In this ever growing global village where digitisation is the order of the day, it’s nearly impossible for a business to make headway without an online presence. It is a well known fact that not all entrepreneurs can afford a website, furthermore not every startup is tech savvy. The good news is there are numerous free website creation platforms for new businesses to fall on. A website creation platform is a tool that provides a simple drag and drop interface to build a fully functional site without manual coding.

Below are my top 8 creme de la creme website builders that you can use to cement your online presence.

1. Wix
Owned by an Isreali company, wix is arguably one of the most popular website builders with an easy to use interface. it is quick with simple templates. You can choose from over 500 tailor made templates with this cloud based web development tool. One can simply use its drag and drop feature to design a user friendly HTML5 website for a personal blog, an online portfolio, a business website or a one page resume. You don’t require any coding skills to use this website. Some of the remarkable features of platform include:
   > A built in Google Analytics
   > Reliable support
   > Fully customizable
   > 500MB storage space with 1gb bandwidth

NB you can use Wix’s Artificial Design Intelligence ( ADI ) to auto design your website after you answer a few questions.

2. WordPress
Because of its flexibility WordPress is the worlds most popular Content Management System (CMS) no wonder a third of the world web runs on it. There are two versions of wordpress namely wordpress.com and wordpress.org . WordPress.org is more flexible and suitable for small startups because its free and self hosting. It is an open source platform and users do not need any advanced tech skills. It is available on web hosting platforms like bluehost which is an official wordpress partner with a one click install feature. This website builder has 1000’s of free templates for you to choose from. You can create almost any kind of site with WordPress be it an commerce store, a forum , an online course, a blog, an event calendar, or a form. just in case you want more control you can integrate platforms like Beaver and Elementor which are well known wordpress drag and drop builders.

3. Weebly
If you need a basic yet clean website which resonates with your clients choose Weekly. Its quick, easy, simple but lacks versatility. Even though weebly has under 100 mobile friendly themes websites like barcelona-meseum.com, which has over a 100 pages has been built out of it. This means weebly has a notch of handling large websites well than the others. Its drag and drop features are second to none as it is very user friendly. You can use Weebly to easily design a blog and ecommerce sites. With an commerce website you can sell digital products like Mobile Phones, MP3’s and Vidoes plus easily import your product list automatically. However, your customers can’t make payments offline as six doesn’t support that.

4. WooCommerce
Woo commerce is arguably the most popular ecoomerce platform, sorry shopify! It is simply a wordpress plugin for an online shop. It turns the basic wordpress operating system into a fully functional commerce store. Woo commerce is open source and free plus you don’t need to be a professional designer to launch a site. It compatibility is unparreled as it works on every platform. Transactions on a woocommerce based estore is safe as it is secured by automattic, a well secured billion dollar company which supports all wordpress platform. You can sell virtually everything on this platform, from physical products like shirts and jewelries to digital products like phones, and smart watches to beach reservations.

5. Shopify

Sell anywhere any how with Shopify. This platform is next to Woocommerce in term of popularity. Create an ecommerce website backed by powerful tools to help you manage your day to day transactions, find customers and drive sales with Shopify. The good news is you don’t need any coding knowledge to use this awesome platform neither do you need hosting services or software installations. It is not free however, you need pay monthly charges in the range of $29 – $299 with no additional charges. There are 800000 plus online stores on shopify with over $ 70 billion worth of sales and 3500 plus employees. Some ecommerce features supported on shopify include gift cards, abandoned cart recovery, email marketing and a 24hour support team.

6. Squarespace
From creating a logo for your brand to adding a custom domain name to you website to choosing from one of best library of website templates squarespace is all you need. It has the best quality designs and outlook for your website hence its perfect for a professional website. With a strong supportive live chat Squarespace offers over seventy mobile adaptive templates. All you gotta do is pay $12 plus per month depending on your requirement. you don’t need any special coding skills to use it. Some of its unique features include
   > Blogger supportive built in tools
   > Pay Pal and G Suit integration for businesses
   > Commerce functions, SEO and Social Media Integrations
   > 30 days grace period to restore deleted posts

7. Site123
Site123 is arguable the easiest free website builder. You can create a website under 2 hours with ready-made layouts and styles in just three steps. Another unique feature of this website builder is the fact that it is multilingual, meaning you can build your website in 80 different languages, what else do you want? It’s highly user friendly and mobile responsive. Site123 works perfectly for ecommerce checkouts. Just incase you face a problem while creating your dream website you can receive fast and accurate advice from its 24 / 7 live chat.

All the above website builders can use Accelerated Mobile Pages ( AMP) an open source library to drastically improve the speed and response of their websites.