Best Cheap Website Builders Compared

We’ve researched website builders extensively to compare features, ease of use, price, and more. Our latest 2019 results show that Wix is the best cheap website builder out there, with plans starting from just $5/mo for a beautiful ad-free website that you can get published in minutes.

Looking at the other cheap website builders on the market, these seven are our favorites:

1. Wix – From just $8.50 per month, it’s the best website builder on the market
2. Weebly – Another outstanding website builder that starts at just $7 per month
3. Squarespace – A bit pricier than some of its rivals, starting at $12 per month, but Squarespace’s beautiful design templates justify the premium
4. 1&1 Ionos – Starting at $5 per month, it offers amazing customer help and support
5. WordPress.com – From only $4 per month, WordPress gives you serious bang-for-your-buck
6. GoDaddy – For just $5.99 per month, you’ll get a super easy-to-use website builder, perfect for those looking to get online quickly
7. Site123 – From $10.80 per month, Site123 makes the process of building a website easy and intuitive

So that’s the skinny on the best cheap website builders, but how do they really stack up against each other? And which builder offers the best value for money?

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.

	Wix	Weebly	Squarespace	1&1 Ionos	WordPress	GoDaddy	Site123
Test score	4.5 stars	4 stars	4 stars	4 stars	3.5 stars	3 stars	3 stars
Verdict	Comfortably the best website builder we’ve tested, and brilliantly simple, even for beginners	Another great website builder that’s also very approachable for first-timers	Stands out with its attractive templates, though not quite as well-rated as Wix	A good system for producing an e-commerce website	Perfect for blogs, but can be fiddly for other types of site	Some big improvements to templates in the past year, but a little light on features	Can help you build a website, but the options are more limited compared to rival website tools
Free Plan Limitations	Unable to publish site	Only 500 MB storage, Weebly.com subdomain, display Weebly ads	14-day free trial	No free plan	Only 3 GB storage, displays WordPress ads, no access to WordPress support	30-day free trial	Only 500 MB storage and 1 GB bandwidth, displays Site123 ads
Cheapest Plan	Combo – $8.50/month (for 36 months), 2GB bandwidth, 3GB storage, free domain for one year	Starter – $8/month, better site analytics, limited ecommerce, unlimited storage	Websites Personal – $12/month, unlimited bandwidth and storage, free custom domain with annual purchase, 24/7 support	Online– $5/month, access to templates, free domain and email account	Personal – $4/month, custom domain, removal of wordpress adverts, just 6GB storage	Personal – $5.99/month, limited customization functionality, no ecommerce, 24/7 support	Basic – $10.80/month, limited ecommerce features, 10GB and 5GB bandwidth
Average Plan	Unlimited – $16/month, 10GB storage and bandwidth, access to Site Booster and Form Builder apps	Pro – $12/month, password protected areas, can list up to 25 products, phone support	Online Stores Basic – $26/month, sell unlimited products, advanced ecommerce functions, professional Gmail, unlimited contributors	Only offers two plans	Premium – $8/month, premium website templates, 13GB storage, improved social media functions, monetize your site through ads	Business Plus – $14.99/month, Yelp & Google My Business functions, online appointment booking, social media integration	Advanced  $16.80/month, removes Site123 footer, 30GB storage and 15GB bandwidth, allows 50 ecommerce orders per month
Most Expensive Plan	VIP – $29/month, 20GB bandwidth and storage, email marketing and priority support response	Business – $25/month, removed transaction fees, unlimited product listings, digital goods, product reviews, industry management, shipping and tax calculators	Online Stores Advanced – $40/month, subscription product sales, abandoned cart recovery, advanced shipping, flexible discount, gift cards and orders API	Online Store– $15/month, create content tailored to user segments, SEO tutorials and email marketing tools	Business – $25/month, upload custom templates, access plugins, SEO tools and Google Analytics, removes all WordPress branding	Online Store – $19.99/month, abandoned cart recovery, accept credit cards, Apple Pay and PayPal, check out on your own site	Gold – $28.80/month, unlimited ecommerce orders, 270GB storage, 135GB bandwidth
Features	4 stars	5 stars	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	2 stars	3 stars
Design Flexibility	4 stars	5 stars	4 stars	3 stars	3 stars	3 stars	3 stars
Value for Money	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	2 stars	2 stars
Help and Support	5 stars	4 stars	4 stars	5 stars	4 stars	2 stars	3 stars
Customer Score	5 stars	4 stars	4 stars	5 stars	3 stars	4 stars	3 stars
Ease of Use	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	4 stars	3 stars	4 stars	4 stars
Try it Today	Visit Wix	Visit Weebly	Visit Squarespace*	Visit 1&1 Ionos	Visit WordPress	Visit GoDaddy	Visit Site123

* Take 10% off Squarespace with code ‘TECH10’

Wix

The best overall cheap website builder we’ve tested

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 $8.50 per month if you’re happy to pay for 3 years – 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 only pay for 12 months, the price increases to $11 per month, so we’d recommend saving and going for the 3-year deal.

The Unlimited plan, which costs $14 per month when billed annually, gives you a free domain as well as 10GB of storage and bandwidth. It also removes adverts from your site. It’s a great option, and if you’re looking to grow a small business, it’s ideal.

Weebly

A great, cheap, easy to use website builder

Weebly, like Wix, offers a free pricing plan – and as with Wix, it’s probably not worth dealing with.

The Starter plan costs $5 per month and removes adverts, gives you unlimited storage plus site analytics, and even lets you sell a small selection of products. The Pro plan costs $12 per month and gives you even more features than the Starter plan, including site search, password protected areas, and HD video and audio uploads. You’ll also get over-the-phone support.

Weebly also has the Business and Performance plans, which cost $25 and $38 respectively. These are designed for ecommerce businesses and give you loads of ecommerce specific features, including inventory management, tax calculators, and the ability for customers to checkout on your own website.

Squarespace

Making a website this good looking shouldn’t be this cheap

Squarespace prides itself on the quality of its website templates, and this level of quality comes surprisingly cheap.

There’s no free plan, but the $12 per month Personal plan offers a lot of features normally reserved for pricier plans on other website builders. You get unlimited storage and bandwidth, free custom domains, and 24/7 customer support.

You could run a fully-functional, high quality website on the Personal plan, but if you want to sell stuff on your Squarespace site, it’s worth opting for the Basic Online Store plan, which costs $26 per month. You’ll have access to all the key ecommerce features, without transaction fees.

1&1 Ionos

Straightforward pricing structure makes choosing the right package easy

1&1 Ionos only offers two pricing plans: Online and Online Store. The Online plan offers you all the basic features to build a website and costs $5 per month. You get a free domain and five associated email accounts, social media widgets, and templates pre-filled with content relevant to your website.

The Online Store plan costs $15 per month. You get access to everything in the Online plan, plus SEO tutorials, an email marketing tool, and — most importantly — online store features. As the Online Store plan isn’t too much more expensive than the basic Online plan, it might be worth jumping straight to the Online Store plan to take advantage of those SEO and email marketing tools, even if you don’t need to sell products online.

It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that 1&1 Ionos requires users to sign up for a year’s plan when creating their site.

WordPress

The ubiquitous blogging platform is a good value website builder

WordPress.com (not to be confused with WordPress.org, which doesn’t include website hosting) offers four pricing plans, including a free option. The free option probably isn’t worth bothering with, as you’ll have to host WordPress advertising and banners as well as use a WordPress.com sub-domain.

The Personal plan, which starts from $4 per month, removes WordPress adverts and gives you 6GB of storage space. You can build a proper site on the Personal plan, but it’s not the best feature set.

Instead, the Premium plan – which costs $8 per month – gives you access to unlimited premium website themes, advanced customization and editing, 13GB of storage, and support for basic ecommerce functions.

The Business plan costs $25 per month and is best suited to small ecommerce businesses, with SEO tools, plugin support, Google Analytics integration, and the removal of WordPress footer branding.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy offers competitive pricing for businesses and online stores

Instead of a free plan, GoDaddy offers a 30-day trial before you sign up to one of its four paid plans. The cheapest is the Personal plan at $5.99 per month, which offers website hosting and 24/7 support.

Next up is the Business plan, which costs $9.99 per month and adds SEO tools and a PayPal button. It’s not a huge step up from the Personal plan.

Business Plus, on the other hand, costs $14.99 per month and offers a range of extra features. These include email marketing, Yelp and Google My Business listing, social media integration, and in-browser appointment booking.

The Online Store plan costs $19.99 per month, and unsurprisingly gives you basic ecommerce functions. These include a shopping cart, product management, and a range of payment options.

Site123

A speedy way to build a simple website

Site123 offers five pricing plans, including a free option. The cheapest Basic plan starts from $10.80 per month, and gives you 10GB of storage, 5GB of bandwidth, and limited ecommerce functions. You’re stuck with Site123 branding, though.

The subsequent pricing plans – Advanced ($16.80 per month), Professional ($22.80 per month) and Gold ($28.80 per month) – offer more storage and bandwidth, allow for more ecommerce orders, and provide multilingual options. It’s not the most compelling set of features, and you’re probably better off with the Basic or Advanced plans if you’re looking to use Site123.

How Much Does a Website Cost?

As you can see from above, there’s no one fixed price when it comes to building a website. Instead, you’ll have to make a judgement on the type of website you want to make, and the type of features you’ll need.

After all, the needs of a student looking to create an online portfolio are pretty different to 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 $10 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 $4-10 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 $10-20 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 kind 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 amount of sales you can make in a month.

Find out more: How much does a website cost?

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 $4 per month, 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.

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: With paid plans available so cheaply, you don’t need to cut corners and settle for a free website. Just a couple dollars investment will pay off, while a free website may cost you in unprofessionalism.