Website builders are the perfect go-to solution for creating small business websites. These builders have marketing features, SEO optimization, and online stores that help entrepreneurs develop functional, sophisticated, and entirely custom websites.

What’s A Website Builder?

A website builder is a tool that lets anyone manage a domain name and website without manual coding. In simple terms, a website builder is a software program or tool that assists users in creating a website.

In the past, programmers built websites using CSS and HTML knowledge. Nowadays, programmers are required to know PHP and JavaScript. This isn’t the case with most website builders.

Website builders help everyone design websites in minutes, from bloggers and small businesses to e-commerce platforms and news sites.

Since several website builders are on the market, choosing an excellent one can be challenging. This post is a review of the best website builders for small businesses.

10 Best Website Builders for Small Businesses

1. WordPress

WordPress.com is the world’s most well-known website builder best for business blogs.

Ease of Use

This website builder is challenging to handle at first, and it has a rather steep learning curve. Therefore, it’s not ideal for entrepreneurs who need to build a website fast.

Nevertheless, if you have time to invest in building your website, WordPress.com is the perfect solution. You’ll appreciate this website builder’s control level after learning how to navigate between the front-end and back-end editor.

Design Flexibility

WordPress.com is a perfect choice if you want infinite control over your branding since it’s highly customizable once you’re familiar with its editor. However, this website builder has a limited range of designs for particular industries.

The main focus of WordPress.com is business blogs, and you’re less likely to get a template that’s suitable for other types of businesses.

Pricing

WordPress.com is among the most affordable small business website builders. It provides a cheap plan with a starting price of $4 every month. With this cheap payment plan, you can access great features like excellent blogging tools.

This website builder provides a great value solution for small businesses.

WordPress has another business plan worth $25 per month that comes with various features like advanced SEO tools, more storage space, and the option to install add-ons — these features will help your business website succeed.

2. Squarespace

Squarespace website builder is best for building brands.

Ease Of Use

This website builder has a steep learning curve since it has advanced design tools.  Squarespace isn’t so intuitive, so making changes to your website can take time.

However, you’ll pick up the pace with basic tech skills and enjoy the various template styles available.

Design Flexibility

This website builder has over 100 executive templates covering several industries like real estate and local businesses. Squarespace has polished templates with clean lines that portray professionalism. With these templates, you can make your small business look executive without coding.

You can also stamp your mark on your site by simply customizing the design, from the colors and fonts to the background images and sidebar width. You won’t be able to change templates once the website is live, but the templates share similar building blocks; therefore, you can redesign your website in the future when you want to rebrand.

Additionally, you can add features such as a mobile information bar and an announcement bar. The mobile info bar streamlines your site for mobile phone visitors and lays out a shortcut menu with important info like opening hours and contact details. The announcement bar is perfect for displaying new products.

Pricing

Squarespace doesn’t provide a free plan like other platforms such as Wix, but it has a 14-day trial period. The website builder has four price plans—two e-commerce-specific plans and two generic website builder plans.

Since the two e-commerce plans are fully-fledged, they’re a bit pricey. A cheaper business plan for small business sites goes for $18 per month and allows you to create modern executive pages and sell products. The business plan gives excellent value to small businesses.

There’s a 3% transaction charge for the sales entrepreneurs make on the Business plan. You get a transaction fee waiver if you scale up to the Advanced or Basic Commerce plans. It’s advisable to go for the Basic Commerce plan if you’re looking to sell many products.

3. Wix

Wix is among the leading website builders suitable for small businesses.

Ease of Use

Wix is the ideal website builder for entrepreneurs who want to keep things simple. You don’t need design or technical skills to build an executive-looking, unique small business website.

The editing interface allows you to design your website by dragging and dropping images and text boxes to any place you desire. Wix’s editor is straightforward and doesn’t restrict your artistic freedom.

Wix’s features and tools let you add products and control your inventory in one place, therefore eliminating all the complicated back-and-forth of some e-commerce sites.

This website builder also has an Artificial Design Intelligence (Wix ADI) that can generate a completely developed business website. You’ll only need to answer a few questions about the website to guide the Wix ADI to create a website that meets your needs.

Design Flexibility

Wix has a flexible design that allows you to build a customized small business website. This website builder has over 800 executive templates encompassing businesses, from hairdressers to car dealers. More than 118 of these templates are mainly designed for e-commerce.

The main drawback is that you can’t use a different template after publishing your website. So, ensure you choose an impressive template before you publish your site.

You can easily add additional functionality to Wix templates. It’s possible to:

• Add tailored surveys and quizzes that let you discover what your clients think
• Add online booking forms and contact forms for appointments
• Generate and dispatch invoices and track payment, allowing you to handle your finances in a single place

Velo by Wix allows the tech-savvy to integrate custom code in their Wix website — it’s completely optional and grants you the liberty to create an original business site.

Pricing

Clients can choose from eight price plans — four plans are e-commerce-specific, and the other four are for non-e-commerce sites.

Wix Pro plan with a starting price of $23 per month is perfect for small business websites. This plan gives you access to Wix’s marketing tool, Ascend.

There is also a more affordable unlimited plan for $18 per month for those who don’t plan to sell online. The program has $300 advertisement vouchers split across Local Listings, Bing Ads, and Google Ads — this can help you promote your small business website.

You’ll have to upgrade to an e-commerce plan if you plan to sell online. The Business Basic plan is a great starting point that costs $23 per month. It enables you to sell unlimited goods and gives you the tools to sell across various social channels.

The Business Unlimited plan comes with several sales tools like dropshipping potential, advanced shipping, the option to sell subscriptions, and multiple currencies. This plan will help you sell many products if you plan to create an e-commerce site.

4. GoDaddy

GoDaddy is the ideal website builder for businesses that need to get online fast.

Ease Of Use

This website builder is simple to use mainly because of its ADI feature, making it excellent if you want to get online speedily without developing your site.

GoDaddy can build a website in a few minutes without requiring much effort from you. However, this website builder is restrictive due to its limited creative control. GoDaddy is the perfect website builder for those who value ease of use over artistic freedom.

Design Flexibility

This website builder has an impressive design functionality that allows you to change templates as much as you want—this makes it flexible when redesigning your website in the future.

GoDaddy is a quick fix! The website builder’s theme customizer feature lets users preview their new theme in various styles without losing the content. The designs cover a more comprehensive range of industries such as sports, food, fashion, etc.

Pricing

GoDaddy has four plans with reasonable monthly prices between $6.99 to $14.99. There’s a $19.99 premium plan for small businesses that comes with:

• Payments for appointment
• Recurring appointments
• Text and email appointment reminders
• Limitless social media platforms
• 25,000 monthly email marketing sends

The cheaper plans have limited email marketing and social media features, and they also don’t offer any of the appointment features.

With GoDaddy, you can manage everything in one place, from web hosting to domain registration and website building.

5. Weebly

Weebly is a free website builder ideal for small businesses on a budget.

Ease Of Use

Weebly has a drag-and-drop editor that lets users view edits in real-time without switching between preview and editing modes. However, this website builder is challenging compared to other builders like Duda and Wix.

This website builder offers minimal design intuitiveness and visual cues when designing your site.

Design Flexibility

Weebly has outdated themes and designs, which are disappointing compared to other builders. It has limited templates — approximately 50, with only a few templates designed mainly for businesses.

Its restrictive block-based editor makes customization difficult. Tech-savvies can use the builder’s Code Editor to access the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and HTML and customize their website layout to add a greater personalization level.

Pricing

Weebly has excellent features and affordable plans, making it one of the best value small business website builders.

With just a $6 monthly charge billed annually, you get the premium features on Weebly’s Personal Plan, inclusive of the ability to connect your domain and 500MB storage.

The website builder’s paid plans are way cheaper than its rivals. Therefore, you should upgrade from the free subscription. The free plan ties you to a Weebly.com subdomain, which is unprofessional.

However, this $6 Personal Plan isn’t suitable for a long-term business website since it displays Weebly ads on your website. This can distract users, confuse your branding and diminish your brand image.

You should upgrade to the Performance Plan that goes for $26 every month since it opens up your site to allow PayPal payments.

6. Jimdo

Jimdo is best known for its hands-off ADI functionality.

Ease Of Use

Web building is easier when using Jimdo as it has ADI functionality. Similar to GoDaddy, Jimdo uses the data users give it to design the basics of your site. This means users can jump directly to personalize their websites instead of building them from scratch.

Compared to GoDaddy, Jimdo is much simpler to use. However, it’s not as user-friendly as Squarespace or Wix. While setting up a site on this platform is faster, It isn’t easy to use Jimdo once you start personalizing the site.

Design Flexibility

Using Jimdo can be very frustrating since it doesn’t have much creative control to edit its templates. The platform’s template challenges are similar to Strikingly and Duda’s; they’re very limited.

The good thing about this platform is that it lays the groundwork for you to build your brand, making it suitable for businesses with limited time that want most of the design work done for them. With Jimdo, users get a blend of GoDaddy’s ADI setup with the visual advantages of Squarespace’s clean designs.

Pricing

Jimdo compensates for their rigid design with fair pricing. Jimbo offers the best value for money compared to the other website-building platforms.

The platform has four premium plans and a free plan.

The best plan is the Grow plan which costs $15 each month. This plan comes with digital marketing features to aid in growing your business.

7. Zyro

Zyro website builder is perfect for business basics.

Ease Of Use

This website builder has a section-based template editor that allows you to add and delete various page elements in a few clicks. Zyro is very easy to use since it has a grid format that guides you whenever you drag page elements like text boxes and images around on the page.

After dragging, the page elements snap into place at exact angles. Therefore, it’s hard to make design mistakes when using Zyro. It also provides special artificial intelligence tools like logo maker and SEO copywriting tools to simplify design and content creation.

Design Flexibility

The website templates on the platform are top-quality. The templates are simple, modern, and clean — these are all crucial elements if a platform is keen on enhancing user experience.

However, the templates aren’t customizable — if you’re aiming to create a unique brand, you should consider Squarespace or Wix instead. Once your site is live, you can’t change templates. As a result, you have to be committed to the design you select, particularly since the ways you can personalize it are limited.

Pricing

Regarding value for money, Zyro sits relatively evenly besides Squarespace and Wix. The standard websites cost $ 2. 90 every month, while e-commerce sites go for $9.90 every month. Zyro has an impressive one–month money-back guarantee policy.

Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning that when applying for the $2.90 regular plan, you have to pay for a 4-year subscription. If you wish to pay yearly, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee of $4.90, which is still very cost-effective.

8. Duda

Duda is ideal for web design businesses.

Ease Of Use

Updating text boxes and moving elements around the page on Duda is simple since it’s a drag-and-drop builder. Duda’s website templates are very structured and visually appealing, meaning you can only place items in specific areas on the page.

According to online reviews, most users found Duda easy to use — it’s ranked second after Wix based on ease of use.

Duda is less flexible than Wix. It’s a beginner-friendly web builder. Duda’s themes are more straightforward for beginners to customize compared to Squarespace. They aren’t minimalist or contemporary.

This blend of simplicity in use and yet somewhat limiting makes Duda the ideal platform for any business that prefers simplicity over highly customizable branding.

Design Flexibility

The platform’s flexibility stems from its individualized user journey options. With this feature, users can customize how different clients see your site, and it’s available even on the lowest-priced price plan.

For instance, you can show a video detailing the services you provide to customers visiting your site for the first time, or you can add a widget asking customers to contact you if they are visiting from somewhere close.

This feature could assist you in fostering more positive relationships since 74% of visitors get frustrated when web content isn’t personalized.

Pricing

Duda is a  costly web-building platform. Compared to other small business web builders featured in this article, it offers the least value.

Duda doesn’t have a free plan. Their 2-week free trial period is limited to only one of its plans. The platform has four pricing plans: a custom enterprise plan for big firms with many sites, and:

• Basic plan ($14 per month)
• Team plan ($22 per month)
• Agency plan ($44 per month)

The Team plan is perfect for small businesses as it comes with a 14-day free trial and also has branded marketing materials and analytics capabilities that aren’t on the basic program.

9. 1&1 IONOS

1&1 IONOS has the best pricing though it’s at the expense of features.

Ease Of Use

This platform isn’t for you if you aren’t well-versed in technology. You require confidence and patience to use this builder. 1&1 IONOS has limited customization, making it very difficult to work with.

Design Flexibility

When it comes to personalization, this platform is very limited. Additionally, it has outdated designs and images. It’s better to upload your images rather than relying on the ones the platform provides.

1&1 IONOS is the best platform for you if branding is essential to your business. However, if you’re looking to build a unique site, you’re better off using SquareSpace or Wix as 1&1 ONO’s templates are difficult to customize.

Pricing

This platform has very cheap plans, which start at $5 every month when you choose an annual subscription.

The platform also offers discounts on its plans. Consequently, you can get the lowest-priced plan going for as little as $1 for your first year, after which it renews at the regular $5 each month. These affordable prices are very enticing if you have limited funds.

10. Site123

If you’re searching for speed and reliability, Site123 is your platform.

Ease Of Use

Site123 usually asks users about their site desires and then creates a template based on their information.

However, the platform is too restrictive; hence users don’t find it enjoyable. It’s so simple that instead of making things easier, it makes them pretty difficult.

Design Flexibility

The platform’s simplicity translates into unsophisticated templates. It’d be better to use GoDaddy and Wix ADI as they have slicker templates and are less restrictive.

Pricing

The platform offers excellent value for money as it has affordable pricing plans. Their lowest plan starts at $12.80 every month. Nevertheless, you can get more for your money with a robust website builder.

What To Look For When Choosing The Best Website Builders

Website builders aren’t equal. Some builders provide extensive features and affordable prices, while others may be complicated and expensive. While you’re looking for the best site builder for your small business, you should consider the following essential factors:

1. Features

Choose a website builder that has all the features you require. Make a list of all the features you are looking for in a site builder and find one that matches your requirements.

If you intend to launch an online store, you’ll require a safe website builder that accepts PayPal or credit card payments.

Select a website that provides various pre-designed sites or professionally built themes if you wish to have a contemporary and sleek website design but has no experience.

If you intend to store numerous product videos and images, you’ll require a website builder with plenty of storage and high bandwidth.

You may require many other features, including SEO services, blog capacity, customer support, template editors, payment channels, etc.

2. Pricing

While some of these platforms come with free plans, at some point, you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan if you want to have a successful website.

Pricing can differ significantly depending on the platform. Even though buying the cheapest website builder plan may sound like a great idea, you’ll need to upgrade your site at some point. Challenges associated with more affordable website builders include insufficient storage space, website downtime, limited customer support, and limited bandwidth.

All these platforms have a monthly payment option. Most website builder sites and domain hosts typically offer discounts if you buy one year or more when setting up an account. If you intend to have the site for a long time, you can save a lot of money by signing up for a one-year plan with the website builder of your choice.

Some website builders provide various themes, premium plugins, and add-ons that could amount to hundreds of dollars of additional costs. This could significantly inflate your site’s price if you don’t select the correct builder or add-ons.

You may incur website design fees, customer support fees, credit card payment charges, and stock photo fees. Ensure you look into and understand the expenses related to your preferred builder.

3. Usability

One of the benefits of using a website builder is that you don’t need coding skills. Nevertheless, some builders are easier to use than others.

A website’s templates and drag-and-drop features can make it easy for anyone to create a website with little experience and computer knowledge.

Once the website is up and running, having a user-friendly site makes future updates to your website simpler.

4. Website Design, Features, And Options

You don’t have to be a professional web designer to create a contemporary, effective and fast website. Today’s site builder organizations give you control over the site, and you can drag-and-drop components to build your design.

Many builders offer premium templates and plugins that greatly enhance your small business’s website for additional flexibility.

If you have problems with complicated apps, selecting a site like Squarespace or Wix as your builder can assist in getting your site up and running quickly.

5. Security And Reliability

You need a website builder that offers excellent reliability and security. A safe site is essential for both the business owner and the consumer. Secure sites help ward off scammers, viruses, and fraudsters.

Working with a reliable website builder company is also vital. You don’t want to select a builder that constantly fails to load your site or crashes. Fortunately, all the builders listed in this article are reliable, and your website should be running well over 99% of the time.

6. Scalability

Having a website for your business can help you get new clients from all over the world. If you’ve begun with a beginner website, you might soon need to upgrade the website to ensure customer satisfaction.

Most of these builders give you the flexibility to scale up and enhance your site. Whether you’ve added many products or customers, you require a website builder that can grow with your business.

Advantages Of Using A Website Builder

Even though you can create a custom website from scratch or hire someone to do it for you, it takes money, skills, and time to build a site. Not everybody can code a whole website or afford to hire a coding expert.

Nevertheless, the most significant advantage of creating a website from scratch is making precise changes and developing a unique website for your brand. A website builder can speed up and simplify this process.

You can build a site in less than an hour or two with the appropriate tool. Additionally, if you wish to make specific changes, most website builders allow you to add lines of codes as needed.

Advantages of using a website builder include:

1. Streamlines Operations

Several website builders come with integrations like email marketing and SEO that streamline your operations and help you boost your online presence. You can use these tools to create links with an email signup form or custom landing pages in seconds without spending too much time on coding.

2. Fast And Easy

Website builders simplify the process of creating sites. Using a website maker saves you money and time, enabling you to direct the resources towards other important business projects. Some top builders allow you to create appealing, executive websites without basic coding skills.

3. Cost-effective

Although different website builders have different pricing, this is the most budget-friendly way of making an executive website. Since several website builders are on the market, you can choose one that fits your budget. There are even free website builders with great features.

Wrap Up

A small business doesn’t need to invest big to create online visibility. A well-designed site, e-commerce, marketing features, and more are just a platform away — all you have to do is select the right one.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Which is the leading website builder?

Weebly is the best website builder due to its flexibility and affordable pricing plans. In 2018, Square bought Weebly. As a result, they combined Weebly’s drag-and-drop feature with Square’s e-commerce capabilities, making it the best in the market.

2. How much does it cost to create a small business website?

Generally, small business website builders usually cost between $12 and $ 30 every month. If it doesn’t come with a hosting solution, hosting platforms typically cost around $15-240 depending on the hosting type — dedicated, VPS, or shared hosting.

3. What’s the best free website builder for small businesses?

Most web builders have a free-for-life plan, even though they are typically very limited with bandwidth and storage. They do provide a free way to get a simple website for your business so that you can test it. Then if you find that online presence boosts sales, you can scale up to an affordable paid plan.

Currently, the leading free site builder for small businesses is the free plan offered by Wix.

4.  Are website builders scalable?

Yes. Site builders are highly scalable. You can upgrade your plan to meet your expanding team. Vendors have enterprise-level functionality with individualized pricing. Contact your provider’s customer support team to learn more.

5. Is there a difference between a website builder and web hosting?

Yes. A website builder provides tools to create a sleek web page or multiple pages for clients to learn about you. The website requires hosting. Think of clothes on a mannequin; dresses can only be admired once correctly displayed. Similarly, a site must be hosted on a platform that can handle its traffic.

6. What’s the difference between WordPress and Wix?

Both perform the same task — building websites. WordPress is an open-source CMS that lets users design larger sites with multiple pages and add functionality. WordPress requires a steeper learning curve and requires users to purchase separate hosting.

On the other hand, Wix is an easy-to-use builder with a drag-and-drop template solution for building websites.

7. How much does it cost to build a website?

The majority of the website builder platforms charge a monthly fee and have different pricing options depending on the features a user requires. Generally, these platforms cost between $30 and $50. Most of them come with file management and hosting, but you’ll need to buy your domain.