However, website builders now allow you to create functional, branded websites without any coding knowledge. The best website builders offer hundreds of templates that you can easily customize and a variety of design elements to create a unique website.
Should you choose a website builder or hire a web developer and/or designer to create your website? The answer depends on your goals, budget, needs, time availability, and other factors.
Modern website builders have advanced features and greater design flexibility than ever before country wise email marketing database , making the result comparable to custom web development.
Let's take a closer look at website builders and how they compare to web developers/designers.
What are website builders?
Website builders are do-it-yourself tools that allow users to create a website using ready-made templates without having to write code or create designs. They allow you to create a professional-looking website by dragging and dropping elements.
They have both online and offline formats – you can edit directly in your browser using online website builders. Most online builders offer complimentary hosting services so users don’t need any technical knowledge in this regard.
Popular website builders include Elementor, Squarespace, Weebly, GoDaddy, and Wix.
Elementor is a live drag-and-drop WordPress website builder that offers extensive design features and a huge collection of templates in its free plan.
Elementor Editor
Source: GatosQuiénCódigo
Wix is a comprehensive, scalable, and beginner-friendly platform that helps you create a professional website without writing any code.
Squarespace is ideal for users who have some technical skills and web design knowledge, as the platform's strength lies in visual design.
Weebly works well for small businesses, online stores, blogs, and personal portfolios. You can use its drag-and-drop editor to create simple yet elegant websites.
It makes sense to use DIY website builders because of the creative freedom and amazing design features they offer at affordable prices.
Key Factors to Consider When Considering Custom Web Development vs Website Builder
There are many good reasons to choose website builders over web designers/developers to create a solid, professional website. Let’s take a look at five key factors that tip the scales in favor of website builders.
1. Speed and performance
Google is doing everything it can to improve user experience, as evident from the recent Core Web Vitals update. Website speed and performance are important contributors to a smooth and fluid browsing experience and search engine rankings.
Web designers use several methods to increase page loading speed, such as compressing image files, using lazy loading and caching, optimizing JavaScript, using content delivery networks, and using fewer and better plugins.
Website builders like Elementor are inherently designed for speed, but they also feature ongoing updates to optimize performance, such as:
Selective Asset Loading: Improves front-end website performance by reducing the amount of JavaScript code loaded on the page by default. Page speed is increased by loading only the necessary features. Some widgets have lazy loading to reduce page size and the number of HTTP requests when the page is initially loaded. This improves page performance.
Internal JavaScript and CSS Optimization: Users can configure the Google Fonts loading method and font display property in the Font Awesome library. It reduces render-blocking processes and gives users more control over the website's appearance and functioning.
Improved code output: They have created a smaller DOM and simplified the code output by removing wrapper elements. They also provided inline loading to allow displaying widgets without waiting for all JavaScript files to fully download before rendering the content.
Backend and rendering processes optimization: Dynamic CSS loading and rendering mechanism has been improved with page caching. Improves server-side rendering times.
Leveraging native browser support: The use of certain CSS and JavaScript libraries has been reduced and replaced with native browser support. This makes implementation efficient and greatly reduces JavaScript execution time. For example, the Waypoints library has been replaced with the native Intersection Observer API.
