In today’s market, it’s common for even the smallest companies to conduct at least some business online. Starting a business is no longer a brick-and-mortar-only enterprise. And whether you want to start an ecommerce business or need to allow for online bookings, you can’t really have an online presence without a business website.
But if you’re not tech-savvy and you can’t afford a freelance web developer with all your other business startup costs to cover, are you out of luck?
Definitely not. The best website builder for small business will help you create a powerful and well-designed business website at a low cost. Here are the 11 of the best website builders for small business, plus a few other great options to consider.
Best for Beginners
WordPress is a small business website favorite, but its reach goes far beyond the small biz category—34% of all websites are built via WordPress.[1]
WordPress offers one of the easiest website and blog building platforms for beginners. So if you’re just starting out and are in search of one of the best website builders for small business, WordPress is a safe bet.
There are more than 350 applicable templates for small business websites—including a bunch of free ecommerce WordPress themes—and you can customize each template with your own fonts, images, logo, colors, and more. WordPress also comes with a strong analytics tool and SEO capabilities—which is great if you’re interested in how people are finding your site, and how it’s performing on the internet.
Pricing: WordPress offers a free plan, but entrepreneurs may be better off with one of the paid plans:
Best Free Option
Weebly is another small business website builder that has been around for a while (since 2007) and has remained popular with small businesses. Weebly is a good fit for businesses that need websites, online stores, or blogs, though it has some limited capabilities. It has a powerful drag-and-drop editor, making it one of the more customizable business website services available to small business owners. You can also use their App Market to customize your business website further.
This business website tool also goes beyond just building, offering email marketing services, tools to help with your SEO strategy, ecommerce services, and blogging capabilities. We think that the best website builder for small business will offer you flexibility without breaking the bank, and Weebly fits the bill.
Pricing: The free offerings from Weebly are especially powerful compared to its competitors. If you’re looking for the best free website builder for small business, it’s a great option. However, if you’re interested in a paid plan, they have four to choose from:
Best Basic Builder
Sitey is a simple but powerful small business website builder. Sitey offers a little bit of everything for a small business owner who’s looking for a functional and easy-to-use website—you get Google-friendly desktop and mobile development, 24-hour hosting, hundreds of templates, ecommerce capabilities, and more.
You can get a lot of functionality with their free subscription—50 MB of storage, 5 MB for file uploads, and 1 GB of bandwidth. If you’re looking for the best free website builder for small business and Weebly didn’t quite cut it for you, Sitey may be another option.
Pricing: Beyond their free plan, Sitey offers three advanced plans. They include:
Best for Design Template Options
If you’re looking for a host with a large (very large) array of design templates, then Wix might be the best small business website builder for you.
Wix offers hundreds of free design templates that work for just about any type of business. Sort through their templates by category: business, photography, videography, restaurants and food, design, and so on.
This small business website builder has an easy-to-use template: Simply drag and drop elements to create your website. That makes the actual building part of creating a website for your business pretty painless. This best website builder for small business option also offers mobile capabilities and free, secure online web hosting.
Pricing: Wix offers hundreds of templates, unlimited pages, and web hosting for free. But they also offer premium subscription levels specifically for businesses:
They also have an Enterprise plan for $500 per month.
Best for Creatives
Squarespace is a small business website builder largely known as a service for creative industries and those hoping to start an ecommerce business. However, Squarespace still has something to offer most small businesses.
Squarespace has a variety of beautifully designed templates—if you want your small business website to have real visual appeal, a Squarespace website will really wow your customers.
That said, this service doesn’t allow for as much customization as other small business website builders do. However, if you’re looking for an easy way to craft a professional-looking business website, Squarespace is a no-brainer.
Pricing: While Squarespace isn’t the cheapest business website builder on this list, they do offer a very simple pricing structure: The Business plan costs $18 per month when you pay for a full year or $26 per month when you pay monthly. It comes with a wide array of features suitable for most businesses. Here is their full pricing plan when paid annually:
Best for Ecommerce Integrations
This is one of your best website builder for small business options if you’re creating an online store. Shopify offers many different ways to sell your product and integrate with other shopping environments—through an online store, Facebook shop, selling on Amazon, and so on.
Shopify also equips your website with tools to help you sell on the go—at trade shows, marketplaces, or just about anywhere in person. Along with your subscription, you’ll also get a Shopify POS system. Its features increase with each subscription level.
Pricing: After experiencing a free 14-day trial, Shopify has three paid options to choose from. They are:
Best for Ecommerce On-the-Go
With more than 15 million sites under their belt, Jimdo is another great small business website builder. Jimdo can help you create everything from a simple, single-page website to an online store, making it a good option for any type of business that retails at least partially online. Moreover, Jimdo themes are all mobile-ready, and they allow you to easily edit your website wherever you are from their mobile and tablet apps.
Pricing: While Jimdo can create a website of any kind, their strength is in online stores. However, you’ll have to pay for a subscription to access their online store service:[2]
Best for Social Media Integrations
Duda provides an easy small business website builder solution that’s especially useful if you’re looking for desktop, tablet, and mobile capabilities. With Duda, you can convert your standard desktop website into a mobile site, or build a mobile site from scratch.
But Duda isn’t just for mobile; they also help small business owners create well-designed desktop sites with their easy-to-use interface. As a plus, Duda comes with an intuitive social media integration and a helpful built-in analytics system.
Pricing: Duda offers three pricing tiers, each of which increases the number of features you get, and can suit businesses of varying sizes. These include:
The Enterprise plan works best for the largest companies who need the most capabilities from their business website.
Best for SEO
Webs is another small business website builder that offers all the top tools available to business owners—many templates, drag-and-drop capabilities, social connectivity, and so on.
But where Webs really shines is its SEO capabilities. If you build your business website with Webs, the platform will guide you through setting your website up for search engine success, while also letting you customize your website based on your needs. Other than that, Webs is one of the oldest website builders in the industry, and a solid option for small business owners who need a powerful and intuitive website.
Pricing: Webs offers three plans. All three give you a free domain name, but they increase in storage space, web store items allowed, customer support, and other features:
Best User Experience
Yola is a great website builder for small business owners who want the easiest possible experience. With Yola, you can create a powerful small business website with absolutely no code or tech skills in your arsenal. In fact, Yola claims that you can make one of their free websites in minutes, using hundreds of professionally designed, customizable templates.
Pricing: Yola offers a free service, or three separate tiers. Each offers users increasing levels of features and support:
Best for Registering Domains
Another option when it comes to choosing a small business website builder is GoDaddy. They are best known as a company that started registering domain names. However, they now allow their customers to build their own websites, and offers ecommerce capabilities, at low prices. As you may have read in our Shopify vs. GoDaddy review, there are some limited capabilities compared to competitors, but it still works well for your purposes.
Pricing: Not all of the plans with GoDaddy allow you to sell products, so you’ll have to be sure to choose a plan that works for your business needs.[3] They offer the following plans:
If you don’t think any of the above are the best website builder for your small business, that’s okay! You may have specialized needs that those small business website builders couldn’t meet. Here are three more options if you’re still shopping around for tools, hosting, and more:
Pixpa is a website builder made primarily for small creative businesses to create a website, publish blogs, and start an ecommerce store without any coding knowledge. With multiple client-proofing tool integrations, Pixpa is especially useful for independent photographers to share, sell, and deliver work online to clients.
If you’re looking for an uncomplicated, drag-and-drop experience and customizable themes for your creative business, Pixpa is worth your consideration. Subscriptions start at $5 per month.
Though not a web-hosting service, Template Monster is a great option for business owners looking for themes at varying prices. We recommend their Monstroid2 WordPress template as a solid multipurpose template. It works well for the launch of personal web pages, business or ecommerce sites, and is a feature-rich theme designed for expert webmasters and beginners alike.
MotoCMS is a small business website builder with a huge collection of designs for any business. Developing top-quality website templates for every purpose and need, MotoCMS has a drag-and-drop website builder with plenty of plug-ins and widgets available to enhance the functionality of your small business website.
It’s equipped to handle ecommerce sites, portfolio sites, and small business websites alike. Besides the templates, the company specializes in providing custom web design and development services.
MotoCMS offers a 14-day free trial period. After that, you’ll pay at least $139 for your template.
While searching for the best website builder for small business, you want to find a balance: The perfect platform has a broad set of functionalities but is easy and intuitive to use.
At the top of your list of things to consider before choosing your business website builder should be your budget and the level of usability you need in order to make your website a success.
In general, the features of a good, if not the best, website builder for small business include:
Because there are many tools for building a small business website these days, we’ve helped you filter out some of the noise, but ultimately the decision will be up to you.
As a small business owner, you’re always busy. With so many other things on your plate, your best website builder for small business will need to be easy to use but fully functional and budget-friendly. Luckily, there’s no need. Any of the above are well-priced options for setting up a stellar website, so think through what you need for your small business website, and take the plunge!
Article Sources:
Sally Lauckner is the editor-in-chief of the Fundera Ledger and the editorial director at Fundera.
Sally has over a decade of experience in print and online journalism. Previously she was the senior editor at SmartAsset—a Y Combinator-backed fintech startup that provides personal finance advice. There she edited articles and data reports on topics including taxes, mortgages, banking, credit cards, investing, insurance, and retirement planning. She has also held various editorial roles at AOL.com, Huffington Post, and Glamour magazine. Her work has also appeared in Marie Claire, Teen Vogue, and Cosmopolitan magazines.