3 New Website Builder Tools: Modern Tools for Your Next Project

WordPress (2003), Squarespace (2004), and Webflow (2012) were created over a decade ago. While age doesn't always mean outdated, it often makes staying agile and modern challenging.

It's time for a new website builder. One that leverages next-gen infrastructure, has no maintenance, has the full power of CSS in a visual tool, and aligns itself with the latest web design and development capabilities.

That's why we created Webstudio. It's a next-gen no-code website builder with a generous free tier.

Webstudio

• Best known for: Advanced visual website builder
• Open source: Yes
• Year founded: 2022
• Starting price with custom domain: Free
• Types of projects: Marketing sites, dynamic sites, structured content, ecommerce (see status)

Webstudio is an open-source website builder that is hyper-focused on providing the best frontend builder. It offers the full power of CSS and components for building websites, adhering to industry-standard naming conventions like flex rather than imposing proprietary ones.

Key features and benefits

• Full power of CSS in a visual tool – Control every property, unit, and breakpoint, without writing code.
• Frontend that can talk to any backend – Fetch any HTTP API and bind response data. This enables you to display data from headless CMSs, CRMs, and platforms such as Airtable including the ability to build a dynamic sitemap.
• Reusable styles without classes – Build a large website without the pain of combo classes. Attach styles to tokens and apply tokens to any of your components. Tokens can be rearranged and deleted.
• Ludicriuosly-fast performance – When using Webstudio Cloud, projects are deployed to the Cloudflare Edge, milliseconds away from your users and search engines.
• Scale without worrying about costs – From your first visitor to your billionth, pay only for what you use (view pricing). Enjoy the benefits of a free website builder that allows you to grow without upfront expenses.

Downsides

• Animations require code (for now) – Adding animations to the UI is on our backlog. The implementation will ensure the fastest performance possible. Careful planning and consideration will go into this instead of integrating a bloated solution.
• No internal CMS – For blogging and similar needs, users must to connect an external CMS. This may not be ideal for simple sites, given that extra work needs to go into setting up a third-party CMS. However, this enables using data from any external system, such as headless CMSs, Airtable, Notion, Baserow, Supabase, etc.
• Not many templates –  Those looking to jumpstart their site using website templates won't have many options here.

Divhunt

• Best known for: No-code website builder
• Open source: No
• Year founded: 2019
• Starting price with custom domain: Free
• Types of projects: Marketing sites, structured content

Divhunt is a modern no-code website builder with a designer-oriented interface such as a canvas that can be zoomed in and out, naming conventions like layers, and having the components in the top nav like Figma or Framer.

Key features and benefits

• Real-time collaboration – Design on the canvas with your team members simultaneously.
• Connect to any REST API – Fetch data from platforms such as Airtable and use the data in your designs.
• Intuitive navigator – Rearrange page elements with high precision and understand where they will drop.
• Creating classes is optional – Using the default tag allows you to apply styles without naming anything.

Downsides

• Can't edit text on canvas – When clicking on text, it opens a modal where you can edit it. You must click "save" to save it, as there is no autosave feature. These extra clicks add up when working on your website.
• Limited styles – Only allows a fraction of CSS without code limiting design possibilities.
• Specificity issues – Uses classes that lead to specificity issues. Classes can't be rearranged either, increasing the issues with specificity.
• Closed source – Reduces portability of your site and flexibility in pricing options.

WeWeb

• Best known for: Web application builder
• Open source: No
• Year founded: 2017
• Starting price with custom domain: $49/month
• Types of projects: Web apps, internal tools, dashboards, client portals, SaaS products

WeWeb is a powerful no-code web application builder designed to quickly create complex and dynamic web apps. While it's not the newest platform, it provides more app-building functionality if you need it.

Key features and benefits

• Visual development – Drag-and-drop interface to design web apps visually.
• Backend flexibility – Integrate with any REST API, GraphQL API, or third-party services, making it easy to connect to existing systems.
• Custom logic and workflows – Use JavaScript for custom logic and workflows, allowing more advanced functionality and interactivity.
• Hosting options – Deploy your web app to WeWeb's hosting or export the code to host on your servers for complete control.

Downsides

• Unnecessary abstractions – Instead of having a div/box, there are containers and sections.
• UX – While it's a powerful platform, the UI can be difficult to navigate.
• No custom breakpoints –  You must use the three they provided, and anything else would have to go into custom code.
• Limited CSS units – The options are px and %, and occasionally, the field offers vw/vh.

Considerations when choosing a new website builder

Open source

Creators who leverage open-source website builders benefit from transparent pricing, the ability to self-host, full data ownership, and customizable features.

Ecosystem compatibility

High ecosystem compatibility enables you to choose the best tools the internet has to offer. Platforms that integrate with other platforms ensure your tech stack can adapt to whatever needs you may have in the future.

Avoid all-in-one (probably)

While "all-in-one" platforms offer a broad range of functionalities, their commitment to integrating diverse features often leads to none being truly exceptional. This jack-of-all-trades approach can mean settling for "good enough" rather than best-in-class in vital areas like visual building, content management, or ecommerce.

For example, an online store has at least three large requirements:

1. Ecommerce features
2. Marketing pages
3. Blog

Users think they are stuck because no platform will excel at all three of those requirements... nor should they.

When, in fact, they can use Webstudio as the frontend and integrate multiple backend tools, getting the best of both worlds.

1. Ecommerce features – Headless Shopify (see status)
2. Marketing pages – Webstudio
3. Blogs – Headless CMS

To get the best features and improve the longevity of your tech stack, it's best to choose platforms that are hyper-focused on solving one problem, in this case, visually creating websites.

No-code website builders have existed since the early 2000s, but many have become outdated or fail to meet creators' needs. This gap in the market has led to the development of new website builders.

The existing platforms on the market typically have multiple problems:

• Closed source
• High maintenance
• Lacking features to maintain consistent designs
• Page builders with limited design capabilities
• Closed ecosystem

That's why we built Webstudio to solve these problems. Webstudio is open source, has zero maintenance, offers tokens that let you reuse styles to design with consistency, integrates with any API, and provides the full power of CSS in a visual tool.

Build on the new website platform, Webstudio.