You can absolutely do that. If you want to upgrade to a paid plan to get some of the features you want, then you can switch at any time through the My Products option in your account or with the help of a GoDaddy Guide. Once you upgrade your site will have all the same customizations and work that you've already put in place, just with the added features. See Website Builder plans and pricing for more info.
Shopify’s primary focus is ecommerce, so they are specifically geared toward building this kind of site for as little as $29 a month. There is also a ‘Lite’ plan available for only $9 a month, which allows users to add a Shopify buy button to an existing site (which can be on another platform). Importantly, the industry- standard encryption SSL certificate is included with all their sites.
WordPress is easy to setup, install, run, and manage. There are numerous themes, plugins, and other products built for WordPress, and You have no shortage for help (which you’ll often need) from tons of “learn all about it yourself” self-help content on the WordPress official site, communities, blogs, and more. It would take weeks to build websites like these from scratch without all these convenient extras mentioned above.
Customization on WordPress requires much more technical skill than it does with website builders. You’ll need to dive into the code to make the changes you want. If you’re comfortable with HTML, CSS, and Javascript (or looking to learn more about them), this shouldn’t be an obstacle. Just be wary. WordPress offers more control than website builders, but only to those equipped to use it.
Hi Paul, I totally feel your pain here! It can be so hard to know where to start. You might find our website builder comparison chart a good place to start, or you can take our short quiz for a personal recommendation. The comments under our articles should also hopefully prove helpful. Other than that, we often find Reddit a good place to engage with a lot of like-minded people, so I'd suggest taking a look there. Thanks, Hannah
Several of the services included here offer free options, too. If you choose that path, however, your site will include branding from the provider, which necessarily makes your site less impressive to savvy surfers—and shoppers. Free offerings vary greatly in the storage, bandwidth, and site options they allow, so read the small print to find out how much you get with each provider. Strikingly, Weebly, Wix, and WordPress.com are among the most generous with their free offerings, if that's the way you want to go.
