1. What website builders are cheapest?
What are website builders?
With more customers than ever starting their search for information online, it’s essential that your business has a useful and attractive website. In the early days of the internet, this would have meant hiring a professional web developer to write custom code to design and build your site. Today, it can mean signing up for a website builder subscription and building your site yourself using a simple design interface.
Website builders are one-stop shops for designing and building your business website. They let you purchase a domain, build a bespoke website or customize an existing template, and manage your site. Website builders make it so easy to build your website because they don’t require any coding ability. They have simple user interfaces that let you drag and drop features around the site, pick colors and themes, and attach third-party integrations. The good and the great website builders are separated by price, user interface, and feature richness.
This simplicity and flexibility are what make website builders increasingly popular, especially for small businesses. E-commerce businesses that rely on their websites to sell products aren’t the only sort of businesses that would benefit from websites. Service businesses like hair salons and restaurants; retail businesses like boutiques and bookshops; and business-to-business firms like accountancies and construction companies can all benefit from having easily accessible, user-friendly, and professional websites.
We’ll explore some of the top cheap website builders in more detail later in this article, including their prices, user interfaces, and features.
What are cheap website makers?
There are tons of website builders on the market these days, and it can be hard to know what differentiates them and which provides the best value for your money. In this article, we’ll discuss ten of the top website builders and see how they stack up in terms of price, usability, and features.
Website builders like Wix, WordPress, and Webflow promise to help you build functional and beautiful websites cheaply and easily. These website builders often include:
- Customizable templates to help you get started
- Third-party integrations that let you connect helpful services like scheduling apps or social media feeds
- Mobile-responsive designs to help you reach customers on their cell phones
- Analytics that make it easy to judge how your website is driving traffic to your business
Some have even more features that we will discuss in detail later on.
2. How to find the best and cheapest website builder for small businesses
How much does it cost to build a website?
Website builders aren’t the only option when it comes to making a website for your business. While website builders are a cost-effective and simple do-it-yourself solution for small businesses, some businesses choose to instead use professional design agencies or freelance designers. We’ve summarized the price you can expect to pay to build and run a website using each of these options below.
| Options | Price to Develop | Price to Maintain |
| Professional Design Agencies | $25 to $60 per hour of the developer’s time | $5 to $150 per month, depending on required maintenance, hosting, support, etc. |
| Freelance Designers | $250 to $600, depending on site complexity | $5 to $150 per month, depending on required maintenance, hosting, support, etc. |
| Website Builders | Included in a subscription price | $7 to $30 per month, with maintenance, hosting, and support included |
Whether you have the time and energy to do it yourself and save some money with a website builder or want to pay someone else to take the burden off your shoulders, there are many options when it comes to getting a professional website for your business. We’ll look more closely at website builders in this article and compare the top ten options on price, usability, and features.
How to choose a website builder
When evaluating a website builder, there are several factors to look out for. Striking the right balance across these criteria will help you find a website builder that fits your business’s needs:
- Price: You can fit your website to any budget. If you’re in the market for a bigger and more complex website, you’ll need to budget more money to get it built. Website builders generally have different service tiers, with more premium features costing more money. That being said, simple websites with simple purposes and functionalities can typically be built relatively cheaply and easily.
- Usability: If you’re going the DIY route with your website, you want the experience to be as painless as possible. A lot of this comes down to the templates available for the website builder you choose and the design interface itself. More popular website builders will typically have more templates available, which adds flexibility and makes it more likely that there will be a template closely meeting your needs. The design interface should be simple, easy to figure out, and flexible. If there’s too big a learning curve, it would have made sense to just pay a professional in the first place.
- Features: While the major website builders all have a similar set of base features, some are more feature-rich than others. These can include essentials like e-commerce features. This can be especially important if you’re planning to use your website to sell things, which will require you to build the technical infrastructure to accept online payments. Other features are nice-to-haves like built-in search engine optimization (SEO) advice or business emails. Make sure you pick a website builder that has features that meet your needs.
3. The best cheap website builders
While it can seem tempting to base your decision solely on price and go with the most affordable website builder, it’s important to also consider other factors. We’ve laid out the pros and cons of ten popular cheap website builders below.
Wix
Wix is the most popular website builder platform. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a popular domain hosting service and website builder. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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Squarespace
Squarespace is a shiny and modern-looking website builder known for its marketing capabilities. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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WordPress
WordPress is a popular website builder, especially for content-focused sites built around blogs. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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Weebly
Weebly is another popular website builder. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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Carrd
Carrd is a more niche website builder solution, but it’s possible that its features fit your needs. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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Webflow
Webflow is generally a website builder used by more experienced website designers. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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Strikingly
Strikingly is a website builder that’s great for simple website needs. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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HostGator
HostGator is known as a web hosting service, but it also offers a powerful website builder. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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Zyro
Zyro (by Hostinger) is a no-frills alternative to more popular website builders like Wix or Squarespace. Check out its features, pricing, and our review below.
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Summary of 10 cheap website builders
We’ve captured our final verdict on each website builder below so you can see the differences for yourself.
| Website Builder | Price | User Interface | Beginner Friendly? | Features |
| Wix | $16 – $59 / month | Difficult | No | Advanced |
| GoDaddy | Free – $29.99 / month | Easy | Yes | Limited |
| Squarespace | $16 – $49 / month | Easy | Yes | Average |
| WordPress | Free – $45 / month | Difficult | No | Advanced |
| Weebly | Free – $13 / month | Easy | Yes | Limited |
| Carrd | Free – $19 / year | Easy | Yes | Limited |
| Webflow | Free – $212 / month | Difficult | No | Average |
| Strikingly | Free – $49 / month | Easy | Yes | Limited |
| HostGator | $3.84 – $9.22 / month | Easy | Yes | Average |
| Zyro | $2.59 – $3.59 / month | Easy | Yes | Limited |
4. The cheapest way to build a website
The cheapest way to create a website up front may be a website builder like one of the ones we talked about above, but the cheapest option in the long run is a turnkey website.
Turnkey Websites Online is a top provider of turnkey websites, which are fully developed sites that are ready for you to plug your content into and run almost immediately. While a Turnkey Websites Online site is slightly more expensive than Wix’s cheapest plan up front, you’ll own the site forever.
With auto-blog and auto-update features, these turnkey sites keep your online presence fresh, whether with your own scheduled custom content or automatically generated relevant content. Regular updates help you attract new customers and build a sense of credibility for your site. In addition, Turnkey Websites Online provides excellent online support to ensure your site is up and running smoothly at all times.
Check out what Turnkey Websites Online can offer your business here!
