If you're serious about your music and getting it out there, you'll almost certainly want to build a website for your band or music project. In which case, you'll need to decide which is the best website builder for musicians - and specifically, you. Plenty of online building services are available for quickly creating a functional website, but they're not all tooled up for the specific needs of music makers. Whether you’re a DJ, a producer or you're in a band, all the best website builders for musicians enable you to create a tailored space to host your work, sell merchandise, keep fans updated on events, secure bookings and much more.
But with so many options available, where to start? First, focus on the main purpose of your music website. If your aim is simply to build a fanbase or to get people along to your next gigs, a simple option like Tumblr or Squarespace would most likely do the job. But if you want actually to sell music and merchandise, we recommend exploring an eCommerce-focused website builder like Music Glue.
Alternatively, Bandzoogle is a Swiss army knife in this field. It has all that functionality and more - you can share your music, host your own blog, embed video and audio, create event calendars, sign people up to a newsletter, and sell stuff, all from one site.
We've got some useful buying advice further down the page, but if you want to get straight to our top choices, keep reading.
Best website builders for musicians: Our top picks
If you're looking for ease of use and a range of template options (which let's face it is far easier than starting a new site from scratch), then Wix should really be at the top of your list. It features great drag-and-drop functionality for those who want to really customise that initial template design, too. Depending on your requirtements there are a number of subscription tiers too, so you only need to fork out for the features that you really need. Crucially, It also has plenty of handy eCommerce features built in, including those all-important ticket and merch sales.
Wix is aimed at anyone looking to launch a new site, but Bandzoogle is - yup - tailored for and aimed squarely at musicians and artists like your good self. Selecting a custom domain for your band or project is a breeze, as is selling merch and music straight to your fans. Incorporating your social media feeds is a cinch, too, and like Wix, you have access to hundreds of pretty respectable templates, all customisable via a drag and drop interface. Every Bandzoogle site is mobile friendly too - obviously and absolutely essential in this day and age.
Best website builders for musicians: Services guide
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 DJ & Producer, Solo Artist and Band.
If you can’t find a template you like, answer a few questions using the Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) system and a site will be created for you. 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.
If you already use tour promotion and ticketing services likes 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 – FLAC & 320kbs MP3 files – 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. You’ll have plenty of stats and analytics at your fingertips in order to monitor performance and fine-tune your approach to marketing.
As the name suggests, Bandzoogle is a website builder aimed squarely at music makers, and it was founded by musicians, too.
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 will work seamlessly on all devices.
Importantly, it’s easy to add your tunes and stream them direct from your site. If you have media on Soundcloud, Bandcamp or YouTube, you can integrate that.
Bandzoogle is also a great market place for selling your music, merchandise and tickets direct to fans. Unlike other website builders for musicians, Bandzoogle doesn’t make any commission from sales.
If you’re looking to grow your fan community you can add an email sign-up widget to your site and integrate a gig calendar so people know where you’re performing next. If you already use Bandsintown you can sync your account with your Bandzoogle site.
Squarespace is a great website builder for musicians if premium design, reliability and flexibility are at the top of your wishlist. Their huge range of templates, including bespoke options for music and entertainment, have won awards.
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 trial so you can dip your toes in the water, after which you’ll need to spend £15 per month to take advantage of the full eCommerce setup.
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.
Building a mobile-friendly site is free, so you needn’t worry about monthly fees. There is a limited number of themes to choose from, which you can customise easily and also bring over your own custom domain name. There is a catch however: Music Glue takes a 10% slice of your earnings. Worth thinking about before you pull the trigger.
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 enables you to run pre-order campaigns and offer perks, merch bundles and even VIP ticket packages to fans in order to boost sales.
If you need a simple, mobile-friendly music website up and running quickly, BandVista is worth exploring. While the templates aren’t the most refined, it’s the features you can offer your fans that really set BandVista apart.
For starters, there’s an integrated music player, so your fans can instantly get a flavour of your sound and style. In addition, it’s a breeze to embed video from YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook.
Blogging is a great way to keep fans updated on your latest activity, and there’s the option of adding an email sign-up widget so you can share a regular newsletter with fans.
While eCommerce isn’t BandVista’s strongest suit, it’s easy to create a basic online store to sell merchandise and music. What’s more, you keep 100% of the profits.
BandVista offers a free trial. Beyond that, prices range from $9.95 to $15.85 per month. These packages include perks such as selecting your own custom domain name and the ability to upload a large number of tracks.
If you don’t have much (or any) budget to splash on a new site, Tumblr offers plenty of features and tools for musicians looking to get their music out there, and it doesn’t cost a penny.
It’s essentially a blogging site, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. It’s possible to customise the look of your blog via a range of themes, and there are paid-for options if you want something a little more upmarket.
The jewel in Tumblr’s crown as far as musicians are concerned is that you can upload up to 10MB of MP3 files to your blog every day. If you’re a particularly productive musician, this is a great way to share your moments of inspiration.
Tumblr also benefits from placing you within an already bustling community of artists, musicians and creatives to interact with, support and share content.
In addition to the main blog element, it’s possible to add additional pages to your Tumblr site which can include everything from a gallery or videos, to a contact form which you could use for event bookings, collaborations and more. What’s more, you can upload posts direct from the Tumblr app on your smart device.
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 your needs, including 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.
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.
If numbers are your bag, it’s easy to track site performance using the Weebly app, or create marketing campaigns to widen your fanbase.
A Weebly site is free to set-up. If you want to connect a domain name you already own that will cost £4 per month, or go pro for £9 and bag unlimited storage, a free domain name and an online store.
Best website builders for musicians: Buying advice
How do the best website builders for musicians work?
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The best website builders for musicians are designed to take the head-scratching out of creating an online home for your art; gone are the days of needing to enlist the skills and pay the sky-high prices of a web designer.
Most sites offer custom templates as a starting point or a simple drag-and-drop system enabling you to place page furniture and features where you need them on the page. There is no need for any coding - so you should never feel out of your depth - unless this is something you particularly want to get your hands dirty with (hey, it's certainly a useful skill to have).
Most website builders for musicians also offer search engine optimisation (SEO) features as standard, helping people to find your music more easily, and you’ll have plenty of analytics at your fingertips to help you dive deep into data about your audience and to see how many people are listening to your tunes.
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 fulfills all of those short- and long-term goals.
There are also some free website builder options out there too, but in our view, you get what you pay for. So, if you want to include more advanced features like eCommerce, or you'd prefer your fans not to be bombarded with ads, then you'll need to factor that into your budget.
Ready to build a site? Hit the 'services guide & reviews' button above to check out our top picks.
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