You don’t have to be an expert to create your website. Even beginners can create logos, images, videos, or animations to get their site up and running – as long as you have the right tools!

In this blog, we’ll cover some of the best web design tools and resources available in 2024, including their prices (many free!) and beginner-friendly options you can explore in the WhatsApp Business API.

1. WordPress

Best for: website building and content management

WordPress

While primarily a content management system (CMS), WordPress is also considered a website builder. Its drag and drop feature allows you to create a professional-looking website with little to zero coding skills.

It may take some time for beginners to become familiar with its interface, but that’s a small price to pay given WordPress’s extensive customization capabilities.

Its huge library of themes and plugins allows you to tailor your website to your unique brand and needs, which is why even web design experts choose it

Price: WordPress is free, including some of its themes and plugins. However, some premium options come at a cost..

Other top choices: Shopify, Squarespace, Wix

2. Invision

Best for: design prototyping and user testing

Invision

Before jumping straight into site building, you’ll want to give everyone a ‘feel’ about how the site will look like and function.

With Invision, you can create these highly polished, realistic, and interactive prototypes, allowing team members and executives to experience the design as if it were already live.

Feedback can be attached directly to the prototype, allowing you to identify specific areas that require further tweaks and improvements.

Once design is good to go, you can use Invision to generate detailed specs, asset libraries, and code snippets for the development team.

Price: Invision offers a free version, but limits the number of users, documents, and spaces. The Pro version removes these limits for only $7.95 per user per month.

Other top choices: Webflow, Framer, Figma, Adobe XD

3. Figma

Best for: real-time UX/UI design collaboration

Figma

Figma addresses the challenge of fragmented design processes by combining prototyping and other design functionalities into a single platform.

Designers, developers, and other stakeholders can work together on a single design file. You can see real-time updates when, say, a colleague changes button sizes or a developer leaves a comment about technical requirements.

No more waiting for someone to send the latest version or sorting through confusing email threads. Figma's integrated design and prototyping capabilities, along with its real-time collaboration features, make it an essential tool to streamline the design process and provide a truly collaborative environment

Price: Figma offers a free plan with limited functionality, as well as paid premium plans starting at $15 per editor per month.

Other top choices: Adobe XD, Sketch, Penpot

4. Canva

Best for: Quick and easy graphic design creation

Canva

Canva is a cloud-based graphic design platform that makes it incredibly easy to create visuals for your site. While it's mostly used for social media and marketing materials, it's also great for website elements like hero images, CTA buttons, and even full website layouts.

The best thing about Canva is its simplicity. Its intuitive UI, along with a vast library of pre-designed templates, allows you to generate and drag and drop graphics and pictures.

This is convenient especially for those without a formal design background. However, even design experts use Canva to speed up their work.

Price: Canva is free to use with some limitations. A pro version is available for unlimited access to templates and advanced features, starting at $12.99 per month.

Other top choices: Adobe Illustrator, Vectr, Inkscape

5. Pixabay

Best for: finding stock photographs and illustrations

Pixabay

Pixabay is your go-to source for high-quality, royalty-free visual assets for your website. Whether you need a stunning homepage background or an eye-catching image for a blog post, Pixabay’s diverse library offers you not just photos but also vectors, videos, GIFs, and more.

Simply search for the type of visual asset you need, browse through the results, and download the the best fit. There’s no need to sign up or deal with watermarks, and you can use the assets for both personal and commercial projects.

Price: Pixabay is completely free to use, with no hidden costs or subscription fees.

Other top choices: Pexels, Unsplash

6. Yoast SEO

Best for: optimizing your site for search engine visibility

Yoast SEO

Search engines rely on your site’s content to understand it better. If they can't, your site won't rank on top of search results, ending up pages 2, 3 4 where no one clicks – wasted effort in designing your site’s aesthetics.

Enter Yoast SEO, a WordPress plugin that helps optimize your site for better search engine visibility. It provides real-time feedback and guidance on structuring content and visual elements for improved rankings and better user experience.

For instance, the Yoast SEO meta box lets you preview how a page will appear in search results, including the title, description, and snippet. Additionally, it enhances technical aspects of your site, like XML sitemaps, canonical URLs, and structured data markup, all handled automatically.

Of course, there's more to SEO, and you might need help from an SEO Sydney agency for a comprehensive strategy. However, Yoast SEO is a great tool to steer you in the right direction.

Price: Yoast SEO has a free version and a premium version with additional features at $99 per year.

Other top choices: All in One SEO, Rank Math

7. Asana

Best for: managing website design projects and teams

Asana

Asana is a versatile project management platform that works just as well for planning an entire website design lifecycle as it does for other industries and niches.

With Asana, you can manage complex design projects, break them down into bite-sized tasks, set milestones and deadlines, assign team members, and receive real-time updates about progress and bottlenecks.

What makes Asana even better is its compatibility with design tools like Figma, allowing for seamless file transfers and updates between platforms and avoiding error-prone manual entries.

While there are certainly other project management tools out there, we find that Asana stands out considering how it remains user-friendly while still offering a comprehensive set of features.

Price: Asana’s free plan offers plenty to get started. However, if you have a team of more than 10 members, you might benefit from the starter plan ($10.99/month) or the advanced plan ($24.99/month).

Other top choices: Trello, Monday.com, Notion

8. Cinema 4D

Best for: making 3D animations for website

Cinema 4D

With templates everywhere and many websites looking the same, Cinema 4D allows you to create high-quality 3D graphics and animations that make your site stand out.

It provides all the tools for 3D modeling, animation, and rendering to help you with logos, text animations, and interactive backgrounds.

One of its standout features is its compatibility with other design tools like Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. This makes it simple to incorporate 3D elements into your existing projects.

Price: Cinema 4D offers plans starting at around $2.99 per month, with higher-tier plans providing additional features at a higher cost.

Other top choices: Blender, Autodesk Maya

9. Checklist Design

Best for: making checklists for web design best practices

Checklist Design

Checklist Design lets you create custom checklists to track the specific steps and considerations involved in designing a website.

Instead of creating your own checklist on, say Google Docs, and having to research best practices, you can use Checklist Design, which already includes these guidelines for web design, UI/UX, branding, and technical aspects of website design.

With so many moving parts in web design, this resource helps you ensure that all essential tasks are covered. You can check off each item as it's completed, ensuring no important details are overlooked and avoiding inconsistencies and errors.

Price: Checklist Design is free.