Your website is one of your restaurant’s most important commodities. An effective restaurant website is a channel for customer outreach, a showcase for your menu, a platform for processing orders, and your most powerful top-of-funnel marketing instrument. With so much at stake, you want to be sure that you’re choosing the right tool to build this crucial asset.
But what should you look for? In the discussion below, I highlight some of the features to prioritize and name what I consider to be the top website builders for restaurants.
What To Look for in the Best Restaurant Website Builders
The restaurant technology experts here at Back of House evaluated dozens of top website builders for restaurants. We considered several important factors in our review including:
- Cost
- Ease of use
- Customization options
- Mobile functionality
- Customer service
- Available features
Based on these criteria, here are our picks.
1. Best Restaurant Website Builder Overall: Sociavore
Sociavore is a restaurant website builder with a suite of e-commerce tools designed to help drive sales and boost online visibility.
Key Features
- Drag & drop website builder
- SEO
- Reports and analytics
- Online ordering
- On-demand delivery networks
- Contactless dining
- Events and ticketing
- Reservations
- Merchandise
- Gift cards
Why We Like Sociavore
Sociavore ranks among the best restaurant website builders for its robust capabilities, user-friendly interface, and competitive monthly fees. It's easy to navigate, even for users with limited technical experience. However, if you do require additional setup assistance, you can pay an optional one-time fee for heightened support.
What Restaurant Operators Should Know About Sociavore
Sociavore is a self-serve e-commerce website builder, similar to Shopify. It has a “drag & drop”/“no code” experience, which means you can add components and move them around by clicking with your mouse, and you don’t need to know anything about programming. So it’s designed to be accessible to users with a wide range of technical backgrounds and skill sets.
How Is Customer Support at Sociavore?
Sociavore offers strong customer support. Even if you don’t opt to pay for the additional setup support, customer service reps are readily available, deeply knowledgeable, and highly responsive to questions and concerns.
2. Best Platform for Custom Web Design: Menufy
Menufy is a restaurant website builder that tailors web design around your restaurant’s brand. Your website also comes with full provider maintenance and a listing on Menufy’s restaurant directory through both Menufy.com and the Menufy mobile app.
Key Features
- Custom-designed website
- Free online ordering
- Automated order notifications
- Integrations with any device or POS (point of sale) system
- Tasty Rewards loyalty program
- 24/7 technical support
- Driver delivery tracking
- Intuitive interface
- Smart kitchen order routing
Why We Like Menufy
Menufy ranks among the best restaurant website builders for improving your restaurant’s online visibility. When you build a website with Menufy, you also get the opportunity to list your business on Menufy.com as well as on Menufy’s Apple and Android mobile apps.
You may also take advantage of Menufy’s HungerRush 360 Marketing platform, which can help your restaurant automate text and email campaigns.
What Restaurant Operators Should Know About Menufy
Among its many benefits, Menufy can help improve your delivery sales. Menufy can also help your restaurant manage this higher delivery demand by providing direct access to delivery drivers at a 12.5% service fee.
How Is Customer Support at Menufy?
Menufy is recognized as one of the best restaurant website builders for customer service. Menufy’s U.S.-based customer service team is available 24/7 to both online ordering customers and restaurant operators.
Operators can also receive onsite installation, training, and proactive product release updates from Menufy’s customer service experts.
3. Best Platform for On-the-Go Operators: Flavor Plate
Flavor Plate is a restaurant website builder that provides a single user-friendly mobile platform for menu management, online ordering, communication, and more, all at a very competitive cost.
Key Features
- Menu management
- Online ordering
- Gift card sales
- Event calendar
- Communication tools
- Built-in SEO
- Built-in accessibility
Why We Like Flavor Plate
Flavor Plate ranks among the best restaurant website builders for restaurant operators who are constantly on the move. Flavor Plate’s mobile app is easy to access, easy to use, and enables on-the-fly edits from any device.
What Restaurant Operators Should Know About Flavor Plate
Flavor Plate offers a satisfaction guarantee. It promises to refund your first two months’ of subscription fees if you choose to cancel after 60 days.
How Is Customer Support at Flavor Plate?
Flavor Plate provides several tiers of customer service, beginning with a basic package that includes free design setup and going all the way up to end-to-end support through its hands-on complete website setup, website concierge, and social media management services.
4. Best Platform for Any Website: Wix
Wix is one of the more versatile restaurant website builders on the market. It offers users features like pre-designed website templates, online ordering capabilities with delivery integration, and a full set of optional marketing and loyalty tools. Wix also gives restaurants the ability to customize their web design, even for users with limited tech savvy.
Key Features
-
Website design
-
Online payment management
-
Mobile app
-
CRM (customer relationship management) system
-
Website analytics
-
Email marketing
-
SEO tools
Why We Like Wix
Wix ranks among the best restaurant website builders for beginners who care about design quality. It offers a suite of built-in AI (artificial intelligence) tools, such as an image generator and instant on-brand emails, that make it easy to enhance and customize your own web design and function.
What Restaurant Operators Should Know About Wix
Wix is a great fit for restaurants of every shape and size because it offers five different pricing tiers, from a Light service package for small teams at a low, flat monthly fee, all the way up to the customizable Enterprise package, which is recommended for multi-units that need more than one website, offering custom integrations and custom templates.
How Is Customer Support at Wix?
Wix provides a 24/7 customer support service in 11 different languages. It gives customers access to an Online Help Center as well as a comprehensive archive of “Help” articles.
5. Best Platform for Owners With Multiple Locations: olo
Olo is an end-to-end platform that helps restaurants scale online ordering and delivery, make data-driven business decisions, and personalize both the online and in-person guest experience.
Key Features
- Branded online ordering
- Direct delivery
- Marketplace delivery
- Google order management
- Digitized phone orders
- Payments and fraud protection
- Catering
- Reservations and waitlist management
- Local listing management
- Personalized marketing
- Guest data platform
- Reputation management
- Passwordless checkout
Why We Like Olo
Olo ranks among the best restaurant website builders for growing operations, especially those with 10 locations or more. One reason it’s such a great fit for multi-unit businesses is that it integrates with more than 300 popular industry platforms and applications. This means it’s compatible with most restaurant tech stacks.
What Restaurant Operators Should Know About Olo
Olo is unique for its fully customized pricing structure. Olo works directly with its clients to identify the best products for their goals and capabilities. Before signing up for Olo, you will receive a customized quote based on your exact needs.
How Is Customer Support at Olo?
Olo offers exceptional customer support. Olo’s team of digital experts provides a variety of valuable support resources, including weekly release notes and an informative Take-5 Newsletter. Customer success teams and technical specialists are also available through the Olo help center as well as through phone and email support.
6. Best All-in-One Marketing Platform: Owner
Owner is an all-in-one marketing platform that boasts the same suite of sophisticated tools and functions as the nationally recognized brands but with a far more personal level of guidance and support.
Key Features
- Custom mobile app on IOS and Android
- Automated email and text marketing campaigns
- User-friendly online ordering
- Conversion optimized web design
- Zero-commission third-party delivery
- SEO-focused content and design strategies
- Customer loyalty and rewards programs
Why We Like Owner
Owner boasts a particularly user-friendly experience for your customers. Owner’s website and mobile online ordering app are both highly intuitive. The format and functionality are instantly familiar to customers, which makes it easy and friction-free for your guests to place orders.
Just as important. it’s user-friendly for you — it's built to be“set it and forget it,” so you don’t have to spend a lot of time fussing with your website. Owner works quietly in the background, helping you with SEO and ongoing marketing efforts so you can stay focused on running your business.
We also like that Owner charges users month to month, which means that you aren’t bound to a long-term contract.
What Restaurant Operators Should Know About Owner
Owner is generally compatible with most popular POS systems. For instance, Owner integrates directly with Clover and Square. Owner uses third-party provider Otter to support integration with Toast and other POS solutions. It also provides an unintegrated option that includes a printer and tablet.
How Is Customer Support at Owner?
Owner’s customer support is very hands-on. Owner assigns each client an on-boarding specialist who provides direct guidance through the process of building a new website, updating your branding, adding online ordering, and more. This high level of customer support makes implementation easy and relatively quick.
Need help choosing among the best restaurant website builders?
Each of the website building platforms listed above has unique features that may be a good fit for your restaurant. But before you make the leap, make sure you know exactly what to look for,
Reach out and schedule a free consultation with me or another Back of House expert to receive a customized report based on your restaurant’s exact needs.
