We’re not just in the business of creating beautiful and functional local pages web design software—we’re also dedicated to helping small businesses thrive. When you have a business that depends on a website, there’s no room for error. You need to be able to connect with your customers and provide a seamless experience, and our applications make it easy for you to do just that.
You don’t want to spend your time playing around with code or dealing with building an online store from scratch (or, god forbid, going through an ordeal like we did). You just want to create an online presence that makes your customers happy, so they can connect with you and buy from you without hassle.
We’re here for you. We know what it’s like to be a small business owner who doesn’t have extra time to spend on technical details. That’s why we made our applications simple enough that even my grandma could use them! She actually uses our shopping cart app—and she said she had fun doing it! Stop wading through paperwork and waiting days for your site to load.
Local Pages Web Design Software
1. WordPress (Free and Paid)
Here at websitesetup.org, we recommend people use WordPress to create their websites.
Why?
Through our experience creating hundreds of sites, we’ve found that WordPress offers the best combination of flexibility, power, and ease-of-use necessary to build and launch content-based websites.
And it seems like the internet agrees with us! Over 35% of all websites run on WordPress. WordPress powers popular blogs, e-commerce stores, communities, and more.
To get started with WordPress, you have two options:
- Set up a self-hosted WordPress site (WordPress.org)
- Sign up for a free WordPress.com account
If you’re just looking to host a small personal site, WordPress.com may be a great choice. However, if you’re starting a more complex project a self-hosted WordPress site is probably a better option.
If you are already using WordPress, but looking for help creating a WordPress theme or customizing WordPress pages, we recommend checking out the Genesis Theme Framework and the Elementor Page Builder.
2. Bootstrap (Free)
Originally created by the engineering team at Twitter, Bootstrap is now the world’s most popular framework for building responsive, mobile-first websites.
Put simply, Bootstrap is a free library of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that simplifies the process of coding a website from scratch. Bootstrap offers dozens of features like a grid system, responsive breakpoints, and a large library of components that make coding a website quick and easy.
The component library includes headers, navigation, buttons, forms, alerts, and more. The Bootstrap team has comprehensively documented each feature, complete with examples and suggestions for customization.
To get started with Bootstrap, simply download the latest version of the Bootstrap framework, copy one of the example templates, and start coding.
3. Wix (Free and Paid)
Wix is an easy-to-use, affordable alternative to WordPress.
Much like WordPress, Wix can be used to create a variety of different sites, including blogs and stores. Through its drag-and-drop editor, Wix makes it simple to set up and launch your site in just a few minutes.
Wix is a fully-managed subscription service, meaning that the company handles all the details around hosting the site, backing it up, and handling security.
Wix offers a free, ad-sponsored plan that includes hundreds of templates and options to choose from. Paid plans start at $14 per month and include ad removal, increased bandwidth, and additional space for videos
4. Dreamweaver (Free Trial)
Dreamweaver is Adobe’s application for coding, editing, and maintaining websites. It lets you edit websites both by coding them manually and through an intuitive visual interface.
Dreamweaver includes many of the features of a traditional, text-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) like syntax-highlighting, automatic code completion, and the ability to collapse and expand sections of code. You can even use Dreamweaver with Bootstrap!
Unlike a traditional IDE, however, Dreamweaver’s visual interface is what makes it really stand out. Any changes you make in your website’s code are automatically displayed in real-time in Dreamweaver’s interface, and you can also point and click to edit your website’s code visually.
If you’d like more power than a simple drag-and-drop editor, but need something simpler than a code-only IDE, Dreamweaver is a fantastic option.
You can subscribe to Dreamweaver on its own for $20.99 per month or choose a subscription to Adobe’s full Creative Suite for $52.99 per month. Adobe offers 7-day free trials for both options, and discounts for students are frequently available
5. Squarespace (Paid)
Squarespace is another good website builder that serves as a third alternative to Wix and WordPress.
Much like Wix, Squarespace offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface for creating your website. Squarespace also offers a huge variety of different themes and color customizations and includes many of the standards you’d expect like SSL encryption and the ability to build an online store.
Squarespace’s personal plan starts at $14 per month with limits of 20 pages and two contributors. The business plan lifts these limitations and costs $23 per month
Best Software for Interface Design & Prototyping
Interface design apps and prototyping tools help designers envision and communicate how websites will look and behave before they’re launched. Here are a few great candidates to consider.
6. Figma (Free and Paid)
Despite being one of the newest tools on this list, Figma is also one of the most powerful. If you’re looking for a feature-loaded tool for interface design and prototyping, Figma may be the perfect fit.
Much like Sketch, the next app on this list, Figma features an intuitive, vector-based interface that makes designing websites simple. Anything you can do with Sketch or Adobe XD, you can also do with Figma.
What makes Figma really shine, however, is its collaborative, cloud-based approach. With Figma, multiple team members can edit a design file simultaneously. Business stakeholders can also leave comments, and developers can copy code snippets to simplify the process of turning your design into a real site.
Figma offers a free plan that includes up to 3 projects. Paid plans start at $12 per month and include advanced options like custom user permissions.
7. Sketch 3 (Free Trial)
Sketch is an extremely popular interface design tool focused on simplifying the process of creating beautiful, high-fidelity mockups. Sketch gained popularity in the early 2010s when it won a design award from Apple.
Designers love Sketch because its uncluttered and intuitive interface makes it easy to create beautiful designs quickly, without the steep learning curve often associated with other design tools. Sketch also has a comprehensive ecosystem of plugins and integrations that bring added power and make it simple to integrate Sketch into your workflow.
While Sketch has recently added some features focused on prototyping and collaboration, the program isn’t as advanced in these areas as some of the other tools on this list.
Sketch is available for macOS and costs $9 per editor, monthly (or $99 per editor, annually). Sketch comes with a 30-day trial.
8. Adobe XD (Free Trial)
Tired of being beaten out by simpler tools that were better-suited to interface design and prototyping, Adobe released XD in 2019 as its answer to the other tools on this list.
XD is a powerful, vector-based tool that also supports prototyping animations. If you like Adobe’s other products like Photoshop and Illustrator, chances are you’ll also like XD.
The program also supports opening and editing files from Sketch, making it a popular choice for Windows users who need to collaborate with other designers who use Sketch. That said, novices may find XD’s learning curve a bit steep, and even many professionals prefer other tools on this list.
You can subscribe to XD on its own for $9.99 per month or choose a subscription to Adobe’s full Creative Suite for $52.99 per month. Adobe offers 7-day free trials for both options.
9. InVision Studio (Free and Paid)
While InVision got its start offering a cloud-based prototype service that integrates with tools like Sketch and Photoshop, it now offers its own full-featured interface design and prototyping tool called Studio.
Think of InVision Studio like an advanced version of Sketch, complete with advanced motion animations, collaboration tools, and options to create and share prototypes.
InVision Studio is currently in free beta. To share prototypes using its cloud service, you can opt for a free plan or upgrade to one of InVision’s paid offerings, which allows for more collaborators and projects.
10. Framer X (Free Trial)
Framer originally started as a JavaScript library and toolset for prototyping, but it’s evolved into the most powerful tool on this list.
Framer X is a rapid prototyping tool that supports complex animations and generates the code for React components on the fly. At first glance, Framer’s vector-based interface looks extremely similar to Sketch, but there’s far more power under the hood.
Designers like Framer for its responsive design features, an array of premade components, and support for advanced animations. Developers love it because it simplifies the process of turning a design into production-ready code.
If you’re already part of the React ecosystem, or if you simply want a powerful interface capable of creating high-fidelity prototypes with realistic interactions and animations, Framer X is a fantastic option.
Framer X offers a free plan for up to two editors. Framer’s paid plans start from $20/month.
best professional web design software
1. Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a cross-platform source code editor compatible with Mac, Windows, and Linux.. It supports many programming and markup languages natively.
You can download and try Sublime Text out for free. The personal license costs a one-off purchase of $80. And the business license starts from $65 per year for up to 10 seats and get cheaper as you get more seats.
. . .
To save your time, we create a cheat sheet with all the tools and resources mentioned in this post. Download it to browse everything at a glance and pick what you need quickly.
WEB DESIGN TOOLS CHEAT SHEET
Best web design software for ecommerce
2. Squarespace
Source: SquareSpace
Squarespace is a feature-packed website builder with 100+ flexible designer website templates. It offers customer account functionality for online stores as well as inventory management, discount codes, and abandoned card recovery. This site builder is gorgeous, so if you’re looking for flawless layouts and bleeding-edge artistic vibes, Squarespace may be the right ecommerce site option for you.
Squarespace starts with a 14-day free trial and moves up from $12/month yearly from there.
3. Shopify
Source: Shopify
Shopify is quickly becoming the go-to digital storefront platform. Every Shopify store comes with an SSL certificate, and you can buy domain names directly from them. The team is continually revising the shopping cart experience. That way, they can help reduce cart abandonment and give store owners and drop shippers the flexibility they need to dynamically determine shipping rates, taxes, and more. Shopify also has a suite of marketing tools and mature third-party integration ecosystem to help you sell more.
After a free 14-day trial, Shopify starts at $29/month. There’s also Shopify Lite for $9 per month for pre-existing websites.
4. BigCommerce Essentials
BigCommerce is an enterprise ecommerce solution. For smaller businesses, there’s BigCommerce Essentials, which offers responsive designs, no-code editor, advanced product search, and CRO tools – including an abandoned cart saver feature. Plus, choose from a vast variety of payment gateways.
BigCommerce Essentials starts with a 15-day free trial and goes up from $29.95/month.
5. Weebly
With over 40M sites, Weebly is Square’s powerful drag-and-drop website builder that’s doubled down on eCommerce features in recent years. Choose from template designs and get all the brand assets you need to launch your site quickly. Weebly also has abandoned cart and welcome email features, dynamic shipping pricing, and inventory tracking. It’s a website builder at heart, so you’ll have access to more themes and a lot of easy, user-friendly design functionality for putting your site together as you want it.
Weebly starts free and moves up from $5/month annually.
6. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce platform by Automattic, making it a great choice if your website is on WordPress. Select a theme in the marketplace and customize it to fit your brand. Add products, customize your tax system, and automatically generate an invoice. This plugin can do everything an ecommerce store needs. Its intuitive interface allows you to set up a store in minutes with no coding required!
WooCommerce is a free plugin. Pay 2.9% and $0.30 for each transaction made with U.S.-issued credit or debit cards. Non-US cards cost an additional 1% fee.
Best web design software for interface and prototyping
7. EpicPxls
EpicPxls gives you a quick mockup superpower with easy, downloadable premium design assets. Choose from a well-curated selection of beautiful UI kits and website design templates in various common file formats. You can also download from a library of fonts, graphics, and icons. Preview zip files and make sure your design is in the right format. After you download the zip, create your customized site or app.
EpicPxls starts free. Paid plans start at $22/month for 20 downloads. Grab the $39 EpicPxls lifetime deal, available for a limited time in the AppSumo store.
8. Picter
Source: Picter
Picter is a feedback tool that speeds up your review process. Organize your content assets and create sub-folders to streamline your workflow. Comment on images or videos frame-by-frame and assign an edit request to a teammate. Once done, share the link with your client. No login is required from your client! Enough said, Picter’s in a class of its own.
Picter offers a seven-day free trial. Paid plans start at $12/member per month. Grab the Picter lifetime deal on AppSumo today for $49.
9. Startup 4 by Designmodo
Startup 4 is a free drag-and-drop bootstrap theme builder. With its customizable blocks, you can easily create websites fast, even if you have zero programming skills. Select a style and drag it to the canvas to customize it. Pick your favorite font from Google Fonts (it’s integrated with the editor), then export it in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to launch it.
It’s free to use Startup 4. Paid plans start at $21/month when billed annually.
10. Adobe XD
Adobe XD is the standard in UX/UI design that allows collaborative design and prototyping of intuitive web pages, apps, and much more — including voice interfaces! Add animations, build design systems, and build responsive web designs with content-aware layouts, responsive resize, and set reusable states for various components.
Adobe has a free starter plan. Pricing starts at $9.99/user per month or $52.99/month for the entire Adobe Creative Cloud when billed annually. (Prices vary for students, teachers, and businesses.)
11. Figma
Figma’s strength is that it’s a web-based app with auto layout, asset libraries, and shareable prototyping features. Never worry about losing a thing with auto-save. Add as many team members as you want as free “viewers” to get stakeholder feedback via comments on your design. Sketch and Figma share some plugins and integrations, so you can often find that additional functionality — or even build it yourself — if you need it.
Pricing starts free for three projects with two editors and scales up to $12 and $45/editor per month (when billed annually) from there.
12. Sketch
Sketch is a leader in the web design world, a “digital design toolkit” with interactive prototyping, smart layouts, and a vast library of integrations and plugins. Right now, the software just launched “Sketch for Teams,” which allows user experience designers to share and collaborate on workspaces. Unfortunately, as a native Mac app, you’ll need to be Team Apple to enjoy all the ease of use and functionality Sketch has to offer.
Sketch offers a 30-day free trial. You can get it for $99, but you’ll need to renew your license every year to continue to receive updates.
Conclusion
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