code to run a functional website. If you want to add more advanced functions to it, you can add HTML to it. Because Google Sites is a part of Google’s productivity apps, it works well with YouTube, Docs, Slides, Sheets, and other Google apps.
There is actually another Google’s tool called Classroom, but unlike Blogspot and Sites, it works in a closed environment that can be accessed only by visitors who have been granted permission by the owner, who is usually a teacher.
WordPress.com and WordPress.org
For all bloggers, WordPress is a big name. With this tool, you can create a working blog or website easily and quickly. There are two variants of WordPress that you need to know. The first is WordPress.com, which provides you with all the necessary tools to build your website. There is nothing to download and there is no code to write. You only need to create an account on WordPress.com and you are ready to build your blog or site. The drawback of using this platform is that you will not be able to add WordPress plugins—which is a really big problem—and you cannot monetize your blog or website through ads. You cannot use WordPress themes except those already provided by WordPress.com. Although WordPress.com is a free platform, you still need to pay if you want to enjoy premium features, such as custom domain name and premium themes.
WordPress.org is a website where you can download a WordPress package, which you can then host and install on a hosting service that you have purchased. Thus, the drawback of using WordPress.org package is that you have to buy a hosting plan; however, after you get your blog or website to run, everything will be amazing. You can install as many plugins as you want, use any themes that you have bought or downloaded for free, and gain profit from your blog or site.
Besides the two options above, you can also purchase any WordPress plans that are provided by most hosts. Due to the popularity of this platform, almost all hosting services have provided plans with WordPress already preinstalled on them.
Wix
Wix is very easy to use if you want to create a beautiful blog or website. Wix offers an intuitive drag-and-drop mechanism to build a website, which allows you to get your website to run in minutes. There are some great features of Wix that you cannot find in other platforms, including menu bar customization, icon positioning, template dimension adjustment, and element alignment. The purpose of Wix is indeed to help its users create a website that is aesthetically pleasing in the shortest possible time and the least possible effort.
Wix does have some drawbacks. For people who already use it, Wix is considered slower than other platforms. There are also limited templates available for your website or blog. Wix only offers about 600 templates while Blogspot and WordPress provide you with thousands of them. Lastly, in order to enjoy the ad-free site and other premium features, there is a fee that you have to pay.