So you’re building a website using HTML and CSS, maybe knocking something together for a side project or just to learn. You probably already have an editor of choice that allows you to write code in the browser, whether that be Sublime Text, Brackets, Webstorm, Notepad++ etc. But not everyone has one of these editors (or wants to install another program on their system).
Maybe your budget is tight or you would prefer something free. If this sounds like you, I’m going to show you three great free alternatives to your normal editor.
Weebly: Helps create online stores and product catalogs
Key Features:
- CRM
- Customizable templates
- Email Marketing
- File sharing
- Group Posting
- Image editing
Weebly is a website builder that helps you create online stores and full-fledged websites for your business. The tool provides various themes that you can choose from to build your website from scratch.
Weebly features a drag-and-drop editor that requires no coding skills to create multiple web pages. You can also create interactive pages with video backgrounds and add animation effects. There is also an image editor that lets you create and process images without leaving your website.
The software supports multiple HTML coding languages such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML editing that can help customize your website according to your requirements and optimize it for mobile devices.
Weebly offers email, chat, and phone support. The tool is web-based and also features a mobile app for iOS and Android devices.Weebly4.3 (1592)Read reviewsVIEW PROFILE
Trial/Free Version:Free TrialFree VersionDevice Compatibility:
Screenshot:
Building a website from scratch in Weebly9
WordPress: Offers 24/7 technical support and troubleshooting
WordPress offers email and live chat support. The tool is web-based and has a desktop and mobile app for Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.WordPress4.6 (13657)Read reviewsVIEW PROFILE
Key Features:
- Audio file management
- Auto update
- Collaboration tools
- Customizable templates
- Document classification
- Electronic forms
WordPress is a website-building software tool you can use to create blogs, websites, and portfolios. The software offers a source code editor, HTML and Markdown support, and various themes that you can choose from to create a webpage.
It also features a drag-and-drop editor that you can use to add images and embed videos on your website. WordPress also offers social media integrations to share your website content on third-party platforms easily.
The platform also offers built-in sitemaps and other SEO tools to optimize your website. It also contains a website analytics section to measure the performance of your website.
Trial/Free Version:Free TrialFree VersionDevice Compatibility:
Screenshot:
Selecting a website theme in WordPress
Froala
Froala is a front-end WYSIWYG HTML editor designed to provide optimized performance for users. With a GZIP core of only 50 KB, this lightweight software can load within 40 milliseconds. The software is also optimized for mobile and is compatible with Android and iOS devices.
Despite using a WYSIWYG interface, Froala comes with rich text editor capabilities. Users can add various elements to their pages, including videos, table cells, and emoticons. In addition, its editor comes with over 30 plugins for extending functionality.
For those who prefer direct HTML editing, Froala enables code viewing. Simply write your HTML code, and the editor will automatically generate elements accordingly. Moreover, the software provides seamless integration with Codox.io for real-time editing and collaboration.
Froala offers three subscription plans ranging from $239/year to $3999/year. Moreover, users can always test the software first before buying a license. The software is free to download from NPM (Node Package Manager).
Extra features from Froala include:
- Inline editing – select any element on your web page and edit it directly.
- HTML5 and CSS3 – provides an optimized user experience with the latest HTML and CSS versions.
- Multi-language support – the software is translated into 34 languages and automatically detects input from RTL or LTR keyboards.
- Free online HTML editor – available for converting text to HTML code or “sanity check” for your code.
Froala is available for Windows, Linux, macOS systems. Its prices start from $239/year for a Basic license.
CoffeeCup
CoffeeCup is another HTML editor with a broad range of features and functionality. For example, users can choose to create HTML and CSS files from scratch or customize a pre-made template design from its library.
CoffeeCup HTML editor offers a components library, where users can add web elements like menu, footer, and header across multiple pages. Instead of manually updating each new page, they can simply modify certain library items.
This HTML editor offers multiple ways to preview a website before publishing it. A live preview splits the screen into the coding area and web page, enabling users to code side-by-side. An external preview is also available for displaying a page in a new window.
Also, CoffeeCup’s free trial version is available and comes with the same functionality as the premium one. However, the trial version will expire after 30 days. To keep using the software, users can purchase it for only $29/license.
Other notable features include:
- Semantic web-ready – provides semantic data to all web content to help search engine crawlers understand what your content is about.
- FTP integration – directly publish your website from the menu dashboard using an FTP client.
- Built-in validation tool – indicates errors within your code and makes sure your website functions correctly.
- Template downloader – imports designs from available templates to learn and develop the code.
CoffeeCup is available for Windows only and costs $29 for a one-time purchase.
Brackets.io
Brackets is an open-source HTML editor. It’s free and well-supported by Adobe and an open-source community.
It works well with HTML, CSS, LESS, SCSS, and JavaScript, which makes it perfect for front-end development.
It also includes a live preview feature to save you time. Instead of having to save the file, upload it to your server, then view your site to see the changes you made.
There’s also W3C code validation included as well as Git integration, and free extensions available with lots of other useful features.
Brackets provides a professional experience and is an easy-to-use text editor for HTML. It’s definitely one of the best HTML editors you can get.
Atom
Atom is another free, open-source HTML text editor. It’s also well-supported by the GitHub community and is one of the best HTML editors.
It supports the use of multiple panes, which means you can edit multiple files at one time. This is especially useful if you’re working on interrelated files.
There is also an autocomplete feature, syntax highlighting, search, and replace. Its user interface is customizable, and it has both Git and GitHub integrations.
It offers professional experience and is intuitive to use.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a free open-source HTML editor. It’s also well-maintained by Microsoft and the open-source community.
It includes basic features like syntax highlighting, but there’s also an autocomplete option that provides smart completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules.
There are also advanced features like debugging and Git commands built-in, and tons of other extensions available.
Visual Studio Code supports HTML, CSS, Sass, Less, JavaScript, PHP, C#, C++, Ruby, Perl, SQL, XML, JSON, Python, and many more languages.
It’s certainly one of the best HTML editors because it’s so advanced, and yet, quite intuitive to use. Even though it has a lot of features, the user interface (UI) is clean and well-organized.
Sublime Text 3
If you’re looking for one of the best HTML editors that’s also highly customizable, Sublime Text 3 is an excellent option to consider. It’s free for the basic software with an upgrade available.
You can quickly search and find specific elements, it has syntax highlighting, and a split-pane UI capability as well.
It has a clean interface that’s uncluttered so it’s easier to focus on your code.
Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free HTML editor that’s clean and simple. It supports HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and nearly 80 other programming languages.
It includes syntax highlighting, autocompletion, and a functions list, which is used in the file you’re working on for quick selection.
If you’re looking for an HTML text editor that’s great for transitioning out of beginner or intermediate-level web development, this is an option you should consider. It has some advanced features without being overly complicated.
Notepad++ is also great for advanced users who love the idea of a distraction-free UI.
Vim
Vim is a classic choice and serious contender for the title of the best HTML editor. It’s free and open-source and includes syntax highlighting, and supports over 200 programming languages.
Some consider it as an IDE more than a mere HTML text editor due to its great, advanced features – such as error highlighting, and search and replace tool. Another useful feature worth mentioning is its ability to track everything you typed so you can undo your actions in an unlimited number of times.
Vim is also highly customizable. For example, you can make your own commands, change the colors of the HTML editor, etc.
Komodo Edit
Komodo Edit is a free HTML editor that supports Python, Perl, Ruby, HTML/CSS, Javascript, and more programming languages. It also has syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and you can track your changes effortlessly.
For most developers and beginners, the free version is often perfect on its own. But, if you need professional features such as for a business or enterprise-level project, it’s better to upgrade to Komodo IDE.
Komodo Edit also includes project management and overall is a professional program with great, advanced features.
Froala
If you’re looking for an HTML WYSIWYG editor rather than a run-of-the-mill HTML editor, Froala is an excellent, premium option to consider.
It’s simple to use and has a design blocks feature that’s similar to WordPress’ Gutenberg block editor. You can choose from different elements and add them to the page in one click. The formatting is automatically done for you and all you have to do at that point is to add your content. Then when you’re done, you can access the HTML code to use it as needed.
HTML WYSIWYG editor is created from developers to developers and has a rich feature selection and comes with over 30 out of the box plugins to choose from and use in your project.
TinyMCE Editor
The TinyMCE Editor is certainly one of the best HTML editors out there because it’s a free, self-hosted HTML WYSIWYG editor.
It’s also the HTML editor that was used in WordPress’s classic editor before version five.
There’s a visual editor component that works like a standard word processor. It has all the classic formatting options you would expect to have as well as an HTML editor tab where you can view, edit, and copy the generated HTML.
TinyMCE comes with 50+ plugins available that are easy to configure and it also has 100+ different customization options.
10) Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is a premium option and is one of the best HTML editors because it goes far beyond the basic features of syntax highlighting, and supports many web standards including HTML and CSS.
It has error underlining so it’s easier to spot and correct issues. There’s also a live preview editing area built right into the UI so you can streamline your workflow. This means you don’t have to keep saving your working file and uploading it to your server anymore just so you can check your progress.
Dreamweaver also has Git support as well as a modern, clutter-free UI.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is possibly the best JavaScript ide for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Not only does it support JavaScript, but it also supports Node.js, TypeScript, and it comes with a whole ecosystem of extensions for other languages including C++, C#, Python, PHP etc.
It provides great syntax highlighting and auto-complete with IntelliSense based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules. It also allows you to debug code by launching or attaching to your running apps debug with breakpoints, call stacks, and an interactive console. You can effortlessly integrate a JavaScript UI library into Visual Studio Code. All in all, this IDE for JavaScript is definitely one to check out. An important note – it is free to use.
To get the most productivity out of the Visual Studio Code, we recommend this quick 1-hour online course, which will guide you through adding custom hotkeys, creating templates and boilerplates to increase coding speed, integrating with GitHub to be able to work on Git repositories without leaving VS Code.
RJ TextEd
RJ TextEd is high on our list fighting for the spot of the best IDE for JavaScript. It is a full-featured text and source editor with Unicode support and all in all, a great IDE for web development.
It supports not only JavaScript, but also PHP, ASP, HTML, and CSS. Some of the most important features of this web development IDE include but are not limited to:
- Auto-completion.
- Code folding
- Column mode
- Multi-edit and multi-select
- Document map
- Annotation bar
- Advanced sorting
- Handles both ASCII and binary files
- CSS and HTML wizards
- Highlighting of colors in CSS/SASS/LESS
- An advanced color hint that can convert between color formats
- Dockable panels
- FTP and SFTP client with synchronization
- File explorer, text clips, code explorer, project manager
- Convert between code pages, Unicode formats and text formats
- Unicode and ANSI code page detection
- Open/Save UTF-8 encoded files without a signature (BOM)
- Unicode file paths and file names
- HTML validation, format, and repair
- Tools available like syntax editor, color picker, charmap.
Conclusion
The best HTML editor depends on your wants, needs, platform, and skills. The best HTML editor can vary by who is asking the questions. Whether you work to develop web pages or just edit them for fun, there are dozens of HTML editors available that can help increase your productivity or provide an impressive way to work with all your coding projects.