6 Best Restaurant Website Builders

Wix has the best website features out of all the ecommerce restaurant builders we’ve tested, scoring 4.4 out of 5!

The highlights of its features offering include:

• Easy social media integrations
• Wix POS – to make syncing your in-person and online transactions as easy as possible
• Great blogging features for content marketing
• Wix’s SEO Wiz, which makes optimizing your site for search engines easy for beginners

That said, Wix doesn’t have the tools to support a large restaurant with a big customer base. The Wix Restaurant app, which comes built into its restaurant and food templates, doesn’t support inventory updates for its online ordering system. This will make it very hard to track your stock levels.

On the upside, you can offer both delivery and customer pick-up with Wix, although there aren’t any in-house integrations with delivery apps like Deliveroo or Uber Eats.

Wix gives you plenty of choice when it comes to picking a payment gateway, with over 15 to choose from – and it doesn’t charge transaction fees, either. Wix also has its own, in-house payment gateway called Wix Payments, which is worth checking out if you want to manage your payments all in one place.

Abandoned cart recovery is a great asset for recapturing the interest of customers who have abandoned items in their basket, and you should be able to find any missing features you want in Wix’s huge app market!

Wix has a huge range of templates, including restaurant-specific designs, and has an easy to use editor that uses drag-and-drop to give you ultimate design control over your website.

You’ll find relevant features already built into Wix’s restaurant-specific templates, such as menus, reviews, and reservation booking systems.

The main drawback to Wix’s design functionality is that you can’t switch templates once you’ve published your site – this is usually not too much of a problem, unless you want to rebrand later on.

Wix’s ecommerce plans start at $23 per month (billed annually), and for the features you get, that price offers pretty good value – we awarded it 4 out of 5, which makes it one of the best value options after Square Online.

When looking at the two builders side-by-side, however, we’d recommend Square Online if you’re on a budget. You get better features for less money, and we know every cent counts when you’re running a business!

Wix’s ecommerce plans range from $23 to $49 per month, billed annually – each one gives you a free domain, secure online payments, and at least 20GB storage.

Wix is known for being very beginner-friendly, and came in as the second easiest restaurant builder after Squarespace.

You might be wondering why Wix hasn’t received a higher ease of use score – although 4 out of 5 is still impressive, Wix is usually unbeatable when it comes to ease of use. Well, we found that the limits on its features were impacting how easy our users found it to create their website.

For example, to allow customers to customize their online order, you need to manually edit the variant options to add a notes section for them to add any comments about their order. This is a lot more hassle than a builder that automatically includes a feature for customers to edit their order!

Wix’s backend is the reason we don’t recommend it for larger restaurant businesses – it’s nice and easy as long as you’re selling 10 products or less.

Wix scored highly for help and support, reminding us that at its heart, this is a beginner-friendly platform. Whether you prefer finding answers by knowledge center, video, social media, phone, email, or on-page hints while you build, Wix has got you covered!

Shopify scores 4.4 out of 5 for its features. We like Shopify’s online ordering functionality, and the fact your inventory can be synced and updated from your Shopify dashboard. Shopify also has its own POS software, which you can use to link and sync your website to your restaurant.

You can offer local delivery and customer collection, and there’s even the option for customers to leave tips at checkout!

However, it’s worth noting that there’s no integration with delivery services like Deliveroo or Uber Eats.

Shopify includes a built-in menu feature on its restaurant-specific ‘Express’ template, which is great to see – in the past, Shopiy lacked a built-in menu widget, so we’re pleased to see this addition!

There are a few drawbacks that prevented Shopify from achieving a higher score, however. For example, there’s no built-in reservation system, and we hesitate to recommend any of its third-party reservation apps based on the poor user reviews.

You can add a call to action that lets visitors ring your restaurant directly, but you’ll need coding skills to set this up – it’s not as easy as the other builders we tested.

One area where Shopify has always performed well is its sales features. This is an ecommerce builder through and through, and its features reflect that focus – you get all the tools you could need to build and grow a serious online store.

Shopify’s sales tools are designed for online stores – among other things, you get access to:

• Abandoned cart recovery
• Multi-channel integration
• Dropshipping
• 100+ payment gateways
• Multiple currencies
• Built-in automatic tax calculation

One feature in particular that comes in useful is the option for customers to customize their orders, meaning you can easily accommodate for allergies or dietary requirements. You can also add variants such as meal size, meat options, sides, and more.

This is perfect for a lot of ambitious businesses – while we don’t recommend Wix for restaurants selling over 10 products, a large inventory is something Shopify can handle with ease.

Shopify has a range of both free and paid templates, all of which feature stylish designs. There are 19 themes in the “Food and Drink” industry category, 17 of which are premium themes. The prices for Shopify’s food and drink themes start at $150 and go up to $350.

Shopify’s Express theme is worth checking out if you need a website for your restaurant quickly and easily.

This is a free theme that’s designed to help non-traditional businesses get online fast, and with minimal hassle – Shopify released it in response to restaurants’ struggles during the pandemic. It’s optimized for one-page stores, and has a strong mobile focus.

Shopify scored 3 out of 5 for value for money, making it the worst value option out of these four ecommerce restaurant builders. Prices start at $29 per month, which is a lot if you’re also having to shell out for third-party apps to add extra functionality to your store.

It’s also worth knowing that you’ll have to pay transaction fees unless you use Shopify Payments, which is Shopify’s own in-house payment gateway. The transaction fee ranges from 0.5-2% depending on your plan.

Shopify comes with a 14-day free trial so you can test it out before you choose a price plan.

Although it’s a pretty powerful ecommerce builder, Shopify is still nice and easy to use. On the whole, you don’t need coding skills, and its themes are simple to edit and make your own. Adding products, changing colors, tweaking text – it’s all pretty straightforward, so you won’t struggle to get started with Shopify!

Shopify has a solid range of support options, including:

• 24/7 phone
• 24/7 live chat
• Email
• Help center
• Community forum
• Video tutorials

So however you want to reach out for answers, there should be something to satisfy your curiosity!

Square Online impressed us with its range of restaurant features. Its built-in menu creator is fully customizable – you can edit images, pricing, and descriptions, enter nutritional information for customers, and even add delivery and pick-up options.

Shoppers can customize their orders, winning you points with any fussy eaters or those with dietary requirements. Lastly, it supports the ability to update your inventory based on orders via the menu.

Square Online’s features are designed to make your life as easy as possible – expect inventory syncing, delivery integrations with Deliveroo and Uber Eats, as well as a dedicated POS system you can link to your store.

The only drawback is that Square Online doesn’t have a built-in reservation system – instead, you’ll need to use its integration with the OpenTable app.

Square Online doesn’t have the same powerful sales features offered by Wix and Shopify, but it still has a lot to help your store run smoothly. Adding products is super easy, you get powerful inventory management, and (our favorite) you can allow customers to easily personalize their items. Perfect for food orders!

Square Online is ideal if you’re already using Square as a payment processor, or for your business’ EPOS – you’ll discover seamless integrations between your restaurant’s physical and digital presence.

Square Online falls down when it comes to design and customization. First off, Square Online only has one restaurant-specific template, and you may find customizing your design frustrating.

Customization options are pretty limited, especially if you’ve tried a builder like Wix and want a similar level of creative control. However, if you want your template to guide your design, then you may enjoy the structured feel of Square Online’s editor.

One thing that really stands out about Square Online is how affordable its price plans are. You can even sell for free with Square Online, which is pretty rare!

The free plan is generous – among other things, it lets you:

• Sell an unlimited number of products
• Automatically sync inventory, items, and orders with your Square POS
• Offer pickup, delivery, or shipping

The cheapest paid plan costs $12 per month (billed annually), and this lets you remove adverts and connect a custom domain for a more professional site.

Another thing worth mentioning is how you can simply add Square Online payment links to an existing website for free, so you only pay Square’s transaction fee. You can add links to Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress websites. This is an affordable option worth knowing about if you want to let customers check out and pay directly on your site.

For the number of features you get, Square Online’s prices offer great value for money – with an impressive score of 4.7 out of 5, it’s the best value ecommerce restaurant builder we’ve tested!

Square Online is easier to use than Shopify, but not quite as easy to use as Wix.

The good news is, setting your site up takes nearly no time at all. You provide answers to a few questions about your business, such as your business name and industry, and you’ll be given a general website layout based on your answers.

That means even if you’re a beginner, you’ll have no problem building your restaurant website using Square Online.

Square Online’s help and support options are the best we’ve seen compared to all its competitors!

Square Online offers support via:

• Phone
• Live chat
• Email
• Knowledge center

One of the things we were most impressed by during testing is how useful Square Online’s knowledge center is – our users found it easy to find the information they were looking for. The other great thing about Square Online’s support is that you can access it on the free plan – you don’t have to upgrade to unlock more support channels.

Squarespace boasts some ace restaurant features, such as its built-in menu widget and online reservations system, Squarespace Scheduling. Scheduling lets customers easily view your availability, book tables, and even make payments. Squarespace’s online ordering feature is pretty neat, too, and you shouldn’t have any trouble managing orders.

Squarespace allows inventory updates based on your online orders, although you can only update whole menu items, rather than individual ingredients. This could mean a little more effort to work out how many ingredients you have left after a busy day.

Customers can personalize their online orders thanks to Squarespace’s integration with ChowNow.

With the ChowNow integration, customers can view the menu, submit their order, and pay using a collapsible ChowNow order page. Luckily, this all takes place directly on your Squarespace site, without redirecting away from it.

Unlike Wix, Shopify, and Square Online, Squarespace doesn’t have a dedicated POS to sync your inventory in your real-life restaurant. You can offer delivery or store pickups, but there are no integrations with delivery apps such as Deliveroo.

Squarespace doesn’t do badly when it comes to sales features, offering a range of payment gateways and 0% transaction fees as long as you choose from its two ecommerce plans.

However, compared to Wix and Shopify, which both scored over 4 out of 5 for their sales features, Squarespace is a less powerful option. It scored 3.4 out of 5 for its sales tools – it offers fewer payment options and no stock monitoring features, for example.

On the plus side, Squarespace does now offer a Square integration, making it easier to sync your inventory when running pop-up stands or market stalls.

Design is where Squarespace really shines – it has the best designs out of all the ecommerce restaurant builders we’ve tested!

It comes with beautiful, restaurant-specific templates – complete with built-in features, such as a menu widget – to make building your site easier.

Squarespace lets your product photography shine – people can’t smell your food online, but Squarespace uses large, high-quality images to showcase your mouth-watering images!

Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan, but you can try it out free for 14 days before choosing from one of its paid plans, which range from $18 to $40 per month, billed annually.

The cheapest plan with ecommerce functionality is the $18 per month Business plan, but to remove transaction fees, you’ll need at least the $26 per month Basic Commerce plan.

Compared to its rivals, Squarespace offers better value than Shopify, but less than Square Online.

Squarespace is the easiest to use ecommerce restaurant builder, with a score of 4.2 out of 5. That means it’s even easier to use than Wix, which is famous for its easy drag-and-drop editor!

Our users found Squarespace easy to use during our testing, thanks to its straightforward editor and easy to navigate backend. In comparison, users found Wix’s backend and inventory management confusing. So if you’re looking for a smooth, simple building process, and easy management, Squarespace is a great choice!

Squarespace provides all the usual support channels – knowledge base, email, live chat, and social media – but it doesn’t offer phone support. So if you’re a bit old fashioned and want to pick up the phone to get support, Squarespace isn’t the right choice.

Wix has the best restaurant features out of all the informational restaurant builders we tested, scoring a near perfect score of 4.9 out of 5. Not only does it give you plenty of features to help run your business, but it gives you creative control over your menus and bookings too.

We love Wix’s fully-customizable menu widget – you can choose whether you want to display pricing, dish options, dish labels, or images, and you can also customize the menu design to match your on-site branding.

Wix also comes with a built-in reservation widget, so that customers can place bookings directly through your restaurant website. You can amend the number of people allowed to make a booking at any one time, limit how many people are allowed per party, and set a notice period for reservations.

You can also set up an automatic confirmation email in your reservation settings dashboard.

What we would have liked to see from Wix is a phone reservation call to action. While other builders like Squarespace let customers ring you directly through an on-site call to action, with Wix, you can’t link to a phone number.

One of our favorite things about Wix is the level of creative freedom it gives its users, while remaining super easy to use. Its menus and reservation forms are all customizable so that you can keep your branding consistent across your website, and you can easily add images and text across the board.

Wix has 69 food and restaurant templates to choose from, so you’ll have plenty of options no matter the style or vibe of your business. Wix’s restaurant templates come with relevant features already built in, such as menu widgets and online reservations.

The only complaint we have with Wix’s templates is that you can’t switch once you’ve published your site – so make sure you’re happy with your design before committing!

Wix has a free plan, which is useful for trying out the builder to see if it’s right for your restaurant business. Wix then has four price plans, ranging from $14 to $49 per month when billed annually.

Wix scored 4 out of 5 for value for money, due mainly to its somewhat pricey starting price of $14 per month (billed annually). This means it offers decent value, although you don’t get as much for your money as you do with Squarespace or GoDaddy.

We recommend upgrading to a paid plan for all business websites in order to remove Wix adverts from your site, improve storage, and connect a professional domain name.

Wix is the easiest restaurant website builder to use – not only does this make it perfect for beginners, but it can also be an ideal choice for busy business owners who don’t have time to learn their way around a tricky editor.

One of the reasons Wix is so easy to use is thanks to its drag-and-drop editing tools, which let you drag elements, such as images and text boxes, anywhere you want them on your page. This gives you total freedom over your site, but can be daunting if you don’t have much experience with web design best practices.

Overall, though, you’ll find Wix a breeze to use – there’s very little learning curve, and its editor is very intuitive. You can jump straight in and start building!

Wix scores 4.3 out of 5 for its help and support offerings. You get access to Wix’s help center, 24/7 callback service, support tickets, and more.

Our favorite part of Wix’s support options is its in-editor support – question mark bubbles provide helpful hints, tips, and guidance, so that you don’t need to leave the editor for answers while you build.

One of the reasons Wix doesn’t score full marks for its customer support is that you have to pay more to receive priority support. Still, with 24/7 support on all plans, you should find answers no matter your budget.

Squarespace is the second-best restaurant builder for features, coming just behind Wix with a score of 4.8 out of 5. It provides a great range of in-house restaurant features to make setting up and running your website nice and easy.

You’ll find menus built into its restaurant website templates, plus a choice of online reservation options. Squarespace integrates with OpenTable, but also comes with an in-house scheduling widget that notifies you whenever a new table is booked.

We recommend using Squarespace’s scheduling widget, because it comes with the option to take payments for larger bookings, and allows customers to reschedule, edit, or cancel their forms. You can also prevent canceling or rescheduling less than 12 hours before a booking to reduce the headache of rearranging tables.

A great perk of the scheduling widget is that it provides a calendar view for an easy way to keep track of how many guests you have booked at what time – a feature that’s especially important in this current era of social distancing.

Customers even receive an automatic confirmation email once they’ve booked through your Squarespace website. Alternatively, you can give customers the option to call your restaurant directly with a phone reservation call to action button.

The only drawback to Squarespace’s features is that its menu builder isn’t totally customizable like Wix’s is.

Not only does Squarespace have the best designs on the market, but it also has templates specifically designed for restaurants. And they’re good, too – Squarespace scores 4.5 out of 5 for its designs, making it the best builder for creating a stylish website alongside Wix.

Squarespace’s templates make creating a stylish website even easier, because they’re already tailored to your industry – for example, you’ll find a menu already built into your design.

There are 16 restaurant-specific templates for you to choose from, and each one is modern, stylish, and follows design best practices. If aesthetics are as important to you as features, then Squarespace offers the full package!

However as with the menu widget, you don’t have total freedom when designing your site, something that Wix does offer. It just depends on your preference.

Squarespace scores 4.5 out of 5 for value for money, making it the best value option because of the sheer number of features you get for your money.

Sure, it’s not the cheapest builder on our list, but neither is it the most expensive – at $12 per month, it’s cheaper than both Wix and Duda. Squarespace’s cheapest plan includes unlimited storage and bandwidth, access to all its templates, a free domain on annual plans, and 24/7 customer support.

Squarespace comes with a 14-day free trial, so even though it doesn’t have a free plan, you can still try it risk-free before choosing a plan.

Ease of use was the area where Squarespace scored most poorly, but it still scores a very respectable 4 out of 5. This is because it has a bigger learning curve than builders like Wix, where you can just drag anything anywhere. While you don’t need tech experience to use Squarespace, you will need some time and patience.

Instead of jumping straight in, we recommend spending some time using Squarespace to get the hang of its editor before starting real work on your site – its 14-day free trial is perfect for learning the ropes.

Squarespace has a solid range of support channels, including:

• Knowledge base
• Live chat Monday to Friday
• 24/7 social media support via Twitter
• 24/7 email support
• Community forum

You’ll also find webinars and video tutorials in Squarespace’s knowledge base.

Out of the four restaurant website builders in this list, GoDaddy scores the least for features in our research – it’s not bad with 3.4 out of 5, but it’s not a powerful option, either.

The main reason for this is the fact GoDaddy doesn’t have a built-in reservations feature – you’re reliant on its OpenTable integration.

However, you will find a handy menu widget built into your template. You can choose from multiple design options for a menu that matches your branding, use images, and add your own text.

Something we would like to see from GoDaddy is the option to add a phone call to action, to make it easy for customers to call your business in a single click.

GoDaddy has a number of professionally designed, visually pleasing templates, including restaurant-specific designs.

 

The best way to use GoDaddy is to let its ADI editor create a range of tailored template layouts for you, and pick the one you like the most. This way, your starting point is a template that already has relevant restaurant features such as menus built-in, and contains your business name and information, instead of a generic design.

GoDadd’s ADI setup makes it the fastest way to create your restaurant website, making it perfect if you need to build an online presence quickly.

The drawback to GoDaddy’s designs is that customization is pretty limited – our users found it hard to create something truly unique with its editing tools.

GoDaddy offers better value for money than Wix, but less value than Squarespace – GoDaddy’s plans score 4.2 out of 5 for value in our research. GoDaddy has a free plan, which is great for trying out its editor, and four paid plans:

• Basic: $6.99/month, billed annually – renews at $11.99/month
• Premium: $13.99/month, billed annually – renews at $21.99/month
• Commerce: $14.99/month, billed annually – renews at $24.99/month
• Commerce Plus: $29.99/month, billed annually – renews at $44.99/month

GoDaddy’s starting price is an affordable option, even when you look at its renewal cost – $6.99 per month is still cheaper than both Wix and Squarespace!

However, for restaurants we recommend the $13.99 per month Premium plan, because it includes useful features that aren’t available on the cheapest plans, such as:

• Advanced SEO tools
• Unlimited social media integration (share as many posts, across as many channels, as you like)
• Take payments for appointments – useful if you require a deposit for large table bookings
• Remind customers of upcoming bookings via email and text

GoDaddy is super easy to get started with, thanks to its intuitive ADI editor. All you have to do is answer a few simple questions – such as the type name of your business – and GoDaddy creates a tailored template for you to customize. It does half the work for you!

However, once  you start customizing, it’s less intuitive. Although it’s user-friendly, and uses a simple layout, GoDaddy’s editor offers limited customization. This can prove frustrating if you have a clear plan for your web design, and makes certain tasks – such as resizing images – harder than they should be.

In testing, our users found Wix easier to use than GoDaddy, despite GoDaddy’s design assistance!

GoDaddy offers the usual channels for you to access support, including:

• Phone
• Social media
• Live chat
• Knowledge Center
• Community forum
• In-editor help

The only things missing are email support, and advanced specialist support (such as webinars or fast-track priority).

A big reason GoDaddy only scores 3.8 out of 5 for its support is that our users struggled to find useful answers when they tested out GoDaddy’s knowledge center.

Duda has some attractive features – especially when it comes to design customization – but when it comes to restaurant features, it could do better. For example, it relies on the OpenTable widget to allow online reservations. Duda’s built-in booking feature is geared toward paid bookings such as haircuts, and so isn’t suitable for restaurant reservations.

That said, we liked the way Duda’s built-in menu widget lets you use a CSV file to upload your menu, which then formats to match your site’s branding. You also get to decide whether you display pricing, dish labels, dish options, and images within your menu.

Duda is ideal if you want to personalize your restaurant website because of its easy-to-use widgets and apps, which let you add tailored interactions with your site based on factors such as location. However, it’s worth mentioning that you have to choose the $44 per month Agency plan to use Duda’s widget builder.

Duda scores 3.8 out of 5 for design – this is one of its stronger areas, although it can’t compete with Squarespace, Wix, or GoDaddy, all of which score 4 or above for design. Duda has a small range of seven restaurant-specific templates, all of which are modern, clean, and simple.

Duda’s templates are pretty structured, so you can only customize within your template’s limits – if you start trying to change your design too much, you’ll find Duda clunky and awkward to navigate.

Duda is the worst value restaurant builder we’ve tested, with a score of just 1.1 out of 5. If you’re on a budget and want to make your money go further, Duda simply isn’t the right builder for you.

Duda has a 14-day free trial, and a starting plan that costs $14 per month, billed annually. That’s the same starting price as Wix – however, Duda’s cheapest plan has limited features and support.

Duda has three paid plans:

• Basic: $14/month, billed annually
• Team: $22/month, billed annually
• Agency: $44/month, billed annually

There’s also a Custom plan for large enterprises.

Duda’s plans are expensive, which would be okay if it had outstanding features. But as our research showed, its restaurant-specific offerings just aren’t as good as Squarespace’s, which provides much better value for money.

Duda’s Basic plan only provides email support, and no collaboration or client management tools. You have to choose the $22 per month Team plan to access phone and chat support. To use Duda’s widget builder you need the $44 per month Agency plan.

Overall, you can get better features for less money with a builder like Squarespace or Wix, both of which score better for features and value for money in our research.

The good news is Duda has a 14-day free trial, so you can take it for a test drive before shelling out for one of its plans.

Duda is a wonderfully simple builder, and as long as you stick to the structure laid out by your template, you should find it pretty easy to use. In fact, Duda is one of the easiest to use restaurant builders we’ve tested – it scores 4.4 out of 5, meaning it’s just as easy to use as Wix!

The support you get access to depends on the price plan you choose.

Those on the cheapest $14 per month Basic plan only receive support via email, as well as through Duda’s help center. The $22 per month plan further unlocks chat and phone support, while the most expensive Agency plan gives you priority email support as well, at a cost of $44 per month (billed annually).

We’d like to see more support options on the cheapest plan – if you’re paying $14 per month, you should be able to access more than email support!