If you’re looking to create your own website on your Mac, whether it’s a passion project or the online presence for your new business, then good news – it’s never been easier. With a wide array of sites that can help you build a professional looking website in minutes, for a minimal cost, you’ll be spoiled for choice.

From ecommerce templates to interactive galleries, there’s no limit to what you can achieve with the best website builders for Mac that we’ve rounded up for you. We also take a look at dedicated website builder apps, and let you know if these would suit you too.

The Best Website Builders for Mac

We have carried out extensive user-based research to rank and rate the most popular website builders out there. We ask the same questions you do, such as how easy are they to use, what features can they provide, do they offer good value for money, and what sort of customer support is available, and create a score based on these factors and others. Each website builder we rate is based on real life use, with our testers having hands on time with each service and telling you what’s great, and what’s not so great.

Below are the top scorers to come out of our testing:

Mac Website Builders:

• Wix – An excellent all-rounder for everyone
• Weebly – Easy to use and great value
• Squarespace – An excellent range of designs and templates
• 1&1 Ionos – One of the best web designers for eCommerce
• WordPress – Popular if slightly limited
• GoDaddy – A good range of features
• Site123 – A decent offering, but not as rich as other sites

Scroll horizontally to view full table on mobile devices

	Wix	Weebly	Squarespace	1&1 Ionos	WordPress	GoDaddy	Site123
Test score	4.5 stars	4 stars	4 stars	4 stars	3.5 stars	3 stars	3 stars
Verdict	Wix has some brilliant templates to help you create a professional-looking website, plus powerful plug-ins and apps from its marketplace. It’s the best website builder a business can choose, and simple to use, too.	Second only to Wix in our testing, we think Weebly is a great choice for building a business website. There aren’t as many templates, but it still has fantastic features.	One of the best things about Squarespace is the fantastic range of templates, which have some of the best designs we’ve seen – great for impressing your customers.	If you’re creating an e-commerce website to sell products, then 1&1 is one of the best builders you can choose. Its design options aren’t quite as slick as those from our top services, though.	WordPress has loads of features and settings that will suit experienced web developers nicely, though beginners may find the templates on rival services easier.	GoDaddy is a hugely popular website building tool, and it’s certainly simple to use. The company keeps on investing in the features and templates to help it stay competitive.	While you can certainly publish an attractive and effective business website with Site123, the service doesn’t offer features as rich as what you’ll get with Wix or Weebly.
Number of templates	Over 500	56	91	433	290	8	188
Blogging	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Portfolio sites	✔	✔	✔	✗	✔	✗	✔
Business sites	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Ecommerce sites	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✗	✔
Features	4 stars	5 stars	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	2 stars	3 stars
Design Flexibility	4 stars	5 stars	4 stars	3 stars	3 stars	3 stars	3 stars
Value for Money	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	2 stars	2 stars
Help and Support	5 stars	4 stars	4 stars	5 stars	4 stars	2 stars	3 stars
Customer Score	5 stars	4 stars	4 stars	5 stars	3 stars	4 stars	3 stars
Ease of Use	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	4 stars
Free plan	✔	✔	14-day free trial	✗	✔	30-day free trial	✔
Paid plan (monthly)	Starts from $8.50	Starts from $5	Starts from $12	Starts from $7	Starts from $4	Starts from $5.99	Starts from $10.80
Try it Today	Visit Wix	Visit Weebly	Visit Squarespace*	Visit 1&1 Ionos	Visit WordPress	Visit GoDaddy	Visit Site123

Mac Website Builder Software Compared

Wix Review

Wix is one of the best known website builders in the business, and with good reason. It offers great value, whilst not scrimping on the features available to users. It’s also refreshingly easy to use, with an intuitive drag and drop system, making it a great choice for new starters, as well as those with some experience.

Among its excellent range of features, Wix offers an extensive app store, allowing you to add functions to your site with just a click, from appointment booking to live chat. It also gives users powerful SEO tools to ensure that their website doesn’t languish at the bottom of Google’s search engine, meaning an excellent leg up for your website compared to competitors.

Wix offers a free version, but its fairly basic, and we don’t recommend it. The good news is that it has a good range of prices and won’t break the bank. Opt for a paid package and you can have a professional looking website up and running in minutes, for minimal cost.

Read our full review of Wix

Click the gallery below to see Wix in action

Weebly Review

Weebly is a great website builder for perfectionists, thanks to its deep customization options. Want to see what your website would look like with a diffferent template? No problem, with Weebly, you can swap out different styles at your will, while retaining the information on the page. These changes are done with a simple click, meaning its not daunting for new users who want to experiment.

For expert users, Weebly allows the use of CSS and HTML to be added to its templates, meaning that those with experience can fine tune the pages to to their liking .

If you want to add features to your site, Weebly has an extensive app store, offering over 300 to choose from. One nice touch is the app review system, where users can leave ratings for the apps they have used, giving you guidance on which ones would work best for your site.

Read our full Weebly review

Click the gallery below to see more of Weebly

Squarespace Review

Squarespace’s excellent range of templates enable website novices to whip up a professional looking website in no time at all, and they are the linchpin of the service. With 91 templates to choose from, there are plenty of options, and with pretty much every facet editable, there really is no limit to how your site can look.

While Squarespace offers a fantastic range of options for those looking to create a website that looks the part, the interface can be a little confusing for first time users. It’s something that you’ll get used to quickly, but be aware that there is something of a learning curve initially.

One excellent feature is Squarespace’s blogging function. Posts look the same when they’re being written as how they will on the finished page, removing the needs to continually go back and forth, previewing the site.

Read our full Squarespace review

Click the gallery below to see Squarespace

1&1 Ionos Review

Is 1&1 Ionos as good as the likes of Wix, Weebly or Squarespace? Frankly, no, but it still has some neat tricks up its sleeve which make it worth considering. One feature is that 1&1 Ionos sites can be multilingual, allowing you to create sites in 60 different languages, which could be a selling point for those looking to appeal to international markets.

The builder lets you have full access to the CSS and HTML coding of the templates – many builders don’t like you tinkering with the backend of their pages like this, but with 1&1 Ionos, anyone with experience will be able to make coding changes to get their site to look how they want.

1&1 Ionos feels slightly dated compared to other website builders, and it’s not a patch on the likes of Wix or Weebly, so opt for those instead.

Click the gallery below for images of 1&1 Ionos

Read our full 1&1 Ionos review

WordPress Review

WordPress powers over 500 million websites, so it must be doing something right. It’s an ideal platform for running a blog, thanks to excellent tools and templates that will help you craft the best looking blog out there. As a website builder for creating professional looking business focused sites, it doesn’t quite compete with our favourites, Wix and Weebly, if only because it cannot offer the same ease of adding extra features that those platforms can.

The editor itself is fairly intuitive, and has a great ‘what you see is what you get’ approach, so that as you’re writing your page, you can see how it will look to your readers. Also, thanks to the huge, active userbase, any issues you might come across are usually just a Google away, so if you do come unstuck, it likely won’t be for long.

Read our full WordPress review today

Click the gallery below to for WordPress images

GoDaddy Review

GoDaddy is a huge force in the web building industry, with 17.5 million users. One of the reasons for its popularity, aside from its extensive marketing budget, is the ease with which it lets users create new sites, thanks to a simple drag and drop system, and 24/7 customer support on hand for any issues that might crop up as you’re building your dream page.

Sounds good, but do we recommend it? While it does a decent job, and it’s certainly not terrible, it’s something of a compromise when pitched against the standards of Wix and Weebly. It’s editor is restrictive, meaning you might struggle to create that exact website you’ve always dreamed of, and it’s sorely lacking in apps to add features to your page.

Read our full review of GoDaddy

Click the gallery below to see more of GoDaddy

Site123 Review

Site123 claims to be ‘the easiest free website builder ‘, which is rather bold given it’s stiff competition. However, we can’t disagree that the service makes things easy for you, with its sidebar system making it simple for virtually anyone to create a website in minutes. It’s especially strong as a platform for ecommerce, thanks to its excellent online store template, with all you having to do is add the stock – Site123 will do the rest.

If there’s one area where Site123 falls down, it’s the templates. None of them are overall exciting, putting function before creativity. However, if all you care about is getting your ecommerce website up in record time and for with minimal cost, Site123 is certainly one to consider.

Read our full review of Site123

Click the gallery below to see Site123 in action

Website Builder vs Mac Website Software

While a web-based website builder is the most popular option, there is also dedicated software available that can do the same job. Software has fewer benefits compared to online services like Wix and Weebly – quite often you’ll have to pay more upfront, with potentially expensive licenses, you can only use them on the machine they are installed on, and some may have high requirements that won’t pose a problem to newer Macs, but which older models might struggle with. On the other hand a website service is accessible from any machine, costs a few bucks a month, and guaranteed to run on your device.

The one appeal of dedicated software, is that you are fully in control – as they are not online, you are not relying on another persons service, and you can also use them offline, so they don’t require an internet connection. If you’re the sort of person who likes total control, then dedicated site building software may appeal.

We take a brief look at some of the most popular options.

Sandvox

Sandbox makes big claims about its accessibility, stating that users will be able to create a website in under an hour. With a drag and drop interface that’s not too hard to believe, and those with coding experience can inject their own CSS or HTML to really make their website their own. It also offers in depth guides and on hand customer support should you need it.

RapidWeaver

RapidWeaver doesn’t require any prior experience, and it’s a decent starting point for newcomers who simply want to create a functioning website. Integrated SEO tools make sure that your site will be spotted by Google and rank well, and there are dozens of themes to choose from. The automatic navigation system means that your site won’t suffer broken links.