What is the best website for a small business?

Most lists of the best website builders are written by people paid a commission when you sign up, so it helps to start from what the site has to do rather than which brand tops a table. For a trades or local service business the job is simple to describe: someone searches on their phone, finds you, sees you cover their area and do the work they need, and calls or sends an enquiry.

DIY builders like Wix and Squarespace are a fair choice if you want a small brochure site, have the time to build it, and are comfortable editing it yourself. You pay a subscription and the hosting, security and updates are handled for you. The trade-off is that you are renting the platform: moving away later usually means rebuilding, and adding dozens of service and area pages gets fiddly.

Shopify is built for selling products online. If you sell parts, kits or vouchers online, its checkout and stock tools earn their keep. If you sell a service booked by phone, most of what you would be paying for goes unused.

WordPress runs a large share of the web and can do almost anything, which is both its strength and its catch. It needs hosting, updates and plugins kept in order, so it suits someone who will look after it or pay someone to.

A built site, made by a freelancer or agency, makes sense when the website is meant to bring in work rather than just exist: a page for each service, a page for each area you cover, fast load times and enquiries you can track. Whatever route you choose, check four things before you commit: it is quick on a phone, you own the domain name, you can change prices, photos and text without help, and you can get your content out if you leave.