Only 61% of French Small Businesses Have a Website in 2025, Down from 70% — New Observatory by Les Créavores
A new Observatory by Les Créavores aggregates official public data from Afnic and France Num to quantify the digital slowdown among French small and medium-sized businesses.
Ars-sur-Moselle, France, August 23, 2026 --(PR.com)-- For the first time since the pandemic-era surge, the share of French micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (TPE-PME) with a website has declined, falling from 70% in 2024 to 61% in 2025, according to the Afnic "Réussir avec le web" 2025 study. France Num's 2025 Barometer, run by the French Directorate General for Enterprise (DGE), measures a comparable 64.6% — a methodological gap that does not change the underlying trend: digital adoption among small French businesses has plateaued after a decade of growth.
Les Créavores, a web design agency based in Metz, France, has published an Observatory dedicated to this trend, available at https://lescreavores.fr/observatoire-presence-en-ligne-tpe-pme/. The report aggregates two official public sources — the Afnic study, based on roughly 2,500 micro, small and medium-sized businesses surveyed between September 2024 and August 2025, and the France Num 2025 Barometer, which surveyed more than 11,000 companies — without introducing any proprietary data. Every online channel measured declined year over year: social media presence fell from 75% to 64%, online directory listings from 47% to 37%, and marketplace presence from 15% to 12%.
The slowdown does not reflect declining interest in the internet: 99% of business owners still consider it useful or essential to their activity. Instead, the Observatory points to budget caution — 66% of small businesses now spend less than €300 a year on their online presence — combined with persistent gaps in basic digital fundamentals: 49% of companies do not use an email address on their own domain, 44% do not know whether they are protected against cyber threats, and 61% do not actually track their online performance, even though 26% of equipped businesses attribute more than 30% of their revenue to the web.
"These numbers show the question is no longer whether small businesses believe the internet matters — 99% already do. The real issue is the gap between the web's potential, which accounts for over 30% of revenue for a quarter of the businesses that use it well, and the majority who lack either the budget or the method to capture that value," said Trésor Kaya, founder of Les Créavores. "Our Observatory is built entirely on official public data, to give business owners a reliable picture before they make any decisions."
Full data, charts, and detailed sources are freely available on the Les Créavores Observatory. An accompanying dataset is also published on data.gouv.fr under the etalab-2.0 open license, with the attribution: "Source: Les Créavores Observatory, based on Afnic and France Num data."
About Les Créavores
Les Créavores is a web design and visual identity agency based in Metz, France, founded in 2010. The agency helps small and medium-sized businesses build websites, improve search visibility, and strengthen their online presence.
Press contact
Trésor Kaya, Founder
Les Créavores
contact@lescreavores.fr
https://lescreavores.fr/observatoire-presence-en-ligne-tpe-pme/
Les Créavores, a web design agency based in Metz, France, has published an Observatory dedicated to this trend, available at https://lescreavores.fr/observatoire-presence-en-ligne-tpe-pme/. The report aggregates two official public sources — the Afnic study, based on roughly 2,500 micro, small and medium-sized businesses surveyed between September 2024 and August 2025, and the France Num 2025 Barometer, which surveyed more than 11,000 companies — without introducing any proprietary data. Every online channel measured declined year over year: social media presence fell from 75% to 64%, online directory listings from 47% to 37%, and marketplace presence from 15% to 12%.
The slowdown does not reflect declining interest in the internet: 99% of business owners still consider it useful or essential to their activity. Instead, the Observatory points to budget caution — 66% of small businesses now spend less than €300 a year on their online presence — combined with persistent gaps in basic digital fundamentals: 49% of companies do not use an email address on their own domain, 44% do not know whether they are protected against cyber threats, and 61% do not actually track their online performance, even though 26% of equipped businesses attribute more than 30% of their revenue to the web.
"These numbers show the question is no longer whether small businesses believe the internet matters — 99% already do. The real issue is the gap between the web's potential, which accounts for over 30% of revenue for a quarter of the businesses that use it well, and the majority who lack either the budget or the method to capture that value," said Trésor Kaya, founder of Les Créavores. "Our Observatory is built entirely on official public data, to give business owners a reliable picture before they make any decisions."
Full data, charts, and detailed sources are freely available on the Les Créavores Observatory. An accompanying dataset is also published on data.gouv.fr under the etalab-2.0 open license, with the attribution: "Source: Les Créavores Observatory, based on Afnic and France Num data."
About Les Créavores
Les Créavores is a web design and visual identity agency based in Metz, France, founded in 2010. The agency helps small and medium-sized businesses build websites, improve search visibility, and strengthen their online presence.
Press contact
Trésor Kaya, Founder
Les Créavores
contact@lescreavores.fr
https://lescreavores.fr/observatoire-presence-en-ligne-tpe-pme/
Contact
Les Créavores
Tresor Kaya
+33764386055
lescreavores.fr
Tresor Kaya
+33764386055
lescreavores.fr
Contact
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