6 Best Website Builders for Political Campaigns in 2023

When you’re a politician, every cent of donor money you spend on your political campaign will be scrutinized. You need to make sure your website builder offers a ton of value – for you and your voters. Choose the wrong builder, and you risk losing valuable time and money, giving your opponent an easy advantage.

That’s because your campaign website is more than just a collection of pages – it’s a hub where potential voters go to learn about you and your platform. Unfortunately, not every website builder is equipped to help you create this digital hub. Many completely lack features you need such as site analytics, forms for gathering data, or tools to help you reach more potential voters.

Features aren’t the only consideration, though. Some website builders with advanced functionality may not have enough design customization options to help your website stand out. No matter how compelling your message is, your voters won’t engage with a website that looks impersonal, generic, or has inconsistent branding.

I’ve tested the best website builders on the market, and I’ve found six that offer the best features for creating a political campaign website that wins votes.

What We Look For in the Best Website Builders for Political Campaigns

Your campaign website needs to look great and have powerful tools to help you to reach new voters. I made sure that every website builder on this list has the following features and benefits:

• Ease of use. As your campaign gains momentum, you don’t want to be spending your valuable time trying to figure out a complicated website builder. These builders all come with intuitive site editors that are simple to learn.
• Forms, forms, forms. These platforms all have built-in or third-party form builders. You can keep your campaign rolling with customizable forms for collecting donations, creating surveys and polls, and even finding volunteers.
• Tools for reaching out to voters. As a political candidate, you’ll want to be in tune with your voter base. Your website builder should allow you to share content on social media, and gather and analyze data about potential voters, endorsers, or donors.
• Professional-looking templates. A poorly designed website can undermine your legitimacy in the eyes of voters. That’s why I only included builders with high-quality templates that give you a head start in creating a commanding online presence.

1. Wix: Best for Modern Campaign Websites

Website builders don’t get much more straightforward than Wix. With Wix’s drag-and-drop editor, you can move blocks of text, images, videos, and other content around your page until everything looks exactly how you want it.

While you can use any of Wix’s 800+ templates for your next campaign, there are also a handful of specialized templates designed for political campaigns. With pre-built donation buttons, news pages, and event columns, you’ll be able to set up your campaign website in less than an hour.

Just remember that once you’ve chosen a template, you can’t change it, so make sure you pick one you’ll want for your whole campaign.

Features

• Dedicated Members Area. Wix allows you to create a members-only area of your website. This gives your voters a space to come together and create profiles, have discussions on a forum, chat with each other, and share files.
• Video hosting. Wix has a great video player that allows you to upload videos of important speeches and messages to your supporters. This will help you to keep current voters engaged and get potential voters interested in your campaign.
• Wix App Market. Here you’ll find many free and paid apps to add specific functions to your campaign website. There are apps for live chatting, building custom forms, tracking visitors, collecting donations, building an events calendar, and more.
• Wix ADI. If you don’t have a lot of time to set up a website, Wix’s AI-powered design tool will build a website for you. All you need to do is answer a few questions about what your site should do and how it should look, and you’ll get a custom website in minutes.

Learn about other great features in our expert Wix review.

2. Squarespace: Best for Built-In Marketing Tools

Squarespace offers a simple drag-and-drop editor, making it easy to build a modern, engaging, and unique campaign website. Not only that, but you’ll also get a ton of advanced built-in features, including great marketing and promotional tools you can use to reach a broader audience.

You can set up social media sharing buttons in just a few clicks, which makes it easy for your voters to share your speeches, events, and donation page with their network. Squarespace’s SEO tools will also show you how to optimize your site for search engines to make your content easier to find.

Squarespace doesn’t offer any templates specifically for political campaigns, but I recommend using a local business or nonprofit template as these usually have donation buttons and store pages ready to go. With a few simple edits to your template, you can get a professional campaign website up and running.

Features

• Donation Blocks. These allow you to connect your PayPal or Stripe account to your website so you can accept donations. You can add suggested amounts or let donors decide for themselves, and you can customize additional fields if you want to collect more information about your supporters.
• Built-in email campaigns. This feature allows you to build, design, and edit email campaigns and send them to your mailing list. You can do this on any device, so you’ll still be able to communicate with voters when you’re out campaigning.
• Social media integration. Squarespace allows you to link multiple social profiles to your website, so you can post content automatically. Save time by sharing content between all your platforms with one click.
• E-commerce functionality. You can sell merchandise, event tickets, and even subscriptions through Squarespace, helping you to fund your campaign. Squarespace will even calculate shipping fees and taxes within the US.

Dive deeper into this platform’s features in our full Squarespace review.

3. Hostinger: Best for Time-Saving AI Website Tools

During the height of your campaign, you don’t want to be spending dozens of hours each week maintaining your campaign website. Fortunately, Hostinger’s AI-powered website tools are here to help you save time.

While setting up a website on Hostinger Website Builder takes less than an hour, you can speed up the process by using its AI template generator to create a unique template for your campaign. If you’re stuck for ideas with your campaign slogan, section titles, or even entire blog posts, Hostinger Website Builder has an AI generator that can help.

This tool is great for generating ideas, but I wouldn’t recommend using its suggestions without some heavy editing. Some of the generated slogans were ungrammatical, and the blog generator doesn’t give you much more than a paragraph’s worth of content. However, if you’re not sure what you want to write about, Hostinger Website Builder’s AI generator can help to spark some ideas.

Features

• 140+ templates.  Hostinger Website Builder has a fair amount of unique, elegant, and minimalist templates that are ideal for campaign websites. You’re not stuck using the example layout, either – each template is fully customizable.
• Built-in SEO tools. Market yourself to potential new voters by using Hostinger Website Builder’s integrations for Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Facebook Messenger, and Meta Pixel. You’ll also get a free SSL certificate on all Hostinger Website Builder plans, which will boost your search engine rankings and build trust in your site.
• 24/7 support. If you run into any problems when you’re out campaigning, you might only get a chance to contact tech support early in the morning or late at night. Fortunately, Hostinger Website Builder’s email and live chat support lines are available 24/7.
• E-commerce and donations. Hostinger Website Builder lets you accept donations on the Business plan via Stripe. You can expand this to 70+ different payment methods on the eCommerce plan and above, which will also let you sell merchandise and event tickets, track inventory, and sell on social media.

See how AI tools can help your campaign in our expert Hostinger Website Builder review.

4. IONOS: Best for Politicians on a Budget

If you’re running your campaign on a strict budget, then IONOS is a good choice for you. The Starter plan costs less than a takeout coffee each month, and you’ll get a custom domain and professional email included. You can also add an e-commerce option to any plan so you can accept donations and sell merchandise or event tickets.

IONOS also offers design and management packages, which are ideal if you want a completely unique website without the hassle. While these plans are more expensive (and come with a setup fee), it’s one of the cheapest ways to get a completely custom website with ongoing edits and maintenance included.

It’s worth bearing in mind that you’ll get what you pay for with IONOS – there aren’t a lot of templates on offer, and you’re limited in the customization options you get. You will, however, get a modern, clean, and mobile-friendly website that doesn’t use up all your budget.

Features

• RankingCoach. IONOS integrates with RankingCoach, which offers automated SEO tools to help potential voters find your campaign website. If you don’t have the time to manage your SEO marketing or the budget to hire an expert, this is a great tool to have.
• Intelligent personalization. On the Plus plan and above, you can show different content to different visitors. This enables you to tailor different experiences for donors clicking a link from your newsletter and potential voters that find your campaign on Google, for instance.
• Social media integration. With IONOS, you can link your social media platforms to your website with simple like/follow buttons to encourage engagement. You’ll also be able to use images from your social media accounts to help you set up your website quickly.
• Multilingual options. IONOS supports automatic translation in over 60 languages, which is ideal if you’re campaigning within a multilingual community.

Read our in-depth IONOS review to see how you can set up a website for less.

5. SITE123: Best for Building Campaign Websites Quickly

SITE123 is an easy, quick, and intuitive website builder. It doesn’t have a drag-and-drop editor like some other website builders, but SITE123 is a great choice if you want to get a great campaign website up and running as quickly as possible.

There are over 150 templates, but none designed specifically for a political campaign, so you’ll have to customize the one you choose. All the templates are mobile-responsive, so your website will look good on any device your visitors are using to view it.

While SITE123 is well-suited for simple, elegant websites, you might find the similarity of its templates somewhat limiting. This might not be a dealbreaker if you just want to get a good-looking site up quickly. But if you’re looking to really wow your voters, you might be better off opting for a builder with a superior template library, such as Wix or Squarespace.

Features

• Simple donation options. SITE123 has an easy-to-use donation page where you can set predetermined amounts or allow users to enter their own amount. It also offers an integration with Donate.ly, a professional fundraising tool.
• Analytics tools. You can add the Google Analytics app to your website to get a better idea of where your visitors come from, their interests, and how they interact with your page.
• Chat with voters. You can also integrate Zendesk Chat so that potential voters know you’re always available to answer questions or even just a quick “hello.”
• Multilingual websites. Reach more voters by giving them the option to read your website in their preferred language. Your website will be automatically translated, but you’ll also have the option to manually translate your content to make sure it’s accurate.

Read our in-depth SITE123 review to learn what else the platform has to offer.

6. WordPress.com: Best for Bespoke Campaign Websites

WordPress.com offers some of the best features for creating a striking political campaign website. With over 160 themes and plenty of built-in features, WordPress.com gives you a lot of freedom in the way you build your site and the look of the final product.

It does have a steeper learning curve than some of our other top website builders, so it’s not ideal for absolute beginners. However, if you’ve got any questions, WordPress.com offers 24/7 live chat on the Premium plan and above. Not only that, but WordPress (as a whole) has built a strong community of website designers who are happy to offer support.

This community support is what makes WordPress.com shine. There are thousands of third-party themes and plugins available (both free and paid) that allow you to fully customize your campaign website. With plugins for donation buttons, social media, event management, and more, you’ll be able to build a fully functional campaign website without needing to know a single line of code.

Features

• Variety of third-party themes. ThemeForest, a third-party marketplace, has a lot of responsive themes made especially for political campaigns. One of my favorites, aptly called “Campaign,” is a sleek, modern template with donate buttons, a section for news, contact forms, an events calendar, and much more.
• Advanced social sharing capabilities. WordPress.com has built-in social sharing buttons that you can put on each post so your readers can easily share your content and help you reach more voters.
• Built-in stats tracking. Whether you look at your website’s dashboard on desktop or mobile, you’ll have access to graphs, lists, and charts that track your website’s visitors. You can also see in-depth stats such as where your visitors clicked and which websites referred them to you.
• Recurring donations. You can set up subscriptions on any WordPress.com plan, which is a great way to collect recurring donations from your supporters.

For more website building features, read our expert WordPress.com review.

How to Build a Website For Your Political Campaign

Building a stunning, modern, and informative campaign website can seem complicated on the surface, particularly if you’re new to website builders. Fortunately, it’s really simple! Just follow my step-by-step guide:

1. Choose a website builder. If you’ve got time, I recommend using free trials to try our recommended website builders and see which one works for your campaign. But, if you don’t have time, don’t worry – most website builders have money-back guarantees so you won’t lose your campaign funds.

2. Choose your website’s template. Every website builder on this list offers professional, high-quality templates that will give your voters confidence in your cause. In particular, I recommend Wix – any one of its 800+ templates can be customized to work for your campaign.

3. Add a contact form. Both current and potential voters desire to see your willingness for conversation and discussion. Providing a simple contact form not only enables this, but also fosters trust that you truly care about their interests.

4. Share your website. Your voters need to know where to find you, and that doesn’t just extend to in-person events. Share your website to your social media accounts and add its URL to your campaign leaflets so voters know where to find more about your campaign.

Being a Politician Is Hard; Building a Campaign Website Doesn’t Have to Be

Choosing the right website builder is a simple way to get ahead of the other candidates and create a space for voters to learn more about your platform. So, which website builder should you choose for your political campaign website? Well, it depends.

If you want a quick, versatile, do-it-yourself website builder with all the essential features, I strongly recommend Wix. There are dedicated political campaign templates you can use to get started and lots of tools to help you grow your voter base. You’ll get a ton of customization options, too.

Squarespace is a great choice if voter outreach is your priority. With plenty of built-in marketing tools, including an email campaign tool, you’ll get all the support you need to attract potential voters.

Finally, you’ll love Hostinger Website Builder if you want a website builder that’ll save you time while you’re on the campaign trail. Its AI tools will build you a custom template for your campaign and even generate content ideas, which is ideal if you don’t have time to plan what kind of content you want to include on your website.

This table will give you a good overview of the best features each website builder offers.

FAQ

How can I accept donations on my political campaign website?

Accepting donations for your political campaign is something that most website builders support, but the way this is done depends on the individual website builder. For example, Wix has third-party donation apps that you can easily add to your website. If your website builder doesn’t offer these, you can use a platform like DonorBox to embed a donation form, provided you have an SSL certificate on your website.

How much does a political campaign website cost?

The cost of a political campaign website will vary depending on what features you need. Website builders are a convenient way to create your campaign website if you’re a beginner, but they can be more expensive than building and hosting a website yourself. For a full breakdown of the costs associated with building a campaign website, check out our guide to building a website in 2023.

What should I include in my political campaign website?

Your campaign website needs to keep your voters engaged, so you’ll need forms, surveys, and polls. A chat feature or member’s area is a great way to build a connection with your voters. You’ll also want to learn more about your visitors, so you appreciate a website builder that has analytics tools to help you understand the age, location, and other characteristics of your visitors.

Where can I find templates for a political candidate website?

Not all website builders have dedicated templates for political campaigns, but our top website builders in 2023 all offer fantastic alternatives that can work just as well with a few tweaks. Some builders, like WordPress.com, even allow you to import third-party themes. If your website builder supports custom code, you could also hire a website designer on Fiverr to build a custom campaign template for you for as little as $5.