5 of the best website builders for small business

Starting a business is obviously a crucial step for every entrepreneur, who intends to make profit and aims at company popularization. However, there is still one thing that matters even more than successful business start up. If you really have long-lasting endeavors regarding your business promotion and customer generation, then establishing quality web present is not a whim, but a must. Having a website will boost your company rating, making it accessible any time of the day even on the go.

There are several ways to launch a small business website. If you are not a web design pro and don’t intend to hire a qualified web developer to build a website for you, then using website builders is a surefire way to gain success. These services are the top notch destination for users with no web design expertise and coding knowledge at all. Website builders also differ in complexity and feature sets, but there are many of them that feature perfect combination of quality, ease of use, convenience and affordability. Most services offer multiple templates, which come up to various niches and topics. This allows selecting those themes that perfectly adhere to your particular specialization.

The most important thing about website builders is that they make it possible to create small business websites in a couple of days or even hours, especially if your coding skills are enough to cope with the task. Now it’s high time to review the best of them to simplify the choice.

SITE123: The Absolutely Free Website Builder

SITE123 is a cloud website builder which comes with the WYSIWYG editor. The service is one of the easiest web building solutions out there, which features simplicity, convenience and functionality. The service is versatile in nature. This means that you can build any type of project with it, including decent small business websites. It meets the needs and skills of beginners and web design pros.

Benefits for Small Businesses

Being a universal website builder, SITE123 stands out from the crowd due to its multiple web design features. These include:

• Free Responsive Templates. The website builder has a decent collection of niche-specific responsive templates which are free and easy to customize. It’s also possible to select a blank canvas to start your personalized website from scratch.
• Multiple Design Editing Options. SITE123 makes website design customization simple, quick and effective by letting users utilize multiple options. This includes: add and edit web pages, integrate social networking services, widgets, set up SEO parameters and domains, manage website elements, select backgrounds, fonts, styles, layout, etc.
• eCommerce Module. The platform comes with a powerful eCommerce engine to enable web store owners to effectively manage product lists, set up shipping/payment options, create and manage discount coupons, accept PayPal payments and what not.
• Multilingual Support. The website builder comes with the advanced multilingual tool, which allows building different language versions of your website to meet your business goals.

Cost

SITE123’s pricing policy is flexible and meets various web design needs and budgets. The system has a free plan for trialing, you will want to upgrade to premium when it comes to building small business websites.

If you plan to launch a web store, then it is better to upgrade to the Advanced, Professional or Gold plan depending upon the size of your online store and the product assortment you plan to sell. The basic plan will be enough for a standard business website, as it offers enough disc storage space and bandwidth for it.

SITE123 is a decent representative of universal WYSIWYG website builders. The service deserves the attention of newbies and proficient web designers due to its simplicity, which does not compromise with decent performance. Business websites launched with SITE123 are quality, functional and visually-alluring. Is there anything users are looking for?

Mobirise: Offline Website Builder Software

Mobirise is a free website builder, which has one serious distinction from other website builders reviewed. This is the software, which requires download and installation prior to proceeding to the web building process. The service is quite convenient and makes it possible to launch landing pages, portfolios and business sites.

Benefits for Small Business

Mobirise offers a set of features, which contribute to the efficacy of the web building process and decent result:

• Block-Based Structure. Mobirise currently offers over 800 content blocks you can select, edit and arrange on a page to form its structure.
• Design Editing Options. To edit the content blocks and give your business website decent look, the system provides multiple advanced design customization tools (marketing and media integration options, background choice, font and style selection and more).

• AMP Website Builder. Mobirise is one of few systems, which allows building AMP web pages, which rank high in the search engines and enhance the mobile browsing experience on different types of mobile devices.
• GitHub Pages Hosting. With Mobirise, you are free to select hosting provider, but the system makes it possible to host your newly built website (or many of them) with GitHub at no cost.

Cost

Mobirise is absolutely free for all registered users. It doesn’t matter how many websites you are going to launch and what content you plan to submit – you can do that at no cost at all. However, you will need to buy hosting and domain name as well as premium templates and paid extensions. These are optional, but they can give your website personalized design. The cost of templates ranges between $19 and $39, but you can save a lot (around 77%) by opting for the all-in-one kit. It comes with a set of templates and widgets to ensure ease of search and convenience.

Ucraft: Web Design and Marketing Tools

Ucraft is a drag-and-drop website builder, which is mostly oriented on professional users, but can be a nice solution for newbies willing to improve their web design skills. The service is mostly used to launch landing pages, portfolios, web stores and business websites. Its feature set is enough to build quality projects at affordable cost.

Benefits for Small Business

Ucraft features appeal to many users due to their unique nature and strong design focus. These are:

• Responsive Templates. The website builder boasts an extensive collection of business-focused templates, which are responsive in nature and can be changed on any stage of the web development process.
• Designer Tools. Being partially oriented on web designers, the platform comes with a set of tools that can give your website personalized look (Typography, UIKit,Layout). You can also design your own company logo to enhance business recognition and popularity.
• Multilingual App. With Ucraft multilingual tool, you can  create a website in a variety of languages to expand your business popularity.
• Articles App. The app makes it possible to launch a blog or publish a news section in a couple of simple steps.
• Code Integration. Proficient users can work with code editing options to give their websites personalized design.
• eCommerce. Ucraft eCommerce engine is worth separate attention. This is the feature, which allows creating and managing an effective online store by choosing and editing product lists, making web store settings, creating discount coupons, connecting the store with 8 popular sales channels etc.

Cost

If you have serious web design aspirations, a free plan (called Landing Page) is not what you need. It lets you create one-page websites for personal use, which won’t work for serious business projects. Users, who have long-lasting web development goals, can make use of one of four paid plans Ucraft offers (from $8 to $60/mo).

The plan that will come up to standard web design needs is a Website Plan ($8/mo). It allows creating the unlimited number of web pages with multilingual support. The rest of the plans are great for business use, including eCommerce website creation. These plans differ with regard to the features implied, number of products offered for sale, pricing options etc. You can test any of these plans for 14 days absolutely for free after you sign up for the system.

IM Creator: B2B Website Builder with White Label

IM Creator is a contemporary free website builder, which is a real catch for newbies and web design specialists, who work on the development of client projects. The service mainly focuses on the creation of business websites, but it can be also utilized to launch creative projects and websites for students, artists, non-coders. The system is easy to explore and master and it also offers decent functionality to come up to various web design needs.

Benefits for Small Business

IM Creator has a rich stock of features and options, which allow building quality and personalized websites. The most remarkable of them are as follows:

• Stripes. IM Creator has a unique approach to the development of website structure, which implies the use of the Polydoms technology and application of Stripes (content blocks you can select and arrange as you wish).
• Blogging and eCommerce. The website builder offers powerful blogging and eCommerce engines, which make it possible to design quality blogs and online stores.
• Mobile-Optimized Templates. The platform boasts a collection of professional templates optimized for mobile viewing.
• White Label Tool. The website builder offers an advanced White Label tool, which allows the system users to start their businesses under their own brands, getting the most out of the system functionality.  

Cost

IM Creator is initially a free website builder as its functionality is partially centered around the needs of artists, creatives, students and non-profit organizations. For business owners and users, who wish to use the service for professional advancement, IM Creator unveils an opportunity to upgrade for a premium subscription ($8/mo) or the White Label Plan ($350/year), which works great for resellers, white labels, hosting providers and professional web designers.

uKit: Small Business Website Builder

uKit is a specialized small business website builder, the entire feature set of which centers around the creation of projects for entrepreneurs. The service has won user recognition due to its exceptional ease of use, convenience and affordable pricing policy. It is so simple and intuitive that even a newbie with zero coding skills can cope with web building tasks with it.  

Benefits for Small Business

uKit functionality is on the top notch level, which makes the web creation process engaging and simple. The major benefits of the platform for small businesses encompass:

• Business-Specific Widgets. uKit offers a collection of business-focused widgets, integration of which results in the development of stunning business websites (Callback, AMO CRM, LiveChat, SoundCloud, Timer,  Google Maps, SlideShare, Timeline etc.).
• Responsive Business Templates. The website builder comprises the collection of mobile responsive templates, which fall into categories based on the niches users specialize in.
• Online Cost Calculator. If you run a web store, integrating an online uCalc into it will certainly boost customer interest, increasing the conversion rates.
• eCommerce Platform. The website builder offers two ways of launching a web store – either by means of integrating a powerful eCommerce widget or by connecting the existing or new Ecwid account.
• SSL Encryption. uKit lets you connect an advanced SSL Certificate to boost your website safety and protection of personal data.

Cost

uKit pricing policy is flexible and affordable. You won’t find a free plan here, but the cost of the paid plans will fit into any budget – so cheap the subscriptions are.

If you plan to run and manage an online store, then subscribing to the eCommerce plan ($9.6/mo) will be the most reasonable solution. In case you just intend to launch a business website to boost company reputation, then it makes sense to apply for a Premium ($4/mo) or a Pro Plan. Browse the terms they offer to decide on the most suitable solution.

Bottom Line

Profitable and successful business won’t go without online presence. It is impossible to imagine a reputable company that doesn’t have a website. This fact makes business owners think about the ways of launching a website. Using a website builder is the simplest and the most effective solution for users with diverse web design background. These systems are specially built with the needs and skills of entrepreneurs in mind. They are simple and ensure intuitive web design process devoid of any hassle.

SITE123, Mobirise, Ucraft, IM Creator and uKit are the top services to consider when working on the development of your project. Whether you need an instruction on how to create an eCommerce website from scratch or just look for a simple service to design a small business website, these platforms are the first to try. Explore each of them to decide, which one exactly comes up to your current web design needs, expertise, requirements, skills and budget most of all.