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Building a website for your business helps to promote your brand and attract new customers, and thanks to a powerful all-in-one website building platform, this task has never been easier!
But which website building platform is the best choice?
To address this, we conducted detailed tests with over 50 brands, focusing on a few key areas of importance to review (functionality, ease of use, price/performance, etc.) and here are the results: overall, Wix is the best platform for building small businesses, with over 500 industry-specific templates and super easy setup; Squarespace has a beautiful design and excellent scalability, while Weebly Provide value-for-money services.
Wix is powerful, easy to use, and offers unparalleled flexibility when creating websites. With itsWhat you see is what you getWith the drag-and-drop editor, you can launch a stunning corporate website in a matter of hours.
If you want to keep things simple, Wix is absolutely ideal for building a compelling and professional site without any coding experience or design skills. the ADI editor makes web design easy, with artificial intelligence asking you a few relevant questions and then creating a complete business website based on your answers.
With Wix, you can easily create a unique business website with over 500 templates to choose from, covering all types of businesses such as makeup artists, distributors, marketing consultants, real estate agents, counselors, law firms, IT services, and more. However, it will not be possible to change to another template after the site is published, so make sure you’re happy with your first choice!
Just because Wix is easy to use doesn’t mean it lacks features, you can.
- Add contact form and reservation form to make a reservation
- Create / send invoices and track payments to help you manage your finances in one place
- Add custom quizzes and surveys so you know what your customers are thinking
- Insert video background to make the website more attractive
For tech-savvy developers, there are Wix Corvid available, allowing you to integrate custom code into your Wix website. This tool is completely optional and offers unparalleled site building freedom, with additional features that include
- Wix App Market.Choose from more than 200 plug-ins and services covering tools for search engine optimization, forms, sliders, portfolios, email, online marketing and more
- Wix Video.Makes it easy to add videos with custom logos, but use caution with product videos — the annoying automated voice will dissuade 75% consumers
- Wix SEO Wiz.Enter information about your industry, location and target keywords and this feature will create a custom SEO plan with tips on how to improve your search result rankings
- Wix Ascend.All-in-one marketing package that creates personalized messages for each customer, distributed via social media or marketing emails, all in one place
Advantages
- Great for beginners, requires no coding knowledge and provides excellent creative control
- A large number of application marketplaces that allow you to add new functionality to your website in the areas of finance, marketing, e-commerce and more
Disadvantages
- Can’t switch templates after the website is online
- In the early stages of building a website, the wide range of customization options can be overwhelming
Squarespace may not be as easy to use as Wix, but for small businesses looking to stand out on the Internet, the beautiful template design and great image quality make it a unique product.
Squarespace offers more advanced design tools than Wix, which means it may take you longer to make changes to your site. However, if you have basic coding skills and development experience, and an understanding of how computers work, you’ll soon get to grips with Squarespace and enjoy the creative freedom of the wild.
All templates are carefully polished, giving your business website a professional and modern look compared to other website builders without having to write a single line of code. In addition, you can easily adjust page elements, including fonts, colors, images, sidebars, etc., and add your own logo to your website. It’s also easy to switch between preset templates when you feel your website needs to be revamped.
Feature options are abundant, such as a bulletin board / information bar that streamlines your website on mobile devices and displays content such as shortcut menus, contact information, business hours, social media links, and more. The beautiful templates cover a wide range of industries and allow you to attract new customers without knowing any code:.
- Professional blog.Blogs are great for adding personality to a business and adding useful content to a website
- Domain Name.You can purchase a domain name from Squarespace or easily connect to an existing domain name. If you sign up for an annual paid plan, you will receive a free domain name for one year
- Social media integration.Connect your corporate website to numerous social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest) integration, even on certain platforms can be displayed directly on the page
- Super SEO.If SERP is your focus (as it should be for most small businesses), Squarespace is the best choice
Squarespace does not have a free plan, but offers a 14-day free trial. They have 4 pricing plans: 2 generic site builder plans and 2 e-commerce plans. If you don’t intend to sell products online, you should choose the personal plan, while the business plan has other features such as pop-ups, countdown to promotions, accepting payments online, etc. Without a doubt, this plan is best suited for businesses, providing you with everything you need to succeed online.
Advantages
- Search engine optimization is very powerful and can help you rank better on search result pages
- Social media integration is excellent and can build a better social media presence for your brand
Disadvantages
- Takes some time to learn, not as easy to use as Wix
- The editor is not fully automatic, and you will be prompted to save the work you have done after each change, not automatically
Weebly It is an excellent website builder that allows you to start an online business quickly and at a low cost, starting at as low as $6/month (annual payments). In terms of ease of use, this platform is somewhere between Wix and Squarespace, not as clean and intuitive as Wix, but easier to use than Squarespace.
Like Wix, Weebly uses a drag-and-drop editor that allows you to view changes in real time without having to switch between edit and preview modes. But unlike other site builders such as Wix and DudaWeebly may be more difficult to use than Weebly.
They recently made a complete update to their theme gallery, offering over 40 templates to suit a variety of industries, and while it can’t compete with Squarespace’s design in terms of simplicity, it’s better suited for small businesses that want a clear, simple, and cost-effective way to present their services on the Internet. For coders, you can use the code editor to access HTML and CSS and customize page layouts for a higher level of personalization.
- Huge application market.Choose from over 300 applications (plug-ins) in categories such as marketing, communications, e-commerce, social media, and more
- Membership options.Available in the Premium Plan, allows you to grant registered members access to restricted pages. This can be useful if you want to create private clubs or share private information with certain visitors
- SEO.Easily edit titles and descriptions, customize URLs, and add alternative text to images, all of which can help make your site easier to find by search engine users
Value for money is one of Weebly’s biggest advantages, and for the cost of a cup of coffee a week, you get access to the premium features in the personal plan, including 500MB of storage space and connection to a custom domain. Their paid plans are significantly cheaper than their competitors, so it’s definitely worth upgrading from the free subscription.
Advantages
- Value for money
- Huge application marketplace provides you with great flexibility to create personalized websites
Disadvantages
- To restore a deleted website, you must get help from the customer support team
- Must subscribe to premium plan to install most applications
This is one of the best platforms for building websites that need to go live quickly, and with GoDaddy ADI, you can launch a website in minutes. But after that, the site’s functionality will be very limited and, without ADI, you’ll have to opt for drag-and-drop, but GoDaddy doesn’t have the same creative freedom as Wix in this regard.
As we just explained, GoDaddy has little to no design flexibility, but it’s a good choice if you need to create a simple small business website quickly and aren’t going to get fully creative. That said, they still offer over 100 themes, and the new theme customization feature allows you to preview in 20 different styles without losing any content.
- Limited social media integration.You can only add icons to link to social media channels
- Google Analytics.Unlike most other site building platforms that use their own analytics tools, the GoDaddy platform works with Google Analytics Seamlessly integrated to provide excellent data analysis at all times
- GoDaddy SEO.Automatically view your website and optimize it for search engines
- Domain Name.GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain name registrar, so it’s easy to set up a domain name
GoDaddy has 4 price plans, as well as a 30-day free trial, which is quite reasonably priced. The basic plan unlocks blogging capabilities and we recommend signing up for at least the standard plan in order to benefit from GoDaddy’s SEO tools. What we like about GoDaddy is that the platform does all the work in order for you to manage domain registration, hosting and website building in one place.
Advantages
- Allows you to quickly launch a fully functional small business website
- Provides advanced e-commerce capabilities to add up to 5,000 products and easily set up logistics options
Disadvantages
- Not much creative freedom, and far from the art industry
- Some features lack depth and are therefore not suitable for large enterprises and e-commerce sites
WordPress.com is the perfect blogging platform, and if your business relies heavily on blogs, or if blogging is your main focus, this site builder will help you out. However, for any other purpose, you may find WordPress.com to be too limited.
Note that WordPress.com is a site building platform, while the similarly named WordPress.org is a powerful content management system that can store and organize more content than the former, but also requires more coding skills. If you are interested in the differences between the two platforms, you can read this article of ours. But here, we focus on WordPress.com!
Not surprisingly, WordPress.com’s templates focus on blogs, making it difficult to find the right theme if you don’t run a blog.
- Social media integration.You can set up blog posts to be automatically shared on social media, as well as add social media widgets
- SEO.WordPress addresses SEO mechanics for you with 80%~90%, for example, all pre-defined templates designed to optimize each page. If you wish to take a more hands-on approach, there is also a wide range of SEO tools for editing meta descriptions and page links
Despite its shortcomings in setting up non-blog sites, WordPress.com is second only to Wix in terms of average price, starting at $4 / month.
Advantages
- Excellent tools and features related to blogging
- Affordable pricing plan for only $4 per month
Disadvantages
- Rigid templates and outdated backend systems are very limiting for building non-blog sites
- Most customizations require coding knowledge
Duda positions itself as a platform for designers to build websites, but they are capable of more than that, creating corporate sites is so easy that the cheapest plan costs $14 / month. The drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to move elements around the page, and the pre-defined templates are attractive in appearance but very fixed in structure, meaning you can only place items in certain areas on the page and achieve creative freedom within a limited scope.
The theme templates aren’t as creative as Wix or as modern and clean as Sqaurespace, but Duda is still great for beginners. Its flexibility comes from the personalized user browsing options, where you can change the way different users view the site, for example, you can show relevant videos to first-time visitors, or add widgets and ask users to call if they are visiting from a nearby location.
Creating personalized user views is usually a strategy for coders, but Duda makes it easy for anyone to do so. All you have to do is click on Personalize on the right side and select the rule, a very smart feature and one that sets Duda apart.
Duda lacks basic marketing features (such as email subscription newsletters), does not have an app store, does not have much SEO support, and does not offer the same SEO guidelines as its competitors, so you need to research all the content yourself. Although not the best platform for building a website, Duda is a good choice for users who want a well-designed website and don’t care much about marketing features.
Advantages
- Over 90 well-designed templates
- Even the cheapest pricing plan allows you to create a personalized corporate website
Disadvantages
- Expensive, from $14 / month, no free plan
- Not the best choice in terms of SEO support
The capabilities are pretty even across the board, and if you want to launch a one-page website simply, quickly and inexpensively, then Strikingly is the way to go. It’s worth noting, however, that the preset templates are similar to Duda and strictly limit the actions you can perform, so if you’re looking for more creative freedom, go with Wix.
As mentioned before, you can only build single page websites on Strikingly, there’s no getting away from that taboo! Most people scroll 22.7 meters a day on their cell phones and your page is one of them. You can’t add a blog or sell products on this type of site, or the distance you need to scroll is too long.
You can get with email marketing services MailChimp and seamless integration through Facebook Messenger Add the ability to live chat (Premium plans only). All plans allow you to purchase a domain name and register a domain name for up to 10 years. In addition, Strikingly offers a basic SEO checklist to ensure that basic SEO best practices are covered.
This site building platform is not for small businesses looking to grow quickly; instead, Squarespace has solid SEO capabilities and is a better choice for fast-growing startups.
Advantages
- Proactive and helpful customer support team
- You can create two websites on the cheapest package and sell up to five products
Disadvantages
- Only single page sites can be created, meaning it is not a scalable platform
- Moderate feature quality compared to other competitors
SITE123 will ask you several questions about your needs and then generate a fully functional template based on the information you provide, creating a website with SITE123 feels like a multiple choice question. With this assisted method, even novices without any technical knowledge can realize their dreams, but the downside is that you don’t have access to more features.
The platform is responsive and easy to use, but of course, you can get better results with Wix ADI or GoDaddy, both of which offer smoother templates and greater creative freedom. In terms of features, SITE123 doesn’t stand out, for example, you can’t archive and you can’t add a comment module to your blog, so if you like to write, we recommend using WordPress.com.
You can add call-to-action phrases to your website, but as far as marketing features are concerned, there is no more advanced support. With this in mind, we recommend Wix if you want a website builder that is quick to get started and keeps up with modern trends.
Advantages
- Design-assisted approach makes it an easy-to-use website builder
- Excellent customer support team
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