Does your small business need a website? Try these services.

If you can use a computer, you can use Wix. That's how simple it is to create a website using the service. The site offers hundreds of different templates to get you started, but you can also choose to drag and drop different elements, ensuring your website looks unique. That's a significant strength for a website builder as you want your business to have its own identity. When it comes to adding content, it takes just seconds, so you won't have to worry about training your staff to make updates.

The free plan offers unlimited pages, but you'll see Wix-branded ads. For a small business, you need to invest in at least the Combo plan, which offers 2GB bandwidth and 3GB storage with no ads. Those who want to sell products through their website will need a dedicated ecommerce package, and that's where things get more pricey. Still, if you're starting small, Wix has you covered and will easily grow with your firm. It's easy to switch between plans when you need to. It's great for helping you decipher SEO magic too, so you can rank more highly on search engines. 

Squarespace is almost as simple to use as Wix. It offers fewer templates, and a few of its menus are hidden away, but it's still ideal for novice website builders. Best of all, all its plans offer unlimited storage and bandwidth, so you don't have to worry about running out. There's no free plan option, but for a business, you should expect to pay anyhow to avoid ads. You'll also need to pay extra for an online store, but it still works out as a better value than many of Squarespace's competitors. 

We prefer Wix's simple interface as it produces better results, but Squarespace is unbeatable if you need unlimited space. It'll save your business a fortune if you know you need to store large files, such as if you're running a portfolio site. Squarespace also uses great image optimization algorithms to improve the experience further. 

HostGator is speedy — very speedy. You can easily set up a website in under an hour without any hassle. That website won't look as stylish as something from Wix or Squarespace, but if you're not too fussed about having a unique look, it does the job. HostGator is also part of a regular web hosting package, so you can easily delegate responsibility to a dedicated designer if you choose to pursue that route.

It's also cheap. The starter package works out to under $4 per month if you take the two-year plan while still providing you with unlimited storage and bandwidth. Even the e-commerce plan is under $10 at first, so this could be an ideal service if you're just starting out and experimenting with your website. Just don't be surprised if your site lacks the style that something via Wix or Squarespace would provide. 

If you're on a tight budget, Weebly is the best option for your business. It has a free plan offering 500MB storage, providing you don't mind using a domain name with Weebly branding, but even the premium plans don't cost much. You'll need to spend a little more to get unlimited storage and e-commerce functionality, so, ideally, this is the website builder for your placeholder-style website.

Whatever you choose, there are SEO features and plenty of templates to choose from. The templates aren't quite as stylish as what you see through Wix or Squarespace, but with the service working out cheaper, it's an ideal place for quickly putting together a simple site. It even divides up themes according to your business needs.

Shopify is responsible for many of the biggest online stores out there, and you've probably already used it as a consumer. Its focus is squarely on making it easier to sell online. You can use it to create a business logo, a personal shop feel through themes and templates, as well as sell, of course. It's immensely powerful stuff right down to the option of using POS hardware that's tied into it, so that everything goes through your website, even in-person sales. 

That comes at a price, with Shopify working out to be quite expensive compared to other ecommerce options, but it's worth it if you plan on selling a lot through your website. It also takes a bit of mastering with some intricate web design going on, so this won't be something you'll complete in a day. (But there are plenty of online courses to get you started.) Still, if you're serious about online selling, you can't go wrong here. 

Wordpress has been around for long enough that it powers over 36% of the web. That's both a good and bad thing. It's simple enough to set up a blog, but delve deeper and it can get overwhelming. Ideally, it works best for those who have some coding knowledge already so they can make tweaks to existing templates and plugins. Once you master it, Wordpress can do almost anything you want it to thanks to a vast repository of plugins and themes, but you need to be willing to work at it. 

If you just want to blog so you can inform your customers about all the latest news for your business, or you want somewhere to showcase your photography or other creative skills, Wordpress gets a bit simpler to grasp thanks to the almost never-ending supply of themes. It's cheap too, with some basic features available for free or other services costing a few bucks more. 

GoDaddy is often the first place many people go for website hosting, and for good reason. It's dependable and well-priced. Same deal when it comes to GoDaddy's website builder functionality. It starts out reasonably cheap with a basic plan only costing $10 per month for all the essential features one needs to launch a website. You can always opt to start with a free plan, just to see how the setup works for you. It's only when it comes to e-commerce functionality where you'll have to pay more and, ultimately, there are better options out there. 

Whatever plan you go with, templates and designs within the GoDaddy website builder are a little basic. They're just fine, but they're far from eye-catching. This is the kind of interface that's best if you wish to point people in the right direction towards your business, rather than if you want to showcase some sort of creative or artistic enterprise. You can't beat it for speed, though. It really will take you hardly any time to design something here. You can also use it for domain registration as well as web hosting, which is convenient when you don't want to juggle multiple accounts.