Best Web Design Software for Beginners & Professionals

Are you looking for the best professional web design software? Design software makes it possible for you to create web templates and beautiful designs in much less time.

Not long ago, you had to write complex code and make web design programs to create even the most basic templates. But with more advanced software now on the market, anyone can build beautiful web designs quickly and easily.

In this article, we’ll share the best web design software that you can use to create website templates or full-fledged websites.

Best Software and Builders to Design a Website

Below, you’ll find our pick of the best web platforms and tools in the market that will help you create either a full-fledged website, landing pages, or website templates.

1. WordPress

WordPress is a free and open-source software that lets you build any kind of website with ease. Over 40% of the web uses WordPress, making it the most popular Content Management System in the world.

WordPress comes with built-in themes and if that’s not enough, you can always choose from the thousands of third-party WordPress themes that are available for just about every niche.

Each theme has a basic structure, and you can change anything in a theme like its colors, text, background, and images. There are also WordPress page builders like SeedProd that let you customize the theme from the frontend, so there’s no coding required at all.

Added to that, you can also use WordPress plugins for endless customization options.

WordPress.org is the best platform for site owners and developers who want access to cPanel and phpMyAdmin to control website files and databases. If you are serious about growing and expanding your website, then WordPress is an obvious choice.

Now installing WordPress is easy and free! But first, you need a domain name and web hosting plan, which costs around $14.99 per year and $7.99 per month, respectively. It can be quite a lot when you’re just starting with a new website.

Fortunately, we’ve worked out a special deal for SmartWebsiter users. You can start a website for only $2.75 per month with Bluehost. They’re the best web hosting provider and are even officially recommended by WordPress.org.

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2. SeedProd

SeedProd is already the best landing page builder for WordPress sites. And now, with its new Theme Builder, you can use SeedProd to easily create a custom WordPress theme from scratch.

The software comes with full theme kits and over 150+ beautiful and responsive page templates. The theme kits include matching designs for every part of your site, not just the homepage.

Customizing your theme is easy with the drag and drop builder, text editor, layout navigation, and live previews. You’ll also find smart sections, headline animations, WordPress template tags, and powerful page blocks to build unique pages all by simply dragging and dropping them to where you want them to appear.

You can choose what you want to show/hide on desktop and mobile devices. Your site’s design will be mobile-friendly in every way.

Plus, the platform integrates with email marketing tools and other WordPress tools. This makes it easy to sync other features of your website such as contact forms, WooCommerce products, and more.

With SeedProd, the best part is there’s no coding required whatsoever. The design process is contained smoothly within the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface. However, SeedProd also has advanced settings and a code editor for developers if they want to insert custom coding.

SeedProd has a free plan and a premium version. You’ll need the Pro plan to access the Theme Builder.

See our full SeedProd Review for more details.

3. Thrive Suite

Thrive Suite is one of the best ways to build a WordPress site that’s optimized to convert visitors into subscribers and buyers.

You’ll get premade themes and a drag and drop theme builder to design a custom website in no time. If you want to create an online store, Thrive integrates seamlessly with Woocommerce There’s even a setup wizard that makes it incredibly easy to set up your eCommerce site.

There are hundreds of pre-designed sections and templates to customize your header, footer, blog post template, page template, site bar, and more. Simply choose your brand color, tweak a few details and your site is good to go live.

When you sign up for Thrive Suite, you also get access to powerful conversion optimization tools including:

  • Thrive Theme Builder: 100% front-end visual theme building
  • Thrive Automator: Smart automation that integrates with your marketing tools and website
  • Thrive Architect: Visual page builder to create beautiful content & layouts
  • Thrive Leads: Build your email list faster than ever before
  • Thrive Apprentice: Create and sell online courses
  • Thrive Comments: Leverage comments to make your site more engaging
  • Thrive Quiz Builder: Create powerfully engaging quizzes
  • Thrive Ovation: Set-and-Forget Testimonial Plugin for WordPress
  • Thrive Ultimatum: Create scarcity marketing campaigns
  • Thrive Optimize: Find out what works with landing page A/B tests

With Thrive, you’ll have everything you need to set up and grow an online business.

4. Web.com

Web.com is one of the original and most popular do-it-yourself website builders on the market. Using the intuitive drag and drop builder and readymade website templates, anyone can quickly build a website, no technical skills are needed.

You can easily add features like contact forms, photo galleries, videos, social media buttons, map locations, and more. Plus, you get access to thousands of stock images you can use on your site.

All Web.com plans come with a free domain name, business email address, autosave & backup features, website analytics, SEO features, and other essential website tools.

The Starter website plan starts at only $1.95 per month.

5. Gator Builder

Gator Builder is a web design and development software by HostGator. It’s packed with dozens of web templates for every business niche. The templates are beautiful and fully dynamic to work with third-party services. You can use the user-friendly drag and drop interface to add images, videos, Google Maps, and more in a few clicks.

Since it’s built by HostGator, one of the best web hosting companies on the planet, each plan comes with a hosting option as well. Gator Builder integrates with social channels to display feeds from your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.

6. SiteBuilder

SiteBuilder is a web design software with hundreds of ready-made templates that let you easily build a website. You can either customize the web templates or design your layouts from scratch with the drag and drop builder. It offers a free domain name and web hosting with each plan to help you get started quickly.

It also offers great customization options to design a complete website, start a blog, or run an eCommerce store. It has several design tools to add images, content, and other media files to your web template.

7. Divi

Divi is a popular WordPress theme and web design software. It comes with a drag and drop editor that lets you create custom web templates easily. Divi’s template portfolios have hundreds of premade designs for restaurants, cafes, medical, fitness, the list is endless. It gives you an advanced visual editor to customize your templates with effects, shape dividers, transformations, and more.

Its point and click tool allows you to add text anywhere on your web template. It’s a modern software with options to edit, undo, redo, and revise your customizations. Divi Builder is packed with dozens of global elements, style options, and content blocks to ease your website designing process.

For more details, check out this complete Divi review.

8. Weebly

Weebly is a popular web building and designing software. It can be used to create web designs for general websites and online eCommerce stores — millions of users on the internet trust it. Weebly comes with a drag and drop interface to create your web design in just a few minutes.

It’s a hosted solution so you won’t have to worry about additional web hosting charges. It’s built-in to your pricing plan.

The drag and drop feature makes it even simpler to develop your website design without writing a single line of code.

Though the free version of Weebly comes with everything you need to make beautiful websites, it’s worth checking out their paid plan for more features and options. For more details, read the complete Weebly review from our experts.

9. Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is an easy-to-use page builder for WordPress users. It comes with responsive templates and a simple drag and drop builder.

This makes it one of the most beginner-friendly website design tools out there.

It works great for everyone including freelancers, developers, agencies, eCommerce stores, and businesses.

Beaver Builder is developer-friendly if you want to make advanced changes. Plus, there are addons to extend features and functionality of the page builder.

Interested in this platform? Get more information inside our Beaver Builder Review.

10. Wix

Wix is designed to be a beginner-friendly website builder. Once you sign up, there’s a setup wizard that helps you take all the steps you need to design and publish a website.

The visual builder lets you make changes in real-time. And you’ll find tons of customization options inside the editor to add headers, footers, images, and more. The great part about Wix is that it takes care of website maintenance like updates, SSL, and security.

However, it uses a fully-managed subscription service model. This means you need to pay a monthly or yearly fee to keep your website on the internet.

The downside to this platform is that you’ll be very limited in terms of web development control and customizations.

While ease of use takes priority, you won’t be able to design your site the way you want it. There are premade responsive website formats that your site will automatically follow.

Wix is a good option if you’re new to website design. But as your own website grows and expands, you’ll want to switch from Wix to a more flexible platform like WordPress, and that can be very complicated.

See our full Wix Review.

That’s our list of the best web design software for building and launching a regular website. If you had to ask us what is the most popular web design software? The winner would be WordPress.org, hands down.

Up next, we’ll check out the best design software and apps available for online stores and anyone in the eCommerce sector.

Best Web Design Software for eCommerce

To create and design an online store, choosing the right platform is critical. Once you get started, it can be difficult to switch later on.

We have a detailed comparison of eCommerce platforms to choose from. Below, we’ve highlighted our 3 top picks in the market.

11. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free eCommerce platform for WordPress. It’s incredibly easy to set up and is the most flexible eCommerce option available.

There’s a beginner-friendly setup wizard that makes sure you cover all the steps you need before you launch your store.

It lets you easily create customized product catalogs and product pages. You can list both physical and digital products. Plus, it’s easy to configure taxes, shipping, payment options, and more so your customers will have a better user experience.

Since it’s built on WordPress, WooCommerce is compatible with thousands of themes so you can get the UI design you want. Plus, you’ll get access to tons of third-party plugins that you can use for SEO, speed optimization, contact forms, and mroe.

With WooCommerce, designing an eCommerce website is easy, however, you’ll need to have a WordPress site for that. We also recommend choosing a WooCommerce hosting plan that will give you ample bandwidth to run your store smoothly.

Learn more in our WooCommerce Review.

12. Shopify

Shopify is a fully hosted eCommerce platform. It’s beginner-friendly but it’s also a managed platform like SquareSpace. This means you won’t have to worry about technical stuff. Your site will also come pre-installed with an SSL certificate for better security. But this also means you get very limited control over the design of your website.

This eCommerce design software comes with premade templates to create any kind of store you need. Plus, you can customize these templates using the intuitive web builder.

The good thing about this platform is that you’ll have lesser maintenance tasks to take care of. However, it comes at a hefty price especially once your website starts growing.

13. Big Commerce

Big Commerce is another popular eCommerce platform that’s fully hosted. You can integrate it with WordPress so you can convert your existing site to an online store.

It’s easy to design a beautiful storefront using customizable themes. And BigCommerce handles product images, crops them, and creates beautiful gallery layouts.

Shopify and BigCommerce pricing is quite similar.

With that, we’ve taken a full tour of the best web design platforms and software to build websites. Next, we’ll show you the best tools for graphic design and marketing.

Best Software for Graphic Design and Marketing

Below is our pick of the best web design software programs that can be used both online and offline. You’ll mostly need this to enhance your website’s design, create marketing campaigns, sale promotions, and more.

FAQs on Web Designing Software

1. What is the easiest website design software to use?

To build a website, SeedProd is incredibly easy to use. SeedProd works on top of WordPress so you’ll get the ease of use plus flexibility to grow the way you want.

2. Which is the best software for web designing?

We love WordPress. It’s the best open-source software to design any kind of website you want. You’ll get access to thousands of themes and plugins to customize your site. And let’s not forget, it’s free!

3. How do you make a website?

You can make a website using a website builder. Follow our guide: How to Make a Website (Step by Step).

4. What is the easiest program to build a website?

We believe that WordPress is the easiest program to build a website that you can grow and monetize. You can use a builder like SeedProd or Thrive to customize your site easily. However, if you’re looking to build a simple online presence, then you can look at platforms like WordPress.com and Wix.

We hope this article helped you find the best web design software on the market. Next, you’ll definitely want to check out these resources:

These posts will help you find the right web tools and give you easy tutorials to set up a website or online store the right way!