Best free web design software reviews

You can easily connect to servers, download files to your local drive, amend content, then upload it back to the server. Overall, Dreamweaver is phenomenal tool for beginners, intermediates and pros to effectively design, edit and build websites from. As you can see from the screen shot above, the interface is both intuitive and user-friendly. Also, if you find that your strengths are creating websites with stunning looks, but hit a brick wall when it comes to building the website, then Adobe Muse is the software that can help.

You can literally design and build a website at the same time. NO need for coding skills here. Adobe Muse is a website builder that is very different to the normal drag and drop web builder that you get with platforms like Wix and Weebly. With Macaw, you can create your own beautiful website without the need to ever delve into any code.

Having used both Muse and Macaw, I have to say that Macaw is by far the simplest and most intuitive to use out of the two programs. If you view some of the video tutorials, you will be able to get to grips with the platform and design a fully responsive and well designed web page template in less than an hour.

Everything you do can be viewed in real-time, making the process of building a website through trial and error, an absolute walk in the park. Sketch is probably one of the best web design software on the market. The team behind Sketch have been making constant improvements to the platform since making it one of the tools to have in your arsenal of web design weapons.

It has a massive following amongst the web development community. Sketch as plenty of features for complete novice web builders to get excited about.

It has an incorporated CSS logic function which enables you to easily convert your designs into CSS, as well as an Automatic Slicing tool which takes the effort out of manually slicing your designs.

Another great things about Sketch is the ability to preview your website on any mobile device, which is awesome considering the importance of having a mobile friendly site. Creating assets in Sketch is easy with one-click exports to various formats and sizes.

You can easily edit elements the same way you would do in a vector program like Adobe Illustrator. The whole platform is very intuitive like Photoshop, but a lot easier to understand and use. Overall Sketch is a beast of a tool for web design and one that would benefit designers of all abilities. A great tool for bringing your digital ideas to life. As with most designers, they are great at designing, but when it comes to coding up their ideas, they hit a brick wall and have to outsource.

It completely transforms images and sketches into interactive prototypes. What you are left with is a prototype that actually looks, feels and functions like a real websites. One little downside to this software is the reliance on Dropbox. You need to connect to your Dropbox account to be able to use Marvel. Marvel works from your PSD files, which is then placed into the Marvel dashboard, which I must say is super intuitive and beautiful to use.

You can then hotlink your pages together just as you would with a traditional HTML web builder. Photoshop is an extremely versatile piece of kit and can be used for any aspect of design, and not just photography and web design. In a sentence, Photoshop is a photo-editing, graphic design and digital image creation software. The software uses a layer based editing functionality which gives the user the ability to create images, apply filters to different layers and aspects of the image, add masks and filters, shadows and so much more.

You can adjust absolutely any aspect of an image, illustration or graphic. For example, you could adjust saturation of colors, colors, blurs, contrast, tone, sharpness…. You can pretty much design your whole website with Photoshop, then export to programs like Macaw or Fireworks to bring your creation to life. You can create web graphics from scratch and accurately layout web templates. With Photoshop you can pretty much undertake any design project.

Gimp is one of them and my favourite Photoshop Free alternative. Pictaculous is an online image color tool which helps you choose awesome color palettes for your website, landing page, blog etc. Simply upload the image that you like the colors to Pictaculous and it will extract a color palette that perfectly matches the colors in the picture.

It generates all the correct color values and even gives you the option of downloading the Adobe color swatch for your reference. This saves you the hassle of buying a hosting account purely for testing if a website works the way you want it to. Especially ideal for WordPress developers and users.

There are both Free and Premium versions available. Fireworks is another Adobe app available on a subscription with Adobe Creative Cloud. Its a trusted piece of software with web designers around the world. Fireworks allows you to create websites and highly optimized graphics for web, which are completely editable in both vector and bitmap environments.

You can import Photoshop and Illustrator files into Fireworks and apply behaviors to objects, add pages, layers, states and symbols to simulate interactivity to your wire-frames and prototypes. In short, Fireworks will take your graphic design project and turn it into an interactive web prototype.

Lightshot is one of those very useful free tools that make the life of a designer just that more easier. Lightshot is a screenshot tool for both Mac and Win and is probably the best screenshot software on the web. Lightshot is easy to use and seamlessly integrates with your operating system. You use exactly that same keyboard shortcut to activate Lightshot as you would with the built in version.

When the tool is activated, Lightshot will enable you to highlight the area you want to screenshot and then let you save it to your local drive or share with people. You can design websites even without the knowledge of coding. Adobe Dreamweaver is one of the most popular free web design software. It ensures fast and flexible coding with code hints and visual aids to help beginners create professional websites.

However, Adobe Dreamweaver is available on a free trial, only for seven days. After that, you have to get its paid version to continue using its amazing features. Also available is a seven days free trial version. Brackets website builder provides pre-processor support and visual tools for writing codes and building websites. The open-source and free web design software is ideal for designing in the browser using live previews.

It provides visual tools along with editors to help web developers and front-end developers with error-free coding. Pricing Mode: Brackets is a free and open-source web design software. Reasons to Buy: Brackets is ideal just not for web designers but also for front-end developers. It is simple to use and provides free extensions and syntax colouring.

WordPress is one of the best professional web design software. The web design software offers plugins and addons for building professional quality landing pages in minutes. Thus, you can create websites easily without the advanced knowledge of coding. In addition, it provides Pro layouts to create professionally designed websites. You can also get started for free with limited features. Reasons to Buy: Best for building fast websites and blog pages.

WordPress can be easily integrated with plugins from third-party apps. Several instances are also available for live hosting and testing. CoffeeCup HTML editor helps businesses create an online presence with the help of professional web development tools. Implementing SEO strategies or adding web firms, all is easy with this website design software.

The best part is its HTML editor that can be used to design websites and edit the code and build mobile-friendly emails. Joomla is a website maker software and content marketing system, which offers command-line applications for building websites. Pricing Mode: Joomla 3. Reasons to Buy: Joomla has a smooth learning curve with various video training materials and documentation available. Further, you can use Joomla or its metadata management capabilities and powerful search engine optimization capabilities.

Bootstrap open source web design software offers mixins and SaaS variables and responsive grid systems for creating responsive websites. The web design software provides essential features and colours for styling webpages and making webpages behave as per their screen size.

Also available are side features like popovers, modals, tooltips, glyph icons and pagination. Bootsrap also offers a free plan for up to 10 users and 2GB storage. Reasons to Buy: Bootstrap free website builder is compatible with multiple browsers like Opera, internet explorer, Chrome, Safari, etc. Pre-styled customizations and components are the added advantages of using Bootstrap. Mobirise is a free web design software , which is best for creating landing pages and high-ranking websites for non-profit and professional use.

The web design software offers thousands of beautiful templates, blocks and website blocks to help you start quickly with the web designing process. Non-techies highly prefer Mobirise to create Google and mobile-friendly websites without any coding knowledge. Suitable for Business Size: Small business, mid-market professionals and freelancers. Reasons to Buy: No coding is required for building websites. The free website making software is best for beginners with not much knowledge of coding.

The website design tool helps automatically generate a code for displaying a website and its functions correctly. Reasons to Buy: Easy drag and drop functionality can be used to customise, insert, and modify web objects onto pages.

This process is hassle-free and easy for beginners. GIMP or GNU image manipulation program is a free web design tool offering professional features for image manipulation purposes. This web design software can also be used for designing graphical elements by changing the source code and distributing the changes.

Simple interface along with various options for filtering and effects make GIMP a convenient website designing tool. Webydo is one of the best professional web design software trusted for creating responsive websites that are pixel perfect without deploying any code. What makes Webydo unique is its content management capabilities, something that makes it possible for clients to update or edit the content anytime they want.

Pricing Mode: Free trial available for all paid plans. Reasons to Buy: Intuitive drag and drop interface besides visual tools that require no static mockups.

You can create professional websites with Webflow website builder software. It uses visual canvas to create attractive websites. It is also possible to use each layer individually. GIMP is one of the most popular Photoshop alternatives with advanced tools that will help you create an eye-catching web page layout.

Verdict: WordPress is website software free with open-source code. It will help you effectively create any type of website. Since its initial release in , WordPress becomes the most sought-after Content Management System on the globe. To speed up your work, you can use built-in WordPress themes. They are completely customizable, so you can edit a particular theme according to your preferences. WordPress has a very flexible theme structure, so it is possible to alter colors, images, backgrounds, etc.

If you feel like you need more than just a basic template, you may boost your workflow by purchasing premium WordPress themes and extensions. Verdict: Over the last 15 years, Squarespace has been used to create a lot of websites. It is designed to build web pages with a stylish and visually appealing look.

With this tool, you can easily demonstrate your unique artistic vision. The service lives up to its reputation as a simple web design tool due to its drag-and-drop interface and intuitive menus.

The level of complexity depends on the skills and priorities of a user. Regardless of your web development experience, you can create a high-quality website. Apart from a rich library of templates, Squarespace has all the necessary tools for effective work. It is the best website editor for photographers, digital artists and anyone who want to showcase their creativity. Verdict: The name of this software may give the impression that it is an average web design tool.

Google Web Designer lets you incorporate animation and interactive elements in your work to show off your unique style. The distinctive feature of this software is that it comes with pre-installed templates for creating advertisements. There are three different types of ads: banner simple fixed-size ads , expandable small banner-size ads that expand when clicked and interstitial suitable for mobile devices, since the vertical and horizontal position of the page is automatically determined.

Moreover, you can create an advertisement without a code of a particular platform. Verdict: Wix is a popular program with a free plan that allows you to test out this service. Using its rich functionality, you can create a stylish and visually interesting website.

Wix has an ADI Artificial Design Intelligence mode which has an intuitive interface to make the design process as simple as possible. This service is a perfect choice for beginners as you can put together your website just following simple guidelines.

Besides, Wix offers an array of beautiful templates to make your website even more appealing. This website creator is so user-friendly and well-thought-out that designing your website turns out to be an interactive game. In addition, Wix has great support for different media and responsive customer service even for free-plan users. Verdict: Figma is an excellent web design tool that is aimed at real-time collaboration. It allows several people to view and edit the same web template simultaneously.

Using this powerful design tool, you can share the project with your clients and make changes in real-time. This is a whole new level of interaction for the web site creator software. Figma has an editing panel with fonts, colors and other useful settings.