07.03.24

12 Best Web Design Software for expert in 2024

Are you looking for the best web design software tools? Today you can find lots of free websites with user-friendly interfaces and powerful features. These tools can significantly simplify your web design process. Just choose one of these solutions to boost your design process.

Choosing the Web Design Software

The best choice depends on what you need and what you like. Here are some things to consider when picking the right web design software:

1. Your Skills. If you're new to this, pick a web design software that is easy to use and get into the design process faster. 

2. Type of Project. While tools like WordPress, Canva are mostly suitable for small projects, others like Framer, Figma and Sketch are mostly for large and composite websites and apps.

3. Price. Some web design software costs much more money; however, some are free. Therefore, think about your budget before deciding. Please note that the prices we provide here are actual at the date of publishing this article.

4. Collaboration. If you're working with others, choose a web design software that makes it easy to collaborate and share the designs with a click.
5. Your Personal User Experience Preferences. Everybody has their own user experience preferences. Therefore, pick a web design software that lets you create the designs you like and that you enjoy looking at.
 

The best web design software tools that we could find in 2024

Webflow

• Cost: Available in trials which come with some basic functionality. Freemium plans are possible, and for the paid plans, the prices are starting at $12 a month for the starter plan and $24 a month for the Business one.
• Services: Webflow is a kind of website finding tool for Web designing web development or simply stated Webflow helps you build websites visually.
• Best for: It’s suitable for those who like to have an idea of what they are doing as they make a structure. Also for testing the ideas, and developing engaging websites and building sites with content management solutions without coding.
• Advantages: You don’t have to know any programming. It has cool animations available and it is particularly good for seting up online shops.

 

Figma

• Cost: Freemium (limited features), Professional plan ($12 per month), Organization plan ($45 per month)
• Services: This platform helps teams work together on designing interfaces, illustrations, and prototypes. Furthermore, it allows real-time editing and keeps track of different versions.
• Figma is the best solution for team work to share the solutions. It’s also good for designing user interfaces and experiences, trying out ideas, and creating prototypes.
• Advantages: You can work together on the same project in real time. Moreover, it has tools for making prototypes. Additionally, you can leave comments and give feedback easily, and there's a big community with lots of extra features & plugins you can add.

 

Adobe XD

• Cost: Included in Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (starting at $21 per month)
• Services: A design and prototyping tool
• Best for: Designers who use Adobe Software, make interactive designs, use voice-controlled interfaces, and manage design systems
• Advantages: It works well with other Adobe tools. It has advanced animation, and integrates with design systems.

 

Sketch

• Cost: Subscription ($9 per month)
• Services: Design tool for interfaces, illustrations, and icons. It is one of the pioneers of the latest generation design tools.
• Best for: Experienced designers, detailed mockups, creating icons and graphics, complex projects.
• Advantages: Easy to use interface, many plugins available, strong vector editing tools.

 

Canva 

• Cost: contains limited features for using the service at no charge. As for the paid plans, the Canva Pro costs $13 per month, and starts at $34 monthly for the Canva Enterprise plan.
• Services: A software tool that lets you design social graphics, websites, presentations and any other graphic material for social media accounts or for client projects.
• Best for: Useful to non-designers, beginners, or to those who need to create simple web graphics or social media objects.
• Advantages: Lots of templates and elements, the ability to work with objects through dragging.

 

WordPress 

• Cost: It is free and open source. But, you will have to bear the cost for web hosting and a domain yourself.
• Services: A content management system that provides capabilities for the creation of web sites.
• Best for: A person who needs to build a website, especially those who are not familiar with coding.
• Advantages: Partially open source for all basic functionality is free to use.

 

Wix 

• Cost: It has a free plan, but it has fewer features. If you pay, plans start at $18 per month and $49 per month for the VIP plan.
• Services: A website builder that allows you to create pages with a drag-and-drop interface.
• Best for: It's good for beginners who want to create a website quickly.
• Advantages: You can use it easily, and Wix has many templates and features to pick from.

 

Zeplin

• Cost: Freemium (limited features), Professional plan ($19 per month), Studio plan ($49 per month).
• Services: Design handoff tool for developers and designers.
• Best for: Connecting design and development, accurate specs for handoff, code snippet generation, and collaboration.
• Advantages: Simplified handoff and precise code generation. Additionally, it creates style guides and developer-friendly features.

 

InVision

• Cost: Freemium (limited features), Professional plan ($8 per month), Enterprise plan (custom pricing).
• Services: A tool for prototyping and collaborating on designs.
• Best for: Prioritizing user experience, prototyping and testing, collaborative design, iterative processes.
• Advantages: Seamless integration of user testing, advanced animation options, managing design systems, and lastly, their solutions are based on users feedback.

Gutenberg Editor

• Cost: Free (part of WordPress core)
• Services: Block-based website editor for WordPress, allowing visual editing and custom layouts.
• Best for: Existing WordPress users who build simple to medium-complexity websites. 
• Advantages: Free to use, intuitive block-based interface, good for content-heavy websites. Additionally, it has easy integration with WordPress plugins and themes.

 

Gatsby

• Cost:  Free open-source program.
• Services: Static site generator for building fast and SEO-friendly websites using React and GraphQL.
• Best for: SEO optimization, building large-scale web applications, and developer oriented projects.
• Advantages: Really fast performance, excellent SEO, developer-friendly tools, scalability for large projects.

 

Vue.js

• Cost: Free (open-source)
• Services: JavaScript framework for building interactive web applications with a focus on simplicity and performance.
• Best for: Building dynamic web applications, single page applications (SPAs), interactive elements, and complex user interfaces.
• Advantages: Approachable syntax, large and active community, strong performance. Additionally, it is well suited for building complex interactions.

 

Tailwind CSS

• Cost: Free (open-source)
• Services: Utility-first CSS framework for rapidly styling web components with pre-built classes.
• Best for: Rapidly prototyping UIs, building simple websites, styling components without writing custom CSS.
• Advantages: Fast development speed, easy to learn, responsive by default, extensive utility classes. Lastly, it has a large community and resources.

Please be aware that the prices and features mentioned may change, depending on the company's plans and your preferences. It's important to check each web design software official price page for the latest details.

Some Extra Design Tips

1. Try Before You Buy. Many web design software offers free trials or free versions. Therefore, experiment with them to see which one you like.

2. Learn from Others. Join online groups to learn from people who've used this web design software. Additionally, they can give you good advice.

3. Stay Updated. The design world is always changing. Therefore, keep up with the latest trends and updates in the field of web design software. To know trends, to get in touch with colleagues, to know the best practices, it is crucial to participate in international web design events. 

More About Framer

In this section, I would like to focus separately on a web design software called Framer. Notably, Framer has become one of the greatest tools for web development nowadays, or even maybe the best we’ve ever had. Why is it so? We believe it is a game-changing app that every web designer should consider and the reason, at first, it is a web-based program web design software. Similar to Figma, it works from your browser. You just have to register and you are good to go. Second, it allows you to create a website in a few hours from templates and publish it straight away without knowing the coding.  

Let’s have a look at the best features of Framer.

The Main Features of Framer

AI Tool

Framer has an AI-powered tool for automatic simple website creation. However, who doesn’t have an AI feature nowadays? Some services take it seriously, but most of them are just following a trend. What Framer has is something in the middle.

You may use it or you may not. However, you could play with web page creation with AI on Framer for a while, of course, but we’d recommend you stick to manual development.

The AI tool may look good, but you probably have to customise it a lot, anyway, so you might spend the same time on development. Try out templates — there is a huge library of them in Framer. Templates are a good alternative for AI. There are many free variants among them.
 

CMS of its own

In Framer, you can generate pages based on CMS entries and easily update the content in the future without dealing with the design layout. Furthermore, you can get a nice-looking CMS with a simple interface that any school kid can deal with and add, edit, or delete the content.

 

Importing layouts From Figma

Let’s say you have some layout designs created in Figma and now want to switch to Framer. Does the copy and paste function work for that? The answer is “Yes”. Just open your Figma file, select the portion of elements you want to transfer, then go to the Plugin panel and click on “Framer Copy and Paste”, open the destination file in Framer and paste. There might be some minor issues when exporting, therefore it is recommended to watch a 10 minutes tutorial on the Framer Academy called “Import from Figma”.  

Impressive Fonts Library

Framer has a broad selection of its built-in web fonts. Additionally, you can pick up any of the Google Fonts here as well.

Language Localization

Framer has its own localization panel where you can set the languages your website has to support, and it will simply adapt the content based on a user’s location. Moreover, not just text, but images and other content can be pre-adapted to a specific area.

A “Publish” button

What makes it stand out? Just one button, to put it simply. One button that’s called “Publish”. At any time you can publish your site and see it on the Internet live. It’s like drawing up a website in Figma or Sketch and having the ability to publish it and update it at any time. It appears like some sort of magic.

So whatever you create here has its code behind it simultaneously written. If your website isn’t super complicated, you don’t have to hire a layout code designer at all. At some point, you might need to dig into coding aspects, but anyway Framer saves you around 80% on development.
 

SEO included

How come? Well, Framer specialists claim that Framer-based websites are SEO friendly by default which means that your web app doesn’t need an SEO specialist and again you save a lot of time and costs. The search engine optimization has become a very important part of web development. If no one sees your website, then what is it for? If search engines like Google and Yahoo are able to track your website and show it to people on their first search result pages it means a lot.

Accessibility, well-structured content, good loading speed — all these things are considered by search engines and directly affect your presence on the search results pages. For improving accessibility Framer gives you tools like Semantic Tags, Image ALT text (easy to set for each image), Tab order, ARIA label, or Reduced Motion option. Framer pre-renders every website when you deploy it (this feature is also called server-side rendering). The pre-rendered HTML ensures that the Google bot can analyze your website easier and faster.

 

Linking feature

In Framer you can turn any element into a clickable link. The more links you have on the website the easier for a user to find the one they currently need. When you create a link, Framer auto-fills it with existing pages, so you won’t have any broken link. The system automatically keeps you away from it.

 

Pages structure set up

Organizing pages in Framer is easy. You can create, rename and move around different pages of your website. Each page has its path, which you can easily change. You may change your website’s structure, such as reorganizing content or redesigning your site avoiding 404 pages with the Redirect feature. Simply create redirects to the actual page from any old ones.

 

Reverting feature

In Framer, any accidentally wrongly made publish can always be reverted. First of all, you can have a staging domain so you can test your changes before deploying and easily roll back when they appear to be wrong.

 

Cookie Banner included

The Cookie Banner allows you to run the full cookie consent system through Google Tag Manager. Additionally, you can customize this banner, from text to visual elements, to ensure that it fits your website.

 

Sharing your project

As in Figma, you can share your layout with any of your colleagues providing access to the whole project. It is up to you which permissions to give to the invited person. They can make design changes, content changes, or even deploying ability. Additionally, it helps prevent accidental changes on your website.

 

How much is the average salary of a web designer?

The average pay for a web designer can change depending on where they work, how much experience they have, and the skills they bring. On average, they usually make between $45,000 and $75,000 a year.

Where they work matters. For instance, those who work in the large cities or sectors that relate to technology may be paid better. Yet, in small towns it may be lower. If they are beginners, they will earn a lesser amount of money when compared to one who has practiced for some time. 

While the average pay for web designers can give a general idea, it can change based on where they work, their skills, and their experience. Web designers need to keep learning new web design software  and stay updated to make more money.

 

Conclusion

Taking into account all these amazing features, we recommend you don’t hesitate and check out Framer and other web design software tools yourself. As the saying goes, “It is better to see once than hear a hundred times.”

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