Best website builder for restaurants in 2026: 4 picks compared

What a restaurant website has to do

A restaurant site is a working tool, not a brochure. People come to check the menu and the hours, then order or book a table, usually from a phone. Before you compare builders, make sure yours can handle these jobs:

• A menu in real text. Put the menu on the page, not only in a PDF. Squarespace’s help center notes that text in its menu blocks can be read by search engines, unlike a static PDF menu.
• Online ordering for pickup and delivery, ideally on your own site so you don’t pay a marketplace commission on every order.
• Reservations, through a button or a booking widget.
• Hours, address, map and phone on every page, matching your Google Business Profile.
• Photos of the food and the dining room.
• A phone-first layout. Google mainly crawls and indexes the mobile version of sites, and StatCounter put mobile at 49.1% of US page views in September 2026. Look for a template with responsive design.
• QR code menus or table ordering, plus gift cards and loyalty if you offer them.
• Accessible design: alt text on photos, readable color contrast, and forms you can fill in with a keyboard.

How we picked

This list comes from research, not our own testing: we read each builder’s pricing page, help center and restaurant guides, plus the delivery apps’ own fee pages. We ranked the builders on how well they cover the jobs above, what they cost over 3 years and how easily you can leave. Our full method is on the how we research page.

1. Square Online: best for ordering that syncs with your register

If you already use Square at the counter, Square Online is the shortest path to taking orders on your own site. Square says its ordering page syncs with the Square POS menu, so online orders flow to the register and the kitchen. It covers in-person and curbside pickup, on-demand local delivery, QR code ordering, multiple locations, loyalty and eGift cards.

Square Free is $0 a month, and you pay only card processing: 3.3% + 30 cents per online payment. Square Plus is $49 a month per location and Square Premium is $149 a month per location, both billed monthly; Square publishes no yearly price. Paid plans cut the online card rate to 2.9% + 30 cents and come with a 30-day free trial. Our 3-year estimate for Plus is $2,064.24.

Is Plus worth it? On our math from Square’s posted rates, the lower card rate covers the $49 fee once online sales pass about $12,250 a month. But QR code table ordering needs Plus or Premium, which may decide it for you.

What to watch: delivery partners charge their own fees. We could not confirm on Square’s current pages whether a Free site can use your own domain or shows Square branding. Square also says little about templates, blog tools or custom code, so check those during the trial.

Exit score: 2/10. The site and design can’t be downloaded; your item library exports to CSV or Excel. Read our Square Online review.

2. Wix: best all-in-one site with ordering built in

Wix has its own restaurant apps. According to Wix’s help center, Wix Restaurants Orders works with the Wix Restaurant Menus app and supports pickup time slots, delivery areas with their own fees and times, and dine-in QR table ordering. Wix also documents a DoorDash Drive setup, where DoorDash drivers deliver orders placed on your own Wix site.

Plan on Core at $29 a month billed yearly. Wix’s plans say online payments start on Core; Light, at $17 a month billed yearly, can’t take them. Wix shows month-to-month prices only at checkout. Our 3-year estimate for Core is $1,332.96.

What to watch: the ordering setup article doesn’t say which plan food orders need, and we could not confirm whether Wix takes any commission on them. Ask Wix before you launch. Many Wix App Market apps also carry their own monthly fees.

Exit score: 3/10. Wix says sites must run on its servers, and blog posts can’t be exported. You keep the domain. Read our Wix review.

3. Squarespace: best for design-led restaurants that take reservations

Squarespace has a Restaurants category of templates and a help guide for building a restaurant site. Its menu blocks keep the menu as text, and it has dedicated OpenTable and Tock blocks for reservations. Tock can also link to online orders.

For ordering, Squarespace points to partners: a ChowNow ordering page, the Allday Ordering extension, or a menu link to an outside ordering service. That keeps ordering off Squarespace itself, so add the partner’s fees to your budget.

Pick Core at $29 a month billed yearly ($39 billed monthly). It adds JavaScript for third-party widgets and one Google Workspace email account free for the first year. Basic is $19 a month billed yearly ($25 billed monthly). Our 3-year estimate for Core is $1,332.96, before any ordering partner’s fees.

What to watch: Squarespace’s guide names OpenTable and Tock, not Resy, and we found no official Resy integration. A Reserve button that links out still works with any service.

Exit score: 5/10. Pages and one blog export to a WordPress file; the design stays behind. Read our Squarespace review.

4. WordPress (self-hosted): best for restaurant groups that want to own the site

Self-hosted WordPress is free software you run on hosting you choose. You can build a page per location with the menu as real text, point Order and Reserve buttons at whichever services you use, and sell merch with the free WooCommerce plugin, which adds no platform transaction fee. We build on WordPress every week, so weigh our view with that in mind.

Bluehost Starter is $3.99 a month on a 36-month term, then renews at $9.99 a month. Our 3-year estimate is $432.60, the lowest here, before any paid plugins or theme.

What to watch: nothing restaurant-specific comes built in, and someone has to handle updates, backups and security. It is the most work of the four picks.

Exit score: 10/10. The whole site moves to any WordPress host as-is. Read our WordPress review.

Compare the picks

Delivery apps vs ordering on your own site

This is the biggest money question for most restaurants. Delivery marketplaces bring you new customers, but they take a percentage of each order. Ordering on your own site costs card processing and, for delivery, a courier fee, but no marketplace commission.

Fees come from the DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub merchant pricing pages. DoorDash doesn’t list the processing rate for its own Online Ordering product there.

Here is what that means on a $40 delivery order, using our math from the posted rates. On DoorDash’s Plus plan, the 25% commission is $10. The same order placed on a Square Online Plus site costs $1.46 in card processing, plus whatever the courier charges. Through Uber Eats’ Webshop, the fee is $1.29.

That doesn’t mean you should drop the apps. They put you in front of people who have never heard of you. A practical middle path: stay on the apps for discovery, and give regulars a reason to order direct. Put an Order online button at the top of every page, print your ordering link or QR code on bags and receipts, and keep the menu on your own site the most current one.

Menus, reservations and your Google listing

Keep one source of truth for the menu. Square syncs the online menu with the POS, Wix pairs its Menus app with ordering, and Squarespace uses menu blocks. Whichever you use, update prices on the site the same day you change them in the restaurant.

For reservations, Squarespace has built-in OpenTable and Tock blocks. On any builder, a Reserve button that links to your booking service is easy to set up and easy to change later.

Then match your Google Business Profile to the site: the same hours, address, phone number and holiday closures. Mismatched hours send diners to a locked door.

Make the site work for every diner

The U.S. Department of Justice’s 2022 web guidance says businesses open to the public must make their websites accessible. It lists color contrast, alt text, captions, accessible forms and keyboard navigation as examples, and says automated checkers alone are not enough.

For a restaurant, that means a menu in real text rather than a photo of the printed menu, alt text on dish photos, and an ordering flow someone can finish with a keyboard. Seyfarth Shaw counted 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits filed in US federal court in 2025. This is general information, not legal advice; our web accessibility entry explains the basics.

Skip the list if…

• You mostly ship packaged food or merch nationwide. Store features and fees matter more; see our best ecommerce website builders.
• You’re choosing between Square and Shopify for a shop. Read Square Online vs Shopify.
• Ordering and reservations already run through services you like. Then any builder that links out cleanly will do, so pick on design and cost with Squarespace vs Wix.

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