Best Cheap Website Builder 2021

Wix is the best cheap website builder on the market, offering incredible value for money and regular deals and discounts. Its prices start from just $14 per month for a professional-quality website — and you can even create an online store for just $23 per month. There are other cheap website builders available for lower costs, such as Squarespace (from $12) and GoDaddy (from $10) or even Zyro (from $1.52 with Tech.co). However the lower the pricing, the more you'll compromise on features and usability.

Here at Tech.co, we conduct our own independent research and user testing to find the best website builders on the market for everyone — regardless of whether you're a dab hand with tech or an online novice. You might be able to find other cheap website builders – at face value – besides the ones we've identified on this page, but our research has shown that these platforms often don't give you the service that you might expect, and can often come with hidden fees.

In this guide, we’ll round up the best cheap website builders, offer some guidance about how much different types of websites will cost, and explain why you should avoid a free website.

Best Cheap Website Builders Compared

The table below features the scores from our independent testing and research into website builders, and shows what features you’ll get with each website builder’s pricing tiers. We think that your best cheap options will be Wix, GoDaddy, or Squarespace so we'll go into more depth on these after the table.

• Wix – Best overall website builder
• GoDaddy – Best for easy set up
• Squarespace – Best for growing businesses
• Weebly – Best for businesses on a budget
• Zyro – Best for beginners
• Jimdo – Best for ease of use
• 1&1 IONOS – Best for international companies

In this guide:

• Best Cheap Website Builders
• How Much Should a Website Builder Cost?
• Why You Should Avoid Free Website Builder Plans
• Verdict: What is the best cheap website builder?
• Frequently Asked Questions

Wix

The best overall website builder

There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it; Wix is the best overall website builder, according to our research. Between the creative freedom provided by the notable customizability to the massive features catalog that allows everything from ecommerce to marketing, Wix has virtually no limitations on what you can do as a business.

As far as cheapness goes though, it is a bit on the expensive side compared to other options on this list, but it does have a free plan that can get you in the door without charging you. Still, that free plan is pretty limited, and you'll definitely need to bump up to a paid plan if you want any hope of running an real, functional website.

Wix Pricing

Wix offers four pricing plans, including a free option. We wouldn’t recommend the free plan, though – while it will allow you to construct a website, you won’t be able to publish it.

Instead, the Combo plan – which starts at $14 per month if you're happy to pay for a year upfront – allows you to connect a domain name to your Wix site, remove the Wix adverts that blight the free version, plus enjoy plenty of bandwidth and storage. If you choose monthly billing, the price increases to $18 per month.

Wix's ecommerce plans, on the other hand, start from $23 per month with annual billing. The Business Basic plan gives you unlimited bandwidth and 20GB of storage. You'll also get access to the Site Booster and Form Builder apps which can help boost your sales.

The big news here, however, is that you won't have to pay Wix any commission on the sales you make from your website.

For more information, you can check out our Wix Pricing guide or you can get started with Wix straightaway

GoDaddy

Best for easy setup

GoDaddy is a great all-around choice for website builders if you're a small business in need of some small site offerings. It's not nearly as robust as Wix, nor as well-designed as Squarespace, nor as cheap as Weebly. However, it does offer plenty of features, great templates, and an intuitive interface that even beginners will be able to figure out in no time.

Perhaps the best part of GoDaddy though, is how easy it is to get your site set up. In our research, we found it to be the quickest and most efficient website building experience across all brands.  Still, sites can like a bit bland and generic compared to the stunning options from Wix and Squarespace, but for ease of setup, it's hard to beat.

GoDaddy Pricing

GoDaddy offers a free plan and four different pricing plans: Basic, Standard, Premium, and Commerce.

The Basic plan will run you $6.99 per month and offers the basic features you need to get your website going. You'll get the SSL certificate, a custom domain, a website dashboard, and access to simple marketing, ecommerce, and design functionality.

The next plan is the Standard plan, which will cost you $10.49 per month. It adds a few marketing tools, improving your ability to reach customers. The Premium plan does even more at $13.99 per month, allowing you to take appointments and adds even more marketing features.

As you may have guessed from the name, the Commerce plan — which costs $17.49 per month — adds the ability to host an online store and marketplace. You'll get all the standard features that come with it, including gift cards, discounts, and real-time shopping rates.

Squarespace

Best for growing businesses

If you're trying to grow your business — and who isn't? — Squarespace is uniquely positioned as a great option thanks to its robust marketing functionality. These features will allow you to attract new customers, retain loyal customers, and generally improve your business over time. Plus, with some of the most beautiful templates on the market, you'll be ahead of the game as far as design is concerned.

There is a slight hiccup when it comes to customization though. Especially compared to Wix, Squarespace design is a bit rigid, which is likely to maintain the integrity of the beautiful templates. Still, it can be a bit of a drag when you're trying to make the website fit your particular needs, so it might worth it to look elsewhere for customization if that's what you're after.

Squarespace Pricing

There’s no free version of Squarespace, but there is a 14-day free trial. Squarespace’s cheapest tier is the $12 per month (with annual billing) Personal plan which offers a host of features normally reserved for pricier tiers on other website builders. You get unlimited storage and bandwidth, free custom domains, and 24/7 customer support. If you choose monthly billing, it'll set you back $16 per month.

Squarespace's Business plan costs $18 per month with annual billing or $26 per month with monthly billing. You'll be able to register an unlimited number of contributors to your site, as well as getting professional, branded email and Workspace tools from Google. You'll also be able to take reservations online and $100 worth of Google ad credit.

Squarespace also offers two other plans specifically aimed at online stores: Basic and Advanced.

The Basic plan costs $26 per month when paid annually or $35 per month with monthly billing. You won't have to pay any transaction fees on the sales you make and you get a fully mobile-optimized checkout and improved commercial metrics.

The Advanced plan, on the other hand, costs $40 per month or $54 per month with monthly or annual billing, respectively. You get a bunch of new features including advanced shipping rate calculations, flexible discounts, and access to the Orders API which allows you to build custom third-party integrations.

Use TECHCO10 at checkout to save 10%.

If you want to learn more about Squarespace, check out our full Pricing Guide. However, if you need to build an online store, we'd try Squarespace's 14-day free trial

Weebly

Best for businesses on a budget

As far as cheap website builders go, you can't get much cheaper than Weebly. With arguably the best free plan on this list, you'll be able to get a website live right away, with ecommerce features, marketing functionality, and even some SEO help, all for free.

Unfortunately, “cheap” has two meanings in this situation. While Weebly is free, it doesn't offer much for growth, and you'll likely outgrow the platform before too long. Additionally, the platform provides some staggeringly bland templates, which is unfortunate given the kinds of templates you can find on other platforms.

Basically, this is a classic “you get what you pay for” situation, as Weebly provides a lot of value for very little money, but the overall experience will likely leave you wanting.

Weebly Pricing

Weebly has four pricing tiers, including a free version. That free version does allow you to create and publish a site — even an online store — for free, forever. However, your site will have to display Weebly adverts and it is limited to 500Mb of storage. We'd avoid it.

The cheapest paid-for plan, Personal, costs $6 per month billed annually or $9 per month billed monthly. You can connect a custom domain name but that's about it. The Professional plan, on the other hand, costs $12 per month when billed yearly or $16 per month is good for small business sites. You'll get unlimited storage and a free domain name.

The $26 per month with yearly billing ($29 per month with monthly billing) Performance plan gives you some more advanced ecommerce tools such as shipping labels and abandoned cart emails.

Zyro

Best for beginners

If you're looking for a no-frills alternative to Wix that won't cost you an arm and a leg, you just found it. Zyro is certainly not one of the more well-known options out there, but it has a lot of potential to become the perfect fit for your website building needs.

Plus, it provides a lot of very easy-to-use templates that make website building simple. Unfortunately, it does lack a bit when it comes to customization, but if you need to get your website going and don't have a lot of experience (or money), Zyro is a definitely worth a try.

Check out our Zyro vs Wix comparison guide for more info

The downside though, is that Zyro doesn't have an app store, which decidedly limits its customizability. However, Zyro does offer a wide range of cool additional features that can really help you when it comes to building your site.

First off, Zyro offers users an AI writer, which provides unique, engaging written content on your site without you having to lift a finger. You'll also be able to utilize the platform's logo maker to better establish your brand.

From an analytics standpoint, Zyro offers a comprehensive heatmap, which will help you better understand how your users interact with your website.

Zyro Pricing

Perhaps the most attractive feature of Zyro is the price. It's much cheaper than your average website builder, by a lot, so you if you're looking to save some money, Zyro is a great place to start.

Zyro plans start at $8.90 per month (only $2.32 per month with this special deal), mid-tier plans go for $12.49 per month (only $1.52 per month with this special deal), and get as high as only $29.99 per month (only $13.41 per month with this special deal) at their most expensive. At these price points, Zyro heartily competes with the other options on this list when it comes to keeping your budget in tact.

Additionally, if you opt for an annual plan, you'll also get an additional free 3 months and a free domain with this special deal, so definitely consider investing for the long haul.

Check out our Zyro review for more information

Jimdo

Best for ease of use

Jimdo isn't the best website builder on the list, but pound for pound, it offers the best value as far as cost per feature is concerned. Simply put, you can get a lot for a little with this provider, particularly if you're a beginner that isn't entirely familiar with website building software. It'll really hold your hand through all whole process, so you end up with something you like without breaking your budget.

There are, of course, some limitations that come with Jimdo though. For one, there is no blogging functionality, so you won't be able to attract customers that way. Subsequently, there is very little SEO guidance and virtually no internal marketing features. Still, if you need to get up and running quickly and easily, Jimdo is a great option.

Jimdo Pricing

Jimdo offers a free plan, dubbed Play, as well as two different pricing plans: Start and Grow.

The Play plan is completely free forever, but obviously doesn't offer much functionality. You'll get a branded domain, which is never ideal, and you won't get any SEO help, which obviously hurts when it comes to attracting new customers. Still, you'll be able to get a site live, which is saying something.

Now, the Start plan will cost you $9 per month, and definitely adds some serious functionality. You'll get a custom domain, some SEO help, better support options, and a generally more functional website across the board.

The Growth plan is aimed at companies looking to scale, and will cost you $15 per month. This plan gives you more bandwidth and more storage, so you'll be able to handle more visitors. You'll also get even more SEO help as well as social media marketing capabilities, so you can really grow your business.

1&1 IONOS

1&1 may not be one of the better known options, but it still provides some solid options when it comes to website building. For one, it had the quickest server response time and the best mobile site speed in all of our tests, which is nothing to scoff at. Plus, it allows for simple SEO help within the editor, so you can optimize your site easily without a lot of back and forth.

The primary draw of 1&1 IONOS though, is that it offers some serious internationalization features. Between the ability to make your website multilingual and the ability to utilize international domains, you can set yourself up to be an international business in no time.

1&1 IONOS Pricing

1&1 offers three different pricing plans: Starter, Plus, and Pro.

The Starter plan starts at $5 per month, although you do get it for $1 per month for the first year. You start with unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth, so no stress about visitor counts. You'll also get access to some pre-built templates for specific sections, which limits customizability but makes it easy to use.

The Plus plan is your next option, at $10 per month, although you can get it for $5 per month for the first year. This plan adds a whole bunch of customizable templates, so you can really create what you want. Plus, you'll be able to set up the site to be multilingual, which will significantly increase your potential visitor numbers.

Finally, the Pro plan will cost you $15 per month, although you can get it for $10 per month for the first year. Most notably, this plan adds targeted content delivery and personalization, so you can take customer retention to a whole new level.

How Much Should a Website Cost?

The top website builder companies — Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy — charge different amounts. Some offer free trials, while others will give you a free website indefinitely. However, you’ll need to be realistic about the level of features that you'll need and you'll need to be prepared to pay for them.

After all, the needs of a student looking to create an online portfolio are pretty different from the needs of a sole trader looking to attract customers and are different again to someone looking to sell their wares online.

You’ll also need to factor in the costs of domains, hosting, plugins, and third-party apps, which can all add up.

• For a portfolio site – Expect to pay around $12 per month. You’ll need a website builder that offers a lot of storage so you can upload images of your work – Squarespace could be a good choice.
• For a blog – Expect to pay $6-14 per month. We’d recommend WordPress here, and you can easily build a blog with the Personal plan, which costs $4 a month. If you’re looking for more customization, you can move up to the Premium plan, which costs $8 per month.
• For a small business site – Expect to pay around $12-26 per month. If you’re happy to have a pretty basic website, you could definitely get by spending only $10 per month. However, if you’re looking for more advanced features such as appointment booking or contact forms, you’ll be looking at closer to $20 per month – although the extra outlay will be worth it.
• For a larger business site – Expect to pay $20-40 per month. If you’re running a larger business, your customers will be expecting more from your site, making site uptime and bandwidth essential. Make sure you find a good website hosting service to increase uptime, and look for a website builder with generous bandwidth to make sure customers can get to your site. You’ll also need advanced features such as contact forms, appointment booking, and SEO tools to compete in competitive markets.
• For an ecommerce site – Expect to pay $30+. Ecommerce websites are expensive and complicated to run. So much so, in fact, that there are dedicated platforms for running these kinds of sites. You’ll need to make sure that the platform you choose doesn’t have transaction fees, supports multiple payment options, and doesn’t limit the number of sales you can make in a month.

Why You Should Avoid Free Website Builder Plans

While lots of the website builders above offer free plans, they’re often very limited in terms of features. And, when you can build a good website from as little as $1.52 per month from Zyro, there’s no real reason to compromise.

With a paid-for site, even one that’s only a few dollars a month, you won't have to live with:

• Adverts
• Website builder branding
• A fixed domain name (e.g. username.wixsite.com/website)
• Limited functionality

You'll also get better support and analytics, which free users won't have access to. Better security is another benefit, and one that's particularly important for modern ecommerce websites.

If you bump the price up a little bit more (to the value of two or three fancy coffees a month, rather than one) you'll get:

• A professional-looking site
• Improved features, such as social media integration and contact forms
• The possibility to monetize your site

A website like this will help you land that dream job, sell your wares, or grow your business.

Verdict: What is the best Cheap Website Builder?

With paid plans available so cheaply, you don't need to cut corners and settle for a free website. A free website might save you money in the short term but its lack of professionalism will lose your users and customers to your competitors. However, investing just a little in a website builder can help you leave your rivals reeling.

With a paid-for Wix plan, you'll be able to get a professional-looking website for just $14 a month, which we think is incredibly good value. With prices that low and features so enticing, it doesn't make much sense to try and build a site for free.

Of course, you can always try Wix for free and see if it works for your business before committing.

Frequently Asked Questions