In the current economic climate, it is important to stick to a budget, which is why considering value for money is crucial when assessing website builders.
The most inexpensive plan offered by IONOS starts from just $1 per month for the initial 12 months, making it a fantastic option for budget-conscious individuals. This allows ample time to assess if the builder is suitable for your needs, all while paying a minimal price. Following that is Hostinger, typically priced at $11.99, but presently on sale for only $2.99 per month. Additionally, you receive a complimentary three-month period at the beginning.
GoDaddy ranks third in terms of price, charging $9.99 per month for a full website builder, a reasonable rate. However, having the cheapest plan does not necessarily make IONOS the best value for money. The title of being the best value for money goes to Squarespace, which our research rates at an overall 4.6 out of 5, while IONOS only scores 3.1 out of 5.
We have carefully examined and investigated all the plans offered by the leading providers to present a comprehensive analysis of what they provide for the advertised price. Our team has personally tested every website builder mentioned here, and although some may be more worthwhile than others, they are all reputable brands. We will provide you with all the details you need to make an informed decision.
Compare the Best 8 Cheap Website Builders
When evaluating website builders, price is not the sole factor to consider. This chart provides a comparison of the essential features included in the most affordable paid plans of each platform, allowing you to determine which ones offer the greatest value. Utilize the arrows to conduct a side-by-side comparison of the platforms.
#1. IONOS: $1 per month for the first 12 months
ONOS is uniquely created to assist businesses in establishing an online presence, and it differentiates itself through its remarkably affordable pricing options that commence at just $1 per month for the initial year. Moreover, it is well-suited for expansion as your business progresses and enables you to translate your website into multiple languages, thus enhancing your global outreach.
Despite being the top choice for its affordable $1 monthly plan, IONOS falls short in terms of customization and design options, as indicated by our research findings. Surprisingly, IONOS’s value for money score has plummeted by -26.2% since our previous study, dropping from 4.2 to a mere 3.1 out of 5. This decline can be attributed to the limited features provided at its low price point.
Let’s explore this provider more deeply and see how far you can go with IONOS for only one dollar.
There are specific details that you need to be aware of regarding the $1 per month Plus plan.
- Free domain for the first year
- Professional email address
- Limited customization and design abilities
- Good online marketing tools
- No ads
- Prices renew at a higher rate in the second year of subscription
#2. Hostinger: $2.99 per month + 3 months free
A quick overview of Hostinger.
Hostinger, although new, is already gaining significant attention in the website-building industry. It offers advanced features, including an AI writer, which proves valuable for smaller businesses that lack the resources for freelancers. During our most recent testing, it experienced a 16% improvement in both overall features and design compared to the previous year. While it continues to expand in various aspects, it does encounter some challenges. Consequently, we rated it with a customer score of 2.8 out of 5 to acknowledge these limitations, but this score is subject to change in the future.
There is a need to know about the $2.99 per month ‘Website’ plan in a gradual and systematic manner.
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited storage
- Free domain for a year (or connect your own)
- Built-in AI tools
- Blogging tools
- Free email for 3 months
- Integrate with Google Analytics
- Can’t sell on this plan
#3. GoDaddy: $9.99 per month
GoDaddy’s artificial design intelligence offers the quickest and most affordable option for building a small business website, priced at $9.99 per month. Each plan comes with GoDaddy Insight, a tool that creates a customized action plan to enhance your online visibility, which is especially advantageous for small businesses. However, GoDaddy’s ranking has slightly decreased from 4.4 to 4.2 out of 5 in our assessment.
Additionally, demonstrating a genuine commitment to improvement, it is worth noting that the sole website builder that has enhanced its site speed is also the only one rated ‘Good’ in our research. For individuals seeking a website builder that ensures long-term growth, this is a positive indication.
You need to be aware that the Basic Plan costs $9.99 per month.
- 1-month free trial
- No free domain
- No adverts on your website
- 24/7 phone support
- GoDaddy Insight analytics
- No built-in SEO website optimizer
- Integrate with one social platform
- Offer one-time appointments (no recurring bookings)
- No ecommerce
#4. Shopify: $5 per month (social media selling only)
Shopify is focused on being an ecommerce platform primarily used to assist merchants in creating, operating, and expanding online stores. This indicates that all of its plans, themes, and features are specifically designed for online selling, which makes it most suitable for larger enterprises. The Shopify Basic plan, priced at $29 per month, is the least expensive option, while the next tier begins at $79 per month. Therefore, it is imperative to evaluate whether you truly require its features in order to get the most cost-effective solution.
Indeed, Shopify offers a less expensive option called the Shopify Starter plan. By paying just $5 on a monthly basis, individuals are able to acquire a Shopify store dedicated to selling through social media. Although it lacks the full array of features provided by the Basic plan, it proves highly suitable for those seeking a speedy selling experience.
You need to know the details about the Shopify Starter plan, which costs $5 per month.
- A simple storefront
- Unlimited product pages
- Fast and secure checkout
- Contact page for customer inquiries
- Linkpop, the link in bio tool designed for commerce
- Access to Shopify apps
- Shopify order management and integrated fulfillment network
- 2% transaction fee, unless you use Shopify Payments
#5. Wix: $14.40 per month with discount code ‘GET10!’
Wix is a website builder that offers ecommerce plans for individuals who desire to create an online store. The cheapest plan available costs $16 per month; however, to begin selling, one must switch to the Core plan, priced at $27 per month. Wix provides a suitable combination of brand-focused creative freedom and growth-oriented sales tools, making it an ideal choice for small businesses with ambitions to grow.
By following a step-by-step thought process, the following services can be accessed with the Light plan priced at $16 per month:
- Free domain for one year
- No adverts on your store
- 2GB storage
- +800 templates across a variety of industries
- 24/7 customer care
#6: Squarespace: $14.40 per month, with discount code ‘WBE’
Squarespace is a major player in the website-building industry and has earned its reputation for good reason. It is highly suitable for small businesses due to its integrated analytics tool, strong SEO performance, and extensive library of extensions. It offers a supportive framework that empowers small businesses to grow and expand. Additionally, it provides excellent value for the cost, surpassing any other builder we have tested. In our evaluation, it demonstrated an impressive 15% improvement from last year, increasing its rating from 4 to 4.6 out of 5. Consequently, it is our top pick for the best value for money builder. If you utilize our exclusive WBE 10% discount code, you can further reduce the price of the Personal plan from $16 per month to only $14.40.
To know about the Personal plan, it is important to keep in mind that it costs $14.40 per month.
- Connect a custom domain
- Free domain for the first year
- No adverts
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Comprehensive SEO features
- Awesome 24/7 customer help and support
- No ecommerce on cheapest plan
#7. Square Online: $29 per month (you can sell for free)
Square Online offers a perfect balance between affordable starting prices and scalable features. Right from the beginning with its Professional plan at $29 per month, you have the ability to sell an unlimited number of products. Additionally, it is user-friendly and particularly suited for integrating an offline business with your online store.
You need to know that the Professional plan costs $29 per month.
- Sell an unlimited number of products
- Free domain for one year
- No adverts on your store
- Automatic syncing with Square POS
- Offer pickup, delivery, or shipping
- No abandoned cart
- No product reviews
- 2.9% + 30 cents transaction fee
#8. Jimdo – Best cheap website builder for ease of use
Although Jimdo is not the top website builder on the list, in terms of value for money, it provides a great offering with its intuitive software. Similar to Square Online, it is quick and easy to get started and navigate through the software.
Jimdo does have some limitations, one being that it lacks blogging functionality. As a result, you will be unable to utilize a blog to target your audience or attract customers.
Due to this, there is a lack of SEO guidance and minimal internal marketing features available, ultimately affecting the reach of your audience. Nonetheless, if you require a fast and effortless setup at a low cost, our researchers affirm that Jimdo remains a viable choice. However, in terms of the finest inexpensive website builder, Wix remains the superior option.
When it comes to pricing, Jimdo provides a free plan called Play, in addition to two other pricing plans, Start and Grow, to accommodate various business budgets.
Although the Play plan is free, our research showed that it lacks a significant amount of functionality. It provides a ready-branded domain, which is not ideal, and does not offer any assistance with SEO. This limitation obviously impacts the ability to attract new customers. However, being able to have a live site is still a noteworthy advantage.
The Start plan now has a price of $9 per month, providing additional features that greatly enhance its functionality. These include a custom domain, assistance with SEO, improved support options, and an overall more efficient website.
The Grow plan is designed for businesses that want to expand and will require a monthly payment of $14. With this plan, you will have increased bandwidth and storage capacity, enabling you to accommodate a larger number of visitors. Additionally, you will receive enhanced SEO assistance and gain access to social media marketing features, allowing you to effectively expand your business.
Despite not being the top cheap website builder on this list, Jimdo still offers great value for money at just $9 per month. While there are limitations, particularly in terms of audience expansion, it remains a good and affordable website builder. Its user-friendly nature is further enhanced with the option to purchase a marketing add-on for just $4 a month, making it even more useful.
How Much Should a Website Cost?
The charges for website building services vary among the leading companies such as Square, Wix, and Squarespace. Certain companies provide free trials, while others offer free websites permanently. Nevertheless, you must be realistic about your required features and be ready to pay for them.
The needs of a student who wants to build an online portfolio are different from those of a sole trader who wants to attract customers. These needs are also different from those of someone who wants to sell products online.
You will also have to consider the expenses of domains, hosting, plugins, and third-party apps, as they can accumulate.
- 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 pricing indicates it 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 the best cheap 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+ per month. 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
Although many of the website builders listed above have free plans, their features are typically quite limited. Therefore, when you have the option to create a high-quality website with Hostinger for as low as $2.61 per month, there is no valid justification for settling for less.
By having a paid-for site, even if it’s only a few dollars a month, you can avoid dealing with advertisements, the branding of the website builder, a fixed domain name (for example, username.wixsite.com/website), and restricted capabilities.
By upgrading, you can also gain access to enhanced support and analytics, which are not available to free users. Additionally, you will benefit from improved security, which holds great significance for contemporary ecommerce websites. If you increase the price slightly (equivalent to the cost of two or three expensive coffees per month instead of just one), you will obtain a more polished website appearance and enhanced features such as integration with social media, contact forms, and the ability to monetize your site.
Methodology: How We Rate Cheap Website Builders
Our commitment to impartial research and analysis ensures that we provide you with the most transparent and beneficial product recommendations, instilling utmost confidence in our work.
After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established tools in the market, we proceeded to test them in a hands-on manner to determine their actual strengths and weaknesses. Specifically, we evaluated ten website builder products across 251 areas of investigation.
After conducting extensive market and user research, we have developed a method for testing website builders. This method assesses each product in six primary categories and 33 subcategories, including customer feedback, design, ease of use, and other relevant factors.
Our main testing categories for website builders are:
- Website Features: the capabilities and functionalities offered by a website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, and marketing capacity.
- Design: the aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using a website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates and customizable themes.
- Customer Score: external customer opinion. This is the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular website builder – the market position and reputation a website builder holds.
- Ease of Use: how user-friendly and intuitive a website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.
- Value for Money: the balance between the cost of a website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.
- Help and Support: the assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using a website builder.
Our process is complete after spending hundreds of hours, and the results will help you find the best solution for your needs because not all testing areas have equal weight in calculating a product’s final score. We understand that certain aspects matter more to our readers, while others are simply considered “nice to have.”
