The best website builder for small businesses allows brands to get online first, without compromising quality.

There’s more to great website builders than just an easy drag-and-drop design. Many small business owners are looking for a clean, on-brand website that actually works when embarking on a website builder comparison, without the need for extensive coding knowledge or developer costs. Sadly, small businesses often feel stuck between overpriced web agencies and clunky DIY tools.

This is why I recommend beehiiv’s website builder.

Built with simplicity and growth in mind, beehiiv allows small businesses to launch a sleek, professional website quickly and easily. Businesses of any size will find it easy to keep their website on brand, connect with audiences, and grow subscriber numbers - all on one platform.

In this guide, I’ll explain why beehiiv stands out as the best website builder for small businesses, plus my go-to starting points for design and templates.

In today’s ever-changing digital world, your website is where customers get their first impressions of your brand. This makes it super important to get this right. A well-designed website boosts credibility, regardless of the size of your business. 

Consumers are more likely to trust and purchase from your brand if their first impression is professional. Some examples of website features that instantly boost credibility include:

Visual design also plays a big role in websites that stand out. Having a clean hero section with strong branding, paired with an intuitive navigation, can work well together, helping to create a slick user experience.

When done right, a great site will look great and direct people exactly where you want them to go.

Your store may close its doors at 5 pm, but your website is open all day long.

A great website will keep working around the clock, showcasing your services, special offers, and recent updates, even after you’ve finished work.

The beehiiv platform can transform your website into a 24/7 sales and marketing machine. You can use Subscribe pages to grow your email list while you’re away from work, as well as Upgrade pages to offer paid memberships, digital products, or exclusive content to your most active subscribers. 

beehiiv also allows creators to collect leads via embedded forms, making it easy for potential customers to book in with you while you’re off the clock.

The most important element with small business website builders is automation. Once your website is live, beehiiv can handle the follow-ups, sign-ups, and even upsells, allowing you to focus on running the rest of your business.

For a small business, website design needs to work to the best of its ability.

A good website builder shouldn’t just help you get online. It should help you to do it quickly, affordably, and without snags along the way.

I look for three things in a business website builder: ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and reliability.

In 2025, you really don’t need a complex system with endless settings to manage. The right platform lets you design and update your site without a developer, and allows you to trust that everything will work.

Here are a few non-negotiables I need when using a great website builder:

When I’m creating a new website for a brand, I don’t have time to mess about with HTML or embark on a lengthy hiring process for a new web designer.

Drag-and-drop editing tools shine here, allowing you to launch a new landing page quickly and without any coding experience. 

beehiiv’s Layouts work well for this, with pre-built page templates allowing you to spin up professional landing pages in just a few clicks. You can customize these pages with different sections, rearrange content/images, and align fonts and colors with your own branding.

Optimizing your website for speed, SEO, and mobile-friendliness should be done by default in 2025.

These factors directly impact usability and ranking in search engines, so it should be a given that a great website builder handles these concerns for you.

I love beehiiv’s built-in SEO settings. It allows me to easily set page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs without needing to use glitchy plugins or train my team in extensive technical SEO knowledge.

Every page comes with a mobile preview so you know how your site will look on small devices before it goes live. Plus, fast-loading pages help with both user experience and SEO.

After trying other platforms that were too complicated or limited, I found beehiiv gave me exactly what I needed.

It’s simple to use, powerful when driving results, and designed for businesses that specifically want to grow.

The website builder is divided into three main tabs: Styles, Layouts, and Settings, allowing you to easily navigate growth tools and ultimately keep all your website needs in one helpful dashboard.

I’ll explain these features in some more detail below, so you know how to build and maintain a website that also helps to grow your small business.

The beehiiv website builder is well-organized, with the tabs Styles, Layouts, and Settings making it super easy to use.

The Styles section is for branding, allowing creators to adjust fonts, brand colors, and spacing without seeing any code or technical jargon. 

Layouts are perfect for structuring key pages like your home page or landing pages. You can choose from a range of sections, such as testimonials, CTAs, or service highlights, and arrange them exactly where you want them on each template. 

The Settings tab is ideal for managing SEO basics such as page titles, meta descriptions, and custom domains, giving your site exposure to people searching online.

beehiiv is so much more than just a business website builder. One of my favorite beehiiv features is Boosts, which allows you to attract new subscribers by promoting your newsletter through the beehiiv network. This allows you to piggyback similar publications and share your audience, too.

As an email provider, beehiiv also allows creators to send out regular emails to their subscribers with a range of pre-built templates and track growth using their built-in 3D Analytics. This shows how many people are visiting your site, converting, and engaging.

It’s best to check your dashboard at least weekly to identify trends in your data and to start making smart decisions moving forward.

A great success story when using beehiiv is from The Career Supplement’s Rohan Matani. When he moved his newsletter to beehiiv, he maintained a 50-60% open rate, unlocking new revenue streams and scaling to over 1 million subscribers - check out the full case study here!

With beehiiv, I love that I can manage my online presence with one dashboard. I hate needing 5 different tools to manage how my business appears online, but with beehiiv I can manage my entire website, my email list, and all my sign-up forms in one place.

This makes running a business super efficient, allowing you to launch a new page, send an email campaign, check subscriber growth, and tweak your home page without even changing platforms.

Why Listen to Me? I have been working in the digital marketing space for nearly 10 years, predominantly helping brands with their email marketing and online presence. I now specialize in creating great content for beehiiv to help people nail their email strategies!

If you’re considering launching with a small business website builder like beehiiv, don’t overthink it. The platform is designed to help you work quickly, without getting overwhelmed.

Here’s a simple order of steps that I like to use when launching new sites, so you know everything is covered:

Here’s a bit more info to help you break down these steps and start building your new site:

It’s important to remember that you don’t need lots of complete pages to get started. The most important pages you need to start with are a home page to introduce your brand and a signup page to start driving results.

If you’re a bit unsure of how to lay things out, activate the Example Site mode in beehiiv. This gives you inspiration from live designs and helps you understand what’s possible for your own site.

Build these two pages first, and it’ll be much easier to hit the ground running.

One of the biggest time-savers in the beehiiv system is the ability to duplicate sections and reuse existing templates. 

Once you’ve created a layout you know works, you can reuse it across different pages, keeping your branding tight and your site consistent while also knowing that you’ve got the winning formula for producing results.

I’d suggest creating a ‘base layout’ that you’re happy with, and then start tweaking it for each new page on your site. This way, you’re not starting from scratch every time, plus your design will be consistent.

When it came to building a website for my business, I wasn’t looking for bells and whistles - all I really wanted was simplicity, control, and built-in tools to help my brand grow.

beehiiv was an integral part of this process. It gave me everything I need in one easy-to-use dashboard: an easily customizable website, email tools to grow my audience, and features that help me launch quickly and measure my results.

I don’t have to worry about juggling plugins, hiring developers, or managing lots of different tools to keep things running.

If you’re a small business owner trying to get online, I recommend starting with beehiiv’s free plan. It’s the easiest way to see what’s possible for your brand, without pressure or commitment. Start building and see how you can create your own website that you’re proud of.

Start a free trial today to begin building your online presence!

beehiiv is the best website builder for small businesses. It’s quick to set up, promotes growth, and you don’t need to be a developer to edit it.

Platforms like beehiiv include hosting, negating the need for small businesses to source an extra hosting provider.

The cost of small business website design can range between $230 - $5,000 (GoDaddy). I’d recommend using a website builder like beehiiv to significantly save on website building costs.

Both Wix and Squarespace appear to work well for small businesses when carrying out a website builder comparison. However, beehiiv offers a faster setup and built-in email tools that make it particularly useful for brands focused on growth.