If you’re looking to make your own website in 2026 – because you’re going self-employed, or you’re changing things up in your business, or for whatever reason – then let us save you DAYS of time by sharing our research into the best site builders around at the moment.

I wanted to help one of my best friends on her quest to start a business, by advising her on the best and most cost effective way for her to build her own website in 2026. So I wrote my 60+ page guide to getting started online, and told her we’d review the best online site builders. (Yes, it would have been quicker to build her a website, but this way it benefits another friend who was recently made redundant and is looking at options for 2026, and anyone else who is in the same boat.)

The slight snag is, that I’m maybe not a fair tester of online website builders, because I spend my life using online systems. Even though we code websites rather than use drag and drop builder tools, it might be more obvious to me, after 20 years of updating title tags and choosing URLs how to update some of the options – the labels might have been familiar or the interfaces not so overwhelming.

So I asked my 11 year old to do the report! He is very tech savvy, can code, but – at the end of the day – he’s still just 11. No experience of business, no experience of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), very minimal experience of filling in online forms and answering questions online and choosing options in an interface. I hoped this would balance things out a bit- a technical 11 year old vs. someone with life experience, in your shoes.

The brief: website builder comparison project of 2026

So, I took him for a hot chocolate one inset day and we made a plan. He created a fictional business called Magenta Interiors and generated some dummy content for it – partly via ChatGPT and partly written by him. And then we made a list of what systems he should test. So far he’s looked at the ones with a free tier – he’ll look at the ones you need to pay for next, but we didn’t want to hold up the launch of this report (as obviously he’s only doing this occasionally as a hobby project for someone interested in the web… the Christmas holidays are just around the corner though…). I want to be able to compare each of the finished sites and do a review from my point of view – hence starting with the free ones first, as the paid ones get a free trial window and we’ll do the comparison within that window. Therefore this overview will be updated during early 2026 – make sure you’re on my mailing list to hear when to check back.

If you are desperate to hear about SquareSpace though, here’s the report I wrote during 2025 about how easy it is to use.

He did also look at WordPress.org, and his review is here…. but I’ll write more about WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com (and ask him to do a review of WordPress.com too) in January.

OK, without further a do, it’s over to him…

Website builder tools – Wix, vs Webflow and Canva

During the past few weeks I have been trying out the free plans of different website builders to see which one is superior. On each option I created a website for a made-up business, Magenta interiors. This article will act as a summary of my findings, and how each builder stacks up against each other. However, individual articles on each one are available. Initially I am comparing Wix, WebFlow and Canva (but I’m going to add SquareSpace and GoDaddy soon – and then I will hopefully do a separate review of Shopify).

What can you get for free with Wix, Webflow and Canva?

All of these options have a free plan. But what I am interested in is how much you can get in that free plan. Using Wix you can do a decent amount for free, with only a few limitations: your website will have a Wix subdomain (mine was https://magentainteriors.wixsite.com/magenta-interiors-1), your website will have a Wix ad at the top of every page, only 500MB of storage and only 1GB of bandwidth (this may not be suitable for growing businesses). Aside from that, you can use all of the other features that Wix can offer.

[Intejection by Lisa – “bandwidth” is how much data can flow between your website and your visitors… so say you had a photo on the site that was 40KB, each time someone saw that picture it’d take 40KB of bandwidth. Everything on your website has a size, and so a weight. So keep your images / graphics / assets small, and be prepared that once you hit 1GB of data transfer, your website will be offline until the start of a new month.]

WebFlow, on the other hand, is much more limited. You will have a WebFlow subdomain (similar to Wix, my website was https://magenta-interiors.webflow.io), 1GB of bandwidth a month (once again, the same as Wix), 50 CMS items (dynamic content, can be blog posts or portfolio items) but these can not be put onto a live site without a CMS plan (I’ll explain this more in the WebFlow post) and – here comes the really annoying bit – only two static pages. By “static” they mean anything that isn’t a CMS item, but you need to pay for live CMS items anyway.

With Canva, you can do nearly everything you would want to for free. You can create your website using Canva’s “drag and drop editor”, though it will, once again, have a Canva subdomain. My domain name was this: https://magentainteriors.my.canva.site. Apart from that you can use any elements and tools that don’t have the pro symbol. I did just fine only using free elements.

Do they work with Google Analytics?

Out of Wix, WebFlow and Canva only WebFlow works with Google Analytics (in the free plan). For Wix you require a custom domain, which means paying, and Canva just doesn’t really have straightforward Google Analytics integration.

[Interjection by Lisa: If you want to know what Google Analytics is, it’s a way for measuring how many visitors your site is getting – you can read more in my Getting Started Online free guide.]

How pleasant are they to use?

This is a tough one, but very important. Overall, I personally think that while Canva definitely has its drawbacks (more on that later), it did give me the overall most pleasant experience when it came to constructing the pages. Wix was very easy as well, and it was probably just that I have used Canva to make posters and other things in the past, so I was more used to how it works. WebFlow, however, was very daunting. My first reaction when I started editing my website was “WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE?” However, once I got used to it wasn’t that bad. I would say though, for ease of use, you’re better off going with Wix or Canva.

How do they compare when it comes to features?

This is what I think about the free plan for each one.

Wix and WebFlow certainly dominate when it comes to features. Canva doesn’t have blogs, for example, and it doesn’t allow editing in mobile view, which Wix and Webflow do (on that note, Wix has two screen size options while Webflow has four). I think that you can do more for free with Wix by adding their different apps to your website. Some apps require payment but many are free, such as: Wix Blog, Wix Chat (which lets your customers reach out to you 24/7), Wix Bookings, Wix Stores, Wix Events and Tickets, Wix Member’s Area, Wix Online Programs and more. From what I could see when using WebFlow’s free plan, they don’t offer anywhere near as much as that for free.

WixWebFlowCanva
SEO score mobile:619145
SEO score desktop:619145
Google Analytics?Yes, but not in free planYesNo
Free plan?YesYesYes
Performance score mobile:718342
Performance score desktop:759870
Limitations of free plan:Ad, Wix subdomain, 1GB bandwidth2 page limit, WebFlow subdomain, 1GB bandwidthAccess to only certain elements and tools, Canva subdomain
Ongoing costs:£0, £9 – £119 per month to upgrade £0, $14 – $39 per month to upgrade£0, £6.50 – £8.50 per month, or contact them for enterprise information, to upgrade

Overall, when it comes to performance and SEO WebFlow wins by a landslide, even with nothing done to it. Canva is SHOCKINGLY bad, and Wix is just meh. Bearing in mind, these figures are the base sites, without any of their SEO options applied.

[Interjection by Lisa: We measured their SEO and performance using Page Speed Insights, a tool from Google.]

Comparison overview conclusion:

In conclusion, Wix, WebFlow and Canva are all good website builders, each with their different strengths and weaknesses. WebFlow excels at SEO, but has an annoying two-page limit in the free plan. Wix is in the middle at pretty much everything, but has a very strong feature list. However, it is the only builder with an ad on the free site. Canva is the most pleasant to use, but is terrible at SEO and lacks many features. Now it’s up to you to choose which one you want to use!

You can read more about the details of each one here:

Canva review

WebFlow review

Wix review

SquareSpace, GoDaddy and WordPress.com coming soon!