Best Cheap Website Builder 2021

Wix is the best cheap website builder on the market. Its prices start from just $14 per month — you can even create an online store for just $23 per month.

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 cheaper website builders at face value, but our research has shown that these platforms often don't give you all the features that you might expect, and can often come with hidden fees.

Wix, on the other hand, has everything you need to create an exceptional website or online and is remarkably easy to use. Plus, it offers regular deals and discounts to make it an even more compelling choice.

There are other excellent and inexpensive website builders on the market, too. Weebly is a fantastic alternative and slightly undercuts Wix. Squarespace, on the other hand, is more expensive but offers some class-leading features and design templates.

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.

In this guide

• Best Cheap Website Builders – We round up the best affordable website builders
• Wix – The best for, well, everyone
• Weebly – An excellent but more affordable alternative to Wix
• Squarespace – A brilliant choice for a cheap online store
• How Much Should a Website Builder Cost? – We look at how much a typical website builder costs
• Why You Should Avoid Free Website Builder Plans – Free sounds good but in practice it won't give you the website you want
• FAQ – Common questions, asked and answered

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 options will be Wix, Weebly, or Squarespace so we'll go into more depth on these after the table.

Wix

The best all-round site builder and offers excellent features at (almost) unbeatable prices

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.

Wix costs for small businesses

For small businesses, these prices can seem expensive. However, with a Wix website, your business will be able to find new customers far easier. As a result, you'll find that your new Wix site can easily make back your initial outlay.

Wix does have a free plan but we wouldn't recommend it for any type of website — especially small business sites. You'll have a paltry 1 GB of bandwidth per month and just 500 Mb of storage for photos, images, and videos. Similarly, you won't get a custom URL and your site will have to host Wix adverts. You certainly won't be able to sell products online.

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

Weebly

Weebly is cheaper but lacks some of Wix’s refinement

Weebly has four pricing tiers, including a free version. That free version does allow you to create and publish and 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 without) Performance plan gives you some more advanced ecommerce tools such as shipping labels and abandoned cart emails.

Weebly online store costs

Weebly used to offer tools for online stores but, since it was acquired by Square in 2018, its ecommerce functions have moved to Square Online.

This means that Weebly is now only recommended for businesses that don't need to sell online. Still, for websites that don't need to sell products online, Weebly is a good and slightly cheaper option than Wix.

Squarespace

Straightforward pricing structure and you won’t find cheaper ecommerce

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

There’s no free version, 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.

Great value for online stores

Squarespace shines brightest, however, when it comes to ecommerce sites.

It has two plans for 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.

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

How Much Should a Website Cost?

The top website builder companies such as Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace, 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 $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. 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: Cheap Website Builders

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 the 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