A daycare website builder is a tool question with a business answer hiding inside it: can you, the owner or director, assemble a site that turns a parent's visit into a tour request?
The answer is yes, because the builder only holds the pages, and the pages do the work.
What those pages need, page by page, is the subject of our daycare website design guide; this page is about the tool choice, the free-versus-paid question, and the order to build in.
Why the site deserves the weekend
In a federal survey of how parents search for child care (OPRE report #2025-099, 2024 data), 60.2% of parents said they got child care information from providers themselves, through websites, flyers, ads, social media, visits or calls, and respondents could name more than one source.
Every other channel there is rented; the website is the one your center owns, so the build is worth doing well.
Wix, Squarespace or WordPress: the two routes
Search for daycare website builders and you meet two families of tools.
The hosted route, where Wix and Squarespace live, bundles the editor, the hosting and the software updates into one account you manage in a browser.
The WordPress route is open-source software installed on a hosting account you control, which buys flexibility and bills you the upkeep.
Hosted builders (Wix, Squarespace and peers)
- Editing, hosting and software updates handled in one browser account
- Templates and drag-and-drop blocks, form blocks included
- Upkeep is not your job
- What you can export and take with you varies by platform, so ask before you build
Self-hosted WordPress
- Open-source software installed on hosting you control
- Plugins and themes add whatever the site needs
- Updates, backups and security are your job or your helper's
- More control, and more places for a small site to go wrong
No sourced ranking of builders for child care exists, so "best website builder for daycare" has no honest one-line answer; run the checks below on any tool you are considering.
Free daycare website builder: check these before you build on it
A free plan is a fine way to learn a tool; the risk is discovering a limit after the whole site is built.
- Your own domain: the address bar shows your center's name, not the builder's
- No forced branding: any "built with" badge or ad the plan places on your pages can be turned off
- The form: the tour request form works on that plan, with the fields you want and no submission caps
- The photos: room for real photo galleries of your rooms and staff, not just stock slots
- Phone speed: your pages with your photos, loaded on your own phone
- The exit: your logins, and a stated way to take your content and domain with you if you leave
We print no builder prices here: vendors change plans often, and whatever a plan page says on the day you sign is the published fact, dated then.
What a center website costs all in, build and run, is the subject of our daycare website cost guide.
How to create a daycare website with a builder
The tool you pick matters less than the order you build in.
Write the page list first
Builders make pages cheap, which is how centers end up with twelve thin ones; the short list that converts is in our design guide, and the tour form belongs on every page in it.
Trial two builders with real content
Drop one real program page and your own photos into each trial, then change what a parent notices first; our daycare website templates guide covers what to change.
Build the tour form before anything pretty
Nielsen Norman Group's top form guideline is to cut every field that is unnecessary or learnable another way (2016), laid out in a single column with short related fields like City/State/Zip on one row.
Baymard's checkout research adds that the number of fields matters more than the number of steps (2024); the field-by-field work is our daycare tour request form guide.
Shoot your own photos
NN/g's eyetracking research found users study photos of real people and ignore decorative stock images (2010), so your rooms, your staff and your playground beat anything purchasable.
Photos of enrolled children go up only with written parent permission under your photo release.
Publish, then judge it on a phone
Connect your Google Business Profile, then load every page on your own phone and fill in your own tour form one-handed.
The rules that come with whatever you build
Accessibility: the DOJ's guidance of March 18, 2022 says it has consistently taken the position that the ADA applies to everything a business open to the public offers, including on the web, while leaving businesses flexibility in how they get there and naming no required technical standard for private businesses.
WCAG is the benchmark that guidance calls helpful, and the work shows up in your finished pages either way: contrast, field labels, keyboard navigation and alt text, which our daycare website accessibility guide details.
COPPA is the next one templates can trip: the FTC decides whether a site is directed to children under 13 from factors including subject matter, visual content, animated characters, child-oriented activities, music, the age of models, language and whether advertising is aimed at children (16 CFR 312.2).
A tuition-and-tours site written for parents points away from that; a games-and-videos "kids corner" could point the other way, an inference from the factors and not an FTC statement about child care.
The FTC also says COPPA covers personal information collected online from children, not information about children collected from parents, which is why a parent-filled tour form is not what COPPA targets.
And because templates ship with badge slots: NAEYC's accreditation policy handbook (2023) says the NAEYC logo belongs to NAEYC, only programs notified that they are accredited may use it, and the name or logo may not be used without prior written consent.
Rules change and states add their own, so confirm the details with your state licensing agency or a lawyer.
Where the builder stops
More Booked Enrollments does not sell website builds or redesigns, and we don't sell, resell or set up enrollment software either.
Our work starts where the build ends: one controlled test a month on the pages you already have, judged by tours booked and children enrolled rather than form fills, with current prices on our pricing page.
If the site exists and tours are thin, that testing work is the subject of our daycare website conversion guide.
Frequently asked questions
Can I build a daycare website myself, or should I hire it out?
The mainstream builders need no code, so the tool is not the hard part; the content is: the page answers, the photos and the tuition wording. What hiring the build out costs is its own topic, covered in our daycare website cost guide.
Is a free daycare website builder good enough?
Judge the plan on the checks in this guide: your own domain, no forced platform branding, the tour form included, and pages that load fast on a phone. Builders change their plans often, so what the plan page says on the day you look is the fact that counts.
Wix or Squarespace for a preschool website?
Both are hosted drag-and-drop tools that can hold the pages a converting center site needs, so trial each with one real program page and your own photos. More Booked Enrollments doesn't sell builders or websites, so we don't take sides.
When does COPPA apply to a daycare website?
The FTC looks at whether a site is directed to children under 13 and collects personal information from them (16 CFR 312.2), and it says COPPA does not cover information about children collected from parents. A tuition-and-tours site written for parents points away from that; a games corner could change the analysis, so ask a lawyer before adding one.
How long does it take to build a daycare website with a builder?
The editor is the fast part; a small site comes together in days once the content exists. Writing the page answers, shooting photos and settling the tuition wording take longer than placing any block.