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A few years ago, it was still pretty common to land on websites that were not optimized for mobile phones.
And it’s pretty likely that you know at least one restaurant that still has this clunky old website that won’t display properly on your smartphone.
Fortunately, it’s no big effort anymore to create a mobile-responsive website.
Squarespace, Hostinger, Webflow, Weebly, Shopify and WordPress all provide mobile-friendly templates to help you create a responsive website that looks great on any device. In this blog post, we’ll look at each of them in detail so that you can find the best website builder for your small business or personal website.
Get ready – we’re diving into the world of responsive website building!
What is a mobile responsive website?
In a nutshell, it’s a website that looks and works great on any device, whether you’re viewing it on a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone.
My own website on an iPhone, iPad and Mac desktop computer
To explain the concept of a responsive website, I think it’s best to describe what it isn’t. Imagine you’re browsing a website on your phone and the layout is very difficult to navigate. The text is tiny, the images are too big, and you can’t click on any of the links because of the small text. That’s not a mobile-responsive website.
This video shows how a responsive website behaves:
Why are mobile-responsive websites important?
More and more people are using their mobile devices (phones and tablets) to access the internet (68.2% according to our study), so having a mobile responsive website makes it easy for them to use your site. Plus, Google and other search engines give priority to mobile-friendly websites in their search results, which will help you rank higher (see also: the best website builders for SEO).
Now, let’s see which web builders you can create a mobile-friendly website easily.
The Best Responsive Website Builders
We’ll now go through the details of each of them:
Squarespace – Flawless designs
Squarespace is a powerful website builder designed for small businesses, freelancers, and creative makers. It offers an intuitive drag and drop interface that makes it easy to create beautiful websites without any coding knowledge. With its built-in tools, users can easily add text, images, videos, audio files and more to their sites. Additionally, Squarespace provides access to hundreds of professionally designed templates that are not only responsive but also fully customizable.
Squarespace’s features
Squarespace offers many features, including ecommerce capabilities (e.g. product pages and shopping carts); integrated analytics so you can track your visitors; SEO tools; custom domains; email marketing campaigns; 24/7 customer support via phone or chat; social media integration with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram; excellent blogging capabilities with RSS feeds, and comment moderation options.
Squarespace Pricing
All of Squarespace’s plans offer access to the full library of their responsive templates.
- Personal: $16 a month. Ecommerce not included.
- Business: $23 a month. Includes marketing features and ecommerce.
- Online Store (Basic): $27 a month. Lets you sell online without transaction fees.
- Online Store (Advanced): a $49. Adds advanced ecommerce features.
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Squarespace is a great choice for small businesses and freelancers looking to create an attractive, responsive website. It offers plenty of features and customization options, but due to its relatively high cost may not be the right fit for everyone.
> Read the full Squarespace review
Hostinger Website Builder (formerly Zyro) – Stylish budget choice
Hostinger is very similar to the largest website builder out there, which is Wix, but at the same time it also offers mobile-responsive design, which Wix doesn’t. Plus, Hostinger is a lot more affordable. It’s still a relatively new player, but it’s growing rapidly in popularity.
Hostinger’s Features
Hostinger Website Builder offers many features for creating professional websites quickly and easily. These include drag-and-drop editing tools for easy customization; blogging tools; 100+ customizable, mobile-responsive templates with different designs; built-in SEO tools; and integrated ecommerce capabilities (which are a bit limited still).
Hostinger Pricing
- Website: $9.99 a month. Includes responsive templates and all features except ecommerce
Hostinger Website Builder is a great choice for freelancers looking to create an attractive, responsive website that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
> Read the full Hostinger Website Builder review
Webflow – Designer’s dream
This one isn’t quite as easy as the two aforementioned website builders. You are given countless options to choose from, which ultimately makes it much more complicated to work with. Webflow is particularly popular with web designers who create websites for their clients.
Webflow Features
There are more than 1500 mobile-responsive themes available in their theme store. That’s right, it’s a store. While there are some free templates available, most of them have a price tag, which is usually around the $49 mark.
It offers a vast range of features, including custom code editing, dynamic content, and ecommerce capabilities. One of the main advantages of using Webflow is its flexibility. The platform allows users to customize their sites with ease by offering multiple design options such as fonts, colors, layouts etc., allowing them to create unique experiences for their visitors.
One downside is the technical know-how you’ll need to make full use out of it – this may be difficult for beginners who are just starting out in web design.
Webflow pricing
- Starter: $0. To try the platform.
- Core: $19/month. Up to 3 seats. You can create up to 10 website projects and export your code.
- Growth: $49/month. Lets you can create an unlimited number of projects.
Please note: We are showing the Workspaces Plans (read more about Webflow pricing here).
Overall it’s a great option for those looking to create a modern, responsive website and don’t mind the extra effort. It’s packed with features and offers flexible pricing plans to suit any budget.
> Read the full Webflow review
Weebly/Square Online – Easy like no other
Weebly was one of the first no-code website building platforms. It provides an easy-to-use drag and drop editor (probably the easiest around), allowing you to customize your site with various features such as text, images, videos, forms and more.
Weebly Features
It comes with a variety of features including responsive templates; ecommerce capabilities for selling products online; blog tools for writing posts; analytics to track visitor activity on the site; SEO tools to help increase visibility in search engines; domain name registration options and more.
One of the biggest advantages of using Weebly is its ease of use – it’s designed specifically for those who don’t have much experience in web design or development. In addition to this, it has marketing tools like email campaigns and social media integration, which make it easier to promote your business online. Finally, its pricing plans are very affordable compared to other platforms on the market.
One of the main issues with Weebly is the fact that it has hardly received any product updates since Square acquired it in 2018. While it does have an app store, the apps in it are relatively underwhelming. But worst of all, Weebly features just a handful of templates, all of which are starting to look outdated. At least all of them are mobile-responsive.
Weebly Pricing
- Free: $0 a month. Shows a footer ad and no custom domain name. Includes all of their responsive themes.
- Starter: $8 a month. Removes the Weebly ad and includes a custom domain.
- Pro: $12 a month. Extra features like video and audio player.
- Business: $25 a month. This is for running online stores.
- Business Plus: $26 a month. Offers more advanced ecommerce features.
Weebly is an easy-to-use website builder with plenty of features. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to build a free website.
> Read the full Weebly review
WordPress – Endless themes
WordPress is an extremely popular CMS (content management system). It is an open-source software, which means it can be modified and improved by anyone with the right skills. The learning curve can be steep, though – definitely steeper than with Squarespace or Weebly.
The great thing about WordPress is that you have access to a vast selection of responsive themes, many of them completely free. There are even external marketplaces like Envato, where you can purchase premium WordPress Themes for around $30-80.
With WordPress, you can customize your site’s look and feel, as well as add features like galleries, contact forms, social media integration, and more.
WordPress features
Thanks to various page-building tools (e.g. Elementor) and the new Gutenberg drag and drop editor, WordPress is now much more accessible than it used to be. It lets you manage multiple blog authors; install plugins for additional functionality such as ecommerce capabilities or SEO; and use widgets to display content in sidebars or footers automatically – all without having to write a single line of code!
WordPress pricing
- Hosting: approx. $6/month for hosting WordPress.org. WordPress.com provides its own hosting and starts at $4 a month.
- Template: Free or around $30-80 for premium themes.
- Plugins: from $0 to $200 per year on average.
Overall, I would recommend WordPress to anyone whose website is the main component of their business. WordPress is best for a growing business that needs a website that scales with it.
> Read more about WordPress
> Try WordPress using Dreamhost
Shopify – Mobile-friendly ecommerce
Shopify is an ecommerce website builder that allows you to create and manage your own online store. The platform includes an easy-to-use editor, payment processing solutions, inventory management capabilities, marketing features such as email campaigns and discount codes, analytics tools to track performance metrics such as sales and website traffic, and more.
Shopify features
These include customizable themes with mobile optimization options; secure hosting; integrated payments; powerful search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities; support for multiple languages; and integration with social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Advanced features include customer accounts (allowing customers to save their information for future purchases); abandoned cart recovery functionality (which helps you recover lost sales from shoppers who leave without completing their purchase); and real-time shipping rates (so customers know exactly how much they will be charged for shipping before they checkout).
Additionally, there are hundreds of third-party apps available on the Shopify App Store which can be used to extend the functionality of your store even further.
Shopify pricing
- Basic: $29 a month. Includes all the free themes.
- Shopify: $79 a month. Extra marketing features like gift cards and abandoned cart recovery. The non-Shopify-payment transaction fees drop to 1%.
- Advanced: $299 a month. Transaction fees are now 0.5% Includes advanced features like reports and automatic shipping rate calculations.
Shopify is probably the best choice for merchants who are serious about selling online.
> Try Shopify for free
> Read our full Shopify review
Conclusion
It’s essential your website works well on mobile devices, especial if you want to attract business. So when it comes to the best responsive website builder for small businesses, Squarespace, Hostinger Weebly, Shopify and WordPress all offer great options. Here are our top picks:
- Best for small websites: Squarespace and Hostinger
- Best budget option: Hostinger
- Best for ecommerce: Shopify
- Best for larger websites: WordPress or Webflow
- Best for designers: Webflow
If you have any further questions, please leave a comment!
FAQ: Responsive website builders
Even though Wix is the largest website builder out there, it doesn’t offer fully responsive templates. Instead, it offers a mobile-optimized version, which is similar to responsive design but comes with its own pros and cons. Learn more about Wix’s template approach here.
The best free responsive site builder is Weebly. It offers a wide range of features, including drag and drop design tools, a decent range of responsive themes, and an easy-to-use interface. Other interesting free responsive site builders are Webnode and GoDaddy. Both feature templates that have a more modern look than Weebly’s while its features are generally slightly less advanced.
One way to check if your site is responsive is to use the website Responsinator, which lets you view how your website appears on various devices. Another method is to manually test your website on different devices by adjusting the size of your browser window or accessing the website on various devices (as you have seen in the video above).
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30 Aug 2023 - Zyro is now called Hostinger Website Builder
17 Jan 2023 - A few smaller updates
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