The 10 Best Website Builders in Canada
By Maude Gauthier | Published on 19 Apr 2023
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SendA website builder allows you to do some of the work yourself using pre-designed templates and drag-drop features that an expert has already created. Many of these website builders can get you from start to finish in just a few hours, getting your new website up and running that same day.
1. Shopify – For all types of businesses
Shopify is a Canadian company that is great for eCommerce website building. It is easy to use and you can design your entire website without any knowledge of coding. There is a wide range of templates you can use, or you can pay for a customized website design.
Shopify allows you to provide your customers with a wide variety of payment options including Paypal and Stripe. They help you build a website that is both desktop and mobile-friendly, with a lot of customizable options.
They also provide you with great customer service, with 24/7 availability through chat, email or phone. A shopify subscription provides a lot of free marketing tools and helpful tips to strengthen your online presence.
Shopify is used primarily for online stores, and does not work well as a blog design.
Price
You can start with the 3-day free trial then pay 1$ for the first month to see if you like it before committing. Brand new or smaller companies can start with the basic version, and companies with two or more busy online shops should use Advanced Shopify.
| Basic (sole proprietorship) | Standard (small teams) | Advanced (as your business scales) | Plus (complex businesses) |
| $38 per month | $99 per month | $389 per month | $2,300 USD per month |
2. Squarespace – For hassle-free online sales
Squarespace is a website design company with headquarters in New York City, and offices in Portland, Oregon and Dublin, Ireland. Squarespace is a great option if you need a simple, professional website ready to go right away.
Squarespace does not offer as many customization options but is extremely easy to use. They allow custom domain names and you can have a website ending in .ca and you can customize your province to automatically calculate tax rates.
With your subscription, you’ll have access to a community forum, webinars, and a help center. They also have options to automate marketing emails based on clicks and will send you low inventory notifications to keep you organized.
Price
Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial before you choose your subscription type.
| Personal | Business (sell products and services) | Commerce (merchandising tools) | Advanced Commerce (advanced shipping and subscriptions) |
| $21 per month | $32 per month | $36 per month | $66 per month |
3. Wix – For ambitious beginners
Wix is a website design company formed in 2006. They now have designers and employees from over 12 countries. They are one of the most popular and successful website design companies with over 250 million users worldwide.
Wix is easy to use with over 900 customizable templates and a drag-and-drop setup that makes it easy to create a website you love. Wix also offers logo design, SEO optimization, and mobile-friendly website designs.
Multi-cloud hosting ensures 99.9% availability even during peak periods. Wix allows the use of credit cards, debit cards and Paypal, but offers no inventory notification for limited stock.
Price
| Light (no eCommerce) | Essential | Business | Business Plus |
| $16 per month | $27 per month | $39 per month | $149 per month |
4. WordPress – Fully customizable at a great price
WordPress is a popular website builder where over 500 websites are built per day. WordPress is well-known because it is user-friendly and customizable.
There are many reasons to opt for WordPress, from its low rates, its availability in many languages, its ability to create bilingual websites, its thousands of themes and extensions, its top-notch SEO and security features, and so on. It’s also worth noting that there’s a huge community behind it to help you out if you need it.
WordPress is fully customizable but it may require some knowledge of coding to get started, depending on your needs. WordPress allows you to easily link to social media, collect statistics about your audience, and gives you guidance about SEO. There are hundreds of creative themes to choose from and these are updated frequently.
They also provide 24/7 customer support via email and their community website. You can use plug-ins to create an eCommerce site, or set it up through WordPress for a fee. WordPress makes it easy to create a mobile-friendly version of your site after you complete the design.
Price
WordPress is inexpensive. To benefit from advanced features, such as peak resilience and isolated site infrastructure, you’ll need to choose a more expensive package, which is still affordable.
| Starter | Explorer | Creator |
| $5 per month | $10 per month | $33 per month |
5. GoDaddy – For simple websites
GoDaddy uses artificial intelligence to design a website just minutes after you input your information. GoDaddy is one of the easiest website creators to use and does not require any prior experience or coding knowledge. It can be used to set up a blog, eCommerce site, or service site.
The downside of GoDaddy is that it is less customizable than other website builders and you have to keep your site fairly simple when using GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy sites can handle scheduling one-time appointments, accepting credit card payments, and sending automated email and social media marketing.
Price
There’s plenty of choice when it comes to pricing. GoDaddy offers 4 packages.
| Basic | Standard | Premium | eCommerce |
| $11.99 per month | $15.49 per month | $22.99 per month | $26.99 per month |
6. Lightspeed – More automation
With a home base in Montreal, Canada, Lightspeed is more than a website builder. They help you build and organize your POS and provide you with the tools and software to manage your entire business. They specialize in eCommerce, restaurant, and golf course management.
Lightspeed can generate automated marketing emails, has SEO tools to direct traffic to your site, and can handle inventory management. If you already have a website but do not have eCommerce capabilities, you can connect a lightspeed eCommerce account to WordPress, Wix, or Weebly.
The basic plans help you set up and manage a basic eCommerce site and POS, and the most expensive provides automated bookkeeping and rewards plans.
Price
Lightspeed is the most expensive website builder, but it can automate a lot more work for your business than the other website building options. High-volume merchants (over $500k annual GTV) should contact Lightspeed for monthly pricing.
| Lightspeed Lean | Lightspeed Standard | Lightspeed Advanced |
| $89 per month | $159 per month | $229 per month |
7. PageCloud – Collaborate easily
PageCloud is another Canadian website builder that is simple, effective, and highly customizable. Their landing page states that they can help you get an eCommerce site up and running in just a few minutes. They offer a unique feature that lets you share your website design with your team, allowing everyone to edit and input information before the page is published.
They provide SEO tools, 24/7 chat support, a community blog to help answer questions, and connectivity to social media sites. You can also hire a PageCloud Pro with marketing experience who will design and create your website for you.
Price
PageCloud offers informational and e-commerce website plans, with eCommerce being slightly more expensive. Prices are indicated in USD.
| Starter or Basic | Launch | Grow/Advanced | Pro/Unlimited | |
| No eCommerce | Free | $20 per month | $36 per month | $79 per month |
| eCommerce | 29$ per month | — | $59 per month | $89 per month |
8. WebSelf – User-friendly platform
WebSelf is a website creator based out of Quebec, Canada. They have helped over 3 million customers design their own websites since 2009. Their drag-and-drop design capabilities are user-friendly, and easily customizable.
They have blog, forum, and eCommerce capabilities, as well as mobile-friendly designs. WebSelf offers free 24/7 customer service to help walk you through the process. They also offer a free training course called WebSelf academy where you can learn tips to help you build an effective website.
You can create a website for free with up to five pages and a webselfsite.net subdomain. With paid plans, you get your own domain, and the eCommerce plan includes translation with multilingual site capabilities into “almost any language” including English, Spanish, and French.
Price
| Basic | Pro | eCommerce |
| $11.95 per month | $18.45 per month | $24.45 per month |
9. Site123 – Build an affordable website to sell products online
Site123 is a Canadian-based website builder great for people just starting out. They have easy-to-use templates and their service is very inexpensive. Using Site123, you can create a custom domain, an eCommerce store, and mobile-friendly web pages.
Site123 helps you create your website in just three steps. You choose a design, upload your content, and publish. You can have a website completed in less than an hour. Site123 provides royalty-free images you can use for your site, and SEO suggestions to increase your traffic. They also offer free 24/7 chat support.
Price
Site123 offers only two options: the free version, which forces you to use a sub-domain, or the premium version for $12.80 per month, which includes eCommerce functionalities and lets you connect your own domain name.
10. Website.com – Advanced features at a good price
Website.com works well for small online stores, photographer portfolios, as well as restaurants, life coaches, and Real Estate websites. They provide professionally designed templates you can use and offer multilingual site capabilities. They have over 83,000 reviews with a 4.6 out of five-star rating.
The advanced business plan includes a free domain for 1 year, 50 GB of storage space, 20 domain email accounts, customizable web forms, support for 10 website languages, unlimited products in your store, unlimited discount codes, abandoned cart recovery and more.
Price
| Free Plan | Free, including the possibility to sell 3 products |
| Personal Plan | $3 per month |
| Elite Plan | $5 per month |
| Business Basic | $10 per month |
| Business Standard | $16 per month |
| Business Advanced | $22 per month |
What to Look for in a website builder
Starting out with so many options to choose from can be overwhelming. Price is obviously an important factor when choosing any service or product. Decide how much you are willing to spend and stick to your budget. There are many free website builders out there, but be careful. Choose an option that is search engine friendly, suitable for mobile devices and offers you your own domain name.
Free website builders work well for small businesses, but may not be enough for complex websites with a lot of traffic or need to keep information secure. You can earn rewards like cash back by paying for a website builder with a business credit card.
While templates are a great guide and can get you started building your website, you also want it to be unique. Avoid boring websites or sites that look just like your competitors. You want to have a unique look and be able to give your clients or customers exactly what they need through your website.
Look for a website builder with a good customer service record, with clear tutorials and helpful tips. Use google reviews or ask other business owners about how the company handles issues and complaints. Having 24/7 support and online chat options can help you solve problems quickly, saving you time, money, and frustration.
Look for builders available for you to use. Another great feature to look for is a forum where other users discuss ideas, questions, and tips for website building.
Impact of a well-built website
Online presence is more important than ever, and this will not change any time soon. In 2023, the average Canadian was spending several hours a day online. Most of this time was spent on social media and looking for information about businesses or shopping.
There are two ways the internet can really help your customer base grow and your sales increase. You need to increase the amount of traffic to your website, and convert that traffic to sales. A well-designed website can help you do both.
Using search engine optimization (SEO) to bring your website closer to the top of a search list will get more clicks to your site. You can also bring more customers in with a strong social media presence and by offering useful and engaging information for your potential clients.
Once people are looking at your website, you need to keep them there and get them excited about your product or service. A beautiful home page that is easy to navigate and guides customers through the experience makes a big difference.
A professional website is like dressing well for an interview. Show customers that you have a good aesthetic, pay attention to details and consider their needs.
Technical difficulties
Research from Google shows that 53% of customers will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. If your website has frequent technical difficulties, you will lose clients. Customers, especially ones shopping online, want convenience and they don’t want to wait.
It is well worth the investment to build a website that will not crash or fail to load. Unless you have an extremely sought-after and unique service or product, by the time you can correct a website issue, most of your clients will have made a purchase from your competitor.
