Comparisons of four website building services

offering a free subscription :

WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Blogger

When commencing your social media business platform profiles, it is also important to be aware of the FREE website building subscription options such as WordPress, Wix, Weebly and Blogger, as you may also wish to engage in a professional blog site and website.

Comparing their features and what you actually require will depend on an individual’s and/or business’s needs, as you may want to add video, audio, a photo gallery, contact forms and even an online store. Initially you may not require all such features, however, it is well worth considering these points before beginning your website or blog. As your business grows, managing your business needs and features within the website builder needs to be as easy as possible.

WordPress offers many great free features and accessibility and is therefore a very popular website builder with its simplicity and security. It is easy to use and manage. You can choose from many of their free and customable template designs and register with your own domain name. Features include analytical statistics, responsive mobile themes (meaning your website will look good when viewed on any device),  mobile apps, great support, and the opportunity to easily upgrade your service in the future. As you own your own content, managing your account offers great freedom to alter and export that content at any time. Free and open source plugins are available for use on your free WordPress website (WordPress, 2018).

WPBeginner (WPBeginner, 2018)  comments “WordPress is the world’s most popular website building platform” with “over 28% of all websites on the internet are powered by WordPress”. And, what is important to note, WordPress offers two platforms, WordPress.org and WordPress.com, which are both quite different. So, it is worthwhile to check out their differences carefully.

The free Wix website builder in comparison only offers a basic free service to build your website using the customable templates. However, analytic tools, an eCommerce store, and platform hosting are not free Wix features, available only through paid subscription. With the free service you are able to build and test out your website and choose from plugin functionality apps. A custom domain name is not included in the free Wix free plan either, although your business will have a Wix site address (WPBeginner, 2018).

Weebly also offers many good template designs, and also has an easy drop-and-drag photo feature with its free basic website plan. However, if you wish to switch to another platform, Weebly is rather difficult to do this with. It is also “not an ideal solution to create a blog or run an online store” (WPBeginner, 2018). A paid Weebly service plan does offer a lot more features.

Blogger is the Google available free blogging platform, hosting it on blogspot.com. It gives users access to free analytics and the hosting service. Blogger also enables you to host contributing bloggers on your site. A blogger can “host multiple blogs with the same account name” states Karch (Karch, M 2018), with options of either a Blogger URL or a domain one. Images can be easily uploaded from your desktop by the drag-and-drop method into a chosen blogger template, and videos are easy to embed into a Blogger post. Like many other website and blogging building services, blogs can be shared on social media sites for promotion of your page or post.

Looking at and comparing the four free website builders of WordPress, Wix, Weebly and Blogger, demonstrates many opportunities to consider for promoting yourself and your business.

References

Karch, M 2018, Lifewire: Getting started with Google Blogger, viewed 28 August 2018, https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-google-blogger-1616420

Wix 2018, Free vs. premium site, viewed 28 August 2018, https://support.wix.com/en/article/free-vs-premium-site

WordPress 2018, Democratise Publishing: Our mission, viewed 28 August 2018, https://en-au.wordpress.org/about/

WPBeginner 2018, Beginner’s guide for WordPress: How to choose the best website builder in 2018 (compared), viewed 28 August 2018, https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-choose-the-best-website-builder/