Big or small, if you have a business, you need a website.
Online presence has become critical because consumer behavior has changed. More people today look for products online and make their purchase decisions based on what they find in cyberspace.
The best website builders for small businesses score well on these parameters:
- Easy to use
- Flexible designs
- High-quality features
- Extent of help and support available
- Value for money
Here’s a list of 10 business website builders that work perfectly for small businesses.
1. WordPress
By far the most popular and user-friendly free business website builder for small businesses.
There’s a bit of a confusion to clear first, though. If you search the net, you’ll notice that there are two WordPress sites: WordPress.org and WordPress.com. It’s easy to confuse between the two because of the same name and the same logo.
WordPress.org
WordPress.org is an open-source content management system (CMS) which is one of the most popular publishing platforms today. You could even say it is the best free website builder for small businesses.
You can use the self-hosted WordPress.org absolutely free to build a website for your business.
The biggest benefit of WordPress is the availability of unlimited theme support. Use free themes, your own customized themes, any other commercial theme – whatever you want. Also, users can access an equally expansive library of plug-ins and add-ons: That allows you to optimize the value of your website in the ways that you want. It means you can install SEO and Analytics tools. These are recognized tools for business growth.
Apart from promoting your own goods and/or services, you can earn from your website also. You can monetize it in whatever way you want. You could post ads of goods and services that do not conflict with your business interest, for example. If you are planning to create an online store for your business, you can do that with this free software.
WordPress.com
With WordPress.com, you can get a website for your business without needing to worry about where to host it. There’s a monthly fee, though. WordPress.com will take care of building and maintaining your website. You do not need to worry about the technicalities. WordPress.com offers you that for no extra cost. That allows you to have real-time answers to your questions.
Note that WordPress.com allows only limited plugins and add-ons unless you upgrade from the Basics plan. That means you will have no control over SEO and analytics. Your website will carry “Powered by WordPress” unless you upgrade to remove that branding.
2. Wix
Wix is a super flexible and user-friendly website builder for small businesses. Their drag and drop menu makes it easy to build one even by yourself. Wix also offers a free version, but you can’t have your own domain name there.
For a business website, you’ll surely want your own domain name. So, you’ll have to buy it. The free plan of Wix is one of the most well-featured options available. Their paid plans are also reasonably priced, starting with US$ 17 per month.
It scores high on the easy-to-use yardstick. High scores also on the help and support parameter. Wix has a five-star rating by customers on the value for money criterion.
3. Shopify
This is one of the most popular among paid ecommerce website builders for small businesses. It is a hosted platform for e-commerce.
It hosts your online store. You don’t need to worry about server maintenance. Customers testify that the Shopify loading speed is excellent. With dedicated customer support, including SEO, Shopify ensures your websites are lightning quick to load. Shopify allows multi-channel retailing: online, offline, and social.
4. BigCommerce
This is another paid ecommerce service platform, considered one of the major competitors of Shopify. It’s an exceptional digital solution for vendors with multiple products on offer. It offers more built-in features like abandoned cart saver, product review, blog, etc. than its competitors.
BigCommerce Allows multi channel selling, with no additional transaction fees even if you use a third-party payment option. Its superb SEO tools, multiple layers of security, and great customer support are other USPs.
5. Weebly
This is another preferred website builder for small businesses that scores very high on the user-friendly criterion. Users fall in love with its easy-to-use drag and drop template collection, fairy versatile in range
You can opt for paid plans that are free of the Weebly ad on your domain. All paid plans offer unlimited storage space. Only the free plan has a 500 GB limit. Extended built-in features, multilingual support, and decent SEO support available if you install Weebly’s MarketGoo app – these are the key benefits you get when you choose Weebly.
6. Volusion
Volusion users go gaga about their built-in onboarding materials. Apart from great onboarding help and customer support, you get high performance on loading speed and trustworthy security features. Extensive and flexible payment options make this website builder suitable for ecommerce.
You also get SEO and analytics support, a mobile app for your business, and dependable customer support with all plans. Volusion is exceptionally good if you want to branch out into ecommerce shortly, because of its extensive sales and marketing features.
7. Jimdo
Ease of use is Jimdo’s motto. It offers a free plan with no domain name. Even the basic paid plan for a domain name is one of the cheapest. Comprehensive SEO support ensures your can get your website indexed and optimized for search visibility quickly.
You can open an e-commerce store with a range of payment options with one of Jimdo’s higher paid plans. Comprehensive analytics support makes business decision making easy. Its mobile app is one of the best in the market, allowing you to make changes to your business website on the move.
8. Squarespace
Professional critics admit that the style options here are of superior quality. The “Build It Beautiful” tagline totally lives up to expectations and extends to backend support. High-quality blogging features, solid SEO options, and dependable security are superb Squarespace features. Plus, your website enjoys superlative loading speed.
Business owners benefit, in particular, from the logo design help offered by Squarespace. The options to add video content easily makes it particularly cool for e-commerce stores. Users also benefit from the 24×7 customer support through the live chat option.
9. Webnode
The best feature of Webnode is that it offers a free plan with your own domain name and no site ads. The website builder interface is easy to use, accompanied by eye-catching and creative template designs.
It makes social media marketing easy, and comprehensive ecommerce store features, with good SEO and analytics support make your work easy. Webnode offers extensive membership website management features, and a classy forms builder to help you enable seamless surveys.
10. GoDaddy Website Builder
This is one of the latest to arrive in the market with a free plan to start with and the cost of hosting is only US$ 1. The interface is easy to use, and built-in tutorials to help you set up your website. GoDaddy InSight™ is an AI powered data crunching capability built into GoDaddy, which promises to help businesses with decision making advice.
Extensive templates to choose from, with layouts optimized for mobile phones take design hassles out of the way. GoDaddy lets you manage your appointments and bookings, social media profiles, and email marketing right from a single interface, freeing up your time.
Which Website Builder Should You Choose for Your Small Business in 2020?
Hope we have made it easy for you to reach a decision about which website builder to choose for your business. We recommend Wix as a superb, balanced, and affordable feature rich business website builder. If you’re focused primarily on eCommerce, go for Shopify. Happy building!
