Campaign website builders, compared

The short version: if you just need a polished page, Wix or Squarespace will do — but you'll wire up the donate button and the compliance yourself. NationBuilder gives you a website and a CRM, but it serves both parties and the price scales with your list. RUN! is purpose-built for Democratic campaigns and is the closest fit for our side. Across all of them, the gap is the same: built-in, multi-state disclaimer compliance bundled with a values-aligned, all-in-one stack.

Wix and Squarespace: cheap, polished, generic

Both are excellent general-purpose website builders. They're inexpensive (roughly $10–20/month), look professional, and don't require any technical skill. For a zero-budget school board or town council race, they're a perfectly reasonable starting point.

The catch is that they know nothing about campaigns. You'll embed a donation form yourself, write your own "Paid for by" disclaimer, and own the compliance entirely. There are no built-in connections to Democratic fundraising or organizing tools — you bridge them with third-party connectors or manual exports. They look the part; they just don't do the political part.

NationBuilder: website plus CRM, for everyone

NationBuilder bundles a website with a supporter database, email, and organizing tools. That all-in-one CRM is genuinely useful, and it's why a lot of campaigns have used it for years. Pricing starts modestly but scales with the size of your contact list, and serious campaign features sit in higher tiers.

Two things to weigh. First, it's a CRM with a website attached, which is more tool than many down-ballot campaigns need. Second — and this is a values call, not a technical one — NationBuilder serves campaigns across the political spectrum, including Republicans. Some Democratic organizations would rather not build on shared infrastructure.

RUN!: built for Democratic campaigns

RUN! is a website builder made specifically for Democratic and progressive campaigns, with campaign-native components (endorsements, issues, donate buttons), strong accessibility, and integrations with the Democratic stack like NGP VAN, ActBlue, and Mobilize. It's explicitly not available to Republican candidates. For a Democratic campaign that wants a values-aligned site builder, it's the closest established option — and it does its job well.

The question isn't "can I get a website." It's "can I get one that's compliant, values-aligned, and doesn't leave me wiring the hard parts myself."

The gap none of them fully close

Look across the field and a pattern emerges. The generic builders skip compliance entirely. The bipartisan platforms don't take a side. And almost none of them treat the "Paid for by" disclaimer — federal plus all fifty states' rules — as a first-class, built-in feature rather than something you paste in and hope is right.

That's the gap Electbase is built to close: a values-aligned platform built specifically for Democratic and nonpartisan campaigns, with compliance generated for you and placed correctly by default, a donate page that embeds the processor you already use, accessibility built in, and a path from a free site into email, social, and managed media — all in one place.

Pricing and feature details for third-party tools change frequently; confirm current specifics on each provider's site before deciding.