Best website builders for bands and musicians 2026: Sell tickets, offer merch and expand your digital reach with your own band website

Pair of white headphones sat on a laptop
Choosing the right software is vital to help your career grow (Image credit: Getty Images/Poike)

If you’re a musician, you’re on the internet. Outside of the most obscure avant-garde artists and contrarian creators on the globe, there’s no escaping that fundamental necessity of being on the web – even if it’s just a smattering of social media accounts to keep your fans updated on the big things you’ve got coming soon, and how soon you’ve got them coming. But social media, much as it has soaked up a great deal of our time and attention, isn’t the be-all and end-all for digital presence. Really, you need a website. And that's where the best website builders for musicians and bands come in.

Having a website is a vital part of breaking out as a band, a solo artist, or even a session musician, for a wide variety of reasons. On the commercial side of the equation, it’s a customisable home for your ‘brand’: a place fans can go for updates on new records, tour dates and merch, and a potential shop front for said records, tour dates and merch. On the business side of the equation, it’s a one-stop shop for PR and marketing, and can even host your EPK for when you start your next promotional sprint.

Of course, a bespoke, from-scratch website that meets these needs can be difficult to manifest if you don’t have coding experience, and costly to manifest if you intend to hire a web designer or agency. This is precisely why your next port of call is a website builder, a platform that enables you to build your own website, either using pre-designed in-house templates or from scratch, through a proprietary website creation program.

And such is the remit of this very guide! Here, I'm taking a level look at the best website builders for musicians and bands, from high-profile name-brand platforms to lesser-known products with unique musician-friendly tools. Whether you want a pristine platform for launching your next project or a bespoke blog to show your fans how the creative sausage is made, you’ll find your next website builder in the following entries.

But if you want to get stuck in right off the bat and discover what my top pick is, I've gone for Wix – an excellent, all-round option that provides features galore, a range of subscription models, e-commerce functionality and more.

If you’re completely new to this, or would like to know a little more about what you should think about when making a website for your band, you’ll find a tranche of advice and information on how to choose the right website builder below.

Quick links

Best overall

The main page of a music template for Wix, showing a box for a demo album and a multicoloured background.

Wix is a versatile web builder with loads of cool templates and features (Image credit: Wix)

1. Wix

Huge design options for every type of musician

Specifications

eCommerce functionality: Yes
Free domain: Yes (custom domain free for 1 year with any paid subscription)
Visitor analytics: Yes (dependent on subscription)
Bandwidth: Unlimited (dependent on subscription)
Other features: SEO and digital marketing helper tools

Reasons to buy

+
Wide template selection
+
Range of subscription options
+
Add your own music and videos
+
Comprehensive analytics

Reasons to avoid

-
High cost for expanded eCommerce tools
At a glance

Buy if you want the most comprehensive web builder: With loads of templates and plenty of fine-tuning options, Wix is hard to beat.

Avoid if you want a cheaper option: To expand ecommerce options, you'll have to pay extra.

Star ratings

Value for money: ★★★★½
Ease of use: ★★★★★
Features:★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★★

It’s easy to create a music website from scratch using Wix, thanks to great drag and drop tools, or you can choose from a multitude of striking custom templates aimed squarely at musicians. These are broken down into useful categories including Singer and Musician, Band, DJ & Producer and Music Industry. If you can’t find a template you like, answer a few questions using the Wix’s AI web builder tool and you’ll get a custom-generated site template to tweak as you please.

Your site will deliver all the musician-friendly benefits you’d expect from a premium website builder, from connecting your social media channels and embedding music videos and other media, to mobile optimisation. You’ll have plenty of stats and analytics at your fingertips in order to monitor performance and fine-tune your approach to marketing. If you already use tour promotion and ticketing services such as Bandsintown or Songkick, these can be easily incorporated into your Wix site, too.

Most notably for musicians, it’s easy to upload your own tracks – MP3s, FLACs, M4As or WAVs – enabling fans to hear your music directly on the site without needing to download any extra software.

If your ultimate goal is to sell music and merchandise, you can do this commission-free direct from your Wix online shop, though you’ll need a step up from the cheapest subscription – and there will be payment processing fees too, whether you go with Wix Payments or a provider of your own choosing.

Best for usability

A Bandzoogle web template for a new website front page

Bandzoogle allows you to sell mech and music commission-free (Image credit: Bandzoogle)

2. Bandzoogle

This website builder for musicians is a purpose-built platform with some excellent practical features

Specifications

eCommerce functionality: yes
Free domain: yes
Visitor analytics: yes (dependent on subscription)
Bandwidth: unlimited
Other features: responsive templates, SEO tools, mailing lists

Reasons to buy

+
Feature-rich even at cheapest level
+
Sell music and merch direct, commission-free
+
EPK Templates

Reasons to avoid

-
Requires pro sub to sell merch
At a glance

Buy if you want an easy to use bit of software: Even if your website knowledge is limited, Bandzoogle makes things easy with its drag and drop tools.

Avoid if you want to sell merch: Yes, you can sell merch here, but you'll need the Pro tier to do so.

Star ratings

Value for money: ★★★★
Ease of use: ★★★★★
Features: ★★★★★
Overall: ★★★★★

As the name suggests, Bandzoogle is a website builder aimed squarely at music makers. It was founded by musicians, too, which goes some way to explaining how well-attuned it is to musicians’ needs.

Building your Bandzoogle site is easy: choose from hundreds of templates, then use drag and drop tools to add page furniture and customise fonts, colours and layouts. Your site will be mobile-friendly, too, so it'll work seamlessly on all devices.

It is, of course, a cinch to add your tunes and stream them direct from your site, whether integrating widgets for Soundcloud, Bandcamp or YouTube, or uploading your own tracks to stream.

Bandzoogle is also a great marketplace for selling your music, as well as merchandise and tickets, direct to fans. Unlike other website builders for musicians, Bandzoogle doesn’t make any commission from sales.

I found the templates easy to use, and even the lightest of subscription plans is chock-full of useful stuff – including a separate EPK template section for handling the industry side of your digital presence.

Best for design

A Squarespace web template for the band Vandam, showing two men and two women with their backs to the camera

Squarespace gives your band unlimited storage, so get creative! (Image credit: Squarespace)

3. Squarespace

A do-it-all builder offering stunning design options

Specifications

eCommerce functionality: yes
Free domain: yes
Visitor analytics: yes (dependent on subscription)
Bandwidth: unlimited, depending on subscription
Other features: appointment booking on your site, marketing/email tools

Reasons to buy

+
Award-winning template designs
+
Unlimited storage
+
Third-party website integration

Reasons to avoid

-
Fairly expensive
At a glance

Buy if you want award-winning templates: Squarespace is famous for its wide range of flexible templates - and it now features an AI tool to help.

Avoid if you're keeping the costs down: Prices range from £12 to £79 per month - and that might just price you out if you're just getting up and running.

Star ratings

Value for money: ★★★★
Ease of use: ★★★★½
Features:★★★★½
Overall: ★★★★½

Squarespace is a great website builder for musicians if premium design, reliability and flexibility are at the top of your wishlist. Its huge range of templates, including bespoke options for music and entertainment, have won awards. It's also jumped on the AI train with Design Intelligence, that you can use to make a bespoke website with intelligent assistance from scratch.

Although Squarespace isn’t designed specifically for musicians, there’s plenty on offer for music makers. Integration with music-friendly third-party sites include Eventbrite, Soundcloud and all the usual social media suspects, without the need to install any additional plugins. What’s more, if you have music or merch to sell, it's easy to set up an online store.

Squarespace offers unlimited storage and bandwidth so you’re free to load up on images, music and video, and you can blog to your heart’s content, updating fans on news, documenting your time in the studio or diarising your latest tour.

Squarespace offers a free two-week trial so you can dip your toes in the water. After this, subscriptions range from £12 to £35 per month – but there’s always a coupon code to knock down the cost of that first year.

Best for selling merch

Best website builder for musicians: Music Glue

If you're planning on selling through your website, Music Glue is a top option (Image credit: Music Glue)

4. Music Glue

Music Glue nails the eCommerce side and has a low barrier to entry

Specifications

eCommerce functionality: yes
Free domain: yes
Visitor analytics: yes (dependent on subscription)
Other features: social integration, 'fan club' rewards subscribers, print on demand service for merch

Reasons to buy

+
eCommerce focus
+
Proven performance with known bands

Reasons to avoid

-
Takes commission on sales
-
No custom domains on cheapest plan
At a glance

Buy if you want a site with a focus on selling: Music Glue is your one-stop-shop when it comes to selling tracks, albums, merchandise and tickets.

Avoid if you want to keep all of the cash for yourself: Music Glue is great, but just be aware that they take a 2% commission for each sale.

Star ratings

Value for money: ★★★★½
Ease of use: ★★★★½
Features:★★★★
Overall: ★★★★½

Music Glue is focused more on the eCommerce side of music, enabling you to sell tracks, albums, merchandise and tickets with ease, direct to your fans from a single place. If you need further convincing, Music Glue has form, managing the online sales for huge acts including Metallica, Iron Maiden and Blondie.

Being more of a storefront than a complete web-building solution, there’s slightly less focus on design and analytics – but you can still create a bespoke site on the platform that reflects your aesthetic.

The cheapest price plan is the Lite plan; at £4.99 a month, it is easily the cheapest plan on the market to offer eCommerce tools – and even among the cheapest of plans, full stop.

From the jump, you can upload unlimited product listings, though Music Glue does take a 2% commission on each sale. Music Glue can also be your source of ticket sales, and with a fairly cheap 10% commission too.

If it’s t-shirts you’re selling, you can make your own, or Music Glue even offers its own print on demand service with no upfront costs, so there’s no need to worry about packaging or storage. The more immersed you become in online selling, the more creative you can get.

Music Glue also enables you to run pre-order campaigns and offer perks, merch bundles and even VIP ticket packages to fans in order to boost sales.

Best for customisation

The image shows the ePentatonic template for WordPress featuring a man playing a guitar while facing a mic on stage. The shot shows the desktop and mobile versions on the template.

Wordpress is a well-known platform although some coding knowledge goes a long way (Image credit: WordPress/ePentatonic)

5. WordPress

Still one of the best prospects for creating a website out there

Specifications

eCommerce functionality: Yes
Free domain: Yes
Visitor analytics: No
Bandwidth: unlimited
Other features: Fast customer support, WordPress plugins

Reasons to buy

+
Open-source platform
+
Easy web builder
+
Great template themes

Reasons to avoid

-
Can be complex
At a glance

Buy if you want an open-source platform: WordPress is perhaps the most famous platform out there and because of its open-source structure, it's hugely versatile.

Avoid if you don't have coding experience: Yes, WordPress does have drag and drop options, but to utilise it to the max, a bit of coding knowledge will stand you in good stead.

Star ratings

Value for money: ★★★★
Ease of use: ★★★½
Features:★★★★½
Overall: ★★★★½

WordPress is an old hand when it comes to web design. This household name has been knocking around since 2003, and yet today remains one of the better prospects for creating a website out there.

This is not just for the brand’s pedigree in hosting blogs and proto-social media platforms; today, WordPress is a highly dependable multi-hyphenate tool that offers some of the best customisability in the biz.

WordPress sites can be put together with a familiar drag-and-drop site creation app, but they can also be endlessly tweaked and even hand-built from scratch, thanks to an open-source ethos that makes getting under the hood a breeze.

This level of tweakability might be a little scary to those of you without a little coding experience, but if you’re willing to do some reading this can be extremely powerful for your project.

WordPress plugins make your web-building process modular too, offering you access to endless third-party tools including analytics and eCommerce.

Best budget

Best website builders for musicians: Weebly

Weebly has cheap subscription plans and is ideal for those on a budget

6. Weebly

A supremely customisable web builder with some attractive subscription options

Specifications

eCommerce functionality: Yes (depending on subscription)
Free domain: Yes (dependent on subscription)
Visitor analytics: No
Bandwidth: Unlimited storage dependent on subscription
Other features: SEO tools, community forum

Reasons to buy

+
Cheap subscription plans
+
Fast and secure
+
Plenty of site customisation options

Reasons to avoid

-
Advanced features unlocked at a cost
At a glance

Buy if you want a cheap but flexible website: Weebly gives you access to stylish themes and best of all, its cost isn't prohibitive.

Avoid if you advance features are essential to you: To squeeze the advance features from Weebly, you'll have to pay a bit more.

Star ratings

Value for money: ★★★½
Ease of use: ★★★★
Features:★★★½
Overall: ★★★★

Weebly isn’t specifically aimed at musicians, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t offer plenty of scope for creating an imaginative, engaging website for hosting your music and connecting with fans.

Each of Weebly’s stylish themes is ready to launch straight away and can be customised to suit all your needs – and that includes video backgrounds, animated effects, plus music and video hosting.

There’s even image editing tools built-in so you can fine-tune the style of the pictures on your site.

And, if you’re a more advanced user, custom HTML/CSS and Javascript tools enable you to delve deeper into your site and tailor it to your needs.

A Weebly site is free to set up. If you want to connect a domain name you already own that will cost £5 per month; alternatively, you can go pro for £9 and bag unlimited storage, a free domain name and ad-free webpages.

A great budget option for musicians looking to get off the ground.

Best free option

A screenshot of the Google Sites website builder showing someone playing drums in a small room packed with records and posters

Google Sites is free to use, but some functions are noticeably absent (Image credit: Google)

7. Google Sites

A free Google app with surprisingly powerful web-builder cred

Specifications

eCommerce functionality: No
Free domain: No (free subdomain, free hosting)
Visitor analytics: Yes
Bandwidth: Limited, high ceiling
Other features: strong security, cloud collaboration, Google App cross-compatibility

Reasons to buy

+
Completely free to use
+
Intuitive webpage designer
+
Easy to add collaborators

Reasons to avoid

-
No true eCommerce functionality
At a glance

Buy if you want a free but still excellent web builder: Google Sites is completely free and it comes with a load of templates to choose from.

Avoid if you want to sell on-site: Being free means some things aren't featured - and that includes e-commerce tools.

Star ratings

Value for money: ★★★★★
Ease of use: ★★★★
Features:★★★½
Overall: ★★★★

Most bands don’t have the funds to replace their faulty jack leads, let alone to pay for a top-tier subscription to a website builder and hosting platform. Luckily, there are some free options that offer a great starting point – and Google Sites is arguably the best of them.

Google Sites is a free-to-use website builder with a respectable number of useable templates for you to tweak and twizzle. Google Sites has all the essential functionality you could expect, and then some, including code and media embeds as well as file hosting (indeed, you get 10GB of free storage for assets you’d like to host).

You can also share the creative load with your other band members, simply by adding collaborators.

There isn’t any eCommerce functionality in Google Sites, however there are some clever ways you can integrate other payment platforms.

In all, this is a highly serviceable free web builder that can offer you an extremely cheap route to a decent-looking band platform.

How to choose

Future of computer music

(Image credit: Future)

Picking from the best website builders for musicians isn’t easy, particularly if you’re not especially au fait with the ins and outs of getting a website live. To help you get a little more perspective on what you’re choosing, it might help to consider your decision in the context of the following thoughts and criteria.

What do you need?

Fundamentally, you’re looking at a website builder for a reason. That reason is more or less the same across the board – you want a website, don’t you? – but not exactly the same. Some of you might be after a website to more easily announce tour dates and offer ticket presales; others might want a centralised platform from which to sell records and merch. Some artists might be making a website as a portfolio for getting more session and studio work, while others might simply be after a platform to make DIY PR campaigns a little bit easier.

These needs inform the kinds of core features you’ll be looking for in a website builder. If you want to sell merch on your website, your chosen website builder will need a built-in e-commerce platform, or the opportunity to link a third-party platform easily. If you want to be able to make your own digital EPKs from scratch, you’ll want an easy-to-use UI with drag-and-drop widgets (and the ability to host various media files).

There are also the things you don’t need to bear in mind. If one of your band is a graphic design whizz, then you won’t be as reliant on the beginner-friendly nature of some web builders’ webpage design interfaces. Likewise, if you’re already well-integrated with Shopify or Bandcamp as a primary platform for selling merch, you won’t need in-house e-commerce in your subscription.

What additional features could help?

The features you need are one thing, but the ones you don’t know you need are another thing altogether. There’s so much more you could be taking advantage of as a band or artist, and which some platforms are more forthcoming than others.

For instance, if you’re a band on the up and up, for instance, you’ll get a great deal out of having access to analytics data – particularly with record and ticket purchases, but also with respect to your merch sales. Web analytics won’t rank high in your initial list of wants and needs, but they can be instrumental if you want to understand the cogs behind your online success a little better.

There are all sorts of features and sub-features offered by website builders, from SEO tools to EPK templates and beyond. Keep an eye out for the features list in each web builder, and earmark the features you think could aid you when you get to the next level.

User experience

Whether or not you’ve got a web whizz-kid on your team, the service you choose to build your website on should be, at the very least, an easy one to use. Of course, this is subjective – some people get on better with some UIs than others. Luckily, most platforms have a free trial you can try, to see if you get on with the interface and tools provided to you.

Price

Your budget is an unavoidable, unassailable criterion when looking at the best website builders for musicians. One service or subscription tier might have all the bells and whistles you’re hoping for, but it’s irrelevant if the price point isn’t something you can quite justify.

This can be a tricky aspect to advise around, as every band or musician’s finances are different. Not only this, but there’s the fact that a website, done right, can improve your visibility with knock-on benefits for your income, whether with respect to tickets pre-sold or merch purchased.

As such, you need to get your accountant’s head on and do some prospective spreadsheeting before you can justify a higher monthly cost for better analytics or a lower sales commission. Suffice it to say, though, that bands and artists pulling in hobbyist levels of cash should consider a cheaper service and investing in other things (like PR or booking agents), rather than frontloading website costs and still struggling to book shows.

Upgradability

Lastly, the best website builders for musicians typically operate with tiered monthly subscriptions. These tiers offer varied levels of access to web builder features, analytics and other features you may find useful. As your brand scales, you might want to expand your feature-set – so which web builder best fits your best-case scenario? Going from a local band to an international touring project, with the merch numbers to match, can be a stressful thing; which web builder is best suited to scale up with you, the way you want to scale?

Glossary of terms

  • Algorithm: This refers, in web search contexts, to automatic search engine mechanisms that select which websites to display first in answer to a given search query. Search engines are always scanning the content on websites across the internet, evaluating them for relevance to keywords and search queries.
  • Analytics: The collection and arrangement of data with respect to your website and its traffic. Analytics enable you to see the demographics of your site’s visitors, and information relating to how long they spend on certain webpages – amongst other statistics. These can be used to improve your website, with a view to creating more visitor engagement.
  • Call to action: An active request one makes of their audience. Calls-to-action appear everywhere, but musicians will be most familiar with them in social media and mailing list contexts: “click this link to preorder the next single”; “buy tickets here to our next show”.
  • Content: The material displayed on a given webpage, whether text or media.
  • Domain: The literal ‘home’ of your website. This is the address at which your website lives (i.e.: www.yourbandhere.com), and which you need to pay an annual fee to keep. Most website builders for musicians bundle domain services in as part of their subscription, but some services – like the free Google Sites – require you to use a third-party domain host to grab your preferred domain name.
  • E-commerce: The sale of goods and services via an online shopfront. Bands and musicians can sell merchandise, physical media, music downloads and gig tickets via e-commerce platforms. Some website builders for musicians will include an e-commerce platform, where others will enable you to connect your website with a third-party platform.
  • EEAT: This stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. This acronym relates to SEO, and comes from search engine Google’s guide to ranking in Google searches. It is a useful set of metrics by which to measure the quality of your website’s content; the more your website reflects EEAT, the more likely it is to be preferred by Google’s algorithms.
  • EPK: Stands for Electronic Press Kit, referring to a digital media package artists and musicians use in promotion of upcoming music or tours. Cloud storage like Google Drive can be used to share EPKs easily, but a neater, more aesthetically-pleasing way to make an EPK is to create a private page on a website, which can then be shared in emails to publications, promoters and labels.
  • Engagement: The amount to which an audience or set of website visitors interacts with a social media post, webpage or e-commerce platform.
  • Organic: Refers, in web contexts, to the natural (i.e.: unforced) nature of something. An organic visit to your website would be borne of a search engine query, as opposed to of a paid online advert; an organic keyword would be a term or phrase that someone naturally uses in a search engine.
  • Retention: The extent to which visitors to a website become regular visitors. It is a useful metric for targeting fans and repeat buyers of merch; likewise, falling retention can indicate an issue with the website or its content.
  • SEO: This stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is the practice of making your website more attractive to search engines, and hence easier for people find by searching online. The most accessible and common way to do this is to organically populate the text of your website with keywords that reflect your project, location or genre.

FAQ

Band discusses the design of their website

Take your time and share opinions to get the best results from your website (Image credit: Getty/Maskot)

Why do I need a website for my creative practice?

A website is a powerful thing for any creative outlet, and particularly so for your band or solo project. Not only is it a place where you can centralise news about your upcoming release or tour plans, but it can also be a central hub for managing the online sale of your music, merch and even gig tickets.

The public-facing benefits of a website are pre-eminent, and reason enough to start looking at website builders for musicians; websites are extremely handy hubs for information, and also customisable to the aesthetic brief of your band’s current sprint, or your brand as a session musician (in a way that social media tends not to be). Still, there are back-end benefits that can be considerably more impactful for your career progression.

For instance, every musician needs an electronic press kit to facilitate the promotion of their next release, and these can be difficult to design, whether interactive PDFs or administratively frustrating Google Drive folders. Creating an unlisted page on your website, however, allows you to leverage your website's existing template to create a swanky, easy-to-read online EPK that blends with your aesthetic; this could be a deal-maker for many press outlets that would otherwise overlook your music.

Of course, the true answer is that no band or musician truly needs a website, just as no band really needs an Instagram account, or guitar pedals, or a van, or an accessible space to practice in. A musician is a musician regardless, but things are a hell of a lot easier when you have certain tools in your arsenal. And a website is absolutely one such tool, which can make things so much easier with respect to growing an audience, selling merch or expanding your client list as a jobbing player.

How do the best website builders for musicians work?

Almost every website builder uses the same essential functionality to make it easier for you to build your own website. This tends to involve a browser-based design application that lets you build pages block by block – often by dragging and dropping elements from an intuitive visual sidebar.

There are many differences between platforms and subscriptions, and some user interfaces are much more intuitive than others, but there are more similarities than differences. Some platforms even offer AI web design assistance if you’d rather throw some buzzwords at an algorithm and tweak the results.

Pretty much every website builder for musicians offers much more than this basic creation station, too. Many will handle the hosting of your website for you – the bit that enables other people to see your website online. Some providers might let you choose your domain name in-app, but others might require you to get your domain from another provider before plugging the relevant registration data into the site.

Many website builder platforms will also offer a wide variety of ancillary tools and features, designed to keep the management of a given business or project as central as possible. This might include e-commerce and digital payments, or schedule management and visitor/customer analytics. These would all be accessible from a back-end portal, allowing you to make quick and easy changes on the fly.

What should I look for in a website builder for musicians and bands?

Building a website is one thing, but building a website for a creative project or vocational discipline is another entirely. Many people looking to make their own website are looking for business opportunities, whether by selling goods as an online shop, or selling advertising space as an authoritative blog. Being a creative, your needs are a little different – and different still from other creatives looking to build their own website.

If you’re a freelance bookings agent, for example, you’ll be far more interested in getting your website in front of potential clients’ eyes than you will creating a seamless multimedia page for sharing music and press photos. As such, you’d be after a website builder for creatives that offered comprehensive SEO and web analytics tools. Meanwhile, as an active gigging band looking to consolidate your growth, you’ll be more interested in a website that can host media files, manage merch and hold a blog than a website that focuses on data.

Some website builders are better than others in certain areas – something I've reflected in the categorisation of our best-of entries above – but all will have some essential functionality you’re looking for. It’s not really a matter of picking e-commerce over SEO analytics, since so many platforms readily offer both. When push comes to shove, then, the two key elements that might impact your decision the most are ease of use and subscription price.

Do I need to think about SEO when building my website?

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the arcane art of getting your website to do well on search engines. Of course, ‘well’ is a subjective thing, and predicated on what your goals are for your website. If your band website is little more than a contact page and a handy repository for smart-looking EPKs, then SEO won’t mean much of anything to you; any traffic driven to your website will be from efforts you’ve made elsewhere in your digital strategy, and search visibility will be low on your priorities list.

But this isn’t the case for a large majority of budding website-builders, who might want their website to be a bit more of a front page for a project, or at the very least, easier to find on Google for fans and potential fans. Google uses algorithms to crawl the internet ,evaluating websites and pages, using opaque criteria to rank websites on their usefulness to a given search term. SEO is the acknowledgement of this back-end evaluation, and the attempt to pass search engines’ sniff tests, and hence rank higher on search results pages.

This is at once a very simple and highly complicated undertaking. It’s simple because there are simple things you can do to improve your website’s ranking; it’s complex because there are many different things you can do, and each of them can impact one another positively or negatively (and again, depending on how well you execute your SEO!).

As an amateur looking to give your new website a boost, there are two things it would help you to know about: EEAT, and keywords. EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness, and describes the core factors that make a website (and its appearance in search results) high-quality. Keywords are what match your content to search terms, and the shrewd (and organic) peppering of such keywords throughout your web content can work wonders for your search visibility.

Do I need to pay for a website builder for musicians?

Most of the sites in this best website builders for musicians guide include a free trial, so you can experiment with creating a site before committing to a subscription plan. In terms of pricing, the more you spend on a subscription plan, the more features you will unlock, so it’s worth making an initial list of your specific needs and investing in a service that fulfils all of them.

On this note: unless you’re about to announce a global tour and a slew of high-profile festival slots, it’s not likely that you’ll need the ‘premium’-level tier of any website service. And if you think you might, you’re probably high-profile enough to have a team to make that decision for you!

At the other end of the spectrum, you might find it a little difficult to justify a monthly cost for a website that may not get much traffic – at least, while you’re starting out. There are some free website builder options out there too, but in our view, you get what you pay for. If you want to include more advanced features like eCommerce or payments management, or you'd prefer your fans not to be bombarded with ads, then you'll need to factor that into your budget.

The best free builder of the bunch is Google’s Google Sites app, which enables the modular integration of new features from third-party providers as and when you come to need them. The trade-off is that there are few built-in features and tools – and that the page design options are a little simplistic. Still, if you’re a young band that wants an online hub from which to market EP number one, this is a solid option that doesn’t require investment beyond your domain.

How we test

An Asus ProArt P16 laptop on a desk with music production gear

(Image credit: Future)

Website-building software packages and subscriptions are now commonplace and the choice available has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, giving artists a much broader selection when it comes to getting their websites up and running.

At first glance, some website builders seem to offer a huge array of natty features for a reasonable price, but it’s only when you delve in and have a root around can you discover what you actually get for your money, and how much is squirrelled away behind further paywalls.

When putting together this list, I took several factors into consideration, with the main criteria being features, template choice, whether e-commerce tools are included, value for money and how easy the software is to use.

Many website-building software used drag and drop functionality, making snapping together a website pretty straightforward, while other require a little bit of coding experience to squeeze everything out of them. Others offer e-commerce tools to help generate cash through sales on the finished website, while others eschew this in favour of a more general functionality.

I’ve highlighted those subjects and more above, so you’ll hopefully be able to find a creation tool that suits you, whether you’re a solo artist or getting your band’s first website up and running.

Why you can trust us

Pair of Beyerdynamic headphones sits on top of a MacBook Pro laptop

(Image credit: Future)

✔️ More than 9,500 reviews on-site
✔️Over 17 years of product testing
✔️ 2.9 million monthly users globally

MusicRadar first launched back in 2007 and the website has been helping people find the right guitars, basses, drum kits, software, pedals and more since then.

The website is created by musicians for musicians and we take pride in providing you with practical information to help you on your musical journey, no matter if you're a newcomer to the world of music, an experienced DJ or someone who's been making music for decades.

Our team of experts and industry professionals are always on hand, putting a variety of instruments and software through their paces to give you all the information you need before making a purchase.

Along with hundreds of in-depth buyer's guides, MusicRadar also provides all the latest daily news, reviews on new releases, alongside how-to features to make this your one-stop-shop on all things music.

Thanks to you, we receive three million visitors per month - and we also feature content from our magazine titles such as Future Music, Computer Music, and eMusician.

Meet the experts

Chris Barnes
Chris Barnes

I'm MusicRadar's eCommerce Editor. In addition to testing the latest music gear, with a particular focus on electronic drums, it's my job to manage the 300+ buyer's guides on MusicRadar and help musicians find the right gear for them at the best prices. I dabble with guitar, but my main instrument is the drums, which I have been playing for 24 years. I've been a part of the music gear industry for 20 years, including 7 years as Editor of the UK's best-selling drum magazine Rhythm, and 5 years as a freelance music writer, during which time I worked with the world's biggest instrument brands including Roland, Boss, Laney and Natal.

James Grimshaw
James Grimshaw

James Grimshaw is a freelance writer and music obsessive with over a decade in music and audio writing. They’ve lent their audio-tech opinions (amongst others) to the likes of Guitar World, MusicRadar and the London Evening Standard – before which, they covered everything music and Leeds through their section-editorship of national e-magazine The State Of The Arts. When they aren’t blasting esoteric noise-rock around the house, they’re playing out with esoteric noise-rock bands in DIY venues across the country; James will evangelise to you about Tera Melos until the sun comes up.

Latest updates

Recent updates

23/02/26: We've added all new buying advice, FAQs and a glossary of terms. 05/03/25: The guide has been updated to feature two new website-building software options: WordPress and Google Sites, while "at a glance" entries and star ratings have been added to all product entries highlighting clear pros and cons for each of the seven software platforms featured. We've also added a new section on how we tested the best website builders, alongside a section detailing why you can trust the MusicRadar team. The FAQ section has been extensively expanded with new entries.

Read more:

MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.

Chris Barnes

I'm MusicRadar's eCommerce Editor. In addition to testing the latest music gear, with a particular focus on electronic drums, it's my job to manage the 300+ buyer's guides on MusicRadar and help musicians find the right gear for them at the best prices. I dabble with guitar, but my main instrument is the drums, which I have been playing for 24 years. I've been a part of the music gear industry for 20 years, including 7 years as Editor of the UK's best-selling drum magazine Rhythm, and 5 years as a freelance music writer, during which time I worked with the world's biggest instrument brands including Roland, Boss, Laney and Natal.

With contributions from