best website for business plan

You’ll also learn the financial benefits investors can reap from putting money into your venture rather than trying to sell them on how great your product or service is.

This business plan guide focuses less on the individual parts of a business plan, and more on the overarching goal of writing one. For that reason, it’s one of my favorites to supplement any template you choose to use. Harvard Business Review’s guide is instrumental for both new and seasoned business owners.

7. HubSpot’s Complete Guide to Starting a Business

8. Panda Doc’s Free Business Plan Template

23 of My Favorite Free Marketing Newsletters

The 8 Best Free Flowchart Templates [+ Examples]

What is a Business Plan? Definition, Tips, and Templates

7 Gantt Chart Examples You'll Want to Copy [+ 5 Steps to Make One]

How to Write an Executive Summary Execs Can't Ignore [+ 5 Top Examples]

20 Free & Paid Small Business Tools for Any Budget

Maximizing Your Social Media Strategy: The Top Aggregator Tools to Use

The Content Aggregator Guide for 2024

16 Best Screen Recorders to Use for Collaboration

The 25 Best Google Chrome Extensions for SEO

2 Essential Templates For Starting Your Business

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

• Start free trial

Start selling with Shopify today

Start your free trial with Shopify today—then use these resources to guide you through every step of the process.

7 Business Plan Examples to Inspire Your Own (2024)

Need support creating your business plan? Check out these business plan examples for inspiration.

Any aspiring entrepreneur researching how to start a business will likely be advised to write a business plan. But few resources provide business plan examples to really guide you through writing one of your own.

Here are some real-world and illustrative business plan examples to help you craft your business plan .

7 business plan examples: section by section

The business plan examples in this article follow this template:

• Executive summary.  An introductory overview of your business.
• Company description.  A more in-depth and detailed description of your business and why it exists.
• Market analysis.  Research-based information about the industry and your target market.
• Products and services.  What you plan to offer in exchange for money.
• Marketing plan.   The promotional strategy to introduce your business to the world and drive sales.
• Logistics and operations plan.  Everything that happens in the background to make your business function properly.
• Financial plan.  A breakdown of your numbers to show what you need to get started as well as to prove viability of profitability.
• Executive summary

Your  executive summary  is a page that gives a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. It’s easiest to save this section for last.

In this  free business plan template , the executive summary is four paragraphs and takes a little over half a page:

• Company description

You might repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page, social media profile pages, or other properties that require a boilerplate description of your small business.

Soap brand ORRIS  has a blurb on its About page that could easily be repurposed for the company description section of its business plan.

You can also go more in-depth with your company overview and include the following sections, like in the example for Paw Print Post:

• Business structure.  This section outlines how you  registered your business —as an  LLC , sole proprietorship, corporation, or other  business type . “Paw Print Post will operate as a sole proprietorship run by the owner, Jane Matthews.”
• Nature of the business.  “Paw Print Post sells unique, one-of-a-kind digitally printed cards that are customized with a pet’s unique paw prints.”
• Industry.  “Paw Print Post operates primarily in the pet industry and sells goods that could also be categorized as part of the greeting card industry.”
• Background information.  “Jane Matthews, the founder of Paw Print Post, has a long history in the pet industry and working with animals, and was recently trained as a graphic designer. She’s combining those two loves to capture a niche in the market: unique greeting cards customized with a pet’s paw prints, without needing to resort to the traditional (and messy) options of casting your pet’s prints in plaster or using pet-safe ink to have them stamp their ‘signature.’”
• Business objectives.  “Jane will have Paw Print Post ready to launch at the Big Important Pet Expo in Toronto to get the word out among industry players and consumers alike. After two years in business, Jane aims to drive $150,000 in annual revenue from the sale of Paw Print Post’s signature greeting cards and have expanded into two new product categories.”
• Team.  “Jane Matthews is the sole full-time employee of Paw Print Post but hires contractors as needed to support her workflow and fill gaps in her skill set. Notably, Paw Print Post has a standing contract for five hours a week of virtual assistant support with Virtual Assistants Pro.”

Your  mission statement  may also make an appearance here.  Passionfruit  shares its mission statement on its company website, and it would also work well in its example business plan.

• Market analysis

The market analysis consists of research about supply and demand, your target demographics, industry trends, and the competitive landscape. You might run a SWOT analysis and include that in your business plan. 

Here’s an example  SWOT analysis  for an online tailored-shirt business:

You’ll also want to do a  competitive analysis  as part of the market research component of your business plan. This will tell you who you’re up against and give you ideas on how to differentiate your brand. A broad competitive analysis might include:

• Target customers
• Unique value add  or what sets their products apart
• Sales pitch
• Price points  for products
• Shipping  policy
• Products and services

This section of your business plan describes your offerings—which products and services do you sell to your customers? Here’s an example for Paw Print Post:

• Marketing plan

It’s always a good idea to develop a marketing plan  before you launch your business. Your marketing plan shows how you’ll get the word out about your business, and it’s an essential component of your business plan as well.

The Paw Print Post focuses on four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place. However, you can take a different approach with your marketing plan. Maybe you can pull from your existing  marketing strategy , or maybe you break it down by the different marketing channels. Whatever approach you take, your marketing plan should describe how you intend to promote your business and offerings to potential customers.

• Logistics and operations plan

The Paw Print Post example considered suppliers, production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory.

Financial plan

The financial plan provides a breakdown of sales, revenue, profit, expenses, and other relevant financial metrics related to funding and profiting from your business.

Ecommerce brand  Nature’s Candy’s financial plan  breaks down predicted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.

It then dives deeper into the financials to include:

• Funding needs
• Projected profit-and-loss statement
• Projected balance sheet
• Projected cash-flow statement

You can use this financial plan spreadsheet to build your own financial statements, including income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement.

Types of business plans, and what to include for each

A one-page business plan is meant to be high level and easy to understand at a glance. You’ll want to include all of the sections, but make sure they’re truncated and summarized:

• Executive summary: truncated
• Market analysis: summarized
• Products and services: summarized
• Marketing plan: summarized
• Logistics and operations plan: summarized
• Financials: summarized

A startup business plan is for a new business. Typically, these plans are developed and shared to secure  outside funding . As such, there’s a bigger focus on the financials, as well as on other sections that determine viability of your business idea—market research, for example.

• Market analysis: in-depth
• Financials: in-depth

Your internal business plan is meant to keep your team on the same page and aligned toward the same goal.

A strategic, or growth, business plan is a bigger picture, more-long-term look at your business. As such, the forecasts tend to look further into the future, and growth and revenue goals may be higher. Essentially, you want to use all the sections you would in a normal business plan and build upon each.

• Market analysis: comprehensive outlook
• Products and services: for launch and expansion
• Marketing plan: comprehensive outlook
• Logistics and operations plan: comprehensive outlook
• Financials: comprehensive outlook

Feasibility

Your feasibility business plan is sort of a pre-business plan—many refer to it as simply a feasibility study. This plan essentially lays the groundwork and validates that it’s worth the effort to make a full business plan for your idea. As such, it’s mostly centered around research.

Set yourself up for success as a business owner

Building a good business plan serves as a roadmap you can use for your ecommerce business at launch and as you reach each of your business goals. Business plans create accountability for entrepreneurs and synergy among teams, regardless of your  business model .

Kickstart your ecommerce business and set yourself up for success with an intentional business planning process—and with the sample business plans above to guide your own path.

• How to Start a Dropshipping Business- A Complete Playbook for 2024
• The 13 Best Dropshipping Suppliers in 2024
• How To Source Products To Sell Online
• 25+ Ideas for Online Businesses To Start Now (2024)
• The Ultimate Guide To Dropshipping (2024)
• How to Build a Business Website for Beginners
• 7 Inspiring Marketing Plan Examples (and How You Can Implement Them)
• 10 Ways to Write Product Descriptions That Persuade (2024)
• Get Guidance- 6 Business Plan Software to Help Write Your Future
• Business Valuation- Learn the Value of Your Business

Business plan examples FAQ

How do i write a simple business plan, what is the best format to write a business plan, what are the 4 key elements of a business plan.

• Executive summary: A concise overview of the company's mission, goals, target audience, and financial objectives.
• Business description: A description of the company's purpose, operations, products and services, target markets, and competitive landscape.
• Market analysis: An analysis of the industry, market trends, potential customers, and competitors.
• Financial plan: A detailed description of the company's financial forecasts and strategies.

What are the 3 main points of a business plan?

• Concept: Your concept should explain the purpose of your business and provide an overall summary of what you intend to accomplish.
• Contents: Your content should include details about the products and services you provide, your target market, and your competition.
• Cashflow: Your cash flow section should include information about your expected cash inflows and outflows, such as capital investments, operating costs, and revenue projections.

Keep up with the latest from Shopify

Get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.

By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.

popular posts

The point of sale for every sale.

Subscribe to our blog and get free ecommerce tips, inspiration, and resources delivered directly to your inbox.

Unsubscribe anytime. By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify.

Latest from Shopify

Aug 16, 2024

Learn on the go. Try Shopify for free, and explore all the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business.

Try Shopify for free, no credit card required.

How to Write a Business Plan: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

Noah Parsons

24 min. read

Updated July 29, 2024

Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated. 

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a business plan that’s detailed enough to impress bankers and potential investors, while giving you the tools to start, run, and grow a successful business.

• The basics of business planning

If you’re reading this guide, then you already know why you need a business plan . 

You understand that planning helps you: 

• Raise money
• Grow strategically
• Keep your business on the right track 

As you start to write your plan, it’s useful to zoom out and remember what a business plan is .

At its core, a business plan is an overview of the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy: how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. 

A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It’s also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. 

After completing your plan, you can use it as a management tool to track your progress toward your goals. Updating and adjusting your forecasts and budgets as you go is one of the most important steps you can take to run a healthier, smarter business. 

We’ll dive into how to use your plan later in this article.

There are many different types of plans , but we’ll go over the most common type here, which includes everything you need for an investor-ready plan. However, if you’re just starting out and are looking for something simpler—I recommend starting with a one-page business plan . It’s faster and easier to create. 

It’s also the perfect place to start if you’re just figuring out your idea, or need a simple strategic plan to use inside your business.

Dig deeper : How to write a one-page business plan

Brought to you by

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

• What to include in your business plan

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally just one to two pages. Most people write it last because it’s a summary of the complete business plan.

Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan. 

In fact, it’s common for investors to ask only for the executive summary when evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation , or more in-depth financial forecasts .

Your executive summary should include:

• A summary of the problem you are solving
• A description of your product or service
• An overview of your target market
• A brief description of your team
• A summary of your financials
• Your funding requirements (if you are raising money)

Dig Deeper: How to write an effective executive summary

Products and services description

This is where you describe exactly what you’re selling, and how it solves a problem for your target market. The best way to organize this part of your plan is to start by describing the problem that exists for your customers. After that, you can describe how you plan to solve that problem with your product or service. 

This is usually called a problem and solution statement .

To truly showcase the value of your products and services, you need to craft a compelling narrative around your offerings. How will your product or service transform your customers’ lives or jobs? A strong narrative will draw in your readers.

This is also the part of the business plan to discuss any competitive advantages you may have, like specific intellectual property or patents that protect your product. If you have any initial sales, contracts, or other evidence that your product or service is likely to sell, include that information as well. It will show that your idea has traction , which can help convince readers that your plan has a high chance of success.

Market analysis

Your target market is a description of the type of people that you plan to sell to. You might even have multiple target markets, depending on your business. 

A market analysis is the part of your plan where you bring together all of the information you know about your target market. Basically, it’s a thorough description of who your customers are and why they need what you’re selling. You’ll also include information about the growth of your market and your industry .

Try to be as specific as possible when you describe your market. 

Include information such as age, income level, and location—these are what’s called “demographics.” If you can, also describe your market’s interests and habits as they relate to your business—these are “psychographics.” 

Related: Target market examples

Essentially, you want to include any knowledge you have about your customers that is relevant to how your product or service is right for them. With a solid target market, it will be easier to create a sales and marketing plan that will reach your customers. That’s because you know who they are, what they like to do, and the best ways to reach them.

Next, provide any additional information you have about your market. 

What is the size of your market ? Is the market growing or shrinking? Ideally, you’ll want to demonstrate that your market is growing over time, and also explain how your business is positioned to take advantage of any expected changes in your industry.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write a market analysis

Competitive analysis

Part of defining your business opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage is. To do this effectively, you need to know as much about your competitors as your target customers. 

Every business has some form of competition. If you don’t think you have competitors, then explore what alternatives there are in the market for your product or service. 

For example: In the early years of cars, their main competition was horses. For social media, the early competition was reading books, watching TV, and talking on the phone.

A good competitive analysis fully lays out the competitive landscape and then explains how your business is different. Maybe your products are better made, or cheaper, or your customer service is superior. Maybe your competitive advantage is your location – a wide variety of factors can ultimately give you an advantage.

Dig Deeper: How to write a competitive analysis for your business plan

Marketing and sales plan

The marketing and sales plan covers how you will position your product or service in the market, the marketing channels and messaging you will use, and your sales tactics. 

The best place to start with a marketing plan is with a positioning statement . 

This explains how your business fits into the overall market, and how you will explain the advantages of your product or service to customers. You’ll use the information from your competitive analysis to help you with your positioning. 

For example: You might position your company as the premium, most expensive but the highest quality option in the market. Or your positioning might focus on being locally owned and that shoppers support the local economy by buying your products.

Once you understand your positioning, you’ll bring this together with the information about your target market to create your marketing strategy . 

This is how you plan to communicate your message to potential customers. Depending on who your customers are and how they purchase products like yours, you might use many different strategies, from social media advertising to creating a podcast. Your marketing plan is all about how your customers discover who you are and why they should consider your products and services. 

While your marketing plan is about reaching your customers—your sales plan will describe the actual sales process once a customer has decided that they’re interested in what you have to offer. 

If your business requires salespeople and a long sales process, describe that in this section. If your customers can “self-serve” and just make purchases quickly on your website, describe that process. 

A good sales plan picks up where your marketing plan leaves off. The marketing plan brings customers in the door and the sales plan is how you close the deal.

Together, these specific plans paint a picture of how you will connect with your target audience, and how you will turn them into paying customers.

Dig deeper: What to include in your sales and marketing plan

Business operations

The operations section describes the necessary requirements for your business to run smoothly. It’s where you talk about how your business works and what day-to-day operations look like. 

Depending on how your business is structured, your operations plan may include elements of the business like:

• Supply chain management
• Manufacturing processes
• Equipment and technology
• Distribution

Some businesses distribute their products and reach their customers through large retailers like Amazon.com, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains. 

These businesses should review how this part of their business works. The plan should discuss the logistics and costs of getting products onto store shelves and any potential hurdles the business may have to overcome.

If your business is much simpler than this, that’s OK. This section of your business plan can be either extremely short or more detailed, depending on the type of business you are building.

For businesses selling services, such as physical therapy or online software, you can use this section to describe the technology you’ll leverage, what goes into your service, and who you will partner with to deliver your services.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write the operations chapter of your plan

Key milestones and metrics

Although it’s not required to complete your business plan, mapping out key business milestones and the metrics can be incredibly useful for measuring your success.

Good milestones clearly lay out the parameters of the task and set expectations for their execution. You’ll want to include:

• A description of each task
• The proposed due date
• Who is responsible for each task

If you have a budget, you can include projected costs to hit each milestone. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section—just list key milestones you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. This is your overall business roadmap. 

Possible milestones might be:

• Website launch date
• Store or office opening date
• First significant sales
• Break even date
• Business licenses and approvals

You should also discuss the key numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common metrics worth tracking include:

• Conversion rates
• Customer acquisition costs
• Profit per customer
• Repeat purchases

It’s perfectly fine to start with just a few metrics and grow the number you are tracking over time. You also may find that some metrics simply aren’t relevant to your business and can narrow down what you’re tracking.

Dig Deeper: How to use milestones in your business plan

Organization and management team

Investors don’t just look for great ideas—they want to find great teams. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire . You should also provide a quick overview of your location and history if you’re already up and running.

Briefly highlight the relevant experiences of each key team member in the company. It’s important to make the case for why yours is the right team to turn an idea into a reality. 

Do they have the right industry experience and background? Have members of the team had entrepreneurial successes before? 

If you still need to hire key team members, that’s OK. Just note those gaps in this section.

Your company overview should also include a summary of your company’s current business structure . The most common business structures include:

• Sole proprietor
• Partnership

Be sure to provide an overview of how the business is owned as well. Does each business partner own an equal portion of the business? How is ownership divided? 

Potential lenders and investors will want to know the structure of the business before they will consider a loan or investment.

Dig Deeper: How to write about your company structure and team

Financial plan

Last, but certainly not least, is your financial plan chapter. 

Entrepreneurs often find this section the most daunting. But, business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast. 

A typical financial forecast in a business plan includes the following:

• Sales forecast : An estimate of the sales expected over a given period. You’ll break down your forecast into the key revenue streams that you expect to have.
• Expense budget : Your planned spending such as personnel costs , marketing expenses, and taxes.
• Profit & Loss : Brings together your sales and expenses and helps you calculate planned profits.
• Cash Flow : Shows how cash moves into and out of your business. It can predict how much cash you’ll have on hand at any given point in the future.
• Balance Sheet : A list of the assets, liabilities, and equity in your company. In short, it provides an overview of the financial health of your business. 

A strong business plan will include a description of assumptions about the future, and potential risks that could impact the financial plan. Including those will be especially important if you’re writing a business plan to pursue a loan or other investment.

Dig Deeper: How to create financial forecasts and budgets

This is the place for additional data, charts, or other information that supports your plan.

Including an appendix can significantly enhance the credibility of your plan by showing readers that you’ve thoroughly considered the details of your business idea, and are backing your ideas up with solid data.

Just remember that the information in the appendix is meant to be supplementary. Your business plan should stand on its own, even if the reader skips this section.

Dig Deeper : What to include in your business plan appendix

Optional: Business plan cover page

Adding a business plan cover page can make your plan, and by extension your business, seem more professional in the eyes of potential investors, lenders, and partners. It serves as the introduction to your document and provides necessary contact information for stakeholders to reference.

Your cover page should be simple and include:

• Company logo
• Business name
• Value proposition (optional)
• Business plan title
• Completion and/or update date
• Address and contact information
• Confidentiality statement

Just remember, the cover page is optional. If you decide to include it, keep it very simple and only spend a short amount of time putting it together.

Dig Deeper: How to create a business plan cover page

How to use AI to help write your business plan

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can speed up the business plan writing process and help you think through concepts like market segmentation and competition. These tools are especially useful for taking ideas that you provide and converting them into polished text for your business plan.

The best way to use AI for your business plan is to leverage it as a collaborator , not a replacement for human creative thinking and ingenuity. 

AI can come up with lots of ideas and act as a brainstorming partner. It’s up to you to filter through those ideas and figure out which ones are realistic enough to resonate with your customers. 

There are pros and cons of using AI to help with your business plan . So, spend some time understanding how it can be most helpful before just outsourcing the job to AI.

Learn more: 10 AI prompts you need to write a business plan

• Writing tips and strategies

To help streamline the business plan writing process, here are a few tips and key questions to answer to make sure you get the most out of your plan and avoid common mistakes .  

Determine why you are writing a business plan

Knowing why you are writing a business plan will determine your approach to your planning project. 

For example: If you are writing a business plan for yourself, or just to use inside your own business , you can probably skip the section about your team and organizational structure. 

If you’re raising money, you’ll want to spend more time explaining why you’re looking to raise the funds and exactly how you will use them.

Regardless of how you intend to use your business plan , think about why you are writing and what you’re trying to get out of the process before you begin.

Keep things concise

Probably the most important tip is to keep your business plan short and simple. There are no prizes for long business plans . The longer your plan is, the less likely people are to read it. 

So focus on trimming things down to the essentials your readers need to know. Skip the extended, wordy descriptions and instead focus on creating a plan that is easy to read —using bullets and short sentences whenever possible.

Have someone review your business plan

Writing a business plan in a vacuum is never a good idea. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom out and check if your plan makes sense to someone else. You also want to make sure that it’s easy to read and understand.

Don’t wait until your plan is “done” to get a second look. Start sharing your plan early, and find out from readers what questions your plan leaves unanswered. This early review cycle will help you spot shortcomings in your plan and address them quickly, rather than finding out about them right before you present your plan to a lender or investor.

If you need a more detailed review, you may want to explore hiring a professional plan writer to thoroughly examine it.

Use a free business plan template and business plan examples to get started

Knowing what information to include in a business plan is sometimes not quite enough. If you’re struggling to get started or need additional guidance, it may be worth using a business plan template. 

There are plenty of great options available (we’ve rounded up our 8 favorites to streamline your search).

But, if you’re looking for a free downloadable business plan template , you can get one right now; download the template used by more than 1 million businesses. 

Or, if you just want to see what a completed business plan looks like, check out our library of over 550 free business plan examples . 

We even have a growing list of industry business planning guides with tips for what to focus on depending on your business type.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re writing your business plan. Some entrepreneurs get sucked into the writing and research process, and don’t focus enough on actually getting their business started. 

Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them:

Not talking to your customers : This is one of the most common mistakes. It’s easy to assume that your product or service is something that people want. Before you invest too much in your business and too much in the planning process, make sure you talk to your prospective customers and have a good understanding of their needs.

• Overly optimistic sales and profit forecasts: By nature, entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future. But it’s good to temper that optimism a little when you’re planning, and make sure your forecasts are grounded in reality. 
• Spending too much time planning: Yes, planning is crucial. But you also need to get out and talk to customers, build prototypes of your product and figure out if there’s a market for your idea. Make sure to balance planning with building.
• Not revising the plan: Planning is useful, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned. As you learn more about what’s working and what’s not—revise your plan, your budgets, and your revenue forecast. Doing so will provide a more realistic picture of where your business is going, and what your financial needs will be moving forward.
• Not using the plan to manage your business: A good business plan is a management tool. Don’t just write it and put it on the shelf to collect dust – use it to track your progress and help you reach your goals.
• Presenting your business plan

The planning process forces you to think through every aspect of your business and answer questions that you may not have thought of. That’s the real benefit of writing a business plan – the knowledge you gain about your business that you may not have been able to discover otherwise.

With all of this knowledge, you’re well prepared to convert your business plan into a pitch presentation to present your ideas. 

A pitch presentation is a summary of your plan, just hitting the highlights and key points. It’s the best way to present your business plan to investors and team members.

Dig Deeper: Learn what key slides should be included in your pitch deck

Use your business plan to manage your business

One of the biggest benefits of planning is that it gives you a tool to manage your business better. With a revenue forecast, expense budget, and projected cash flow, you know your targets and where you are headed.

And yet, nothing ever goes exactly as planned – it’s the nature of business.

That’s where using your plan as a management tool comes in. The key to leveraging it for your business is to review it periodically and compare your forecasts and projections to your actual results.

Start by setting up a regular time to review the plan – a monthly review is a good starting point. During this review, answer questions like:

• Did you meet your sales goals?
• Is spending following your budget?
• Has anything gone differently than what you expected?

Now that you see whether you’re meeting your goals or are off track, you can make adjustments and set new targets. 

Maybe you’re exceeding your sales goals and should set new, more aggressive goals. In that case, maybe you should also explore more spending or hiring more employees. 

Or maybe expenses are rising faster than you projected. If that’s the case, you would need to look at where you can cut costs.

A plan, and a method for comparing your plan to your actual results , is the tool you need to steer your business toward success.

Learn More: How to run a regular plan review

How to write a business plan FAQ

What is a business plan?

A document that describes your business , the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy, how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

What are the benefits of a business plan?

A business plan helps you understand where you want to go with your business and what it will take to get there. It reduces your overall risk, helps you uncover your business’s potential, attracts investors, and identifies areas for growth.

Having a business plan ultimately makes you more confident as a business owner and more likely to succeed for a longer period of time.

What are the 7 steps of a business plan?

The seven steps to writing a business plan include:

• Write a brief executive summary
• Describe your products and services.
• Conduct market research and compile data into a cohesive market analysis.
• Describe your marketing and sales strategy.
• Outline your organizational structure and management team.
• Develop financial projections for sales, revenue, and cash flow.
• Add any additional documents to your appendix.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

There are plenty of mistakes that can be made when writing a business plan. However, these are the 5 most common that you should do your best to avoid:

• 1. Not taking the planning process seriously.
• Having unrealistic financial projections or incomplete financial information.
• Inconsistent information or simple mistakes.
• Failing to establish a sound business model.
• Not having a defined purpose for your business plan.

What questions should be answered in a business plan?

Writing a business plan is all about asking yourself questions about your business and being able to answer them through the planning process. You’ll likely be asking dozens and dozens of questions for each section of your plan.

However, these are the key questions you should ask and answer with your business plan:

• How will your business make money?
• Is there a need for your product or service?
• Who are your customers?
• How are you different from the competition?
• How will you reach your customers?
• How will you measure success?

How long should a business plan be?

The length of your business plan fully depends on what you intend to do with it. From the SBA and traditional lender point of view, a business plan needs to be whatever length necessary to fully explain your business. This means that you prove the viability of your business, show that you understand the market, and have a detailed strategy in place.

If you intend to use your business plan for internal management purposes, you don’t necessarily need a full 25-50 page business plan. Instead, you can start with a one-page plan to get all of the necessary information in place.

What are the different types of business plans?

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan: The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used when applying for funding or pitching to investors. This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix.

Business model canvas: The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

One-page business plan: This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences. It’s most useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.

Lean Plan: The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance. It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan covers the “who” and “what” of your business. It explains what your business is doing right now and how it functions. The strategic plan explores long-term goals and explains “how” the business will get there. It encourages you to look more intently toward the future and how you will achieve your vision.

However, when approached correctly, your business plan can actually function as a strategic plan as well. If kept lean, you can define your business, outline strategic steps, and track ongoing operations all with a single plan.

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

Table of Contents

• Use AI to help write your plan
• Common planning mistakes
• Manage with your business plan

Related Articles

1 Min. Read

How to Calculate Return on Investment (ROI)

5 Min. Read

How To Write a Business Plan for a Life Coaching Business + Free Example

3 Min. Read

What to Include in Your Business Plan Appendix

7 Min. Read

How to Write a Bakery Business Plan + Sample

The LivePlan Newsletter

Become a smarter, more strategic entrepreneur.

Your first monthly newsetter will be delivered soon..

Unsubscribe anytime. Privacy policy .

The quickest way to turn a business idea into a business plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

No thanks, I prefer writing 40-page documents.

Discover the world’s #1 plan building software

WEBSITE ESSENTIALS

How to plan a website in 7 steps

• Rachel Bistricer

Get started by: Creating a website →  | Getting a domain →

Having a strong website is invaluable for establishing your brand and driving growth in the digital age. But simply launching any site isn’t enough. To truly make your mark and outshine competitors, understanding how to plan a website is a must.

With the right approach, your website can capture attention, reflect the essence of your brand and drive real results. Follow this website planning guide to develop an online presence  and learn how to make a website .  

Streamline the process of planning your website with  Wix's website builder .

What is website planning and why is it important?

Website planning is the first step in the process of website creation. Think of it as a blueprint for your online presence—an outline of what you want to achieve with your website, who you aim to reach and how you intend to do it.

This process sets the strategic foundation for your online presence, leading to a successful, user-friendly website that meets your business objectives and provides a satisfying experience to visitors.

Defines objectives

Defining clear objectives ensures that every aspect of the website is strategically aligned with the goals of the business. This includes determining the purpose of the website, the target audience and the desired outcomes. Clearly defined objectives also make it easier to measure the success of the website.

Helps in user experience

A thoughtfully planned website enables visitors to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. It also ensures that the website is responsive and optimized for different devices, which is critical today with the increase in mobile usage.

Streamlines communication

Website planning involves collaboration between different teams and stakeholders, including designers, developers, marketers and content creators. It facilitates effective communication between these teams, ensuring alignment and collective contribution towards shared objectives.

Saves time and money

Proper website planning eliminates the need for costly redesigns or rebranding efforts. By investing time up front, you ensure that the website is designed correctly from the start, setting you up for long-term savings and success.

How to plan a website

Define clear goals for your website

Understand your audience

Pick a domain name and hosting provider

Plan and build your website

Choose elements for your website design

Create compelling website content

01. Define clear goals for your website

When setting website goals, view them as stepping stones to achieving broader business aims. First, identify your website’s purpose. For example, are you trying to gain traffic and build an audience or are you looking to sell products? Identify 2-3 key business objectives, then brainstorm actionable website goals enabling users to participate. Whether you want to boost impressions, gather data or motivate purchases, let these specific business goals steer your tactical website goal-setting.

For example, if increased lead generation is crucial for future revenue, focus conversion goals on capturing contact details. A website goal might be to utilize popups and value offering incentives to generate 50 newsletter signups daily.

02. Establish your unique selling proposition

It's essential to identify and highlight the unique aspects of your brand or business that differentiate you from competitors. Define your business's unique selling proposition (USP)  early in the process, as this will guide the overall direction and objectives of your website. You should then ensure these elements are prominently featured in key areas of your website.

When crafting your USP, focus on these guiding questions:

How do you stand out from competitors in terms of services or products?

What value do you have to offer to potential customers?

02. Understand your audience

Whether you’re seeking to engage a broad consumer base or a specialized niche target market, getting specific on your audience drives more impactful website planning. Rather than taking a generic one-size-fits all approach, research key demographics to generate a buyer persona like:

Purchase intention

Other important audience aspects to consider:

Professional details: Industry, company size, job details

Psychographics:  Interests, hobbies, values, motivations

Influences and biases:  Online activities, blogs, newsletters, social networks

Challenges:  Pain points, barriers 

The more thorough picture you have of your target audience, the easier it is to make informed choices when designing user experiences on your website. From visual aesthetics to content messaging to product offerings, you can customize components to resonate with the preferences and motivations of prospective visitors.

03. Pick a domain name and hosting provider

A carefully chosen domain name, well-designed site architecture and reliable hosting service are foundational elements when planning a website. These factors influence the success of your website by affecting both user experience and search engine performance.

First, it’s important to understand what is a domain , and in turn you’ll be able to  choose a domain name  that both suits your business and is also available.

When picking a domain and hosting provider, these simple tips will help you invest in a solid technical foundation: 

Select a domain name that is short, easy to remember and directly related to your brand. Avoid overly complex or confusing names. A domain like " johnsmithphotography.com " clearly communicates what the site is about.

Prioritize web security and uptime when evaluating hosting providers. A reliable host helps ensure consistent site accessibility for both visitors and search engines. When you build your site with Wix, you automatically get free web hosting  when you publish your website, so you don't need to find an external host.

Factor in scalability needs for the future. As your site and traffic grow over time, make sure your hosting plan allows upgrading server capacity, storage space and bandwidth. With advanced security monitoring, TLS (transport layer security), automatic backup and a 99.9% uptime, Wix website infrastructure simplifies the scaling-up process and also guarantees peace of mind regarding your website's performance and security.

What often gets forgotten when talking about choosing a website builder is the capabilities of the infrastructure that’s promised to you - the reliability of the hosting, the level of security that’s in order to protect your visitor’s data, and of course your site's speed. Even if infrastructure is not the first thought that comes to mind when it comes to how to plan a website, if it’s not robust enough, it can cause large headaches for website owners when trying to scale a website later on.

Esin D.Habif, Product Marketing Lead Outbound at Wix.com

Try this domain name generator  as part of your website planning. 

04. Plan and build your website type

Before you can fully start planning your website, first decide what kind of website you require. There are many types of websites to choose from based on your needs. 

Here are a few most common types of websites to consider:

eCommerce websites and online stores

Business websites

Blog websites (try using a blog maker )

Online portfolios

Event websites

Nonprofit website

Online forum

Online resume websites

Landing pages (use a landing page builder )

Next, outline a sitemap or hierarchy framework of key webpages  to optimize user experience, this is also sometimes referred to as a website wireframe . This helps connect all elements intuitively as you build out pages. Consider how many pages and what content is needed to achieve your goals. The next step after this is to consider your page layout.

Some common elements are:

Homepage : Introduce visitors to your brand with clear calls-to-action.

About page: Include your background and qualifications to build trust and credibility.

Product/services pages:  Describe what you sell or offer with photos, costs and contact options.

Blog or resources page:  Share knowledge that attracts visitors and positions you as an industry expert.

Contact page:  Make it easy for visitors to get in touch and ask questions.

FAQ page: Address common inquiries about your business, products or services.

Then, identify must-have features and functionality to support user experience and business needs:

Navigation menu:  Foster website navigation between the different pages or sections of a site.

Contact/inquiry forms: Remove barriers to contacting you for sales, questions, etc. with form builders.

Search bar:  Help users find what they want seamlessly—and fast.

Calls-To-Action (CTAs):  Strategically place CTAs to prompt visitors to take a specific action, like buy products or subscribe to content. Check out our guide on CTAs for more tips.

Privacy policy: this may vary depending on where your business or you are located (so check all local and country regulations before proceeding) but should generally include information about the data collected from users and what it will be used for.

Payment systems : if you're building an eCommerce website , you'll need a website payment solution in order to accept and process payments.

Pick a website builder

With your website elements and goals clarified, the next step is choosing a website builder  to bring your vision to life. Here are several options for building your site.

Use an easy drag-and-drop interface, or Content Management System CMS , for uncomplicated no-code website creation, like Wix’s Editor.

This includes using a platform with hundreds of pre-designed free website templates for any type of site.

Start from scratch and build with custom code on an open source platform like Velo .

Consider a responsive website or web design, with a platform like Wix Studio .

Hire a web designer  to help outline your website planning and site creation.

Consider creating a website with AI - Wix ADI is one way to do this with an AI website builder.

When it comes to how to plan a website, you'll also need to fact in the cost of making your site . This can be done for free with a website builder like Wix, which also has a number of premium plans available depending on your website planning goals.

05. Choose elements for your website design

Cohesive visual design makes an impression on visitors. Research current styles and layouts that successfully engage your audience on existing websites for inspiration. To help unify aesthetics, create a brand style guide outlining important design assets to use:

Logo:  Craft a recognizable logo that encapsulates your brand essence. This visual signature builds consistency on your website and across platforms, both on and offline, including your favicon, social media channels and printed assets. You can use a logo maker tool to create something lasting and unique.

Colors:  Website colors are emotional and eye-catching, they can immediately set the tone of your site within seconds.  Pick a palette that aligns uniquely with your branding. You can explore different complementary colors  to convey your brand identity.  Consider all the places that colors can make an impact as you plan your website, including buttons, menus, backgrounds and elements.

Fonts:  Curate a font combination of sleek headings and clean body text that enhances readability and accessibility. Typography directly impacts tone.

Photos : On-brand photographs visually connect users to your brand’s human centric stories and values. Be sure to use high-quality images and consider inclusivity when selecting images. When you plan your site with Wix, you’ll have access to a Media Manager with hundreds of free Wix image and video files that you can add directly to your site. You can also use an image resizer  tool to ensure photos fit the page accordingly.

Illustrations:  Custom iconography and illustrations are a creative option to differentiate your unique look and feel.

Other visual elements:  You can explore a wide variety of background options, interesting scrolling effects and layouts, all directly within the Wix Editor.

Explore the Wix database of totally customizable website templates  to see which one fits your vision best. 

06. Create compelling website content

Well-planned websites don’t just look nice—they provide value to audiences through engaging content. This is where you can really showcase your creativity and expertise with a strong content marketing strategy.  Keep in mind that your web content should be dynamic and evolve with your brand. For example, if your product offering changes, be sure to update descriptions and images.

Don't forget to include relevant keywords in your content strategy to improve your website's SEO and visibility. Here are some tips:

Conduct keyword research to identify terms and phrases your audience is searching. Incorporate these organically into content.

Optimize page titles and meta descriptions with keywords, aiming for under 60 characters.

Use keyword-focused headers and subheaders (H1, H2 tags) to improve on-page SEO.

Create SEO-friendly URLs using keywords separated by dashes instead of spaces or underscores.

Add image alt text and video transcripts with keywords for visual assets.

Integrating SEO considerations from the outset ensures that the website is optimized for search engines, improving visibility and ranking. Include this step in your website planning process with Wix SEO  tools such as the SEO Wizard. This tool analyzes your website content and structure, delivering tailored recommendations to boost visibility. 

You might want to consider how to incorporate AI content creation into your workflow, when it comes to creating website content as part of your wider content marketing efforts.

Bringing your website planning to life

Once your website planning is complete, testing helps identify and resolve any issues before launch. Some examples of tests to run include:

Conduct thorough user experience testing to optimize navigation, task flows and content clarity based on feedback.

Perform technical tests including site speed, mobile optimization, browser compatibility and more to catch bugs.

Implement ongoing maintenance like link and image checks, content updates, backups, theme and plugin updates and security reviews to maintain performance and provide continuous value.

Make sure your website is connected to an analytics tool (like Wix Analytics ) so that you can track the traffic and user engagement on your website.

Consider how to to include your website within your marketing strategies and how are you going to market your website.

Conducting constant website maintenance

Being proactive by using different tests such as  A/B testing  to compare different versions of your web pages and conducting regular  website maintenance  to ensure all functionalities are up to date is crucial for your site's efficiency. This not only enhances visitor experiences by offering a seamless browsing journey but also helps in identifying potential issues at an early stage.

How to plan a website FAQ

How do i plan a website project budget.

Budget can have a significant impact on website planning. Limited resources may require prioritizing certain features or functionalities over others. It's important to determine what aspects of the website are essential and allocate funds accordingly. Creativity and resourcefulness play a vital role in optimizing the website within the given budget, such as leveraging cost-effective tools and technologies.

What technical requirements are important to consider when planning a website?

Who should have input in the website planning stage, related posts.

How to create a professional website: step-by-step guide

How to create a website from scratch in 11 steps (for beginners)

40+ Simple website templates for professionals

Was this article helpful?

• Services & Software

Article updated on August 15, 2024 at 5:00 AM PDT

Best Web Hosting For Small Business In 2024

These are the best web hosting options for all kinds of small businesses, from the solopreneur creating a portfolio to the multi-employee small business looking for a place to grow.

Our Experts

CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise.

• Excellent security protocols
• LiteSpeed-enhanced servers
• Email hosting available with all plans
• Lowest-tier plan has permanent pricing, meaning your cost won’t increase on renewal
• Must sign up for three years to get the best discount on shared and WordPress plans
• Low-tier plans don’t include a free domain for the first year
• Phone service not available on Sunday

Best for long-term affordability

AccuWeb’s affordable web hosting plans for small businesses are jam-packed with features. Some of the benefits included with all plans are secure socket layer — SSL — certification, a custom firewall, antivirus protection, malware scanning, distributed denial of service — DDoS — protection and daily backups. AccuWeb servers are also LiteSpeed-enhanced to optimize site speed.

Small business owners will also appreciate AccuWeb’s email hosting. The most affordable managed WordPress plan — which is also the company’s most affordable option overall — includes up to five email addresses, and the next level up includes up to 150.

AccuWeb offers 24/7 customer service via live chat and email, plus 24-hour phone service every day except Sunday.

Plans for small businesses

Very small businesses can use the lowest-tier WordPress hosting plan , which costs $2.75 a month forever if you choose a three-year term. This plan offers 10GB of data and 100GB of bandwidth,enough to host 1,000 web pages and accommodate as many as 10,000 to 20,000 monthly visitors, with some variation based on how many images and videos exist on your site. There are also several other WordPress plans with more data, bandwidth and email addresses.

E-commerce businesses can use AccuWeb’s WooCommerce plans , which feature pre-installed WooCommerce and a free WooCommerce migration. These plans start at $5 a month ($10 a month on renewal) for 50GB of storage, 1TB of bandwidth, 150 email addresses and one virtual central processing unit — vCPU — for improved ability to handle complex site processes, like playing videos, for many users at the same time.

If you don’t plan to use WordPress, you can also get regular shared hosting from AccuWeb , starting at $4 a month (renews at $9 a month) for 50GB of storage and 750GB of bandwidth.

You can also get managed VPS — virtual private server — hosting starting at $6 a month (renews at $11 a month), with two vCPUs, 25GB of storage and 250GB of bandwidth. Unmanaged VPS hosting starts at $11 a month for 30GB of storage and 250GB of bandwidth, with no pricing increase on renewal if you choose an annual plan. These plans are great if you need to store lots of large files — like images and videos — and/or you expect over 200,000 monthly visitors.

• Specialized tools for performance monitoring and security
• Developer tools
• Comes bundled with premium plugins like Yoast SEO
• WordPress and WooCommerce experts available for customer support
• WooCommerce plans include built-in page builders and custom themes
• Availability of Magento plans for e-commerce businesses that don’t want to use WordPress
• Above-average uptime of 99.99%
• No free domain
• Introductory prices only last three months and are only available with a three-year plan

Best premium web hosting for small businesses

Nexcess is a premium web hosting service with plans for small-to-medium-sized companies and even enterprise businesses, making it a great choice if you want a host that can grow with you as your business does.

Nexcess provides fully managed hosting with free SSL certification, daily backups, a wide range of developer tools and an above-average 99.99% uptime guarantee. You’ll also get 24/7 access to expert customer support via live chat, phone and support ticket. You can also create unlimited email accounts on any Nexcess plan. Email hosting space is part of your main storage allocation.

However, there are a couple of drawbacks. You won’t get a free domain for the first year on any Nexcess plan. You also won’t get introductory discounts on the basic WordPress plans outside of certain seasonal sales, and the regular prices are on the expensive side.

Nexcess offers managed WordPress hosting with auto-updates for the core software and plugins. A Solid Security plugin, image lazy loading and compression tools, a plugin performance monitor and a CDN are included for secure, fast and reliable site performance. The most affordable option is $8.40 a month for the first three months ($21 a month after) and includes 15GB of storage and 2TB of bandwidth -- enough for 1,500 pages and several hundred thousand monthly visitors.

Nexcess also offers specialized WooCommerce plans bundled with premium design plugins like Astra Pro, Beaver Builder Lite and custom storefront themes. These plans start at $8.40 a month for three months ($21 a month after) for 30GB of storage and 3TB of bandwidth. You can also get Nexcess hosting for Magento , another popular e-commerce platform. These plans start at $37.52 a month for three months ($67 a month after) for 50GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth.

• Top-notch security
• Cloud-based servers for improved performance
• Multiple daily backups
• Unlimited email hosting
• Fast customer service
• No free domain for the first year
• Introductory discounts for shared and WordPress hosting only available with a three-year contract
• Introductory discount only available for first quarter on VPS hosting

Fastest customer service

HostArmada uses cloud-based servers for all types of hosting, reducing downtime and increasing site speed for all customers. HostArmada plans also include security features like SSL certification, advanced firewall protection, malware scanning protection, brute force protection, live server monitoring and multiple daily backups.

Another benefit of HostArmada for small businesses is the unlimited email hosting offered on all plans. This lets you create as many professional email addresses as you need for different employees, departments and campaigns. However, email storage comes out of your total storage amount, so there is a technical limit on how many accounts you can create.

What really stands out about HostArmada, though, is the promised customer service. You can access 24/7 customer service via live chat, support ticket, phone and email. HostArmada also brags about fast response times: instant for live chat and phone, within 10 minutes for support tickets, and within one hour for email.

Small businesses can use the Start Dock plan, which comes in two varieties: shared hosting and WordPress hosting . Both start at $3 a month ($10 a month on renewal) for 15GB of data and enough bandwidth for up to 30,000 visitors a month. You’ll also get two CPU — central processing unit — cores and 2GB of random access memory — RAM — to ensure fast, reliable performance. The WordPress version also includes one-click WordPress installation and automatic WordPress updates.

You can opt for a bigger shared or WordPress hosting plan if you need more data or bandwidth, or choose managed VPS hosting starting at $45 a month and rising to $60 a month (based on quarterly payments). The lowest-tier VPS plan includes 50GB of storage, 2TB of bandwidth and one CPU. VPS plans are great for storing large amounts of videos and images, receiving hundreds of thousands of visitors per month or customizing things like your server’s operating system.

What is the best web hosting for small businesses right now?

AccuWeb is the best web hosting for small businesses on a tight budget. You’ll get top-tier security and performance, plus email hosting for at least five email addresses, for very affordable prices -- there are several plans starting at less than $10 a month. Moreover, the lowest-tier plan doesn’t have increased renewal pricing, so you’ll pay $2.75 indefinitely. This makes it ideal for portfolio and solopreneur websites.

Nexcess is the best web hosting for small businesses with more spending power. Its fully managed plans reduce the time you need to spend on website maintenance. You’ll get excellent security and performance-enhancing features, plus support experts trained in WordPress, WooCommerce and Magento. WordPress and WooCommerce users also get built-in premium plugins. However, the lowest-cost plan starts at $8.40 a month and rises to an expensive $21 a month after three months.

Factors to consider when choosing a web hosting for small business

Types of web hosting.

As a small business owner, you’ll probably start with shared hosting or WordPress hosting due to their affordable and easy-to-use nature.

Shared hosting splits one web server’s resources — like bandwidth and data storage — between many websites. This limits how much content — like blog posts and landing pages — your site can store and how many monthly visitors it can handle, but it also makes shared hosting affordable. Low-cost shared hosting plans can usually accommodate up to 10,000 monthly visitors, while high-end plans can typically handle up to 400,000.

WordPress hosting is (typically shared) hosting optimized for WordPress, a content management system — CMS — for creating and organizing blog posts and other site content. This includes pre-installed WordPress and may include pre-installed themes or plugins and automated WordPress updates. Low-cost WordPress hosting plans can often accommodate up to 10,000 monthly visitors, whereas higher-cost plans can typically handle up to 400,000.

Cloud hosting stores a website in multiple data centers to improve uptime and loading speeds for users around the globe. This type of hosting is used by popular website builders like Squarespace . Many traditional website hosting companies also offer cloud hosting. Cloud hosting bandwidth varies a lot, but most plans can accommodate at least 10,000 monthly visitors, and scaling up as your site grows is often quite simple with cloud hosting.

Virtual private server — VPS — hosting involves creating several virtual servers within one physical server. Each virtual server has dedicated resources, like storage and bandwidth. This typically lets you store more data — tens or hundreds of thousands of large files like images and videos — and accommodate more traffic (often several hundred thousand monthly visitors) than shared hosting. You may also get to customize aspects of your server, like the operating system.

Dedicated hosting involves giving one customer a full physical server. Many dedicated hosting plans let you store 1TB or more of data and accommodate millions of visitors per month. However, these plans are expensive and can be complicated to set up, so I generally don’t recommend dedicated hosting for small businesses.

Performance

There are two ways a web host influences your site’s performance: uptime and site speed.

Uptime is the amount of time your website spends online. Most web hosting services guarantee 99.9% uptime, meaning that server issues won’t cause your site to go down for more than 45 minutes a month. Some go beyond this to guarantee as much as 99.99% uptime, meaning your site won’t go down because of server issues for more than four minutes per month.

Site speed is how long it takes for your website to load. As a general rule, shorter load times are better. There are a few things web hosts can offer to improve this aspect of performance:

• International data centers so you can choose a server close to your target audience and improve loading speeds for them.
• Caching tools to store key data in users’ browsers and improve loading times on repeat visits.
• Content delivery networks or CDNs to store data in several locations around the world, allowing users’ browsers to pull from the server closest to them.

Keeping your data — and your customers’ data — safe is important, especially if you’re accepting payments or collecting sensitive personal information through your website. Your web hosting plan should provide at least two security tools:

• Secure socket layer — SSL — certification: A protocol that encrypts data sent to and from your website. SSL certification also indicates to Google, browsers and VPNs that your site is safe, and some browsers and VPNs won’t even let you open a site without it.
• Firewall: A software tool that filters out malware attempting to infiltrate your site. Some firewalls also provide protection from distributed denial of service — DDoS — and brute force attacks .

Some hosts also provide security provisions like malware scanning/repair to handle any malware that makes it through to your site and automated backups so you can quickly restore your site if something goes wrong.

Customer service

You should be able to reach customer service at any time of day or night via live chat, support ticket/email or phone. When you contact them, customer support reps should be fast to respond and knowledgeable enough to fix your issues in a timely manner.

This is one area where checking reviews is important. Companies always say their customer service is great, but that doesn’t make it true -- look at sources like Trustpilot and our own web hosting reviews to see what real customers have experienced.

There are a few things to keep in mind when considering web hosting costs:

• Contract length: You may have to buy a one-, two- or even three-year plan — and pay for all of those months up front — to access the best price.
• Renewal pricing: Many web hosts offer low introductory pricing and raise the cost significantly when the contract renews.
• Additional fees: You may need to pay extra for things like a domain name . You’ll also want to pay attention to transaction fees if you’re choosing an e-commerce plan through a website-builder-focused host like Squarespace or Shopify .

How CNET tests web hosting

We conduct thorough research on every web host we feature, focusing on:

• The quality of the plans listed on their website
• Customer service options listed on their website
• Reviews from Trustpilot , complaints on the Better Business Bureau website and the host’s overall reputation

We’ve also developed a framework for testing web hosting services that involves purchasing a plan and testing ease of use, uptime and speed over the course of one week. We also test each method of communicating with customer support to test response times and expertise. Notes from these reviews are included in relevant listings and updated as we complete more reviews.

Other web hosting we've tested

HostGator is a popular web host that performed reasonably well in our hands-on testing, with easy-to-use site and account management tools and decent server performance. However, customer service was very inconsistent, suggesting that HostGator’s not suitable for sites with complex support needs.

There have also been some disappointing recent changes to HostGator’s most affordable plan, including the removal of email and phone support and a switch from perma-free SSL certification to only offering SSL certification free for the first year.

Still, HostGator can be a good choice for simple websites, with plans starting at $3.75 a month (renews at $10 a month) for 10GB of storage, unmetered bandwidth and pre-installed WordPress with a proprietary site assistant to simplify setup.

Read our HostGator review .

GoDaddy is the biggest name in web hosting, powering 15.6% of all websites . I found it relatively easy to work with during my testing, with decent account and site management tools, excellent server performance and fast, knowledgeable customer service.

GoDaddy also seems quite affordable at first glance, with the lowest-cost shared hosting plan starting at $6 a month and rising to $10 a month on renewal. However, there are some caveats. SSL certification is only free for one year, and you’ll have to pay $100 a year after that. You’ll also need to pay an extra $3 a month for basic security protection like a firewall.

Read our GoDaddy review .

Web hosting for small business FAQs

How much is website hosting for a small business.

I recommend shared or WordPress hosting for most small businesses. Most of these plans start with a price tag of $3 to 5 a month and rise to $10 to 20 a month on renewal. VPS hosting, a good option for businesses with more advanced data needs, can cost anywhere from $3 a month to $100 or more each month.

Cloud hosting, an ideal choice for site owners expecting high traffic levels and especially high international traffic, is only offered by some web hosting services and typically costs $30 or more each month.

Which web hosting is best for beginners?

Beginners who are good at — and interested in — learning new software and want maximum customization should choose shared or WordPress hosting and use WordPress to build their sites. Beginners who want the lowest possible learning curve should choose website builder hosting from a company like Squarespace or Shopify.

What are the three types of web hosting?

There are several types of web hosting, but the three most common are:

Shared hosting, where one server’s resources — like data and bandwidth — are shared between many sites. The cost of maintaining the server is also split between the sites, making shared hosting highly affordable, often starting at $3 to 5 a month.

Virtual private server or VPS hosting, where a server is split into multiple virtual private servers with dedicated resources. This type of hosting typically provides more flexibility for large and complex websites than shared hosting, resulting in higher costs, often $30 or more a month.

Dedicated hosting, where an entire physical server is dedicated to a single site owner. This often comes with several hundred gigabytes or even a terabyte of data, high bandwidth and full server customization, but it’s also typically hundreds of dollars per month.

How do I choose a website host for my business?

You should establish an understanding of what type of website you want to create, research important web hosting terms and use that information to figure out what you need from a website host.

Once you know what you need, you can create a shortlist of potential hosts and read in-depth reviews of companies you’re considering. Take your time with this decision, as your choice of web host can make or break your business!

How much should I pay someone to host my website?

As a small business owner, you should expect to pay $3-6 a month for your first term (one to three years) and $10-20 a month on future contracts if you choose shared or WordPress hosting. You’ll pay $15-30 a month on a permanent basis if you choose website builder hosting through a company like Squarespace or Shopify.

Services and Software Guides

• Best iPhone VPN
• Best Free VPN
• Best Android VPN
• Best Mac VPN
• Best Mobile VPN
• Best VPN for Firestick
• Best VPN for Windows
• Fastest VPN
• Best Cheap VPN
• Best Password Manager
• Best Antivirus
• Best Identity Theft Protection
• Best LastPass Alternative
• Best Live TV Streaming Service
• Best Streaming Service
• Best Free TV Streaming Service
• Best Music Streaming Services
• Best Web Hosting
• Best Minecraft Server Hosting
• Best Website Builder
• Best Dating Sites
• Best Language Learning Apps
• Best Weather App
• Best Stargazing Apps
• Best Cloud Storage
• Best Resume Writing Services
• New Coverage on Operating Systems

Best Web Hosting Plans 2024: Shared, VPS, WordPress and Cloud

We’ve tested the major hosting providers to help you find the right one for your needs.

• Types of Web Hosting Plan

Best VPS Web Hosting

Best cloud hosting, best shared hosting, best wordpress hosting, best vps performance.

• Shopping Tips
• How we test

Whether you’re putting up a page just to show off your resume and family photos, you’re building data-driven online tools, or you’re promoting a small business, you need a web hosting service to serve your site. The good news is that there are dozens of web hosting companies competing for your business and each of them has a variety of plans at different price points. 

To help you find the best web hosting plan for your personal or business website, we’ve tested over 20 plans from more than 10 different companies. These range from shared hosting plans (you share resources with lots of other clients) that go for just $2.95 a month to pricey VPS (Virtual Private Server, your own server resources) plans that cost $90-plus. We spent many hours or days with each plan, setting up a site, enabling common features such as SSL, and running a set of benchmarks that measure both server capacity and database speed. See the bottom of this page for more on how we test. 

The overall best hosting company right now is Hostinger, thanks to its strong combination of performance and pricing, particularly for its VPS plans , which start at just $4.99 a month (we like VPS hosting plans because they offer more flexibility). However, some other web hosting plans are better for many users, depending on their needs and budgets. We’ve listed the very best web hosting plans for different use cases below. We also have buying advice and detailed descriptions of the different types of hosting plan: VPS, Shared, WordPress and Dedicated.

Best VPS Web Hosting With a starting price of just $4.99, you get the flexibility and functionality of a VPS for the price of a shared plan. Performance is also very strong. ✅ Hostinger VPS Hosting Plans

Read more below

Best Cloud Web Hosting 

If you’re expecting a lot of visitors to your website and want to be able to serve pages quickly, Bluehost’s Cloud plans, by far, did the best on our concurrent traffic tests. ✅ Bluehost Cloud Hosting Plans

Best Shared Web Hosting

If you just need a small site for promoting your personal brand or a small business, you can get set up easily for less than $3 a month.

✅ HostGator Shared Web Hosting Plans

Show More ⬇️

Best WordPress Hosting 

For shared plans that come with WordPress preinstalled, these are extremely performant and easy to manage. ✅ ScalaHosting WordPress Hosting Plans

Best VPS Hosting Performance

These VPS plans scored really well on our benchmarks and are available with a wide variety of CPU core counts, RAM and storage. ✅ Liquid Web Managed VPS Hosting Plans

I've been developing websites and using web hosting services since most people were dialing in to AOL with 56K modems.  I've built large databases in MySQL, programmed web tools in PHP and worked on the front end in HTML and JavaScript. After having programmed many different sites, I understand what web developers of all skill levels (from beginners setting up a WordPress blog to programmers starting an online business) need from their web hosting providers.

Different Types of Web Hosting Plan

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test .

When choosing the best web hosting plan for you, these are the main types:

• Shared hosting: The most affordable plans put your site(s) on the same server as an unknown number of other accounts, which means you don’t have admin rights to the server and performance / capacity is limited. Good for those who don’t build custom tools or expect a ton of traffic.
• VPS (Virtual Private Server): This option usually costs quite a bit more than shared hosting, but it gives you your own virtual machine with guaranteed resources, including a set number of CPU cores and a fixed amount of RAM that belongs to you. You also get full control over the server, including admin rights and the ability to install software. If you can afford it, VPS is the best choice for serious businesses or tech-savvy users.
• Cloud hosting: Oddly named – because all hosting is “in the cloud,” these plans offer a very high level of performance in their ability to handle a lot of concurrent traffic. You get some amount of flexibility but you don’t get admin rights over the server. Prices tend to be a little bit more expensive than VPS.
• WordPress hosting: This is the same as shared hosting, but WordPress comes preinstalled. But you can always install WordPress on your own so it’s not a big deal.
• Dedicated hosting: The most expensive type of hosting, dedicated hosting involves having your own physical server located in the hosting company’s data center. No one else has an account on it but you. Theoretically, this should make dedicated hosting the fastest. We haven’t tested any dedicated servers as part of our current round, because most require a significant long-term contract to use.
• Managed or Unmanaged : Some VPS and Dedicated hosting plans are offered as “unmanaged,” which means that you must install all software and updates on your own. Managed, the more common solution has the hosting company at least keeping the OS and core server software up-to-date. For most people, I recommend getting a Managed plan.

Best Web Hosting Plans 2024

1. Hostinger VPS Plans

Specifications, reasons to buy, reasons to avoid.

If you take your hosting even a little bit seriously, a VPS (Virtual Private Server) plan makes more sense than the cheapo shared plans that so many folks sign up for. With a VPS, you get your own virtual machine with dedicated resources such as CPU cores, RAM, and storage that only belongs to you. More importantly, you get admin control over the server itself, which means you can reboot it, upgrade the software or explore the Linux shell with superuser privileges.

Hostinger’s VPS plans are among the cheapest on the market, with the base plan starting at just $4.99 a month, which isn’t more than many shared hosting plans. We would, however, go with at least the KVM2 plan that is $6.99 a month and provides 2 vCPU cores, 8GB of RAM, and 100GB of disk space. These prices are way lower than what you pay with competitors such as Bluehost or HostGator. Any of these plans require a 24-month commitment, after which the cost goes up as is typical for all hosting plans.

In our tests, we found Hostinger’s VPS KVM2 plan able to complete our database tests very quickly. For example, it completed the massive MySQL DB Insert (using its preloaded MariaDB software) in just 7 minutes and 52 seconds, less than half the time it took HostGator’s VPS and about 50 percent quicker than Bluehost’s VPS.

Its WordPress Hosting Benchmark score of 7.4 was not the highest we’ve seen but it is more than adequate for running a speedy content site. It delivered a strong 23 requests per second when hit with 500 concurrent requests, among the upper tier of VPS plans. 

To get a VPS plan at prices that are this competitive, you do have to either accept a small trade-off or pay a bit more. When you activate your plan, you’re given a choice of operating systems and control panels to install on your server and, if you choose cPanel / WHM, you have to buy an additional license which costs at least $22 a month. cPanel is, by far, the most powerful and easy-to-use site control panel and WHM is the best for managing the server itself (doing reboots, creating accounts, installing software). 

However, the good news is that you can live without cPanel. Hostinger offers a combination of VirtualMin  / Webmin panels for free. While these tools are more difficult to navigate, they perform pretty much the same functions and don’t add cost.

Read: Hostinger Review

2. Bluehost Cloud Plans

If you expect to get a lot of traffic on your website, a Cloud plan will give you more resources to serve those requests. And, of all the Cloud plans we tested, Bluehost’s was the fastest. We tried the very basic $29 / month, Cloud 1 Plan and found that, on our Apache tests, it was able to deliver an amazing 1,578 requests per second when hit with 500 concurrent requests, an amount that not every hosting plan can even handle. At 100 concurrents, it delivered a stunning 1,220 requests per second. That’s nearly 5 times faster than any other plan we tested on any service.

Bluehost’s Cloud plans start at a reasonable $29 and go all the way up to $119 a month with a one-year commitment. After that, the prices go up a bit. Our entry-level plan had a mere 10GB of storage space, but you can go up to 225GB if necessary.

Unlike with VPS, you don’t get admin rights to the server and you don’t get cPanel to control your server, but Bluehost’s own built-in admin interface is more than adequate to get you access to WordPress, to setting up shell access and to the database, which happened to be MariaDB 10.6 at the time of testing.

Though you don’t get admin rights to your server, you can log in to the terminal via SSH. And, in doing so, I was able to execute a shell script that ran for at least 3.5 hours (after which I stopped it). That’s good because some plans will kill your script after just a few minutes, making long-duration tasks such as scraping a website or performing a complex database import impossible.

In our tests, the Bluehost Cloud plan handled two out of three of our MySQL Database tests with aplomb but it was overwhelmed by and timed out on our third and most intensive workload which joins two giant tables and sums data across millions of rows and columns. 

However, if you’re using the server for hosting a content site such as one based on the WordPress CMS, the ability to serve pages is the most important thing. Bluehost’s Cloud hosting plan not only can handle a lot of requests but it scored a very strong 8.5 on the WordPress Hosting Benchmark, which is one of the highest scores we’ve seen.

Read: Bluehost Review

3. HostGator Shared Plans

If you are just building a simple website to showcase your resume or a very small business (without an online store), a shared hosting plan is your best bet. HostGator offers shared hosting plans starting at less than $3 a month with a three-year commitment. All of the plans have “unmetered bandwidth,” which means you don’t get charged extra or cut off if you go above a traffic threshold. And, as with even the cheapest shared plans, you get the ability to host and make free email accounts with your domain name on them.

I tested the $3.50 / month Baby Plan that promises 2 vCPUs, 20GB of storage, and Cloudflare CDN for faster page loading. You can even have 10, 20 or 50 websites on a single account. Overall, I was pleased with how easy it was to set up features such as SSL for domain, though I was frustrated that HostGator seemingly wouldn’t support domains with the .sbs top-level domain that we use for testing and we had to register a different one with a .site extension (a regular “.com” or “.org” should do fine). 

However, the message here is that the presence of cPanel makes HostGator really easy to operate and set up. Installing WordPress is a breeze and so is doing things like setting up SSH access.

If you’re after the best performance you can get from a shared plan, HostGator may or may not fit the bill. It scored a solid 7.3 on the WordPress Hosting Benchmark and it capably handled all of our database benchmarks. However, when we ran our Apache traffic test, the server couldn’t handle 500 or even 100 concurrent requests. At 10 concurrent requests, it delivered a modest 6.1 requests per second. But that’s fine for a personal blog, a resume site or one meant to promote a small business.

Read: Hostgator Review

4. ScalaHosting WordPress Plans

ScalaHosting isn’t the best-known name in web hosting, but it offers some really affordable and highly functional plans. Its WordPress hosting plans, which are shared hosting plans but come with WordPress pre-installed, are a particularly good value and are able to handle a lot of traffic. 

The company’s WordPress plans start at just $2.95 with a 36-month commitment and just 10GB of storage space, but they ramp up to 100GB of storage if you’re willing to pay $9.95 a month. We tested the low-end WP Mini plan and were impressed with its ease of setup and ability to handle lots of concurrent traffic.

One of the problems we see with a lot of shared plans is that they can’t handle a lot of concurrent requests. That means that if you get a burst of traffic, some of your users may not get served or may be waiting a very long time to see your page. ScalaHosting’s WordPress hosting plan was able to withstand the Apache Benchmark where I threw 500 concurrent requests at it and it delivered a solid 13.4 requests per second, which is not the world’s fastest, but neither Bluehost nor HostGator’s shared hosting plans could even handle this amount of traffic.

ScalaHosting’s WordPress hosting performance on our database tests was not spectacular, but it actually completed all the tests with its MariaDB 10.6 application, while competitors such as Bluehost timed out on the third and most intense test, which involves a massive table join and sum action. It also got a very mediocre score of 5.3 on the WordPress Hosting Benchmark.

The plans come with cPanel, the most powerful and easy-to-use control panel around. And that makes it easy to do things like enable SSL, create email accounts, and handle subdomains. Shell access is disabled by default, but I made a support request to have it turned on and Scalahosting’s support staff enabled it for me without complaint.

In fact, ScalaHosting’s support is some of the best I’ve seen, because it has a simple ticketing system you can use to ask for help with problems. Then you can go about your business and check back in later to see the tech’s response. Most hosting plans I’ve tested require you to use a live chat to file requests, which is slow and frustrating because you have to sit there for 30 minutes or more as you wait for responses and for your request to be escalated to the right person. If it’s not a 911 emergency, you’re better off filing a ticket.

Overall, if you’re looking for good capacity, ease of use, and support, ScalaHosting’s WordPress plans fit the bill.

Read: ScalaHosting Review

5. Liquid Web Managed VPS Plans

If you want a ton of performance and flexibility in a VPS plan, Liquid Web’s Managed VPS plans should be near the top of your shopping list. While they aren’t quite as cheap as Hostinger’s, Liquid Web gives you a ton of configuration options at very reasonable prices. And performance in my testing was fantastic. 

As with Hostinger, cPanel does not come standard but is available as an add-on for at least $28 a month. Instead, we used the Interworx / Nodeworx control panels that come at no additional cost, but are harder to use and less powerful than cPanel / WHM. Still, they are functional enough to perform the tasks web developers need most, like creating databases, turning on SSL, and enabling SSH for user accounts.

Liquid Web offers a very wide variety of Managed VPS plans – managed in this case means that they handle server maintenance and upgrades which is common for most hosts. These range from a $20 / month plan that comes with 2 vCPU cores, 2GB of RAM, and a 40GB SSD up to a $55 / month plan that has 16 vCPU cores, 12GB of RAM (or 16GB with 12 cores) and a 200GB SSD. Those are some really good prices, though each one is limited to 10TB of bandwidth per month, which is probably a lot for most people, but competitors such as Hostinger have VPS plans that go up to 32TB of bandwidth or unmetered.

We tested a plan with 4 vCPUs, 4GB of RAM, and 100GB of storage and it turned in really strong performance on all of our tests. On the WordPress Hosting Benchmark, it scored 8.4 out of 10, which is one of the highest we’ve seen on any plan. Its Maria 10.6.18 database completed all three of our database tests at epic speeds. And it delivered 71.18 requests per second when we hit the server with 500 concurrent requests.

Best Web Hosting Shopping Tips

 When shopping for the best web hosting plan for your home or business project, consider the following: 

• Don’t fear commitment: Most plans offer a low, per-month cost but, to get it, you must agree to a two, three or even a four-year commitment. After that term is up, prices get much higher and you may want to switch providers. Since this is commonplace, you’re better off agreeing to a long-term plan and locking in that low price for a while.
• Watch database size limits: Some plans impose a size limit specifically on your MySQL databases that is not published in the specs. So, you might sign up for a plan that says you have 200GB of storage space and then learn you can’t have a database that takes up more than 5GB. Read all the fine print. We’ve noted this problem in many of our reviews.
• Register your domain elsewhere . If at all possible, use a separate registrar such as Namecheap or Go Daddy for managing your domains rather than registering them through your hosting provider. That way, when you want to switch providers, you won’t have a hassle.
• cPanel is a huge plus because it’s the easiest and most powerful control panel, but you can save money by choosing a plan that doesn’t have it.
• Stick with Linux: Unless you have a special application that requires Windows Server, which is doubtful, stick with Linux as your hosting OS, which is what most plans use. In fact, most plans use either CentOS or Alma Linux, which are both good flavors for serving.
• Email is easy: Every plan comes with email: Pretty much every plan comes with the ability to create multiple email accounts on your domain and to store messages in the cloud. If you plan to dozens or hundreds of addresses, you may want to look at the fine print. But, for most people, the email service is more than adequate on any plan.

How We Test Web Hosting Plans

To see how each hosting plan stacks up, we register for an account and go through the process of assigning our domain name to it – we usually use domain names that are hosted by an outside registrar (Namecheap), enabling SSL and installing the latest version of WordPress CMS (if it doesn’t come preloaded).

To benchmark WordPress itself, we run the WordPress Hosting Benchmark, a plugin that gives you a score in the 0 to 10 range (10 is best) based on criteria such as database performance, network speed, etc. We also use an Apache test to hit the server with 500 concurrent connections and see how many requests per second it can deliver; if it can’t handle 500 concurrents, as is often the case (sometimes due to security restrictions), we drop it down to 100.

It’s also really important to determine how quickly a hosting plan can handle complex database queries. Most websites, including those built with WordPress, rely heavily on MySQL or MariaDB, a MySQL-compatible database. Later versions of both applications tend to provide better performance as do servers with more resources dedicated to your account.

To test database speed, we conduct three intensive MySQL queries. In the first, we insert 87 million rows of data drawn from historical traffic data on our site, with each page having an entry in one table and multiple page view entries by date in another table. This is a massive insert that uses more than 4GB of disk space; some plans that have database size limits can’t handle it. After the insert, we do a number randomization test where our script goes through each row and replaces its original traffic data with sets of random numbers. 

Our third database test involves a massive query where we join the traffic table and the articles table in order to get a sum total of page views, entrances, and other traffic numbers for each article. This is usually the most intense of the three tests and some servers time out rather than completing it.

Speaking of timing out, we also run an “endless script,” which is just a bash script that writes the time elapsed to the log every minute. We check back on it after several hours to see if it is still running or if the system has killed it. Many hosting plans have a short time limit after which they kill scripts. If you are doing a major operation such as scraping a website or conducting a giant database query, you don’t want time limits.

Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter

Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.

ScalaHosting Review: VPS and WordPress Hosting Tested

Bluehost Review: Cloud, VPS and Shared Hosting Tested

AMD Ryzen-powered gaming handhelds are going down in price — Asus ROG Ally now sells for $499, and Lenovo Legion Go for $544

Most Popular

5 Best Open-Source Website Builders in 2024 (Top New Picks)

Pricing: $9 per month Standout Features: Open-Source Flexibility, Limitless Customizability, Advanced Content Management

Pricing: $43.56 per month Standout Features: Highly Scalable, Integration Capabilities, Robust Content Management

Pricing: $86 per month Standout Features: User-Friendly Interface, Extensive Template Library, SEO Optimization

Are you struggling with a budget when building a website for your small business? Check out our list of the best open-source website builders in 2024.

By opting for open-source solutions, one can save on licensing fees and invest the saved funds in other critical areas of the project. Open-source builders offer free access to their software with affordable hosted solutions, which is great for small businesses on a budget. This guide will help you find their special features and pick the best one for your business. Let’s get started.

• 1 Understanding Open-Source Website Builders
• 2 What to Look for in Open-Source Website Builders
• 3.1 1. WordPress
• 3.2 2. Umbraco
• 3.3 3. T3Planet
• 3.4 4. Webstudio
• 3.5 5. GrapesJS
• 4.1 Feature Comparison of the Best Open-Source Website Builders
• 4.2 Best Open-Source Website Builders: Price Comparison
• 5 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Understanding Open-Source Website Builders

Open-source website builders are web development tools that help you create websites. The software is free, and its code is open for everyone to see and change. This means you can look at how they work, make changes, and share your version with others. Many offer hosted solutions for their platform to handle your domain and hosting all in one place.

These builders are popular because they are flexible and customizable. A community of developers helps to improve them by adding new features and fixing problems. You can find many themes and plugins to make your website look and work how you want.

What to Look for in Open-Source Website Builders

Choosing the right open-source website builder is crucial for creating a robust and scalable web presence. The ideal platform should offer a balance of ease of use, flexibility, and strong community support to ensure your website can grow and adapt over time. Here are key factors to consider when selecting an open-source website builder:

• Dedicated Support: Look for open-source software with a dedicated community following and developers who regularly update it. This ensures the platform will be safe to use in the future.
• Ease of use: Look for an intuitive interface with drag-and-drop functionality that simplifies the design process. Comprehensive documentation and tutorials are also essential to help users get started quickly.
• Templates: Templates serve as pre-designed blueprints for web pages. They are essential for responsive layouts, adapting seamlessly to different screen sizes. Responsive templates ensure your website looks good on both desktop and mobile devices. They adjust layouts, fonts, and images to fit screen sizes.
• Plugins: They can provide features like contact forms, online store tools, SEO controls, and enhanced security. However, choose plugins carefully to avoid conflicts and potential malware. Use industry-recommended plugins to ensure safety and reliability.
• Upload of images: A good website builder makes it easy to upload images in formats like PNG, GIF, JPEG, and SVG. It should also allow you to effortlessly replace default layout images and backgrounds.
• Themes and colors: Themes form the foundation of your website’s design. They offer variations in numerous built-in options, such as layouts, colors, and columns. Select a theme that matches your website’s specifications. Poorly coded themes can slow your site and negatively impact SEO and responsiveness.

While surfing the internet, you will find many popular options with unique strengths. Evaluate them based on these criteria to find the best fit for your needs.

Top Open-Source Website Builders

We reviewed open-source website builders by exploring documentation, engaging with online communities, and testing the tools ourselves. This list combines our hands-on experience with insights from the broader community.

1. WordPress

🥇best open-source website builder for flexibility.

WordPress is a powerful and versatile open-source CMS and website builder that currently empowers 43% of websites worldwide. The software can be downloaded and used for free on WordPress.org for self-hosting, the preferred method for building any website with limitless flexibility. However, you can also use their all-in-one Saas solution, WordPress.com , if you want a more streamlined onboarding process with more limitations.

WordPress (.org) delivers comprehensive website-building solutions. With 30,000 customizable themes and 58,000 plugins, users can easily tailor their sites to their needs. WordPress also provides strong content management tools, SEO optimization, and integration with third-party services.

Due to its widespread use, plenty of WordPress hosting providers can get your site up and running for just a few bucks a month or free.

WordPress + Divi

Some of the best themes , like Divi , can enhance the process of building a WordPress website above and beyond the default block editor.

Divi is a versatile theme and website builder that offers extensive customization options. It includes:

• Visual Page Builder- a drag-and-drop interface allowing users to design their pages visually in real time without coding .
• Theme Builder – build and manage all of your global site templates (blog posts, page categories, WooCommerce pages, etc.) using the visual builder and dynamic content modules.
• Divi AI – a powerful AI website builder integrated into the theme that can automatically generate entire sites , sections, images, and text to fit your brand.
• 200+ content modules – including sliders, forms, galleries, and more.
• 300+ website templates and starter sites – choose from thousands of layouts to jumpstart your designs

With Divi AI, you can generate a complete website in 2 minutes.

Your browser does not support HTML video.

So, if you are worried about spending countless hours and money developing your site, don’t sweat it. With WordPress, it’s all about finding the right theme and plugins to do all the heavy lifting for you. Regarding open-source builders, it is hard to compete with WordPress.

What We Like About WordPress

• Extensive Theme Library: With over 30,000 free and premium themes available, WordPress enables users to easily customize the appearance of their websites.
• Plugin Ecosystem: It boasts over 58,000 plugins that extend its functionality. Installing and activating plugins allows users to enhance their websites with features like SEO tools , contact forms , eCommerce capabilities ( WooCommerce ), social media integration, and more.
• Gutenberg Block Builder: The Gutenberg block builder revolutionizes content creation with its intuitive, drag-and-drop interface. Users can easily add, arrange, and style various content blocks, such as text, images, videos, and widgets, without coding knowledge.
• Regular Updates: This platform is continuously updated to improve security, functionality, and performance. Users benefit from these regular updates by accessing the dashboard and checking the themes/plugins that must be updated.
• Customization and Control: The WordPress Customizer and Block editor allows users to efficiently manage and organize their website content. Moreover, features like content scheduling, revision history, and media management make creating and maintaining a dynamic and engaging website easy.

What Can Be Improved

• Security Concerns: Due to its popularity, WordPress sites are frequent targets for hackers. Despite providing regular updates and effective security plugins , a more robust security framework could be beneficial.

🥇Why We Picked It

WordPress allows users to add virtually any functionality without extensive coding. Its vast array of themes provides unparalleled design versatility, and the built-in Customizer tool enables extensive design modifications. The user-friendly content editor, Gutenberg, and a robust media library simplify content creation and management.

Who Is WordPress Best For?

WordPress is best suited for bloggers, small businesses, and non-technical users. Its user-friendly interface, extensive library of plugins and themes, and large community support make it ideal for those without technical expertise. Small businesses benefit from its flexibility and customization options, while its built-in SEO features are particularly advantageous for bloggers looking to enhance their search engine rankings.

Community Reviews and Ratings

Users on platforms like G2, Capterra, and Sitejabber commend WordPress for its open-source flexibility and wide range of customization features.

WordPress.com offers a free version and paid plans starting at $9 per month . (hosting included). WordPress.org software is free to use with affordable hosting providers like SiteGround .

Get Started with WordPress

🥈Best Open-Source Website Builder for Scalability

Umbraco is a powerful, flexible, open-source website builder designed to help businesses create and manage dynamic websites. It offers a robust platform enabling developers and content creators to build custom web solutions tailored to their needs. With its intuitive user interface, Umbraco makes it easy for users to manage content without extensive technical knowledge. The platform supports various features, including advanced media management, seamless integration with third-party applications, and a rich plugin ecosystem for extensive customization. Additionally, Umbraco’s scalability ensures it can grow alongside your business, accommodating everything from small blogs to large enterprise websites.

The Grid Editor allows users to create complex, responsive layouts without writing a single line of code. This highly customizable drag-and-drop interface effortlessly enables users to build and rearrange content blocks. The Grid Editor simplifies content creation and ensures consistency across the website, making it easier for teams to collaborate and maintain a unified design language.

What We Like About Umbraco

• Flexible Content Management: Umbraco allows you to publish news, images, campaigns, and various other types of content effortlessly without the need to write any code. You can revisit your work anytime and benefit from automatic publishing features.
• Scalable and Reliable Hosting: Umbraco Cloud’s hosting infrastructure ensures reliable performance and scalability as a hosted platform. Users benefit from automatic updates, security patches, and regular backups, ensuring a secure and up-to-date site.
• Content Audit: The platform provides robust version control, ensuring your content is never lost. If you need to undo changes or revert to a previous version, you can easily roll back to an earlier version of your content.
• Ecommerce Integration: Umbraco Commerce add-on sets up an online store with integrated eCommerce features, including shopping cart functionality, payment gateways, and inventory management.
• Automatic Cropping of Images: It ensures your images look great across all formats, including a blog page, social media post, or website header. Its responsive image management features automatically adjust and optimize images for different display contexts.
• Not Enough Plugins: Unlike other open-source website builders, such as WordPress, this platform does not offer many plugins. However, Umbraco 8 can influence this and make it a priority.

🥈Why We Picked It

Umbraco offers a flexible content management system that can accommodate small websites and large, complex applications. Its customizable backend can be tailored to meet specific project needs, and the platform’s strong API support facilitates seamless integration with other systems and services.

Who Is Umbraco Best For?

Umbraco is highly suitable for developers, large enterprises, and tech-savvy users. Known for its flexibility and scalability, it is ideal for large enterprises that require tailored solutions and can handle complex content structures. Umbraco offers a developer-friendly environment with a robust API appealing to technical users.

Umbraco is renowned for its powerful and flexible content management features. Users praise its scalability and customization options, noting the platform’s ability to easily handle complex websites.

Umbraco is free to use, and its pricing plans start at $43.56 per month . The suggested hosting providers for this platform include Hostinger and Kamatera.

Get Umbraco

3. T3Planet

🥉best open-source website builder for user experience.

T3Planet is a robust and dynamic platform that redefines how we create and manage websites. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools and features to streamline web development. T3Planet supports seamless integrations and responsive design and offers a powerful content management system (CMS) that ensures flexibility and scalability. Additionally, it provides advanced SEO tools, multilingual support, and robust security features.

T3Planet’s extensive template library allows users to choose from many professionally designed templates tailored to different industries and needs. Templates are available in multiple categories, such as corporate, eCommerce, and portfolio.

What We Like About T3Planet

• Extensive Template Library: T3Planet provides a vast collection of pre-designed templates. It has more than 150 custom TYPO3 elements and 15 pre-built demos.
• Built-In SEO Tools: This platform can become your SEO technical partner, overseeing your projects individually. It also provides content optimization support, such as on-page optimization.
• Efficient Backend Management: An editor-friendly TYPO3 backend allows developers to access and modify the source code. This flexibility enables advanced customization and the integration of third-party plugins and extensions.
• Ecommerce Ready: With built-in eCommerce capabilities, this platform allows users to easily set up online stores. Features such as product catalogs, shopping carts, and payment gateways are included.
• Performance Optimization: While T3Planet offers many features, website performance can be improved. Faster load times and better resource management could enhance user experience, especially for content-heavy sites.

🥉Why We Picked It

T3Planet has a highly intuitive drag-and-drop interface, which simplifies site-building. Its templates are fully responsive. The platform includes a rich library of pre-built elements and modules. Lastly, T3Planet’s integrated SEO features help optimize content for search engines.

Who Is T3Planet Best For?

T3Planet is designed for Joomla users and developers. Built on the T3 Framework, it integrates seamlessly with Joomla, making it perfect for those already using or planning to use this CMS. It offers advanced customization options, ideal for developers creating complex websites. Additionally, the wide range of templates available caters to countless industries.

T3Planet stands out for its user-friendly interface and seamless integration capabilities. Users appreciate its intuitive design and the ease of creating and managing content.

T3Planet offers a free trial, and its pricing plans start at $86 per month . The hosting options for this website builder include Platform.sh and Brightside.

Get T3Planet

4. Webstudio

Webstudio is one of the best open-source alternatives to Webflow . It is a comprehensive builder designed to simplify web design without locking users into a specific host. It offers unparalleled flexibility and control, enabling users to create stunning websites without extensive coding knowledge. Its extensive library of pre-designed templates and customizable elements ensures users can quickly create unique, professional-grade websites. Additionally, Webstudio supports a handful of plugins and integrations.

This platform’s real-time collaborative editing capabilities make it preferable. It ensures that users can edit pages and sections on the front end. This streamlines the web development process, reducing the need for back-and-forth communication and ensuring that updates and changes are instantly visible to all team members.

What We Like About Webstudio

• Efficient Style Management: Webstudio simplifies style management by allowing users to attach styles to Tokens, which can be easily added, deleted, or reordered. Additionally, the platform features local styles for on-the-fly design without creating tokens or naming styles. Users can seamlessly convert Local Styles into reusable Tokens.
• Influence of AI: It uses AI technology to transform voice or text input into website components and styles. Users can build their websites by simply speaking or typing their design preferences, and the AI will automatically translate these prompts into functional elements and styles.
• Cloud-Based CMS: With cloud-based CMS, you can manage your website content from anywhere, ensuring real-time updates and changes.
• Advanced Customization: It allows users to define custom breakpoints for precise control over responsive design. Additionally, users can upload custom fonts, including variable fonts, directly into the platform.
• Suitability for Coding Experts: Webstudio is primarily suited for coding professionals, as certain features, such as animations, need coding with GSAP.

Who Is Webstudio Best For?

Webstudio is tailored for designers and creative professionals, focusing on creative freedom and visual aesthetics. It offers a user-friendly interface that allows designers to create visually appealing websites without deep coding knowledge. Extensive design customization options benefit creative professionals looking to showcase their work. Additionally, collaborative tools included in Webstudio support team projects, making it an ideal platform for design teams.

Webstudio is free to use, and its pricing plans start at $20 per month . You can also export your Webstudio projects as a static HTML site to be self-hosted on most hosting platforms.

Get Webstudio

5. GrapesJS

GrapesJS is a versatile web builder framework designed to help users create and manage HTML templates without requiring extensive coding knowledge. It boasts a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, enabling seamless editing and layout customization. Its component-based architecture allows users to create reusable content blocks, streamlining the design process and ensuring project consistency. Additionally, the framework supports responsive design, ensuring that websites look great on any device. With built-in tools for managing styles and assets, GrapesJS simplifies the web development workflow.

GrapesJS’s robust and extensible plugin system allows developers to easily add new functionalities and integrate third-party services. By using plugins, users can expand GrapesJS’s core features to include advanced forms, custom scripts, and interactive elements. The plugin ecosystem promotes a collaborative community where developers can share and access countless tools and enhancements.

What We Like About GrapesJS

• Built-In Code Editor: This platform includes a built-in code editor for advanced users that enables the customization of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript directly within the platform.
• Asset Manager: Save and manage media content, which can be reused across multiple projects. You can double-click on images to make changes.
• Extensive Styling: The Styling manager ensures users can easily design complex layouts. You can also go through the CSS properties of those components to achieve the desired results.
• Real-Time Preview: Users can see changes instantly as they make edits. This immediate feedback helps in refining designs on the fly and ensures the final product matches the user’s vision.
• Limited Pre-Built Templates: While GrapesJS provides a robust website framework, it lacks a wide selection of pre-built templates. Without a diverse template library, new users may struggle to start quickly.

Who Is GrapesJS Best For?

GrapesJS caters to developers and technical users. Its design emphasizes deep customization and control over website building, making it perfect for developers. It integrates seamlessly with custom code, allowing technical users to implement specific functionalities. GrapesJS’s component-based architecture benefits developers looking to create reusable elements, and its flexibility and extensibility make it suitable for building complex and custom web applications.

GrapeJS is free to use. It is typically used as a front-end editor and can be hosted on platforms supporting custom web applications, such as Codesphere.

Get GrapeJS

What are the Best Open-Source Website Builders?

Exploring open-source website builders can be a great option if you’re looking to build a website without breaking the bank. These tools offer flexibility and customization, allowing you to create a site that perfectly suits your needs. To help you navigate the numerous choices available, we’ve curated a few comparison tables of the top open-source website builders.

Feature Comparison of the Best Open-Source Website Builders

The best open-source website builders share several key features: they offer extensive customization options, have a user-friendly interface, and provide robust community support. These platforms allow for flexible design and seamless integration with various tools and often come with a wide range of plugins and extensions to enhance functionality.

Best Open-Source Website Builders: Price Comparison

Open-source website builders have different pricing models. While they are generally free to use, some may offer optional premium features or paid add-ons. The table below compares our top open-source website builders based on their base cost, optional upgrades, and overall value.

WordPress is our top choice for the best open-source website builder. It is user-friendly and offers a vast array of powerful tools and plugins that allow you to create and manage any type of website. If you are a developer or designer looking to build professional-grade sites, T3Planet is a robust platform with advanced customization options. On the other hand, Umbraco provides a powerful open-source solution for those seeking a scalable open-source website builder that can cater to a wide range of web development needs.

Want to build your first website? You should be able to select your preference in our list of best website builders .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the best open-source website builder for beginners, are open-source website builders secure, can i use open-source website builders for ecommerce, do open-source website builders support seo, how do i choose the right open-source website builder.

Explore Our Top Picks

Here are our favorites! 👇

Get WordPress Today!

With so many great options available, it can be hard to pick one. find out why wordpress is our favorite. 👇.

By Fahad Hamid

Fahad enjoys writing about a diverse range of topics, from business and marketing to design. Alongside this, he balances his love for tennis, showing skill both on the page and on the court.

Explore Divi, The Most Popular WordPress Theme In The World And The Ultimate Page Builder

Check Out These Related Posts

• Best AI Tools for Content Creation in 2024 (Expert Picks)

Posted on August 9, 2024 in Business

Yes, AI tools can simplify content creation, but they should not be used to generate shareable content without human review. Relying on AI for publish-ready content harms your brand and is equal to wasting its potential. Instead, AI is best used as an assistant to enhance human output by automating...

How To Make A Website That Makes Money (2024 Guide)

Posted on August 1, 2024 in Business

Have you collected a domain or two over the years and want to put it to use? Or do you feel like you have some computer skills and extra time that you’d rather put toward making some extra cash? You might feel a little unsure about all of this, but if you act now, with some help, you can make...

The Best Open-Source CMS in 2024 (5 Top Picks)

Updated on August 6, 2024 in Business

Are you working on a project with a tight budget? Check out our list of open-source content management systems (CMS) in 2024. Budget limitations might make open-source CMS solutions more attractive since they often come without licensing fees. This will reduce overall project costs. This guide will...

Seems inadequate research done before publishing?

Drupal has been around for so many years and used by many well known brands. How is that not in the list?

Leave A Reply Cancel reply

• Recent Posts
• New Divi Starter Site for Weddings (Quick Install)
• How to Manage Multiple WordPress Websites from One Place
• 6 Best Construction WordPress Themes for Builders in 2024
• New Divi Starter Site for Interior (Quick Install)
• Divi Resources
• Theme Releases
• Tips & Tricks

Wait! 👋 Today Is The Divi Summer Sale! Get Up To 70% Off When You Join Today.

Divi features.

• All Features Explore Divi
• Divi Modules
• Divi Layouts
• Quick Sites Brand New!
• No-Code Builder
• Ecommerce Websites
• Theme Builder
• Marketing Platform
• Speed & Performance
• Premium Support
• Divi Theme 70% Off
• Divi Marketplace 50% Off
• Divi Cloud 40% Off
• Divi AI 40% Off
• Divi Teams 40% Off
• Divi VIP 40% Off
• Divi Hosting
• Divi Dash 70% Off
• Extra Theme 70% Off
• Bloom Plugin 70% Off
• Monarch Plugin 70% Off
• Plans & Pricing Get Divi Today
• Documentation
• Help Articles & FAQ
• 24/7 Support
• Developer Docs
• System Status
• Product Updates
• Best Plugins
• Best Hosting
• Divi Meetups
• Divi Facebook Group
• Divi Examples
• Divi Integrations
• Divi Reviews
• Community Forum
• Affiliate Program
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2024 Elegant Themes ®

How To Create A Successful Marketing Plan

Published: Aug 13, 2024, 7:15am

Table of Contents

What is a marketing plan, marketing plan vs. marketing strategy, why businesses need a marketing plan, essential marketing channels, how to create a marketing plan, bottom line, frequently asked questions (faqs).

The difference between a flourishing business and a floundering business often comes down to an effective marketing campaign. This is especially true for small businesses. Every successful marketing campaign starts with a well-thought-out marketing plan. In this article, we will guide you through the steps on how to create a top-notch marketing plan to help put your business on the road to success.

A marketing plan is essentially a roadmap that guides businesses through the complex terrain of promoting their products or services. Think of it as a blueprint that details specific marketing campaigns, timelines, target audiences and channels such as social media , email or traditional media. Your plan should also establish clear metrics for success, the methodology used to evaluate performance and allocated budgets.

It is important to note that a marketing plan is not a static document. It is supposed to be an ever-evolving plan that adapts to market trends, customer feedback and the successful or unsuccessful marketing efforts. If done properly, a marketing plan will help you synchronize your marketing objectives with your overall business goals and ensure every marketing activity aligns with your broader vision of growth.

Featured Partners

Free; Unlimited contacts

On Brevo's Website

Constant Contact

Advanced Automation (Abandon Cart Reminders, etc.)

On Constant Contact's Website

Email, SMS, mobile push, and more

350+ integrations, no coding needed

Predictive analytics, personalized feeds, benchmarks

On Klaviyo's Website

Some assume that “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” are the same thing, but be aware they hold distinct meanings and serve different purposes. A marketing strategy is more big-picture thinking. It identifies your target market, your value proposition, how you position yourself against competitors and how you will sustain your value over time. It involves deep insights into your customers’ needs, market trends and competitive analysis. It is essentially the “why” behind all your marketing actions.

The marketing plan, on the other hand, details the “what” and the “when” of those efforts. Once you have your marketing strategy outlined, you can begin to create a marketing plan. The plan should outline the specific campaigns, activities and tactics you’ll use to carry out the strategy. This includes details on the marketing channels you’ll use, the timeline for implementation, the budget and the key performance indicators you’ll track to measure success. It’s a blueprint that translates the strategy into actionable tasks and schedules.

A carefully crafted marketing plan can be a game-changer for small businesses dreaming of steady growth and a competitive edge over larger companies. Marketing plans with smart strategies and targeted campaigns can level the playing field by helping small businesses carve out their niche. It provides a clear roadmap that aligns marketing efforts with business objectives to ensure every marketing action contributes to the broader company goals.

This focused approach saves small businesses money by efficiently focusing resources instead of using a scattergun approach that can drain limited budgets. By identifying and understanding target markets, businesses can tailor their messaging to meet specific needs, which increases the likelihood of conversion. A solid marketing plan offers a framework for measuring success by setting benchmarks. With careful tracking, small businesses can quickly see what’s not working and adjust strategies in real time for better outcomes.

Today’s businesses have a wide array of marketing channels available to them. From highly analytical PPC advertising to engaging in-person event marketing, there’s no shortage of methods to promote your company.

Social Media

During the past two decades, social media has proved to be a highly effective way for small businesses to market themselves at little to no costs. Platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn offer businesses a dynamic platform to engage directly with their audience. They allow for the sharing of content, running targeted ads and fostering community through comments and shares. Effective social media marketing can enhance brand awareness, drive traffic and strengthen customer loyalty.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is another highly effective way to reach an audience directly. Newsletters, promotional offers and personalized content can nurture leads, promote loyalty and drive conversions. Email marketing offers measurable results and high ROI, making it a staple in a digital marketing strategy toolbox.

• Content Marketing

Content marketing involves creating hyper-relevant and compelling content that will act as a magnet to attract a laser-focused group of people. You can create blogs, videos, infographics and podcasts to cultivate an engaged community of followers with whom your brand’s message genuinely resonates.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the practice of optimizing website content to rank higher in search engine results pages. Effective SEO strategies including on-page optimization, quality link building and keyword research help drive traffic to your website.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is a method of online marketing where you pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad. Popular platforms such as Google Ads and Bing Ads guarantee your ads show up first in search engine results for specific keywords, allowing you to bypass the “organic” results. While the pay-per-click fees can add up, this form of advertising provides immediate traffic and measurable results.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing leverages the reach of influencers in specific niches to help you promote your business to a larger audience. When you partner with a credible influencer, you can tap into their loyal followings, gain trust quickly and drive engagement that will hopefully lead to greater sales. Affiliate marketing can complement influencer marketing by allowing influencers to earn commissions on the sales they drive. This performance-based option is cost effective, as you will only pay for actual results.

Event Marketing

Event marketing involves marketing your brand, company or service through in-person or virtual events. It can be anything from interactive webinars and educational workshops to large-scale conferences and industry trade shows. Event marketing gives you the opportunity to directly engage with your audience and hopefully provide a memorable experience for your customers.

Featured Partner

HigherVisibility

Starting at $1,250 per month

Memphis, TN

On Highervisibility's Website

Starting at $2,500 per month

Harrisburg, PA

On WebFX's Website

Creating a marketing plan is a step-by-step process. Make sure you take your time with each step before moving on to the next one.

1. Create an Executive Summary

An executive summary is a snapshot of your simplified marketing goals, significant milestones and an outline of future plans. It should encapsulate relevant facts about your brand, setting the stage for the detailed strategy that follows. This section provides stakeholders with a clear understanding of where the company stands and where it intends to go, concisely summarizing the essence of the marketing efforts.

2. Identify Your Target Market

Who are you trying to reach? By identifying your target market you can tailor your marketing strategies effectively to help them reach the people most likely to be interested in your products or services. Outline the characteristics of your ideal customer including age, location, goals, pains and trigger points.

3. Research Your Competitors

Competitor research is a critical step in forming a marketing plan. Analyze the strengths and weaknesses in other businesses in your industry. This insight can help you identify opportunities for differentiation and areas where you can fill in the opportunity your competitors may have overlooked.

4. Determine Your Marketing Goals

Without clear marketing goals, you are just shooting barrels in the dark. Are you trying to increase brand awareness, boast sales or grow your digital footprint? And if so, by how much and in what timeframe? Use the SMART criteria for goal setting, which advises that goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

5. Establish and Track Benchmarks

Once you determine what your marketing goals are, it is important to track their effectiveness.

To do this, set baseline measurements for key performance indicators related to your goals, such as website traffic, conversion rates or social media engagement. Monitor these benchmarks on a regular basis and adjust strategies as needed to enhance marketing performance.

6. Identify Your Marketing Channels

Are you going to throw all your eggs in the social media basket? Or are you going to diversify your marketing strategy with both digital and in-person events? This step requires a deep dive into the various channels available—be it social media, email marketing, SEO or traditional advertising. When choosing your marketing channels, be sure to ask yourself where your target audience is most engaged.

7. Create a Budget

Finally, create a budget that covers all aspects of your marketing efforts from paid advertising and content creation to software subscriptions and event sponsorships. This will help you stay financially responsible as more marketing opportunities arise.

One of the keys to a successful business is setting yourself apart from the competition. A strategic marketing plan that details your marketing efforts can not only help you stand out but also provide a step-by-step guide toward reaching your business objectives.

What are the main elements of a marketing plan?

The main elements of a marketing plan typically include an executive summary, marketing objectives, target audience definition, marketing strategies, budget and metrics for performance evaluation. It outlines the company’s strategy for attracting and retaining customers by detailing specific actions to achieve campaign goals, timeline with key milestones, channels to be used and team members responsibilities.

What is a realistic marketing budget?

A realistic marketing budget is typically determined as a percentage of a company’s revenue. It is recommended that B2B companies spend 2% to 5% of their revenue on marketing. Because B2C companies typically have a broader range of marketing channels, it is recommended they spend between 5% and 10% of their revenue on marketing.

What should every marketing plan start with?

Every marketing plan should start with a clear mission statement for the marketing department that aligns with the overall mission of the business. This statement should be specific enough to guide marketing efforts but also allow room to adjust the plan as needed. For example, if your company’s mission is “to revolutionize home cooking,” the marketing mission might be “to inspire home cooks and provide them with innovative cooking solutions.”

• Best SEO Software For Small Business
• Best Social Media Management Software
• Best Email Marketing Software
• Best SEO Services For Small Business
• Best Mass Texting Services
• Best Mailchimp Alternatives
• Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives
• Top SEMRush Alternatives
• Top ahrefs Alternatives
• Hootsuite Review
• MailerLite Review
• ActiveCampaign Review
• Constant Contact Review
• Sprout Social Review
• SEMRush Review
• Mailchimp Review
• Small Business Marketing
• What Is Marketing?
• What Is Digital Marketing?
• Digital Marketing Strategy Guide
• Digital Marketing Tips
• Search Engine Marketing Guide
• SEO Marketing Guide
• Social Media Marketing
• PPC Advertising Guide
• Tips For Generating Leads Online
• The 4 Ps Of Marketing
• How To Get More Followers On Instagram
• How To Start A Podcast
• E-Commerce SEO
• WordPress SEO Guide

Next Up In Marketing

• Best SEO Tools & Software
• Best Social Media Management Tools
• Best SEO Services
• Best Chatbots

International SEO Best Practices In 2024

How To Start A Business With No Ideas

Best Search Engines To Use In 2024

Social Media Marketing Strategy Tips For 2024

What Is Incident Response? Definition & Best Practices

What Is An IT Audit? Definition And Best Practices

Jennifer Simonson draws on two decades as a journalist covering everything from local economic developement to small business marketing. Beyond writing, she tested entrepreneurial waters by launching a mobile massage service, a content marketing firm and an e-commerce venture. These experiences enriched her understanding of small business management and marketing strategies. Today, she channels this first-hand knowledge into her articles for Forbes Advisor.

Namecheap review August 2024: Features, pricing, integrations and more

Bob Haegele covers small business, investing, insurance, and credit cards. Bob studied information technology, finance and economics, and has leveraged his knowledge to help people manage their businesses and their money. His work has been featured in publications like Business Insider, TIME, USA Today, and Newsweek.

Namecheap is an established name in the domain world, with over 17 million domains and over 3 million customers with active domains. However, Namecheap also offers web hosting services for small and large businesses. It lacks some advanced features, but its easy-to-use website management make it ideal for those who are getting started.

Namecheap receives good scores overall for its services and promptly addresses customer issues. Its customer service is generally good, with responsive agents and several contact methods available.

• Very low introductory rate
• Includes website builder with templates and AI tools Free domain for first year
• Includes a free domain name (no .com, .net, or .org)
• Lacking in advanced features and tools
• No phone support
• Shared plans only include one year of free secure sockets layer (SSL

Namecheap pricing & plan overview

Namecheap offers three shared hosting plans that include a free website builder, domain name, and privacy protection, unmetered bandwidth, Supersonic CDN [content delivery network], SSL, and free website migration. Its website builder comes with AI tools, such as text and image generators and a writing assistant. Learn more about how the costs work in our guide to web hosting costs .

Best Namecheap plan for small businesses: Stellar Plus

Stellar Plus is the clear winner for small businesses looking for an affordable web hosting solution. This plan removes the caps on the number of websites you can create and gives you unlimited storage space and mailboxes. It also adds automatic backups, letting you create full cPanel backups automatically. Even if you pay with monthly billing, this plan is $6.48 per month, so it isn’t very expensive for businesses.

Of course, this is still shared hosting, and businesses should be aware of the limitations of this arrangement. With shared hosting, each customer shares server resources with other customers, such as central processing unit (CPU), random-access memory (RAM), and network bandwidth. Although Namecheap has few limits for its Stellar Plus plan, there could be performance impacts due to sharing resources with other customers.

• Unlimited websites, SSD space, and mailboxes
• Automatic backups
• Affordable pricing
• Includes cloud storage with European Union data center
• Doesn’t include cloud storage with United States data center
• Storage limited to 300,000 files
• SSL only free for the first year

Other services Namecheap offers  

We’ve covered some of the best features Namecheap has to offer, but it still has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. Additional Namecheap services include:

• Website migration within 24 hours: Namecheap promises to transfer your website within 24 hours. If it fails to do so or you aren’t satisfied, it will credit your account for the value of your first purchase of shared hosting.
• Automatic backups: Websites on shared hosting websites are backed up twice a week, plus add automatic backups starting with the Stellar Plus plan.
• Free domain privacy protection: Domain privacy protection is free for life with Namecheap plans.
• cPanel: Manage your web hosting account using cPanel, an easy-to-use app you access from your web browser.
• 100% uptime: Namecheap promises 100% uptime for all its shared hosting plans.
• FastVPN: Virtual private network (VPN) service starting at 99-cent per month that lets you hide your internet protocol address and unblock restricted websites.
• Business formation: Free limited liability company (LLC) formation, including articles of organization, a name check service, and an LLC checklist.

Namecheap includes numerous features, even on its cheaper plans. Naturally, you’ll get more features if you opt for a more expensive plan.

The Namecheap platform and customer support  

Namecheap generally has a user-friendly experience as you’ll use visual tools, such as cPanel and WordPress, to manage your websites. EasyWP, Namecheap’s managed WordPress hosting solution, features a simple setup wizard that lets you get your site up and running in minutes. EasyWP includes simple one-click backup and restore. In addition, it lets you manage all your websites in a single dashboard.

Customer support is generally quite good with Namecheap. It’s available 24/7 via live chat, or you can submit a ticket. It also features a knowledge base with a large number of articles that cover various topics. The knowledge base is well-organized, with each subtopic broken into pages that answer specific questions. However, no phone support is available, so you are limited to chat if you want a live support option.

Is Namecheap secure?

Namecheap is relatively secure, with several security features available or included by default to keep your data safe. These include domain privacy protection, SSL, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, and a firewall. You also have the option to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for accessing cPanel. In addition, Namecheap continuously monitors your server for security updates.

Although Namecheap has taken steps to secure its data, that hasn’t always gone according to plan. For example, an incident reported in 2023 involved a hacker who gained unauthorized access to the Namecheap email system and used it to conduct a phishing campaign. Although Namecheap confirmed the incident at the time, it said its own accounts were not breached and no accounts nor personal information was leaked.

Namecheap user reviews

Reviews from Namecheap customers are typically positive, with a rating of 4.3/5 on both Trustpilot and G2. Trustpilot ratings assess Namecheap as a whole while G2 ratings are specific to Namecheap hosting. Verified customers on G2 say Namecheap is cost-effective, easy to use, and that customer support is excellent. They also like the uptime, reliability, and the company’s strong infrastructure and data centers. However, some have said they have experienced slow responses from customer support and that response times should be improved.

Unfortunately, Namecheap doesn’t fare as well on the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website. There, it has an average rating of 1.39 out of 5 and a D- grade from the BBB.

Compare Namecheap alternatives

Namecheap vs. Hostinger

Hostinger’s Premium plan offers many features similar to Namecheap’s Stellar Plus plan. For instance, it offers free website migration, unlimited bandwidth, AI tools, and a free CDN. However, Hostinger’s plan offers 10 GB of SSD space, while Namecheap offers unlimited space with its plan. But Hostinger has some advantages, such as 400,000 files versus Namecheap’s 300,000. Hostinger also has unlimited free SSL while Namecheap only offers this for free for one year.

Namecheap vs. A2 Hosting

Like Namecheap, A2’s Drive plan offers unlimited websites and storage, free website migration, and cloud backups. However, while Namecheap features nonvolatile memory (NVMe) storage, A2 has the potentially slower Raid-10 SSD for its Drive plan. Neither offers a free trial, but both have either a refund policy or a money-back guarantee. While Namecheap doesn’t have a data center in Asia, A2 Hosting has one in Singapore.

Is Namecheap right for you?

Namecheap carves out a nice niche for itself as a web hosting solution that is easy to use and simplifies the process of launching a website. Its plans are very affordable, especially if you opt for shared hosting. It includes a website builder and AI tools that make it simple to start designing your site. Shared hosting can have performance limitations, and Namecheap doesn’t have a data center in Asia. Still, small businesses and entrepreneurs may find it’s more than enough to meet their needs.

Frequently asked questions

Why is namecheap so cheap.

Namecheap hosting is one of the cheapest options on the market, especially when considering its shared hosting plans. Namecheap doesn’t provide information about this on its website, but it can likely offer such low prices because it has a large customer base. Cost may decline for each additional customer, allowing it to offer lower prices for shared hosting. Prices also increase for most plans when they renew, so they aren’t as low in the long run.

How reliable is Namecheap hosting?

Namecheap is generally reliable and guarantees 100% uptime on all its shared hosting plans. While reviews from verified users typically attest to Namecheap’s reliability, some reports suggest its services aren’t as unwavering as the guarantee would make it seem. However, while some downtime may be possible in the real world, Namecheap should be reliable in most cases.

Is Namecheap owned by GoDaddy?

No, Namecheap is not owned by GoDaddy. The two are separate companies and are direct competitors. Both companies made a name for themselves by offering cheap domains. However, both companies now offer web hosting services as well.

• Entrepreneurs need more from their business checking accounts .
• We’ve done the hard work to find the best business credit card for your small business.
• Choosing the best CRM platform for your small business is easy with our ranking.
• VoIP systems are not all created equal. Our list ranks the best VoIP services on the market.

About the contributors

EDITORIAL DISCLOSURE : The advice, opinions, or rankings contained in this article are solely those of the Fortune Recommends ™ editorial team. This content has not been reviewed or endorsed by any of our affiliate partners or other third parties.