With the growing competition, most businesses (irrespective of their size and type) are investing in website development to reach their target audience more effectively. A website not only helps you to establish an online brand face in the market but also to be credible and build trust among consumers. However, building a solid website is a tricky job that requires great expertise and, of course, huge money. But now, with the advancement of technology, website designing is easier than ever. There are best website platforms for small business that you can use to create a site with a professional programmer or designer.
Are you looking for an effective website builder that can help you to create a consumer-centric site? In this blog, we will talk about a few open source and proprietary website builders that can assist you to build a site of your choice. So, if you are confused with your options, feel free to skim through the blog.
#1: WordPress
Though WordPress is not a website builder, it is a powerful tool that can help you in both website designing and hosting. WordPress can also be considered as a website creation software that allows you to manage your content more efficiently than many other builders. This means it provides you with the dashboard and different tools to create and manage your website content. With this open-source CMS (content management software), you are free to do anything with your site. It has tons of themes, built-in blogging and plugins that you can use to create a powerful e-commerce solution.
WordPress is one of the best website platforms for small business for good reasons. It comes with a steep learning curve and an easy customization process. So, if you are a startup or tight on money, WordPress is a great option for creating a simple yet highly attractive website. WordPress has a class of its own because of its control and features. From e-commerce plugins to SEO ones, this platform has ample extensions to add to your website and make it more attractive yet functional.
Pros:
- Enables you to use smart tags and manage your website content with its built-in tools.
- Its drag and drop feature makes website building easy and convenient.
- Allows you to customize your content with its available themes and plugins.
- Provides you with intuitive design capabilities.
- Allows you to build a website of your choice without any programming skills.
- Offers various plans, including a FREE plan.
Cons:
- Plugin complications may bother you.
- Its highly customizable feature makes it easily breakable.
- An amateur with so many tools and plugins may easily mess up the site.
- High-performing plugin versions might not align with WordPress,
- Free plan users may not install functional plugins without upgrading the plan.
- Full SEO tools are limited only to top-tier plans.
#2: Joomla
Joomla is among the most popular website platforms for small businesses after WordPress. This open-source content management system can be used to develop and design various types of sites. No matter if you are a blogger, an e-commerce or an individual, Joomla allows you to manage your website content more efficiently. As this platform provides you with an open-source script, even programmers can use it for developing quite advanced websites.
Joomla is easy to install and takes around ten minutes to download and place a script on a server. Though the platform is not as convenient as WordPress, it provides full control over your website content. Unlike other CMS platforms, Joomla ensures data integrity by locking your content while editing. Websites designed with Joomla are quite faster as it avoids overloading the hosting server. This CMS platform also allows you to create hierarchical menus making your site more user-friendly.
Pros:
- Provides an advanced system for enhanced user control and management.
- Its specialized modules and components are flexible and allow users to display different content types.
- Supports a multilingual option with its built-in feature and thus, does not require a third-party plugin.
- Lets you use a wide variety of templates for different pages.
- Allows you to create different pieces of content and manage them independently with its administration panel.
- Allows you to create a well-performing e-commerce site.
- Allows you to access premium extensions to enhance your website’s performance.
Cons:
- Managing the content, site structure and performance requires a greater level of expertise than WordPress.
- Does not allow you to allocate different pages to different Cascading Style Sheets or CSS.
- Has compatibility issues with some plug-ins and thus, it’s tough to enhance the website’s functionality without some modification to the PHP code.
- It is not very SEO-friendly and requires a SEF plug-in for better optimization.
#3: Wix
Wix is one of the best website platforms for small business and that’s too for good reasons. Designed for startup and small business audiences, Wix is easy, affordable and provides good value. The drag-and-drop feature of this website builder lets you customize your website in every possible way. In fact, this popular proprietary website builder comes with some truly great security features. So, if you are concerned about your site and customers’ data, Wix is the perfect choice for you. Plus, it has excellent design options, usability and customizability features that set it aside from its competitors.
Wix has come to a partnership with Deepcrawl to launch customized SEO tools for its users. This is a great deal as SEO plays a crucial role in websites’ success. Additionally, Wix has a huge template library that allows you to access more than 800 themes to make your site attractive and engaging. So, no matter if you are a financer, gardener or consulting firm, you are free to choose your template design according to your need. You can also access different add-ons through the Wix App Market to enhance the functionality of your website and stay ahead of competitors.
Wix has some truly reasonably priced plans for small businesses. However, if you are tight on budget, you can also use its ‘Free Forever’ plan that allows you to use up to 500MB storage and 500MB bandwidth for FREE. Due to all these reasons, Wix can be considered one of the best small business website creators of this time.
Pros:
- Comes with an easy drag-and-drop interface that makes website designing convenient.
- No need to understand technicalities or coding as it is self-explanatory.
- Provides a wide range of templates and customization options, even with the ‘Free Forever’ plan.
- Gives access to several add-ons to enhance the website’s performance.
- Has an extensive app market.
Cons:
- Building e-commerce websites with Wix can be a bit costly.
- The FREE version comes with lengthy and annoying URLs.
- The backend navigation is not up to the mark.
- The mobile version of the app could be better.
- The application has a relatively delayed loading speed.
- Doesn’t provide 24/7 customer support.
#4: Shopify
Shopify is one of the most popular platforms for e-commerce design. It is a platform that offers tools for both creating and managing online stores. If you are looking for one of the best small business website creators, you can surely go for Shopify as the option. With more than 1.7 million merchants, it is undoubtedly the largest e-commerce platform.
Since this platform focuses on businesses selling online, it has some truly advanced e-commerce features than other website builders in the market. Apart from helping you build and manage an online store, this platform assists you in inventory management, SEO and other marketing approaches. It also has a wide range of themes specifically designed for e-commerce businesses.
As we know that business analysis is important for e-commerce success, Shopify provides you with quite impressive tools for analytics and reporting. These tools help you to understand your store’s performance in respect to customer behaviour, acquisition and so on.
Shopify is a beginner-friendly e-commerce design platform. However, to make the most out of this application, you must have some basic coding skills. Shopify’s in-built editor allows you to customize different aspects of your online store, including the appearance of the page, its colour, fonts, etc. While doing the customization, you will be constrained by the theme you choose. However, if you have basic coding skills, you can always personalize your e-commerce store using custom code. Shopify’s management dashboard is very user-friendly. Its intuitive interface lets you manage anything and everything in your store easily and conveniently.
Pros:
- Allows you to explore a wide range of apps like email marketing app, sales app, etc. via the Shopify App Store.
- Lets you access almost every feature that is required to design an e-commerce store.
- Allows you to add a dropshipping option in your online store.
- Adds Secure Sockets Layer or SSL to your website so that you do not have to worry about your site’s security.
Cons:
- The best website platforms for small business might be costly, but if it needs more e-commerce features, Shopify is the best option.
- Lets you access very limited themes compared to other website builders.
- Not designed for every business type as it specializes in designing e-commerce websites.
- Not perfect for businesses looking for specific or heavy customizations.
#5: GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a great website builder that can be used by a beginner to create an attractive website. This platform uses Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI), which makes the website designing process easy and fast. Here, you can customize your site by entering information. So, if you want to publish a simple business website, GoDaddy is the perfect choice for you.
This is one of the best website platforms for small business that comes with Website + Marketing features. Thus, GoDaddy is a great option for boosting your SEO approaches and audience reach. Its design functionality allows you to create a website with a professional look. However, it has very little room for creativity. So, if you want to add more features and designs to your website, GoDaddy is not an ideal choice.
Pros:
- Provides a quick solution for building a business website.
- While switching themes, the site will reformat the content automatically.
- Very easy to operate and perfect for beginners.
- Affordable pricing plans when compared with other website builders.
- FREE version available.
- Comes with more than 100 mobile responsive design templates.
Cons:
- Does not provide any creative freedom to the user.
- The block elements available with the platform are restrictive.
- Some of the features available with this platform lack depth.
- Websites created are not as visually appealing as other website builders.
- No live support.
Conclusion
Building your website can be tricky and time-consuming. The above-mentioned platforms are some of the best small business website creators available in the market. These platforms are easy to handle and manage. So if you are looking for a solution for an effective website, you can always bank upon these options.
However, if you are looking for a professional and creative-looking website, consider hiring a professional web development agency.