Best Website Builder for Small Business in 2024

Type of hosting

There are two types of web hosting commonly used by website builders:

• Shared hosting, which stores many websites on one server. This means each website has limited resources (like bandwidth and storage), but it also keeps costs low. Traditional hosting companies like Hostinger use shared hosting for their website builder plans.
• Cloud hosting, which stores a website on several interconnected servers in different geographical locations. This makes it easy for the host to provide more resources (like bandwidth and storage) as your site grows. Cloud hosting may also provide better uptime and site speed than traditional hosting types. Cloud hosting is more expensive than shared hosting. Companies like Wix and Squarespace use cloud hosting.

Shared hosting may be the best option if you’re building a small business website and you want to keep costs low. Cloud hosting is a great option if you’ve got a bigger budget and/or you expect your small business to experience rapid growth.

Templates

Website builders typically use templates to dictate your site’s appearance. You can customize most elements of your site, the template gives you a starting point with preset places for images, text and interactive elements like buttons. Templates also feature preset color schemes and fonts.

The best website builders for small businesses have templates for various industries like fashion, tech and marketing. Many also have functionality-focused templates for things like e-commerce stores, blogs or portfolios. There should be a broad selection of designer-made templates and a search function to help you find the right one.

AI tools

Most website builders include some generative artificial intelligence tools, ranging from full AI site generation to simple text creation. If you’re interested in using AI, look for reviews and tutorials that document the AI processes of the website builder you’re considering. You can also test it yourself if there’s a free trial or plan.

Before you commit to using AI, however, make sure you understand the potential ethical and legal implications of using these tools. Many generative AI tools are trained by scraping content from the web, often without the original creators’ consent. Creators aren’t compensated for this work either. This has led to many ethical concerns and some lawsuits against generative AI companies, including a class action lawsuit against Stable Diffusion. AI work also can’t be copyrighted in the US at this time.

Ease of use

All website builders are designed to make site creation easy for people without any tech experience, but they still require different skill levels. What’s simple for one user isn’t necessarily easy for another, either. I found Wix easier to work with than Squarespace. The opposite might be true for you.

You can learn how intuitive it is to use a specific website builder by reading reviews, watching tutorials and, if there’s a free plan or trial, testing it yourself.

Flexibility

Some website builders, like the GoDaddy website builder, ensure ease of use by limiting design options. This is fine if you’re looking to build a simple site, like a freelance writing portfolio, but it’s not great if you’re looking to build something truly unique or showcase your design skills.

If you want to build something unique to your business, look for a website builder that lets you customize everything, from overall fonts and color schemes to the placement and formatting of individual content blocks.

E-commerce and other monetization tools

There are three things to pay attention to here:

• Types of monetization tools: Some website builders offer built-in tools for a range of monetization strategies, including gated content and appointment booking systems. Others only offer basic e-commerce functionality and require add-ons for other types of monetization.
• Plan limitations: Many website builders restrict some or all of their e-commerce tools to higher-tier plans. This can result in significant costs — often $30 or more per month — if you’re starting an online store.
• Transaction fees: These come out of your customers’ payments. Most payment processors charge 2.9% + 0.30 USD for transactions from US-based credit cards. Some website builders charge more. Squarespace, for example, charges a 2% online store fee and a 7% transaction fee on content subscriptions on the lowest-tier hosting plan. You’ll need to factor these costs into your pricing to avoid losing money on sales.

Storage

Storage dictates the number of images, videos and pages you can host on your website. Many popular website builders have unlimited storage but others, like Wix, restrict your storage based on your plan. Understanding how much storage you’ll need to start your website is important.

You can generally expect to host 10 large pages (like image-heavy product pages) or 100 small pages (like blog posts with only one or two images) per GB of storage. Some estimates claim you can host up to 1,000 pages per GB, but I prefer to stick with the smaller estimates because having more storage than you’ll need is better than running out.

Bandwidth/data transfer

Bandwidth is the amount of data your site can send per second. Most web hosting companies use bandwidth interchangeably with data transfer, the measurement of how much data your site can send in a given month.

Most website builders offer unlimited or unmetered data transfer. There are often technical limits, but they’re so high that the company assumes most sites won’t exceed them. You can often find out what these limits are by reading the terms of service or asking customer service.

Some website builders list data transfer limitations with specific measurements in MB or GB. You can ask customer service how many monthly visitors these plans can accommodate.

Uptime

The percentage of time your site spends online. Uptime is important because users who can’t load your site will often go elsewhere, resulting in lost traffic, audience trust and potential revenue.

Most website builders guarantee 99.9% uptime, meaning your website won’t go down due to server issues for more than 10 minutes a week. Some promise 99.99% uptime, meaning your site won’t experience server-related downtime for more than two minutes per week.

Site speed

The number of seconds it takes for your site to load. Your site speed should be under three seconds because bounce rate (the percentage of users who leave your site after only viewing one page) decreases by 32% when your site speed goes from three to one seconds.

Most website builders don’t promise a specific site speed because it’s largely dictated by the layout of your site. They may offer two tools to improve your site speed:

• Caching: A protocol for storing data in specialized “caches” that connect to a server’s CPU or central processing unit instead of the random access memory or RAM. This improves site speed because the CPU processes data more quickly than RAM.
• Content delivery network or CDN: A CDN stores website data in multiple interconnected servers spread across the globe. This allows users’ devices to access sites more quickly by pulling data from the server closest to them instead of being forced to retrieve information from the other side of the world.

These features often aren’t listed on website builders’ pricing pages. You can find out if they’re offered by a specific website builder by searching the company’s help center or asking customer service.

Security

At minimum, your website builder should offer two layers of security:

• Secure socket layer or SSL certification: An encryption protocol that translates data sent to and from your site (like payment information) into a language only computers can understand. This makes it difficult for malicious users to intercept your data. SSL certification also indicates that your site is safe. Some browsers and VPNs won’t open sites without it. Google also penalizes sites without SSL.
• Firewall protection: Filtration software that scans all data sent to your site, blocking most malware and other threats. Think of it like the website equivalent of wearing a mask during COVID or flu season: the majority of viruses are kept out, while the good stuff (air or, in this case, regular website traffic) is allowed through.

Many popular website builders also offer things like distributed denial of service protection to keep your site from being overwhelmed by malicious traffic and two-factor authentication to prevent unauthorized users from accessing your account.

Customer service

Customer service should be available 24/7 through your preferred method of communication, whether that’s live chat, email or phone. Many of the best website builders offer customer support through two or more of these channels. Channel availability doesn’t make the customer support good — website builder customer support is often slow and representatives may or may not be knowledgeable enough to help with your issues.

You can get a feel for a company’s customer service by reading their reviews on sites like Trustpilot, looking at their Better Business Bureau profiles and reading hands-on website builder tests right here on CNET.

Pricing

There are two pricing models you’ll encounter when looking at website builders: traditional web hosting pricing and website builder pricing.

Traditional web hosting pricing offers steep introductory discounts for your first contract term if you commit to two to four years of hosting. These prices often rise by 50% or more when your contract renews. This pricing model is used by companies like Hostinger and Ionos.

Website builder pricing has one permanent price point for each plan, billed annually. You can’t get a discount by paying for two or more years up front, but you won’t have to worry about the price increasing significantly when your contract renews either.

You’ll also need to consider some additional costs:

• Domain registration: Registering a domain (like cnet.com) typically costs around $20 or $30 per year. Many website builder plans come with a free domain for the first year, but you’ll need to pay for it yourself after that, even if you’re on a multi-year hosting plan.
• Add-ons: You may need to pay additional fees for things like email hosting and marketing. Some website builder companies offer these tools directly, while others require you to work with third-party services like Mailerlite.