When you’re thinking about building a website for your blog, portfolio, or business venture, the last thing you want to worry about is learning how to code or design so you can create the site you want.
Thanks to platforms like Google Sites, you can create a website that’s fully functional and visually pleasing with little to no knowledge about web design or coding.
Although Google Sites is one of the simpler and popular options for creating web pages and sharing them on the internet, it’s hardly the best solution for building fully functional websites.
For starters, it offers a very limited range of pre-designed templates that you can use. Google Sites is also inflexible in terms of customization and it doesn’t support integration with lots of third-party tools.
Furthermore, it doesn’t come with custom domains or eCommerce, and its marketing features are sorely lacking.
For these reasons, it’s imperative to consider more viable website builders than Google Sites that can better serve your needs and help you create stunning sites in no time.
Best Google Sites Alternatives
1. Squarespace
Squarespace is a powerful website builder and one of the best alternatives to Google Sites that you can find. It provides an extensive range of customizable, visually pleasing templates that you can use to build beautiful websites.
The great thing about Squarespace is that it allows you to change templates later if you end up not being satisfied with your initial choice or you just want to try a different look for your site.
It allows you to sell services, subscriptions, digital content, and even manage your storefront from a handy mobile app.
Squarespace handles your email and SEO campaigns for your site and provides various marketing tools to help you reach, engage, and grow your audience and customer base. It also takes care of security and maintenance for your website so you don’t need to worry about it.
Another feature that Google Site surely lacks, but Squarespace offers is the ability to connect your site to your social accounts, showcase social links, and automatically share posts to your social profiles.
It also gives you the freedom to download and import any content you want from the accounts connected.
2. Webflow
Webflow is an advanced drag and drop site builder built for people who want to design and publish their own personal or business websites without coding.
It’s one of the few website builders to include a full content management system, allowing you to use files, images, rich text, and other fields to create custom collections.
Compared to Google Sites, Webflow gives you a lot more options and wiggle room to customize your website to your liking and manage your content. Webflow also supports integration with various third-party applications such as MailChimp, Google Analytics, and Zapier.
Whereas Google Sites gives you access to less than a dozen templates and places restrictions on what you can and cannot tweak, Webflow has hundreds of fully-customizable templates to choose from. Whatever visual vision you have for your site, you can probably create it with Webflow.
Webflow also comes with other useful features that are absent from Google Sites like direct client billing, animations, dynamic SEO, and live communication.
If you have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS, you’ll find it easy to learn the ropes of Webflow. Otherwise, you can count on the platform’s elaborate collection of tutorials and guides to help you figure things out quickly.
3. Wix
Whether you’re a creative or a small business owner in the market for an easy-to-use website builder, Wix is fully capable of meeting your needs. You can build anything from portfolios to landing pages and online stores where you can list and sell your products.
Wix offers hundreds of tastefully designed templates to pick from and features a simple drag and drop editor that even the most technologically challenged person would have no trouble wrapping their heads around.
With fun design options like video backgrounds and animated titles, Wix will have your website looking like it was professionally built from scratch.
Like Google Sites, you don’t need to know how to code to get a website up and running with Wix. But unlike Google Sites, it comes with eCommerce, search engine optimization, and marketing tools to help your website get the visibility it deserves and generate conversions.
Another feature that makes Wix a great alternative to Google Sites is that you can build your website for free, although it will feature ads and the Wix nametags.
To get rid of the tags and ads, and unlock custom domains, increased video hours, and bandwidth you can opt for one of Wix’s affordable premium plans.
With over 500+ customizable templates, free hosting, SEO tools, and round the clock customer support, Wix lets you create beautiful websites fast and easy!
4. Weebly
Weebly is one of the best Google Sites alternatives for eCommerce store owners with a limited budget who want to build a great storefront from which to sell their products. The website builder comes with a free plan and an assortment of premium plans depending on your needs.
In Weebly’s free plan, you get basic features designed to help you run your eCommerce shop such as coupons, shipping calculator, inventory management, tax calculator, shopping carts, and payments integration, all of which you can’t find on Google Sites.
Weebly can also help with search engine optimization, monitoring website performance, and sending email notifications and pop-ups. It provides fully-functional mobile apps so you can build and manage your websites from anywhere.
Keep in mind that the free plan will display ads on your site and only accept Weebly subdomains.
So you can set up your site for free when you’re just getting started and upgrade to one of Weebly’s reasonably priced premium plans to give your customers an ad-free experience, register a custom domain, and get access to advanced features later on.
Weebly’s premium plans cost $6, $12, and $26 per month. The higher the subscription cost, the more comprehensive the features that come with it. Feel free to consult the company’s pricing page for updated pricing information anytime.
Weebly helps you create stunning websites, and ecommerce stores in quick time. Simply pick a theme and get started. What's more, it's entirely free.
5. Zyro
Zyro lets you create gorgeous fast loading websites in less than an hour with no need for coding skills or experience. It features an intuitive, user-friendly interface that makes building and designing websites so easy.
This AI-powered software is particularly useful for people who want to build an online shop where they can sell products or services. Zyro comes with integrated marketing, search engine optimization, and social media tools that can help increase awareness and reach for your store and help you generate more sales.
It boasts of powerful features like automatic SSL integration which gives you an SSL certificate for free and a photo repository where you can find stock photos for your design and customization needs.
Another area where Zyro surpasses Google Sites is in terms of speed and loading times. Webpage tests and other speed testing tools for websites give Zyro very high marks in this regard.
Zyro offers free access to its website building solution and its premium versions are also very affordable with prices ranging from $2.49-$15.90 per month. For updated information about Zyro’s plans and their costs, you can always consult the company’s pricing page.
6. Joomla
Want to build a fully functioning site in just a few hours? Joomla is one of the best Google Sites alternatives for the job.
The platform currently powers about two million active websites, more than 9% of all known business sites, 6% of the CMS market, and over 3% of the world wide web.
Whether you want to create an eCommerce store, a website for your business, a blog, or an online publication, Joomla’s flexible system is equal to the task.
The platform supports thousands of third-party extensions that you can use to extend Joomla’s capabilities and customize the solution to suit your needs or preferences. Unlike Google Sites, Joomla comes with built-in SEO tools for optimizing the searchability of your website.
Additionally, Joomla makes content publishing and editing a breeze thanks to its range of publishing tools and features such as content versioning, editor buttons, media manager, drag and drop images, article management, and more.
Despite offering a broader and comprehensive set of features than Google Sites, Joomla is also free to use forever so you can build professional, stable, and extensible websites without paying a dime.
7. Bubble
This alternative to Google Sites is geared towards people who are looking to build powerful websites, web and mobile applications, custom marketplaces, job boards, review and community sites, social networks, personal finance tools, and more without coding.
Bubble takes care of hosting, deployment, design, and other technicalities for you so can focus on managing your site or app. Its simple drag and drop editor makes it easy for you to infuse interactive elements like news feeds and live chat into your website and applications.
With this powerful website builder, you can control several data structures, multiple user accounts, and even stretch your site and app’s capability using Javascript plugins. Bubble gives you the option to make your own plugins and connect them to the platform with its API connector.
Alternatively, you can use existing Bubble plugins to extend your website’s functionality. Bubble’s plugins and supported integrations surpass anything you can hope to find on Google Sites and its collection is constantly expanding.
Bubble provides a free plan you can use for building sites, but naturally, it comes with some limitations. To unlock advanced features, you can opt for one of the platform’s paid plans which cost $25, $115, and $475 per month.
Don’t hesitate to check out Bubble’s pricing page for up-to-date information about its plans anytime.
8. WordPress
WordPress is one of the most popular website builders in the world and it’s available in two options: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The latter is a self-hosted option that you can customize and design however you like.
However, if you want someone else to handle the task of hosting your websites, maintaining them, providing security, and even offering design templates so you don’t have to build from scratch, WordPress.com is the best option for you. All you have to do is register an account and you can begin creating your site.
Compared to Google Sites, WordPress has more extensive design features with thousands of beautifully designed themes and templates to select from.
It also gives you a lot of freedom with regards to the editing of templates, so you can fully express your brand identity and create the visual image you want for your website.
The great thing about WordPress is that you can create practically any type of website you want be it a business site, a blog, eCommerce store, or an online portfolio.
In addition, it provides an array of useful tools for monetization and marketing like search engine optimization, recurring payments, and subscriptions.
WordPress offers a completely free plan that lets you build basic websites and requires you to use a WordPress.com subdomain. Its paid plans also come cheap with a price range between $4-$45 dollars per month.
You can always consult the pricing page for updated information about WordPress plans and prices.
9. Medium
Medium is another platform like Google Sites that is targeted mainly at content creators and writers who want to create a blog where they can regularly publish their content without hiccups.
Since the site currently has over 120 million users, you have a large community of potential readers that you can reach with your content.
All you have to do is register on Medium to start writing and publishing and the content platform will handle all the other technical issues like design and hosting.
If you’re on a tight budget, building your writing career, or looking for other avenues to publish your work and expand your reach, Medium might just be the perfect solution for you.
Instead of worrying about building and designing a blog and then trying to figure out SEO to give your posts much-needed visibility, you can just focus on what you do best—writing.
Medium is ridiculously easy to use even for beginners so it should only take you a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the workings of the platform.
And unlike Google Sites that is hardly future proof thanks to the company’s propensity for killing off products willy nilly, you don’t have to worry about Medium going away any time soon.
10. Shopify
If you’re looking for a great website builder for eCommerce stores, you’d be hard-pressed to find another Google Sites alternative that provides the range of functionalities that Shopify has to offer.
Since customers shop across online various platforms like Etsy, Google, Instagram, and Facebook, Shopify gives you the opportunity to sell from anywhere by bringing these platforms under one roof.
This way, you have one shop that sells across different channels. Shopify is extremely customizable so you can tweak or even extend its features to create a specific design for your store.
The Shopify app store is full of thousands of plugins that you can use to customize and optimize your store. For example, Floating Widgets enables you to add unlimited banners to your website and One Click Upsell allows you to add upsells—like handwritten notes or —to your shopping cart.
Other amazing features that Shopify offers include a built-in payment processor, automatic shipping rates and taxes calculators, free SSL certificate, multiple payment getaways, and over 100 professional themes to pick from.
Set up your ecommerce store, pick a plan later. Check special pricing for Shopify =>
11. Gator
Another site similar to Google Sites that is worth checking out is Gator. The website builder is brought to you by HostGator and it features a drag and drop builder that’s almost effortless to use.
With Gator, you can build a professional-looking custom website in a matter of minutes. Although it’s not free to use like Google Sites, investing in one of Gator’s affordable plans is worth it because it comes with a custom domain name, plenty of design options, lots of customizable templates, and more.
For as little as $3.84 per month, which is the cost of Gator’s starter plan, you can access all kinds of yummy perks like hundreds of responsive, ready-to-use themes, tons of storage, unfettered bandwidth, and fast hosting. You can always consult the company’s pricing page for updated information.
Gator is perfect for building any website you have in mind be it an online shop, a portfolio, or a blog. Whatever theme you choose, you can easily switch to a different one later on if you like.
Also, Gator provides excellent customer support, social media integration, and access to a vast library of royalty-free photos that you can use to customize your website.
12. Strikingly
Create beautiful-looking websites easily without breaking the bank with Strikingly. This feature-rich alternative to Google Sites offers responsive themes, attractive designs, and an interface that’s highly amenable to being customized.
The platform is ideal for building small business and personal websites. Strikingly offers a free tier so you can try out its services without having to cough up any fees unless you want to incorporate more advanced features into your site.
Strikingly allows you to preview how the website you’re building will look on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. You also get the option to include mobile-centric features like “send email” and “call” to your website to enable users to contact you in one click.
These responsive design and mobile optimization features are not available in Google Sites. Also, you can easily change templates on Strikingly without having to rebuild your website all over again.
While Google Sites offers next to nothing by way of customer support, leaving you to rely exclusively on community help forums and support documents when you experience issues with the platform, Strikingly offers robust support.
The company’s friendly support staff are ever ready and happy to attend to your issues in a fast and efficient manner.
13. GoDaddy
Although GoDaddy is better known for its hosting and domain services, the platform offers a solid website builder solution that allows you to create great sites within minutes.
It offers a range of templates for portfolios, blogs, business, and eCommerce sites so all you have to do is select the one that works for the website you have in mind.
One of the things that makes GoDaddy an excellent Google Sites alternative is its simplicity and intuitive interface. You don’t need anyone to hold your hand or do the work for you with GoDaddy because it’s easy enough to figure out on your own.
With GoDaddy, you can pick from hundreds of professionally designed templates when building your site and customize them to suit your tastes.
Thanks to the Over app, you can use GoDaddy to create branded content like logos for your website, social networks, and other channels.
The GoDaddy website builder is fully mobile responsive so you can build and design entire websites from your mobile phone.
It also comes with various business tools that can help you accept reservations, book appointments, optimize SEO, market on social media, and sell all kinds of products and services.
14. Duda
Duda is a powerful all-in-one solution that gives you practically everything you need to create and host a responsive, professional-looking website easily and quickly.
It features built-in eCommerce tools that support digital downloads, an excellent editor, unlimited storage, efficient web store tools, and powerful traffic reporting and analytics.
This Google Sites alternative provides over 100 templates to choose from, which far exceeds the less than a dozen templates that Google Sites offers. The best thing about Duda is that its templates look great across all devices from desktops to tablets and smartphones.
If you’ve got some web development experience, Duda has a developer mode that grants you access to CSS and HTML, enabling you to increase your website’s control and flexibility to a greater degree.
Duda offers other interesting features that can enhance your website building and management experiences such as automated content import, a WYSIWYG editor, and unlimited monthly data transfers.
15. Pixpa
Pixpa is an excellent web builder for artists, product designers, photographers, and other creative professionals who want to build highly visual websites or portfolios to showcase their work and sell digital downloads or physical products. It has a modern, stylish look, with an easy-to-use interface.
With Pixpa’s blogging feature, you can easily write and publish blog posts and articles to expand your reach, boost credibility, and drive potential customers/clients to your website. Pixpa supports integration with several third-party services including Spotify, MailChimp, and Google Analytics.
Another feature that makes Pixpa stand out as an alternative to Google Sites is the ability to build personalized gallery applications.
Since people spend more time on their phones than they do on their computers, you can leverage this powerful function to drive more sales and commissions.
You also get some handy eCommerce features like the power to generate coupon codes. What’s more, unlike most other platforms that offer eCommerce services, you don’t have to pay any payment processing fees for the transactions you make on your website.
You can take Pixpa out for a spin for free for 15 days, and if you decide to stick around for longer, you can invest between $3-$16 per month on a premium subscription. Check out the company’s pricing page for current information about the cost of its plans.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to build a website, there are lots of options other than Google Sites for you to consider and we have explored some of the best ones in this article.
However, at the end of the day, the right Google Sites alternative for you ultimately comes down to your budget, specific needs, the technical skills you have, and the tools you require for your site.
That being said, we recommend going with Wix because it’s easy to use, comes with a free plan and affordable premium plans, and offers tons of customizable templates that you can use to bring the vision for your website to life.
Scott L. Macarthur is a marketing consultant and an online author. He is mostly engaged in providing his expertise to startups and SMBs. He is also an author on TheNextWeb.