If you are planning on putting together a website, to establish your presence in the online world, then you might already be on the looks for an intuitive website builder to help you get started. Without the need to know any coding, website builders help people put together websites from the simplest, single-paged ones, to complex eCommerce platforms. 

More than a decade ago, when website builders first started being around, there were only a hand full of options to choose from. Today, you can choose from a variety of builders suited for each and every need. The following list will give you some details about the best options you can find on the market, to help narrow your search. 

1. WordPress.org 
2. Wix 
3. Gator by HostGator 
4. BigCommerce 
5. Shopify 
6. Weebly 
7. Squarespace 
8. GoDaddy Website Builder 
9. WordPress.com 

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The list could not start any different than with the most popular option on the market, WordPress.org. The platform has been around since 2003 and, today, it hosts more than a third of the websites you can find online.

WordPress has two separate hosting platforms, WordPress.org and WordPress.com, which will be featured later in the article as well. WordPress.org is WordPress’ free website building platform. By being an open-source builder, the platform allows you to customize and have full control over the features and plugins of your website. The .org platform is a self-hosted platform, which means you will have to host the website on your own, by using a WordPress hosting platform, which you can find with a simple online search. 

Pros: 

• Complete control over each and every aspect of your website 
• Suited for every kind of website, from blogs to forums and eCommerce stores 
• Access to over 50,000 plugins, free to use 
• A large variety of pre-made themes, which you can find online 

Cons: 

• You will be fully responsible for the maintenance of the website 
• You will also have to handle security and backup on your own 
• Keeping up to date with all the new WordPress features and plugins is also your responsibility 

In terms of pricing, WordPress.org is free, but you will need to purchase a domain name and hosting, which typically starts at around $3/month. You can look online for hosting providers, but make sure to choose a WordPress official one. 

Pros: 

• Access to a wide variety of templates, all of which are fully customizable 
• Drag and drop builder, extremely user-friendly and intuitive 
• Tens of apps, both free and paid, which you can add to your website 
• Free SSL with all Wix payment plans 

Cons: 

• The free plan will show adds on your website, as well as the Connect Domain plan 
• You will have to buy a domain name to connect it to the Connect Domain plan 

While Wix still offers a free plan, it is quite limited and offers a Wix sub domain name. If you want to connect your domain, you can choose the $9,16/month plan, or pick the combo plan for $14,95/month, which also comes with a free domain name. For eCommerce, the payment plan starts at $26,25/month. 

New on the website building market, Gator is a website builder developed by HostGator. Although it is quite a new platform, its creators are well-known in the web hosting industry, as HostGator is one of the most widely-used hosting providers.

Gator is a great option for someone who is looking for the whole package, as it offers complete website building and hosting solutions, so you won’t have to worry about self-hosting. 

Pros: 

• Fully hosted, which means all updates and backups are done automatically 
• Very intuitive and easy to use 
• Access to stock photo library included 
• Customizable, with access to a large variety of templates, which you can easily personalize 
• Drag and drop, as well as point and click, item editor 
• The price also includes a free custom domain name 

Cons: 

• No free plan or free trial available 
• As it is not fully customizable, the builder does have some limitations 
• No built-in email marketing 
• Unsuited for more complex websites 

As mentioned before, Gator does not offer any free plan option, but it does offer three payment plans. The price for the starter plan starts at $3,84/month, the premium plan at $5,99/month and the special eCommerce plan at $9,22/month. 

If you are looking to start an eCommerce business, BigCommerce is the best option you can find on the market. As it is a platform that was specially developed for eCommerce, you will find all the vital features you need to start your business.

Pros: 

• As BigCommerce is fully hosted, the technical aspects of your website are handled by them 
• Native WordPress integration 
• You can integrate any of the most popular payment gateways, such as PayPal, Amazon Pay and Visa Checkout, without having to pay any transaction fee 
• Lots of pre-made templates, easy to customize 
• Built-in conversion rate features 
• Access to metrics, so you can monitor the growth of your business 

Cons: 

• Pricier than other regular website builders, as it is a niche platform. 

When it comes to pricing, BigCommerce does offer a free 15-day trial for all payment plans. The standard plan starts at $29,95/month and the pro plan can reach $249,95/month, for all the advanced features an eCommerce website needs. 

Pros: 

• Fully hosted, which means Shopify will take care of all software updates and backups 
• Apart from the popular payment gateways, Shopify does have its own integrated payment solution, Shopify Payments. 
• Hundreds of templates to choose from 
• Drag and drop interface, to help you build your store to your own likings 

Cons: 

• As most eCommerce-focused website builders, the payment plans are a bit on the price side 

To get you started, the Basic payment plan starts at $29/month and can go as high as $299 for the Advanced plan. Additionally, Shopify also has a Lite plan, for only $9/month, which allows you to add a “BUY” button to any kind of page or website. 

Pros: 

• Fully hosted, which means you get a website builder and hosting services, all in one platform 
• A multitude of designs that you can choose from, which you can then edit to your own preferences 
• Built-in eCommerce support, to create a basic online store 
• Various built-in features, such as photo galleries and contact forms, which you can add to your website with just a click 

Cons: 

• Because it is a fully hosted platform, you are limited only to the features that Weebly provides 
• If you want to open an eCommerce website, but don’t want to upgrade to a business plan, Weebly has a 3% transaction fee on every purchase made through your website. 

Weebly has three pricing plans, starting with the basic one, which is $8/month, a pro plan for $12/month and a business plan for $25/month. Weebly does have a free option as well, but it comes with very basic features. 

Pros: 

• Enterprise-grade hosting infrastructure, good for business websites 
• A wide variety of designs, all of which are fully customizable 
• You can use multiple templates at a time for the same website 
• Drag and drop function, as well as point and click content writing 
• eCommerce function, which allows you to add an online store to your website 

Cons: 

• Limited third-party services integration 
• Limited options for payment processing: PayPal, Apple Pay and Stripe 
• Some people have reported slow and unhelpful customer support 

For websites, the payment plan starts at $12/month, and for eCommerce, the basic payment plan starts at $26/month. 

8. GoDaddy Website Builder 

Pros: 

• Simple, professional looking and easy to use. 
• Comes with pre-loaded blocks, which you can use to create your own layout. 
• Integrated photo gallery, which holds professional photos curated from Getty Photography. 
• Mobile-friendly website builder, so you can work on your website anywhere. 
• Includes a scheduling feature, perfect for online tutors and coaches. 

Cons: 

• Limited features and design options. 
• Unsuited for rich-content websites. 

The price for a basic plan starts at $5,99 and goes all the way up to $14,99 for a business plus plan. 

9. WordPress.com 

Although they share the same name, WordPress.com has quite a few notable differences from Wordpress.org. First of all, what differentiates the .com version from the .org one is hosting. WordPress.com is fully hosted, with a simple and user-friendly design, which means you won’t have to worry about learning how to code. Its features are perfect for blogging as it offers a great variety of tools for RSS and social bookmarking.

Pros: 

• Hundreds of templated to choose from 
• Built-in customizer for widgets and navigation menus 
• Extremely helpful and fast customer support 

Cons: 

• The templates are only designed for blogging and can be quite hard to customize for other purposes. 
• Custom plugins are off-limits, if you don’t choose the business payment plan. 
• eCommerce features are only available with the business plan. 

Pricing plans are quite varied, as the platform even offers a free plan, but it is extremely limited. For a basic personal plan, you will need to pay $4/month, including a custom domain. The most expensive plan is the business one, which starts at $24,92/month. 

Final Verdict 

Nowadays, the options for someone who is looking to open a website are endless. Website building platforms are constantly coming up with new features to outrank each other. Truth be told, the decision should not be made based on popularity, but on whether or not the platform suits your needs.

To make sure you picked the best option, make sure you have a clear idea of what the outcome should be and choose a platform that suits your needs, while at the same time fits your budget. Make use of the free-trial programs and test various options to find the one you most are content with.

For the many pros that come with WordPress websites, one significant con is how easy they can be to hack. If you do not ensure that you have a high level of WordPress website security in place for your site or blog, then you are at risk.

There are ways to make your site significantly more difficult to hack, however.

If a hacker is able to access your site they will likely insert bad-links, steal data, or other various activities that you will want to avoid having to deal with.

To help, we have put together some WordPress security tricks in the following step by step guide which will help you avoid any unwanted guests in your site.

Attacks That Pose A Threat 

There is a range of attack styles that your WordPress website security will need to defend, all of which come with a different level of severity. These can include: 

• Bruteforce logins: This is a widespread technique that simply tries to log in to your site to take possession of your data and admin 
• SPAM: This attack features bots which leave large amounts of comments which you will not be able to remove due to their sheer numbers 
• Old plugins: Older versions of WordPress are the most vulnerable 
• SQL injection: Not as common but by far the most severe, this attack gives access to sensitive information which the attacker can modify 

The good news is, all of these attacks can be prevented. There is also additional protection available from hosting providers which are tailored to a specific CMS. 

Step by step WordPress security tricks 

Let's look at some things you can implement to ensure that your WordPress website security is up to scratch, all of which can provide some necessary extra layers of protection. 

We'll get the most obvious one out the way first. It seems simple enough, but you would be surprised how many people do not set a very difficult password. A difficult password is one of the best ways to create trouble for a hacker looking to get into your site. 

If a hacker does guess your password the will immediately change it and start loading the malware, so make your password as complicated as possible. Include: 

• Uppercase letters 
• Lower case letters 
• Random numbers 

2. Updates 

Hackers and viruses are constantly evolving and adapting, and version and plugin updates work to combat this. Most security updates are automatic, but significant releases often require a manual update, so keep on top of this and perform the updates when they become available. 

Another great hacker prevention trick is limiting login attempts as this makes the task of infiltrating your site much more difficult for spammers with automated software. It would also help if you set your default membership role to Contributor which means people can submit a blog post for review but are unable to publish.

For your logins, however, you can use the Limit Login Attempts plugin which performs the function its name suggests. If you have someone attempt to log in to your account with an "admin," they will be blocked for a certain amount of time after a particular amount of logins that you dictate. 

You can also block IP's and run a report to see who is attempting a login that shouldn't be so you can block them. 

The default "admin" username should be changed straight away, if not you have already done half the work for the hackers. 

To do this, run the following query in Mysql: 

update wp-users set user_login=’newuser’ where user_login=’admin’; 

You can also create a new account with admin privileges then delete the original admin account, once you have logged in and tested the new one. 

Take note that if you follow this point the "admin" username as mentioned in the last point will also need to change in your login attempt plugin. 

There is a range of SSL plugins available that can help you with this. 

As you may already have realised, there is no shortage of themes and plugins for your WordPress site, but you may not realise that not all of them are safe. Some themes can contain malicious code or security loopholes which is why you need to be careful when making your selections an only choose trusted themes.

A good way to ensure the theme is safe is by reading the reviews before downloading and only use trusted theme directory sites like MyThemeShop or Elegant Themes. 

To really play it safe, only search for themes through the WordPress Free Themes Directory and check the developer’s site. After installing the theme, run a WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin which will ensure there is no suspicious code. 

You should limit the access to the important linking pages of your site. 

Use the encrypted passwords of Secure FTP (SFTP) or Secure Shell access (SSH) as opposed to Simple FTP when adding files as this will make things significantly harder for hackers. 

Delete your FTP account altogether if you are not using FTP connection for sharing files, and if you are running your site on Linux, you have the ability to choose who can access which data. Keep your settings relatively locked down, especially for important folders. 

Further to this, the folders which contain valuable data should be given a strict privacy setting and unique password. You can do this via the control panel under Security > Password protect directories. This will show you all of your folders, and you can select the ones you deem the most important. 

Set a username and password then under security settings check the box “Password Protect this directory.” 

It is vital that you always have your website backed up. This is handy not only in the case where it may get hacked but also if you are making changes in the software or updating things. Having an original copy website can prove invaluable. 

By having all the database and files, you can regenerate your site and recover all the data in the case of a hacking which requires you to delete and start fresh. Always ensure that you regularly update the copy of the backup as you make changes to your WordPress site. 

Backup your site in the cloud or on your OS but be aware if using email or cloud that getting hacked means they may also get access to these places as well. 

You can add another layer of security to your WordPress plugins with a range of plugins that will prevent logged in users from making any changes until they have verified via a second factor of authentication. 

This involves the user, once having logged in, being emailed a code, different every time, which is validated with a cookie added to the user’s session which removes itself once they have logged out. 

There are some simple changes you can make in your WordPress database to make things more difficult for hackers. For example, the default name of every table will start with wp_, but this can be changed. By making this simple change, you are taking a certain level of information away from the hacker and placing an infinite number of new possibilities in front of them to make it harder for them to gain access. 

The name of your database will also have a default ending which can also be changed so decoding it is made tougher. The more unique wording you use in these areas, the harder the shell will be to crack, it's as simple as that. 

If You Are Hacked 

All of the above advice is preventative, but what happens if the unfortunate occurs and you are hacked? The first thing you should do straight away is attempt to reset your admin password, and scan your website for malicious content. You can also contact your host for assistance. There are various online services that can help you remove malware and repair any damage. 

Any layer of security that you can add to your WordPress site is worthwhile. Your hosting provider has a level of responsibility in the configuration of the server to ensure the necessary security measures are in place, but you also must be diligent and ensure you keep everything up-to-date. 

The extra effort you spend securing your website today can save you significant headaches tomorrow!