Website on Mac: Best software

If you want to build and design a website with your Mac com­pletely by yourself, there are heaps of useful tools on the web. Thanks to special programs, both beginners without pro­gram­ming knowledge and advanced web de­velopers can get their website idea up and running quickly. We introduce you to the best website builder software for Mac.

Overview of editors and web design programs for building your website on a Mac

The best website builders for Mac for beginners

Using web editors is a great way to gradually build up con­fid­ence with basic pro­gram­ming and develop a web presence with static content. With WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editors, designers can build websites just as you create texts, tables, and images in Word documents. A cor­res­pond­ing HTML code is sim­ul­tan­eously generated in the back­ground. You can view this at any time in order to gather knowledge about the markup language.

The following two editors can offer a simple in­tro­duc­tion to web design and can be used free of charge:

Sparkle

The popular iWeb editor was part of the iLife software package until 2011, but de­vel­op­ment has since been dis­con­tin­ued. A modern al­tern­at­ive is the WYSIWYG editor Sparkle, which is often referred to as the spiritual successor to iWeb. Sparkle is strongly oriented towards the intuitive iWeb interface and is therefore suitable for both newcomers and iWeb fans. In addition to its ease of use, Sparkle offers a variety of modern tools and in­teg­ra­tions, such as an AI-driven website generator and an SEO wizard. Sparkle also has functions for an­onymising user data. The app de­velopers are based in the EU.

Sparkle is a great web design program for Mac, but it also has a few lim­it­a­tions. Many of the modern SEO and web design tools are only included in the Pro and Personal versions. On the other hand, the free version of the app is severely limited since users are only allowed to create one website with just three pages. In addition, Sparkle’s range of functions cannot quite keep up with es­tab­lished pro­fes­sion­al solutions such as Adobe Dream­weaver.

Mobirise

Similar to Sparkle, the WYSIWYG website builder Mobirise is par­tic­u­larly im­press­ive due to its easy operation. However, Mobirise offers an even simpler user interface than Sparkle. Mobirise also offers its users several thousand HTML templates and website blocks that can be inserted using drag-and-drop. If you are not satisfied with the ready-made elements, you can use the Mobirise HTML editor to modify the code as you wish. As with Sparkle, Mobirise also has an AI website generator with which you can quickly generate templates for any purpose.

However, Mobirise also has some lim­it­a­tions that could be crucial for many Mac users. Like most WYSIWYG editors, Mobirise’s sim­pli­fied operation comes with the downside of providing a more limited range of functions compared to many other programs. Although Mobirise includes several thousand website blocks, ex­ten­sions and other features, these are not included in the free version of the program (including the HTML editor). If you want to be able to use all blocks, ex­ten­sions and other features, you need a license, which costs around £115 per year.

The best website builders for Mac for advanced pro­gram­mers

If you’re already confident in basic pro­gram­ming, and looking for support with designing more complex web projects, then web design software is a good in­vest­ment for you. In principle, these programs can be con­sidered offline website builders, as they can be used even without an internet con­nec­tion, as long as they’re installed on your system. You can use the user interface directly from your Mac, without having to rely on your browser. You’re not tied to your current hosting provider’s server either, giving you the freedom to decide which server your web project should be uploaded to.

We’ve found four software solutions that make building a website on your Mac seem like child’s play.

Rap­id­Weaver

Realmac Software Ltd. first published Rap­id­Weaver, the pro­pri­et­ary software for Macs, back in 2004, making it one of the earliest programs to allow users without sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gram­ming knowledge to create websites. The software is very usable for beginners, but its wide range of functions also makes it a good tool for advanced users. Ever since its launch, Rap­id­Weaver has gone from strength to strength, which is why it’s still one of the most sought-after web design programs today.

Thanks to the user-friendly interface, it’s also easy to carry out search engine op­tim­isa­tion and design mobile sites. There are 50 templates to work from and no limits to the number of sites that you can make.

Rap­id­Weaver contains further useful functions including JavaS­cript and CSS file op­tim­isa­tion, automatic back-ups, and a ‘health check’ function, which offers re­com­mend­a­tions for im­prove­ment of site structure. The program also allows users to switch between viewing the code and the preview, enabling you to see how your work appears on a browser. Al­tern­at­ively, you can conduct a local test in your web browser to view your Rap­id­Weaver project from the per­spect­ive of a site visitor.

You can use the FTP function to upload your project onto your web server. There are also hundreds of ex­ten­sions (mostly fee-based) to further bulk up your range of functions.

Adobe Dream­weaver

To use Adobe Dream­weaver, you need to sign up for a sub­scrip­tion and pay a monthly fee. You also need an active internet con­nec­tion in order to complete the in­stall­a­tion and the monthly veri­fic­a­tion. But this is a small price to pay when you take into con­sid­er­a­tion the wide range of functions Dream­weaver boasts. The software for building websites on macOS features helpful as­sist­ance such as colour-coding and auto-com­ple­tion for lines of HTML code. The program allows you to easily design webpages for various devices and thanks to the device preview, check the in­ter­activ­ity in real time.

Dream­weaver is linked to the fee-based Adobe Stock. You can thus open or implement photos, videos, il­lus­tra­tions and vector graphics directly in a preview. Using this tech­no­logy, you can embed design files and optimised images quickly and easily from Photoshop directly into your web project. The Adobe web design software also assists users by checking the coding in real time and marking any errors in red while dis­play­ing an error message in a text box.

If you’ve already got Adobe Dream­weaver (i.e. as part of the Creative Cloud plan), the web designer would be an excellent choice for future web projects. If you don’t already have an Adobe sub­scrip­tion, you can test the software for 14 days.

IONOS Website Builder

IONOS Website Builder is an easy and intuitive website builder that doesn’t require any prior knowledge or ad­di­tion­al software to create and edit a website. In just a few clicks, it is possible to choose from a great variety of pro­fes­sion­al and cus­tom­is­able mobile-optimised templates. With access to an extensive image library, it allows beautiful websites to be created on Mac, adapted to both private and business users.

Each website template contains a cus­tom­ised selection of hundreds of web apps, including Google Maps and Facebook. There are also text and image sug­ges­tions for various in­dus­tries, which you can simply insert using the drag-and-drop function.

WordPress

For many, the open-source software WordPress is primarily con­sidered a free blogging software, or content man­age­ment system. But in addition to its countless design templates and plugins, WordPress offers all the tools you need to build complex websites. In fact, many of the WordPress tools that benefit bloggers are also helpful for web design. These include:

• easy operation
• search engine op­tim­isa­tion
• first-rate support from other users
• the ability to adapt WordPress to suit your own re­quire­ments with plugins

You’ll need to access a local server in order to use WordPress to build websites on a Mac. As MySQL and PHP are basic re­quire­ments for this process, it’s advisable to download the XAMPP software package, which simulates the functions of a web server on your Mac, thus providing the perfect basis for WordPress. Download the latest version of WordPress from the official WordPress website. It only takes a few minutes!

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when building a website on a Mac

The editors and programs featured here make up just a small selection of the resources available for building websites on Mac computers. If you explore the topic of web design further, you’ll find thousands more tools and programs with which you can create out­stand­ing websites. It’s a good idea to test different programs before making your final decision; this way you can find out which software works best for you.

Your ideas for your web project can only come to life if you take the time to learn your chosen program’s various functions. Strictly speaking, you can also choose to forgo extensive programs com­pletely and just use a text editor like Tex­tWran­gler, BBEdit, Sublime Text or Vim.