Best Website Builders for Non-Profits
Website visibility helps grow any organization — which is crucial for non-profits. A high-functioning and well-designed website lets readers quickly know what your organization is about and allows them to get involved through participation, volunteering, or donations.
Non-profits need website builders that provide user-friendly tools, simple explanations, and services at a low cost. We’ve scoured the internet to find the best website builders for non-profits.
What Is the Best Website Builder for Non-Profits?
Squarespace provides the best website builder for any non-profit. WordPress suits those who plan to have a highly populated blog, and Shopify serves non-profits who will sell products to customers.
Non-Profit Website Builder Comparison
If you don’t have time to read the entire article, we made a short summary below:
| Score | Free or Trial Plan? | Starting Plan/Month | Templates | Apps | 24/7 Support | |
| Squarespace | 4.75/5 | Yes (14 days) | $12 | 60+ | No | Yes |
| WordPress | 4.5/5 | Free version available | $4 | 300+ | Yes | No |
| Wix | 4.3/5 | Free version available | $13 | 500+ | Yes | Yes |
| Weebly | 4/5 | Free version available | $6 | 50+ | Yes | Yes |
| Shopify | 3.8/5 | Yes (14 days) | $29 | 70+ | Yes | Yes |
| Duda | 3/7/5 | Yes (14 days) | $14 | 90+ | Yes | Yes |
| GoDaddy | 3.5/5 | Yes (1 month) | $10 | 100+ | No | Yes |
Want to read more in-depth reviews? Here they are.
Squarespace – Best Overall Website Builder for Non-Profits
Squarespace helps non-profits build a professional and user-friendly website in minutes. The company offers lots of drag-and-drop website building options as well as a way to use advanced coding to tweak the site to your liking.
Squarespace sites look good, run well, and they’re cheap to build. That’s why we put them at the top of our list.
Ease of Use: 4.5 stars out of 5
Customer Service: 4.5 stars out of 5
Website Features: 5 stars out of 5
Design Flexibility: 5 stars out of 5
Value For Money: 5 stars out of 5
Squarespace Pros
Your website will look gorgeous. Squarespace offers easy-to-use templates that allow users to create aesthetically pleasing sites with minimal effort.
Squarespace also allows users to integrate social media links on to a site, growing the organization’s brand and presence.
Squarespace Cons
There’s a slight learning curve, but it’s not too difficult to get over.
The lack of an app store means you must rely on what’s pre-built into the site builder.
Ease of Use: 4.5/5
Squarespace lets users design the most professional looking website with the simplest tools. While there’s still more of a learning curve to Squarespace than with other site builders on this list, we think taking the time to learn Squarespace is worth it.
The basic technical skills you already know will allow you to pick up Squarespace’s interface quickly. From there, you can design an intriguing, eye-catching website.
Design Flexibility: 5/5
Squarespace offers a diverse array of website templates. You can pick the one conveying the tone or vibe you want your non-profit to give to viewers.
The company designed each template to look professional and sleek, but you can still customize fonts, colors, pictures, and other media, and other aspects of the site with ease. If you know how to code sites, that’s even better.
Website Features: 5/5
You can purchase a domain straight from Squarespace. If you’ve purchased your domain from another company, you can easily connect your existing domain to Squarespace.
Super SEO also lets you optimize your site so that people can find it quickly on the web. Optimizing your site also helps you grow your audience and find new viewers through organic keyword searches.
We also liked the simple social media integration on Squarespace. The company supports Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and other major social media hubs.
Customer Service: 4.5/5
If you have a question, you can refer to Squarespace’s vast video tutorial library or community forum to help answer questions on their own.
Should the in-depth knowledge base listed on the website not suit your needs, Squarespace has live chat Monday through Friday, as well as 24/7 Twitter and email support.
Squarespace’s robust avenues of customer service mean you can find answers or solutions to a myriad of problems you can have.
Value for Money: 5/5
Squarespace provides a pretty good value for the money. There’s even a variety of pricing options to choose from:
- Personal — $12/month
- Business — $18/month
- Basic Commerce — $26/month
- Advanced Commerce — $40/month
Person plans are best suited for individuals who hope to run their own website. The business plan offers pop-up ads and a way to accept payment, while basic commerce lets you set up a basic online store. Advanced commerce is best reserved for larger online merchants.
WordPress — Best for Blog-Oriented Non-Profits
WordPress lets you build your site in under five minutes. There are many free or paid templates to choose from. They let you create a beautiful-looking website, or you can tailor them to your liking.
Non-profits who intend to keep an up-to-date blog on recent news, press, and other exploits will like WordPress. The platform is not only easy to use but lets you quickly add a new post. You can then schedule a post or publish it on the spot, helping you speak to your audience.
There’s a reason an estimated 25% of all sites on the internet were done on WordPress.
Ease of Use: 4 stars out of 5
Customer Service: 4.5 stars out of 5
Website Features: 4.5 stars out of 5
Design Flexibility: 4 stars out of 5
Value For Money: 4.5 stars out of 5
WordPress Pros
Easily write, upload, and schedule posts for your non-profits blog.
The plethora of plug-ins let you track website data, install newsletter sign-up forms, and other items you need to grow your audience.
WordPress Cons
There’s a bit of a learning curve to using WordPress — especially if you’ve never used a content management system similar to it.
With so many plug-ins, you may find it hard to pick which ones serve your site best.
Ease of Use: 4/5
Once you familiarize yourself with the website builder, it becomes quite easy to use.
There are places in which you can customize your site’s appearance, menu, plug-ins, posts, and more. You can also upload pictures, video, audio, and other media on the site. In the end, we thought WordPress would serve those who aren’t very computer savvy.
Design Flexibility: 4/5
The dozens of WordPress themes lets you easily create a site that you like. If you have coding knowledge, though, you can easily play around and customize your site further.
Even if you don’t have coding knowledge, WordPress’s popularity means there are thousands of tutorials and helpful videos to fill any knowledge gaps you have.
Website Features: 4.5/5
Many WordPress plug-ins help you optimize your website for SEO.
It’s also easy to integrate your social media on WordPress websites using plug-ins as well.
Pretty much, you can use a WordPress plug-in to accomplish almost anything you want on your site. Not all plug-ins are free, though. Independent developers can also share plug-ins, meaning not all plug-ins on the site may be legit.
But WordPress’s plug-in store means you can get nearly any website feature you want.
Customer Service: 4/5
WordPress has an impressive knowledge base, including not only customer support but expert tips to help you improve your site.
Customer service technicians are only available.
WordPress.com has a knowledge base with a search feature that will direct you to relevant pages with helpful guides and articles. There is no dedicated support team that you can reach via phone or live chat.
Value for Money: 4.5/5
We’re rather impressed with the amount of stuff you can do on WordPress for the price. WordPress offers the following pricing options.
Free plan
Personal plan — $48 per year ($4/month)
Premium plan — $96 per year ($8/month)
Business plan — $300 per year ($25/month)
Not only can you build a completely free website, but you can also pay a little extra for some really nice features, such as audience tracking, high-tech security, higher website traffic, and more.
Wix — Fastest Website Builder for Non-Profits
Wix is a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use website builder. The drag-and-drop features let you build a site in minutes — which would especially suit busy non-profit leadership.
Wix Pros
User-friendly drag-and-drop website building lets even the most technologically challenged build a website.
Robust app market allows you to further customize your site how you want it, such as with marketing or e-commerce functions.
Wix Cons
You can’t change your site’s template once it goes live. You’ll have to create a new site if you want to redesign it.
The number of apps in the market can be overwhelming at times.
Ease of Use: 5 stars out of 5
Customer Service: 4 stars out of 5
Website Features: 4.5 stars out of 5
Design Flexibility: 3.5 stars out of 5
Value For Money: 4 stars out of 5
Ease of Use: 5/5
Other website builders fail to compare to Wix in terms of how easy it is to use. The drag-and-drop features make it incredibly easy to build a stunning website with absolutely no coding knowledge.
Design Flexibility: 3.5/5
While you can create a good website, we didn’t like that you can’t change your website’s template once it goes live. Non-profits need their websites to grow with them. If you can’t change your website’s template, your site appears stuck or frozen in time.
This can force you to create a new site altogether — which can be cumbersome and time-consuming.
Website Features: 4.5/5
Wix gives you plenty of website features to choose from, what with the drag-and-drop options, app marketplace, and more.
Customer Service: 4/5
Wix users can call customer service representatives in eight languages. You can also submit an electronic ticket and get written help.
Value for Money: 4/5
Wix provides an easy to use service for non-profits who want to quickly set up a beautiful website.
They offer the following pricing options from $13/month for individuals up to $500/month for businesses.
If you want to set your website and forget it, Wix would be for you. Otherwise, those who want to frequently update their template should pass.
Weebly — Great Value for Money
Weebly offers an affordable website building platform for non-profits. Pricing options scale up depending on the size and features you want your site to have, so there are suitable options for non-profits of all sizes.
Weebly Pros
You can get a pretty good site built for free using Weebly. The most expensive plan costs only $26, giving you lots of features for an affordable monthly price.
Weebly has a sizable app market. Whatever feature you’re looking for, whether it’s SEO or data tracking, you can find an app that provides it.
Weebly Cons
You must rely on Weebly’s customer service to help restore your site should it be deleted. You can’t restore your site yourself, unlike with other web builders.
Many of the apps Weebly offers are only available for premium users. This can be annoying for non-profits on a tight digital budget.
Ease of Use: 4 stars out of 5
Customer Service: 4 stars out of 5
Website Features: 4 stars out of 5
Design Flexibility: 4 stars out of 5
Value For Money: 4 stars out of 5
Ease of Use: 4/5
Weebly has a drag-and-drop editor to let you build your site quickly. You can design sites by yourself depending on your tastes, but it’s not as intuitive as Wix.
Design Flexibility: 4/5
Weebly not only provides an array of 40 templates, but you can also build your website from scratch if you have the coding skills. The templates seemed less intriguing than other web builder platforms to us, though.
Website Features: 4/5
Weebly offers over 300 apps — though most of them are reserved for premium users. Weebly also makes optimizing your site for SEO a breeze, enabling you to improve your attempt to land high on search engines.
Customer Service: 4/5
Weebly offers 24/7 support tickets. They also have live chat and phone support during business working hours. There’s also plenty of articles and videos both on Weebly and the web to help solve common user issues.
Value for Money: 4/5
Weebly gives you solid web building at an affordable price. If you’re hoping to save a few bucks when building a site, Weebly is for you. If you want a web builder with more robust features and better templates, perhaps look somewhere else.
Shopify — Best for Non-Profit Sellers
Shopify helped revolutionize online shopping. They also created a web builder to help e-commerce-oriented organizations design websites. If your non-profit sells items to raise money, you’d benefit from such a service.
Shopify Pros
Choose from over 70 themes to build a professional-looking site. You can also code to make your site look how you want it to.
Shopify can also put you in touch with custom web design experts to give you the best looking site possible.
Shopify Cons
Shopify has its own transaction fee, which cuts into your income.
Content doesn’t reformat when you alter themes, meaning you’ll have to readjust your website whenever you decide to redesign it.
Ease of Use: 4
Shopify is user-friendly and doesn’t require coding skills to use — though it certainly wouldn’t hurt. The website design feels more like WordPress rather than a drag-and-drop one like Wix or Weebly.
Design Flexibility: 3.75
You can create your website how you want. There are over 70 themes to choose from, each providing beautiful website visuals.
Website Features: 4
Accept payments directly, with no third-party required. Shopify can also handle multiple different languages and currencies.
Your site gets unlimited bandwidth and specialized SEO to help you grow a robust seller-oriented non-profit.
Help and Support: 4
Shopify offers 24/7 support, though you have to be logged in to access it. This can be cumbersome if multiple people in your non-profit plan to have web managing privileges.
Value for Money: 3.75
Few other companies have e-commerce web builders that are as efficient as Shopify. Their plans are a little pricey, though.
Basic — $29/month
Shopify — $79/month
Advanced Shopify — $299/month
Duda — Best Templates
Duda offers sleek, easy web building for non-profits. Their prices are competitive, and their templates provide a modern, eye-catching look.
Duda Pros
Their templates truly beat out the competition. Templates have different vibes that fit different missions. Whether you’re hoping to portray business or business casual, there’s something for everyone.
There are over 90 templates to choose from, making it easiest for people who want to set up an awesome looking site quickly.
Duda Cons
While the templates look pretty, there’s not much creative freedom. You can’t really customize a template without extensive coding knowledge.
There’s also not much SEO support for your non-profit’s website.
Ease of Use: 4 stars out of 5
Customer Service: 4 stars out of 5
Website Features: 3.5 stars out of 5
Design Flexibility: 3 stars out of 5
Value For Money: 4 stars out of 5
Ease of Use: 4/5
Duda provides a simple drag-and-drop builder that makes building a website a breeze. There’s plenty of instruction should you get lost.
Design Flexibility: 3/5
While each item is easy to use, you can only place items in certain places on the page. It can feel formulaic and frustrating to not have creative freedom but great if you want fast website design.
Website Features: 3.5/5
Lacks marketing as well as SEO tools. Duda focuses more on site aesthetics than utility.
Customer Service: 4/5
The more expensive your plan, the more customer service options you have. Every plan gets email help going all the way up to priority email, live chat, and phone.
Value for Money:
The pricing plans fall in the middle of the website building bell curve, providing ample value for your money.
Basic — $14/month
Team — $22/month
Agency — $44/month
GoDaddy — Best for Fast Website Creation
Need your site to go online as soon as possible? GoDaddy is the way to go. But if you’re hoping to get lots of creative freedom as well, GoDaddy isn’t the place.
GoDaddy Pros
You can buy a domain, sign up for web hosting, and build your site all under GoDaddy.
Web building is easy, intuitive, and quick.
GoDaddy Cons
Lacks the features suitable for larger businesses or merchants.
Doesn’t offer much creative freedom.
Ease of Use: 4 stars out of 5
Customer Service: 4 stars out of 5
Website Features: 3 stars out of 5
Design Flexibility: 3 stars out of 5
Value For Money: 3.5 stars out of 5
Ease of Use: 4/5
GoDaddy offers easy-to-use templates and designs to help get your website up quickly. You can also load your ADI so that GoDaddy gets up quickly.
Design Flexibility: 3/5
You have some templates to choose from. You can also somewhat tailor your design how you like it — it just doesn’t have the same freedom as other web builders.
Website Features: 3.5/5
You have good SEO and a large swathe of domains to choose from. There’s also a unique website analytic feature built-in.
However, there’s little social media integration.
Customer Service: 4/5
GoDaddy offers 24/7 phone support, live chat during business hours, a knowledge base, and a help forum. They’re in the middle of the bell curve.
Value for Money: 3.5/5
GoDaddy’s pricing plans include:
Basic — $10/month
Standard — $15/month
Premium — $20/month
E-commerce — $25/month
It leans a little too expensive compared to the services it offers, meaning you’re not getting the most bang for your buck.
Final Thoughts
Websites make-or-break a non-profit. Having a proper website drives traffic and engagement, and these website builders can help you build an elegant website design on a budget.
