As the Internet becomes increasingly accessible and as e-commerce markets expand, companies everywhere are recognizing the importance of conducting at least some of their business online. However, it can be difficult for small businesses to know where to start when building an online presence. We’re here to help.
Whether you sell goods or services, building a website for your small business that prospective customers can easily find and purchase from is essential. Fortunately, there are several website builders catering to small businesses that can help owners create a powerful, visually appealing, affordable website. Even better, these tools are easy to use and most require no coding experience.
Important Considerations When Choosing a Small Business Website Builder
The best website builder for your small business depends on your needs. There’s a wide range of options available with varying feature sets, some of which you may not need or want. When searching for the best tool, try to strike a balance between ease of use and richness of features—as with any tool, it should make your life easier and not introduce a new set of frustrations. In general, a good website builder:
- Allows you to easily choose a domain name
- Offers a variety of templates
- Provides responsive mobile design
- Makes uploading photos and videos easy
- Provides a shopping cart service (if you’re interested in e-commerce)
- Connects with your company’s social media accounts
- Has an affordable pricing structure that won’t force you to exceed your budget and sign up for unnecessary features just to cover your basic needs
We’ve identified some of the most popular and affordable website builder tools available that meet these criteria.
Wix: Best for Ease of Use and Versatility
Wix is a highly customizable website builder, offering many responsive design themes and hundreds of useful plugins. If you are looking for a service that will do much of the design work for you while still allowing you to personalize your customer experience, Wix may be the perfect small business website builder for you.
With its simple interface and drag-and-drop design tools, Wix makes building a site and adding pages a breeze, even if you have no coding experience. They also offer secure online hosting, meaning you won’t have to shop around for someone else to host your website and keep your data safe. Bundling design and hosting services together can help keep your checkbook tidy and streamline the process of managing your own site.
Pricing: Wix’s free plan offers 100s of templates, unlimited pages and top-grade hosting. With that said, this version has limited bandwidth and storage. The company also offers the following paid plans with more features. These are the plans that are recommended for small businesses:
Unlimited: $17/month
Recommended for entrepreneurs and freelancers:
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 10 GB Storage
- Site Booster App
- Visitor Analytics App
Pro: $22/month
Recommended for small to medium businesses:
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 20 GB Storage
- Site Booster App
- Visitor Analytics App
- Events Calendar
VIP: $39/month
Recommended for businesses that need a high level of support:
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 20 GB Storage
- Site Booster App
- Visitor Analytics App
- Events Calendar
- Professional Logo
- VIP Support
WordPress: Best for Complete Control
WordPress is one of the most popular website builders around and offers more customization options than any other builder on the market. In addition to offering thousands of plugins, WordPress provides storage and design options that allow you to fine-tune your site to meet your and your customers’ needs. Whether you want to start a free blog to improve your Web presence or create a full-blown e-commerce site, WordPress can do it.
Complete control over your online experience will require a bit of extra work, however. The more advanced facets of WordPress will definitely come easier to those who have the desire to go beyond drag-and-drop. Be prepared to watch a few tutorials if you’re a first-time website designer!
Pricing: Although WordPress does offer a free plan, only their paid plans provide access to more advanced features. These are the recommended business-level plans:
Premium: $8/month
Recommended for freelancers:
- Site customization
- Marketing and monetization tools
Business: $25/month
Recommended for small businesses:
- Site customization
- Marketing and monetization tools
- Business-class features
“eCommerce”: $45/month
Recommended for e-commerce businesses:
- Site customization
- Marketing and monetization tools
- Business-class features
- Advanced e-commerce features
Squarespace: Best for Small-Scale E-Commerce
Squarespace is another drag-and-drop small business website builder with many built-in tools to support an online store. It’s a great option for small business e-commerce and offers all the features your online store needs.
Squarespace has built-in functionality that lets you accept credit card payments, track your customers, and create gift cards. It also offers a comprehensive set of marketing tools, from search functions to email campaigns. However, Squarespace doesn’t allow as much customization as some of the other website builders.
Pricing: Squarespace offers the following business-level plans:
Business: $18/month
Recommended for small businesses:
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage
- Premium integrations
- Advanced marketing tools and analytics
Basic Commerce: $26/month
Recommended for e-commerce small businesses:
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage
- Premium integrations
- Advanced marketing tools and analytics
- Fully integrated e-commerce
- 0% transaction fees
- Customer accounts
Advanced Commerce: $40/month
Recommended for e-commerce small to medium businesses:
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage
- Premium integrations
- Advanced marketing tools and analytics
- Fully integrated e-commerce
- 0% transaction fees
- Customer accounts
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Advanced shipping
- APIs for orders and inventory
Shopify: Best Scalable E-Commerce Builder for Growing Small Businesses
Shopify is one of the best small business e-commerce website builders on the market and is a perfect option for small businesses that need a scalable platform. It provides all of the e‑commerce and point-of-sale features you need to start, run, and grow your business.
Shopify offers built-in marketing tools that help you create, execute, and analyze campaigns on Facebook and Google.
Pricing: Shopify offers a 14-day free trial so you can learn the ins and outs of the service without making a commitment. After this period, you can choose one of the following business plans:
Basic Shopify: $29/month
Provides the basics for starting a new e-commerce business:
- Online store
- 2 staff accounts
- 24/7 support
- Manual order creation
- Unlimited products
- Print shipping labels
- Point of Sale app
Shopify: $79/month
Provides everything you need for a growing business:
- Online store
- 2 staff accounts
- 24/7 support
- Manual order creation
- Unlimited products
- Print shipping labels
- Point of Sale app
- Professional reports
- Special USPS pricing
- Third-party POS apps
Advanced Shopify: $299/month
Provides advanced features for scaling your business:
- Online store
- 2 staff accounts
- 24/7 support
- Manual order creation
- Unlimited products
- Print shipping labels
- Point of Sale app
- Professional reports
- Special USPS pricing
- Third-party POS apps
- Advanced report builder
- Third-party calculated shipping rates
Each of these small business website builders are great options to get your business online quickly and easily without breaking the bank.
