57 helpful tools to build, design, and grow your website

Last updated: June 3, 2026

As a website creator, you might feel a bit overwhelmed with all the steps you need to take in order to bring your vision to life. From how to create a website to what colors and fonts you can use, from where to source images to what platforms are available to you, we’ve compiled a list to get you from ideation to creation in no time.

Here’s our list of helpful tools to make a custom website. These aren’t in any particular order and we admit, some will be better than others depending on your needs. There are a lot of tools out there so use these as a jumping-off point. Enjoy, and best of luck!

Get a Domain Name

Hover… duh. You want to own your domain name yourself, not tie it to any one service or platform. With Hover, you register your domain, then use it with any services you want. This gives you the flexibility to move without the hassle of moving your domain name.

Create a Website

Website builders help—yep—build your website from scratch. They offer the templates and tools to help make it happen. Here are some of our favorites:

Wix – A well-known drag-and-drop website builder with a free plan available. Premium features cost extra but unlock additional storage, video capability, logo design and removal of Wix ads.

Framer – A design-first no-code website builder that started life as a prototyping tool and has evolved into a full website publishing platform. Its AI-powered page generation, built-in CMS, and support for advanced animations make it a favorite among designers, agencies, and startups who want pixel-perfect results without writing code.

Webflow – Build your website with +7000 customizable templates. Webflow makes things simple with automatic updates, customized SEO capability, on-page editing and more. All the personalization you would want without any coding required on your part. 

Squarespace – Another popular and powerful drag-and-drop website builder with many sleek customizable themes and a free logo maker. Squarespace also offers a slew of e-commerce and marketing tools.

Weebly – A free drag-and-drop builder that includes a shopping cart, SEO, as well as chat and email support. Optional premium features include unlimited storage, more commerce and security features as well as priority support.

Pixpa – A paid portfolio website builder with integrated client galleries, blogs, eCommerce store and 24/7 support. Subscriptions offer features like inventory management and advanced mailing lists.

Pixieset – This builder offers free and subscription-based memberships with a focus on image-based templates. Membership tiers are primarily based on storage space ranging from 3GB to unlimited depending on plan type.

Design Your Website

These tools can help you figure out how to truly customize your website if you forgo templates and like to code. 

Color Schemes

Color wheels help you figure out what color combinations work best for your aesthetic.

Adobe Color – An advanced color wheel with many options and moving parts to help you create the perfect color palette.

Paletton – Another color wheel with a very simple interface.

Coolors – Your spacebar will generate random colors and you can lock them in or remove them while pressing the spacebar to generate more to compliment your choices.

Colourcode – Rather than dragging points around a wheel, simply move your mouse across the screen to generate colors and the side menu to add options.

COLOURlovers – While it appears a bit basic, this free community-generated collection has great color schemes, patterns and unique images.

Fonts

Create a website as unique as you are with a variety of fonts to show off your personality or brand. Here are some tools to help:

Font Squirrel – An extensive collection of free hand-picked high-quality fonts.

MyFonts – If you’ve seen a font you like but don’t know its name, upload a screenshot of it and let the site find it, or a similar one, for you using their What The Font! search box.

Typetester – An excellent tool to compare fonts side-by-side so you can design fonts, narrow down options or test which fonts go well together.

Stock Images and Vectors

Images and icons to make your website stand out:

Pixabay – An extensive (boasting over 6.1 million) collection of free and royalty-free stock images, vectors, illustrations and videos.

NounProject – Community-generated vector icons, free with attribution to the artist or via a paid subscription for royalty-free use. Nearly 10 million icons are available, with new icons added daily.

Findicons – A large collection (+500,000) of free icons and illustrations as well as a free icon converter to convert your icon to any format you need. 

Nappy – This is a free collection of aesthetically pleasing hi-res images, featuring people of color.

Pexels – Beautiful, modern, on-trend images provided completely free, with no attribution required (though crediting the photographer is always appreciated). All images can be downloaded in various sizes to suit your needs.

Unsplash – Last but definitely not least, this site features high quality, editorial images from a world-wide photographer community, with a library of over 5 million photos for your branding needs. Images can be downloaded in different sizes, and while credit to the photographer is not required, it is always appreciated.

Image Editing

Photoshop/Lightroom – The gold standard in image editing used by top professionals. Available as part of Adobe’s Photography Plan, which bundles both Photoshop and Lightroom together as part of Adobe Creative Cloud.

Figma – A browser-based design too used widely by web designed and product teams for wireframing, prototyping, and laying out visual designs. Works collaboratively in real time, so multiple people can work on the same file at once. A free plan is available.

GIMP – A completely free, open-source editor and popular alternative to Photoshop, compatible with Mac, Windows and Linux.

Pixlr – A browser-based alternative to software image editors, now with AI-powered tools including background removal and generative fill. A free plan is available, with paid tiers unlocking additional features and a larger library of graphics and templates.

Canva – A browser-based drag-and-drop image editor created for non-designers. Select layouts, background images and add text to create impressive images and graphics. Upload your own images or use the extensive free library included. A permanently free plan is available, with an optional Pro tier unlocking premium assets and AI tools.

BeFunky – An easy-to-use browser-based photo editor that can also be used to make collages and create templates for marketing materials. A free version with basic tools is available, while a Plus subscription unlocks premium features including AI editing tools, background removal, and an ad-free experience.

Content for Your Website

If you’re creating a website, we’re going to assume you might want to add content to it. Get started with these tools:

Blogging

WordPress – Hands-down the most popular blogging platform. The software is free and open-source, with thousands of plugins to choose from, though you’ll need separate web hosting to get started.

Tumblr – The standard for microblogging, allowing you to quickly share images, audio, video, text and anything else you can think of with your audience. It’s also free.

Svbtle – A stripped-down interface lets you focus on writing instead of overwhelming you with a ton of widgets, menus and other distractions.

Ghost – Another distraction-free blogging platform with a clean side-by-side view of your writing and a live preview of the final product. It can be self-hosted for free or used via Ghost’s managed hosting, and comes with built-in support for memberships, paid subscriptions, newsletters and SEO.

Posthaven – Making things all the simpler, Posthaven is unique in that it lets you post to your blog by sending an email. Simply write your content, add attachments and send.

Postach.io – Easily publish articles from Evernote, with support for multiple sites, password-protected sites and multiple authors. Bonus points for using a domain hack.

Forms

Google Forms – Just like most things Google, Google Forms is a feature-packed form creator available completely free of charge. Create polls, collect email addresses, pop quizzes and more with a super-simple interface. 

MachForm – A powerful standalone form builder available as a cloud-hosted service or a self-hosted solution. Features include automatic email notifications, auto-responder emails, file uploads, and payment collection via a wide range of processors including PayPal and Stripe.

Wufoo – Use their templates or simply click what elements you’d like to include in your form and customize to your heart’s content. Integrates with MailChimp, WordPress, Stripe, Google Sheets, and more, and offers reporting and analysis tools. A free plan is available, with paid plans offering more forms, submissions and advanced features.

JotForm – A feature-packed editor that’ll let you design highly customized forms and even host them for you. A free plan is available with up to 5 forms and 100 monthly submissions, with paid plans unlocking more submissions, payments, storage and sub-user accounts.

Zoho – A drag-and-drop editor that makes designing forms a breeze. Zoho will also collect and manage form submissions, and integrates seamlessly with other Zoho apps and a range of third-party tools. Available on a free plan, with paid plans offering more records, storage, custom branding and other features.

Comments

Disqus – Add a feature-rich commenting section to any section of your site. Disqus lets visitors discover other great content from your site that’s sparking discussions, and allows you to set notifications and monitor engagement. It’s easy to use, with a free ad-supported plan available as well as paid plans for an ad-free experience.

IntenseDebate – A free commenting platform from Automatic, the company behind WordPress and Akismet. Features include threaded discussions, the ability to post using social accounts, email notifications, and robust spam filtering tools.

Newsletters

MailChimp – A feature-packed email marketing platform that let’s you create beautiful emails, organize subscribers into different lists, use A/B testing, analyze the success of your campaigns and many other features. A free plan is available for those just starting out, with paid plans unlocking higher sending limits and more advance features as your list grows.

Substack – A publishing platform that combines blogging with email newsletters, making it easy to build a subscriber base and send regular updates directly to readers’ inboxes.

MailerLite – A clean, beginner-friendly email marketing platform with a drag-and-drop editor, automation, landing pages, and a generous free plan for smaller lists. A popular choice for creators and small businesses look for a straightforward software.

Campaign Monitor – A great drag-and-drop email creator with meaningful analytics and social media integrations. Particularly populat with agencies and design-forward teams thanks to its polished templates and multi-client management tools.

AWeber – A full-featured platform with a drag-and-drop editor, subscriber segmenting, analytics, and even RSS-to-email to automatically keep people in the loop. Free for smaller lists, or paid options scaling up as your subscriber count grows. 

Web Analytic Tools

After you create a website, you’ll need to monitor site activity. Here are the tools to help you do it: 

On-Site

Google Analytics – Google’s free tool will allow you to learn everything there is to know about the success of your website, such as where visitors spent the most time, where they left, and where they came from, helping you optimize your site based on visitor behavior.

Microsoft Clarity – A completely free behavior analytics tool from Microsoft that provides heatmaps, sessions recordings, and insights into how visitors interact with your site.

Matomo Analytics – An open-source web analytics platform that promises to protect your data and privacy, giving you 100 percent ownership of your data. This one provides great insight into what’s working (and, more importantly, what isn’t) and is free if you host it yourself, with managed cloud plans available for those who prefer a hands-off setup.

Ubersuggest – An SEO and content marketing platform to help with keyword research, competitor analysis, site audits, and increasing traffic. A limited free tier is available, with paid plans unlocking full access to the suite’s features.

Crazy Egg – See how visitors interact with your website with heatmaps of where people clicked, scroll maps, and session recordings. Use that information and edit your website to increase engagement, traffic or conversions. Paid plans are required, but there is a free trial available.

Open Web Analytics – A completely free and open-source web analytics platform that includes heatmaps, geo-location, and search term tracking to understand visitors, their journey and navigation on your site. Best of all, there’s no upselling—the project relies entirely on donations from its users to continue development.

Off-Site

Google Alerts – A free and simple tool that will send you a notification whenever you’re mentioned on the web—by name, your brand or company name, or whatever keyword you choose.

Buffer – A straightforward social media scheduling and analytics tools that lets you plan and publish posts across multiple platforms from one place. This is a popular tool among individuals and small teams.

BuzzSumo – See where you’ve been mentioned or how many times articles have been shared on different social networks. Check out what related content is trending or what questions people are asking online. A very limited free tier is available, with paid plans unlocking full results, multiple users, alerts, content analysis, and more.

Hootsuite – A great all-in-one social media management platform, Hootsuite allows you to set up a custom dashboard so you never miss a mention and grow your online presence. A 30-day free trial is available, after which a paid subscription is required.

Sprout Social – Streamline your social media and understand your followers. Much like Hootsuite, this tool collects a lot of data to analyze engagement and following, in addition to helping you organize your workflow and manage you social media calendar. Sprout Social is a premium platform aimed at teams and agencies, with a 30-day free trials available before committing to a plan.