General descriptions are:
Responsive web design – changes to the size of the screen no matter what the target device screen size is. The layout is ‘fluid’ and harnesses the power of CSS media to change styles. This fluid grid lets the page resize its width, height and content flow to adapt to different screen sizes and show correctly.
Adaptive web design – uses breakpoints of distinct layouts for multiple screen sizes. Layouts will be static based on the resolution 320, 480, 760, 960, 1200 and 1600, of the display of the viewing device.
If you are a larger company, this is a larger and more robust topic to discuss. Being that we are in the Eugene Oregon area and there are more small businesses, we are going to focus on smaller and lower budget websites.
While there are many advantages of an adaptive website, we are going to plainly recommend responsive. For the simple reasons that there are more inexpensive options for either you to do yourself of for website service providers like us, to offer. Also, Google prefers a responsive site to an adaptive one and unless you want to spend more money or time on SEO to overcome some of the pitfalls, it is just easier and makes more sense for a small business.