5 Best Website Building Platforms for the Successful Entrepreneur Setting Up a New Online Business

The Essential Website

Having a website has revolutionised the way entrepreneurs are able to run their businesses. Something that would have been impossible for a traditional brick-and-mortar business, a website allows instant access to an enormous, potentially global customer base at a nominal cost.

And it represents the ultimate convenience store for your customers, allowing them to browse through your goods or services at their leisure any time of the day or night. So for all intents and purposes, websites allow you to stay open 24 hours a day!

Furthermore, not only is your website the showcase for your business, but it also allows you to promote your products or services, and build customer relations by using mailing lists with newsletters and regular offers that can go out directly to all your regular customers at no extra cost to you.

Your website also gives your business credibility, as you can include important information on your website like your biodata, business history, and customer reviews.

Therefore, having a good website has become an essential and integral part of having a successful business. But in an already vastly overcrowded online landscape, it’s essential to have a website that isn’t just unique, but stands out from the rest. It also has to be appealing to your potential customers, and easy to browse.

So depending on your business model, whether you have an affiliate business, or you’re selling goods or services, in each case, your website must include relevant properties to ensure your customers enjoy the experience of being on your website and keep returning over and over.

Like your website, the right website builder builder also is an indispensable part of running your super-successful online business.

 

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What to Expect From a Website Builder

The website builder your choose, should have as many, if not all, of the features essential for running your business.

These may include...

A user-friendly interface. If you don't have experience in website building and design, then an intuitive, easy-to-use drag and drop interface will allow you to build a professional-looking website with ease.

Good customisable templates. Your website should reflect the uniqueness of your business and / or brand, so a good number of templates that you can alter to your requirements, is vital in order for your website to stand out.

Responsive viewing for mobile, and other devices. Many people now use their mobiles as their primary devices, so mobile responsiveness is a must.

A blogging function. Most business websites now offer a posts page for reviews and information for their customers, so this can be a very important feature for your website, especially if your website relies heavily on SEO (see below).

Good e-commerce facilities. Not all website builders offer good e-commerce features, so if your business in dedicated to e-commerce, then not all of the m will be suitable for your needs.

Good (SEO) search engine optimisation tools. Most search engines now use algorithms to promote websites that upload good, regular content, so an SEO feature is essential for all websites.

Reliable site security certification facilities. With cyber crime becoming ever more prevalent, users - and search engines - are very wary of insecure sites, so an SSL (site security license) certificate is now indispensable.

Up-to-date analytics information to track how your website is performing. Since the internet is the marketplace for your website, you will need analytics information in order to monitor how your website is doing.

Hosting facilities. It may be worth looking into your overall costs to see if choosing a company that offers hosting is better for you.

And finally, good customer service. You may experience technical problems from time to time, so it's important to ensure you have the level of customer service that will ensure your business needs are met.

Based on these criteria, I have chosen the following websites, as good all round performers that can meet your specific requirements, and enable you to achieve success with your online business.

 

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The Website Builders

The following website builders are what I believe to be the best choices for a new online business. They offer good service, with each having its advantages depending on what particular qualities you require for your individual business needs.

GoDaddy

Hostinger

Squarespace

Wix

WordPress

 

(N.B: I have restricted this post to plans that are relevant for businesses. There are several other plans with many excellent qualities for general or personal website building offered by the above website building platforms, but I have excluded them from the discussion for the purposes of this post.)

 

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GoDaddy

The Pros and Cons of GoDaddy:

Pros

• Good AI user-friendly interface.
• Over 200 templates to choose from.
• 1-month free trial available.
• 3 business plans starting from Standard plan £7.99 (~$6.00) going to Premium plan £11.99 (~$15.00), and e-Commerce plan £14.99 (~$18.00)
• ADI (artificial design intelligence) feature. *
• Unmetered bandwidth.
• 100GB storage.
• Custom domain.
• ".club" Domains available for clubs.
• 3,900 servers located globally.
• Good SEO, SSL certificate, and analytics tool.
• Autoresponder services on higher-tier plans.
• Facility for creating branded content.
• Mobile editing feature on all plans.
• Email marketing on all plans.
• Appointment reminders on higher-tier plans.
• One group events feature on higher-tier plans.
• Appointment Booking facility on higher-tier plans.
• Good e-commerce facilities through WooCommerce plugin.
• Abandoned cart feature for e-commerce.
• Membership facilities with 3rd party plug-ins.
• Good domain management.
• 99%+ uptime guarantee.
• Social media integration.
• Knowledgeable members forum for technical queries.
• 24-hour live customer support.

* ADI (artificial design intelligence) feature allows users to build their websites using artificial intelligence. This involves writing a set of instructions stating what is required and letting the ADI feature build the website. It can be instructed to include relevant stock photographs as well.

Cons

• Pricing policies not always clear with regard to renewal costs.
• Known for aggressive upselling.
• 2.3% transaction fees + £0.25 ($0.30) flat rate charged per transaction.
• No dedicated hosting.
• Possible performance issues, including slow loading times and downtime despite up-time guarantee.
• Restrictive refund policies with confusing language.
• 24-hour live support only available in English-speaking countries.

Conclusion:

GoDaddy is definitely one of the most well-established and popular website builders out there and along with Wix, its ADI feature makes it an ideal choice if you want a great-looking site built at a fraction of the cost of having it made by a designer. The downside of it though is that the ADI is not very original with its design capabilities and your website may well end up looking very similar to all the other ADI-generated websites out there.

Nevertheless, with WooCommerce integration, as well, as many of the marketing and SEO tools being built into the editor or dashboard, GoDaddy would suit small businesses and online stores very well.

 

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Hostinger

The Pros and Cons of Hostinger:

Pros

• Easy to use drag and drop "fluid" interface.
• Fully customisable templates.
• Very affordable plans, with business plans starting from £3.99 ($4.80) per month.
• 30-day free trial period with all features activated.
• Free domain with the business plan.
• Unlimited bandwidth.
• 100GB storage.
• 99%+ Guaranteed uptime.
• Servers optimised for speed.
• Subscription form facility
• Free professional email address with business plans.
• Email marketing tools.
• Free SSL certificate and SEO features with business plans.
• Good e-commerce facilities, including drop shipping, through WooCommerce or PrestaShop.
• Online store facilities with credit card payment, and international payment gateways like PayPal.
• No transaction fees for e-commerce.
• Discount vouchers and promo codes for e-commerce.
• Abandoned cart feature.
• Good video tutorials.
• 24-hour live chat support.
• Unique AI heat map feature.

Cons

• No free plans available.
• Not as many templates as competitors.
• No facility for memberships.
• No inbuilt e-commerce facility.
• Limited social media integration.
• No live telephone help.

Conclusion:

Hostinger is a good choice for small business enterprises due to its low cost. It's particularly suitable for e-commerce with its advanced and versatile e-commerce features but serves perfectly well as an affiliate marketing site. Although it doesn't offer as many templates as some of its competitors, on the whole, it's a good choice since they are all fully customisable. Its heatmap feature makes it very useful for visually rich content. Its biggest disadvantage is the shared hosting, which despite the uptime guarantee can affect the time you are able to work on your website.

 

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Squarespace

The Pros and Cons of Squarespace:

Pros

• Three tier business plans available: "Business", "Basic Commerce" and "Advanced Commerce".
• Award-winning templates.
• User-friendly fluid interface.
• Mobile optimised pages.
• 14-day trial period available.
• 1 free domain for first year, between £20 ($24) – £70 ($85) per annum thereafter.
• Unlimited bandwidth and storage.
• Free SSL certificate, analytics and built-in SEO tool.
• Membership subscription facility available.
• Events page feature with up to 350 events per month.
• “OpenTable” integration available for restaurant bookings.
• Limited availability labels available on Commerce plans.
• 3^rd-party drop-shipping integration.
• Online store payment facilities with credit cards, and international payment processing gateways like PayPal.
• 0% transaction fees on Commerce plans.
• Customer accounts feature for faster check-out for returning customers on Commerce plans.
• Discount voucher facility for generating automatic discount vouchers for returning customers on Commerce plans.
• Social media integration tool.
• 24-hour online support, with live chat available between 4.00 am - 8.00 pm (ETA).
• Unique AMP (accelerated mobile pages) feature to allow faster upload for mobiles.*

* The AMP feature automatically adjusts the size of graphic content depending on the device it's being viewed on to maximise loading speed.

Cons

• Rather expensive packages: "Business" ~£15 ($18), "Basic Commerce" ~£22 ($26), and "Advanced Commerce" ~£33 ($40) paid annually, and considerably more pricey paid monthly.
• Short free trial period.
• 3% transaction fee on Business plan.
• Not fully customisable templates.
• No built-in drop-shipping facility.
• Cannot transfer all your website content to another host.
• No telephone support available.

Conclusion:

Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders for e-commerce, despite not having its own drop-shipping facility. The customer account features like discount vouchers are very useful for business promotion. The 3rd party drop-shipping enables speedy shipping of goods.

It is a little pricey in comparison with some of its competitors but its templates are of excellent quality and despite the lack of customisability, which some may find somewhat frustrating, the AMP feature * makes it a popular choice for artists with large portfolios.

Perhaps one of the biggest disadvantages of Squarespace is that once you've built your website on it, Squarespace will only permit a limited amount of your content to get transferred, and you may lose some of it, unless you copy and paste your website code.

 

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Wix

The Pros and Cons of Wix

Pros

• Over 800 fully customisable templates.
• Site builder available in several different languages.
• Free domain for 1 year, followed thereafter at £10 ($12) to £45 ($54) per annum `.
• 7 business plans available billed monthly for all size of businesses starting from ~£18 ($22) Business Basic, going up to ~£400 ($500) Enterprise.
• Unlimited number of websites allowed on each account.
• ADI feature.
• Good blogging facility with all plans.
• Free SSL, SEO and analytics tool.
• Logo maker with e-commerce plan.
• Events calendar facility with first 10 events added for free.
• 4,500 simultaneous transactions handled capability higher tier business plans.
• No transaction fees on any plan.
• Drop shipping available for e-commerce.
• Abandoned cart feature available for e-commerce.
• Facility to use international payment processing services like PayPal.
• Plugin for Membership facility with all business plans.
• Online booking form feature available with higher tier business plans.
• Site booster with higher tier business plans.
• Social media integration tool and inbuilt video-making facility.
• 24-hour live telephone support.

Cons

• Complicated billing plans.
• Limited storage and bandwidth.
• Somewhat limited e-commerce tools in comparison with some of its competitors.
• Cannot change templates once your website is built.
• Difficult to transfer your site to a different platform if you want to leave Wix.
• Cannot move your online store to another platform.

Conclusion:

Wix is a good all round website builder and one of the top choices for people who want to create a good-looking, fully functional site very quickly. Its most attractive feature is the huge number of templates it offers. The in-built site booster makes Wix a good choice for SEO purposes too.

However, on the downside, it has fewer e-commerce features than other platforms, and its limited storage and bandwidth facilities which may become an issue later. And since it does not presently permit its customers to remove their assets, it may not be an ideal choice depending on your eventual business plans.

 

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WordPress

 

The Pros and Cons of WordPress

Pros

• CMS system.*
• Over 9,000 fully customizable templates.
• Fully responsive themes.
• 3 plans suitable for businesses: Premium, Business and e-Commerce.
• Nearly 60,000 free plugins.
• Excellent high security managed paid hosting through BlueHost, or DreamHost, with built-in firewall and cyber-security. (Free managed hosting for Blogs through WordPress.org.)
• Custom TLD’s (top-level domains) or extensions, free for one year, and £18.00 ($22.00) per annum thereafter.
• Professional email address, free for 3 months, and ~£2.84 ($3.50) per month thereafter.
• Google Workspace (G-Suite formerly) fully supported.
• Free domain and website transfer from other platforms.
• Free SSL, SEO, and analytics with WordPress plugin, also compatible with Google Analytics.
• 13GB storage with Premium plan, 200GB with Business plan and e-Commerce plan.
• Unlimited bandwidth.
• Excellent blogging platform.
• Excellent e-commerce facilities with WordPress plugins.
• Fast WordPress “eCom” plugin for online store.
• Very good drop-shipping with 3^rd party integration or custom plugins.
• Over 100 international payment gateways, like PayPal, as well as debit and credit card payment facilities for e-commerce.
• Several reputable international shipping carriers like UPS Shipping, and DHL through “WooCommerce” integration.
• 0% commission on sales.
• Excellent online community for expert help.
• Good WordPress tutorials available for self-study.
• 24-hour email support.

* CMS (content management system) is a very versatile and flexible type of website-building software, that allows unlimited scalability. While all website builders are undoubtedly customisable to a greater or lesser degree, and generally easier to use than CMS, they are not all able to support large complex websites. CMS also allows style flexibility at the editing level by allowing for those with coding experience.

Cons

• Rather steep curve, in order to get the most out of the platform.
• Managed hosting plan, which can cause problems if WordPress changes hosting company.
• Videos count against storage in Premium plan.
• WordPress popularity creates frequent security threats.
• Plugins and Themes undergo frequent and regular updates.
• Plugins and Themes must be kept updated in order to prevent security issues.
• Frequent updates sometimes create incompatibility issues.

Conclusion:

WordPress is possibly the most popular CMS used for building websites today. Although it does require some initial learning, there are no limits to its versatility, and pretty much any style of website with any type of appearance can be created. Since the software is open-source, it can be freely customised, and shared by designers and programmers. Thus, for custom templates or unusual features like split menus, WordPress is definitely the website-building platform for you; however, you may need to get a web designer to help out!

 

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Conclusion

All the platforms mentioned above offer good service and some have unique qualities. Depending on your specific needs, any one of the above website design packages will deliver excellent results.

With the exception of WordPress, which requires some design experience, they all have very user-friendly interfaces, with Wix and GoDaddy offering ADI facilities. Furthermore, being all-in-one domain registrars, web hosts, and website builders, the convenience of having everything provided by one platform would suit people new to website design.

With that said, GoDaddy would probably be suitable for small business ventures and online stores, as well as clubs and groups with its ".club" domains.

Hostinger would suit artists, photographers, and writers, and would be ideal for small businesses with its very affordable plans.

Squarespace too, like Hostinger, would be a good choice for artists, photographers, and writers as it offers excellent template designs. For that reason, would suit any type of small business but would be ideal for online shops and galleries with its many e-commerce and good membership facilities.

Wix is good for all types of businesses, and having a huge number of themes and templates to choose from would suit all types of websites.

Finally, WordPress is an exceptional website builder, and though it does require some getting used to, with some coding experience being a big advantage, it is possibly the go-to choice for anyone wanting to create a website that can be expanded and added to as the business matures and grows. Any type of website design is possible with WordPress and there are really no limitations to it. For people looking to scale and expand their businesses, WordPress is perhaps the best choice as it offers huge potential, and is fully capable of supporting the complex requirements of a large business website.

With all that said - please do your own research too in order to ensure you choose the builder that's right for your purposes since some of the platforms will not allow their users to transfer their sites and domains elsewhere, while others bind users to contracts, and may levy penalties for changing; some, on the other hand, will allow customers to transfer their websites, but without all of their content!