How we review website builders
Every review on WebsiteBuilderReport.com is written against the same methodology. This page explains exactly how we pick winners, score platforms, handle affiliate relationships, and keep pages current. If you read a review and want to know why a specific scoring call was made, start here.
What we're reviewing
We review the major consumer and prosumer website builders (Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, Webflow, WordPress, Ghost, and trade-specific tools where relevant) against the specific jobs different businesses need a website to do. A florist has different website jobs than a therapist, which has different website jobs than a SaaS founder. A one-size-fits-all "best builder" review can't honestly serve any of them. That's why every review on the site is business-specific, not platform-specific.
The three-part test every review applies
Before we score anything, we answer three questions about the specific trade:
- What are the three or four jobs this business's website has to do? For florists, that's handling date-based local delivery, presenting bouquet photography, and not breaking under a Mother's Day rush. For therapists, it's qualifying the right clients and staying on the right side of HIPAA.
- Who actually builds and maintains the website? A busy solo operator, a volunteer webmaster, a designer on retainer? The answer changes which builder is right.
- Where does the business actually meet its customers? Instagram, Google Business Profile, wire services, referrals, paid ads, walk-ins? The website's role in the funnel depends on this, and so does the ranking.
The scoring rubric
Every review scores four platforms (plus any trade-specific tool worth naming) on a consistent set of factors. Each factor is scored 1 to 10, with 10 reserved for genuinely best-in-class.
| Factor | What a high score means |
|---|---|
| Template quality | Out-of-the-box layouts that suit the trade's visual needs, with minimal design work required. |
| Trade-specific features | The builder handles the non-negotiable jobs (delivery dates, bookings, client galleries, HIPAA separation) without plugins or workarounds. |
| Mobile performance | Core Web Vitals hold up on image-heavy pages at cellular speeds. |
| SEO | Editing titles, meta descriptions, schema, canonicals, and indexing is straightforward and not fighting the CMS. |
| Ease of setup | A motivated operator can launch a credible site in one weekend. |
| Fees | No surprise platform transaction fees on top of payment processing; predictable subscription costs. |
| Cost tier | Positions the builder's total cost of ownership against the trade's typical margins. |
Overall fit is a weighted blend of the above, weighted by how much each factor actually matters for that specific trade. A florist review weights local-delivery and mobile-performance heavily. A SaaS review weights iteration speed and CMS depth heavily.
How we pick a winner
Every review picks one winner, one runner-up, and names when each one is wrong. We don't hedge with "it depends" as the headline answer.
- Winner is the platform we'd genuinely recommend to an operator in that trade who asked over coffee.
- Runner-up is named with the specific scenarios where it actually beats the winner (e.g. "pick Wix if your delivery logic has three zones with different cutoffs").
- Why the other two aren't the pick is explicit, not implied.
When a trade-specific tool is part of the operator's stack (Pic-Time for photographers, FTD for florists, SimplePractice for therapists), we cover how it pairs with the main site rather than pretending it doesn't exist.
What informs the review
- Hands-on use of the major platforms across multiple client builds and personal projects.
- Operator conversations with people who run the actual trade. When a florist tells us their delivery-cutoff logic is the thing that matters, that weights the review more than any feature matrix.
- Third-party sources that specifically cover the trade in question, not generic web-design blogs. We cite them where their input changed a call we made.
- Platform documentation for feature specifics and pricing structures.
How we keep reviews current
Every page carries a visible last-updated date. Reviews are refreshed:
- When a platform ships a change that moves a score (a new pricing tier, a feature addition that changes a ranking call, a breaking change).
- When reader or operator feedback flags something wrong, out of date, or missing.
- On an annual cycle even if nothing else has moved.
Pricing discipline
Specific plan prices live only in the CTA on each page, where they're easy to update when a platform changes its pricing. Body content uses qualitative language (mid-tier, premium-tier, no transaction fees) that doesn't go stale between platform pricing moves. This is a deliberate editorial choice so that a page written in April still reads accurately in October.
Affiliate relationships
The Site is an affiliate publication. Specifically:
- Squarespace is the only platform we have a paid affiliate relationship with at this time. Clicks on Squarespace links in our CTAs that lead to a subscription pay us a commission, at no extra cost to you.
- Every other platform we review is linked with a plain, non-affiliate URL. We earn nothing from Wix, Shopify, Webflow, WordPress, Ghost, or other sign-ups via our pages.
- No platform has paid to be ranked as a winner, a runner-up, or to appear at all. We don't accept sponsored rankings and won't. A single sponsored pick would undermine every other review on the site.
- Complimentary access (free demo accounts, press credentials) is used for review purposes only and disclosed when it informs a specific claim.
Affiliate disclosure appears on every business-specific page, in our privacy policy, and in our terms.
Corrections
If you spot something wrong on any review (a feature we said didn't exist, a pricing note that's out of date, an integration we missed, a platform that has changed in a way we haven't caught up with), email hello@websitebuilderreport.com. Corrections are handled on a priority basis; factual errors get fixed within a few business days.
What we won't do
- Publish sponsored content dressed as editorial.
- Accept payment for a ranking, a verdict, or a score.
- Hide the winner behind a lead-capture form.
- Hedge with "it depends" as the headline answer to a question that deserves a real one.
If any of the above ever slips onto the Site, email us. A single violation is a bigger story than an individual page.