The 10 Cheapest Ways to Build Your Small Business Website

10 Top Builders for Small Business Websites

1. Wix
2. Squarespace
3. Weebly
4. Duda
5. WordPress
6. Yoda
7. Sitey
8. Shopify
9. Webs
10. Jimdo

In today’s market, it’s common for even the smallest companies to conduct at least some business online. And whether you own an ecommerce store 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 startup costs to cover, are you out of luck?

Definitely not. There are a variety of small business website builders that help owners create powerful and well-designed business websites—at low costs. Here are the 10 best tools to use to build your small business website on a budget, plus a few other great options to consider.

The Top 10 Business Website Builders

The best website builder for small business varies from business to business.

When you’re searching for a business website builder, think carefully about what you need for your small business website. If you think you could fully customize your small business website to your needs with a given tool, then that’s probably the best tool for you.

While searching for the best tool, you want to find a balance: The perfect platform has a broad set of functionalities, but is easy and intuitive to use.

In general, a good website builder:

• Helps you easily choose your domain name.
• Offers a variety of website templates.
• Has mobile design capabilities.
• Makes photo uploads and gallery uploads easy.
• Offers a shopping cart service (if you’re selling products online).
• Syncs with your social media accounts.
• Gives access to an attentive customer support team.
• Has a pricing structure that doesn’t break the bank.

Because there are many tools for building a small business website these days, we’re here to help you filter out some of the noise.

These 10 tools are a great fit for building a small business website on a budget.

1. Wix

If you’re looking for a host with a large (very large) array of design templates, then Wix might be the 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 to create your website. That makes the actual building part of creating a website for your business pretty painless. They also offer mobile capabilities and free and 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:

• Business Basic: $20/month
• Business Unlimited: $25/month
• Business VIP: $35/month

2. Squarespace

Squarespace is a small business website builder largely known as a service for creative industries and ecommerce companies. However, Squarespace still has something to offer for 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 customizability as other small business website builders do. However, if you’re looking for an easy way to craft a professional-looking website, Squarespace is a no-brainer.

Pricing: While Squarespace isn’t the cheapest website builder on this list, they do offer a very simple pricing structure: The Business plan costs $18 per month, with a wide array of features suitable for most businesses.

3. Weebly

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. It has a powerful drag-and-drop editor, making it one of the more customizable services available to small business owners. You can also use their App Market to customize your web development in any way you want.

This business website tool also goes beyond just website building, offering email marketing services, SEO functionality, ecommerce services, and blogging capabilities.  

Pricing: The free offerings from Weebly are especially powerful compared to its competitors. Paid subscriptions start at $8 per month, with their Business tier (best for small businesses and stores) at $25 per month.

4. Duda

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 site-builder 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 increase in the amount of features, and suit businesses of varying sizes:

• Basic: $14/month
• Team: $22/month
• Agency: $74/month

They also provide a Custom service, which works best for the largest companies who need the most capabilities from their business website.

5. WordPress

WordPress is a small business favorite, but its reach goes far beyond the small biz category: 30% of all websites are built via WordPress.

WordPress offers one of the easiest website and blog building platforms for beginners. So if you’re just starting your business and need a easy small business website service to use, WordPress is a safe bet.

There are more than 350 applicable templates for small businesses, and you can customize each template to make it your own—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 free plans. But entrepreneurs are better off with a Premium plan, priced at $8 per month. Larger small businesses can opt for the Business plan, priced at $25 per month.

6. Yola

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 site 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:

• Bronze: $4.95 per month
• Silver: $9.95 per month
• Gold: $19.95 per month

7. Sitey

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, e-shop capabilities, and more.

You can get a lot of functionality with their free subscription—50MB of storage, 5MB for file uploads, and 1GB of bandwidth.

Pricing: Beyond their free plan, Sitey offers three advanced plans:

• Starter: $4.61 per month
• Pro: $6.14 per month
• Ecommerce: $9.99 per month

8. Shopify

This is one of your best small business website builder 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 point of sale system. Its features increase with each subscription level.

Pricing: After experiencing a free 14-day trial, Shopify’s three packages are priced as such:

• Basic Shopify (best for new businesses): $29/month
• Shopify (best for growing businesses): $79/month
• Advanced Shopify: $299/month

9. Webs

Webs is another small business website builder that offers all the core functionalities as 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, website items, customer support, and other features:

• Starter (best for basic websites): starts at $5.99/month
• Enhanced (works for most small businesses): starts at $12.99/month
• Pro (best for online stores): starts at $22.99/month 

10. Jimdo

With more than 15 million built sites under their belt, Jimdo is another great small business website builder. Jimdo can help you create a simple, single-page website to a more complex online store, making it a good option for any type of business that retails at least partially online.

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 for access to their online store service:

• Pro (best for personal use): $7.50/month (note that this service doesn’t include an online store)
• Business (best for smaller businesses and entrepreneurs): $20/month
• SEO Plus (best for SEO optimization): $30/month
• Platinum (best for fully functioning online stores): $40/month

Honorable Mentions

1. Pixpa

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.

2. Template Monster

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. 

3. MotoCMS

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 plugins 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 offera a 14-day free trial period. After that, you’ll pay at least $139 for your template.

How to Find the Best Website Builder for Small Business

As a small business owner, you’re always busy. With so many other things on your plate, you need a small business website builder that’s easy to use but fully functional—but with business financing at the top of your mind, you don’t want to splurge on a website, either. Luckily, there’s no need. Any of the list 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!

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from Fundera Ledger https://www.fundera.com/blog/small-business-website/