7 Best Websites To Buy Or Sell An Online Business For Free
Although starting your own website from scratch is an excellent way to fine-tune every aspect of your business, sometimes, it’s often financially wiser to acquire a well-established one instead, especially if you’re looking for a quicker path to profitability and want to minimize the initial learning curve.
There are over 40 different brokers and marketplaces currently offering online businesses for sale. Don’t know where to start? This guide will help you.
We’ve thoroughly reviewed and compared various platforms where you can purchase online businesses. Below, you’ll find our insights into the best 7 options.
Top Websites to Buy Online Business For Sale in 2024
- Best Overall: Investors.club
- Best for Experienced Buyers: Flippa
- Best for FBA: Empire Flippers
- Best for Low Price: Motion Invest
- Best for Full Brokerage Services: Digital Exits
- Best for Buying Side Projects: SideProjector
- Best for Profitability: Latona’s
An In-depth Look At the Best Places to Buy and Sell Online Businesses
In this section, we’ll take a deep dive into some of the best platforms to buy and sell online businesses/websites.
Best Overall: Investors.club
Let’s kick off the list with our top recommendations based on market research and consumer choices.
Although Investors.club has only been around since 2020, it managed to make a solid name for itself and establish the platform as one of the most trustworthy websites for connecting profitable online businesses, whether you’re buying or selling.
One of the things we like about this platform is its simple yet highly intuitive user interface. You can easily navigate through all the listings while finding all the necessary information about each business.
Additionally, while the platform recommends that you do your own research, Investors.club has a specialized team to verify all the details listed on the website through a 5+ hour long auditing process.
This team is also ready to offer free one-on-one support and guidance throughout the entire process to give you the peace of mind and knowledge necessary to complete your deal.
The platform also has an exclusivity listing and non-competition agreement. This means that sellers are committed to only listing their businesses on Investors.club and not anywhere else and not competing with the website after selling it.
Another major advantage of the Investors.club is its transparency and full support during the transaction process. This includes taking care of the documents, escrow service, and asset transfer for free and without any hidden fees and a commission capped at 7%.
Website Highlights and Top Features
- The website details the entire process of the website from submitting your business/proposal to the asset transfer.
- It sets strict minimum requirements for sellers to ensure the quality of their listings. However, you can find a good variety of listings for different budgets and niches.
- Provides an intuitive valuation tool that will help you set a decently accurate estimate of your website in a few minutes, which is perfect for first-time sellers (you can also use it as a buyer to estimate a fair price for a website.)
- Each listing undergoes a heavy verification and auditing process to protect buyers from potential fraud and scams.
Who Is It Best For?
Although the criteria and features of Investors.club make it perfect for all kinds of online business buyers, we find it extra special for first-timers.
This is because the website does a lot of the legwork for you by checking and verifying websites to ensure that you’re only dealing with a legitimate listing. The website also offers continuous support throughout the sale process, which adds to its convenience and trust factor.
Best for Experienced Buyers: Flippa
Next up, we have Flippa, which is a big marketplace for online businesses, with a long history of buying and selling online businesses.
Besides online businesses, Flippa also deals in a variety of digital products and assets, including domain names, apps, blog websites, etc.
According to the website, Flippa completes over 12,000 transactions every year. This reputation and large user base make it one of the perfect solutions if you want to buy or sell quickly.
Flippa also offers due diligence and advisory services in the form of a full multi-page report. This one benchmarks the website’s performance and dives into the website’s operations to reveal any potential for growth or high risk of failure to safeguard your investment. However, this service can be a bit pricey, so it’s only recommended for fairly large investments.
Flippa also offers a free valuation service, although it’s not as sophisticated as the one that Investors.club offers.
In addition to due diligence services, Flippa also offers a matchmaker service where it can pair you with sellers privately as well as other handy services like legal handling and financing services.
Website Highlights and Top Features
- A reputable marketplace with a large variety of listings and user base.
- Features several premium services to facilitate your process, including due diligence reports, legal assistance, connecting with financing partners, private matchmaking, and brokering.
- Comes with an online valuation bot to help you assess websites quickly and for free.
- Great search engine with plenty of filters to easily find the businesses you’re targeting.
Who Is It Best For?
All in all, Flippa is an excellent all-around website if you’re looking for a reputable platform with a variety of helpful tools and services to facilitate your purchase.
However, since Flippa does not do any verification on smaller businesses, it’s not well suited for beginners, and many users have been scammed. Their support will not be assisting you with either buying or selling, so if you don’t quite know what you are doing, it’s best to go to a supported marketplace like Investors Club, Motion Invest, or Emprire Flippers.
Best for FBA: Empire Flippers
Empire Flippers has been around since 2011. This means that it offers both the market experience and credibility necessary to intermediate a worry-free purchase.
The first impression you get while navigating Empire Flippers is how streamlined and “easy on the eye” it is. Everything is well organized and designed to give you all the necessary details about the websites listed.
At the time of this review, Empire Flippers only featured 120 websites for sale – a lot less compared to Flippa – but those websites are curated and vetted. A big portion of Empire Flippes offering is Amazon FBA online businesses, and they have assisted many buyers and sellers with this type of business.
The website also has a full transparency policy when it comes to its sales, and you’ll even find a continuously updated scoreboard where the platform displays the current sales success rate (above 68%) as well as 30-day and overall sales worth (over $481 million).
Website Highlights and Top Features
- Curated and vetted online businesses
- Great track record assisting with buying and selling Amazon FBA
- Ensures transparency and provides plenty of public information about the website’s success rates and sales record
- Intuitive user interface with plenty of information about each online business listing.
Who Is It Best For?
Empire Flippers is an excellent choice for anyone who’s looking to buy or sell an Amazon FBA business. Although the listings on the website are a bit pricey, each one is heavily vetted and checked to ensure legitimacy.
Best for Low Price: Motion Invest
Motion Invest is another newcomer to the website marketplace scene, but it adopts a unique yet simple standardized process for evaluating websites, which minimizes the guesswork and risks involved in buying online businesses.
What makes this website stand out is that it offers a wide range of online businesses in the lower price range. It only sells profitable online businesses – unlike Flippa, where you will find a lot of “starter websites” that do not generate any revenue.
Motion Invest also sets fair prices for the websites they offer to make sure that they’re a fair market value.
Motion Invest uses a Dutch Auction system where websites that don’t get sold quickly reduce in value systematically every two days, ensuring fair pricing.
Motion Invest listing carries all the necessary information you need to know about the business and you’ll need to register for full access.
You can also use advanced search to pinpoint what you’re looking for, including several filters like niches, monetization method, listing type, price, monthly visitors, and much more!
Website Highlights and Top Features
- Provides detailed and transparent details of the purchase process through the website.
- Great search filters for advanced targeting and finding exactly what you’re looking for.
- Deals in a variety of websites at lower market values, but only profitable businesses.
Who Is It Best For?
Motion Invest is an excellent entry point for someone only willing to invest a few thousand dollars. Since Motion Invest, unlike Flippa, verifies all their listings, it’s a much safer choice for small investors looking for a hassle-free purchase.
Best for Full Brokerage Services: Digital Exits
Digital Exits is a subsidiary of Business Exits, a top-tier platform for buying and selling profitable businesses. As the name suggests, Digital Exits specializes in selling digital properties, especially established websites with annual profits between $250,000 to $5 million.
Digital Exits has a team of knowledgeable advisors who will help you get the most bang for your buck, as they have a large network of websites to suit your goals.
In addition to helping you land the ideal website for you, the team will also provide you with an executive summary of the website’s performance and assist you while setting a marketing plan for your new investment.
Website Highlights and Top Features
- Help you set a comprehensive marketing strategy for your website
- Connect you with a large network of websites at different market values to suit your budget and needs
- Have a 91% success rate for selling websites within 6 months
Who Is It Best For?
Digital Exits is an excellent choice if you’re looking for a partner that will do most of the work for you. The platform’s team of experienced brokers will help you land the right deal for the best possible price.
Best for Buying Side Projects: SideProjectors
SideProjectors is a reliable platforms for buying and selling different kind of digital projects. This doesn’t only include websites, but also web/mobile apps, domain names, and even plugins and browser extensions.
Although the website might need some revamping in the web design department, it does its job perfectly when it comes to what you’re looking for: finding and buying websites.
This interface of the website is basically a search engine where you can browse through the websites and projects it offers.
Unlike other platforms we reviewed, SideProjectors is one of the few places where you can purchase unfinished projects.
The website does requires sellers to provide plenty of information about their listings to facilitate their sales.
Website Highlights and Top Features
- Minimalist layout that gets straight to the point
- Easy to navigate and offer unique project opportunities
- Fairly affordable when compared to other options on the list
Who Is It Best For?
SideProjectors is best suited for anyone who doesn’t mind doing most of the work themselves, such as researching the business and assessing its potential.
It’s also perfect if you’re interested in doing something on the side but don’t want to start completely from scratch.
Best for Profitability: Latona’s
Lastly, if you’re all for profitability no matter how much it costs, you should consider Latona’s while searching for online businesses to buy.
One of the best things about Latona’s is that you will get to fine-tune your search results to find exactly what you’re looking for.
The website’s search engine is highly intuitive and allows you to check various metrics, such as income stream, profit, financing options availability, and more!
Although the listings aren’t as sophisticated as some other options on the list, you still get to access the right kind of information for each one, such as annual revenue and profit.
Website Highlights and Top Features
- Features some of the most profitable items on the market
- You’ll get to optimize your search to pick options with excellent financing options
- Offers a variety of value calculators to help you make the right investment
Who Is It Best For?
Since Latona’s has plenty of highly profitable websites for sale, it’s an excellent choice if you’re a serious investor who’s looking for the highest possible return on their investment, although you’ll need to do further research to validate the seller’s figures.
The Criteria We Use to Assess Websites for Buying/Selling Online Businesses
To make sure that we pick the best possible options for this list, we used the following criteria while assessing each website:
- Reputation and Track Record: must have a long-standing record of complying with their regulations and taking extra measures to meet their promises to clients.
- Quality and Variety of Listings: should have a wide variety of listings to meet different budgets and search criteria (revenue streams, niches, financing options, etc.)
- Transparent Pricing Structure: must provide full details about the businesses listed and check the authenticity of the seller’s claims to make sure that they’re legit.
- Simple Yet Intuitive Interface: must have a clean user-friendly interface to make the research and vetting process easier for its users.
Things to Keep in Mind While Buying an Online Business
Here are some helpful tips to consider while choosing the ideal business for you.
- Type of Business/Niche
The first thing you need to consider while purchasing a website is its niche. It’s best to be familiar with the fundamentals of the niche to maintain the website’s revenue, and to be able to continue operating it. - Reason of Sale
It’s best to know the reason behind selling the website because, in some cases, sellers might downplay some of the negative aspects of the website or hide essential information about the website’s potential for growth. - Analytics and Key Metrics
Most website marketplaces will provide information about the key metrics of listed businesses. These include things like website traffic, revenue, expenses, what it takes to operate the business, and more. - Potential for Growth
Is there potential for growth, and do you have the skills needed to grow it? If there is no potential for growth, do you have skills and knowledge to maintain the revenue? - Feedback and Reviews
Don’t forget to also check customers’ and users’ feedback on the business. You can do this by checking the website’s page on websites like TrustPilot and or Google Reviews. This can help you find out more about the current user experience and whether people are happy about the business, and its offering. - Due Diligence
While most platforms offering online businesses for sale undertake some level of vetting and verification, the ultimate responsibility for due diligence falls on your shoulders. If you end up with a less-than-desirable purchase, it is on you. Therefore, it’s essential to thoroughly investigate these aspects during your due diligence process to steer clear of any unwelcome surprises post-deal completion.
FAQs:
- Is buying an established website a good idea?
Buying an established website comes with its set of advantages and challenges, so it comes down to your personal preferences and needs.
It’s an excellent way to get a headstart instead of starting completely from scratch. You can also utilize the existing visitors and user base to expand your existing brand.
However, this usually comes at extra expenses and you’ll still need to do your due diligence to ensure a good investment and avoid scams. - What type of online business should I buy?
The type of online business you should consider buying depends on your interests, skills, budget, and long-term goals.
Assess your passion and expertise in specific niches, align your skills with potential ventures, and establish a budget. Conduct market research to identify growth opportunities and evaluate your risk tolerance. Decide on a business model, consider scalability, and define your exit strategy. Thorough due diligence is crucial, including reviewing financials and seeking professional advice if needed. Your ideal online business should reflect your unique profile, ensuring a successful and fulfilling investment
