Moving to Atlanta: Georgia's Top Cities to Start a Business!

It’s no secret that Georgia is one of the top states for starting a business, but what about when it comes to the individual cities?

Atlanta and Savannah make the list when it comes to the big cities, but suburbs and smaller cities have the most profitable businesses. They take up six places in the top 10!

Located 10 minutes from downtown Atlanta, 35 percent of this city’s business has paid employees. With Vinings’ competing unemployment rate of 2.5 percent, they are home to over 1,700 businesses. One of the big name businesses includes Home Depot and the restaurant that was named ‘Business of the Year’ in 2014 by the Vinings Business Association, Social Vinings.

Even though it has more business per 100 people than the other cities on this list, it has almost as many businesses as residents. It’s one of the smallest cities on the list, but these businesses benefit from the transportation and technology infrastructure. They even have a Small Business Service Center that coaches and gives supportive discussions to help local business owners start and grow.

University of West Georgia offers free consulting services at their Small Business Development Center. The Burson Center provides help to get startups off the ground. There are around 2,550 businesses in the city, and the average revenue per business is over $3.6 million, and this makes it one of the more profitable cities in the state for business owners.

With three highways and railways coming in from six different directions, transportation obviously plays a huge role in this city’s economy. It is home to over 1,300 businesses and almost 40 percent of them have paid employees.

Because of Alpharetta’s 60,000 residents, it’s the largest city on the list. Their almost 9,000 businesses average over $6.9 million in revenue each year. Thanks to Georgia 400, the city has had a huge economic boost.

Downtown in this city is one of the largest in the state and has an average revenue per business of $3,277,773. To help grow its city center and the 300 businesses that it’s home to, the city invested $7 million. With over 3,500 businesses, over 40 percent of their employees are paid.

In this city, people that want to start a business have options such as free monitoring and workshops though Score Atlanta. Businesses here can earn things such as $3,500 per job tax credit, and this city has a high concentration of businesses with 30 businesses per residents.

This city’s average revenue per business is $5,361,780, right after Alpharetta. It does help that the city is fairly close to Atlanta, major transportation routes and two large airports. The city is even redeveloping a former General Motors plant into a business and community center along with a movie studio.

Located in Chatham County, this city is part of the state’s coastal region. Georgia Ports Authority is based here, allowing the city’s shipping terminal to be one of the busiest container ports in the US. The average revenue for this city is over $216 million, and around 43 percent of the businesses have paid employees.

Wayne County, the county seat of Jesup, was deemed an “Entrepreneur Friendly Community” by Georgia. Almost 45 percent of businesses in this city have employees on their payroll, making it the highest percentage of cities in this study.