Best hosted web design software

Hosted web design software

Choosing web design software that also can host your finished product takes the worry out of maintaining your site, backing up your content and making sure it is secure. You'll have to set up your website and update the content, but the software in this section makes that easy to do.

WordPress.com (Free) receives high marks in many professional reviews as the best web design software for beginners and advanced users alike. WordPress.com started out as a blogging site, but it now allows users to build professional-looking websites as well; creating a blog as part of your website is optional. Keep in mind that WordPress.com is different from WordPress.org. WordPress.com hosts your website, which means that your site's URL will have the suffix .wordpress.com tacked onto it. WordPress.org, on the other hand, doesn't offer web hosting, but it does give you more control over your website by enabling you to edit the HTML coding and offering lots of third-party plug-ins. See the next section for more about WordPress.org.

With WordPress.com, you can be up and running in no time. All the construction happens in the dashboard, which organizes all the tools and features that you need. Most of the decisions you make are reversible, so you can experiment with the look and feel of your site as well as the layout without being locked into a decision you may later regret. With more than 200 templates to choose from and the ability to change the background colors, fonts and the header graphics, you can easily and quickly create an attractive, personalized website.

If your website design is heavy on graphics or you want to create photo galleries, take a look at Squarespace.  Squarespace receives the Bronze Award in TopTenReviews.com's 2013 roundup of blogging software, and you can create a fully functioning website with it. The $8-per-month plan includes 2 GB of storage for up to 20 pages, blogs and galleries; for $16 per month, you get unlimited bandwidth, storage and pages, and you can post updates to Facebook pages. You can try Squarespace free for 14 days, and you don't need to give a credit card number to do this. Unlike WordPress.com, Squarespace gives you a custom domain name; like WordPress.com, all the plans are ad-free.

Calling Squarespace ideal for "a beginning, non-technical blogger who wants to create a slick, beautiful-looking blog", the editors of TopTenReviews.com say that it offers a high level of customization for those who can't write HTML code. There are about 25 templates to choose from with the free version of Squarespace, and most of them are suitable for blogs or portfolios. When you select a template, you're shown examples of customer websites built with it, something reviewers say is a useful feature.

Building your website is a cinch, users say. Simply drag and drop text, images and blocks onto your page. Although there are preset color palettes, Squarespace allows you to customize your site by changing fonts, backgrounds, headers, and by adjusting the size and number of columns. Further customization is available through CSS editing for those who know HTML code.

Where Squarespace excels is in its creative tools, reviewers say. Features include the ability to upload photos by dragging files from your computer desktop, edit the photos with special effects and cropping, and create a slideshow. In addition, Squarespace allows you to connect to most social media, including Twitter, Facebook and Google+.