If you want to succeed in the modern world, you need to have a website— whether that’s for your business, your blog or your professional portfolio. Thankfully, there are many free or inexpensive web buildersavailable to help you make your website a reality.
For most entrepreneurs and aspiring bloggers, the question then becomes: What’s the best all-around website builder? Which platform is the most cost-efficient, offering the best and greatest number of features for the lowest possible cost? Unfortunately, the answer to this question is: there’s no such thing as a singular “best” website builder. Instead, each platform has distinct advantages and disadvantages, which make them better in some cases and worse in others.
But why is this the case, and if there is no objective “best,” how can you choose which website builder to use?
The main problem here is one of specialization vs. generalization. Some of the best website builders available are ones that generalize, attempting to offer the most well-rounded set of features for the widest potential range of customers. These are platforms likeWordPress, which have risen to prominence, in part, because of how approachable they are for people who aren’t sure what they need in a website.
This is perfectly fine, and if you don’t have any special requirements or needs, these types of platforms will serve you well. However, for specific functions, they will always be out-competed by platforms that specialize in one particular area. For example, there are website builders designed for people who want to sell things online, and they outperform many of their competitors in that specific area. The more you learn about website builders, the more you’ll come to understand and recognize how many subtypes there are.
Specialist platforms will always be out-competed in some areas by generalist platforms, and generalist platforms will always be out-competed in some areas by specialist platforms. Depending on your needs, one of these areas will likely be more important than the others — but for you alone. There can’t be a best platform for everybody, because every individual building a website will be working with different criteria.
So how should you go about making your decision?
You can create almost any type of website you can imagine using a website builder. The question is, which platform is best to use in doing it? Unfortunately, there’s no single platform that can offer you ultimate flexibility or ultimate efficiency, but if you’re willing to put in the effort to research and evaluate your options, eventually, a clear “best fit” will arise.
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