4.6 
Introduction
Since the pandemic started and people massively moved online, many businesses have been moving their businesses online to keep up with the trend. Those businesses include small, medium, and large alike. Out of those three, small businesses make up the largest types of businesses that exist in the global economy. Thus, many website builders are tailored for small business needs and wants. That is why we have compiled a list of the best website builders for small businesses as a means to help such businesses get online and receive the best value for their money while doing so.
Our conversion chart below is where you can find our best website builders for small businesses list, so stay with us to learn what each website builder has to offer and how they compare with their competition.
Check Out Our Top 7 Best Small business Website Builders:
- Squarespace – Best for brand creation and building.
- Wix Website Builder – Best overall website builder for small businesses.
How Do We Rank and Test?
Choosing which website builder is right for you may take hours of research and comparisons. However, if you do not conduct the appropriate research, you might end up with a lousy website that nobody will want to visit.
That is why we have developed our own ranking system with which we rank website builders and take into account all the essential features and options you would need for your website. We put website builders through numerous tests so that we can rank them accordingly. Also, while they are reviewing the website builders, our experts buy the plans that the builders offer to test them even further.
Our ranking system is based on a few factors to which we assign specific percentages depending on how important they are for small businesses.
- Ease-of-use (30%): how easy it is to set up with the builder, overall ease of navigating through the dashboard and using the Control Panel, how fast it is to learn to use the builder.
- Customer support (25%): the help the builder provides (24/7 support through live chat, email, phone), how fast the builder responds to customers, ability to solve issues.
- Design flexibility (10%): how many templates the builder offers, how customizable are the templates, quality of the templates, whether the templates can be changed once the website is live.
- Features (20%): what kind of features the builder offers, how many features it offers, are the features useful for small businesses, ease of adding features to a website.
- Pricing (15%): are the plans worth the money, whether the builder offers a free plan.
How to Choose the Best Small Business Website Builder?
Before we dive deep into our top 7 website builders for small businesses, let’s take a look at what you need to do when choosing the best small business website builder first.
- Form a budget – the first thing you need to do is figure out what you can afford. If your budget is limited, you can go for plans that include different website services, like a website builder and web hosting, for example.
- Think about your priorities and needs – after forming your budget; you need to determine what you want your website to be and do. For example, you need to determine whether you want a personal website, business website, blog, eCommerce site, or anything else that might fit your needs. Here, you can ask yourself a few questions that can help you determine what kind of website builder you need. Those questions include:
- How much experience do you have with design?
- Do you need an online store?
- What kinds of media do you want to include in your website (like video, pictures, maps, etc.)?
- Consider the number of themes the website builder offers – before picking a website builder, make sure that it provides a broader range of themes you can choose from for your website. That way, you will make sure that you will find a theme that you like and suits your business best.
- See if it’s easy to use – just by getting a website builder instead of building a website with coding makes things a lot easier for you. However, not all website builders are very easy to figure out. Features like a drag-and-drop builder and an intuitive editor are what you should be looking for here, as they will make your website building experience much easier.
- Look for a builder with SEO features – getting a builder that provides SEO features and tools will help your website rank on Google and be easier to find on the Internet. Also, SEO does not only apply to Google; it applies to all search engines on the Internet.
The Top 7 Best Small Business Website Builders
- Overall Score: 4.7
- Ease-of-use: 4.6
- Customer Support: 4.4
- Design Flexibility: 5.0
- Features: 4.9
- Pricing: 4.8
Squarespace is another famous website builder which is ideal for small businesses due to its affordable prices and beautiful designs. Squarespace focuses primarily on the creative side of website building with its sleek designs and social media integration tools.
Squarespace’s websites are always aesthetically pleasing and hard to forget. The focus of Squarespace’s designs is to catch the eye of those who visit it and be interesting enough to make people stick around longer.
Pros:
- Aesthetically pleasing designs
- Many built-in tools
- Drag-and-drop site builder
- Ability to sell on social media
- Affordable prices
Cons:
- Slower site speed compared to other website builders
- No access to most third-party applications
Squarespace is best known for its sleek and aesthetically pleasing designs. It is ideal for small businesses and artists that want to communicate their brand values through their website.
| Plan | Personal | Business | Commerce (Basic) | Commerce (Advanced) |
| Price | US $19/month | US $33/month | US $36/month | US $65/month |
| Number of Products | None | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free Trials | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Additional Feature |
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Squarespace’s Unique features:
Built-in tools
Squarespace has many built-in tools, including functionality that allows users to accept credit card payments, create gift cards, track customers, and more. Also, Squarespace has a built-in online booking tool. Users can sell spots on their calendars for consultations or custom work with that tool. Also, with Squarespace, users can sell memberships and subscriptions.
Design
Squarespace has over 100 templates designed by professionals that cover many types of business sectors, from flower shops to real estate companies. Squarespace’s high-quality templates give off both aesthetic and professional vibes and aim to catch the eye of everyone who sees them. So, with those templates, you can make your website look as professional as possible without having to write any code by yourself.
Customization
What makes Squarespace the best website builder for brand creation and brand building is its excellent customization tools. You can communicate your brand’s values and make your website truly your own with it. You can customize everything, like fonts and colors, sidebar width, background photos, and more. And, if you want to rebrand in the future, you can easily redesign your site when you want. However, keep in mind that you cannot switch templates once your site is live.
Squarespace is our pick for the best website builder for brand creation and building with its sleek and professional designs and numerous design and customization tools. Learn more about everything Squarespace offers by reading our expert review.
- Overall Score: 4.9
- Ease-of-use: 5.0
- Customer Support: 4.8
- Design Flexibility: 4.9
- Features: 5.0
- Pricing: 4.8
Wix is a greatly popular website builder. It is a drag-and-drop builder that is easy to use and allows users to customize their website however they want.
Wix has been around for a long time now, since 2006. And ever since then, Wix has been improving and simplifying its website builder so that everyone can use it. Also, Wix is very flexible and allows users to move elements around within a present grid so that they can customize their sites and organize the elements.
Pros:
- Easy-to-use
- It doesn’t require any coding skills
- Numerous design themes
- Multichannel integration
- Many options for customization
Cons:
- A little worse customer support than its competitors
- Slower loading speeds
- The free plan has ads
Wix is best known for its easy-to-use website builder and competitive prices that are ideal for small businesses. It is also known for providing hundreds of high-quality templates to its users.
| Plan | Connect Domain | Combo | Unlimited | VIP |
| Price | US $4.50/month | US $8.50/month | US $12.50/month | US $24.50/month |
| Number Of Products | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Free Trial | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Additional Feature |
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Wix Unique features:
Easy to use
As we mentioned, Wix has been working to improve its ease of use ever since it started. Consequently, it is one of the most easy-to-use website builders and a perfect fit for those who do not have a tech background. Wix has a drag-and-drop editing interface that allows users to design and customize their website simply by dragging and dropping pictures and text boxes to the places they want them to be. The same thing applies to Wix’s online store builder.
Also, to make it even easier to use, Wix has an ADI builder that can design your whole website for you. The only thing you would need to do is answer some questions about your website and what you want it to look like, and the ADI builder will create it for you.
Customization
Wix offers more than 800 high-quality professional templates for its users to choose from, which cover all types of businesses. Also, more than 118 templates are specifically designed just for eCommerce sites, which is something that many other website builders offer.
You can also add a few useful features to your template, including:
- Creating and sending invoices;
- Tracking payments;
- Add quizzes, surveys, and contact forms;
- Add online booking forms for scheduling appointments;
SEO tools
Recently, Wix partnered with Deepcrawl to create custom-designed SEO tools for Wix users. The SEO tools are built explicitly for the Wix app store and can get websites listed on Google within 60 seconds. Also, Wix’s SEO tools can continually improve your website’s Google ranking and get it further up so that people will see it more easily and click on it.
Wix’s mix of beginner-friendly, easy-to-use, and powerful tools and affordable prices make it the best overall website builder for small businesses. Check out our expert review if you want to know more about the company and what it offers.
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How Much Does a Small Business Website Cost?
The average cost of a small business website depends on a few factors. Namely, determining how much a small business website will cost you is not as straightforward as it sounds.
For one, the total cost of a website depends on the website’s size, complexity, and whether you need to hire a professional designer or IT person to make the website. If you can build a website all by yourself, you could save a lot of money.
Unfortunately, not many of us have the knowledge and skills to build a website alone, so we need assistance from a professional web designer or a website builder. Hiring a professional web designer can be very expensive, and every designer has their own fee that they charge.
When getting a website builder, in addition to the price of the plans it offers, you need to consider the cost of website hosting and domain prices. Also, an SSL certificate influences the price of a small business website. Some website builders include an SSL certificate in their plans for free, while others require you to pay an additional fee for it if you want it. And trust me, you do. An SSL certificate makes sure that all private data is encrypted, so it is essential for every website.
Another thing that influences the cost of a small business website is the number of pages your website has. For instance, an eCommerce store might have more than 100 pages. On the other hand, a service-based company’s website might have less than ten pages. And of course, the more pages you have, the more you will pay for your website overall.
Types of Small Business Websites
As we mentioned above, when taking your business online, you need to determine what kind of website you want to have. Thus, we have compiled a list of different types of websites you can choose from for your business.
- eCommerce site – if you want to sell products online, an eCommerce site is the most suitable solution for you. Also, if you already sell products and want to sell them online as well, an eCommerce site can help you with that too.
- Portfolio – having a portfolio is excellent for those who sell services, especially creative services. With a portfolio, you can show your work and share information on how people can contact you. Thus, portfolios are ideal for writers, artists, photographers, designers, and others who do similar work.
- Blog – with a blog, you can share written content, photos, and videos. If you want to share your ideas or want to do content marketing, a blog can be the ideal type of website for you.
- Booking website – with an online booking website, you can take customer appointments through digital channels. You can use it to accept or decline appointments and replace your process of making appointments in person or over the phone. This type of website is great for salons, make-up studios, medical offices, and consultants.
These are a few types of websites you can make for your small business; however, they are not the only ones. There are other types of websites that you can make, but the ones mentioned above are the most popular and common types that have proved to be successful.
Summary
After researching and finding the best website builders for small businesses, we have chosen our top 7 picks with the help of our ranking system. So, if you want to find out which website builder is best for your business, you can use our recommendations as a guide and find the perfect match for your business.
Choosing a website builder is a tedious and demanding task, even more so for those who do not know what to look for. Also, there is a lot of tech talk surrounding website builders so it can be extra hard for those with no tech knowledge. Due to those reasons, we have compiled a list of our Top 7 Best Small Business Website Builders so that you can easily choose which builder is best for you and your needs.
