The best website builders for musicians allow any independent artist to come up with a professional and stylish website in very little time.
There’s a lot of choice out there though – each with their own advantages & disadvantages – so in this guide we’ve reviewed some of the most popular on the market to help you figure out which is most suitable for your project.
We’ve come a long way from the days of $2000+ web designers or ugly blog feeds for musicians. And it’s a good thing too: whether you’re just starting out or are an established act on the touring circuit, a website is an important part of self-promotion and fan engagement.
Easy-to-use website builders have levelled the playing field for a lot of DIY musicians: as long as you have some great visual content to build into your site, you can come up with a design that rivals the biggest major label artists in your genre, for a low monthly fee.
So read on for a round up of 4 of the best builders when it comes to websites for musicians:
- WordPress
- Bandzoogle
- Wix
- Squarespace
A quick note on pricing: website builders come with a variety of tiers, so it’s hard to compare each one like-for-like. Instead, we’ve included the pricing ‘range’ for the plans we feel the average musician would need. You can click through each one to view the full pricing page.
#1 Pick: Squarespace
Best for: people looking for a super-stylish musician website with zero site-building experience required
Squarespace has emerged as a popular choice for creatives of all types, with a big section of the music community using this stylish website builder.
In terms of usability, it’s a drag-and-drop builder just like Bandzoogle and Wix; you don’t need any coding knowledge and can simply arrange the elements as you like on the page.
Whilst the design options are totally customisable, the site’s default settings push you towards that clean and clear style for which it’s become known.
Full-width cover images, white backgrounds, neatly aligned margins and sections, beautifully clickable buttons and stylish fonts…
If you are looking to build a site that is both easy- to-use and easy on the eye (and why wouldn’t you?!) this is the best option out there in our opinion.
- Beautiful clean design
- Integrations with Bandsintown, Soundcloud & more
- Easy drag-and-drop use
- 'Pay monthly' is 25-30% more expensive than pay annually
As long as you’ve got some great photos to use, you can have a premium-looking site up and running in minutes.
The builder is so intuitive that you can easily build out the format you want for the site, but there are also a large range of templates – including musician-specific ones – that you can use as a starting point to speed up the process even more.
Squarespace is not made only for musicians, so it is not offering the most industry-specific ‘in-house’ options in terms of things like selling music, direct streaming and displaying upcoming shows.
But that may not be a bad thing…
Embedding elements from specialist external platforms like Spotify, Bandcamp, Songkick, Bandsintown (for which Squarespace has a native integration) and Youtube is, arguably, much better in terms of fan engagement than trying to find a site that takes over all of this.
Lastly – and importantly – with website builders like Squarespace you don’t need to worry about technical updates, viruses or hacks as this is all managed on their side. Simply set up and get back to making music!
Pricing: $12-18/month (paid annually)
Free Trial: 14 days
2. WordPress (with the Divi Theme)
Best for tech-savvy musicians looking to build a totally customisable website
At last count, WordPress powers around 40% of the world’s websites, including giants such as BBC America, TechCrunch and MTV News.
The main reason for its popularity is the total flexibility it offers the user. But whilst experienced web designers can use html code to customise everything, there are a growing number of WordPress themes that allow a drag-and-drop style functionality similar to other builders in this list.
Divi – made by Elegant Themes – is one of the most popular, with more than 800,000 users around the world. Their huge variety of layouts include several targeted squarely at musicians, such as these examples.
- Total flexibility
- Unlimited chat support
- One time theme cost
- Some technical knowledge required
- Needs regular maintenance
- Not designed solely for musicians
The big drawback of WordPress websites for first-time-users is that it requires some technical know-how to get set up, as well as regular maintenance to keep it safe and running properly – which is the only reason we didn’t score it higher!
If you already have those basics – or are keen to learn – you won’t find a more customisable way of building out that exact website you’re looking for. And, due to its popularity, finding freelancers to help tweak the design at a later date is relatively easy to do.
Pricing: WordPress (free), hosting & domain name (from $4.95/mo), divi theme ($89/year or $249/lifetime access)
Free Trial: 30 days (Divi theme)
#3 Bandzoogle
Best for: a dedicated musician-focused website builder with great support
As you might have guessed from the name, this platform is exclusively focused on websites for musicians.
As such, it comes with perhaps more industry-specifc bells-and-whistles than any other option on this list.
Whether that’s a good thing is debatable (we’re a fan of maximising the reach of existing networks like Spotify and Bandcamp rather than bringing everything in-house) but if this level of control is what you’re looking for, Bandzoogle could be the one for you!
We asked more than 50 musicians what they liked best about their current website builder and the overwhelming response from Bandzoogle users was customer service.
So if you’re a novice website builder and don’t have access to support for Squarespace or WordPress, that’s another great reason to choose Bandzoogle.
The platform offers hundreds of templates for musicians and then allows you to customise with a simple drag-and-drop tool.
Whilst you can integrate Soundcloud, Spotify, Bandcamp or Youtube if you want, they also offer their own custom solution to streaming via a music player and selling music and merch directly to your fans via a shop.
Pricing: $8-16/month (paid annually)
Free trial: 30 days
4. Wix
Best for: a solid, easy-to-use platform with your own online store
Founded more than 15 years ago, Wix is one of the longest-running and biggest website builders, with more than 200 million customers around the world.
As you might have guessed from that statistic, they aren’t specifically in the market for musicians websites, or even creatives. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find any industry where at least some companies or people are not using Wix.
That sort of reach brings a level of security and stability to the company, but also means that you might find it harder to get dedicated music-focused support.
That doesn’t mean there are not great options for musicians though: Wix operates through templates and offers hundreds of options for bands and artists.
- Easy drag-and-drop builder
- Very established platform
- Built-in store
- Analytics
- Not specifically for musicians or creatives
- Free plan includes Wix branding
As with all platforms offering websites for musicians, you can integrate everything you need into Wix, from Songkick tour-dates and a Spotify player to your Bandcamp store and mailing list signup form.
As with Bandzoogle, you can also upload your music directly to the site to stream and/or sell via Wix Music, which can be useful if you prefer to keep that part of your career in-house.
Given the large range of clients Wix has, they have also developed a high level of analytics which you have access to as a user. If you’re getting a decent amount of traffic and are interested in a simple interface for learning more about your visitors, this could also be an interesting benefit of building with Wix.
Rather than simply offering a free trial like many other website builders, Wix actually has a free tier. But whilst this is useful for checking if it’s the right website builder for you, it’s not recommended for long term use: promoting yourself as a professional artist or band with a wix branded domain name and site is not a great look.
Pricing: $14-18/month (paid annually)
Free trial: 14-days
Best website builders for musicians: FAQs & advice
Websites for musicians don’t usually need to be the most complex, but they do come with their own very specific set of needs (streaming music, tour dates, connect with fans, etc…) so it make sense to use a platform geared up for creatives.
Many of the most popular website builders for musicians focus on how much you can do right out of the box:
- Sell your music on their platform
- Add you tour-dates directly onto the website
- Use a native streaming player
- Collect email addresses via their custom signup form
As someone who has worked with artists as a booking agent, manager and publicist, I would suggest that’s not actually the primary goal.
No: the primary goal is to have a good-looking web design that allows you to embed or link to the platforms which are totally specialised in their area.
Why build an online store when you can link to Bandcamp, a company that makes building an audience of record-buying fans so easy?
Why upload your tour-dates every time when there are platforms like Songkick and Bandsintown who add so much extra value to that process?
Why let people stream your tracks directly from your website when you can embed a Spotify player and get those extra listens?
Is it necessary to build out a news area, when you can pull in directly from social media?
With all that in mind, the choice of which artist website builder to use matters slightly less.
Find some examples of great musician websites and use any of these platforms here to recreate the striking visual-first design that has become the norm today.
Looking for more help on the promotional materials you’re using to build your audience? We’ve written in more detail about the importance of great photos (especially for getting gigs!) and engaging music videos in the jazz promotion area.
Great resource for musicians! This article lists the best website builders tailored for musicians, making it easier to create professional and engaging online platforms. Highly recommended!
Hi! I want to have an opt-in capability for fans to get on a mailing list. Which is best for that? Thanks for being an awesome resource!
Hi Arlene
I don’t have experience with using native opt-in forms but most (if not all) of these ones would support/integrate with the more famous standalone newsletter platforms.
I use and like Convertkit, i know many musicians (particularly with smaller lists) like Mailchimp for its easy use.
Hope that helps!
I can only confirm bandzoogle has an insanely fast and friendly customer support … 10/10 stars for them!
Also worth cecking out:
http://Www.Tunepipe.com …. Also very good with funnel builder, shop, patreon like „fan donation“ possibilities….
Hello Paul
Yes i was going to talk about tunepipe.
Just to throw another one into the mix. I’m currently using Tune Bud. It’s a v easy to use website builder for music composers. Plus it also has built in ecommerce functionality so you have the option to build your own music library website and sell/license your music direct to clients. Plus it allows you to distribute on digital streaming platforms like Spotify, Tencent etc at no extra cost. Price starts at just $3 per month which is v good. You should take a look and review it.
Thanks; never tried it but always good to know the options!