The Top 3 Website Builders for Affiliate Marketing

Choosing the right website builder to create your affiliate marketing site is an important but difficult decision.

Whether you plan to send organic traffic to a review site through SEO or acquire traffic through paid social ads to a blog, a website is an integral part to most affiliate marketing campaigns. 

Unless you’re someone with extensive coding and web design experience, you’re likely going to have to utilize an online content management system (CMS) or website builder to create your site. 

We believe there are three important factors to consider when deciding which is best for you: 

Cost: The various pricing plans that each offers.  

Ease-of-use: The difficulty level of their editor. 

Features: What additional features they provide such as marketing tools, analytics, and SEO assistance.  

We will be assigning each platform a rating for the above categories ranging from ‘okay’ to ‘good’ to ‘great’. 

A final Affiliate Marketing Compatibility section will then provide a summation on how suitable the platform is overall for affiliates. 

Here are our top three website builders for affiliate marketing. Pay close attention to what each excels at to help determine which will best suit your specific needs. 

Squarespace

Squarespace is a premium website builder that prioritizes gorgeous looking sites that are both easy to make and navigate. 

Although you won’t have a ton of visual customization available, what is available guarantees your site always looks clean and professional. Over 110 striking, responsive template designs also ensure it looks great on both desktop and mobile. What this platform lacks in control it makes up for in both aesthetic and intuitiveness.

Squarespace also does an admirable job at providing additional features such as social media integration and marketing tools like SEO. These can be beneficial for connecting any social pages that you utilize for promoting affiliate campaigns and pushing your site content through them. 

It’s also extremely easy to make changes to specific elements on your site even after you’ve published it. 

Think that font is too big or that image is too small? You can quickly adjust these elements with just a few clicks of your mouse. 

Cost: Good

Squarespace’s pricing sits somewhere in the upper-middle average among its competitors. 

You’ll benefit from unlimited storage and bandwidth on all plans as well as a free domain name for a year. 

Click here for more in-depth pricing information. 

Ease-of-use: Good

An intuitive editor and interface make this a decent option for affiliates with limited experience creating their own websites. However, it may take some time to completely familiarize yourself with the editor’s functionality.   

Features: Good

Squarespace allows you to create email campaigns, manage your SEO settings, create promotion pop-ups and analyze your site’s performance. These are helpful for affiliates who would prefer to do as much as possible in one place. 

Affiliate Marketing Compatibility:   

If visual presentation and an easy-to-use editor are your top priorities as you’re looking to build an affiliate site, then Squarespace might be the best platform for you. There are also some valuable built-in marketing features that every affiliate marketer will find useful. 

Be mindful that customization is somewhat limited. However, that might be a good thing if you’re new to site builders and/or only require a straight-forward site design. 

WordPress

WordPress is the king of flexibility when it comes to website builders for affiliate marketing. That’s mainly a by-product of its 3rd-party integration capabilities through the form of plug-ins and self-hosting. 

Be aware that there are actually two different WordPress platforms: WordPress.org and WordPress.com. 

WordPress.org is self-hosted software that you download and utilize through third-party hosting with unlimited plugin options. 

WordPress.com offers less control and features but also less responsibility by freeing you of hosting and security responsibilities.

Although most affiliate marketers use WordPress.org because of its greater control and lower cost, you can upgrade your WordPress.com site to unlock similar features of WordPress like plug-ins and a custom domain name. 

If you’re intimidated by WordPress’ editor, Elementor is also a great plug-in that will allow you to use a simplified drag-and-drop format. 

This is just one example of how you can ‘upgrade’ WordPress to tailor it to your specific needs. 

Cost: WordPress.com – Okay / WordPress.org – Great

WordPress.com offers a variety of pricing models. To run a fully-functional affiliate site you will likely need to purchase at least the Business package. 

WordPress.org is entirely free for you to download. You’ll only have to pay for third-party hosting which usually works out to less than the cost of your average site builder. This makes WordPress quite inexpensive, especially when you factor in what you get in return. 

Ease-of-use: Okay

Some extra knowledge and time is required to take full advantage of what WordPress can offer. 

Their editor and additional features on both platforms is the least straight-forward out of the three site builders on our list. 

If you’re choosing to self-host through WordPress.org you’ll need to set-up hosting on your own while ensuring your site is secure. More complex designs may also require some knowledge in HTML/CSS to achieve desired functionality and to troubleshoot any issues that may occur.  

Features: Great

WordPress offers more plug-ins and integrations than any other site-building platform on the market. Whether you need SEO assistance, writing guides, visual add-ons or advanced analytics, you can find multiple free or paid plug-ins to help you achieve any goal. 

The WordPress.org version of the platform is untouchable in this category. 

Affiliate Marketing Compatibility: 

WordPress is a popular choice among many affiliate marketers because of how much control and flexibility it provides users. You can tailor it for what you specifically need your affiliate site to accomplish. 

The platform’s ability to adapt to any need is balanced out by the fact that it’s not the most beginner-friendly. However, If you’re able to build your knowledge and utilize the immense number of plug-ins available to your advantage, you’re left with a platform that’s truly limitless.  

Wix

Wix is the best website builder for those who hold customizability and easy editing in high regard. 

If you’re particular about how your site works and functions and want your vision to come to life with relative ease, Wix was made for you. 

If you want to do even less work, you can simply supply information to the Wix ADI (artificial design intelligence) platform which will then generate a site design based on your preferences. 

Even if you prefer a more hands-on approach, utilizing the ADI to start and then tweaking your site from there is a great way to ensure your design matches the needs of your affiliate site. This is a great feature that other site-builders don’t offer. 

Over 900 templates also provide you with a great starting point for building your desired affiliate site. 

Wix offers some great built-in features such as personalized SEO plans that will analyze your site’s weak points and provide helpful tips for improvement.

Cost: Okay

Wix has slightly more expensive plans than Squarespace with their cheapest plan lacking some key features like unlimited bandwidth unlike Squarespace’s cheapest plan. This makes it one of the more costly website builders. 

Ease-of-use: Great

Wix has the most beginner-friendly editor out of the three platforms we’ve discussed. Its ADI feature can help you create your ideal affiliate site quickly even if you are completely new to affiliate marketing and creating websites. 

Features: Good 

Wix offers some valuable features like their ADI and personalized SEO plans. You can also utilize over 250 apps through the Wix App Market. These can have similar benefits to the WordPress plug ins we mentioned albeit on a smaller scale.

Affiliate Marketing Compatibility:

Wix is a “get what you pay for” site-building platform that offers an abundance of customization. 

If you’re completely new to creating your own website and want to do so easily, it can help you accomplish that in a short period of time. However, you will pay a little more for their platform compared to similar services.

If you’re still struggling to decide which of these three site builders is best for you, here’s a quick one-sentence description that highlights each platform’s specialty.  

Squarespace – The best option for those who want to be able to create a beautiful looking affiliate site with relative ease. 

WordPress – The best option for those who want to harness the power of 3rd-party plugins and take a DYI approach.

WIX – The best option for those who want to be able to easily customize the look and functionality of their affiliate site.