Zippia (via Wix, 2026) — 73% of US small businesses have a website; ~27% (more than 1 in 4) do not

Summary

Claim: Zippia (via Wix, 2026): "nearly three-quarters (73%) of small businesses in the U.S. have a website. This means that more than one in four (27%) SMEs in the U.S. don't have their own site."

Source: wix.com/blog/small-business-website-statistics (Zippia underlying) — 2026.

Confidence: Industry-consensus (multiple aggregators; underlying primary sources vary).

Why this matters for Candid: The "honest bound" on the working-surface thesis. ~27% of US SMBs operate without a website at all — many of them healthy. This anchors R1 — Most businesses benefit from AT LEAST ONE of the four working-surface capabilities, NOT all four; match the capability to acquisition / service mode and refutes the "every business needs all four" overclaim.