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Start Your Small Business Website in 2025

Popular Website Builders: Square, Squarespace, Shopify, and WordPress

Affiliate links are included in this blog post about website builders so you can support my work at no additional cost to you (and some include sweeeeet deals). These links provide a small bonus to me for the time and effort I dedicate to creating and sharing free content and offering my professional services.

It’s 2025, and having a strong online presence is absolutely necessary for small businesses and personal brands. Website builders such as Square Up, Squarespace, Shopify and WordPress have made it easy for small business owners to create a new website (especially when compared to options from a decade ago).

So if you can create your own social media accounts by yourself, chances are you are able to begin creating your website using one of these popular website builders too.

I word this with ‘begin creating your website’ because website design and development contains a huge amount of work that even the simplest looking website requires for product and service based businesses.

There are many aspects to consider:

having all of your photographs ready for your site in their correct sizes
your service/product descriptions written
your own business set up with your registered business name and business number/s
legal policies and insurance for you to sell your goods/services in your country

And we haven’t even touched search engine optimisation, business branding and user experience yet!

So let’s begin with the popular options used for creative small businesses and Mumpreneurs to get their small business website started on their own: Square (Up), Squarespace, Shopify, and WordPress.

These four website platforms are commonly used for small businesses (and corporations too); each with their own pros and cons for specific business uses.

Square

Fully known as Square Up, Square is the popular Point of Sale (POS) system for markets, events and on-the-go sales and invoicing for small businesses that expanded to have its own website builder in 2018 when it acquired Weebly. Monthly/yearly subscription, with the option for a free website (free Square domain only).

Recommended for: food and drink operators with online ordering, small ecommerce and service-based businesses that aren’t looking to grow/scale business.

Square Site Builder Pros:

Square’s website builder integrates with its POS (Point of Sale, card reader tech) for card payments and recording cash payments too, with receipts texted and/or emailed directly to customers
Free site option (without domain connection) with some template site options to choose from
Mobile app version of Square allows website editing, invoicing, e-contracts and customer management
Includes easy access to Afterpay at checkout with the click of a button

Square Site Builder Cons:

Zero coding customisation, only code embedding in sections
Using it’s email marketing and further addons can make it more expensive than Squarespace or Shopify’s fees
Clunky and slow loading site builder = slow website for customers and search engines, which is a huge con for SEO and user experience
Removed PayPal as online and POS payment option

Need to sort your Square site woes?

Book a virtual consult for 1-on-1 personalised support today.

Squarespace

Squarespace and Square get confused with each other all the time! There’s a huge capability difference though. Squarespace’s ability to utilise code as well as it’s powerful and true Fluid Engine drag-and-drop builder means it is the site builder for visual design and creativity, and for allowing responsive design across all devices from laptop/desktop view to mobile view. Monthly/yearly subscription, with the option for a 14 day free trial, or extended free trial with my Squarespace Circle access and 20% off your first year of annual subscription.

Recommended for: service-based businesses and small ecommerce (digital or physical products).

Squarespace Site Builder Pros:

Stunning templates available for creating your website with clear desktop and mobile editing for responsive design
Online course management and subscription functionality paired with Acuity for free or paid bookings/scheduling appointments

Squarespace Site Builder Cons:

Add ons add up for email marketing, Acuity etc. to be more expensive than Shopify’s monthly/yearly fees (comparing ecommerce only, not online courses or services)
Steeper learning curve for beginners to responsive web design

Keen for Squarespace?

Let’s plan your content, compliance and creativity for your new service or small ecommerce website.

Shopify

Shopify is the Queen of website builders, and is specifically for ecommerce (digital or physical products). Not only does this site builder allow for mass editing of products, it’s also speedier regarding the site builder’s loading, and a higher amount of functionality inlcuded that aren’t paid addons such as full coding access, email marketing and automations, currency display and basic website legals too. Monthy/yearly subscription with 3 days free trial, then the first month at $1USD before rolling over to an active subscription.

Recommended for: online selling (ecommerce) – physical and digital products

Shopify Site Builder Pros:

Specialized ecommerce features such as mass product/category editing, email marketing and code functionality for online stores included in monthly/yearly subscriptions
Extensive app store for added free and paid functionalities, such as Ricemill’s MyPost Business integration and Order Printer app for mass customer invoice/order print off
Shopify POS for in-person selling without using Square POS that doesn’t integrate with Shopify

Shopify Site Builder Cons:

Specific transaction fees added on for using external payment gateways
Higher pricing plans for advanced features such as having D2C/B2C website and B2B wholesale login (Shopify Plus is necessary for this)
Only recommended for ecommerce, and not for courses or service bookings (unless services are addons such as personalisations to products, recommend the Infinite Options app for this functionality)

Ready to grow big and bold?

Work with a Shopify Expert Partner today.

WordPress (.org)

The King of custom websites that need ecommerce, services, or both! WordPress.org (not to be confused with WordPress.com) is an open-source content management system – meaning this is accessible site builder that you are not paying a company like Shopify or Squarespace a monthly fee for being able to build your site and host it too: you are sorting this out yourself (or through a professional Web Designer like me). Which means you can also backup your website offline, and aren’t reliant on Squarespace, Shopify etc. for their monthly/yearly billing and changes to terms/policies (or closing up business, leaving your website hanging and having to copy and paste it elsewhere).

It does mean if you aren’t sorting your own hosting, domain, free or purchased themes, it can be a time consuming learning curve that not all small businesses can afford to do themselves while also trying to run their income generating activities, and establish their online presence. Monthly/yearly hosting subscriptions apply with various charges across hosting companies such as Siteground or Ventra IP.

Recommended for: ecommerce (physical and digital products), services, scalable growth and combination businesses

WordPress website Pros:

Highly customisable web design with an immense amount of free and paid themes and plugins (apps) for enhancing functionalities
Quicker loading times from its initial setup, with full coding and SEO access and capabilities compared to Square, Squarespace and Shopify

WordPress website Cons:

Themes and plugins require regular updates and maintenance for optimal performance and ensuring your site is secure
Steepest learning curve compared to previous site builders due to its complexity of sorting own hosting and connections – a Web Designer like myself simplifies and walks you through the whole process as well as offering maintenance packages for security, backups and future website updates

Keen for the custom WordPress build of your dreams?

Let’s dive into your business below!

Strategise Your Small Business Website

Whether you prioritise learning to DIY your website until you are ready to invest in professionalising your online presence, need the easiest to use site builder for yourself, require full customisation options for your products or services, email marketing capabilities, or SEO-friendliness; each of these website builders offers unique strengths and weaknesses depending on your business planning, investment and scalability needs.

Consider your specific requirements and goals for your business to boom, as well as what your dream business site would look and function like to you, for you to choose the platform that best aligns with your needs in the end.