Hosted Site Builders
Platforms that host the finished site for you. Fast to start on, and the finished website usually cannot be moved off them.
These platforms are the easiest to start on and the hardest to leave. That trade is the whole category, and it is worth understanding before your fifth client is on one.
What you get is real. Hosting, updates, security and uptime are somebody else's job. For a designer who wants to design, that is a genuine saving.
What you give up is the site itself. The finished website usually cannot be lifted off the platform and run somewhere else, because it was never a folder of files. It is a page assembled by the platform's own software at the moment somebody visits it.
So the question to carry through this category is not whether you can export your design. It is whether a working site still exists on the morning you stop paying.
5 platforms in Hosted Site Builders
Duda
Built to be resold under your own brand. Makes a small shop look bigger, and the product stays somebody else's.
Hosted and white label, sold through resellersFramer
A design tool that publishes websites. Excellent for marketing sites, weaker for content that keeps growing.
Hosted subscription, per siteSquarespace
The one your client already trusts. Great for brochure sites. A move out is a rebuild with a head start.
Hosted subscription, per siteWebflow
Visual builder with real design control. Static pages can leave as code. A CMS or store site generally cannot.
Hosted subscriptionWix Studio
Wix built for people who make sites professionally. Good at volume. The finished site does not move.
Hosted subscription