What Is the Best Website Builder for Therapists? 4 Ideas

As a brand and website designer who regularly creates private practice websites, I often get asked: What is the best website builder for therapists? Before I answer this question, let’s backtrack.

Why Is It Important to Have a Therapist Website? 

Creating a compelling and professional website helps you attract potential clients, build trust with your target audience, and confidently grow your brand. If you’ve ever been asked, “Can I get a link to your website?” and felt uneasy, creating a therapist website that you’re truly proud of can turn this question into the highlight of your day!

You need to use a website builder to create a website for your private practice. The good thing is that there are many website builders out there. The bad thing? There are many website builders out there, and it can be challenging to figure out which one is right for you. In this blog post, I’ll share four website builders that therapists can use. I’ll also explain the pros and cons of each one!

What Is a Website Builder?

A website builder is a tool that allows you to create a professional website with no coding or technical knowledge required. It can provide pre-designed templates, drag-and-drop editors, and various features to customize the website to fit your needs. Most therapist websites are built using a website builder.

When Should I Launch My Private Practice Website?

As soon as possible! Some therapists think that they need to wait until they have more clients to build their website, but the truth is that creating a website allows you to create a cohesive brand identity and makes you appear more legitimate. 

Your website will evolve as you grow your private practice, but it’s a good idea to have a therapist website from the very beginning. As an entrepreneur, you’ll never have everything 100% figured out. The way to figure it out is to take action!

Launching your website will also make it easier to attract clients and help you grow your therapy practice faster. So, without further ado, let’s discuss the best website builders for therapists below.

Best Website Builder for Therapists: My Top 4 Picks

• Best Overall: Showit
• Most Affordable: WordPress
• Therapist-Focused: TherapySites
• Free Hosting: Squarespace
  
  

1. Showit

I’m a Showit Design Partner and Showit is my platform of choice for all of my clients, but there are a few special things that make it a fantastic choice specifically for therapists. 

If you’re not familiar with Showit, it’s an intuitive, drag-and-drop website builder that has gained immense popularity with creative entrepreneurs and small business owners because of its beautiful design and unmatched creative freedom.

✅ Beautiful Design with Zero Restrictions

Literally, none. There is no comparison between Showit and other website builders on this list (or elsewhere) in terms of creative freedom and how aesthetically pleasing your entire website can be. 

Showit’s intuitive user interface allows you to build a website that reflects your personality and approach with unique layouts that attract new clients. As a graphic designer with 10+ years of experience, I’ve never seen a website builder as beautiful and creative as Showit!

This is a recent Showit website I created for a therapist – read the full story!

✅ Mobile Responsiveness

One of the core features that sets Showit apart from other website builders is that you can design a completely separate mobile-friendly version of your website.

More than half of your website visitors come to your website using their phones. This means that the user experience on mobile has to be impeccable (as in, easy navigation, even formatting, functional links and buttons, etc.). 

Most website builders do some basic optimization of your website’s desktop version for mobile, but 99% of the time they end up clunky and hard to navigate. This means that you can lose over half of your website traffic because your website is not mobile-responsive!

Showit solves this problem by allowing you to create a separate mobile version of your website so your ideal clients get the best experience when browsing on their phones. You have unlimited freedom to optimize the mobile version and change it up regardless of what the desktop version of your website looks like. It’s pretty amazing!

✅ Strong SEO & WordPress Integration

Having the most beautiful therapist website in the world won’t make much of a difference if your potential clients can’t find your private practice. 

This is why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important. Simply put, SEO is all about intentionally using keywords that your prospective clients are searching for to help them find your website on Google. Showit makes SEO optimization very easy during the design process!

Showit also offers a WordPress blogging integration, which can tremendously help with SEO. WordPress (another website builder on this list) is one of the strongest platforms for blogging, which is why it’s a huge advantage that with Showit, you get to design aesthetically-looking blog posts and publish them through WordPress, reaping the benefits of all the SEO functionality and plug-ins like Yoast.

✅ Functional Integrations

When you’re building a therapist website, it’s important to be able to easily add client portal links or appointment scheduling widgets from tools like Acuity or SimplePractice. It’s very easy to do so on Showit, which makes running your private practice much easier! Here’s an example of a therapist website I created with a built-in link to their client portal. Check out the full website here!

✅ Great Customer Support Team

Last but not least, Showit has a friendly and highly capable customer support team that can help you figure out what to do when something is not working right. Don’t underestimate the value of this! 

Showit is an incredibly reliable and user-friendly platform, but there are bound to be times when you’re trying to make a small update to your therapist website and something is just not clicking. Showit customer support team is very quick to respond and can help you resolve any challenge.

❌ Limited E-Commerce Functionality

Showit is not the best website builder for e-commerce (even though certain integrations can make an existing Showit website more e-commerce friendly, such as Shopify Starter and WooCommerce). 

If you need a website builder with high e-commerce functionality – which you most likely don’t as a therapist – then Showit may not be the website builder for you.

Showit Pricing

Showit pricing starts at $19/month when billed annually. The basic Showit Plan doesn’t include any SEO blogging. If you want to have a blog on your therapist website, the Starter Blog Plan is $24/month when billed annually and the Advanced Blog Plan is $34/month when billed annually.

Is Showit HIPAA-Compliant?

Showit, as a website builder, does not inherently guarantee HIPAA compliance. That said, you can build a HIPAA-compliant website on Showit under certain conditions, so that protected health information (PHI) isn’t stored with Showit. 

Many aspects go into creating a HIPAA-compliant website, such as using secure third-party portals for client communication and scheduling (such as SimplePractice), encrypting sensitive data, and adhering to other HIPAA regulations.

As a website designer, I can help you create a HIPAA-compliant contact form using Google Forms and then code it with CSS to look like a normal contact form. For this contact form to be HIPAA-compliant, you must first be a Google Workspace user and sign Google’s Business Associate Agreement.

Get in touch with me to talk more about how I can help make the website building process HIPAA-compliant, but please note that I cannot fully control or guarantee HIPAA compliance since this is ultimately in the control of the therapy practice business owner.

2. WordPress

WordPress is a website builder that has been around forever and it continues to remain a popular choice for therapists looking for an affordable yet powerful website builder.

✅ Flexibility

WordPress has many customization options when building your therapist website. You can choose from thousands of themes ranging from sleek and minimalist designs to vibrant and dynamic. Some plugins let you add features and functionality tailored to your specific needs, whether that’s integrating e-commerce capabilities or optimizing for search engines.

✅ SEO-Friendly

WordPress is one of the strongest website builders for SEO purposes. WordPress’s architecture is designed with search engine optimization principles in mind, which will help your therapist website rank higher on Google. WordPress also has many SEO plugins and tools to help you optimize your website content, meta tags, and images for relevant keywords and phrases.

✅ Affordable Pricing

WordPress is one of the most affordable website builders for therapists. There is a free plan (although it can be quite limiting) and the paid plans start as low as $4/month when billed annually and include a free domain name.

❌ Steep Learning Curve

WordPress can be confusing to use and may sometimes even require some technical or coding experience. If you don’t know how to code, it’ll likely mean that you’ll end up needing to frequently hire a developer, even for small changes, which can be costly and frustrating over time.

You need to understand concepts such as themes, plugins, and widgets, and, overall, designing websites on WordPress is not as easy as it is on other website builders. If you want to create a DIY website or be able to easily access your website’s backend to make tweaks, consider using another website builder!

❌ Limited Creativity

When compared with other website builders on this list – especially when Showit! – WordPress doesn’t allow as much creativity and your therapist website may end up looking not as beautiful as you’d like it to be. In my opinion, WordPress websites can look quite outdated!

3. TherapySites

TherapySites is a website builder that specializes exclusively in websites for therapists, unlike other website builders on this list.

✅ Designed for Therapists

TherapySites is designed for therapists, by therapists. As a result, this website builder has therapists’ unique needs in mind, such as HIPAA-compliant online appointment scheduling, therapist-developed content, and a 6-month free directory listing in the Psychology Today Therapy Directory. You can also integrate your website with email marketing software and other third-party applications.

❌ Outdated Design

From what I’ve seen, TherapySites websites can look quite outdated, which makes attracting clients difficult. Compared with other private practice websites, TherapySites themes simply don’t look as nice.

❌ Limited Customization

While TherapySites templates are designed with therapists in mind, they may offer less flexibility in customization compared to other builders. There are only a few themes available and it can be quite hard to make your therapist website actually look and feel like you.

❌ Expensive

TherapySites offers one all-in-one package for $59/month. It includes a 6-month free directory listing in Psychology Today, web hosting, and helpful tools like client management tools and online appointment requests, but it’s still quite expensive when compared with other website builders on this list.

4. Squarespace

Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders today that’s relatively easy to use. It allows you to create a beautiful website and you can get your custom domain on Squarespace as well!

✅ Beautiful Templates

Squarespace offers a wide selection of professionally designed templates that are visually stunning and modern. You don’t need any coding knowledge or design expertise to customize the templates with your copy and branding. When compared with other website builders on this list, such as WordPress and TherapySites, Squarespace offers a much more beautiful design without a huge amount of effort.

❌ Limited Customization and Creativity

Squarespace templates are visually appealing, but customization options can be somewhat limited compared to other website builders. There are many constraints, such as the grid system, that can make it hard to create a website that reflects your personality and brand. This can be frustrating for many therapists!

❌ Limited SEO

While Squarespace includes basic SEO features such as customizable page titles and meta descriptions, users have less control over advanced SEO settings compared to platforms like Showit and WordPress. Squarespace blogging capabilities are also weaker than those of Showit and WordPress.

❌ No HIPAA-Compliance

Squarespace isn’t designed for HIPAA compliance, which is a big consideration for therapists. If you want your clients to schedule appointments directly on your website, you need to use certain scheduling plugins that are HIPAA-compliant. Contact forms on Squarespace are not HIPAA-compliant. 

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace is priced similarly to Showit and comes with a free 14-day trial. When paid annually, the lowest plan starts at $16/month. Squarespace subscription also includes a free custom domain.

Final Thoughts: Showit Is the Best Website Builder for Therapists

Overall, as a brand identity and web designer who regularly works with therapists, I believe that Showit is the best website builder for therapists.

It offers an unmatched creative freedom that allows you to create a beautiful, modern, and high-performing website that forges deep and meaningful connections with your ideal clients. Paired with its SEO capabilities, mobile responsiveness, and supportive customer support, it’s the best option for therapist websites. Learn more about my Showit design services!