The best website builders for research labs in 2026

Choosing a website builder for a research lab is different from choosing one for a business. You need people pages that change every year, a publication list that grows every month, and a site that a rotating cast of students can maintain. Here is how the common options compare.

University CMS

Good for: labs that must use institutional branding.

Most universities give labs a page inside the departmental site. It is free and trusted, but layouts are fixed, editing usually goes through a web office, and moving institutions means starting again.

WordPress

Good for: labs with a technically confident member.

WordPress can do almost anything with themes and plugins, and there are academic themes. The cost is maintenance: updates, security patches, plugin conflicts and hosting. Publications usually mean a plugin or manual entry.

Wix and Squarespace

Good for: a polished one-off site.

Beautiful templates and drag-and-drop editing. But templates are designed for businesses and portfolios; there is no concept of lab members, alumni or publications, so everything is hand-built pages that drift out of date.

Google Sites

Good for: a quick free site.

Very easy and free with a Google account, but limited design, no structured publications and few options for a custom look.

GitHub Pages, Jekyll, Hugo and Quarto

Good for: computational labs comfortable with Git.

Free hosting and full control, and academic themes such as al-folio are popular. Every update is a commit, which works for some groups and stops others from updating at all.

Dedicated lab website builders

Good for: labs that want a professional site that stays current.

Tools built for research groups start from the structure a lab needs: research areas, people, publications, news, openings. Labsite is one of them. What it adds:

• Templates designed for scientific fields — chemistry, neuroscience, plant biology, nanoscience, drug discovery and more.
• Publications that update themselves from ORCID, OpenAlex, Crossref and PubMed, with a page per paper and Google Scholar tags.
• Spreadsheet-style editing for people, papers and news, and section-level permissions so each member edits their own profile.
• Import of an existing lab site, so you do not start from scratch.
• Custom domains, forms, an events calendar and version history.

How to choose

Ask three questions:

1. Who will update it? If the answer is "whoever is around", choose the simplest editor.
2. How often do publications change? If monthly, automate them.
3. Will the lab move? If possible, use your own domain and a tool that is not tied to one university.

For most labs, a dedicated builder wins on time saved. Try Labsite free and compare it against your current site.