Best website builder for small business – top tools for your success
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Miglė Šeikytė
Content Lead
Are you starting your own business and looking into building selling and advertising online? Well, you’re in luck, building a business website nowadays is easier than ever. However, with so many website builders on the market, it can be rather difficult to pick the best one for your needs.
Website builders help small businesses make functional, modern, and completely custom websites. Complete with online stores, marketing features, and SEO optimization, they are excellent all-in-one solutions for any entrepreneur.
In our review of the best website builders for small businesses, we have prepared all the needed information about different web builder providers. We ranked them based on their performance, website-building abilities, features to help businesses, and price-to-value ratio. So, check our list and find the best website builder for your business needs.
Top 7 best website builders for small business
- Wix – top business website builder out there
- Hostinger Website Builder – functional website builder for small business
- SITE123 – simple to use business platform
- Shopify – excellent selling features for an ambitious business
- GoDaddy website builder – great marketing features in a simple business website builder
- Squarespace – great business features, beautiful templates
- Gator website builder – an affordable all-around business builder
📢 LIMITED OFFER: Get an additional 10% OFF Premium Wix plans using code 'CyberNews10!'
Best website builder for small business – our detailed list:
To create our list of best website builders for small businesses, we tested our top-rated website builders. Only those fit for small businesses were selected for our list. For that the providers had to meet our criteria of being fit to build a business site, providing E-commerce and SEO tools, and other useful features for businesses.
1. Wix – the best business website builder
| eCommerce: | From $27.00/month |
| Templates: | 900+ |
| Best for: | Design and site-building freedom |
| Free plan: | Yes |
| Current deal: | Get an additional 10% OFF Premium Wix plans using code 'CyberNews10!' |
Wix is the best website builder for small businesses. With over 900 website templates, handy tools for sales and marketing, like custom emails and creative tools, an app store, and 2 very different approaches to building your website, Wix has something for your small business to thrive.
Website building. Wix offers over 900 templates that can be adapted for business and two different website editors – there’s the classic Editor that offers you excellent in-depth site-building tools, or Wix ADI, which automatically generates a website based on your answers to a questionnaire. The ADI has fewer customization options, but you can always revert back to the classic Editor.
Business tools. With Wix, you get everything you could need to build your small business. That includes a solid E-commerce platform that has easy set-up guides and product management options. More so, the Wix Ascend tool for online marketing lets you make custom emails, social media posts, and even videos using a wide array of creative tools. Good SEO suite that will give you access to a full array of Wix SEO tools to optimize your site for better search engine rankings. And plenty of business-focused apps
Performance. Wix is an excellent website builder for businesses of all sizes – small and big. When we ran our test on GTMetrix with our mock-up site, the loading time averaged around 2.6 seconds; however, it’s barely noticeable when you load the site yourself. So, no matter how image-heavy your site is, Wix will be able to handle it.
Price. There’s a free plan that Wix offers that is limited, but a perfect way to test if this website builder works for you. Then there are several different plans with prices starting at $16.00/month, and the more features you need, the price will grow in tandem. However, the best plans for businesses start at $27.00/month subscription price.
Wix is a great website builder for your e-shop if you already have a full, complete vision of how your site should look and behave. This builder has the best custom editing tools, and it won't take long to learn to use them.
Learn more in our detailed Wix review.
2. Hostinger Website Builder – comprehensive small business website builder
| eCommerce: | From $2.99/month |
| Templates: | 130+ |
| Best for: | Businesses on a budget |
| Free plan: | No |
| Current deal: | Get Hostinger Website Builder, now 75% OFF + 3 months FREE! |
Hostinger Website Builder is an excellent tool to make a modern-looking single or multi-page e-shop. And then there are the prices – which are probably the cheapest in the whole industry, making Hostinger Website Builder an excellent option for aspiring entrepreneurs on a budget.
Website building. Hostinger Website Builder offers over 130 templates, separated into 10 different categories, ranking from personal site, blogs, portfolios, to business sites, for you to build your site and a highly intuitive editor to customize everything to your liking. The editor has simple elements, you can easily drag and drop on your page. It works on a grid system, which does limit you a bit.
Business tools. You will get features including AI options, like a smart heatmap to see where the users click the most, and a content writing feature that helps create eye-catching texts to attract customers. E-commerce allows you to add an online store: you can choose to add it as both a section on the existing page or as a separate page. And you’ll get Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or even a Messenger live chat integration.
Performance. Hostinger Website builder is very fast, when we tested it with GTMetrix, it averaged at around 1.1s loading time. While it might not have advanced third-party tools or design options, it's a top-class solution for product landing pages and small online stores.
Price. Hostinger offers only 1 website builder plan, which is also known as Website Builder and Web Hosting plan. The price for the plan starts at $2.99/month. It's suitable for E-commerce and business sites, has an incredibly good value for money, as the biggest website builders would charge you several times more.
If you're on a budget and need a reliable option to make a simple website, Hostinger Website Builder is the perfect solution. It might not have advanced third-party tools or design options, but it's a top-class solution for product landing pages and small online stores.
Learn more in our Hostinger Website Builder review.
3. SITE123 – an easy-to-use business solution
| eCommerce: | From $11.88/month |
| Templates: | 160+ |
| Best for: | One-person businesses, beginner users |
| Free plan: | Yes |
| Current deal: | SITE123 coupon 40% OFF! |
Site123 is a simplistic website builder that is best for beginners in site-building and for small businesses. It’s a speedy provider on a budget that will help you create the perfect site. For those who care about the results, and not the journey, SITE123 is an excellent choice.
Website building. Site123 has a vast list of 160+ template options that you can then customize with the editor feature, so you can customize your business site to your likening. The themes will automatically adapt to your content, making sweeping content changes easier to do than ever. By mixing and matching them together, you can easily make a seriously advanced business website in just a few minutes.
Business tools. There’s a built-in E-commerce platform that lets you sell digital goods, create coupons, use conversion codes to track orders, as well as showcase related products and variants. SITE123 also provides scheduled posts, integration with RSS, and ready-made templates at your fingertips – the absolute essentials for blogging. As for the SEO tools, you’ll get editable meta tags and titles, automatically generated sitemaps, aids for search engines like Google in better indexation of your sites, and integration with Google’s Webmaster Tools.
Performance. Remarkably fast, SITE123 loads in around 1.8s, based on our testing. This website builder is also aimed toward more novice users since it doesn’t require a lot of knowledge to start.
Price. Site123 offers a basic free plan for testing the service, and then the premium subscriptions start at $11.88/month. To get more features for growing your business, you’ll need to upgrade your plan.
SITE123 editor is laser-focused on speed. It only takes three clicks to have a functioning one-page website, a godsend for business owners who haven’t got the time or technical expertise to spend hours in front of their PCs to build an online presence.
Learn more in our Site123 review
4. Shopify – best advanced eCommerce platform
| eCommerce: | From $29.00/month |
| Templates: | 70+ |
| Best for: | Growing eCommerce businesses |
| Free plan: | No |
| Current deal: | Try 3 months of Shopify for $1/month |
Shopify is an E-commerce juggernaut, striking a perfect balance between being highly customizable and offering an absolute truckload of sales features – both offline and online. Shopify is perhaps the best website builder for small business that wants to sell, and sell big.
Website building. There are only over 70 template options, with only 9 free ones. Others will cost nearly $200 – but this one-time investment might just prove to be worth it. Editing these themes in order to turn them into a business page is very simple – it’s mostly drag and drop editor. While you can personalize pretty much everything on the website, a lot of that will require at least some coding experience.
Business tools. For E-commerce, there are features for adding products, shipping, abandoned cart recovery, managing inventory/orders, and even drop shipping. There is also a Point of Sale (POS) system letting you sell items in real life using the platform's stock management and payment features. On top of all that, Shopify has in-house marketing tools, letting you send out emails and do social media or SMS outreach. Also, the extensive built-in analytics tool looks at conversions, return rates, sales sources, and more.
Performance. Shopify is a perfect option for bigger businesses. It can get a bit expensive – but it's a worthy investment. It can load in around 2.9s, which is a bit slower than other providers on our list.
Price. There’s no free plan option available. Shopify’s subscription plans start at $29.00/month, and if you need to upgrade to more features and for a bigger site, then the prices will grow.
With discounts for transactions, as well as excellent advanced marketing and analytics tools, Shopify is a perfect option for bigger businesses. It can get a bit expensive – but it's a worthy investment.
Learn more in our Shopify review.
5. GoDaddy website builder – top-class marketing features
| eCommerce: | From $16.99/month |
| Templates: | 20+ |
| Best for: | Small businesses and marketing |
| Free plan: | No |
| Current deal: | Get up to 33% OFF GoDaddy website builder! |
Simple, minimalist, and tailored to small businesses, GoDaddy's website-building solution is a quick and effective website-building solution. In fact – it's more than just a regular website builder. Named "Websites+Marketing", this product combines simple site-building features with an advanced marketing suite, perfect for beginners and small businesses.
Website building. GoDaddy website builder starts with a quick setup guide to gain information about your business needs. Then you will be presented with a pre-made website filled with example content and design option. Then you’ll be able to edit a little, you get to pick from only 20+ templates that you then can edit a little bit.
Business tools. For E-commerce, GoDaddy goes simple, offering a lightweight, intuitive interface that should be perfect for beginners, the interface is excellent, and the actual process of adding products is a breeze. InSight suggests data-backed marketing advice on pretty much all facets of your business site. It all starts with you choosing your business goals; then, all of your goals will be broken down into an actionable list you can follow in order to achieve them. Then, there's GoDaddy Studio, it's a drag-and-drop graphics creator you can use to create digital posts for your various marketing mediums.
Performance. GoDaddy website builder is extremely fast; the loading time for our mock-up site averaged at around 1.3s. This is an excellent option for beginner users. It simplifies absolutely everything. Is easy to use, but is limited to customization capabilities.
Price. There’s no free plan available, but the premium plans for E-commerce start from $16.99/month. This is the best plan to run a small business of an e-shop, with all the needed features, tools, and capabilities to successfully run your site.
GoDaddy is an excellent option for beginner users. It simplifies absolutely everything. Sure, helping to easily build a website is nothing new – but the advanced marketing and design features make this a great all-around platform for those just looking to kickstart their new endeavors.
Learn more in our GoDaddy website builder review.
6. Squarespace – an all-in-one platform with beautiful designs
| eCommerce: | From $23.00/month |
| Templates: | 110+ |
| Best for: | Small, contemporary businesses |
| Free plan: | No |
| Current deal: | Get up to 30% OFF Squarespace! |
Squarespace offers a modern, lightweight, design-focused website-building solution for businesses looking to make a beautiful website simply and efficiently. If your business focuses a lot on social media and visuals, Squarespace is the perfect builder for you.
Website building. With over 110+ designer-built and carefully curated business templates, you'll get a seriously good selection. These templates are built with the latest performance and design standards in mind: they'll look good on any modern browser and device. From a single dashboard window, you can install a blog or upload products, integrate your site with social media, and manage your marketing campaigns. The pre-built Squarespace sections will automatically adapt to your chosen site template and color scheme.
Business tools. For E-commerce, Squarespace will provide a simple startup guide that will teach you the basics of running a store and how to populate a website with placeholder items. For SEO, Squarespace offers options to edit each page and post separately, adding meta titles and descriptions. For social media, there's Squarespace Unfold which helps you make visual content and share it directly to social media. And finally, there's email marketing. An intuitive system will help you make good-looking, conversion-driven emails, and track your business performance.
Performance. It takes around 2.8s to fully load the Squarespace site, and sites with a high count of images and other media will take even longer. This is a good web builder for starting a small business with the possibility to grow the site.
Price. With 4 plans available, the business plan subscriptions start at $23.00/month for the most basic plan. For more features and to be able to build bigger sites, you’ll have to upgrade to a more expensive plan.
For a modern business, looking for a sleek way to grow and manage its operations, Squarespace is a perfect all-in-one tool. Also, smart marketing and design tools will help you reach wide audiences with consistent, atractive-looking messages.
Learn more in our Squarespace review.
7. Gator website builder – affordable, beginner-friendly small business solution
| eCommerce: | From $3.46/month |
| Templates: | 190+ |
| Best for: | Beginners, businesses on a budget |
| Free plan: | No |
| Current deal: | Get up to 76% OFF HostGator! |
HostGator website builder – commonly just as simply Gator – is a shining example of everything being done for the sake of simplicity. A quick Express site editor is an excellent tool for custom websites with all of your desired elements: without you having to do anything.
Website building. With more than 190 templates, Gator is one of the most straightforward builders we have tested. Upon picking the "Express" option you'll be made to do a series of choices. There's stuff like "picking your color scheme", or "choosing a navigation style". And then, once everything is nice and picked, you'll be presented with a pre-made website – set up just the way you picked. From the editor, you can edit your sections as easily as enabling and disabling features from the side menu. There are also dozens of pre-made sections, coming with several different layouts.
Business tools. Starting with E-commerce, Gator offers a fairly simple interface that a lot of beginner users should definitely enjoy. It's simple and follows a 5-step guide. As for email marketing, Gator offers a pretty solid suite as well. A builder, very similar to the website, is there for all of your custom design needs. Finally, the analytics – Gator offers a solid built-in option, that's going to be perfect for beginner users to check out the number and the behavior of their users.
Performance. Gator website builder is the slowest provider on this list. During our test, it took around 6.6s to fully load our site, and if it was more media-heavy, it would take even longer.
Price. There are three plans available, and the subscriptions start at the budget-friendly cost of $3.46/month. For the best plan for E-commerce, you'll need to pay $8.30/month.
If you're running a simple business and look for a quick way to go online, Gator can be a great way to go. It's simple, inexpensive, and offers solid marketing and business features. It might not have the most powerful customization interface – but for many people, that won't be a problem.
Learn more in our Gator website builder review.
How did we test and rank web builders for small businesses
To pick only the best website builders for small businesses, we tested all our top-rated providers based on this criteria:
- Builder system. When testing the best website builder providers, we selected those that offer templates and the ability to customize them when creating your site. Additionally, we checked how easy it is to start setting the site up.
- Performance. To pick only those providers that will help you have the best website performance, we test them with GTMetrix to measure the site's load time and overall structure. For this purpose, we build a mock-up site of our own and then tested the performance. Since website builders are visually heavy, the loading times can appear longer, so we look for results that are better than 2.5s at least, but anything quicker is amazing.
- Resources. Those web builders with the best tools for small businesses were selected. That includes SEO tools, analytics, email marketing features, E-commerce, social media management, and others.
- E-commerce. For small businesses, we selected the providers that had E-commerce tools available so you could sell goods or services on your business site. In addition, we picked the providers that offer dedicated design templates for E-commerce sites, or allow enough customization to adapt any template for your business site A great addition was managing social media content.
- Price. High prices don’t always mean that you receive the best product. Therefore, we measured their price-to-value ratio before adding the web builder to our list.
Comparison of the best small businesses web builders
| Wix | Hostinger Website Builder | Site123 | Shopify | GoDaddy website builder | Squarespace | Gator website builder | |
| Logo |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Rating | |||||||
| Best for | Small and big businesses | Small and big businesses | Small and big businesses | Big businesses | Small business | Small and big businesses | Small business |
| E-commerce features | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| SEO tools | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Free domain name | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom email | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Templates | 900+ | 130+ | 160+ | 70+ | 22+ | 110+ | 190+ |
| Free plan | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Price for E-commerce plan | $/month | $2.99/month | $11.88/month | $29.00/month | $16.99/month | $23.00/month | $8.30/month |
| Best deal | Get an additional 10% OFF Premium Wix plans using code 'CyberNews10!' | Get Hostinger Website Builder, now 75% OFF + 3 months FREE! | SITE123 coupon 40% OFF! | Try 3 months of Shopify for $1/month | Get up to 33% OFF GoDaddy website builder! | Get up to 30% OFF Squarespace! | Get Gator at 55% off, for just $3.46/month! |
How to choose the best web builder for small business
Different sites require different features and capabilities. So, for small business sites, you should pick the website builder that offers these features:
- Builder templates and customization. Sometimes it’s easier to pick a pre-made template and customize it to fit your site better instead of building it from scratch. So select the provider that offers a wide variety of templates and builder tools to individualize your site.
- E-commerce tools. For a business website, no matter the size of it, you need ways to sell goods or services; therefore, picking a builder with available E-commerce tools is essential.
- Features. Additions like SEO tools, analytics, and other tools to track customers' activity while on the site, analyze the trends, and manage your website’s trends.
- Price. Another important point to consider is your price point. Just because a website builder is expensive doesn’t mean that it will meet your requirements. So, before purchasing a plan, make sure that you’ll get all the needed features for a fitting price.
Video review
You can also check out our best web builders for small businesses review on YouTube. Learn all about our top provider editors, templates, performance, and many more things.
Wrapping up
A small business doesn't have to invest big to build a solid online presence. With a reliable website builder that offers features for small businesses, you can build your site very quickly and easily and start selling your goods or services.
For the best experience, you should pick a website builder with various templates available to help you start setting up your site, speedy loading times, and features for small businesses. The features you should look for include E-commerce tools, SEO analytics tools, and social media management tools.
Based on our testing, the two best website builders for small businesses are Wix and Hostinger Website Builder. Both providers offer excellent tools for building your site and selling your goods or services, have an easy website setup and customization features, and come for a great price based on their value.
Niche business website builders
This best website builder list for small businesses overviews all the top builders for the job. However, if builders for all sorts of businesses is a little too vague and you're looking for something more specific, here are a few articles we've prepared for niche businesses:
- Best eCommerce website builder
- Real estate website builders
- Best law firm website builder
- Best affiliate website builders
- Best website builder for musicians
- Best membership website builders
- Restaurant website builders
- Best website builder for podcasts
- Best website builder for photographers
- Best website builder for artists
- Best website builder for churches
- Best website builder for non-profits
Best website builder deals this week:
Best website builder for small business – FAQ
Is Wix good for small business?
Yes, Wix is one of the best website builders for small businesses. It's incredibly versatile, offers various template options, and a chance to build your site from the ground up yourself. More so, the subscription prices are extremely low, and you get lots of useful features, like SEO tools, email marketing, and E-commerce tools.
How much does it cost to build a website for a small business yourself?
Solid small business website builder plans start at around $10 a month. However, options like Hostinger Website Builder offer excellent features for as low as $2.99 a month.
Can I get a free website for my business?
While you can get a free website for your business, such options come with some serious drawbacks. For instance, your site will be covered with builder's own watermarks and be hosted on their subdomain – both bad looks for any emerging business. We suggest to go for a premium plan.
Do I need a website for my small business?
Absolutely – everything's moving online, and social media marketing is not always sustainable. It's important to have a place your business can call home – website builders can help you with that.
Comments
I really like Squarespace's contributor options, so you can add other people and give them whatever level of access you wish to attribute. It's also very user-friendly and helpful in building a modern-looking site. If you're looking for something hassle-free and great for small businesses, Squarespace is a top pick.
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