3 March 2022
Best Website Builders For Small Businesses in 2022
Website builders are an effective way for individuals and small businesses to start a website without having to hire a developer. On the other hand, finding the best website builders for small businesses might be difficult for beginners.
There are many website builders available. How do you identify which option is best for you?
In this post, we will go through the pros and cons of the best small businesses website builders to help you select the best one.
What to Look For in the Best Website Builder?
When it comes to deciding on the best website builder for you, you should consider ten main factors.
1. Ease of Use
If you’re deciding which site builder to use, be sure it’s simple to use, even for absolute beginners. It should have a drag-and-drop builder, as well as powerful editing tools and customization tools.
2. Lots of Templates
Make sure you select a website builder that offers a good selection of professional website templates along with the flexibility to add additional features like Google Analytics, CRM, third-party marketing tools, etc.
3. Responsive Options
People now use their mobile phones more to access the internet rather than their laptops or computers. Your website must be mobile-friendly to be used by the vast majority of visitors. The best approach to do is to create a responsive website.
The website builder you use should make it simple for you to make your website responsive. Offering responsive designs is a good choice since it means you don’t have to do anything extra to make your website mobile-friendly.
4. Customization Options
Templates are useful for making the process of creating a website easier, but you should make sure you can customize it to make it your own.
A good site builder will provide you with a lot of customization options. You should be able to change the colors, upload your own images, and customize the shapes and sizes of the icons and buttons as you like.
5. SEO Features
A great website builder with SEO features may offer you a massive advantage by assisting you in optimizing your website’s pages for search engine visibility.
6. Social Share Features
Once your websites start to grow, you want to promote them. You want people that like your site to promote it too.
Social sharing features can be beneficial in both aspects. You can easily upload new content to your social networks to keep your followers up to date, and you can also make it easy for visitors to share your web pages with their followers with a single click.
7. Price
You most likely don’t have a lot of money to invest in your website. And because website builders are usually billed on a subscription basis, you’ll need to think about the long-term costs and what you can pay right now.
Choose a website builder that is within your website’s continuing budget.
8. Image Library
All websites need images because images are vital in how people experience the site.
A website builder that offers an image library may help you save time, get your website up and running faster, and make it look great.
9. Educational Resources
Check to see whether the website builder you select has tutorials on how to use it. You’ll benefit more from your website builder if you’re able to fully understand everything it can do for you and how to make use of it all.
10. Customer Support
Look for a site builder that provides customers support 24/7 when they need it. Hopefully, you don’t ever need customer service, but it’s important to know it’s there and reliable if you ever do.
With all this putting in mind, let’s look at the best website builders for small businesses to start your website without hiring expertise.
Best Website Builders for Small Businesses in 2022
1. WordPress
WordPress.org is the world’s most popular website building platform. WordPress powers over 43% of all websites on the internet.
The self-hosted WordPress content management system is at the top of our list of the best website builders for small businesses because of its popularity, powerful features, scalability, and simplicity of use.
WordPress is an open-source and free website builder. This shows that you have maximum control over your website compared to any other online website builder on this list.
With WordPress, you have full control over your website, with no third-party interference, ensuring the highest level of privacy.
This is why many popular websites, such as WhiteHouse.gov, The New York Times, and Microsoft, among many other small businesses, use WordPress to create their websites.
Pros:
- WordPress is free.
- It’s easy to set up.
- You have total control over customizing the elements of your website using various design options.
- Thousands of free and premium WordPress themes are available to help you establish a great blog without the help of a designer. See our post on how to choose a WordPress theme.
- You have access to over 59,000 free WordPress plugins as well. These plugins function as applications for your WordPress site, allowing you to add features such as contact forms, galleries, and more. See our list of must-have WordPress plugins for all websites.
- WordPress.org is completely optimized for search engines. This makes it simple to rank your blog post in Google using search engine optimization (SEO), mainly if you use some best WordPress SEO plugins.
- In WordPress, you can quickly enable Google Analytics so that you can view the data that matters. This will help you in increasing your new website traffic and subscribers.
- You can use popular drag and drop WordPress page builders to easily create your custom website designs using a drag-and-drop editor.
- A WordPress website builder is fully translated in over 75+ languages, and it allows you easily create multilingual websites.
Cons:
- Basic customization is simple, but there may be a learning curve if you want to make more complicated adjustments.
- It is self-hosted, Which means you will need to take responsibility for hosting and any technical issues that may arise.
- You will have to manage your backups and security.
Pricing:
WordPress.org is 100% free; you will still require a web hosting package and a domain name.
To save your time and money, I recommend Bluehost for domains and web hosting.
Because their web hosting is quite simple to set up, their service is excellent, and their plans are highly affordable.
See our post on how to start a WordPress blog for complete step-by-step instructions.
2. Web.com
Web.com is one of the popular website builders for small businesses. They provide simple website-building tools at a low cost, allowing anyone to create a website without knowing how to code.
Pros:
- A drag-and-drop website builder that is simple to use.
- Simple to set up and manage.
- Offer dozens of fully customizable 100% mobile-friendly templates for your website.
- Free domain name for all paid plans.
- 24/7 support via phone call, which isn’t an option for every website builder.
- It also offers custom web design services at a very affordable price.
- It comes with a business email address, SEO tools, website analytics, and more.
Cons:
- There’s no free plan or free trial
- You are limited to 50 products with the eCommerce plan.
- Lack of powerful features when business grows.
- Web.com is a proprietary website builder. Moving your blog to another platform in the future will be difficult.
Pricing:
Web.com starter plan starts at $1.95 per month, which includes a drag & drop website builder, hundreds of beautiful templates, and a free domain.
Their marketing package starts at $2.95 per month and includes extra SEO features to help you rank higher in search engines.
Lastly, their eCommerce package starts at $3.95 per month and includes eCommerce features such as the ability to accept credit cards using a secure shopping cart, sell up to 50 products, track and manage orders, and more.
3. Wix
Wix is another best website builder for small businesses that allows you to completely control your site. Unlike some other builders, it does not lose power or customizability for simplicity; instead, it combines easy drag-and-drop editing capabilities with a wide range of functionality. Over 1.9% of all websites use Wix as their website builder.
It is not only a great website builder, but it’s also a great option if you like to start an online store, with three eCommerce-specific plans and a slew of tools to help you increase your sales.
Pros:
- Easy to create a website, No coding required.
- Wix provides a broad selection of eCommerce tools, making it a perfect choice for starting an online store.
- It has many features, such as great SEO tools and a lot of applications.
- You may select from more than 800 professionally designed and completely customizable templates.
- Great help and support.
Cons:
- Wix’s free version is limited and displays Wix’s logo.
- After you’ve published your site, you can’t change the template without starting again.
- You may need to spend more to install third-party apps for long-term scalability.
- It is difficult to move Wix to a different website builder in the future.
Pricing:
Wix offers a free version that includes a Wix-branded subdomain. You may connect a domain for $9.16 per month. Their combo plan starts at $14 per month and includes a free domain name. The monthly eCommerce plan for online stores starts at $23.
4. Squarespace
If you’ve done your research on small businesses website builders, we’re willing to guess that you’ve come across Squarespace. Squarespace is the most popular site builder and hosted content management system. It powers 1.8% of all websites on the internet.
While it does serve internet companies, it primarily serves individuals who want to start blogging or establish an online portfolio.
All you have to do with Squarespace is pick from their 100+ templates and edit them. You may add text and images to your website by drag & drop elements. You may also easily change the colors, fonts, and other elements.
Pros:
- It is simple and easy to use for non-technical users.
- It offers more than 100+ templates that are optimized for tablets and phones.
- Comes with blogging features.
- 24/7 customer support.
- Edit pages through mobile apps.
Cons:
- Limited integrations with third-party service.
- eCommerce plans’ payment processing options are limited to Stripe, Apple Pay, and PayPal. You won’t be able to add any more payment gateways.
- Page speed isn’t that good.
Pricing:
Squarespace plan starts from $19 per month. Their eCommerce plan starts from $36 per month.
5. Weebly
Weebly is a simple website builder that is best suited for people who are creating their first website.
It comes with a professional-looking page builder that allows you to customize your website without knowing any coding.
You may get started immediately with a free account, but your domain will be branded with the Weebly logo. However, you may add a custom domain to Weebly’s premium plans.
It is also important to note that Weebly can power websites that require e-commerce integration. Weebly’s higher-tier plans have limitless storage, so setting up online stores shouldn’t be difficult.
Pros:
- You can get started using Weebly for free.
- Easy to use site editor.
- You may install hundreds of apps to enhance the functionality of your website.
- Start an online store with various features and choices in a matter of minutes.
Cons:
- Weebly is a fully hosted platform, so you cannot hire a developer or designer to add new functionality or feature to your website.
- It shows ads on a free and personal plan. You need to upgrade to their professional plan to remove ads.
Pricing:
Excluding the free version, there are three pricing options. The Connect plan is $5 per month (paid annually). The Pro version, which introduces e-commerce functionality, is $12 per month. The business plan is $25 per month.
6. Shopify
Shopify is a popular eCommerce website builder created specifically for online stores and eCommerce websites. It powers millions of online stores across 175 different countries.
According to research, Shopify powers 4.4% of all websites on the internet, most popular only after WordPress, which has a share market of 43.3%.
Overall it’s not the best website builder, but if you’re serious about starting an eCommerce store, it’s definitely your best option.
Pros:
- It supports over 100 payment options and provides its own gateway, Shopify Payments.
- It offers a number of Shopify apps in the Shopify App Store in different categories like email marketing or sales.
- Provides SSL, so you don’t have to be concerned about the security of your website.
- It generates a sitemap automatically for your products, web pages, and blog posts.
- It works with Google Analytics so that you can track sales, visits, and referrals.
- 24/7 round-the-clock customer support
Cons:
- You’ll have to pay a higher transaction charge on top of other payment gateway costs unless you use Shopify Payments.
- If you’re just getting started, Shopify’s pricing may be a little higher than some of the other website builders on this list.
- Shopify offers fewer built-in features than other platforms, so you’ll need to use apps to improve the functionality of your store.
Pricing:
The basic Shopify plan costs $29 per month. You may upgrade to Shopify for $79 per month or Advanced Shopify for $299 per month. Shopify also has a $9 per month Shopify Lite package that allows you to put a buy button on any website.
7. GoDaddy
GoDaddy is an extremely user-friendly site builder, and it is the quickest overall website builder available. With GoDaddy’s design assistance, all you have to do is enter your information, and GoDaddy will develop a custom website for you to personalize.
The building process is really simple and quick, thanks to simple layouts and instructions for adding features to your site.
On the other hand, GoDaddy isn’t the ideal choice for powerful or complex websites — it may be quick and simple to use, but it doesn’t imply it’s the best option for creating a truly personalized website.
Pros:
- You may create a website and get it live in a matter of minutes.
- Easy-to-use interface with tons of customization.
- Its pricing plans are cheap in comparison to some other website builders.
- Built-in marketing tools and expertise.
Cons:
- It has a limited feature set and fewer design options.
- Sites aren’t as attractive as those created by other website builders.
- Moving your website from GoDaddy Website Builder to another website builder is difficult.
Pricing:
GoDaddy plan starts from $9.99 per month. However, if you want to sell online, you’ll need an eCommerce plan, which costs $16.99 per month.
8. Gator by HostGator
Gator is a popular online website builder from HostGator, one of the world’s largest hosting providers. The Gator builder provides an all-in-one website building and hosting solution, making it ideal for small businesses.
Pros:
- You don’t have to worry about hosting when using Gator since it’s a fully hosted platform.
- 200+ professional design templates.
- It provides an access to a built-in stock photo library.
- A free custom domain name in all paid plans.
- Start an online store with an eCommerce plan.
Cons:
- It does not provide a free plan or a free trial.
- Gator is a simple website builder; thus, it misses the advanced features included in the other options on our list.
Pricing:
The Gator Website Builder starts at $3.46 per month. It includes hosting and the domain name, making it cost-effective for small businesses.
9. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is the best eCommerce website builder that makes it simple to create a scaled online store. It has all the necessary features built-in, allowing you to keep your overhead low and your profit margins high.
Pros:
- You don’t have to worry about website speed, security, or updates since it’s a fully hosted platform.
- It works with all popular payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Visa Checkout, and more.
- Strong SEO support for organic growth.
- Adding product variants and options is both easy and flexible.
Cons:
- A bit expensive for those who are just getting started.
- Moving your website from BigCommerce to other website builders may be difficult in the future.
Pricing:
All BigCommerce plans provide a 15-day free trial. Their basic plan costs $29.95 per month and includes all of the features you’ll need. However, plus plan costs $79.95 per month for extra conversion optimization features. Their pro plan costs $299.95 per month and includes all of the advanced features you may need.
10. WordPress.com
WordPress.com is the best blogging platform and website hosting provider run by Automattic. It was founded by Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of the open-source software WordPress, thus the name WordPress.com.
WordPress.com is not the same as the self-hosted WordPress.org website builder that we recommended as our top pick. Instead, this is a customized hosting service focusing primarily on blogging.
Pros:
- It offers a free plan.
- You don’t have to worry about the software and backups as WordPress.com takes care of it.
- Hundreds of free and premium WordPress themes are in all plans.
- It offers powerful editing tools that bloggers find helpful.
Cons:
- Users cannot install custom plugins or themes unless they upgrade to the business plan.
- Free WordPress sites show WordPress.com branded subdomains.
- WordPress.com does not offer any eCommerce features or integrated payment gateways unless you switch to the eCommerce plan.
- You cannot build membership websites with WordPress.com.
Pricing:
WordPress.com’s free plan is extremely limited. Their personal plan starts with $4 per month billed annually and includes a custom domain. Premium plan costs $8 per month billed annually, and it gives you the ability to monetize your site and advanced design customization.
But to build professional websites, you’ll need either their Business plan ($24 per month) or their eCommerce plan ($45 per month), which is far more expensive than self-hosted WordPress.
Our Pick for Best Website Builders for small businesses
After carefully examining all of the popular website builders, we feel that WordPress.org beats all website builders in terms of overall performance, simplicity of use, pricing, and flexibility.
WordPress is a great platform for beginners, personal websites, and small businesses. Some of the world’s top brands are using WordPress on their websites.
We hope our website builder list helped you in selecting the best website builders for small businesses. If you liked this post, you might be also want to read:
