The Ultimate Coronavirus Small Business Guide – WordPress + Tools to Grow Online

Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, there is a lot of uncertainty in the world, especially for small business owners.

Many small businesses are being forced to adapt and make critical changes just to survive.

During these tough times, the world seems uncontrollable. That’s why it’s extremely crucial for us, small business owners, to focus on what we can control because that’s how we will survive and thrive during these unprecedented times.

In this ultimate coronavirus small business guide, I will share the top tools, tutorials, and WordPress resources that can help you adapt to the changes, streamline your workflow, and even grow your business.

Note: I will be updating this guide through out the next couple of weeks to add more resources as I find them. If you’ve seen helpful guides, then please let me know in the comments below, and I’ll update the list.

Quick Intro (Covering the Basics)

A lot of you reading this coronavirus small business guide might be new to WPBeginner, and I want to welcome you to our community.

My name is Syed Balkhi, and I created WPBeginner over 10 years ago to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys in the digital world.

In my 17 year career, I have built multiple successful small businesses with 100% remote teams. Currently, my companies have over 130+ employees, completely remote, all over the world.

I am writing this guide because many of my friends, family members, WPBeginner readers, and thousands of fellow entrepreneurs are hurting / going through a lot of change.

My hope is that by sharing my experiences, helpful tools, and useful WordPress tutorials, we can help others navigate through this crisis and succeed once it’s all over.

The only thing I ask in return is that if you find this guide helpful, then please spread the word (share it on social media, message the link to a family member, and / or email it to friends who can benefit from it).

Important: To save you time, this article DOES NOT contain information on how to get small business loans or anything related to coronavirus small business relief / business grants / financial assistance programs. Forbes is attempting to keep an updated list of various COVID-19 relief programs, but it’s always best practice to check with your local government authorities for this information.

I am going to divide this article into two sections. First part is for small business owners looking to transition to remote work and/or establish a digital presence to grow online.

Second part is for small business owners looking for side-hustle ideas to supplement their main income. The second part can of course be utilized by anyone (including students). I highly encourage you to take action.

Ultimate Tools to Help Small Businesses with Remote Work (Digital Presence)

In this section, I will share the list of tools that we use in my various companies to streamline our workflows, processes, and ultimately grow online.

You do not need to use all these tools, so please only pick what you need for your specific industry, business, and use-case.

Transparency Disclaimer: WPBeginner content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of the links in this post, we may earn a small referral fee. Please know that we only recommend products that we use ourselves and/or believe will add value to our readers. See how WPBeginner is funded for more details.

Here’s a quick outline to help you easily navigate:

• Best Website Builder
• Business Phone Service that Work Anywhere
• Reliable Group / Team Chat Apps
• Best tool for Online Conference Calls (Group Meetings)
• Bulk email tool for contacting customers
• Online Order Forms
• E-Learning / Training / Memberships
• Appointments and Booking Tools
• Email Support and Ticketing Software
• Live Chat Software
• Time Tracking Software
• Easy File Storage / Document Sharing Apps
• Online Project Management Tools
• Company Hub / Wiki Tools
• Online Forms Solution

Best Website Builder for Small Businesses

If you’re looking to establish your online presence, then you’re likely looking for a website builder.

I have tested all the popular ones, and I can confidently say that WordPress is the best. Rest of the world agrees with me too considering WordPress powers 35% of all websites on the internet.

With WordPress, you can create any type of website from simple business sites to online stores, restaurant website, gym sites, etc etc.

You can follow my step by step guide on how to make a website for detailed instructions.

We also have specific tutorials on how to start an online store, and how to start a blog in case you’re looking for that.

The best part about WordPress is that it comes with tons of free templates (aka themes) that you can use. For easy customization and gorgeous designs, I recommend using Divi by Elegant Themes, it’s a powerful WordPress page builder.

Divi comes with pre-made layouts for every industry (gyms, cafes, restaurants, etc). You can also try Astra Theme because they also have tons of starter templates.

Once your website is live, use our WordPress SEO guide and these proven tips to grow your website traffic.

Business Phone Service that Work Anywhere

We use Nextiva for our business phone service.

Since it’s a business VOIP provider, they have a mobile and desktop app that allows our various team members to receive client calls without having to share their cell phone numbers.

It comes with tons of other powerful features like caller ID, call forwarding, routing, custom greetings, call analytics, customer CRM, live chat, and more. Basically it’s a unified communication platform that lets you work from anywhere.

If you’re looking for an alternative, then check out RingCentral. They’re fairly competitive as well.

Reliable Business Group / Team Chat

With remote teams, communication is like oxygen. You need to have a reliable team chat software.

I recommend using either Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Slack is free with limited storage and up to 10,000 message. However it gets expensive when you try to upgrade to the Pro version.

Microsoft Teams is free for everyone, and they give you even more features with Office365 accounts which is great because that saves you money in the long run.

Online Conference Calls (Group Meetings)

Call quality is my #1 priority when it comes to online conference calls.

If you’re only doing audio conferencing, then Nextiva is perfect. Everyone can either dial-in from their phone or connect using the Nextiva app.

If video conferencing is important, then I recommend using either Zoom or RingCentral.

Both solutions have desktop / mobile apps. Individuals can also dial-in from their phone as well in case internet connection quality isn’t good.

The free version of Zoom is good, but it restricts your calls to 40 minutes. If you’re thinking about upgrading to Zoom Pro, then you’re actually better off using RingCentral because they also offer virtual business phone number along with a complete platform.

If you want a completely free option, then you can use Skype as well. Although call quality suffers with larger groups.

Bulk Email Service to Contact Customers

In these tough times, you must stay in constant communication with your customers. Keep them informed about how you’re serving them, any special offers that you have running, and even how they can help you.

The easiest way to send bulk email is by using an email marketing service like Constant Contact or SendinBlue.

The cool part about these services is that they let you personalize the emails and save time. See this complete step-by-step email marketing guide for more details.

Setup Online Order Forms to Accept Online Orders

I know a lot of businesses are either switching to taking orders by phone or looking for an online alternative.

If you’re just looking for a simple order form, then use WPForms. It’s a WordPress form builder that let’s you easily create an order form and accept payments online.

If you need to sell multiple products online, then I recommend starting an online store using WooCommerce. It’s the most popular eCommerce platform in the world.

For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to start an online store.

Create a Membership Site for Training / Tutoring / E-Learning

A lot of gyms, yoga classes, personal trainers, tutoring centers, and schools are shutting down due to this coronavirus pandemic.

You can transition to virtual classes using one of the many platforms.

With WordPress, you can use the MemberPress plugin to create members-only area, share content, collect payments, etc. We have a step by step tutorial on how to create a membership site.

If you want to have e-learning component that involves quizzes, grading, etc, then you can use LearnDash. It’s a powerful WordPress Learning Management Solution (LMS), and we have created a step by step guide on how to create / sell courses online.

You can combine both of these platforms with an online video platform like YouTube, Vimeo, or even a live conference software like Zoom to deliver content.

Some businesses and communities are using a membership site in combination with a Facebook Group where they’re using Facebook Live to run classes.

A lot of school districts are using Google Classrooms which is a free product by Google. It’s a bit complicated to use, but it gets the job done.

Basically, we need to use the resources available and be resourceful, so we can serve those around us.

Appointments and Booking Tools

As you move to remote work, managing appointments and bookings is a challenge. It’s hard to keep track of available time slots while avoiding the email back-and-forth.

The easiest tool that I have often used myself is Calendly. It’s a free tool for 1 calendar per user.

You can simply select available time slots, and send your calendly link to clients. Your client can pick a time that works best for them from your available slots, and Calendly marks that spot as reserved in your calendar, so no one else can claim it.

If you need to manage bookings for multiple people, then you can use WPForms. It has a booking form template that can seamlessly integrate with your Google Calendar and even Calendly.

For advanced booking plugins, I recommend checking out StartBooking or BirchPress.

Email Support and Ticketing Software

If you’re looking for an easy way to collaborate on emails with your team, then the most proven solution is to use an email support ticketing software.

At my team, we use HelpScout. It’s a robust platform, and small teams can use their Basic plan which is very affordable (scroll down on pricing page, since they list it below their main plans).

FreshDesk and Front App are two other alternatives that you can also take a look at.

Live Chat Software

If you’re switching to selling online, then you might be looking for a live chat software. There are a lot of them, and some of them are really expensive.

My team uses LiveChat Inc. They offer a 30-day free trial.

If you’re using Nextiva for your business phone number, then they also offer Live Chat feature as part of their platform.

Other companies that I mentioned above like HelpScout, SendinBlue, etc also offer Live Chat as part of their higher plans.

If you’re a small business and don’t have the staff to manage Live Chat, then you can also look at using a ChatBot.com platform and use their bot templates to automate some support.

Time Tracking Software for Productivity and Accountability

One of the biggest critique I have heard from small business owners about remote work is loss of productivity and accountability.

That’s simply not true because my business has been remote for over a decade (but that’s a whole different debate).

You can use time tracking software like Time Doctor and HubStaff for improved accountability and reporting.

Easy Online File Storage / Document Sharing Apps

The easiest way to improve collaboration online is by using smart file sharing and document sharing apps.

There are a lot of providers that you can use.

Microsoft Office365 suite includes OneDrive, Word, Powerpoint, etc. that you can use to easily share files and collaborate online.

Dropbox along with Dropbox Paper is another great tool that you can use.

If you’re using Gmail, then you can also use Google Doc and their doc platform.

Note: I’m purposefully not linking to G Suite because they said they don’t want to be associated with Coronavirus and will ban our partnership account if we promote them. I still think it’s a great solution, but after their stance during Coronavirus, G Suite team has lost all respect in my eyes.

Online Project Management Tools for Small Business

The key to succeeding with remote teams is project management. When I first started, this used to be a big challenge, but it’s gotten a lot easier.

My team at Awesome Motive uses Asana because it’s both powerful and easy to use. We love it.

In the past, I have also tried Trello and Basecamp. Both of these apps are also good for specific use-cases, but they have their limitations.

Company Hub / Wiki Tools / Intranet solutions

The easiest way to create a company wiki is to make a WordPress site and use one of the Heroic Knowledge Base plugin.

If you want to create a complete intranet, then WordPress can help with that. See how to create an intranet for small business with WordPress.

If you’re using Microsoft Office365 suite, then they also offer intranet and team sites.

Some of my friends are using Notion, and they really love it. I tried it long ago, and it didn’t have the same level of flexibility, but they seem to have added a ton since then.

Online Forms Solution

Online forms are essential for all businesses. Whether you need to offer your customers an easy way to contact you, collect feedback / surveys, accept appointments or bookings, take online orders, etc etc.

My company, WPForms can help here. You can use either the free version, WPForms Lite, or use the pro version. It’s a robust platform used by over 3 million websites.

If you’re a developer trying to help small businesses create advanced form solutions like calculators, directories, forms that displays data on front-end, and other advanced forms, then I recommend using Formidable Forms.

Side Hustle Ideas for Small Business Owners, Entrepreneurs, and Students

I know these are tough times for everyone. With so much craziness and uncertainty in the world, several people have reached out to me for suggestions on side-hustle ideas to supplement their main income.

Through out history, humans have done some of our best work during times of crisis and stress.

In 1665, when Cambridge University closed for a year because of the Great Plague of London, a young scholar named Isaac Newton was sent home.

While at home, he discovered Calculus and refined the ideas that later became his theory of gravity.

In 1606, Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, King Lear, and Anthony and Cleopatra while quarantined at home.

We may not be Newton or Shakespeare, but you can learn how to use WordPress to build your dream and / or improve your site, so you’re stronger when all of the craziness pass away.

If it helps motivate anyone, I too launched WPBeginner in 2009 towards the tail-end of the global recession of 2008.

With that said, I want to emphasize that there are no shortcuts to making money online.

It takes a lot of work, and you have to treat your website like an actual business. Yes, it is a REAL job.

Anyone person that’s selling a “magic” course that will supposedly help you replicate their success, don’t waste your time or money on that. It’s a scam. There’s a special place in hell for these people especially if they try to market during these times.

Anyways, as long as you’re willing to do the leg work, I think you can make money online.

Here are 30 proven ways to make money online with your website or by offering services.

Specific side hustle ideas:

The easiest way is to sell your knowledge. If you’re a chef, teach others how to cook or sell recipes. If you’re a personal trainer, show people how to work out and sell virtual coaching classes. You can create a membership site with WordPress to sell eBooks, courses, etc.

Along the same line, you can start a blog to teach what you know, so you can build a following. This way you have an audience that you can market your products to, and / or even make money with ads.

You can start a food blog to share recipes, your favorite cooking appliances (affiliate revenue), etc.

If you’re witty, then you can also create a site like Buzzfeed and create entertaining content. People are consuming a lot of content right now, and you can make some money with banner ads.

You can create a question and answers website where you can charge for giving professional advice. You can even invite other professionals

You can also create a micro-jobs site like Fiverr for your local community and help others earn money while taking a small cut of each transaction.

You can create an auction site like eBay, but focus on specific niche or vertical, so you can quality control better, offer expert advice, etc.

If you love craft and making things with your hand, then you can sell your work on Etsy, or better yet create an Etsy-like store with WordPress, so you can avoid middle-man fees.

Again these are just some ideas that others have used to make extra income on the side. For more ideas, you should check out these 27 online business ideas.

Remember, whatever you do, please DO NOT fall for any get rich quick schemes during these times of crisis. There are no shortcuts to make money online!

It takes a lot of hard work and dedicate (like any other business would).

The good news though is that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to broaden your skillet.

With WPBeginner, you can learn WordPress for free in a week or less.

We also have tons of useful free resources like:

• 27 actionable tips to grow your website traffic
• 18 most important things to do after installing WordPress
• Ultimate WordPress SEO guide for beginners
• Over 500+ free video tutorials on WPBeginner YouTube channel
• Free community help from over 30,000+ members on our WPBeginner Engage Facebook group

Aside from WPBeginner, there are a lot of universities and creators that are making their courses temporarily free to help others expand their skillset.

Final Thoughts

I know these next few weeks will feel very long … and I hope that these guides help you create something amazing that you’ll be proud of in the next 6 months.

As small business owners, we need to be disciplined, make the most of the resources available to us (be resourceful), and focus on opportunities that will have the biggest impact.

While the world seems uncontrollable, it’s extremely crucial that we focus on what we can control because that’s how we will win and come out ahead.

I’ll end the article with this beautiful quote from Maya Angelou:

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Stay safe, healthy, and in good spirits

If you liked this article, then please spread the word. Share it on social media, message the link to a family member, and/or email it to friends who can benefit from it.

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for our WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post The Ultimate Coronavirus Small Business Guide – WordPress + Tools to Grow Online appeared first on WPBeginner.

March 24, 2020 at 06:54PM

How to Create a Contact Form with Multiple Recipients (4 Ways)

Do you want your contact form to send notifications to different people in your company?

Perhaps you want all messages to get copied to your assistant, or you want specific messages to be sent to different departments, or maybe you simply want to send users a copy of the information they submitted.

In this article, we’ll share four different ways to create a contact form with multiple recipients, so you can choose the option that best fits your need.

Why You Might Want to Send Multiple Recipients From Your Contact Form

By default, contact forms only send notifications to one email address.

You might want to change this for a number of reasons. Here are some situations that you might face:

• You run your site with a friend, and both of you want an identical copy of all messages that come in through your contact form.
• You want your users to receive a confirmation email whenever they send you a message. You want this confirmation email to be slightly different from the one you receive yourself.
• You want your contact form messages to go to different people depending on the purposes of the message. For instance, you want sales inquiries to go straight to your sales team vs billing inquiries going to your billing team.
• You want to copy your blogging partner, and your assistant in on your contact form emails, so you can easily “reply all” to keep everyone in the loop.

In this article, we’ll be showing you several different ways to get your contact form plugin to send multiple emails to different people. This lets you deal with all the above scenarios and anything else you might face.

Note: Our tutorial is meant for self-hosted WordPress sites only. If you want to learn more about WordPress, see our article on how to start a WordPress blog or how to make a WordPress site.

Choosing The Right WordPress Form Builder

There are a ton of WordPress form plugins on the market. Some of them support multiple email notifications, but not many of them allow you to customize notifications.

We’ll be using the WPForms plugin for this tutorial. It is a popular WordPress form builder used by over 3 million websites.

There is also a free version called WPForms Lite which you can use if you only want to send the contents of your contact form to multiple recipients.

However, if you want to send custom notifications to multiple recipients, then you’ll need the paid version of the plugin. To demonstrate all four methods, we’ll be using the pro version in this tutorial.

Sending Multiple Notifications for Contact Form

There are multiple scenarios for sending contact form email notifications. In this article, we will be tackling each one of them.

First, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Next, you’ll need to head over to WPForms » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on the WPForms website.

After that, you need to visit WPForms » Add New page to create your first contact form. For instructions, see our step by step tutorial on how to create a contact form in WordPress.

Now that you’ve created your form, you can use any of the methods below to add multiple recipients and even create custom notifications for your forms.

1. Send Same Notification to Multiple Recipients

The simplest way to set up multiple recipients is to send the same notification to each person.

Simply go to WPForms » All Forms and edit the form that you want to setup notifications for.

Next, you need to go to the Settings » Notifications tab in the form builder and enter the recipients email in the ‘Send To Email Address’ box.

You can enter as many emails as you like, but remember to separate the email addresses with a comma.

In the example, notifications will be sent to:

• The default admin email address
• editor@mywebsite.com
• sarah@mywebsite.com

Tip: The {admin_email} is the email address for your WordPress administrator. This might be you if you’re the site owner. It could also be whoever set up the website. You can check what it is under Settings » General menu in your WordPress dashboard.

2. Send Different Contact Form Notifications to Multiple Recipients

In some situations, you might want to send a different notification to each recipient.

For instance, you might send users a confirmation email that’s different from the admin email notification you get.

You can easily do this with WPForms. Simply open the form builder, go to Settings » Notifications, and then click the ‘Add New Notification’ button.

You’ll see a popup that asks you to name the notification. This name is just for your reference, so you can put in whatever makes the most sense to you. We’re going to use “Thank you email” for the sake of this tutorial.

Next, click the ‘OK’ button and your new notification will appear at the top of the Notifications list. You can scroll down to find your original ‘Default Notification’ below this.

Delete the {admin_email} tag from the ‘Send to Email Address’ box.

After that, you need to click on the ‘Show Smart Tags’ link just above the ‘Send To Email Address’ box. This will expand to show available fields. Simply, click the ‘Email’ field.

This will then be added into the box as {field_id=”1″} if you’re using the Simple Contact Form template. If you’ve customized your form, then the field ID will be different.

All what this means is that WPForms will send this notification to the user’s email address, which they entered into the contact form.

Next, you’ll need to fill in the Email Subject, From Name, From Email, and Reply-To. Here’s an example of how that could look:

You’ll also want to add a thank you message. By default, the ‘Message’ section contains the tag {all_fields}. This will show all the data that the user entered.

Here’s our thank you message:

Now, your user will get the thank you message after submitting the form, and you’ll get the standard default notification without the thank you message.

You can set up as many custom notifications as you like. You don’t have to include all the form data in each message, either.

For instance, if you’re a coach taking bookings, then you could choose to have all the form data sent to you and the client. Your assistant might only receive the client’s name, email address, and the time(s) for which they’ve booked. That way, any private information stays confidential.

3. Add Different Recipients for Different Form Options

Sometimes, you might have a single form that you want to send to different people depending on what option the user picks.

For instance, you may want to use a single contact form that allows users to submit questions, ask to buy ads on your site, and suggest guest post ideas.

You might want to:

• Send the questions to your assistant.
• Receive the advertising requests yourself.
• Send the guest post ideas to your editor.

With WPForms, it’s easy to do this.

First, go to the ‘Fields’ view of your form. You’ll need to add a field that lets users choose between two or more alternatives. You could pick either the Dropdown or the Multiple Choice field for this.

For our example, we’re going to use the Multiple Choice (radio button) field. Drag and drop the field onto your form. Next, click on it to edit the different choices.



Once you’ve set up the field with various choices, go to Settings » Notifications.

Next, click the ‘Add New Notification’ button to create additional notifications that you need. You will need to fill in the details as appropriate for each notification.

Here’s a notification that’s being sent when a guest post is submitted:



As you scroll down, you need to click the checkbox next to ‘Enable conditional logic’. This will show you few additional settings.



You need to select your multiple-choice field from the dropdown. After that click on the appropriate choice for this notification.



You can then continue to set up new notifications for each of your options.

Tip: You can use this method along with the methods we’ve already looked at.

For instance, you could enter two or more email addresses in the ‘Send To Email Address’ box. That would send copies of the same notification to those people.

You could also set up an email confirmation message to go to the user. If you want to use different confirmations for the different options, you’ll need to enable conditional logic for these too.

4. CCing Others on a Notification Email

Sometimes, you might want to copy people in on your contact form notifications. For instance, you might want to copy in your site’s editor and lead writer when you get a notification about a new guest post submission.

The advantage of using this method is that you can easily ‘Reply All’ to the notification email. Instead of everyone receiving a separate email, as with the first method, there’s one email with multiple recipients copied in.

To add a CC field to your form notification settings, go to WPForms » Settings page and then click on the Email tab.



Scroll down to the bottom of the page and then check the box next to ‘Carbon Copy’ option. Don’t forget to save your settings.



Now, when you’re editing any of your form’s notifications, you’ll see a CC box. This lets you enter any addresses you want that notification sent to.



Tip: Don’t enter more than one email address in the ‘Send To Email Address’ box if you’re using this method. Otherwise, the people being CC’d will receive multiple emails.

Troubleshooting Email Delivery Issues for Your Forms

If you are having trouble sending email notifications from your WordPress contact form, then this section is for you.

By default WordPress uses PHP to send emails. This method can be easily misused by spammers and is limited or blocked by many WordPress hosting companies.

Since it is not a secure method, it is also blocked by popular email providers like Gmail and Outlook. This means your emails never reach the users inbox.

Luckily, there is an easy solution to fix that. You can either use a professional SMTP service provider or use your hosting company’s free business email address feature to securely send your emails.

For step by step instructions, see our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

We hope this article has helped you learn how to create a contact form with multiple recipients in WordPress. You might also like our guide on the best WordPress plugins and best email marketing services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create a Contact Form with Multiple Recipients (4 Ways) appeared first on WPBeginner.


March 23, 2020 at 03:46PM

7 Best Wix Alternatives in 2020 (More Powerful and Reliable)

Are you looking for the best Wix alternatives?

Wix is a website builder that people use to create a website when they first start out, likely because they saw a TV commercial or heard one of the many ads.

The challenge is that their free version is quite limited in functionality, and it gets really expensive when you try to upgrade.

The good news is that many other website builders provide better functionality and features, at a lower cost. In this article, we’ll share our expert pick of the best Wix alternatives that are more powerful and reliable.

Why Are People Switching Away From Wix?

Wix is a popular website builder that’s advertised to have a simple drag and drop builder which makes it easy to build websites quickly.

However, they limit users to specific features, and you will need to pay for every third-party app or plugin to add more options to your site. With the growth in your business, it becomes more expensive to use and still limited in terms of features.

It also limits you in your website template or theme selection. This means you cannot switch to a different template after your website is live on the internet.

With these limitations, Wix is upsetting a lot of users and giving them a reason to switch away to other more powerful and reliable solutions.

Luckily, there are many Wix alternatives with better features, flexibility, and prices.

Best Wix Alternatives

There are multiple website builders that you can choose for your site. We have handpicked the best Wix alternatives for your small businesses, blogs, online stores (eCommerce businesses), etc.

Here are the best Wix alternatives that you can use.

1. WordPress

WordPress is the most popular website builder and a perfect alternative to Wix. Over 35% of websites in the world are using WordPress which makes WordPress the de-facto market leader.

There are two different versions of WordPress which often confuses beginners. WordPress.com, is a hosted solution (ranked #7 – we’ll talk about it later in this article), and WordPress.org, which is a self-hosted and free solution (ranked #1).

For more details, you should check out our complete guide on the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

WordPress is very easy to set up and it gives you maximum control of your website. It is highly flexible and comes with thousands of themes and plugins to start a blog, create an online store, build a community forum, or more.

Unlike Wix, it is an open-source website builder with a simple admin panel for customization. You can also use the WordPress customizer with live preview to make changes to your site.

To use WordPress, you’ll need a WordPress hosting platform (where you’ll store your files) and a domain name (the URL that your users will use to browse your site, like wpbeginner.com or google.com) to set up your website.

Price: WordPress is a FREE website builder. But, you need to purchase a domain name and web hosting that costs 14.99/year and $7.99/month, respectively.

Bluehost offers WPBeginner users a 65% discount on web hosting, free domain name, and free SSL certificate. It is a popular web hosting company, and an official WordPress hosting partner.

This lets you make a WordPress website as low as $2.75 per month, which is a lot cheaper than Wix or any other website builder in the market.

→ Click here to Claim this Exclusive Bluehost offer ←

If you are looking for a Bluehost alternative, then you can check out SiteGround or another recommended provider from our best WordPress hosting list.

2. Constant Contact Website Builder

Constant Contact Website Builder is fast and A.I. based to create powerful websites without writing any code. It is an alternative to Wix and lets you set up a custom website in a few minutes.

It integrates with Unsplash to provide over 550,000 professional-quality images that you can use to engage your website users.

Constant Contact offers a CDN (content delivery network) to load your website pages super fast in any part of the world. It also improves your website SEO rankings.

Other notable features include a logo maker, website analytics, eCommerce support, engaging visual effects, customizable layouts, and more.

If we talk about features, Constant Contact is one of the most powerful and professional website builders in the market.

Price: Constant Contact has a FREE plan that lets you make a website, blog, or an online store.

Their premium plans start as low as $8 per month, and the paid version includes customer support, free domain name, free SSL certificate, and more features.

For online stores, they offer a business plan that costs $18.29 per month. It includes advanced integrations, unlimited products, no transaction fees, and priority customer support.

3. Gator by HostGator

Gator is a leading website builder by HostGator. Since it is built by a popular hosting company, it is an ultimate website builder solution and a perfect alternative to Wix.

It comes with over 200 fully customizable templates to design a website easily. These templates are beautiful and stylish to make a powerful first impression on your website visitors.

Gator is a hosted solution, which means they take care of your website backups, updates, and software. This allows you to focus on the growth of your business.

It also offers multiple tools, social media integration, live Instagram feed, and support for eCommerce stores. Moreover, it has premium-quality stock photos that you can use on your site.

Price: Gator has premium plans starting from $3.46 per month, making it affordable for small businesses and startups. Each plan comes with a free domain name, free SSL certificate, website analytics, and premium 24/7 live support.

4. BigCommerce

BigCommerce is an excellent eCommerce builder for your online store. It is a 1-stop solution to create powerful eCommerce shops and fully scalable to take your business to the next level.

It is a hosted platform, and their team of experts will take care of your website speed, security, updates, and any other technical issues.

BigCommerce has a strong affiliation with WordPress, which means you can combine the features of 2 most powerful platforms to set up an excellent eCommerce solution for your users.

When it comes to payment solutions, BigCommerce supports PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Chase Pay, Visa Checkout, and more. It doesn’t charge any transaction fees, which means you get the complete profit of your sales.

It is a perfect eCommerce solution for online store owners, and far better than the Wix eCommerce builder.

Price: It offers a 15-day free trial to test all features of the BigCommerce platform. The premium plans starting from $29.95 per month. For more conversion optimization features, you can upgrade to a better plan as your business grows.

5. Divi

Divi is an ultimate theme and a drag and drop page builder for WordPress websites. It comes with 100+ layout packs for different business niches.

It also includes 800+ pre-made designs, custom page templates, and website elements that you can use to create any website or online store easily.

With its point and click tools, you can start editing any section of your site from the frontend. Divi is easy to use, and it gives you complete control of everything, including fonts, colors, shapes, background, etc.

It offers advanced editing features like multi-select and bulk editing, find and replace styles, powerful color manager, copy and paste styles, and more.

Divi is better and faster than Wix. And, it combines with WordPress to offer a more robust and powerful solution for building any website, blog, online store, or membership site.

Price: The starting price is $89 per year with 1-year of premium support and product updates. You can also pay a 1-time fee of $249 and take benefit of all their features, lifetime premium support, lifetime software updates, and more.

Both plans include risk-free 30-day money back guarantee (no questions asked). So, you can get familiar with the platform without worrying about your money.

6. Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is a powerful WordPress page builder plugin that combines with other WordPress features to let you launch your website quickly.

It comes with dozens of beautiful landing page and content page templates that are ready to add on your site. You can replace the demo text and images with your original content and publish the pages.

Unlike Wix, Beaver Builder lets you create fully customizable pages with a drag and drop builder for the setup. You can also use the WordPress customizer to make changes to your site.

Price: The standard plan costs $99 that includes 1-year of support and updates, premium modules, templates, and more for unlimited websites.

If you are looking for more advanced features like support for WordPress multisite network, dedicated Beaver Builder theme, etc., then you can select the Pro plan for $199.

For enterprise users who want white labeling to get full control of the software, they offer an Agency plan for $399.

Beaver Builder also comes with a Beaver Themer addon that allows you to create completely custom WordPress themes from scratch without writing any code. This is great for aspiring developers and / or agencies who want to build websites faster.

7. WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a hosting solution for WordPress blogs and websites. It is built by Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of self-hosted WordPress and founder of Automattic.

For more details, you should check out our article on how are WordPress.com and WordPress.org related.

Unlike self-hosted WordPress.org, you don’t need to worry about software updates and backups with WordPress.com. It is a fully custom website builder for beginners and bloggers.

WordPress.com doesn’t come with a drag and drop builder. But, you can use the native WordPress live customizer to make changes easily.

Price: It offers a free basic plan with limited features. The personal plan costs $4 per month, including a custom domain.

Their premium plan for freelancers costs $8 per month. For small business websites, they offer a business plan costing $25 per month.

If you want to run an online store with custom features and WooCommerce extensions, then it has an eCommerce plan for $45 per month. All their plans are billed annually.

Other Wix Alternatives

You may also find other Wix alternatives that are ideal for different types of use cases.

Shopify

Shopify is an eCommerce software that integrates with your website builder to set up an online store. You can use Shopify as a Wix alternative.

Unlike BigCommerce, you need to pay transaction fees for every sale you make using Shopify. It also becomes expensive when you want to add more features and extensions to grow your online store.

Related: Check out our comparisons between Shopify vs WooCommerce and BigCommerce vs WooCommerce to find out the perfect Wix alternative for eCommerce stores.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a premium website builder and an alternative to Wix. It is easy to use for beginners to add content anywhere on the site without editing any code.

However, Squarespace has limited third-party integrations, which can be a hurdle in the growth of your business. It can be ideal at the start, but as your business grows, you need to move to a better platform like WordPress.

You can read our complete article on Squarespace vs WordPress for more details.

Weebly

Weebly is a flexible website builder for any type of website. It is an alternative to Wix for a long time and ideal for small businesses and startups.

It restricts you to the limited features and doesn’t let you add third-party tools to set up a powerful site. If you plan to run an online store, Weebly also charges 3% transaction fees for every payment.

Related: WordPress vs Weebly – Which one is better?

Conclusion: Which is the Best Wix Alternative?

If you are looking for a perfect Wix alternative at an affordable price, then WordPress is the right choice. It is highly flexible and easy to use.

You can use Bluehost for WordPress websites to get the maximum discounts and start as low as $2.75 per month.

After that you can either use Divi or Beaver Builder, which are powerful WordPress drag and drop page builder plugins, to design beautiful website layouts without writing any code.

If you’re looking for a non-WordPress solution that’s hassle-free with better support than Wix, then look at Constant Contact Website Builder. It is perfect for small businesses that are looking for a FREE website builder. It is fast, intelligent, and A.I. powered making it a direct Wix alternative.

In case, you want to build a powerful online store to replace the Wix eCommerce solution, then you’ll need BigCommerce or Shopify. It comes with all the essential features and both offer way more powerful eCommerce solutions than Wix.

We hope this article helped you choose the best website builder for your project. You may also want to see out list of best email marketing services and best business phone services for small business.

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The post 7 Best Wix Alternatives in 2020 (More Powerful and Reliable) appeared first on WPBeginner.

March 20, 2020 at 06:30PM