Website platforms compared: Which builds your business best?

What are the best website platforms for business growth? As an online entrepreneur who’s built, scaled, and sold three websites, this question interests me greatly. So, I drew upon my own experience and extensive testing to curate a list of the top five website platforms for marketers and business decision-makers who care about lead generation, revenue, and proven ROI.

Below, I’ll share how I evaluated top website platforms, what features to look for, a detailed review of the best website-building platforms, and answers to frequently asked questions.

Table of Contents

• What are website platforms?
• How I Evaluated the Top Website Platform Tools
• Website Platform Features to Look For
• Best Website Platforms
• AI-Ready Website Platforms
• Free Website Platforms Versus Paid Plans
• How to Switch Website Platforms Without Migration Headaches
• Frequently Asked Questions About Website Platforms

What are website platforms?

A website platform is software upon which you can build different types of websites. More specifically, for this article, we’ll be talking about website builders, a type of website platform that enables marketers, business owners, and non-technical professionals to create sites using pre-made templates, AI, and no-code visual editors. User-friendly website platforms make it easy for business owners and digital marketers to create and manage an online presence without having to code.

How I Evaluated the Top Website Platform Tools

Ease of Use for Marketers

Since this article is aimed at my fellow marketers, I made sure to include user-friendly website platforms that are made with marketers in mind, with built-in growth tools and no-code visual editors.

Integrations with CRM and Marketing Tools

Marketers know well the headache of switching tools constantly to find data. I included website platforms with built-in marketing tools and CRMs, as well as integrations with popular growth tools.

Reporting and Revenue Attribution

Marketers rely on reporting to prove ROI to stakeholders. Even more important, revenue attribution ties website content to business revenue.

AI Readiness

According to HubSpot's AI Trends for Marketers 2025 report, 66% of marketers globally use AI in their role. Business growth requires staying on the cutting edge, so I looked for built-in AI tools that help with website building, content creation, insights, and more.

Team Permissions and Content Governance

Managing user roles and content governance is a challenge for marketing teams. I considered what kind of team permissions and content governance each website platform offered.

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Website Platform Features to Look For

Visual Editor

In the absence of a visual editor, you’d need to know how to code to make changes to your site’s design and layout. Look for a no-code visual editor that’s intuitive to use, even for non-technical professionals.

Content Versioning + Restoration

A good website platform for business growth, especially for teams publishing content in high volume, will include content versioning. This allows you to see what changes were made, who made the changes, and lets you restore to a previous version if needed.

Templates

Web design is an important part of the user experience, and thankfully, you don’t need to be a pro to get professional-looking website designs. Website themes or templates are premade website designs made by professionals. You can install a template and then edit it via the no-code editor.

Analytics

Analytics play a crucial role in tracking business growth. A good website platform will include at least basic analytics, allowing you to see number of visitors and your top-performing pages. The most advanced analytics will even attribute revenue to specific pages.

Best Website Platforms

Here’s a quick comparison of website platforms in a chart before you dive into the details below:

1. Content Hub

Best for: Built-in marketing tools and lead generation

Content Hub is the only website platform on this list that is built upon an entire unified customer platform, meaning it comes with a native CRM, plus marketing, sales, and service tools. Marketers use Content Hub to connect campaigns and revenue to their customer data.

What I like:

• Native integrations with CRM and marketing tools: Content Hub is built on the HubSpot Smart CRM, so it’s natively connected to your customer data for deeper personalization. It’s also integrated with HubSpot’s sales, marketing, and service tools.
• Multi-touch attribution reporting: More accurate than last-click reporting, HubSpot offers multi-touch attribution to give marketers true insight into which pages are driving revenue.
• Powerful suite of AI agents and content creation tools: Content Hub helps marketers create websites using either templates or an AI website builder. On top of that, the Breeze suite of AI tools includes agents that assist with content creation, reporting, analysis, and customer support.
• Content history, restoration, and approvals: Content Hub is well-suited for large teams because it supports having multiple authors and establishing content approvals. It also has content versioning, showing a history of changes and allowing you to restore to a previous version.

What I don’t like:

• If you’re not using the HubSpot CRM, using Content Hub can feel overwhelming, as it comes with a lot of advanced tools. Additionally, for ecommerce businesses, Content Hub can feel limiting because it doesn’t come with a native shopping cart or inventory tracking.

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

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• Build a website without any coding skills.
• Pre-built themes and templates.
• Built-in marketing tools and features.
• And more!

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2. Wix

Best for: A beginner-friendly website builder

What I like:

• 2,000+ website templates: Wix has the most pre-made web design templates of any website builder on this list. So if you want to build a website fast, you’re bound to find a design you like in its template library.
• Robust AI website builders: Wix actually offers two AI website-building experiences: the standard Wix AI and Wix Vibe, which more closely resembles “vibe coding” tools like Loveable. This gives you a lot of flexibility in how you create your Wix site.
• Content creation tools: Wix offers Astro AI assistant, AI topic brainstorming, AI text generation, and an AI image creator. It also allows you to enable blog post approvals.
• Built-in basic CRM: Wix has a built-in CRM that lets you set up live chat, forms, workflows, and automations, though it's not as robust as the HubSpot CRM. For example, Wix CRM doesn’t offer multi-touch attribution.

What I don’t like:

• Unlike other website platforms on this list, Wix doesn’t let you switch templates after you’ve started building your site. So, if you wanted to change your site’s design, you’d have to start over.

3. Shopify

Best for: Ecommerce businesses

Shopify is a leading ecommerce website platform. I’ve used it many times, mostly for my clients who used it to run their online stores. Despite having advanced and complex features, I find it extremely easy to use, and I’ve been impressed with its new AI website creation tools.

What I like:

• Native and powerful ecommerce features: Shopify is built specifically for ecommerce businesses, with built-in shopping cart, checkout, and inventory management features.
• AI website builder: Shopify has one of my favorite AI website builders, as it generates a beautifully designed website pretty quickly. However, it’s not as robust as Wix’s AI website builder.
• AI content creation tools: Shopify offers the Sidekick AI assistant, AI image editing, and AI text generation.
• Store analytics: Shopify's Analytics page shows you net sales by channel, value of recent sales, and average order value.

What I don’t like:

• Limited blogging capabilities: Shopify limits blog authors to staff accounts, doesn’t let you add multiple authors to one post, and doesn’t provide content versioning.
• No free plan. Short free trial: Shopify doesn’t offer a free plan but does offer a three-day free trial.

4. WordPress.com

Best for: Businesses serious about blogging

The first website I ever built was on WordPress.com, and since then, I’ve launched at least five self-hosted WordPress.org sites and sold three of them. WordPress is the CMS of choice for bloggers, powering 60.2% of all websites with a known CMS, according to January 2026 W3Techs data.

For this article, I’ll focus on the hosted SaaS solution, WordPress.com, as that’s the most marketer-friendly and least technical of the two.

What I like:

• Built for blogging: WordPress started as open-source blogging software in 2003, so it has a strong foundation and history as a blogging tool. It comes with automatic XML sitemap generation, blog categories and tags, and built-in SEO tools on the Business and Commerce plans.
  
  Pro tip: While SEO is still important, don’t forget about Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), which optimizes content for citations by AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity. To see how your site stacks up, check out our free AEO Grader.
• 50,000+ plugins: WordPress has so many plugins that you can basically add any functionality you can imagine simply by installing a plugin (this means you don’t have to hire a developer to custom-code a feature).
• AI tools: WordPress.com has an AI assistant, a basic AI website builder, and AI image and text generation.
• Popularity makes it easy to find support. Because WordPress is the most popular CMS, finding a developer who specializes in it, or even finding fellow bloggers who can speak about their experience, is extremely easy. I like that there’s a solid community built around this website platform.

What I don’t like:

• Limited built-in growth features. WordPress.com offers basic stats, but you can only get advanced insights with the Premium tier or above. It also has a built-in newsletter tool, but it's not as robust an email marketing tool as HubSpot. Many of the more advanced customizations require plugins, so it might take some time to test out which plugins best suit your needs.

Pro tip: If you’ve got technical skills, self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org) offers you more flexibility than WordPress.com. You can more easily switch designs and web hosting, plus have way more control over backend infrastructure compared to the hosted solutions in this article.

That said, self-hosted WordPress is not the simplest or most intuitive option for website platforms on this list. I’ve had many frustrations and trial-and-error moments with my self-hosted WordPress sites. WordPress sites are notorious for plugin bloat and security vulnerabilities, so update your plugins and purge unused ones regularly. You can also check out our list of WordPress alternatives.

5. Squarespace

Best for: Clean, modern website designs

I now use Squarespace for my freelance writing site. In my opinion, it has the absolute best template designs and visual editor. I was able to build a professional-looking site in about a day, and I’m blown away by how sleek and modern it looks.

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.

• Build a website without any coding skills.
• Pre-built themes and templates.
• Built-in marketing tools and features.
• And more!

Get Started for Free

What I like:

• Most beautiful website templates: Squarespace’s template library is smaller than Wix’s, but the designs are much more appealing to me. On top of that, its visual editor makes it easy for non-designers to add animations and visual elements that make the site look professionally designed.
• Intuitive visual editor: I’ve used many no-code editors to build websites, and Squarespace’s might be my favorite. When I built my freelance website with Squarespace, I felt like I could design it like a professional. It was extremely easy to add animations, adjust the placement of visual elements, and more.
• Built-in ecommerce features: Though not as robust as Shopify, Squarespace does offer ecommerce features, including online payments, a shopping cart, and inventory management.
• AI-powered Brand Identity: Squarespace offers Brand Identity, which is an AI tool that lets you describe your business and choose a personality to make sure AI-generated text on your site is on-brand.

What I don’t like:

• No content versioning: Squarespace doesn’t have content history or versioning, meaning you can’t see what changes were made or restore to a previous version. This would be a dealbreaker for me if I were to have multiple authors on a post, as I wouldn’t be able to see who made changes.
• No AI assistant: While Squarespace offers some AI guidance, it doesn’t have a built-in AI assistant like HubSpot or Shopify that you can chat with as you build your site or in your dashboard.
• No free plan: But Squarespace does offer a 14-day free trial.

If Squarespace feels like almost the right fit, but you want to explore more options, check out our list of Squarespace alternatives.

AI-Ready Website Platforms

In 2026, marketers need software that uses AI to help them improve and speed up their processes. So, I wanted to dedicate a section to the most AI-ready website platforms from the list above.

Content Hub

Best for: Weaving AI throughout the whole process — from content creation to closing deals to customer support.

HubSpot is a very AI-forward company that’s made continuous advances in its AI-powered offerings throughout its customer platform.

Content Hub’s top AI features:

• Breeze AI agents. Breeze is HubSpot’s suite of AI tools, and Content Hub users will find Breeze Agents for nearly every use case. Marketers can use Breeze to help generate meta-descriptions, refine landing page copy, and analyze email marketing campaigns. Sales teams can use Breeze’s closing agent to get insights into buyer engagement and blockers. And support reps can use Breeze’s customer agent to answer questions fast.
• AI website generator. Content Hub’s AI can generate a one-page website for free.
• Brand voice. On HubSpot‘s Professional and Enterprise plans, you can set up brand voice. Simply upload a writing sample that reflects your company’s brand voice, and the AI will learn it, allowing you to apply the brand voice consistently across assets.
• Content Remix. Content Hub’s Content Remix lets you create several different assets from one piece of content.

Wix

Best for: Most in-depth AI website builder process

I’ve tested Wix’s AI website builder many times, and I’m impressed with the company’s continuous improvement of the AI builder. It’s gotten so much better than when I first tested it over a year ago. In addition, Wix has released Wix Vibe, which is similar to Loveable in that it uses AI to “vibe code,” creating more complex, custom websites where you can actually inspect and edit the code.

Wix’s top AI features:

• AI website builders. Generate a website using AI with Wix Vibe or Wix AI website creation. Wix Vibe generates a website based on your text prompt and allows you to view and edit the code. Wix’s standard AI website creation experience uses an AI chatbot to guide you step by step, asking you questions about your ideal website. It lets you edit the design via the no-code editor.
• Astro AI assistant. Once your website is built, you can chat with Astro to ask questions right within the dashboard. You can ask it about product features or how to achieve something with your site.

• AI text refinement. Simply highlight text and ask it to rephrase it for you.

Free Website Platforms Versus Paid Plans

Marketers and business leaders looking for website platforms for business growth should not use free plans long term. Free plans are great for testing a platform, but they won’t offer the tools necessary for a thriving business.

As someone who’s used both free and paid plans for many website platforms, here’s what I recommend: Start with free to get a feel for the platform. But if you’re running a business, upgrade to at least the lowest paid tier as soon as possible.

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.

• Build a website without any coding skills.
• Pre-built themes and templates.
• Built-in marketing tools and features.
• And more!

Get Started for Free

Here are the free tier limitations that can inhibit business growth:

• Vendor branding: Every website platform that offers a free website will give you a free branded domain. That means that to visit your site, customers will have to type in something like yourbusiness.wixsite.com.
  
  In addition, the free website will likely have vendor logos on it, such as the free Wix website below.

• Lower storage space. For example, Wix‘s free plan comes with only 500 MB of storage. For more, you’d need to upgrade to at least the Light plan, which offers 2 GB of storage.
• Limited features. For example, WordPress.com offers a free plan, but to access advanced visitor insights and connect Google Analytics (both of which I think are crucial to growth), you need at least the Premium plan.

Overall, using a free plan for your finalized business plan hurts your brand image and growth. Use it for testing purposes only.

How to Switch Website Platforms Without Migration Headaches

Migrating to a different website platform is more complex than merely switching hosts. In many cases, it can involve a lot of manual copy-pasting of content, and for marketers, there‘s the added pressure of protecting hard-won SEO rankings and ensuring lead generation doesn’t skip a beat. Here's a high-level overview of a migration checklist you can use:

Step 1: Back up your entire site. Storing regular backups of your site is a best practice, but this is especially true before making a major change. Before you migrate, ensure you have backups of your entire site so you can restore them if anything goes wrong.

Step 2: Audit your site, including content and SEO. Establish baseline metrics of your top-performing pages so you can ensure the migration doesn't harm those pages. Document your current rankings for priority keywords, organic traffic levels, and conversion rates. This audit becomes your north star for measuring post-migration success.

Step 3: Map your URLs. Create a comprehensive spreadsheet matching every old URL to its new destination. This is critical for marketers because even small URL structure changes can break inbound links, disrupt campaigns, and tank your search rankings. Don't forget landing pages tied to active ad campaigns or email sequences.

Step 4: Export and organize your content. Most website platforms let you export content, but the format varies widely. You may need to reformat blog posts, recreate landing pages, or manually transfer custom fields. Prioritize pages by business impact — start with your highest-traffic and highest-converting content.

Step 5: Migrate the site. Whether you're doing this manually, using a migration plugin, or working with a professional service, test the migration on a staging environment first. This lets you catch issues before they affect your live site and your customers.

Step 6: Rebuild forms and integrations. Reconnect your CRM, marketing automation tools, and any third-party integrations. For marketers, this step is non-negotiable — a broken form or disconnected CRM means lost leads. If you're moving to a platform like Content Hub with native CRM integration, this step becomes significantly simpler since your customer data and marketing tools are already unified.

Step 7: Implement 301 redirects. Set up permanent redirects from every old URL to its corresponding new URL. This preserves your link equity and ensures visitors (and search engines) land where they should.

Step 8: Update DNS. Point your domain to your new hosting environment. Keep in mind that DNS propagation can take 24-48 hours, so plan for potential downtime and avoid launching during high-traffic periods or critical campaign windows.

Step 9: QA the new site thoroughly. Check that all pages render correctly, forms submit properly, tracking pixels fire, and integrations sync data. Test on multiple browsers and devices. Pay special attention to pages tied to paid campaigns. You don't want to send ad traffic to broken experiences.

Step 10: Monitor performance closely. For the first 30-60 days post-migration, keep a close eye on your organic traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion rates. Compare against the baseline you established in step two. Some fluctuation is normal, but significant drops warrant immediate investigation.

For a more detailed walkthrough, check out our article on how to migrate a website without hurting SEO.

Pro tip: If you're switching to Content Hub, HubSpot offers a website migration service where our experts handle the transfer for you, saving you the headaches.

Frequently Asked Questions About Website Platforms

When should you switch from a website builder to a CMS?

First, it's worth noting that the line between website builders and content management systems (CMS) is blurry. Many platforms on this list, like WordPress.com and Squarespace, are technically CMSs that offer no-code visual editors. So the real question is: When should you switch from a simple website builder to a more robust CMS?

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.

• Build a website without any coding skills.
• Pre-built themes and templates.
• Built-in marketing tools and features.
• And more!

Get Started for Free

Here are the signs it's time to make the switch:

• Your team is growing. If you're adding authors, editors, or contributors, you need content versioning, approval workflows, and user permissions. Basic builders often lack these features, which can lead to content chaos.
• You need deeper analytics and revenue attribution. If you‘re still relying on basic pageview stats and can’t connect your website performance to actual revenue, a CMS with multi-touch attribution (like Content Hub) will give you the insights stakeholders demand.
• Your content volume is scaling. Publishing a handful of pages is manageable on any platform. But when you're producing blog posts, landing pages, and campaigns at scale, you need a CMS built for content operations.
• You want native CRM and marketing tool integrations. Manually exporting leads from your website to your CRM is a growth bottleneck. A CMS with built-in CRM connectivity lets you personalize content and automate follow-ups seamlessly. HubSpot's Content Hub is a CMS built on the Smart CRM, giving marketers native access to customer data for personalization and attribution.
• You're hitting plugin or customization limits. If you find yourself constantly searching for workarounds or third-party apps to achieve basic functionality, it‘s a signal you’ve outgrown your current platform.

How do you preserve SEO when migrating to a new website platform?

To preserve SEO, get a baseline of all your ranking data before the migration. That way, post-migration, you can check to ensure your top-performing pages aren‘t being negatively affected. You’ll also want to map your URLs to ensure redirects get implemented properly. For more details, check out our article on how to migrate a website without hurting SEO.

What is the best way to evaluate headless for a small team?

For a small team evaluating a headless CMS:

• Check if you have the necessary developer resources. A headless CMS does not come with a front-end presentation layer — a developer must build it.
• Ask for a demo or a free trial. Contact the sales team and ask to demo the software. Alternatively, you might be able to sign up for a free plan or free trial, though this will take more hands-on work, and again, you’ll need to enlist developer help.
• Consider whether a traditional or hybrid CMS is a better fit. Headless CMSs are a great fit for small teams that publish content to multiple channels and don’t want to create a different version for every channel. But if you’re just publishing to a website, a headless CMS is overdoing it. Alternatively, you might consider a hybrid CMS like Content Hub, which can function as both a traditional (monolithic) and a headless CMS thanks to its APIs. That will give you flexibility in how you choose to use your CMS, though it isn’t a headless-first CMS like Strapi, Contentful, or Sanity.

How can I connect my website platform to CRM and marketing automation?

The easiest way is to choose a website platform with built-in CRM and marketing tools, like Content Hub or Wix. Content Hub is a CMS built upon the HubSpot Smart CRM, allowing marketers to connect their content to customer data. If you choose a website platform without these native tools, you’ll need to check their integrations to see if there are plugins or apps that connect the platform to the CRM and marketing automation tools you use. You can also use middleware, such as Zapier, to create this connection yourself. Lastly, your engineering team could use the website platform’s APIs to connect to external tools, though this takes more time and effort.

What is the simplest path to add ecommerce to an existing site?

The simplest path to add ecommerce to an existing website is to check the website platform’s integrations/plugins/apps library for a way to extend your existing site’s functionality. For example, if you have a WordPress site, you can search the WordPress Plugin directory for plugins that can add ecommerce functionality. Alternatively, Content Hub users can search the HubSpot Marketplace to find ecommerce apps, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and PrestaShop.

Our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure to learn more about how we use AI.

HubSpot's Free Website Builder

Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.

• Build a website without any coding skills.
• Pre-built themes and templates.
• Built-in marketing tools and features.
• And more!

Get Started for Free