Website Builder Adoption Statistics: How Small Businesses Actually Build Their Sites
Compiled from Clutch’s small-business survey data and W3Techs’ platform-tracking data — how many small businesses use a DIY builder versus custom development, and how fast builder platforms are actually growing.
📋 What’s in this page
Key Website Builder Adoption Statistics
No-code website builders have become the default entry point for small business websites — but “default” doesn’t mean universal, and a meaningful share of small businesses still build custom or don’t have a site at all.
How Small Businesses Actually Build Their Sites
Among small businesses that do have a website, drag-and-drop builders are now the single most common route — ahead of both WordPress/Shopify and fully custom development.
| Approach | Share of Small Business Sites |
|---|---|
| DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace, etc.) | 41% |
| WordPress or Shopify | 34% |
| Fully custom-built | 12% |
Source: Clutch small business website survey, 2025. Categories are drawn from survey respondents’ own descriptions of their platform and may not sum to exactly 100% due to overlapping or unspecified responses.
How small businesses actually build their sites
Among small businesses with a website, a DIY builder is now the single most common route.
Source: Clutch small business website survey, 2025.Free to reuse with attribution and a link to paidhosting.com
Who Builds the Site
The rise of no-code tooling shows up clearly in who actually does the building — a shrinking share of small businesses need a dedicated developer at all.
Who does the work
- 37% use an in-house team member
- 45% outsource to an agency or freelance partner
- 8% is built by the business owner directly
Why some are still offline
- Over a third of offline businesses believe a website isn’t relevant to them
- 28% of businesses without a site have no online presence of any kind — not even social media
- 12% of all small businesses launched their first site within the past year
Source: Clutch small business website survey, 2025.
Given how low the barrier to entry has become — free tiers, drag-and-drop builders, no developer required — the remaining 17% without a website skews toward businesses that simply haven’t seen the need, not businesses blocked by cost or technical difficulty. Clutch’s data backs this up: more than a third of offline businesses say a website isn’t relevant to them, and 28% of businesses without a site have no digital presence of any kind, including social media. That suggests the remaining gap is a mindset/relevance question for a specific segment of small businesses, not a tooling problem the industry hasn’t solved yet.
What This Means
For anyone writing “how to build a website” content aimed at small businesses or entrepreneurs, the current baseline worth citing is straightforward: a DIY builder is now the single most common way a small business site gets built (41%), ahead of WordPress/Shopify (34%) and custom development (12%) combined against either individually. That’s a meaningfully different starting recommendation than it would have been a decade ago, when custom development and early WordPress adoption dominated the conversation.
Sources & Methodology
Small-business-specific figures come from Clutch’s 2025 small business website survey. Platform market share and growth-rate figures come from W3Techs’ ongoing web technology survey, March 2026 snapshot. Revenue figures are drawn from company-reported and acquisition data for 2025. This page is reviewed and updated as newer survey and market-share data is published.
- Clutch — Small Business Website Survey, 2025
- W3Techs — Usage Statistics of Website Builders, March 2026
- Company-reported revenue and acquisition data, 2025 (Wix, Squarespace/Permira)
Cite this analysis
https://www.paidhosting.com/website-builder-adoption-statistics/
Findings on this page may be reproduced with attribution and a link back to this page. Press and data enquiries: [email protected]