Amazon, WordPress Most Trusted Brands with Small Businesses, Alignable Reports

Amazon and WordPress are among the most trusted brands among small businesses. And Yelp and Web,com are among the least.

At least that’s the conclusion of Alignable Inc., an online networking site for small and local business owners. The company recently released its kickoff 2017 list of most trusted brands by small and local businesses in North America.

Other high ranking brands with small businesses include Google, Mailchimp and Authorize.net.

Meanwhile other brands to fair not nearly so well with small business owners were Yext, YP and Craigslist.

Alignable regularly tracks brand ratings and reviews from small and local business owners in real-time, so you can see which brands are trusted by business owners versus which ones are not.

Most Trusted Brands of 2017

But what Alignable maintains may be most interesting about the latest results is the narrow group of categories into which the 10 most popular brands fell.

Together the more than 88 brands included in Alignable’s trust ranking list can be fit into a total of 22 categories. However, the top 10 ranking brand fell into only five.

They are:

Digital marketing companies including companies ranging from Amazon to Instagram and making up 22 percent of the companies in the top 10,
Website companies including brands like WordPress and making up 10 percent of those most popular companies,
Shipping companies like FedEx, making up another estimated 10 percent of those most popular brands,
Payment companies say, like PayPal and Square, making up about 29 percent of those top companies, and
Email marketing companies the likes of Mailchimp, again making up 10 percent of that top tier.

“Business owners love these 10 brands,” wrote Dan Slagen, Chief Marketing Officer at Alignable, in a post announcing the report findings on Alignable’s Mains Street Insights blog.

But could the categories these companies fall into also say a lot about the kinds of services small businesses are focusing on these days?

Importance of Brand Trust Ratings

Alignable’s latest small and medium sized brand ratings reportedly included input from over 15,000 small and local business owners.

Last year, Alignable ranked Instagram, FedEx, Twitter, Amazon and Google among the most trusted brands of 2016. Comcast and Web.com were ranked among the least trusted brands.

Slagen noted that while it can be helpful to read online reviews and reports about brands from third party rating companies, “the most meaningful information comes from fellow business owners who have experience with the specific brand/vendor being considered.”

Here is a complete list of best and worst. First, the 10 most trusted brands with small business owners:

10. LinkedIn

9. PayPal

8. Square

7. FedEx

6. Instagram

5. Authorize.net

4. Mailchimp

3. Google

2. WordPress

1. Amazon