7 Top-Rated Affordable Web Design Software

Website designing doesn’t have to be a technical process requiring you to write code for hours. You can invest in web design tools that let you drag and drop elements and arrange them as you like. There are many web design software that offer customizable templates to simplify the web design process.

Before you invest, it’s necessary to ensure that the tool you’re considering meets your needs which can vary from basic web design to website promotion and performance tracking. We suggest you start with an affordable option before spending much money. 

This article lists seven top-rated affordable web design software based on verified user reviews and the base or standard plan pricing found on vendor websites. Per our research, we’ve considered products priced less than $19.63 per month as affordable software and arranged them in ascending order of their prices. All the listed products are dedicated web design software, offering design management, preview functionality, and website publishing options as core features.

We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between April 2022 - April 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.

Webador website builder lets you create a website with unlimited pages. It comes with over 50 templates you can customize per your business needs. These templates automatically adapt to the display on any device, including desktop, mobile, and tablet. Besides, Webador supports free hosting, meaning you can store and access your website’s files at no additional cost.

The base plan of Webador lets you have your domain name without any cost. However, if you need a mailbox with a custom email address that includes your domain name, you’ll have to invest in the tool's higher-priced plans.

Base plan features:*

• Blog function: Create and manage a blog as a part of your website. You can add new posts, customize the layout and design to match the website's overall theme and organize the content into categories for easy navigation.

• Free stock photos: Get free access to more than 100,000 professional stock photos. You can use these images to enhance the visual appeal of your website without the need for personal photography or expensive image licenses.

• Unlimited data traffic: Attract as many visitors as you want to your website, as this tool supports unlimited traffic. This feature ensures that the website remains accessible and performs optimally, regardless of the amount of traffic it receives.

Starting price: $5 per month

Cost to upgrade: $9 per month

Billing cycle: Annual

Customer support options: Knowledge base and email support

Who should consider Webador?

Marketers with high traffic can consider investing in Webador as it has no traffic limits. It allows websites to handle an increasing volume of visits without additional charges, facilitating extensive marketing campaigns and growth without bandwidth concerns. This ensures the site remains fast and accessible, improving user experience and SEO rankings, even during high-traffic events.

SITE123 lets you create a professional website or eCommerce site for your business. It offers design features, such as pre-made color palettes and multiple website layouts that you can choose from while designing your site. You can translate your site's text into any other language and create a separate URL for each language. The tool leverages Google Translate and Bing Translate to translate the text which you can get reviewed by a professional translator before finally creating a new site. 

SITE123 software offers a single subscription plan that includes all the features on the platform.

Base plan features:*

• Remove floating tag: Remove SITE123 branding from your website created using this tool. Removing this branding enhances the professional appearance of your site, making it look less like a templated product.

• Connect your domain: Link a custom domain name to your site instead of using the default SITE123 subdomain. Connecting a custom domain improves brand recognition, enhances search engine visibility, and makes it easier for visitors to remember and return to the site.

• Create a digital store: Create and manage an online storefront directly within the website. This integrated eCommerce solution allows for listing products, setting up payment options, and handling transactions. 

Starting price: $5.80 per month

Cost to upgrade: Not available; only one subscription model is available

Billing cycle: Annual

Customer support options: Knowledge base and inquiry via web form

Who should consider SITE123?

SITE123 is a viable solution for businesses spread across multiple locations and catering to diverse audiences. The tool supports various languages, allowing you to create a website for varied audiences. This functionality enhances user experience by enabling visitors to access the website in their preferred language, fostering greater engagement and understanding. It helps businesses expand their reach and appeal globally, ensuring they can effectively communicate with customers across different linguistic backgrounds.

Sparkle is an AI-powered Mac website builder. It asks for your business type and the website name you want to make. Then, the tool generates a page structure and allows you to deselect the pages you don’t want. As a final step, it automatically builds a website that includes text and royalty-free images. Once the AI has generated the website, you can take over and edit the site per your specific business needs.

Sparkle offers two pricing options: one-time purchase and subscription. The one-time purchase option includes features such as a blog, pop-ups, and background remover. But, if you want access to calendars, payment buttons, and image compression options, you’ll have to invest in the higher-priced one-time purchase plan or the tool's subscription model.

Base plan features:*

• Figma and Sketch import: Import your designs from Figma and Sketch to Sparkle. This allows you to transition the visual concepts into fully functional websites. This feature is particularly valuable for maintaining design integrity and preserving the original visual aesthetics.

• Image compression options: Optimize images to reduce file size without significantly compromising quality. This process enhances website performance by decreasing page load times, which is crucial for user experience and SEO. 

• Dark mode support: Create websites with a dark color scheme, which is easier on the eyes in low-light environments and can save battery life on mobile devices. This feature caters to user preferences for darker interfaces, enhancing visual comfort and accessibility. 

Starting price: $6.67 per month

Cost to upgrade: Not available; only one subscription model is available

Billing cycle: Annual

Customer support options: Knowledge base, email support, and inquiry via web form

Who should consider Sparkle?

Website designers with macOS systems can consider investing in Sparkle as it is a Mac website builder. The AI capabilities of the tool speed up the website generation process, allowing designers to create and iterate designs with minimal manual input quickly. This integration enhances productivity and creativity by automating routine tasks and ensuring high performance. Additionally, Mac compatibility ensures that designers are working within a familiar ecosystem.

Weebly comes with a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to select an element, drag it across the canvas, and drop it onto the desired location to build a website. It offers several elements, such as text, maps, and videos that you can use to build the structure of your website. Weebly sites include a sitemap, SEO-friendly HTML formatting, and meta descriptions that help you optimize your site to make it rank higher on search engines. 

Weebly’s base plan allows you to add custom code to your website to track its performance. On the other hand, the higher-priced plan provides advanced site statistics to understand the site visitors and popular content.

Base plan features:*

• Shopping cart: Add eCommerce functionality to your website, allowing customers to select products, review their choices, and proceed to checkout. You can add unlimited items to your site, including digital goods, that customers can purchase. 

• Inventory management: Track and manage product stock levels directly through the website. This tool supports real-time updates, helping to prevent overselling by automatically adjusting available inventory as sales occur. It also provides insights into which products are performing well, facilitating better business decisions. 

• Lead capture: Collect information from visitors through customized forms integrated into the websites. These forms can gather data such as email addresses, names, and preferences, essential for building contact lists and initiating marketing campaigns.

Starting price: $10 per month

Cost to upgrade: $12 per month

Billing cycle: Annual

Customer support options: Knowledge base, chat, and email support

Who should consider Weebly?

Small business marketers or web designers may find Weebly beneficial as it helps quickly build a website with the drag-and-drop editor, supports an eCommerce store to sell products, and assists in optimizing the site for higher search engine rankings. Together, these features simplify the process of building, managing, and scaling effective online marketing and sales platforms.

Elementor is a WordPress website builder that supports live editing, allowing you to see your website take shape in real time and ensure it meets your requirements. This tool enhances the user experience through its integrated caching tool, which stores recently accessed content. This reduces loading time for previously visited pages, making your website faster and more efficient. It also protects website, customer, and transaction data with a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) that encrypts data transmitted between a web server and a user's browser, ensuring that all data passed remains private and integral.

The base plan of Elementor supports 10K monthly visits, 5GB storage, and 10GB per month bandwidth. On the other hand, in the higher-priced plan, you get 25K monthly visits, 10GB storage, and 30GB per month bandwidth. The higher-priced plans also offer more number of widgets and eCommerce features.

Base plan features:*

• Daily backup: Save content, settings, and website design changes by taking backups every 24 hours. This frequent backup schedule allows you to quickly restore your site to the last saved state in the event of data loss, hacking, or other technical issues.

• Revision history: View and revert to previous versions of your website pages. Every change made during the design and development process is logged, enabling you to track your edits and easily undo modifications without losing work.

• Widgets: Get access to 25 pre-built elements that you can add to your website pages using the drag-and-drop interface. These widgets cover a range of functionalities, from basic text and image blocks to more complex features, such as sliders, buttons, and social media icons. 

Starting price: $11.99 per month

Cost to upgrade: $14.99 per month

Billing cycle: Annual

Customer support options: Knowledge base, chat, and email support

Who should consider Elementor?

Web designers building eCommerce stores with multiple pages can rely on Elementor to protect the site’s and customer’s data. The premium SSL ensures that the website is secure which helps instill trust among visitors and enhance the site’s credibility. Moreover, the integrated caching tool boosts site performance by reducing load times, improving user experience, and retaining visitors. Together, these features enable designers to build high-performing, secure websites without extensive coding knowledge.

GoDaddy Website Builder enables you to create a website using a drag-and-drop editor and customizable themes. You can enhance your site with promo banners, contact forms, and calls to action to support marketing campaigns, gather customer data, and boost sales. Additionally, it integrates with Facebook, Instagram, Google, and email platforms, allowing you to manage campaigns and monitor social posts from one central interface. The tool also features a unified inbox, consolidating communications from various platforms into one place for simplified management.

You get all the above-mentioned functionalities in the GoDaddy Website Builder base plan. If you go for the advanced plans, you can access features, such as SEO tools, appointment booking, product listings, and discount and promotional features.

Base plan features:*

• Content and design tools: Get access to various tools that help create and customize the look and functionality of your website. These tools include customizable templates, text editor, and drag-and-drop functionality.

• Unlimited social media platforms: Integrate your website with unlimited social media accounts. This feature lets you connect, manage, and monitor your social media presence directly from the website dashboard, facilitating easier updates and consistent branding across all channels. 

• Marketing dashboard: Get a comprehensive overview of various marketing metrics and activities and track the performance of online campaigns, analyze web traffic, and monitor social media engagement. The dashboard keeps you updated with your business performance and helps make informed decisions for business growth. 

Starting price: $12.99 per month

Cost to upgrade: $16.99 per month

Billing cycle: Annual

Customer support options: Knowledge base, phone, and chat support

Who should consider GoDaddy Website Builder?

GoDaddy Website Builder can help marketing managers track and manage communications happening across social media platforms. The unified inbox consolidates messages from various platforms into a single location, simplifying communication and ensuring no customer query goes unanswered. Further, social media integration facilitates effortless management of multiple social accounts, allowing the marketing manager to post updates, respond to comments, and track engagement from one centralized dashboard.

Webflow lets you collaborate with your team while creating the website. It lets the team members leave comments on website elements to share their feedback or make changes to the design. You can control each member's access to ensure only the authorized users can access or edit the design. Besides, Webflow lets you password-protect the entire site or certain pages of it, enabling you to control access to exclusive or confidential information. 

The base plan of Webflow supports 150 static pages and 5,000 monthly form submissions. The higher-priced plans, on the other hand, support up to 150 static pages and 2,500 monthly form submissions. They also let you take data backup and add a site search button on the website.

Base plan features:*

• Localization preview: See how your website with appear in different languages and formats, tailored to specific regional audiences. This functionality is necessary for testing and optimizing the user experience for a global audience, ensuring that all text elements, layout adjustments, and other localized content display correctly across various languages. 

• Content delivery network (CDN): Enhance website performance by distributing site content across a network of servers globally. This setup ensures that data is served from the closest server to a user, significantly reducing load times and improving site responsiveness.

• Schema markup support: Integrate structured data into your website to enhance how search engines understand and present your content in search results. Schema markup helps clarify your information's context, allowing search engines to create rich snippets—detailed search results that include features such as star ratings and images. 

Starting price: $14 per month

Cost to upgrade: $23 per month

Billing cycle: Annual

Customer support options: Knowledge base and email support

Who should consider Webflow?

Web designers can leverage Webflow to enhance team collaboration and improve website security. The collaboration feature allows team members to work on a website simultaneously, enabling real-time design edits and feedback, which accelerates the development process and improves outcomes through collective input. Meanwhile, the password protection feature secures specific pages or entire sites, ideal for stages of client review or when handling sensitive content. This ensures that only authorized individuals can access certain areas, safeguarding information and design integrity.

Reviewers of web design software emphasize the critical importance of the following features. To identify these features, we asked users to rate, on a scale of “low importance” to “critical,” how important different features are for web design software. The features showcased are those that the highest percentage of reviewers rated as “highly important” or “critical” over the past two years (as of April 10, 2024).

A web design system can cost as low as $10 per month or up to $208+ per month, depending on various factors—features, number of users, infrastructure requirements, business size/type, training availability, deployment options, integrations, and storage. Most web design solutions typically include the following pricing plans:

• Free trials: Range from seven to 14 days and give users access to either all or limited features of the software. These no-cost trial plans are ideal for a small business that wishes to try out a tool before purchasing it.

• Free versions: Offer perpetual access to limited software features. These free plans are ideal for small businesses on a budget.

• Entry-level plans: Start at $10 per month and offer access to standard features. These are suitable for a small business with basic feature requirements, such as basic templates, a limited number of pages, and a drag-and-drop editor.

• Mid-tier plans: Range from $12 to $157 per month and offer advanced features such as content management system, SEO tools, and web hosting. These are suitable for businesses that have outgrown entry-level web design solutions but don’t require the full range of functionality offered by enterprise-level tools.

• High-end plans: Cost more than $208 per month and offer a range of advanced features, including unlimited pages, marketing tools, priority customer support, and integrations with third-party systems. These are suitable for large businesses.

Here are some questions to ask software providers to find the best web design software for your needs:

• Does the tool allow you to add customized branding?

Look for a web design tool that lets you personalize the website's fonts, colors, and themes. This personalization ensures that your website aligns with your business’s unique identity and creates a consistent and recognizable brand experience across all customer touchpoints. It also differentiates you from the competitors, fosters brand loyalty, and enhances professional appearance.

• Does the tool come with image editing options?

Having image editing options in the site builder that lets you enhance visual appeal, optimize loading times, and tailor images to fit the website's layout and branding reduces the need for hiring a graphic designer, saving time and resources. It also ensures that you maintain a professional and engaging website that captures and retains visitor attention.

• Does the tool support drag-and-drop functionality?

The drag-and-drop functionality allows for the quick arrangement and customization of elements such as text, images, and videos, facilitating a more intuitive and efficient design workflow. It simplifies the design process, making it accessible even to users with limited technical skills. Having this option in the web design tool you invest in significantly reducing the time and effort required to build and maintain a professional and visually appealing website.