Category: Uncategorised

Our research found the best social media marketing tools are: Canva, Buffer, Sprinklr, Social Pilot, and HubSpot. Read on to discover the best of the rest – and how much they cost.

We’ll take you through the best tools in four categories: content creation, publishing, campaign tracking and audience insights.

The breakneck speed of social media can leave the best of us feeling dizzy. But by the end of this guide you’ll have a full understanding of the best tools to conquer your timelines – and how their pricing has changed between 2022 and 2023 as inflation hits.

We’ve included a little bit of pricing info in the above table, but if you’d like more detailed social media management costs check out our guide.

Best Social Media Marketing Tools for Audience Insights

If you’re looking for social listening guidance, then look no further than these next four tools. Easily track reactions to your brand’s products, events, news or initiatives with the most sophisticated audience engagement platforms available today. You’ll be better able to reach and engage with your followers using a purpose-built software service rather than endlessly searching your brand’s name on every individual social media channel.

1. SocialPilot – Best for overall audience engagement

Delve into analytics and insights, understand your content performance, discover active user times and the best times to post content. You can unify your audience engagement and answer queries from one place and save time.

Cost: Free 14-day trial.
Professional: $25.50/month for one user with 10 social accounts (paying annually).
Small Team: $42.50/month for three users with 20 social accounts (paying annually).
Agency: $85/month for six users with 30 social accounts (paying annually).
Agency+: $170/month for unlimited users with 50 social accounts (paying annually). This is a brand new price plan.
Enterprise or White Label: Plans and pricing on request.

These pricing plans have fallen in cost slightly, compared with 2022. However, there’s one less user in the Small Team plan (formerly known as “Studio) and five fewer social media accounts. The Professional plan, however, seems better value as you now get three more social accounts for a slightly lower price. The Agency package is now 15% cheaper though you get 40% fewer social accounts.

2. Brandwatch – Best for advanced analytics

Using advanced AI-powered analytics, Brandwatch’s suite of products (including BuzzSumo) creates visual data reports, carries out social listening and performs sentiment analysis on social media posts. Reports are easy to export and share with stakeholders.

Cost: Pricing is available upon consultation with a sales rep.

3. HubSpot – Best for targeted audience messaging

Link your CRM with social interactions to give context to conversations. HubSpot social media management software connects marketing campaigns with your social schedule, as well as tracking leads and clicks.

Cost: Free 30-day trial

Marketing (Hub Starter): $20/month (includes 1,000 marketing contacts).
Marketing Hub (Professional): $890/month (paying annually). Plus $3,000 onboarding fee.
Marketing Hub (Enterprise): $3,600/month (paying annually). Plus $6,000 onboarding fee.

4. AdSpy – Best for competitor insight

Search through a vast library of Facebook and Instagram ads in seconds to see which adverts are performing well across particular audiences. You may be able to save money on your campaigns by making use of the data on popular and successful adverts. It’s a nifty way to spy on the competition and tap into positive and negative feedback from users.

Cost: $149/month.
New users can get a $50 discount for the first month.

5. Audiense – Best for audience segmentation

Gain data-driven insights into audience conversations on social media with this big data platform. Identify your target audience and make use of trend analysis to better understand and relate to your would-be customers. Audiense also provides custom chatbots for your Twitter inboxes.

Cost: Free limited version of Twitter Marketing and Audiense Insights.
Twitter Marketing: $39/month (paying annually).
Audience Insights: $670/month (paying annually).

(Pricing is given on the Audiense website in GBP, so we’ve converted to USD)

Best Social Media Marketing Tools for Content Creation

Major platforms like Facebook Ads Library and TikTok Creative Center can provide a wealth of creative inspiration for your own dazzling content. But how should you go about polishing up your media for maximum impact?

Let’s take a look at the top five content editing tools for making social media posts that sing.

1. Canva – Best for custom infographics

Lets you quickly create images with over 600,000 templates across a range of categories. Not to be missed are its infographic templates that can beautifully illustrate how your product works or explain the stages of your service. Canva is very easy to use.

Its pricing plans have changed since 2022, so lets look at their new subscription set-up:

Cost: Free plan with 5GB cloud storage (limited template access).

Canva Pro $12.99/month for one person. Although that’s three dollars more per month than last year, you now get 1TB of storage instead of 100GB.

Canva for Teams $149.90/year for two to five people, with 100GB cloud storage plus the ability to schedule social media content across eight channels. Last year this cost $119.99 (equivalent to $10 per month) so the price has jumped up a lot but you get ten times extra storage now. It costs $14.00/month if you pay monthly.

Enterprise pricing has become more complicated but a lot cheaper. It used to be $30/month per person for a minimum of 25 people, with unlimited storage plus custom brand kit creation. Now there’s a $14.50 monthly flat rate plus a variable per person rate depending on how many team members you have. In 2022, a team of 50 would have cost you $1,500 per month, but in 2023 it’s less than half that: $614.49.

2. Biteable – Best for consistent video content

This nifty video tool is as powerful as it is handy. It keeps your content consistent across campaigns, and its templates ensure slick video creation for speedy distribution.

Cost: Free plan comes with watermarked videos.
Pro: $49/month per user with unlimited video storage.
Teams: $199 per month for three team members (add $33 per extra user) to edit videos in collaboration. The monthly price for five users has increased by 6% since last year.

3. Adobe Photoshop, Adobe AfterEffects – Best for precision multimedia edits

A mega giant of the image manipulation industry, Adobe enables professional multimedia editing. Resize, overlay, remix and rework images in Photoshop or video footage in After Effects for bespoke content that outshines the competition. A decent level of training is needed for both programs, and their subscription pricing can be prohibitive, hence why Adobe is not top of our list.

Cost: 7-day free trial.
Photoshop: $20.99/month per individual user with 100GB storage.
After Effects: $35.99/month per business user with 1TB cloud storage.

Adobe actually hasn’t changed their pricing in 2023, unlike many of the newer companies on this list.

4. Splice – Best for creating custom tunes

Splice lets you edit audio on desktop or mobile, making use of a deep archive of royalty-free tunes, beats and loops. Built for the modern sound-maker, Splice prides itself on flexibility, allowing users to keep all downloads even if they cancel their subscription.

Cost: Free trial available (14 days).
Sounds+: $10.83/month per user (paying annually).
Creator: $16.67/month including skills tutorials (paying annually).
Creator+: $33.33/month including 500 monthly Sounds credits (paying annually). This is an 11% price increase with the same amount of credits.

5. CapCut – Best free mobile video editor.

This lets you split, trim, speed up or reverse video footage easily on a mobile device. It’s simple enough for anyone to use, whether or not they have much experience with more robust video editing software. Great for beginners and includes custom filters. They’ve also got free tools to generate subtitles automatically and transcribe video files to text.

Cost: Free.

Best Social Media Marketing Tools for Scheduling Posts

All good things come to those who plan. That’s our version of the saying, anyway. Unless you plan to stay poised over your “publish” buttons at every lunch hour and morning sunrise, you’re going to want a digital calendar tool. This way, you can publish time-scheduled automated social posts at the best time across multiple channels and rest easy knowing your messaging will hit the right eyeballs at the right times of the day.

1. Buffer – Best all round social media oversight

Taking its name from the loading stage of video streaming, Buffer allows you to plan and execute social media posts well in advance. The powerful platform lets you quickly engage with comments left by your followers, and managers can easily obtain social media performance reports.

Cost: Free plan gives you basic publishing tools.
Essentials: $5/month per social channel for improved planning and publishing tools.
Team: $10/month per social channel for unlimited team members with exportable reports.
Agency: $100/month for 10 social channels.

We reckon Buffer’s pricing is highly competitive compared with similar products on the market. The company’s kept its prices steady since 2022 and you’ll get two months free if you pay annually. Also has a 14-day free trial.

2. Iterable – Best for publishing posts with perfect timing

Using smart analytics and machine learning, Iterable helps you progressively improve the timing and frequency of your posts to reach your audiences more effectively. Supporting data integration through its APIs, Iterable lets you hone a truly effective audience engagement strategy.

Cost: It’s not transparent from Iterable’s website as the team prefers to be contacted for quotes, but you can expect to pay upwards of $500/month.

3. CoSchedule – Best for team task organization

This is a decent social media planning tool that resembles Trello in its list-style view for keeping track of projects. It also has a calendar view for visibility of content publishing plans over weeks and months. You can even get organized with automated email reminders for individual tasks. Its integration features are more limited than some of its competitors, but it remains a solid multichannel post publisher and marketing campaign planner.

Cost: Free plan offers social media publishing, unlimited marketing projects and calendar task management.
Pro: $29/month per user and includes bulk social media scheduling, social media automation and campaign templates.
Business: Pricing on request. Automatic marketing campaigns. Detailed project, work and team analytics.

4. Hootsuite – Best for multichannel scheduling

Overcome the lack of scheduling options on the main social media platforms with Hootsuite’s multichannel social media post planning. With a name that reminds us of the Twitter bird, but is actually based on the French expression “tout de suite”, meaning “right now”, Hootsuite has grown from a simple column-based planner to a comprehensive social media management platform. Post, publish and tweet – but don’t expect it to come cheap.

Cost: Free plan connects two social accounts for one user with five scheduled posts. Free trial of 30 days on the two cheapest plans.
Professional: $99/month per user to schedule unlimited posts across 10 social accounts (increase of $50 since 2022).
Team: $249/month for three users across 20 social accounts (increase of $100 since 2022).
Business: $739/month for five users on 35 social accounts.
Enterprise pricing for more users and 50+ social accounts available on request.

Best Social Media Marketing Tools for Campaign Tracking

Your social media stream is beautiful. But how do you know if you’ve achieved success? Unless you monitor and analyze the success of your social media marketing campaigns, you may as well be flinging dollar bills out of the office window. Marketers are an incredible 414% more likely to report success if they document their marketing strategy, according to CoSchedule’s 2022 research.

Major social platforms like LinkedIn have their own inbuilt campaign management dashboards. But that won’t be enough to track and adjust spend across all your channels. Let’s take a look at some top campaign tracking tools…

1. Sprinklr – Best overall social media campaign tool

Named as a leading content marketing platform by Gartner three years running, Sprinklr has a truly impressive array of social media marketing campaign functions. It aims to be an all-in-one platform that helps your team work more efficiently to put out highly relevant and successful social media posts.

Costs: No free trial or plan. Pricing is only available on request.

2. Sprout Social – Best insights

Interactive graphs, custom reports, advanced filtering and additional in-depth insights equip you to take the reins of your social media marketing campaigns and deliver ROI. You can even track competitor performance and evaluate your own spend.

Cost: 30-day free trial.
Standard: $249/month per user for five social profiles (179% increase on last year’s price).
Professional: $399/month per user (167% price increase but social profiles now unlimited).
Advanced: $499/month per user (100% price boost but social profiles no longer limited).

3. Agorapulse – Best social media monitoring

Agorapulse is built for social media reporting, monitoring, publishing and inbox management. Its detailed dashboard gives you insight into which posts are driving the most traffic, leads and sales across your platforms. This platform crunches a whole load of data into an easily understood set of graphs and reports.

Cost: Free program for one user with three social profiles (10 scheduled posts per month). Free 30-day trial for all plans.
Standard: $49/month per user for 10 social profiles (paying annually).
Professional: $79/month per user for 15 social profiles plus social listening and basic ad comment monitoring (paying annually). Last year, you could get two users with 10 social profiles for this price.
Advanced: $119/month per user for 20 social profiles with advanced management (paying annually).
Add an extra social profile to any plan for $15 per month. Or add an extra user for $49-$149 per month.

4. BuzzSumo – Best for networking strategy

Find influencers to support your brand, track mentions and also monitor backlinks and shares. BuzzSumo makes it easy to pick up on trends and quickly discover what people are saying on social media about your company and its niche. It allows you to draft, schedule and publish from several channels.

Cost: Free plan, 10 searches per month. All plans have 30-day free trial.
Pro: $99/month, unlimited projects for five users.
Plus: $179/month, 10 users.
Large: $299/month, 15 users.

These price plans are the same as they were last year.

Expert Verdict

Brand reputation is hard to build and easy to damage. For the best possible results, you should invest in data management tools to help you get the job done. Here are our top recommendations:

• Contextualise social media convos with SocialPilot or HubSpot.
• For the best image-based content creation, you’ll need Canva.
• Easily edit videos for free with CapCut.
• Enjoy affordable post scheduling with Buffer.
• Benefit from campaign tracking with Sprinklr.
• Go to Social Pilot for social listening.

Or check out our articles at the end of the page for more expert guidance.

Our top POS system for takeaways is Lightspeed, closely followed by TouchBistro and Square.

In order for your takeaway business to deliver success in 2024 and beyond, you’ll need to serve customers quickly while producing delicious food and drinks… but you already knew that. It’s the best takeaway POS systems that can really help take your business to the next level.

You don’t need to scroll around online because we’ve done all the research for you. We’ve selected the six best takeaway POS systems in Canada, based on factors such as pricing, ease of use, features, and more. Please note all prices are in USD unless otherwise stated.

Here’s a quick overview of our top picks:

Lightspeed

TouchBistro

Square

Nobly POS

Hike

The Benefits of Takeaway POS Systems

The takeaway industry is taking over. Hungry consumers are turning to their food delivery apps now more than ever before, and dropping the high street chain sandwich for independent takeaway stalls.

Investing in the right takeaway or the best restaurant POS system, or upgrading your existing one, can help your business exploit that growth and maximise profits. Here are just some of the ways a POS system can help your takeaway business:

✔ Quickly process orders to keep customers happy and maximise sales

✔ Boost efficiency by sending orders immediately to the kitchen

✔ Reach new customers by integrating with delivery apps such as Deliveroo and UberEats

✔ Create customer loyalty schemes to encourage repeat purchases

✔ View real-time reports to help you make quick improvements

✔ Access inventory management reports to help you restock efficiently

Despite considerable interest, Sainsbury’s does not offer its own fuel card or similar alternative. However, what Sainsbury’s does offer is a multitude of petrol stations across the UK.

While this may sound like a disappointing compromise, these petrol stations’ prices can be discounted through use of various fuel cards – fuel cards which can be used not just at Sainsbury’s locations, but thousands of petrol stations across the country.

If you’d like to receive quotes from various fuel card suppliers (most of which are accepted at Sainsbury’s), you can fill out our quick quote comparison tool, which will allow you to choose the best fuel card for your business.

Sainsbury’s will accept a wide range of fuel cards, expediting your business’ vehicle process and potentially offering discounts

What Fuel Cards Can You Use at Sainsbury’s?

Sadly, Sainsbury’s doesn’t offer its own fuel card. All hope is not lost, however, as it still accepts various fuel cards. If you’re burning to use a fuel card at a Sainsbury’s petrol station, there are multiple options that can get you fuel discounts at not only Sainsbury’s petrol stations, but petrol stations across the country! Let’s look at some of our favourites, all of which can be used at Sainsbury’s petrol stations.

Allstar One

UK Fuels Fleetone

Texaco Fastfuel

The Fuel Store Card

Why Should You Use a Fuel Card at Sainsbury’s?

If your business uses any kind of road vehicle, there are many reasons to invest in a fuel card. Firstly, fuel cards can offer you discounts on petrol, which, when operating a business with multiple vehicles, can add up to be a considerable amount of money saved over time.

Fuel cards don’t just offer discounts on fuel, however. They expedite and improve the fuel-purchasing process in multiple ways, like logging employee history and activity, controlling which of your employees can spend how much, and compiling all this info into various reports and data visualisations.

Finally, it doesn’t take much usage to make it worth the time. A fuel card is only a couple of pounds a month (per individual card), so the discounts you can claim through the fuel card can ensure it truly does pay for itself.

Our Methodology: How Did We Do Our Research?

Five researchers carried out in-depth research into UK fuel cards according to a comparison framework designed by our research team leader. For each card we’ve asked these questions:

• How convenient is it to use?
• How helpful is it for managing fuel expenses?
• What can it do to ensure your company’s funds are secure?
• What extra benefits do you receive from using it?

We’ve also broken down each card by fee structure, fuel type, network coverage and more to offer you the easiest choice.

Next Steps

While Sainsbury’s doesn’t offer its own fuel card system, there are definitely still ways to take advantage of its petrol stations. If you’re interested in a fuel card, you might want to secure some quotes before committing to a certain provider. If this is the case, you could benefit from filling out our free quote comparison form.

By entering your business’ information, you’ll be given quotes for fuel cards that suit your specific needs. This will allow you to save money and streamline your business’ fuel consumption, making sure you have one less thing to worry about.

Shopify is our pick of the best ecommerce platforms on the market today. With slick inventory functions and marvellous multichannel integrations, Shopify is simply the best – though Wix is not far behind.

We know how tough it is to track down the best ecommerce platforms Australia has on offer. While you’re busy running operations, we’ve done the dirty work of in-depth ecommerce platform comparison – and the results are in.

The 5 Best Ecommerce Platforms:

1. Shopify – 4.7/5
2. Wix – 4.6/5
3. BigCommerce – 4.4/5
4. Square – 4.4/5
5. Squarespace – 4.3/5

We compared online shops based on factors that matter most to Australian businesses: sales features, design, marketing tools, ease of use and value for money. Using our 15+ years of tech review expertise, Expert Market researchers gave each platform a ranking out of five (both overall and for each factor) and asked everyday users to try the platforms, too.

Check out our comparison table followed by a handy overview of the best ecommerce platforms.

Shopify 4.7/5

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers a 14-day free trial period and five pricing plans, which we’ve converted from USD to AUD (to the nearest dollar).
Be aware, with Shopify Starter you can’t build an online store, but you can add sales functions to your existing website or social media channels.

For more detail, check out our Shopify pricing guide. Or take a look at our quick price plan comparison table:

Wix Ecommerce 4.6/5

Wix eCommerce Pricing

Wix offers a 14-day free trial on its premium plans, with three ecommerce-specific plans to choose from:

Sometimes it can help to compare two similar ecommerce providers directly. If you’re looking for more in-depth insight into Wix vs Squarespace, we’ve written a comparison guide to help you.

BigCommerce 4.4/5

BigCommerce Pricing

BigCommerce offers a generous 15-day free trial period, and three core price plans in USD, which we’ve converted to AUD (enterprise pricing is available upon request):

Square Online 4.4/5

Square Online Pricing

Square Online has four price plans to choose from:

Squarespace Ecommerce 4.3/5

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial period and has four main pricing plans. Also, don’t forget you can save 10% on Squarespace by using code EM10 at the checkout.

If you need a website for your business – you’re in the right place. We’ve tested over a dozen website builders on 70+ different features and come up with final scores.

Wix is the top performing website builder: easy to use no matter your tech skills. It’s affordable ($16-$45 a month), its websites look great, and its appointment booking features are particularly useful.

But you may need another tool instead, depending on your business type. Shopify is our expert recommendation if you’re looking to scale up a retail outfit.

Read on for our comparison guide to the best website builders – looking at value for money, ease of use, range of features, and design options.

Head to head: Best website builders

Rivalry is high between the major website builder brands. Although many contain really similar features, there are differences in the quality and performance of each. We’ll go into more detail in the individual reviews below, but for now let’s look at the overall comparison.

Click the left and right arrows to scroll the table and compare features:

Pricing is wildly different depending on which product you’re looking at. For instance, you’ll notice that Shopify is much more expensive than GoDaddy. The reason is they’re aimed at completely different people: if you’re a microbusiness, or focused more on services and appointments, then GoDaddy may be the best web builder for you.

But if you’re scaling up a business selling products, (either online only or to support a brick-and-mortar shop), Shopify is a better choice. Shopify’s sales features (including inventory oversight, order management, and shipping options) are far more advanced than GoDaddy’s, hence the higher price tag.

1. Wix: Best All-Rounder

• Mid price range
• Beginner-friendly website editing
• More templates than any competitor
• Best suited to: hospitality and gyms

Scoring a mighty 4.9/5 in our comprehensive testing, Wix certainly earns its place as the best website builder. Its range of features goes above the basic expectations. Sure you can book appointments, sell products, and install a chatbot – but its Fit By Wix app gives health and fitness clubs a digital platform to host community groups.

While its editor is not hard to use, you may find it takes an irritatingly long time to load. One of our focus group users complained they were “sat watching the spinning wheel of doom” on a loading screen a little too often. But the prebuilt sections allow you to create a well-functioning website much quicker than typing everything yourself.

How does Wix stack up to the competition?

Wix beats rival platforms in most key areas: scoring 4.8/5 in our ‘Website Features’ category, its nearest competitor is Squarespace, which scored 4.6. Wix came top of the charts in ‘Design Functions’, ‘Customer Support’, and ‘Ease of Use’ as well.

But Wix lacks unlimited storage space, unlike Weebly, GoDaddy, and almost all other competitors which offer this as standard.

Wix pricing

Wix offers a 14-day free trial on its premium plans, with several plans to choose from. Only three of these offer the chance to sell online, so look carefully at the features included in each one:

You can find more details on its highs and lows in our detailed Wix review.

2. Squarespace: Best for Portfolios

• Strong value for money
• Unlimited storage space and bandwidth
• Focus on beautiful design
• Best suited to: photographers, visual artists

Nipping at Wix’s heels is Squarespace with an overall score of 4.8/5. The key difference is you’ll get photo uploads without limits on Squarespace. That, combined with its world class template designs, is why it’s best suited to image-centric websites. If you need to sell a vision, Squarespace is the web platform for you.

This year, Squarespace has upgraded its editor so editing your design is more precise. Drag-and-drop blocks now align and resize to match nearby elements. A grid pattern appears while you’re moving pieces around, which is useful as a set of guidelines.

How does Squarespace compare with rivals?

Squarespace offers a higher quality editing experience compared with GoDaddy and Weebly. GoDaddy only allows you to move blocks up and down, and you won’t be able to drag and drop individual images or text boxes like you can with Squarespace.

That said, it’s a less sophisticated online shop option compared with Shopify. For instance, you can’t accept multiple currencies on your Squarespace shop but you can with Shopify.

Squarespace pricing

Squarespace’s pricing plans include a 14-day free trial period and two ecommerce-specific plans to choose from. Also, don’t forget you can save 10% on Squarespace by using code EM10 at the checkout.

If you need a closer look at what’s included, check out our Squarespace review.

3. Shopify: Best for Sales Features

• More expensive than most
• Variable transaction fees
• Sync inventory across multiple locations
• Best suited to: SMB retailers looking to scale

Shopify is rather different to your standard website builder because it’s really focused on retail and inventory management. With Squarespace and Wix, you begin by customizing your website’s design. But Shopify’s dashboard is mainly for managing orders, products, and sales channels. Design is secondary.

Unlike Squarespace, you can link Shopify to Point of Sale hardware (such as Shopify POS). Shopify is also introducing AI features to help retailers. As of April 2023, you can use Shopify Magic to generate product descriptions in your preferred tone based on a few keywords.

Shopify’s newest AI tool Sidekick is designed to be a commerce assistant. It can carry out various tasks such as adding discounts or creating reports you request. This AI tool makes it a lot easier to run an online store as you can have it carry out some of your to-do list for you.

There are also two new apps: Bundles and Subscription which are handy tools to diversify your website’s offerings. The Bundles app can be used to create bundles and if you have Shopify Plus, you can create custom bundles using Shopify APIs. A bundle is typically different but related products sold together or products which aren’t sold separately but are sold together.

The Shopify Subscription is a free app that can be used to select specific products for subscription and customise delivery frequencies. Your customers can set up a subscription, pause, or skip orders. The subscription app opens up another revenue stream for your business and encourages customer loyalty.

How does Shopify match up to competitors?

Shopify is more expensive than any other website builder on this list. That’s because it’s designed to make you money through advanced retail operations; Shopify has far superior sales features (particularly when it comes to selling abroad) compared to Wix, GoDaddy, Squarespace or Hostinger. For a quick example, you can list limitless products with Shopify, whereas Hostinger only allows up to 500.

It’s a little light on templates though – there are around 130 Shopify themes to choose from, and only 12 are free (Wix has 900 at no extra cost, and there are thousands for WordPress). If you need a pretty website more than you need excellent sales features, you should choose Squarespace over Shopify.

Shopify pricing

Shopify used to offer a 14-day free trial period, but this shrunk to just three days in 2023. Anyway, here are Shopify’s price plans:

4. GoDaddy: Best for speedy set up

• On the cheaper side
• Easy to use
• Send hundreds of marketing emails monthly
• Best suited to: time-poor entrepreneurs

GoDaddy is known as a domain registrar and hosting provider, so its websites are highly secure and unlikely to drop offline. Its website builder works well, but you’ll get absolutely no frills on the cheaper plans. Even the ability to take payments for appointments only starts at the $14.99 a month Premium plan.

One of the best things about GoDaddy is its simplicity – creating a web presence is a low stress experience. That’s why it scored 4.1/5 in our ‘Ease of Use’ category. The Ecommerce plan is suitable only for smaller shops without ambitious plans. So if you’re looking to sell in several countries, pick Shopify over GoDaddy.

How does GoDaddy fare against its foes?

GoDaddy has less precise design options than Squarespace, fewer business features than Wix, and limited selling options compared with Shopify. But GoDaddy is faster and simpler to use than all of them. And definitely lighter on the wallet than Shopify.

Honestly, GoDaddy doesn’t come with the perks of its near-priced competitors. While Wix and Squarespace come with a year’s free domain, GoDaddy (surprisingly, as it’s a major domain registrar) does not.

GoDaddy pricing

GoDaddy has a 30-day free trial, plus a 30-day money back guarantee if you change your mind after buying it. That makes it pretty low risk for you, financially. Here are the price plans (only the top one is for selling online):

Although it’s convenient and simple, GoDaddy has some serious limitations in its features for business. So you should check out our full GoDaddy review before going ahead with it.

5. Hostinger: Best for Multiple Websites

• Up to 100 websites
• No app store
• AI website writing tool
• Best suited to: entrepreneurs looking to scale up fast

Hostinger is a less well-known website builder provider (it bought Zyro in 2022, using it as a blueprint for its own product). As you can likely tell from the name, Hostinger is a hosting and email provider, but also a domain registrar. For that reason, it’s well placed to offer secure web hosting, DNS firewall, and unlimited bandwidth. You’ll also get the added bonus of daily and weekly backups, with the option of restoring your website if needed.

You’re able to build up to 100 websites with unlimited SSL security certificates included. Plus these all come with AI tools and the ability to sell up to 500 products on each. That makes Hostinger a cost-savvy solution to scaling at speed.

How does Hostinger measure up to similar providers?

For a provider that specialises in hosting and web security, Hostinger’s design editor is surprisingly high quality. Far more flexible than GoDaddy, and easier to use than Shopify, Hostinger’s editor has a similar grid alignment to Squarespace. The unique “Add shape” feature gives you more creative freedom than GoDaddy.

Yet Hostinger lacks a couple of features you’d get as standard with Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy; for instance, you can’t create and post social content from within your Hostinger site.

Hostinger’s website builder isn’t a good choice for bloggers or subscriber content, either. You can’t create a paid members area, and there’s no blog archive or comments. You’d be better off with WordPress, which has blog analytics and specific SEO tools (that Hostinger lacks).

Hostinger pricing

There’s just one Hostinger website builder price plan, named ‘Website Builder & Hosting’. From $1.99 per month , it’s very affordable compared to competitors.

Note: Hostinger does not list its prices in AUD, prices pictured here are in USD.

Hostinger pricing is displayed in a slightly confusing way on its website because the discount offer makes it seem like the website builder costs $1.99 monthly. Which would be the cheapest premium website builder on the planet. But pay attention to the term, you’ll actually need to pay the entire yearly fee upfront.

Read our full review of Hostinger here.

6. WordPress: Best value for money

• Over 9,000 free templates
• Customization through apps or code
• Unlimited pages and contributors
• Best suited to: Publishers and content creators

Professional grade web content management: it’s yours for free with WordPress. There’s a good reason 43% of all websites use WordPress; the wealth of handy plugins make it endlessly versatile. Not to mention the opportunity to upload your own theme (meaning web layout design), which you can’t do with Wix (a platform that won’t even let you export your website).

The main benefit of WordPress is the ability to edit the website according to your exact preferences. Sure, you may need some knowledge of computer programming, but it’s a great platform to start learning that. And there’s plenty you can do without that skillset. The plethora of inbuilt features and free add-ons is why WordPress.com scored 4.4/5 for ‘Value for Money’: higher than any other leading website builder we tested.

How does WordPress look next to similar website builders?

It’s tempting to class WordPress in a league of its own due to its highly customizable nature. But the truth is, WordPress may be more than you need. If you’re not interested in fiddling around with plugins and aren’t fussy about exactly how your website looks, a Standard GoDaddy plan may be just what you need instead.

That said, if you want to publish articles, blog posts and company updates (or make money from paid content), you’d be a fool to pick any other platform than WordPress.

WordPress pricing

There’s a generous free WordPress plan to get started with – and you’ll get far with that plan. But if you’re ready to invest, we recommend the Premium plan for improved website performance and better scaling capacity.

Even in its free plan, if you’d like to venture into ecommerce territory, you can use its Woocommerce add-on and start selling through your website at no extra cost. Shopify, for instance, doesn’t allow you to do that for free – something we delve into in more detail in our Woocommerce vs Shopify comparison.

If there’s one universal truth, it’s that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Or a free company car. If you run a business that supplies cars to its employees, or if you’re an employee who receives a company car, you’ll need to be aware of the benefit-in-kind tax you owe.

Benefit-in-kind tax is a tax on noteworthy company benefits, most commonly referring to a company car. This tax is paid by the employee, alongside their standard income taxes. The exact tax is calculated using the car’s make and model, as well as its emissions.

While benefit-in-kind tax is largely associated with business cars, it can apply to other benefits, like living accommodation, medical insurance, and loans. Benefit-in-kind tax doesn’t apply to fuel cards, which fall under the umbrella of “small enough not to worry about,” alongside free meals and on-site gyms. If you’re interested in a fuel card for your own business, you can use our free quote tool to nail down some estimates of how much it would cost you.

What Is the Benefit-in-Kind Tax?

It’s an odd name, “benefit-in-kind tax.” Not as immediately understandable as “income tax” or “property tax,” so what is it? Basically, it means that as an employee, if you’re given a significant benefit (for example, a company car), that benefit will come with its own tax implications.

For example, if you’re given accommodation through your work, you’ll need to pay a bit of tax on that, as you’d be missing out on paying standard property tax, and we can’t have that. Benefit-in-kind tax won’t break the bank but is still considerable and necessary for any large company benefits, like cars or homes.

The exact amount paid will rely on various factors, like the value of the car/property, the car’s emissions, and the kind of car it is (diesel, electric). This tax is calculated by the business and removed from the employee’s pay, so the employee themselves won’t need to calculate it, though they should be aware of it.

How Do You Calculate the Benefit-in-Kind Tax?

To calculate benefit-in-kind tax for a car as an example, multiply the P11D value of the car model alongside the vehicle’s BIK percentage band, which is determined by the vehicle’s average CO2 emissions. Finally, multiply that figure to receive the amount of tax needed to be paid.

To make things easier, you can use HMRC’s calculator and forms.

The BIK rate will be increased slightly if the vehicle is a diesel vehicle. But the good news is that if the vehicle is electric, you won’t need to pay any benefit-in-kind tax for the first two years, and only 2% from then on. Another reason to go green!

If you have use of a company car with free fuel during your personal time, unfortunately, that fuel isn’t actually free. To determine how much tax you should pay on the fuel, you’ll need to calculate the car’s benefit in kind with a fuel charge multiplier.

Once you have your figure, you can work out whether it makes more sense to receive ‘free’ fuel, or to fill up yourself. That will depend on your fuel consumption and mileage.

It bears emphasis that while benefit-in-kind tax is paid by the employee, not the employer, the employer still needs to calculate it and remove it from the employee’s final payslip, just like standard income tax, so the average company-car enjoyer won’t need to worry about figuring it out themselves.

Are Fuel Cards a Benefit-in-Kind Benefit?

When used for business purposes, fuel cards are not classed as taxable benefits by the UK government. The only situation in which you’d be liable to pay benefit-in-kind tax on a fuel card, is if it was used to cover the cost of personal travel.

While they may fall under the umbrella of company benefits (as some employees may be allowed to use the company fuel cards to fill their own vehicles), the fact that it’s being used in a professional capacity ensures that it’s tax-free.

Fuel cards aren’t the only company benefit that flies under the radar of benefit-in-kind tax. Company meals, company gyms, or any resources that are shared and available to all employees equally are not taxable benefits.

Next Steps

The good thing about benefit-in-kind tax is that you likely don’t have to worry about the next steps. If you’re in the position to need to worry about benefit-in-kind tax, your employer will manage it before you even receive your salary.

However, you may be an employer looking to figure out how to optimize your payroll process, and finding yourself a bit stuck at benefit-in-kind taxes. If this is the case, you could use the help of a payroll service, which can ensure that you’re all set when it comes to paying your employees and their taxes.

If you’re worried about whether or not you need to pay benefit-in-kind taxes on fuel cards, you can rest easy. As long as it’s purely for work purposes, you won’t need to worry about it. If you’re interested in a fuel card, you can get free quotes through our quote comparison tool. By entering your business’ information, you’ll be able to receive quotes from various fuel card providers, allowing you to make the best decision.

A point of sale (POS) system is a combination of software and hardware that allows your business to process transactions, as well as managing stock levels, taking orders, and sending marketing emails.

There are different types of POS systems, and we’ll outline them below – read on to find the right one for your business.

You can also use our free comparison tool to be matched up with trusted providers. Just give us a few brief details and we’ll do the rest. You’ll then be contacted by POS suppliers with no-obligation quotes.

What Are the Different Types of POS System?

1. Terminal
2. Mobile
3. Cloud based
4. Open source

Below we’ll delve into each type, who they’re best for and their pros and cons.

1. Terminal

Terminal POS systems are hardware systems that take card payments at retail locations. Traditionally, you might think of terminal systems are big clunky machines found in most shops, however POS providers are attempting to move away from this. Instead, they are offering smaller, sleeker and more portable machines. Terminal POS systems are great for retailers.

We recommend Square, Vend and EPOS Now.

2. Mobile

Mobile POS systems are a portable system that can be used on a smartphone or tablet. This system can process transactions from these devices and carry out tons of other functions. A mobile POS system is best for businesses that are on-the-move like mobile hairdressers or market stalls. These mobile systems are tailored, for example, a POS for a food truck can typically be stripped down compared to a full-service restaurant.

We recommend Square, Clover and Toast.

3. Cloud based

Cloud-based POS systems run on the cloud, which means you can use them on iPads or even your mobile. These systems can be accessed from anywhere in the world, which means you can keep an eye on things even if you’re not in the country!

Cloud-based systems provide an easy, secure and remote way to manage your business. We recommend cloud-based systems for businesses in the hospitality industry.

4. Open source

An open-source POS system is software with a free-to-use source code. This means you don’t need to pay anything to have a POS system. Open-source systems can be edited or spread by anyone, making them a good option for small businesses or startups.

Open-source systems can be configured with a lot of the current hardware on the market.

How Much Does a POS System Cost?

Your POS system costs will depend on your business size, sales volume, and general POS system needs. However, once you take the hardware, software, merchant account fees, and installation fees into account, you’ll typically end up making an investment of $1,250, then pay approximately $1,000 per year to use the POS system.

What are the Benefits of a POS System?

POS systems provide your business with tons of benefits, such as:

• Better inventory management – manage inventory in real time so you never have to worry about running out again
• Better customer management – give your customers a smoother experience and develop a long-term relationship with them by storing their contacts on the system so you can send out marketing emails, discounts, offers and more
• Better ordering management – keep track of all of the orders you place so you can manage repeat orders and track your finances accurately
• Better employee management – POS systems allow you to record each employee’s hours, sales, and more giving you the ability to monitor performance better. Some POS systems offer scheduling tools so you can manage everything on one platform

Which Type of POS System Is Right for You?

If you’re a startup or small business with a tight budget and tech-savviness, we recommend an open-source POS system.

If you’re a business on the go, we recommend a mobile POS system.

Cloud-based systems are the best option for those in the hospitality industry.

We recommend terminal POS systems for retailers.

If you’re still on the hunt for a provider, you can use our free quote tool to be matched up with a supplier for your business.

They say the best things in life are free – does that include payroll software?

We’ve made it easy for you to browse the best free payroll software available and find out if it’s a good fit for your business.

We’ve done all the hard work so you don’t have to, and found the best free payroll software on the market.

1. IRIS – Best all-around
2. HMRC Basic PAYE Tools – Best for checking employee’s NI number
3. Shape Payroll – Best for ease of use
4. Primo Payroll – Best for auto-enrolment
5. Enrol Payroll – Best for self-service

Is Free Payroll Software Worth It?

Free software gives businesses the ability to run payroll without any overhead fees. This is super helpful at the beginning stages of a business when you might not have the funds to invest.

There are limitations with free software, as most of them only offer basic features. Paid software provides automation, comprehensive reporting and employee access. These features take away the effort and stress of manual tasks and ensure you stay compliant. Your employees are able to access their own portal and request holiday, check payslips and update their personal details.

We recommend free payroll software for micro-businesses because most providers offer free software for three to 10 employees, and you don’t need a lot of the features paid software has at this stage of your business.

As your business grows, you might find that it’s no longer sustainable to manually carry out payroll tasks or you have too many employees to qualify for free software, you can often easily scale up to a paid version.

How much does payroll software typically cost?

Paid payroll software typically costs around £10 for a basic package.

Paid payroll services are usually either fully managed or part-managed. A fully managed service tends to cost around £4–£6 per employee, per month, and pension plan auto-enrolment costs around £1.50–£2 per employee, per month. If you want HR tools, this will cost you £10–£25 per employee, per month.

Part-managed payroll services are harder to price, as this cost depends on which services you want to outsource. You can expect to pay around £2–£3 per employee, per month.

How We Test Payroll Products and Services for Businesses

We tested eight market-leading payroll products and services to evaluate them in terms of functionality, usability, data security, and customer support so we can make the most useful recommendations to UK businesses.

Our rigorous testing process means these products have been scored and rated in five main categories of investigation and 10 subcategories – in fact, we covered 56 areas of investigation in total. We then gave each category score a ‘relevance weighting’ to ensure the product’s final score perfectly reflects the needs and requirements of Expert Market readers – and that’s our product research algorithm in a nutshell!

Our main testing categories for payroll products and services are:

Control: the level of customisation and flexibility provided by the payroll software in managing and processing payroll, such as the ability to define pay periods, setup tax withholding rules, and manage employee data.

Data Security: the measures and protocols implemented by the payroll software to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive payroll information.

Expertise: the level of knowledge and guidance provided by the payroll software vendor or support team. This can include resources such as documentation, tutorials, and training materials.

Scalability: the ability of the payroll software to accommodate the growth and changing needs of a business, including the capacity to handle an increasing number of employees and support multiple locations or entities.

Customer Support: the various channels and methods available for users to seek assistance and support from the payroll software vendor, such as email or ticket-based support, phone support, or live chat.

The Expert Market Product Testing Process

As business costs rise in Britain and inflation in the UK remains high, combining accounting and payroll in one provider is a great way to cut down costs. Plus, their integration easies processes and gives you more time to focus on growing your ventures.

Out of the nine providers we tested, Iris Staffology offers the best accounting and payroll software in the market. Overall, we found it to be the most versatile, have the most third-party integrations, and offer very transparent pricing, making it the most suitable software for most businesses.

That said, with varying options on the market, we know it can be difficult to make the right choice. We can help you with that if you use our free quote tool to be matched up with suppliers for your business.

However, if you’d like to know more beforehand, head to our top picks list below, in which we cover Iris Staffology as well as four other providers that stood out in our research – one of which might serve you better depending on your needs.

Top five accounting and payroll software providers

1. Iris Staffology – Best combined payroll and accounting software

Iris Staffology tops our list because of the number of boxes it ticks. It offers both part-managed and fully-managed service, unlike TopSource, which only offers an outsourced service.

Also, its transparent pricing is a rarity in the payroll market, which largely operates on a quoting basis. Out of the providers on this list, only Sage Payroll also offers it. QuickBooks and Xero, while openly priced, are primarily accounting platforms rather than payroll ones.

Iris Staffology doesn’t offer a native accounting platform, but links up with seven third-party providers: Sage, Xero, Reckon One, AccountsIQ, QuickBooks and Twinfield. It also integrates with other 12 solutions, in areas such as HR and benefits management. In comparison, TopSource also integrates with seven accounting platforms but lacks any other integrations. This makes Iris Staffology a better pick if you’re looking to streamline your business and centralise operations.

2. QuickBooks – Best for a full tax service

Like Sage Payroll, QuickBooks Payroll integrates easily with its provider’s main solution – in this case, QuickBooks Online. If you’re already using that platform, your bookkeeping records and reporting can be synced up and updated in real time each pay cycle, making it easy for you to share payroll info with your accountant.

On the flip side, like Xero Payroll, QuickBooks Payroll is only available as an add-on of its provider’s accounting software, which means you must get them wholesale to use them. This is bad news if you plan on keeping your current accounting program and integrating it with QuickBooks, because you’ll inevitably end up paying for two accounting services.

That said, apart from its entry-level Self-Employed plan, all of QuickBooks plans include full-service payroll, which is rare to find as other payroll providers tend to limit the number of services available depending on how much you’re paying. All of the plans include unlimited payroll runs, automated tax calculations and filing, direct deposit and an employee portal.

3. TopSource – Best outsourced payroll and accounting service

As a fully-managed solution, TopSource is designed for business owners who lack a dedicated accounting team in-house and are happy for payroll and accounting management to be outsourced. If that’s not your case, Iris Staffology will be a better option, as it offers a part-managed version.

TopSource offers integration with seven third-party accounting platforms: Xero, Sage, MS Dynamics, Navision, CODA, QuickBooks and Tally. However, like QuickBooks, it also offers a native accounting service, in which its team of experts take care of this operation for you.

4. Sage – Best for native software suite

Sage offers a clean, simple and intuitive software for payroll, accounting, CRM and more. Its cloud-based payroll software has accounting add-ons, so you have one organised platform for all your business needs.

Overall, it packs a comprehensive native software, which we found impressive. If you’re looking for a platform that can handle several aspects of your business without you having to integrate with third-party programs, Sage is a great choice.

Sage Payroll structure its payroll submission into a quick 4-step process, with the provider handling all the calculations. If maths aren’t your strength, this can ensure your payroll is accurate. Sage is HMRC-compliant, so you can send real-time data to HMRC with just a click.

Like Xero, Sage has 24/7 online customer support and free telephone support. This is incredibly helpful if you hit a blocker with your submission and need to find a last-minute workaround.

5. Xero – Best for ease of use

Xero is a accounting software that easily integrates with a native payroll service provided as an add-on. Unlike Sage, Xero doesn’t offer these services separately, though this is also the case with QuickBooks. Like Iris Staffology, Xero is cloud-based and has a mobile app, so you can access it from anywhere in the world.

It packs an intuitive, easy to use interface that automates several tasks related to payroll, like pension re-enrolment and leave calculation. Because of this, Xero is particularly suitable for small businesses owners who don’t have complicated accounting needs. By connecting to Stripe, GoCardless and others, you can accept payments online and get paid twice as quickly.

What is payroll accounting software?

Payroll accounting software is software that offers tools to help you run your payroll and accounting. This includes automated calculations, NI deductions, taxes, invoicing and billing.

How much does payroll and accounting software cost?

Payroll and accounting software costs will depend on the number of employees in your business. Prices start from around £7 a month for a basic package.

What are the benefits of outsourcing payroll?

Outsourcing payroll gives you extra time to work on other important parts of your business. Running payroll in-house can take up a chunk of your resources, but by outsourcing you can have peace of mind and more time on your hands.

Outsourcing also reduces your cost to hire and train staff to run payroll. Although you have to pay to outsource, this can often work out cheaper when compared to running payroll in-house.

Outsourcing also reduces the chance of misfiling or not filing on time, along with other HMRC related blunders. If this sounds like the best option for your business, there are many payroll companies to choose from.

How can you make the right decision for your business?

When choosing the best payroll solution for your business, take into account your budget, pay frequency, HMRC compliancy, invoicing and billing tools.

These are important factors, as every business is different and has its own set of needs. Considering the size and frequency of your cash flow means you have a bigger chance of finding a solution within your budget. Also, taking stock of your potential provider’s features is a good way to ensure you pick one that’s truly useful to you and one that doesn’t make you pay for tools your business doesn’t need.

Our Methodology: How Did We Decide on the Best Payroll Software?

Five researchers carried out in-depth research into payroll software platforms according to a comparison framework designed by our research team leader. For each provider we’ve asked these questions:

• How much control does it give you over your payroll process?
• How secure is it? What security measures does it take to protect your data?
• How much help and expertise does it offer when it comes to taxes and compliance?
• How scalable is the product? Can it grow alongside your company?
• How helpful is its customer support offering?

We’ve factored all these questions into our rating system and come out with a ranking of the best payroll software platforms.

Our research puts Wix at the top of the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses leaderboard, closely followed by Squarespace and then Square Online (yes, they are different). These three online store creators are the best around.

We rated each ecommerce platform according to criteria that matter most for small businesses, including value for money, sales features, marketing tools and ease of use. We combined category testing with user trials to calculate a score out of five for each platform. In this way, we’ve made it simple to compare them on a like-for-like basis.

Small business doesn’t mean small workload, and some days it can feel like you’re holding the sky up with your bare hands. Even some selling methods which may be known for their ease of operation, like dropshipping, can take a lot of effort and time to manage. You’ve got to find productivity hacks where you can – and creating a solid ecommerce website is a very good place to start. To know more, just head below.

The 6 Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Businesses:

Our research + user testing = overall score out of 5

1. Wix – 4.7
2. Squarespace – 4.6
3. Square Online – 4.5
4. Shopify – 4.1
5. BigCommerce – 4.0
6. GoDaddy – 3.9

Check out our comparison table followed by ecommerce platform deep dives. Psst – if your company is already growing you may want to check out our guide to the best ecommerce platforms for bigger businesses. 

Wix 4.7/5

Wix Pricing

Wix offers a 14-day free trial period on its premium plans, of which there are three ecommerce-specific options.

Squarespace 4.6/5

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial when you sign up to one of its ecommerce plans.

Plus, you can save 10% on your subscription by using code EM10 at checkout.

Square Online 4.5/5

Square Online Pricing

Square has four price plans to choose from:

Shopify 4.1/5

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers a 14-day free trial period, so you can test its tools and build your entire online store before spending a penny. If you’re happy with Shopify after that period, you’ll then need to upgrade to one of Shopify’s paid plans:

BigCommerce 4/5

BigCommerce Pricing

BigCommerce offers a one-month free trial when you sign up to one of its three core plans:

Prices converted from USD to CAD based on conversion rates on April 13, 2023.

GoDaddy 3.9/5

GoDaddy Pricing

GoDaddy offers a generous one-month free trial on its ecommerce-specific price plan:

Here’s a quick roundup of our three best ecommerce platforms for small businesses…

1. Wix came out on top thanks to its strong SEO features and improved sales opportunities.
2. Squarespace is the better option if you want an easy online store without sweating over design details.
3. Square Online is the best value for money, combining ease of use with the option of a totally free plan.

Our research identified Wix as the winner of the best website builders, due to its huge array of features and flexible design tools.

But what are the best website builders for Canadian businesses today? With the sheer mass of website builders available, it’s easy to feel lost in the wilderness without a map.

Instead of wasting hours trudging through a forest of confusing marketing materials, why not take a look at our handy guide for direction? Whether you’re running a large enterprise, a consulting business, a charitable organization or another professional service, you need a website that’s robust yet adaptable.

We asked test users their opinions on dozens of web builders’ functionality, features, ease of use, value for money and customer support. Using their responses along with our 15+ years of experience, we gave each web builder a score out of five. We’ve also looked at the best portfolio website builders and the best website builders for SEO.

Though they both scored a near-perfect 4.8/5, Wix came just ahead of Squarespace owing to its improved features score – up 18% compared to the previous research round.

The Best Web Builders, Rated Out of 5:

1. Wix (4.8)
2. Squarespace (4.8)
3. Godaddy (4.2)
4. Weebly (3.9)

Here’s a helpful comparison chart so you can compare the best website builders at a glance. For in-depth comparisons, simply keep reading.

Wix 4.8/5

Would suit your business if you are not a tech expert

Wix Pricing

Wix has four plans for building websites. Connect Domain is not a full premium plan – instead it simply allows you to add a custom domain name to your website. For Wix’s premium features, you’ll need to sign up to at least the Combo plan at CAD$15per month.

Wix also has a free plan, but it comes with Wix adverts on every page, plus a ‘.wix.com’ subdomain – which can make your site look unprofessional. For that reason, we’d recommend the premium plans for building your business website:

Wix is our top choice for businesses looking to expand customer markets.

If you’re looking to build out your customer base in other countries, Wix is the way forward. A big reason Wix scored higher in our research this time around is the improvements made to blogging and internationalization. Wix translates sites into 100 languages, far more than any other platform we know of. Blogs are a great way to raise brand awareness and Wix supports blog analytics, social sharing and blog-specific SEO.

Be sure to look into our Wix pricing feature so you can compare the plans in detail.

Squarespace 4.8/5

Would suit your business if you want a beautiful website

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial, and has two website builder plans to choose from. Remember that Expert Market readers can save 10% on Squarespace by using code EM10 at checkout.

GoDaddy 4.2/5

Would suit your business if you want to get online quickly

Weebly 3.9/5

Would suit your business if you want value for money

Weebly Pricing

Weebly has three website builder plans to choose from. Like Wix, it has a free plan, but it comes with Weebly adverts on each page, which can make your site look amateurish. We recommend signing up to one of these price plans instead:

The Best Free Website Builder for Canadian Businesses

Wix is the best free website builder because it offers the most features and free apps.

That said, free website builders aren’t the best option for a business that wants to be taken seriously. Our test users felt that free options offered extremely limited functionality, and they disliked the ubiquitous branding. By contrast, paid tools offer the chance to craft your own domain name and present a more professional image.

Price-conscious companies would be best off opting for a cheap premium option – for example, it’s well worth looking out for half price Wix premium offers that periodically crop up. These put the Wix Unlimited plan at CAD$10 per month and Wix VIP at CAD$22per month.

The Best Website Builder for SEO

When it comes to attracting new customers online, SEO is your best friend. Certain web builders have better SEO-specific features than others. If you want your business website to appear higher on SERP (search-engine results pages) it’s best to choose a web builder with this in mind from the outset.

We found the best website builders for SEO are:

1. Wix
2. Squarespace
3. WordPress

Wix offers a full suite of SEO tools, including best practice prompts – which Squarespace and WordPress do not include. Nevertheless, all three are very strong in SEO capabilities, according to our test users. Squarespace is the only one of the three to actually provide keyword support.

The Best Portfolio Website Builders

A digital portfolio is now a must-have for any artist today. In order to showcase your talents to their fullest, it’s critical to select a reliable portfolio website builder. Fortunately for you, we’ve included portfolio-specific analysis in our research.

The best portfolio website builders are:

1. Squarespace
2. Wix
3. GoDaddy

Our researchers graded portfolio builders according to their affordability, ease of use, design and SEO functions. We selected these criteria given their paramount importance to creative professionals who need to showcase their work clearly and carefully.

Squarespace achieved a staggering 97% overall in our tests, mainly thanks to its wide range of design templates and top notch customer support.

Expert verdict

The best website builders are Wix and Squarespace, both scoring an impressive 4.8/5. While they achieved the same points score, Wix is aimed at beginner website builders, whereas Squarespace would suit someone looking to flex their creative skills.

For those looking for an efficient and effective website, Wix is the solid choice. You can get a Wix project up and running within hours! However, if you’re set on creating a stunning web space, Squarespace certainly offers a more advanced creative toolkit.

Remember, if you’re looking to sell products online you’ll need a dedicated ecommerce platform. Our recommended ecommerce provider Shopify’s price plans spread across five tiers so you’re highly likely to find a plan that suits your budget.

Every year, we put market-leading ecommerce platforms through several rounds of hands-on testing against 300+ different criteria to find out who comes out on top for small businesses. This time round, the best ecommerce platform for small businesses in Canada is Shopify.

Shopify’s advanced inventory management features and smart AI text writing mean it’s best suited to ambitious merchants eager to grow their business. But Shopify’s ability to sync with online marketplaces leaves a lot to be desired – plus it’s not the cheapest solution.

With ecommerce sales now making up around 15% of total retail sales in the US, according to the United States Census Bureau, it’s no wonder you’re keen to sell online. A dedicated e-commerce platform is essential for any online business, regardless of its size or status. With so many providers out there, it can be hard to know which to choose. Luckily, while you’ve been perfecting your business plan, we’ve been analyzing the best web store builder software tools.

We compared these programmes based on factors that matter most to Canadian merchants: value for money, design options, ease of use and sales functions. Our researchers scored each platform based on more than 50 aspects, and asked a focus group for their feedback, too.

5 Best Ecommerce Platforms:

Below, you’ll find our comparison table followed by a handy overview of each platform.

All prices in Canadian dollars (we’ve converted Shopify and BigCommerce pricing from USD, as listed on their websites).

1. Shopify: Best Overall

• Subscription pricing: Mid-to-high
• Transaction fees: Fairly high
• Ease of use: 3.5/5

Who We Recommend Shopify For

Shopify is aimed at business-savvy merchants with a very clear business plan. If you’ve sourced your products, decided on your branding, and looking to scale up your sales, then Shopify has the sales features you need.

We recommend Shopify over BigCommerce for sellers with dozens of inventory storage spots. Why? Shopify can cope with up to 1,000 inventory locations (on all plans), whereas BigCommerce facilitates selling and distribution from just four, five or eight (depending on your plan). Wix has much weaker inventory management features than Shopify.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers a 3-day free trial period plus the first month for $1. There’s three core price plans (priced in USD, but we’ve converted to CAD). We go into more detail on the features available at each price tier in our Shopify price guide but here’s a quick overview:

Connecting Marketplaces to Your Shopify Store

There are no native features to connect your Shopify store with any of the main online marketplaces. Exceptions are Facebook and Instagram marketplaces as well as a wholesale option called Handshake. For any of the others, you’ll have to connect an app, which comes with monthly fees. For instance, to connect Etsy, you’ll have to pay $19 per month to synch up to 20,000 products.

Unfortunately, third-party apps can present difficulties with functionality, because Shopify cannot help you when these go wrong. We’ve seen many Shopify community discussions between 2019-2023 trying to find workarounds when Amazon apps stop working.

Shopify’s AI Features

This year Shopify released its AI writing tool Shopify Magic, which we found effective in crafting creative prose for our product descriptions. While Wix has a similar AI text generator, it doesn’t offer the same range of tones of voice as Shopify’s tool.

Similarly, the AI chatbot assistant in the help center was quick and mostly effective at answering my questions about setting up additional sales channels. Its comprehension was not perfect, for instance, it couldn’t understand that the Amazon by Shopify app was no longer supported. Instead, it repeated (outdated) instructions for downloading that very app.

Shopify Pricing

Here’s an overview of Shopify’s pricing plans:

If you’re keen on starting an online store but not sure how it should look, then go and get some style inspiration from our rundown of the best 10 Shopify stores. You’ll be able to pick up some truly handy tips and hints on web store creation from some big brands that already use Shopify.

On the other hand, you may not even know what you want to sell yet. If you’re interested in earning extra income through ecommerce and want to put a lot of effort into the creative branding and marketing side of things, you can always get into dropshipping. This means purchasing inventory after you’ve made a sale so you don’t have any storage fees. Curious? Why not check out our guide on how to start dropshipping with Shopify to learn more.

2. Wix: Best for Bookings and Services

• Subscription pricing: Mid-to-lower end
• Transaction fees: Just the standard credit card rates
• Ease of use: 4/5

Suited to: Services-Based Business Leaders

Wix tops our website builder list thanks to the wide range of features but dips into second place when we consider its sales platform. The reason is its selling features are slightly less generous – Wix limits the number of transactions with automated sales tax, for instance.

Who We Recommend Wix For

Wix is a good all-rounder platform that’s suited to a wide range of business users. It’s not so complicated that only seasoned professionals can use it – we’d comfortably recommend this for beginners with very little web design or even commerce experience. You’ll get more design control than GoDaddy, but it’s not as complicated to configure as WordPress/WooCommerce.

AI-Assisted Store Set-Up

We’re excited about Wix’s use of AI, such as the text generator to speed up content creation. AI assists in the set up process too, with Wix suggesting features you’ll need based on your industry.

Here are some examples:

• If you run a restaurant: table reservations, food delivery, menu listings
• Hotel managers: season-specific room pricing, list add-on services at extra cost
• Fitness enthusiast: bookings (in person or online) via Wix Fit, subscriber-only content,  automated reminders
• Creative professionals: membership areas with paywall content, video streaming

Wix is better for the services industry compared to Square because the latter isn’t set up for paid members-only pages.

Wix Pricing

Wix offers a 14-day money-back guarantee on its premium plans, and we’re glad to offer our readers a discount code: “TAKE10” for 10% off subscriptions. There are three ecommerce-specific plans to choose from:

Wix is one of very few ecommerce platforms that doesn’t charge transaction fees. If you want to find out more about the costs and features of each tier, check out our Wix pricing guide. We’ve also taken a deep dive into the pros and cons of Wix vs Squarespace in case you’d like to take a more in-depth look at those two side-by-side.

3. BigCommerce: Lowest Transaction Fees

• Subscription pricing: Good range of options
• Transaction fees: PayPal (via Braintree) only
• Ease of use: 3.3/5

Suited to: Product Retailers with a Large Customer Base

If your products are popular with everyday shoppers across Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Facebook, and Instagram, then BigCommerce is a convenient platform to manage orders from all of these streams. With Shopify, you’d need to install apps (at extra cost) to achieve the same multichannel sales set-up.

But the best bonus of all has to be the lack of transaction fees across major payment providers.

Another advantage of BigCommerce is the opportunity to speak with its web platform experts on its easily accessible phone line. That means it’s much easier to access customer support on BigCommerce than it is on Wix (you’d need to request a callback through a customer service ticket on the latter).

Who We Recommend BigCommerce For

It has to be said BigCommerce is aimed at larger sales operations or businesses that are looking to scale up in the near future. Its unlimited products and file storage space are intended for thousands, not hundreds, of products.

The lowest-priced Standard plan ($29 per month, paid annually) isn’t great value for money, as it’s missing some key features such as abandoned cart recovery, which is included with all Shopify plans (even its $5 Starter plan). You should aim for a budget of minimum $100 per month to invest in BigCommerce.

BigCommerce Pricing

BigCommerce offers a generous 15-day free trial period, and three core price plans in USD, which we’ve converted to CAD (enterprise pricing is available upon request):

4. Square: Best Free Plan

• Subscription pricing: Affordable
• Transaction fees: Industry standard
• Ease of use: 3.9/5

Suited to: Small-to-Medium Sellers and Local Businesses

You’ll likely have seen Square’s sleek white card readers at bars and stores in your neighborhood. It’s a popular choice of payment terminal, likely due to its very low cost basic hardware. Its website builder product is affordable too – you can sign up to sell online with no monthly subscription fees on the Square Free plan.

This September, Square launched AI-generated product descriptions, which help you to publish your new product pages faster. That’s a really valuable time-saver, and means you won’t have to spend time and money on professional copywriters each time you want to launch a new product range.

Who We Recommend Square For

Square is ideal for entrepreneurs and small business leaders who sell in person as well as online. For instance, if you picture yourself selling through your website, but also attending festivals, and events, and perhaps selling at a brick-and-mortar location, Square is a good choice.

The Square POS (point of sale) hardware devices are, admittedly, an additional expense. However, Square’s ability to offer a very wide range of payment options for your customers is a big pull factor.

Square’s Limited Free Plan

The drawback of the Free plan is the basic nature of the editing tools. You won’t have as much design customization as you would with Square Plus. And you’ll have Square-branded adverts on your site.

But given how speedy, slick and clear Square’s free website builder is, we have little to complain about here.

Widening Sales Features for Local and National Sellers

Square has recently launched improvements to Square for Retail’s checkout including the addition of a “buy online, pick up in-store” option. We love that, across all price plans, you can opt for a courier to come straight to your location as soon as a sale goes through.

Shipping is now more streamlined, thanks to a refreshed Shipments Page, from which vendors can manage online, in-store, and subscription order fulfilment.

However, Square is not the best for international sellers. For $79 a month you can subscribe to either Square Premium or BigCommerce Plus – but only BigCommerce stores accept payments in multiple currencies.

Square Online Pricing

Square Online has four price plans to choose from:

5. Squarespace: Best Looking Online Stores

• Subscription pricing: Lower end
• Transaction fees: Reasonable
• Ease of use: 4.2/5

Suited to: Artists, Creatives, and Visually-Driven Brands

Squarespace works well as a portfolio website, showcasing the aesthetics of your brand with classy web design. Think of your Squarespace website as a virtual art gallery: lots of white space, few features, and impeccable taste.

Who We Recommend Squarespace For

Squarespace is best suited to creative professionals such as photographers, artists, content creators, and high-end wellness or luxury brands. We appreciate Squarespace for its aesthetically appealing web designs and recommend it for portfolio-based selling.

Squarespace’s Lovely Editing Process

Using Squarespace, editing your web design is a really pleasant experience, and feels much smoother than using Shopify, GoDaddy or Square. Unlike most website editors we’ve tested (see our GoDaddy review for comparison), you can move every text box or image to the precise position you’d like.

Squarespace updated its editing experience this year so that a grid appears in the background when you click and drag design elements. This makes it easy to line them up evenly with others on the page.

Squarespace Pricing

Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial period and has two ecommerce-specific pricing plans. Also, don’t forget you can save 10% on Squarespace by using code EM10 at the checkout.

The Best Free Ecommerce Platform

Square Online is the best free ecommerce platform for businesses in Canada. Offering reasonable functionality at zero cost is a huge draw for many. It’s the only platform in our review to offer a free ecommerce product, though Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce and Squarespace all provide at least a 14-day free trial period.

That said, nothing in this life is truly free: Square Online takes a slice of every sale made on its free platforms. Also, its design features scored pretty low in our user testing. Overall, you’d make far better use of your time and resources by investing in a premium model to grow your sales the way you need to.

Truckstop is a great option for anyone looking to factor their freight invoices. It boasts 24-hour payment along with glowing reviews, and supplies other trucking and freight services – meaning you can forge a substantial relationship with Truckstop if you decide to use its many options.

If you’re a bit lost: in short, Truckstop provides shipping and freight businesses with advances on their unpaid invoices in order to supply those businesses with more liquid capital. This service allows businesses to take advantage of time-sensitive opportunities.

Truckstop is a great option, and it’s also one of many. If you’re looking to compare numerous factoring companies, try our free quote comparison tool. You’ll be able to get quotes from Truckstop, as well as its competitors, in order to find the best deal for your business.

What are Truckstop’s features and benefits?

So Truckstop has a lot going for it, but what are the three main highlights that make it stand out from its competitors?

Same-day/next-day payments

It’s easy to see how a company whose mission is to allow businesses quick access to their money would receive high praise for allowing that process to happen over a relatively short amount of time. Offering a 24-hour payment period is a great boon for any factoring business, and Truckstop is no exception.

Lack of strict rules

Unsurprisingly, a lot of businesses will impose pretty strict rules on their factoring processes, since no one likes to be too liberal with how they treat their funds. However, this can be frustratingly rigid, so Truckstop has lifted a lot of rules and limits that other factoring companies swear by.

You’ll be able to cancel contracts flexibly, and you won’t need a minimum monthly volume in order to keep your agreement with Truckstop.

Other trucking and freight services

Factoring is just one of the services offered by Truckstop. Trucking businesses stand to benefit from many different channels, so to have them all under the same umbrella can be a huge help, as you won’t have to contact numerous businesses to get your ducks in a row.

For example, Truckstop offers help with load boards and transport management systems (TMS), both of which are indispensable for any trucking business looking to grow and optimize its workflow.

How much does Truckstop cost?

Truckstop claims that its factoring fee ranges between 2.5-5% of an invoice’s value. For example, if you had an invoice worth $10,000, the cost of factoring would likely be between $250–$500.

This range likely hinges on the value of the invoice, as a higher value invoice usually incurs a lower percentage. This range can also be dependent on things like the payment method (ex. a wire transfer), the urgency of the payment, or the recipient’s credit score.

A big factor in deciding the price will be whether you opt for non-recourse factoring. In normal recourse factoring, if your customer fails to pay the factoring company, you’ll need to buy your invoice back. However, with non-recourse factoring, the factoring company will eat the cost. This is a bit riskier for them, obviously, so their fee will be slightly higher.

This is a pretty standard fee across the factoring industry, if possibly a bit on the expensive side. However, considering Truckstop’s largely positive reputation (discussed in the review section below), it offers a high-quality service, so this price is fair enough.

Is Truckstop right for my business?

“I don’t have a trucking company yet”

Truckstop might be a tad inaccessible for fresh faces on the trucking scene. Its website is a bit trickier to navigate, and it doesn’t have a wealth of resources for new starters.

If you’re looking for a factoring company that specifically helps people starting out in the trucking scene, Apex Capital offers a Startup program that is specifically designed to teach trucking newcomers the ropes.

“I am a driver with new authority”

If your trucking company is just starting up, Truckstop is a pretty good choice of factoring company. Not only does it provide a solid factoring service, but it also has an easy cancellation clause, meaning you can look elsewhere if you don’t feel it fits your style.

Truckstop also offers a variety of other trucking and freight services, which means that a newer company can get to grips with the various systems and terminology you might be using, even if you decide not to stick with Truckstop for the long term.

“My freight business is well established”

Many of Truckstop’s most positive reviews come from established trucking companies, some of which have been working with Truckstop for a considerable chunk of their time in business.

Established businesses won’t need to worry so much about Truckstop’s slightly higher-than-average price. Obviously no one wants to pay more than they need to, but Truckstop’s rate might particularly scare off companies with less financial wiggle room.

The easy cancellation policy also means you’ll be able to look for other rates if you have an abundance of invoices, potentially only using Truckstop for specific invoices.

What do Truckstop reviews say?

Truckstop reviews are pretty solid across the board. On review aggregate site Featured Customers, it scores a considerable 4.8 stars out of 5 from over 1,200 ratings.

When it comes to factoring, some of the main points of celebration are Truckstop’s user-friendly app, speedy payouts, and ability to easily scan paperwork on the go. Some negative reviews cite poor customer service, but these are few and far between, so are likely isolated instances.

It’s also worth mentioning that Truckstop doesn’t just offer factoring, so these reviews cover the broader range of services that Truckstop offers. However, this quality should still speak for Truckstop’s overall value as a factoring service.

RFID and Bluetooth BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) asset trackers are both examples of Internet of Things technology. This means they form part of a network that consists of sensors, computers, and other pieces of technology, which communicate and send data through the internet.

These days, both methods of asset tracking are robust, and use minimal power to send and receive location signals. They’re suitable for both small scale and mid size tool tracking, and are used by companies from a huge range of industries – from healthcare to construction.

While RFID and Bluetooth asset trackers work on a send and receive basis, there are some differences between the two asset tracking systems that may influence you when choosing the best one for your business.

You can find out all you need to know about RFID vs Bluetooth asset trackers in the sections below. Alternatively, use the menu to navigate to the information you require.

RFID Vs Bluetooth Asset Tracking

The table below explains the main differences between Bluetooth BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and RFID asset tracking.

What’s important to note is that RFID tracking is available as passive technology or active technology. This makes a difference to aspects such as the cost and lifetime of the equipment. You can find out more about the differences between active RFID tracking and passive RFID tracking in our main RFID tracking article.

RFID Vs Bluetooth Asset Tracking – Key Findings

Bluetooth – Best cheap asset tracking system

If you’re looking for a cheap asset tracking system, Bluetooth is the way to go. It’s soft on the wallet, offers up a good range, and because it’s Bluetooth, it’ll automatically hook up with a range of everyday devices. This means you can easily transfer usage data to your laptop, tablet or mobile phone, and use that data to keep on top of proactive maintenance and job allocation.

Active RFID tracking – Best for large assets

Active RFID asset tracking works in a similar way to Bluetooth asset tracking – both methods send information out to a reader using battery powered tags. Active RFID tracking offers up the largest range, making it a great choice for tracking large pieces of machinery on a building site.

You may also want to think about GPS asset tracking for your larger pieces of machinery. A GPS tracker can feed off the power source of the machinery you attach it to, meaning its lifetime is far longer.

Passive RFID tracking – Best for medium to large businesses

An RFID reader may be expensive, but don’t forget that you won’t be paying to replace expensive tags over the years. With a one-off payment and some passive RFID tag stickers, you’ve got yourself an asset tracking system. Simply stick these stickers onto boxes of inventory, and have instant access to inventory info.

What is RFID Asset Tracking?

RFID stands for radio frequency identification, but the way in which RFID asset tracking works will differ according to whether it’s active or passive.

Active asset tracking essentially means the tags that you attach to your tools emit a radio frequency, which is picked up by the RFID reader. The tags require a small battery, which has a lifetime of around three to five years. This means you’ll need to replace your tags once the power runs out.

Passive asset tracking essentially means the tags on your tools don’t emit any kind of radio frequency. Instead, the reader emits a radio signal which bounces off the tags, feeding the location of the tag back to the reader.

What is Bluetooth (BLE) Asset Tracking?

Bluetooth asset tracking has come a long way in recent years. Thanks to the development of Bluetooth Low Energy technology, Bluetooth systems are costing less and lasting longer.

A Bluetooth Low Energy asset tracking system works in a similar way to active RFID tracking – the tags emit a signal to communicate with the reader. This means the tags are always sending location data back.

Which Asset Tracking System Should You Choose?

In this case, there’s no right or wrong answer. Both RFID and Bluetooth asset tracking have their advantages and disadvantages, and both RFID and Bluetooth asset tracking solutions are suitable for small, medium, and large assets.

What it should come down to is what kind of system your company can afford, and whether you want the hassle of replacing your tags once the batteries have run out of power. You can easily find out how much an asset tracking system will cost your company – all you need to do is fill in our online form, and the best suppliers for your requirements will be in touch.

RFID and Bluetooth BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) asset trackers are both examples of Internet of Things technology. This means they form part of a network that consists of sensors, computers, and other pieces of technology, which communicate and send data through the internet.

These days, both methods of asset tracking are robust, and use minimal power to send and receive location signals. They’re suitable for both small scale and mid size tool tracking, and are used by companies from a huge range of industries – from healthcare to construction.

While RFID and Bluetooth asset trackers work on a send and receive basis, there are some differences between the two asset tracking systems that may influence you when choosing the best one for your business.

You can find out all you need to know about RFID vs Bluetooth asset trackers in the sections below. Alternatively, use the menu to navigate to the information you require.

RFID Vs Bluetooth Asset Tracking

The table below explains the main differences between Bluetooth BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and RFID asset tracking.

What’s important to note is that RFID tracking is available as passive technology or active technology. This makes a difference to aspects such as the cost and lifetime of the equipment. You can find out more about the differences between active RFID tracking and passive RFID tracking in our main RFID tracking article.

RFID Vs Bluetooth Asset Tracking – Key Findings

Bluetooth – Best cheap asset tracking system

If you’re looking for a cheap asset tracking system, Bluetooth is the way to go. It’s soft on the wallet, offers up a good range, and because it’s Bluetooth, it’ll automatically hook up with a range of everyday devices. This means you can easily transfer usage data to your laptop, tablet or mobile phone, and use that data to keep on top of proactive maintenance and job allocation.

Active RFID tracking – Best for large assets

Active RFID asset tracking works in a similar way to Bluetooth asset tracking – both methods send information out to a reader using battery powered tags. Active RFID tracking offers up the largest range, making it a great choice for tracking large pieces of machinery on a building site.

You may also want to think about GPS asset tracking for your larger pieces of machinery. A GPS tracker can feed off the power source of the machinery you attach it to, meaning its lifetime is far longer.

Passive RFID tracking – Best for medium to large businesses

An RFID reader may be expensive, but don’t forget that you won’t be paying to replace expensive tags over the years. With a one-off payment and some passive RFID tag stickers, you’ve got yourself an asset tracking system. Simply stick these stickers onto boxes of inventory, and have instant access to inventory info.

What is RFID Asset Tracking?

RFID stands for radio frequency identification, but the way in which RFID asset tracking works will differ according to whether it’s active or passive.

Active asset tracking essentially means the tags that you attach to your tools emit a radio frequency, which is picked up by the RFID reader. The tags require a small battery, which has a lifetime of around three to five years. This means you’ll need to replace your tags once the power runs out.

Passive asset tracking essentially means the tags on your tools don’t emit any kind of radio frequency. Instead, the reader emits a radio signal which bounces off the tags, feeding the location of the tag back to the reader.

What is Bluetooth (BLE) Asset Tracking?

Bluetooth asset tracking has come a long way in recent years. Thanks to the development of Bluetooth Low Energy technology, Bluetooth systems are costing less and lasting longer.

A Bluetooth Low Energy asset tracking system works in a similar way to active RFID tracking – the tags emit a signal to communicate with the reader. This means the tags are always sending location data back.

Which Asset Tracking System Should You Choose?

In this case, there’s no right or wrong answer. Both RFID and Bluetooth asset tracking have their advantages and disadvantages, and both RFID and Bluetooth asset tracking solutions are suitable for small, medium, and large assets.

What it should come down to is what kind of system your company can afford, and whether you want the hassle of replacing your tags once the batteries have run out of power. You can easily find out how much an asset tracking system will cost your company – all you need to do is fill in our online form, and the best suppliers for your requirements will be in touch.

We’ve reviewed takepaymentsplus so you can decide whether it’s the right fit for your business.

takepaymentsplus is aimed at small, independent businesses. For some small businesses, the current EPOS systems on the market are too complex but traditional cash registers were too simple. This is where takepayments comes in, giving you: the card machine that does more. 

Features

Rapid checkout process

takepayments doesn’t just take your payments – it takes them quickly. The fast checkout process gives your customers an easy and efficient experience.

Easy receipts

Customers can be sent receipts in various forms, including SMS, emails or traditional paper receipts.

Real-time reporting

You can keep a close eye on transactions and check to see they have been processed in real time.

Get your money the next working day

You don’t need to wait around for your money to reach you, as all transactions processed will be with you the next working day.

Track employees

You can accurately track employee sales in order to make accurate decisions around scheduling, training and more.

Keep on top of stock

Access to up-to-date stock reporting means you can understand stock usage with ease.

Key benefits:

Keeps you informed

takepayments informs your business, keeping you up to date with who and what is selling best.

You can save time and resources with this information and make better, more informed decisions based on real data.

Easy to use

You can add products in seconds and add customised categories and items.

Mobile

takepaymentsplus is small and mobile, meaning it’s easy to transport and works well for businesses that don’t operate in a fixed location.

Keep costs down

Less manual work means less potential for mistakes to happen. You can use your new-found time to focus on other important tasks.

Price

At £25 a month, this is an affordable solution for small businesses.

With takepaymentsplus, you don’t need to invest in a full EPOS system but it does a lot more than a card machine.

Customer service

You’ll receive a specialist account manager who is available to you seven days a week. This is a great way to ensure you avoid any snags or problems with the machine.

Some users have reported that customer service is not always efficient and that the account managers can sometimes change, in which case you’d have to explain your issue multiple times.

What are small businesses most concerned about?

takepayments surveyed over 1,000 UK SME owners and senior leaders across 20 sectors.

The biggest concern for small businesses is ongoing coronavirus restrictions. Although these are winding down, they’ve had lasting affects on small businesses in the UK.

The swift move to cashless payments has urged many small businesses to quickly catch up. If you found yourself on the less tech-savvy side mid-pandemic, you likely need to step up your tech.

takepaymentsplus – ‘the card machine that does more’ – is just the right amount of tech for small businesses that want to ensure they aren’t affected by any future BAU disruptions.

A leased line provides a business with a dedicated, private, and super-fast internet and/or phone network that doesn’t need to be shared with any other buildings or organisations. Leased lines are good for businesses that rely heavily on the internet, and don’t want to risk outages and slow speeds.

But what else is there to know about leased lines? A lot, it turns out. Read on for our exploration of how leased lines can be used, the different types of lines, their pros and cons, their costs, and more.

You can also use our free quote-finding tool to compare tailored, no-obligation quotes from the best leased line providers for your business.

What is a leased line?

Also known as dedicated internet access (DIA), a leased line is a dedicated data connection that runs between one location and another. They’re most commonly used to establish a private telecommunications network between business premises in different locations – for example, you would set one up between an office in London and an office in Manchester.

Leased lines have two key characteristics, which differentiate them from other telecommunications services:

1. They’re uncontended

This means your business won’t share the data connection with anyone else.

Think of your broadband at home, for example. You share that connection’s bandwidth with other local households, meaning your connection speeds can slow down at peak times, when everyone checks Instagram, turns on Netflix, and signs into an online game. In other words, it’s a contended network.

With a leased line, the bandwidth is allotted to your business and your business only, meaning your connection won’t suffer at peak times.

2. They’re symmetric

With a leased line, your upload and download speeds are exactly the same. Traditional broadband, on the other hand, tends to favour faster download speeds. Symmetric (also known as synchronous) speeds make it easier to send large files, upload to your website, perform data backups, make VoIP calls, host on servers, and more.

What can I use leased lines for?

Leased lines can be used to carry a variety of data services, including internet and phone services. Nowadays, leased lines are most commonly hailed as a super fast alternative to conventional, undedicated broadband setups.

Leased lines have a few different applications:

• Giving your different business sites access to a single, uncontended internet connection
• Linking your computers and servers up as a single network across different sites
• Carrying phone calls between the sites, instead of making calls via the traditional landline (otherwise known as the public switched telephone network – PSTN)
• Providing a private network for your employees to connect to from home

How does a leased line work?

Leased lines are available in three different varieties: wired, wireless, or both.

• Wired leased lines are delivered by fibre to the premises (FTTP) – physical fibre cables which travel underground between your business premises and your ISP’s (internet service provider) supply point. Wired leased lines work in the same way as fibre optic broadband: by transmitting data via light pulses along the cables. We won’t go into the exact science of this because, let’s face it, that’s not what you’re here to read!

• Wireless leased lines are delivered by radio, via antennae installed on your premises’ roofs by your ISP. Each antenna must be within the line of sight (LOS) of the connection route: in other words, the antennae at your separate sites must be ‘lined up’ with one another in order to transmit data via radio signals. It sounds complicated, but this is something your ISP will sort out.

• Leased lines that are both wireless and wired make use of both antennae and fibre cables. The benefit here is that, if an antenna fails for some reason, you can rely on your cables – and vice versa.

Not sure whether you’d prefer wired or wireless? Check whether fibre optic cables have already been laid in your area. If so, establishing a leased line using the cables will normally prove cheaper.

However, if there are no fibre cables available for you to use, setting up a wireless leased line will be much faster and easier, usually taking between 10 and 21 days. In contrast, laying new fibre cables can take 60 to 90 days, and cause disruption to the surrounding area.

The different types of leased line

We’ve already discussed wireless leased lines versus wired leased lines. But within the category of wired leased lines, there are a few different setups to be aware of:

Why do I need a business leased line?

Before deciding whether or not to invest in a leased line for your business, it’s important to understand the pros and cons.

To understand whether you’d genuinely benefit from the pros of a leased line, it’s worth asking yourself a couple of questions:

• How much does your business rely on the internet? Is the majority of your operation internet-based?
• How often do your employees communicate with one another over the internet?
• Do internet connectivity issues cause big problems for you? Can your team still do their jobs without internet? Could you end up losing revenue?

How to get a leased line

Getting your business a leased line is essentially a case of:

1. Choosing a leased line provider
2. Contacting your chosen provider
3. Agreeing on a contract and starting up the installation

That first step isn’t as simple as it sounds, but after 10+ years of helping businesses discover the services they need, we do know a thing or two about choosing providers.

First, take a look at the options available in your area. You can get leased lines from many familiar telecoms companies, including TalkTalk, BT, Virgin Media, and Vodafone, but you can also get them from dedicated alternative providers such as Local Telecom, Colt, and CityFibre. Take a look at our comparison of the best leased line providers in the UK to see what the top options are.

When you know which suppliers you’d like to investigate, there are a couple of factors you should compare, including their download and upload speed, the amount of bandwidth they can offer, and – crucially – how much they charge for a leased line.

This can be a time-consuming and bewildering process if you do it on your own. But our free quote comparison tool can help you quickly and easily compare the best leased line providers for you, and bring you tailored quotes and info directly from those providers. Just answer a few questions about what you need from a leased line, and we’ll do the rest.

Leased line costs

When it comes to leased line costs, there are two key considerations to be aware of:

• Installation costs
• The monthly fee charged by your leased line provider

Installation costs

Monthly fees

How fast is a leased line connection?

Super-fast, ultra-fast… however you want to phrase it, leased line connections are very, very speedy. Available speeds range from 1Mbps all the way up to 10Gbps. At the moment, 100Mbps leased lines are growing in popularity among businesses.

For context, conventional broadband download speeds average at around 10Mbps, with upload speeds significantly slower. Don’t forget leased lines offer symmetric download and upload speeds, which is a huge benefit in their favour.

How to test leased line speed

If you suspect your leased line connection speed is slowing down – or you simply want to check that your provider’s delivering what you agreed on – there are a couple of ways to carry out a leased line speed test:

1. Online: You can find a number of leased line speed tests online – choose one you trust, hook your laptop up to your leased line router, and run the test. This is a quick and easy solution, but be wary that the results won’t be totally accurate.
2. Through your provider: Your leased line provider will have specialist equipment for testing connection speeds. Contact the company and arrange a complete speed test. This will take longer, but the test will be much more reliable and the results you get will be totally accurate. If you’re serious about understanding your connection speed, this is the best thing to do.

TalkTalk Business provides super affordable leased lines alongside friendly and dedicated customer support. We’d recommend it for small and medium-sized businesses in particular.

But what else does TalkTalk’s leased lines service have to offer? What are its weaknesses? And, perhaps most importantly, how much does it cost? Armed with extensive research, we put TalkTalk under the microscope to answer these questions and more. In this review, you can find out whether it’s the right leased lines provider for your business.

You can also try our free quote-finding tool to compare tailored, no-obligation quotes from the best leased lines providers for you, including TalkTalk. It’s fast, easy, and free.

The pros and cons of TalkTalk’s leased lines

What are TalkTalk’s features and benefits?

First off, let’s take a look at the stats worth knowing:

So what are the best things about TalkTalk Business’ leased lines service? Let’s explore.

✓ Award-winning customer support

As UK telecoms giants go, TalkTalk has an excellent reputation among its customers. Where most leased lines providers achieve scores between one and three out of five on Trustpilot, TalkTalk Business has scored 4.4 – a rare feat in the world of telecoms. We’ll explore some of those scores further on in this review.

So, what makes TalkTalk’s customer support offering so good? Firstly, you’ll have your own dedicated, UK-based account manager to deal with, and they’ll be chosen for you based on how well they know your industry and understand your needs, which is reassuring.

You’ll have access to support 24/7, every day of the year (though this is common among leased line services). It’s also worth noting that TalkTalk Business doesn’t operate on a reseller model, so all your customer support queries will be dealt with directly by the company.

If you experience an outage, TalkTalk is committed to responding within 30 minutes and delivering a fix within five hours for dedicated leased lines, or seven hours for EoFTTC or EFM lines. This matches the commitments offered by many other suppliers, so it isn’t blowing anyone out of the water. But it’s good to know that you wouldn’t be waiting longer for TalkTalk than you would for anyone else, especially if you have a dedicated leased line (more on the specific line types and their prices later!).

✓ Affordable and transparent pricing

You can scroll down to our section on TalkTalk’s costs for all the details on this, but suffice it to say that TalkTalk’s leased lines tend to be cheaper than those from BT, Virgin Media, and Vodafone.

Plus, TalkTalk says it’s keen to keep its pricing as transparent as possible, assuring us that the price you’re given is the price you’ll pay – and if unexpected, unwieldy costs crop up during your site survey, you’ll be given the option to cancel free of charge, which is a level of respect you don’t often see.

✓ The UK’s biggest network

You can’t talk about TalkTalk without acknowledging that it boasts the largest network in the UK, with equipment in over 3,000 exchanges across the country. In fact, TalkTalk says its network is over 60% bigger than its nearest competitor’s.

But what does this mean for your business? Generally, a larger network is a more accessible one. With TalkTalk’s network being so large, chances are good that you’ll be able to connect to it with minimal additional construction work and costs.

How much do TalkTalk’s business leased lines cost?

TalkTalk’s leased lines are among the most affordable on the market. Let’s take a look at the company’s price plans:

Installation costs

While leased line installations can be an expensive business, TalkTalk’s are actually often free. Free installation is available with the following plans:

• An EoFTTC line on a three-year contract
• An EFM line on a three-year contract
• A 100Mbps or 1Gbps dedicated leased line on a three-year contract

However, when installation fees are charged, TalkTalk doesn’t clarify how much they’ll be (often, it’s subject to your location and other factors).

That said, we know that TalkTalk does aim to make pricing as transparent as possible once you’ve started the setup process. If any unexpected costs rear their ugly heads as a result of your site survey, TalkTalk promises to inform you of them as soon as possible, giving you the option to continue at cost or cancel free of charge. We see this as a breath of fresh air in an industry where businesses are, sadly, at risk of being charged expensive one-off fees weeks into their installation.

Is TalkTalk right for my business?

“I run a small business”

TalkTalk is definitely worth investigating. In fact, in our guide to the best leased line providers in the UK, we recommend TalkTalk as our top pick for small businesses!

Its affordable pricing makes it a relatively cheap option for small ventures, particularly those that don’t actually need a huge amount of bandwidth – if 10Mbps is fast enough for your small team, you can pay as little as £90 per month.

There’s also the fact that TalkTalk Business’ customers speak very highly of its customer support (we’ll explore what they say in the next section!). When you manage a small business that’s new to a particular service, solid technical support from your provider can prove invaluable.

“I run a large business”

TalkTalk’s leased lines service is targeted towards businesses with up to 100 employees, so if your team is climbing above that number, you might want to look elsewhere.

“My business isn’t based in a major city”

Sometimes, being based in a more rural part of the UK – or even simply not being close enough to a major city – can prove problematic when it comes to connecting up a wired leased line, as the necessary infrastructure might not be in place. However, TalkTalk’s network is the biggest in the UK, which means it might well be able to provide connectivity in your area. It’s worth investigating!

What do TalkTalk’s customer reviews say?

As we’ve already mentioned, TalkTalk Business has one of the best reputations we’ve seen among telecoms customers. To give you a flavour of what its customers think, we’ve scoured the web for the most helpful reviews.

The vast majority of reviewers (73% of those on Trustpilot, in fact) give five-star ratings, and call out the helpfulness and speed of the people they’ve dealt with at TalkTalk:

But we did also note this reviewer, who said they had trouble when their contact was away:

And this reviewer, who experienced problems with their direct debit:

That said, based on the mass of customer reviews available online, it seems that issues like the above are rare. It’s also worth noting that TalkTalk responds to all Trustpilot reviews, offering next steps to solve any issues.

TalkTalk is the best leased line provider for small businesses, while Colt boasts the fastest connection speeds, and BT offers unparalleled reliability. But we’d also recommend looking into Virgin Media, Neos Networks, and Vodafone.

The best leased line provider for one business may not be right for another, so it’s always worth comparing all the options. Backed by extensive research and our 10+ years of experience in helping businesses find the right services, the info and reviews on this page will help!

The best leased line providers

TalkTalk

Colt

BT

Virgin Media

Neos Networks

Vodafone

The best leased line supplier for small businesses

Our top pick for small businesses is TalkTalk, for a handful of reasons.

First and foremost, with prices starting at £90 per month for an entry level EoFTTC line, this company offers some of the cheapest leased lines on the market – an important consideration for small ventures.

There’s also the fact that TalkTalk Business has attracted some excellent customer reviews (the best of all the providers on this list, in fact), which praise the company’s “helpful staff” and “great service”. Prompt and obliging customer support can prove invaluable when you’re new to a particular service or technology, so the fact that TalkTalk’s business services arm is good at this should be reassuring to small teams.

To learn more, check out our TalkTalk leased lines review.

The best leased line supplier for speed

Colt is the best leased lines provider for lightning-quick connection speeds, and for obvious reason: it can offer speeds of up to 100Gbps, where most of its competitors offer maximum speeds of 10Gbps.

To put this in context, home broadband speeds average at around 10Mbps. 10Gbps is 1,000 times faster than 10Mbps, which is already a significant improvement – but 100Gbps is 10,000 times faster than your average home broadband.

Now, this super speed definitely won’t be necessary for all businesses, but if you run a large team that spends a lot of time on bandwidth-heavy work like hosting complex websites, sharing big files, and running company-wide video meetings, it could be just what you need.

The best leased line supplier for reliability

If reliability is your top priority, we recommend longstanding leased line supplier BT.

Uniquely, BT’s target service availability is 100% (most providers settle between 99.95% and 99.99%), which means it commits to never dropping your connection, ever. If your connection does fail, BT will provide you with money-back credits.

BT also aims to fix faults within five hours – which is definitely at the speedier end of the spectrum. Plus, BT’s UK-based customer support team is available to help no matter what time or which day of the week it is, as it’s active 24/7.

Compare leased line prices

As you can see from the price plans on this page, monthly leased line prices can range from £90 to well over £800. These costs will depend on your connection speed, the type of leased line you go for (EoFTTC, EFM, or full fibre), the length of your contract, the add-ons you choose, the location of your business (major cities tend to be cheaper), and more.

Installation costs are also a consideration, ranging from completely free to thousands of pounds.

A bit overwhelmed by all these numbers and options? If you’d like to get an accurate idea of how much a leased line will cost for your business, we can help with our easy and free quote-finding tool. Simply answer a few questions about what your team needs, and we’ll match you up with the best leased line suppliers for you, who’ll be in touch with tailored, no-obligation quotes and answers to your questions. It’s simple, quick, and totally free.

Comparison: broadband vs. leased line

This is the key question: why get a leased line when broadband is so readily available? Well, the answer becomes clear when you compare the two closely. Let’s take a look at the key differences:

Get leased line quotes

With over a decade’s experience in matching businesses up with their best-fit service providers, we’re here to help you quickly and easily compare quotes from the best leased line providers for you. No more digging through provider websites to find price plans, or contacting providers separately just to get an idea of what they charge – our free quote-finding tool will do the hard work instead.

Just answer a few questions about what your business needs, and we’ll match you up with suppliers that can provide it. They’ll come to you with tailored, no-obligation quotes, so you can understand and compare the prices available to you. It’s quick, easy, and free.