Best Web Design Software in 2022 | Free and Paid Covered with Honesty

February 10, 2022
web design software

In my experience as a web designer, I’ve met a couple different kinds of clients: the Rush Hour generation who wants their sites to go live in as little as three days (the Jackie Chan generation) and those who don’t care how long it takes.

This diversity of clients has exposed me to various kinds of web design software.

When I need to complete a client’s work speedily, I rely on the drag-and-drop software. The Wixs. The Squarespaces. (I know you know them like the back of your hand.)

But whenever I get the freedom of time, I enjoy myself with more technical software like the almighty Bootstrap.

With such software, I can always write my own code, design my own sites, and not rely on some crappy pre-built templates (no offense, Wix advocates).

Based on my firsthand experience with so many web design software options, here are my top favorites.

Best web design software

  1. WordPress
  2. Adobe Dreamweaver
  3. Wix
  4. Bootstrap
  5. Figma

What to look for when choosing the best web design software

The name of the brand should never be your benchmark. WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace are the popular names in the industry. But they’re not necessarily the best for the site you want to build.

Below are some important factors I look at when selecting a web design software to use. And yes, before you ask, I did consider them in compiling this list of the best web design software.

  • Ease of use. The best website design software in the market should make the website building process easy. If it’s a drag-and-drop system, then you shouldn’t struggle to find the right tools. If it’s a coding system, then ensure it has the languages you understand. You don’t want a JavaScript-centered software when you’re best at HTML and CSS.
  • Design templates and functionality. These are necessary for design newbies and design experts who still rely on templates. If you are one, you need to look at the templates on offer before you buy the software.
  • Responsive options. Must have the tools you need to make a mobile, tablet, and desktop–responsive website.
  • Customization options. Its customization and editor tools must be vast. This is the only way you’ll have 100% liberty to make designs that suit you.
  • Trial or free package. Before you put your money on the line, first get your hands on a free trial plan. Don’t trust a website design service that doesn’t offer you a trial or testing period. The software you’ll find on my list all offer trial or free versions.
  • SEO features. Must have specially-designed SEO functionalities. SEO functionalities are important if you want your soon-to-be-live website to rank appropriately on the SERPs (search engine result pages).

1. WordPress

When you have everybody rushing through a door, you want to believe there’s probably something special about that door – or at least where it leads to.

With 35% of the internet’s websites built and designed with WordPress, there’s got to be something special about this software.

And, indeed, there is.

WordPress offers the combination of flexibility, power, and ease of use necessary to build and design any website. At its core, WordPress is the best web design software for beginners. So, if you’re just starting your web design journey, this is a great option for you.

Below are some of WordPress’ amazing features:

Like many web design software options, WordPress starts out as a complete website builder, which means that it can do much more than designing.

In general, you first have to buy a hosting service. Then you sign up with WordPress. Afterward, you follow a series of commands to finish setting up your site. Once the setting up is done, you can move forward with designing.

WordPress’s design system stems from its built-in themes. To design a site with WordPress, you have to install a WordPress theme and edit it as you see fit.

Of course, installation is as simple as one single click, and editing is as simple as dragging and dropping various design elements.

At their core, all WordPress themes offer the following benefits:

1) Responsive design

2) Social sharing features: Meaning you can incorporate your social media presence into your site and vice versa.

3) Multiple page styles: This feature of WordPress themes means your site enjoys unique page features for every page designed. In other words, each type of page (e-commerce, testimonials, the home page, etc.) has its own style and works with the user in mind.

4) A boatload of widgets: Designers love having design themes that come with plenty of widgets. In general, widgets improve the overall visual appearance of a site and make theme installation a whole lot easier, saving time and effort.

5) Theme customization: Not only does WordPress bless your design with pre-built themes, but you also get plenty of customization tools to change almost everything about the theme, including fonts, colors, background, images, etc.

6) SEO: The consensus on the internet is that WordPress sites rank better than sites designed with other software. This is true, and the reason is because WordPress builds its themes with SEO functionalities in mind.

7) Retina display: The demand for high-quality visuals is intense in today’s internet world. Dull and low-resolution content no longer cut it. Luckily, most WordPress themes come with retina-ready options.

For those who don’t know, retina-ready themes ensure your site content appears ultra-beautiful on any device. Not only that, but the images, slideshows, icons, fonts, text, and graphics will also appear sharper, crisper, and brighter. Even when zoomed in, retina-ready content won’t shrink in quality.

8) Design bundles: Recently, WordPress has started including some exciting add-ons in its themes. These add-ons include, but are not limited to:

Newsletters

Brand logo

Landing pages

Business cards

Letterhead

Brand icons

Social media branding

The reason for adding these extras into themes is to improve the overall brand consistency of the site you want to design. 

2. Adobe Dreamweaver

The beautiful thing about Dreamweaver is that it has something for everyone.

For coding enthusiasts like me, there’s the code editor, which allows me to wiggle my way through lines of code until I have a pleasant site design.

There’s also a visual interface for the “I hate coding” group that lets you point and click on buttons until you have the site of your choice.

Sounds exciting, right?

That’s Adobe Dreamweaver in three explanatory lines.

Why should you buy Adobe Dreamweaver?

1) Ease of use: When you buy the Dreamweaver package, you get a visual design toolbox. Technically speaking, what this toolbox does is allow you to build a website with your mouse. Some of the elements of the toolbox include starter templates, editor tools, and customization items.

Once you’re in, you just have to point, click and drop various design elements that you want to appear on your site. It’s similar to how you create a layout in Microsoft Docs. As you’re doing that, the pieces will come together and you’ll begin to see your site as you would in a browser. If you find anything displeasing, you can easily point at it with the mouse and make some edits.

Why should you buy Adobe Dreamweaver?

2) Code editor: For lovers of coding, there’s a boatload of tools to help you design your site.

There’s the syntax highlighting. This shows your lines of code in different colors to make for easier reading and correction. There’s the code completion. This one works like your phone’s autocomplete and autocorrect. You start typing (writing a code), and the editor makes suggestions for what you are trying to write. This saves you from making mistakes and taking too long on coding.

Then there’s the code collapsing tool. This one saves you the stress of having to scroll through lines of code every time. If you aren’t working on a certain code section, you can easily collapse it. And if you need to see it again, you can easily expand.

3) Supports all design languages: All programmers will find joy with Dreamweaver, as it features all major design languages, including CSS, Javascript, HTML5, and PHP.

4) Code effects reflection: Another beautiful thing about using Dreamweaver’s code editor is that any change you make in the code appears immediately on the visual interface. That is, as you’re working on the code, you’ll be seeing the effects on the site you’re designing.

5) Free trial: You get a free trial period to test the waters of Dreamweaver.

3. Wix

Wix is more of a website builder rather than an ordinary design platform. That means you can use Wix to design, build, and launch your website all in one.

But for this post, we’re only focusing on the design aspects. Remember, we’re talking about the best web design software.

So, what are the interesting features of Wix as a web design software? Let’s find out.

1) AI automation: The beautiful thing about Wix is that everything is automated in a simple environment. You just have to answer a few questions and Wix designs your site for you.

Once you’re in, Wix asks you to input your contact info and click on the main “Sign Up” button. After you do so, it takes you straight to what’s called the Wix ADI – Artificial Design Intelligence.

The ADI asks questions and builds your site as you go. Once done, it takes you to the templates phase, where you’re ready to begin your web design.

2) Wealth of design templates: Wix spoils you with loads of web design templates to choose from. But to make the process seamless for you, you get asked a few questions. Based on your answers, Wix shows you a list of design templates that would be best for your site. Then it designs your homepage for you.

3) Easy design customization: Of course, Wix doesn’t expect you to like all the details of the homepage its ADI has designed. So you have a customization editor toolbox – the Wix ADI editor – which allows you to make all your desired changes to the design.

Wix’s ADI editor is so intuitive that every element on your site behaves the way you expect it. For example, if you want to edit any of the text on your homepage, just click on it, and a new sidebar will show where you can tweak it. The same goes for images, icons, buttons, etc.

Isn’t that so simple?

4) Total design control: Besides the homepage design and customization, Wix also allows you to…

  • Add as many pages as you like to your site – Contact Us, Blog, Testimonials, etc.

  • Determine the font and color scheme to use – Easily choose from different fonts and colors/palettes (tinted, dark, vibrant, colorful, etc.).

  • Change the overall design style/appearance of a page – Apart from editing what’s inside your content sections, you can also change the overall designs of the sections themselves.

5) Addition of extra visual elements: Wix accepts any type of visual content on your website. Be it images, videos, slideshows, galleries, or even Instagram feeds, bring it on!

4. Bootstrap

Bootstrap is not for beginners, nor is it for the fainthearted. At its core, it involves coding to design your websites.

It was also the software trusted in building LinkedIn, Spotify, and other high-profile websites.

What’s more, Bootstrap was developed by the tech geeks at Twitter.

Sounds like something you might like to get into? Ok, let’s see some of its features and perks.

1) Easy to use and install: The first thing you’ll love about Bootstrap is its simple and easy-to-use installation buttons.

Regardless of whether you’ve been coding for a long time or you’re new to web development, the process of installing Bootstrap is quite seamless.

That said, here is how to link your HTML document with your style sheet and script files.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS):

<link rel=“stylesheet” href=“https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.5.0/css/bootstrap.min.css” integrity=“sha384-9aIt2nRpC12Uk9gS9baDl411NQApFmC26EwAOH8WgZl5MYYxFfc+NcPb1dKGj7Sk” crossorigin=“anonymous”>

JavaScript:

<script src=“https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.5.0/js/bootstrap.min.js” integrity=“sha384OgVRvuATP1z7JjHLkuOU7Xw704+h835Lr+6QL9UvYjZE3Ipu6Tp75j7Bh/kR0JKI” crossorigin=“anonymous”></script>

<script src=“https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.1.slim.min.js” integrity=“sha384-DfXdz2htPH0lsSSs5nCTpuj/zy4C+OGpamoFVy38MVBnE+IbbVYUew+OrCXaRkfj” crossorigin=“anonymous”></script>

<script src=“https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/popper.js@1.16.0/dist/umd/popper.min.js” integrity=“sha384-Q6E9RHvbIyZFJoft+2mJbHaEWldlvI9IOYy5n3zV9zzTtmI3UksdQRVvoxMfooAo” crossorigin=“anonymous”></script>

2) Time-saving: If you ask many designers why they love Bootstrap, they’ll tell you it’s because it saves time. Bootstrap is different from most code-based web design software options in that you don’t have to begin your design code from scratch.

There are plenty of ready-made code blocks built for you to use. All you have to do is modify the code to get your desired results.

Another thing that makes web design faster on Bootstrap is the existence of ready-to-use design templates and themes. Just select a theme or template and then do some tweaking to make it unique and distinctive.

3) Mobile responsiveness: Web development begins with designing grid layouts. But since everybody is mobile-crazy, Bootstrap has developed its grid layout with mobile-responsiveness in mind.

As such, when you create your pages, Bootstrap’s grid system gives them the possibility of 12 separate screen designs, thereby accommodating all the page elements on various screen sizes.

In other words, your website is built to look just the same on any phone, tablet, or PC, regardless of the screen size.

4) Easy customization: If you aren’t too impressed with Bootstrap’s design template, you can easily go back into the template’s CSS file to make some edits there.

5) Cross-browser compatibility: Bootstrap is compatible with all modern browser versions.

6) Consistent development: For decades, designers have struggled to maintain consistency between their designs’ front end and back end.

Bootstrap has solved this problem with its framework. They developed a system that eradicates the use of libraries that differ from developer to developer. As such, no matter who handles a project, the framework between the front and back ends stays the same.

5. Figma

For many years, collaboration has been a big deal in the world of web design.

When working with a team, sometimes you’d want your colleagues to look into what you were doing, make some edits or give comments. But without being in the same place, it was almost impossible.

In comes Figma – a web design software that expertly solved the issue of team collaboration.

Why you should buy Figma

1) Collaborative design system: This is the first point scored by Figma. Whatever you’re doing on the site, everyone can see it: team members, developers, clients, managers. If you’re creating a design and a project manager would like to make some corrections, Figma makes it possible to do that.

2) Cloud-based: This is another interesting thing about Figma. Everything you do is on the cloud, which means you only need an internet connection and a web browser, and you are good to go.

3) Brilliant prototyping: After the collaborative functionality, prototyping is the next big thing on Figma.

Figma provides many key prototyping features, including overlays, move-in and move-out animations, the Smart Animate property, interactions with a long press, hover, after delay, clicks, scrolling animation, etc.

The essence of all these features is that they allow you to picture and test your designs, thereby spotting potential problems and points for corrections.

4) Design layout: Layout grids are essential parts of web design, as they help designers maintain consistency. In Figma, you have three layout grid options: a simple grid, row grid, and column grid.

In addition, you get four alignment options: left, right, center and stretch. Most design software only offers three.

What is stretch?

“Stretch is an option that automatically changes the width of your columns based on their number and the sizes of gutters and margins.”

5) Component simplification: Figma has simplified the way we apply components. For those who don’t know, components are design elements created to reflect across multiple parts of a website.

Still can’t picture what components are? Okay, let me use the same analogy I learned from a UI&UX Bootcamp some years back.

The tutor said,

“Let’s assume we create a button on our site to perform an action like ‘Buy’ or ‘Check out,’ and we name it X. Now imagine you need that button in many pages. What do you do? Copy-paste X everywhere you need it, right?

“Now, let’s assume that one day you have a reason to change the color of the X button. Before components, we would either go back and change the colors of each individual copy of X, or delete them all and copy-paste the new one. With components, the story changes.

“When you turn your X button into a component, it becomes like a parent button. Now, when you copy-paste from that parent button, all the child buttons will be linked to the parent. When you change the color of the parent, the colors of all its child buttons will automatically change. However, you can also give unique properties to a child; it will not mess with the parent.”

You get it now?

Earlier, we said Figma had simplified the application of components. This is what they did.

Traditionally, if you wanted to name a component button, you would need to put something like “/” in front of its name to distinguish it from the child buttons.

Instead of that, Figma developed a new feature called “Variants.”

With this feature, all you have to do is click on “Add Variant.” The system automatically copies a new variation and adds it to your assets library. Afterward, you don’t need to copy-paste again; just keep dragging and dropping.

Conclusion

So, those are five of the best options for web design software in the world right now. Note that there is other excellent design software like Adobe XD, Sketch, Invision, or Zeplin out there, but I’ve opted against adding them to this list because Figma brings all their functionalities under one roof.

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