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The best website builder for small businesses
By Kevin Purdy This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission. Read the full website builder guide here. After researching 17 of the top website-building services and hosts, building 20 websites with seven of the most promising ones, and changing hundreds of little things on each page, we believe Wix is the best way for a small business to put up a professional-looking website. Its templates, setup interview, and editing tools create modern, clean-looking sites that you can easily customize, and adding crucial tools like contact forms or restaurant menus is easier than with other website-building tools. Wix's customer support is reliable, its free trial is generous, and its pricing is clear and fair for small businesses. Beyond the basics of site editing, Wix offers a wealth of plug-ins for adding Google Maps, OpenTable, appointment booking, and other tools to your website. Its search engine optimization tools are easy to understand and use, and thanks to Wix's size and scale, your site should remain reliable and available even under heavy traffic. Weebly lacks the variety of templates that Wix provides, and it can't automatically build you a site by asking you about your business. But Weebly's editing interface is simpler and provides less room for error with its drag-and-drop boxes. Weebly also (paradoxically) offers deeper access to the code behind your site, but has fewer useful plug-ins and forms from the start. You should try Weebly if you can't find a template or generated site you like on Wix, if you want to make some specific changes to your site using code (or a code-savvy helper), or if price is the most important factor for you, as the Starter package for Weebly costs one-third less than Wix's comparable Combo package. Every designer we spoke with specifically recommended Shopify for any business that's looking to sell goods online. Although our top picks have built-in ecommerce tools, it makes more sense for most businesses to use Shopify, or at least its Lite version, and embed Shopify's tools into their websites—Shopify works with both of our top picks, and you won't be locked in if you decide to change your site later.
Friday Favorite: Jimdo
Back in the "good old days," Apple had a nice little app called iWeb that was part of the iLife suite. It was designed to let anyone easily design and publish a website, and despite some failings, it did a pretty good job. iWeb has been ignored by Apple for some years now, and the demise of MobileMe meant that hosting of those sites disappeared unless you knew the secret of moving the site code to another host. Other easy website creators are around and I've probably tried all of them. Lately my attention was drawn to a service called Jimdo, mainly because they offer a free hosting option and also because they have a new free iOS app for creating and editing content. It's this service (free to $240/year) and the accompanying app that are my Friday Favorite this week. The Service I teach a basic website/blogging class at the nearby community college on a regular basis, so I like to get an idea of what tools are available to the general public for creating websites. I've demoed everything from Wordpress.com and Blogger to Squarespace and Barley, and now I think it's time to introduce my students to Jimdo as well. Anyone with a Mac, PC or even "just an iPad or iPhone" can get to work with Jimdo almost immediately. Like many of the "website builder" genre, Jimdo is a website on which you sign up for an account and are presented with a variety of templates that you can then customize. For many site builders, customization means that you can change the name of the site and perhaps choose a color scheme. Jimdo offers more than that, providing a number of layouts with each template, as well as the ability to customize text attributes and colors. But that's not all – if you have the ability and desire, you can even get in and create templates -- CSS and HTML editors are at your fingertips. How did I get interested in Jimdo? I am setting up a simple website with tips on how to set up and use a particular model of amateur radio handheld transceiver, and I didn't want any costs associated with it -- at least not yet. Jimdo had just released the iOS app, so I thought I'd give it a workout. Setting up the free account took no time at all, and then I went in and selected a template that wasn't too offensive (at least to my eyes). From that point, adding content is quite simple. You add elements to any page to contain content, and there are a wide variety of elements to choose from: headings, photos, text, text with embedded photos, columns, vertical spacing, tables, photo galleries, file download links, forms, horizontal lines, a guest book, a "blog display," video, Flickr and Google Maps embeds, HTML widgets, store items and catalogs, and a handful of social media plugins. Like iWeb, if you can't find a built-in tool to enhance your website, you can always use the HTML widgets to add features. There's a web commerce piece that's available to any user -- the total number of possible products in your virtual store is limited to five with PayPal payments only for the free accounts, but with the more expensive accounts, the stores can have unlimited products and take almost any form of payment. One very nice feature is that all of the site templates also include mobile equivalents, so your site is easy to view on any sort of smartphone. Each template has a variety of mobile templates to choose from, so it's easy to find one that expresses the look and feel of your site on a mobile device. So, if you have a Jimdo site set up and running, what can you do with the new iOS app? The App The Jimdo app is definitely 1.0 material, but it shows a tremendous amount of promise. My biggest complaint at this point is that it doesn't support all of the elements, so adding a blog entry -- as an example -- cannot be done from the app. Unfortunately, this can't be done from a mobile browser like Safari or Chrome for iOS, either. So what does the app actually let you do? At this time, the elements that are accessible with the tap of a plus sign are headings, text, photos, text with photos, and photo galleries. The latter element is perfect if you're setting up a photography or travel website, since adding photos from the iPhone/iPad photo library is a snap. For websites that are rather simple in layout and only contain text, headings, and images, the tools in the app are sufficient to let you design and maintain a website. It's just if you're planning on adding those other elements that you're going to have to resort to using your big boy computer and put the iPad or iPhone away. The Bottom Line There are a lot of website creation tools and sites out there. If you're interested in building anything from a free blog to an online commerce empire, Jimdo has something for you. The template designs are a good start, the ability to customize adds polish to your site, and the limited ability to make changes from anywhere with the iOS app is a bonus as well. I'm hopeful that future versions of the app will add all of the capabilities that are available from a desktop web browser.
Website building portal Jimdo creates websites using just an iPhone/iPad
Building a personal website used to be a long ordeal. Prior to the advent of highly customizable blogging platforms like Tumblr and WordPress, building a site required learning code or hiring someone to do all the heavy lifting for you. These days you can build a basic site in minutes at your home computer ... and now you can do it from your iOS device. Jimdo, an online website-creation company, has launched a new iOS app that allows users to create websites from the palms of their hands without messing with coding. Starting with a basic template, the app then allows users to drag and drop site elements to customize the look of the site. There are three tiers of pricing available, each offering expanded levels of support. Beyond the basic free sites, there is a US$90-a-year premium plan that offers expanded design and control options, and a $240-a-year business plan. The business plan provides an online store, an optimized mobile version of your site, improved security and more. Jimdo is available in the App Store right now.
