Essential AI Tools for Small Business Websites

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As a writer, I wasn’t the first in line to start testing out AI programs. It wasn’t until I started using AI at work that I understood how helpful the right tools can be. And for small business owners, AI tools can be a huge time-saver day-to-day when you’re running things solo or with a small team.

Still, finding the right AI tools can be a task in itself. With endless options out there, it’s hard to know which are affordable, beginner-friendly, and actually useful.

After plenty of successes and frustrations, here are my top AI tools for small businesses. From bringing your site to life with an AI website builder to tracking social media mentions, let’s find out which is best for you!

Key Takeaways🔍

  • AI tools can streamline your daily tasks and activities, thus boosting your overall productivity.
  • When choosing AI tools for your business, look for options that are easy to use, affordable, and integrate into your tech stack.
  • Most AI tools offer free plans, but these are typically for personal use. For complex business tasks, you’ll often have to upgrade to a paid subscription.
  • Some platforms, like Wix, grant a high level of access to AI tools on free plans.

For Website Creation: Wix

  • Best for: Creating a bespoke website within minutes
  • Starting price for AI access: Free
  • Read our Wix review

Creating a website that’s functional, aesthetic, and matches your brand personality is no mean feat, but Wix’s AI website builder does all the heavy lifting for you. After a short conversation with a chatbot about your business’s goals and intentions for your website, a personalized setup guide takes you through creating all the pages and functionality you’ll need, saving you the time of working out what you need yourself and setting it all up without help.

As I answered questions about my business, my site profile appeared in real time. Source: Website Builder Expert

But Wix’s suite of AI features extend beyond the initial website creation process, making it a convenient option for small businesses wanting to optimize their SEO, marketing, and online presence (without spending a fortune on separate tools for these things). After the building process, you can use Wix’s AI to:

  • Create website content with the text creator and image creator
  • Start a blogging website with ideation and drafting tools
  • Boost your website’s visibility with SEO support
  • Generate product descriptions

What I Like

✅ No coding or website building experience needed

✅ Lots of AI tools in one platform

Things To Keep in Mind

❌ You can’t swap your template (in other words, redesign your site) once your website is live

What Makes Wix Suitable for Small Businesses?

Wix is extremely beginner friendly. Using the AI builder, a Wix website takes mere minutes to set up, as it’ll ask you all the right questions about your business, your goals, and what you need from a site. Even if you want to make some manual adjustments to your result, you can be confident that the pages and functionality you need will be there from the start.

Wix’s pricing is another reason it’s my top choice website builder. You can get started with Wix’s AI website builder and tons of other tools on its free plan.

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Wix’s AI website builder will have your business website up and running in minutes. Don’t just take our word for it – test it for free today.

For Marketing Materials: Canva

  • Best for: Creating professional branded designs at scale
  • Starting price for AI access: Free

Design powerhouse Canva has a whole host of AI features that make it possible to create high-quality marketing materials within seconds. Thanks to its user-friendly interface and brand-focus features, it’s perfect for small businesses looking to up their website and social media content – even if you’ve never been near Photoshop before (take my word for it!).

With the Magic Grab tool, I could cut out an object in an image and move it without disrupting the background. Source: Website Builder Expert

Canva’s AI tools are housed within its Magic Studio, which has more than 25 tools at the time of writing. My favorites for small businesses include:

  • Magic Write: Create written content in your brand voice
  • Magic Media: Generate images and videos from text prompts
  • Magic Resize: Create variations of one design in different sizes, formats, and languages
  • Highlights: Chop long videos into snappy clips to reuse across your channels

What I Like

✅ Free plan with access to multiple features

✅ Extremely easy to use

✅ Brand-focused AI tools that help you create consistent, on-brand text and media content

Things To Keep in Mind

❌ Most AI tools on the free plan have a very small usage limit that doesn’t refresh monthly

What Makes Canva Suitable for Small Businesses?

What I love most about Canva is how easy and fast it is to use. As someone with no professional editing experience, I was surprised by how quickly I could pick up with the editor to create the graphics you see on our site. The AI editing and content creation tools only enhance this experience, cutting out the need to hire graphic designers or take lengthy courses.

Most of the basic AI tools, such as those that create mockups and charts, are available on Canva’s free plan. However, most other AI features are either unavailable or have low usage caps. If you’re looking to create designs at scale, I recommend upgrading to a paid plan, starting at $12.99 per month.

For Project Management: monday.com

  • Best for: Keeping on top of projects, collaborations, and customer data
  • Starting price for AI access: $9 per account per month (billed annually)

monday.com is an easy-to-use platform for managing your projects from start to finish. As someone who’s used monday.com’s Work Management platform almost every day for the past year, I’m impressed by the usefulness of its AI-powered tracking, collaboration, and customer feedback tools.

The Feedback digest template can analyze the sentiment behind each of your product reviews in a clear traffic light system. Source: Website Builder Expert

monday.com Work Management groups your items in color-coded tables so you can track their progress. You can either create your own boards and add custom AI columns, or use an entire AI-powered template.

Other useful AI tools on monday.com Work Management are:

  • Summarizing: Breaks down large or complex comments to extract key points
  • Translating: When receiving global customer feedback or collaborations, automatically translate text into your language
  • Data sorting: Analyzes data to automatically move tasks into different groups, assign them to the right people, and automate requests

What I Like

✅AI translation tools break down barriers to operate in global markets

✅ Each account attached to a plan gets its own credit limit

✅ Credit model means you only pay for what you use

Things To Keep in Mind

❌ Setting up AI automations can be technical

❌ Can’t use any AI tools on the free trial or free plan

❌ Add-on AI credits are expensive

What Makes monday.com Suitable for Small Businesses?

monday.com’s clutter free, drag-and-drop interface overviews a large amount of information clearly. And with AI automations that can analyze and group data, I recommend it for any small business struggling to keep up with multiple tasks at once.

Every account attached to a premium monday.com Work Management plan will get 500 AI credits per month. The cheapest $9 per month plan is capped at this limit, whereas you’ll have the choice to purchase additional credits on higher plans.

The AI credits should be enough for small businesses with light AI usage. Still, bear in mind that one credit is used per single AI task. If you’re running a complex automation involving, say, translating customer feedback, analyzing sentiment, and assigning it to your customer service team, this would use up multiple credits at once.

For Admin and Business Support: ChatGPT

  • Best for: Businesses looking to save time on communicative and administrative tasks
  • Starting price for AI access: Free

ChatGPT is one of the most widely accessible AI tools today, and it lives up to the hype. From brainstorming content ideas to crunching data to responding to customer queries, there’s not much it can’t help out with. While I wouldn’t recommend ChatGPT for creative writing tasks, it excels in streamlining time-consuming daily tasks, such as data entry and calendar management.

ChatGPT instantly created a customer service email template that included the shipping information I provided in the prompt. Source: Website Builder Expert

Its key uses for small business include:

  • Brainstorming, researching, and planning ideas
  • Generating copy for ads, emails, website content, and social media posts
  • Drafting responses to tricky emails
  • Supporting customer service
  • Creating employee training material

What I Like

✅ Can be used for free without signing up to an account

✅ It’s not industry specific and can help every business in some way

Things To Keep in Mind

❌ Lacks the context to carry out some creative tasks effectively

❌ Depending on the prompt you use, results vary

What Makes ChatGPT Suitable for Small Businesses?

ChatGPT is one of the top AI tools for business because it’s so simple to use – just start typing in the search bar as you would talk to a human, or use AI prompts to hone your answers.

You’ll get by on the free plan if you’re only planning to use it for simple tasks like drafting and summarizing text. For support with data and administrative tasks, you’ll need to upgrade to the $20 per month plan, since this allows you to upload files and images.

Summary

New artificial intelligence solutions are cropping up every day, making it possible to optimize almost any process, from admin tasks like calendar management to larger tasks ordering stock and upselling products.

Still, not all of them will be right for your needs. When choosing AI tools for small business websites, make use of free trials to test out the interface. Where a platform has multiple plans, access to AI tools will be staggered, so ensure the plan that’s within your budget comes with everything you expected.

Finally, if you’re looking to use AI for multiple functions, an all-in-one solution, such as Wix, will save you money and be easier to manage than using multiple platforms.

Written by:
Annie Angus is a Writer for Website Builder Expert with a passion for shaping jargon-heavy research into digestible content. She has previously researched and written about industries ranging from tech to fashion, and now, after testing our top website builders such as Wix and Squarespace, she is enthusiastic to share her findings with our readers. With first-hand experience in utilizing social media and online marketplaces to grow a small handmade clothing business, Annie understands the priorities and concerns held by SME owners, and knows precisely what they look for in a website builder. She combines this unique perspective with her knowledge of website builders to produce engaging content spanning all areas of the small business journey, from creating a strong website to growing and maintaining an audience.
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Wix is a popular website builder with over 250 million users worldwide, in 190 countries. Since launching in 2006, Wix has become a leading website builder known for its feature-rich platform and beginner-friendly tools. Over 85,000 websites are made every day with Wix! And if you've never built a website before, don't worry! Wix empowers anyone to build and grow their online presence, no matter their level of experience, and to feel confident in running their website day-to-day.

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