Best Website Builders for Therapists : Top 7 Options for Therapy Businesses
A website is an invaluable tool for therapists. Whether you’re starting your own practice or want to boost your recognition in the field, having a website makes you appear more professional and accessible to clients.
But how do you know what is the best website builder for therapists? We've reviewed dozens of website builders for you to eliminate as many potential pain points as possible and narrow it down to the seven most popular choices.
Let's take a deep dive into these website builders and wrap it up with our favorite.
What is the Best Website Builder for Therapists?
- Wix: Widest array of SEO features.
- Brighter Vision: Designed for therapists who prefer to let professionals build their site for them.
- SITE123: Most straightforward, intuitive builder.
- Squarespace: Best for growth potential and aesthetics.
- Strikingly: Amazing customer support.
- Weebly: Easiest to use for beginners.
- WordPress.com: Best for blog-focused practice.
Wix offers the widest variety of templates. Squarespace's designs are some of the most aesthetically pleasing we reviewed. Brighter Vision is a specialized web solutions company created for just therapists, and Weebly is easy to use even if you've never built a website before.
Here's a more detailed look at website builders for therapists:
Wix
Wix offers powerful, easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionality and a massive collection of templates. With their app market, responsive support, and lightning-fast site speed, Wix is one of the best website builders.
Pros:
- Their extensive app market allows you to add a blog, activate an ecommerce tool, and more with a few clicks
- Wix offers over 500 templates to choose from
- Marketing is easy with Wix because their SEO management is built-in
- Wix has top-notch support
Cons:
- Once your site goes live, you can't change your template
- Analytics tools are only available on paid plans
- You can't transfer your Wix site anywhere else
Ease of Use
Thanks to their intuitive, drag-and-drop interface and ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence), building a website with Wix requires zero coding skills. It's as easy to use as Site123, but it has more in common with Squarespace feature-wise.
Design Flexibility
Wix offers over 500 professionally designed templates you can choose from. Regardless of your branding, you'll find a template that suits your aesthetic. However, once you choose a template, you can't switch to another one.
Website Features
App Market: Wix offers more than 200 apps that run the gamut from chat features to embedded videos.
SEO Wiz: Rank higher on search engines with Wix's built-in SEO Wiz. Enter your target keywords, geolocation tags, and more for increased SEO visibility.
Ascend by Wix: Wix's fantastic marketing tool makes it easier to boost your website traffic, which builds trust and leads to greater recognition for your therapy practice.
Support Center: Wix's massive support center is one of the most impressive we've reviewed. Easily search for the answers to your issues, or use one of the linked articles found in their Help Center.
Help and Support
While Wix does offer responsive customer support, finding out how to contact them directly is tricky. We had to visit the Support Center and search “contact Wix customer service” to get help.
You can contact Wix by submitting a callback form. Callbacks in English are available 24/7, and if you have an issue with your payments, you can email [email protected] for assistance.
Value for Money
Wix currently offers eight plans, four of which are eCommerce specific:
- Combo: $13/mo
- Unlimited: $17/mo
- Pro: $22/mo
- VIP: $39/mo
- Business Basic: $23/mo
- Business Unlimited: $27/mo
- Business VIP: $49/mo
- Enterprise: $500/mo
With their vast array of plans at a variety of price points, Wix truly has something for everyone. Keep in mind that you will need one of their business plans to accept online payments.
Brighter Vision
Brighter Vision isn't precisely a website builder; the company calls itself a web solutions agency, and they've designed it specifically for therapists. They offer a large assortment of design templates from which to choose, and once you've selected one you like, the agency will create your website for you.
Pros:
- All plans include a custom-built website
- HIPAA-compliant emails protect sensitive client data
- The agency specializes in designing websites for therapists
- All plans come with SEO and tech support
Cons:
- You're not involved in the design process
- It's more expensive than other options
- HIPAA forms are only available on the most costly plan
Ease of Use
Because Brighter Vision creates your website based on the template you've chosen, it's a very hands-off experience, perfect for those who have no experience or interest in design.
You can easily integrate your social media accounts and Google Analytics, which you can manage from Brighter Vision's dashboard. Additionally, Brighter Vision offers its own analytics platform, which has more detailed metrics than Google Analytics.
If you get stuck at any point along the way, Brighter Vision offers unlimited tech support on all of their plans.
Design Flexibility
While Brighter Vision doesn't have many templates, they will walk you through personalizing your website with custom colors, fonts, and up to 10 free stock images.
Website Features
Hushmail Integration: Thanks to Brighter Vision's Hushmail Integration, you can maintain HIPAA compliance and ensure all communications between you and your client are protected.
Social Genie: With a massive library consisting of thousands of social media and blog posts you can customize, Social Genie makes it easy to create content for your website and social media accounts with just a few clicks.
Brighter Vision Payments: Take the hassle out of getting paid with Brighter Vision Payments, enabling you to accept payments directly on your website.
Brighter Insights: Brighter Insights, an all-in-one tool designed to help you keep track of your website's performance, shows you how your website performs with search engines and measures the impact of your email marketing and social media posts.
Help and Support
Brighter Vision offers free, unlimited tech support with one caveat: there is no Live Chat feature. You can get in touch with Brighter Vision by filling out a support ticket, and someone will respond within 1-3 business days.
There is also a Support Wiki where you can find the answers to frequently asked questions or email the company directly. The Support Wiki offers a lot of value, but the lack of phone support or a Live Chat feature is a significant downside.
Value for Money
Brighter Vision currently offers three different packages, and there is a $100 setup fee regardless of which package you choose.
- Start: $59/mo
- Grow: $89/mo
- Flourish: $119/mo
Because you will spend at least $159 to get your website up and running, Brighter Vision is one of the more expensive website builders, but it has tremendous benefits for those who can afford it.
Site123
The aptly named Site123 makes designing your website as easy as 1, 2, 3. If you've never created a website before, Site123 is a great option, as they use a design-assisted approach to website creation.
Pros:
- There's a translation option if you cater to multilingual clients
- They offer a free plan if you want to test their editor before committing to a paid plan
- Because everything is predefined, it's quick and straightforward to build your site
- They offer 24/7 Live Chat support in case any problems arise
Cons:
- You need an Advanced plan if you don't want any ads on your website
- The available website templates are outdated and very run-of-the-mill
- It's impossible to access the code if you want to change a specific design element
Ease of Use
When it comes to ease of use, few website builders are as straightforward as Site123. You simply answer a few questions about the website you're building, select elements you want to use in your template, and generate a preview to see the finished product.
Design Flexibility
Site123's designs are responsible and easy to build but offer zero creative freedom because each feature of the website has a predefined structure. You can't move the images, headlines, or text on your template, so what you see is what you get.
Website Features
With Site123, you have the option of adding Calls to Action (or CTAs) on your website, but that's the only available marketing feature. For therapists who love to blog, there's no comments section, a massive point against Site123.
The free plan has even fewer features. You will get a free domain name for a year with Site123 with a paid plan. If you already own a domain name, you'll need a paid plan to connect it to Site123.
Help and Support
One of Site123's best features is customer support. In addition to a value-packed forum, email support, and social media support, Site123 offers 24/7 Live Chat support.
Value for Money
Despite its free plan, Site123 is mostly lacking in terms of value for money. They currently offer four plans:
- Basic: $10.80/mo
- Advanced: $16.80/mo
- Professional: $22.80/mo
- Gold: $28.80/mo
Because the better features like translation services aren't available until you've splurged a minimum of $16.80 a month for an Advanced plan or better, Site123 isn't the best option for more budget-conscious therapists. It also lacks important features like blog comments.
Squarespace
Out of the website builders we reviewed, no one does aesthetics better than Squarespace. While it isn't as easy to use as some of the other website builders, the fresh design and stunning images make up for the learning curve required to use Squarespace.
Pros:
- Squarespace offers over 100 customizable, mobile-optimized themes
- They have great features, like SEO, if you want to provide a blog on your website
- You can edit almost your entire website using the Squarespace mobile app
- Their Live Chat support offers an almost immediate response time
Cons:
- Their templates load slowly, which could impact your SEO score and user experience
- Editing your website is a time-consuming process
- It's not as intuitive as other website builders, so it's not the best option for tech novices
Ease of Use
Those with some experience with web design won't find Squarespace too challenging, but if this is your first go-around when creating a website, it's not as easy to use as some builders. You have to save your edits with every step since there is no autosave feature, one major downside of Squarespace.
The bright side of a steeper learning curve is the number of design tools Squarespace offers, so it's up to you if it's worth it to spend a little more time building your site to access those tools.
Design Flexibility
Squarespace is the absolute best at offering a professional-looking website without requiring any knowledge of coding. They know their templates are their greatest strength, and they play to that strength by frequently adding new templates and improving on preexisting ones.
Making your website stand out in a sea of cookie-cutter sites is easy with Squarespace. Because every template is optimized for mobile viewing, you never have to worry about how it looks on smaller screens.
Website Features
Widgets: You can find lots of third-party tools in Squarespace Extensions to add functionality to your website. One of the best offerings is QuickBooks Online by OneSaas, which will automate your accounting needs.
Blogging: With Squarespace, you get all the best blogging features to share information with clients while boosting your online presence with AMP support and geolocation tagging. You can also import a preexisting blog to your Squarespace website.
Website Analytics: See where your visitors are coming from and what search terms they used to find your website. Thanks to Squarespace's traffic overview, you can learn which devices and browsers your visitors use, helping you optimize your website.
SEO: Squarespace's powerful SEO features are some of the best in the game. With customizable tags, SSL certificates, and HTML markup, all of Squarespace's websites are engineered to meet SEO best practices guidelines to boost visibility in search engine rankings.
Help and Support
While Squarespace does not offer phone support, they have plenty of ways to contact them. Their Live Chat is available during business hours Monday through Friday. Their Twitter and email support are available 24/7.
There is also a knowledgeable community forum, video tutorials, and in-depth written tutorials to guide you through any issues.
Value for Money
Squarespace doesn't have a free plan, but they offer a 14-day free trial period if you want to test-drive one of their plans before committing to it. They currently offer four plans:
- Personal: 12/mo
- Business: $18/mo
- Basic eCommerce: $26/mo
- Advanced eCommerce: $40/mo
If you plan to offer online payments, then the Personal plan won't work for you. The Business plan does offer ecommerce capabilities, but there is a transaction fee of 3%. Depending on the number of transaction fees you incur in a month, one of the eCommerce plans might be the best bet for you.
Strikingly
Strikingly's focus is on helping people with zero programming skills design modern, mobile-friendly websites. They offer a free entry plan, but that plan comes with the significant drawback of only providing one page. If your website needs more than that, as most do, you have to upgrade to a paid plan, and even their paid plans are lacking in features.
Pros:
- Strikingly is one of the easiest to use website builders around thanks to its drag-and-drop design feature
- Their cheapest plan gives the option to create two websites and sell up to five products
- Strikingly's customer support is amazing in terms of responsiveness and friendliness
Cons:
- If you want to get rid of adds, you have to sign up for their most expensive plan
- If you need more than one page, you have to sign up for the Pro plan
- Even the Pro plan can only support 20 pages, which isn't enough for most websites let alone a therapist’s website
Ease of Use
Strikingly is fantastic when it comes to building single-page websites quickly and efficiently, but they offer very little creativity.
Design Flexibility
Strikingly's templates are inflexible, and one-page websites are outdated. By the time someone scrolls through to find your blog or contact information, they've already lost interest. If you want to have more than one page, you'll have to pay for a pricey plan that's only capable of supporting 20 pages in total.
Website Features
Strikingly doesn't have much to offer in the way of features. The free and less expensive Limited plans offer social media integration. You'll have to buy the Pro or VIP plans to utilize their most impressive feature, Live Chat with Facebook Messenger.
Help and Support
Strikingly beats everyone else in terms of having the most adorable name for their support agents. Strikingly’s Happiness Officers are available 24/7 via Live Chat.
Strikingly also offers a massive selection of video tutorials, a FAQ section, and email support. A VIP plan gains you access to phone support.
Value for Money
In addition to their free plan, which isn't very useful, Strikingly offers three paid plans on their website:
- Limited: $8/mo
- Pro: $16/mo
- VIP $49/mo
While even their limited plan nets you a free domain for a year, Strikingly's limited offers are far from striking if you want to have a professional, easy-to-navigate website capable of accepting online payments.
Weebly
Weebly offers a reasonably simple website building platform that won't break the bank. While they aren't as easy to use as Site123, they aren't as complicated as Squarespace, making Weebly a great, middle-of-the-road option for those who have a little more experience.
Pros:
- Weebly offers excellent value for money
- They have an autosave function, so you never have to worry about saving with every step
- Weebly allows you to integrate apps and extensions
- They have one of the best customer support services in the business
Cons:
- You'll need the premium plan if you want to install most apps and extensions
- If you want to restore a deleted website, you can't do it yourself and will require customer support
- Depending on your template, you can't customize the placement of every element
Ease of Use
Offering numerous templates and drag-and-drop website building, Weebly is much easier for novices to use than Squarespace. However, it isn't as intuitive as others, and we noticed a few glitches that required us to refresh the page before we were able to continue working.
Design Flexibility
Weebly is hardly a match for Squarespace in terms of template offerings, but they're adequate for those who want to display their services on a simple, clean website. If you have more experience with coding, you can utilize their feature that allows you to create custom CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.
Website Features
App Center: Weebly's App Center features over 300 apps. Whether you're looking to integrate your social media accounts or allow Live Chat through Facebook Messenger on your site, the App Center has something you can use.
SEO Guide: Weebly offers a comprehensive SEO Guide that will walk you through SEO practices.
Knowledge Base: With the option to search for what you need help with or scroll down to their massive knowledge base, which offers support with everything from apps to email marketing, Weebly is there for you from start to finish.
Help and Support
Aside from their Knowledge Base, Weebly offers three different ways to get in touch with them. Their Live Chat is only available from 6 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday, and 8 am until 5 pm on weekends. Phone support is available from 6 am to 6 pm, seven days a week. The best way to reach Weebly is by filling out a support ticket, which offers 24/7 support.
Value for Money
In addition to a free plan, which means your website would be a part of Weebly's subdomain, Weebly currently offers three plans:
- Personal: $6/mo
- Professional: $12/mo
- Performance: $26/mo
We don't recommend using the free plan, as it looks much less professional than having your own domain. While the Personal plan is the most budget-friendly, the Performance plan allows you to accept PayPal payments. This is a great option if you intend to accept online payments from clients who prefer PayPal.
WordPress.com
WordPress is a fantastic blogging website builder, so if your practice plans on putting a heavy emphasis on blogging as part of your online branding, WordPress is a great fit.
Pros:
- WordPress.com is budget-friendly
- Amazing built-in features for blogs
- They offer basic eCommerce capabilities
Cons:
- You need some coding skill to customize anything
- The available templates are clunky and outdated
Ease of Use
Unless you want the same cookie-cutter style website numerous other sites use, you'll need to code. It's also not the most accessible platform to use if you want to build anything other than a blog.
Design Flexibility
Because bloggers mostly use WordPress.com, most of the design features are designed for bloggers, which can be annoying when you want to create a more functional website.
Website Features
Social Media: Because WordPress was designed for bloggers, social media integration is easy and intuitive.
Plugins: WordPress.com has access to a massive library of plugins you can use on your site. Again, most have been designed with blogging in mind.
SEO: WordPress's best feature is the optimized SEO tool. However, if you want access to meta-data, you'll need to upgrade to a more expensive plan.
Help and Support
WordPress is severely lacking in terms of support. Despite its assortment of articles and tutorials, they don't offer phone support or Live Chat.
Value for Money
In terms of value for money, WordPress is one of the most affordable web builders. Aside from their free plan, they offer three paid plans:
- Personal: $4/mo
- Premium: $8/mo
- Business: $25/mo
Please keep in mind that you will need an eCommerce plan to accept payments online. eCommerce plans are $45/mo. If you don't want to accept online payments, WordPress.com is fantastic for the budget-conscious therapist.
Final Verdict
You may be thinking, “Okay, there are some great options out there, but what is the best website builder for online therapists?”
Ultimately, our choice is Wix. While its customer support is lacking, Wix is the best for all-around value for money. With their extensive selection of templates, easy-to-use platform, and impressive features, Wix can take your website from dull to dazzling without breaking the bank.