Fastest Loading Website Builders - Top 10 Performance Review
Fast loading times decrease website bounce rates and enhance businesses' chances of success online. Speed also impacts search engine visibility.
Website builders are notoriously known for their slow site loading times. This is why many digital and marketing agencies have been looking down on website builders for quite some time.
But are website builders actually slow?
We Examined These Platforms
We tested the world's top 10 website builders listed by Forbes. We also threw into the mix Webflow and HubSpot, favored by digital agencies, Webnode suitable for DIY enthusiasts, and the Finnish website builder LiquidBlox.
We excluded WordPress, Shopify, and similar Content Management Systems (CMS) that are not unequivocally hosted website builders.
We defined the term "website builder" as follows:
Hosting is always included in the service provided by the platform
The platform allows customization of appearance and structure without add-ons and coding (HubSpot is on the edge in this definition)
Automatic version updates are included in the license fee
The platform is primarily intended for creating websites, not e-commerce
IONOS By 1&1 was also excluded from the test, as we could not find websites implemented with it.
If the platform did not list references on their site, we sought a third-party listing. We confirmed that the site still uses the correct platform by leveraging the builtwith.com service (or equivalent). A minimum of three images or one image and 400 words of text were used as the minimum content for sites.
Test 1: Website Builders' Own marketing Sites
We tested the website builders' own websites with the assumption that companies use their own platform or at least equivalent technology on their own sites.
The test, however, revealed that Webnode has built its own marketing website with WordPress.
Test 2: Customer Sites Implemented with a Website Builder
We selected three to five websites implemented with each website builder, which were likely to load quickly or had been flagged as fast by others. We conducted tests on them using three common tools intended for speed measurement.
Results: The Website Builders' Own marketing Sites
Top 3 based on the loading speed of the manufacturers' own sites:
LiquidBlox 390 points
Duda 346 points
Zyro 310 points
The maximum score in the test was 400 points.
The top three platforms in the test ranked high in both tests. This is not surprising as all these platforms emphasize performance in their marketing communications, which is clearly seen in both tests.
Wix has invested in the speed of its marketing site, as it performed relatively better in this test than in the customer site test.
GoDaddy's marketing site represents the other extreme: the site was much slower than the customer sites on the platform.
Link to the Google Sheet file of the manufacturers' own site test
Results: Customer Sites
Top 3 customer websites based on loading speed:
LiquidBlox 372 points
GoDaddy 370 points
Duda 339 points
The maximum score in the test was 400 points.
The top two, LiquidBlox and GoDaddy, have clearly invested more in the speed of their customers' websites than other platforms. GoDaddy was surprisingly fast compared to the rest, especially considering the platform's lesser-known status.
Squarespace, traditionally focused on visual appeal, lagged far behind the others. The same was true for Webnode, known for its ease of use. Long-standing popular platforms like Wix, Weebly, Webflow, and Squarespace were at the bottom of the results, falling outside the top three.
The most surprising was that HubSpot, which performed competently in the test of the manufacturers' own sites, came last in the test of customer sites. This is likely influenced by the technical solutions used by the builders of the customer sites, as HubSpot requires the use of either self-made or purchased page templates for website building.
Link to the Google Sheet of the customer site test
Final Result: Website Builders Are No Longer Slow
The slowness of website builders seems to be more of a myth than a fact. The myth may have held true in the past, but the current versions of the platforms can offer very fast websites at their best.
Speed is, of course, only one criterion in choosing a platform. However, it is worth considering as it affects both users and search engines.
Investing in speed is not surprising, as website administrators are very aware of the challenges with the help of continuous monitoring tools, such as Google Search Console.
How We Tested
Below are the detailed methods for conducting the tests and the formulas by which we obtained the scores for different website builders.
The tests were carried out with three tools:
Google PageSpeed Insights
Pingdom Speed Test: region Eastern US
GTmetrix: region Chicago USA, device iPhone XR (in addition to this, we ran individual tests out of interest simulating European locations)
From the Google PageSpeed Insights results, we picked the page's Performance value, which is a general speed indicator. Performance results are available separately for mobile devices and computers. Both results were taken into account.
Link to the tool: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Pingdom speed test measures the site's loading time in seconds.
Link to the tool: https://tools.pingdom.com/
For GTmetrix, we used the paid version, which allows you to change the measurement to cover different devices and locations.
Link to the tool: https://gtmetrix.com/
We ran the GTMetrix tests from the United States because the servers of the companies on the list are mainly located there. This made the test as unbiased as possible.
The tests were repeated at least twice to ensure we captured the fastest CDN cache version of the websites. The CDN, or Content Delivery Network, is an essential part of implementing fast web pages.
The total test scores were calculated with a formula where the Google PageSpeed Insights scores (mobile and desktop) and GTmetrix percentage were summed up. With these three, the maximum points are 100 per test. The loading time measured by Pingdom in seconds was subtracted from the number four and multiplied by 25, producing a comparable value. Hence, the cumulative maximum score for the entire test is 400.
Written by:
Tommi Partanen
Tommi is one of the founders of Markkinointisankarit Oy.
Throughout his career, Tommi has held various roles such as programmer, project manager, marketing team supervisor, and entrepreneur - in Finland and abroad.
He has specialized in marketing management and particularly in digitalization of processes, marketing automation, websites, and Google SEO.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommi-partanen-4834235a/
Website Builders in the study:
LiquidBlox
Duda
Zyro
Webflow
Wix
Weebly
Squarespace
GoDaddy
https://www.godaddy.com/websites/website-builder
HubSpot
Webnode
