10 Cheapest Website Builders Of 2025

Hostinger is a strong option for a first website. But you might eventually find you’ve outgrown the service and learned enough about website design and management to move on to a more robust host.

Features

Hostinger’s builder is a fairly standard drag-and-drop editor, but it adds convenient mobile editing. As far as the hosting that comes with the builder, it’s primarily shared server hosting, so think of it as an apartment building. Sometimes you get neighbors who let in unauthorized people or make a lot of noise.

That said, it’s a WordPress.org-recommended managed host and even its lowest-priced plans offer SSLs and tools including LiteSpeed and object cache, e-commerce with WooCommerce, a drag-and-drop builder and AI-powered SEO.

Pricing

As with most web hosts, Hostinger plans are on perpetual sale. Discounts vary widely from its monthly $12.95 starting list price, but there is almost always a deeply discounted introductory price available. While that means great savings upfront, it has a catch. Hostinger bills for four years if you want that big discount.

So even at one of its lowest starting price sales of $1.95 per month, you’re shelling out $93.60 plus taxes and other fees in one lump sum to get started. If you can afford the lump payment, it’s nice to be able to lock in that introductory rate, as renewals usually jump significantly to prices starting at around $8 per month, depending on the renewal term you choose and current sales.

Customer Service

Hostinger makes it easy to contact help. With 24/7 AI-assisted live chat triage that quickly gets you to a live person after gathering a bit of information, it takes a lot of worry out of using the service. I especially like that it offers easy-to-find links for non-customers to find information and contact someone with questions before signing up. A large library of tutorials is also good to see.

Reputation

Hostinger consistently gathers high reviews on trusted outlets such as Trustpilot and G2. However, a flood of 5-star reviews on Trustpilot praising customer support from one-time reviewers seems to be skewing that ranking.

After scouring social media, we noticed a trend of people reporting the usual problems for shared server web hosting. Issues include slow response times, bargain-basement customer support and runarounds when trying to transfer a domain out when leaving Hostinger. While nothing unexpected, it’s something to keep in mind as you’re locking yourself into paying for four years upfront.

Learn more: Read our full Hostinger review.

Squarespace is designed with e-commerce in mind, so while it might not have as many templates powering its Fluid Engine builder, there are more choices for online storefronts. Strong security features add extra peace of mind for store owners.

Features

E-commerce requires more security, bandwidth and storage than other types of websites. Squarespace shines for security features such as its security monitoring center, two-factor authentication, denial of service (DoS) attack defense and SSLs.

The Fluid Engine builder offers detailed customization, alignment guides, mobile optimization tweaking and background editing help for a better result and much easier editing experience than its previous original Classic builder.

Pricing

Considering the online payment security features and templates designed with e-commerce in mind, Squarespace’s $25 per month starting price is a good entry-level price point. I love that it keeps small businesses in mind by offering that monthly billing option. For those with a little more budget up front, you can save 36% by paying annually.

Squarespace does charge transaction fees on some plans so costs are deferred as you sell rather than upfront monthly fees. Higher-priced plans offer no transaction fees from Squarespace, keeping more money in your pocket and helping you stay competitive with your product pricing.

Customer Service

Customer support should be a walk in the park with Squarespace’s 24/7 email and Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET live chat. However, delays are frequent with live chat, where “a high volume of requests” bumping up wait times seems to be a perpetual issue. When I tested customer support, it took about 40 minutes for a response.

That said, there’s a 12-hour turnaround with email where you don’t have to wait for someone to pop online, and live chat offers well-thought-out troubleshooting guides that often solve problems without the need for a support response. My biggest concern is no emergency support contact method for time-sensitive issues.

Reputation

Squarespace has a great reputation in some areas and quite literally fell on its face in others. Specifically, Squarespace bought Google Domains in September 2023, and the transition did not go well. Customers of Google Domains reported paid domains being marked as expired, transfers failing and the inability to pay for renewals, leading to a deluge of complaints on sites such as Trustpilot.

Customers can still point domains from third-party domain registrars such as Cloudflare to Squarespace, so in-house domain management is a relatively easy concern to avoid.

Learn more: Read our full Squarespace review.

Think of Weebly as Squarespace’s spunky younger sibling. It’s not as well-rounded in features, but it’s got a solid core set of features, is very user-friendly and isn’t afraid to go toe to toe with the top names out there.

Features

I love it when companies split services into different units instead of trying to be everything to everyone. Weebly focuses on smaller businesses that need just some core features at a lower cost or don’t necessarily need physical POS.

Weebly offers a drag-and-drop website builder with a mobile design app option for the growing number of small business owners who grew up on mobile devices. You can still start with a template and then move around, delete and add elements such as videos and text boxes to pages.

Hosting features vary widely by plan, but even the free plan includes unlimited e-commerce items, an automatic tax calculator and basic SEO tools.

Pricing

Weebly has a forever free e-commerce-enabled plan, but there are no custom domains for that plan, and it has ads on it. Paid plans start at $13 a month and offer monthly billing or annual plans with discounts.

A lack of an uptime guarantee is more annoying than anything. Uptime guarantees don’t guarantee the uptime; just what a host will do if the service is down too often. Looking back over several years of data, Weebly has only missed 99.9% uptime twice.

Customer Service

It costs to talk to a live person at Weebly. The Professional plan and up have access to phone support, while lower-tier plans only have access to live chat and email ticket support.

However, the Professional plan costs less than many other providers’ starting plans, and phone support available seven days a week is a fabulous option for e-commerce.

Reputation

Weebly’s reputation is pretty firmly split between those who adore the website builder and low costs and those who’ve had billing issues or didn’t read the plan features before ordering. Bottom line, make sure to read all the details of the plans and terms and conditions before signing up.

Learn more: Read our full Weebly review.

WordPress is one of the most popular and flexible content management systems available, with nearly half of websites powered by it. WordPress.com is the user-friendly version that includes a drag-and-drop editor and hosting.

Features

WordPress.com adds functionality to the WordPress.org core that takes away the more complicated management with a flexible drag-and-drop visual editor jump-started with hundreds of templates. However, it includes the ability to add CSS coding for a truly custom look as your needs grow. And because it’s built on WordPress, you can pack up your site and move it elsewhere to the original WordPress system later.

Hosting is serviceable, and even without an uptime guarantee, WordPress.com has maintained 100% uptime with quick server response times in the 200 ms to 400 ms range for well over a year.

Pricing

Along with most free providers, the free plan is more an unlimited free trial than a sustainable business solution. Issues such as subdomains and ads on your website mean a paid plan is pretty necessary for businesses.

WordPress.com’s paid plans start dirt cheap at $9 per month, which is less than some providers’ starter plans. The biggest catch is that to access plugins (one of WordPress’ biggest selling points) you’ll have to jump up to a $40 per month plan.

Customer Service

WordPress.com is still a bit tricky when it comes to reaching a live person.

Human support is only available for paid plans, but the AI chatbot immediately tells you that high volume means you “probably won’t get an immediate response” and tries to convince you to use the community help forum instead.

That said, there is a huge library of self-help docs and tutorials, plus a pretty active community help forum.

Reputation

WordPress.com struggles a bit with reputation because of customer service failings, and many users believe that they are being ripped off because paid plans exist when WordPress is open source. While being charged for hosting (that isn’t included in WordPress.org) is normal, there are some gatekeeping issues with WordPress functionality.

Learn more: Read our full WordPress.com review.

Shopify is close to becoming slang for e-commerce, much like Google stands in for search in casual conversation. With a customizable builder, thousands of plugins, built-in hosting and an average 99.99% uptime, it’s where most new businesses start their search.

Features

Shopify’s drag-and-drop builder works on WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), includes access to free and paid plugins for things such as shipper integrations and offers custom CSS and HTML editing for a more fully featured shop if you want to dig into a little coding.

Along with most all-in-one solutions, many features are dependent on the hosting plan you purchase. For example, if you want B2B features or phone support, you’ll have to jump to the highest-tier plan.

Pricing

Instead of a long free trial, Shopify offers a short three-day trial with an extended offer for $1 for your first month, so you can really kick the tires of your chosen plan (except for enterprise-level plans) before committing. It also offers a streamlined Starter plan designed with social selling in mind for $5 per month for those just starting to dip their toes into e-commerce.

Shopify offers a lot of features compared to plan costs, but it is easy to overspend when searching for some features because of the way plans are set up. It’s a good idea to carefully examine the features of every plan during your trial and first month to make sure the plan you can afford has what you need.

Customer Service

It’s a trend I hate, but as with most web hosts, customer service is only by live chat, except for the highest plan tiers that get phone support. Especially on a platform designed for e-commerce, slow responses can be extremely costly if your store is inaccessible.

That said, there is always the option of hiring an independent Shopify expert from its list to help you out, but that adds more cost.

Reputation

Shopify is trusted by thousands of users who sing its praises on sites such as G2. However, even many of those who love the platform’s features, scalability and ease of use do acknowledge it’s easy to run up costs chasing more features if you aren’t careful.

Learn more: Read our full Shopify review.

Google Sites is one of the more fully featured free builders available that includes free hosting. While not always as user-friendly as some other builders, it’s the most economical way to get online fast for many small businesses.

Features

Google Site’s drag-and-drop editor reminds me a bit of a scaled-down Elementor. While there are some basic free templates (more paid options available), it’s quite capable of letting you drag and drop your way to a custom look fairly quickly. That said, some of the formatting, such as the button text, is clunky and takes a bit of fidgeting to get it working like you want it to.

You can embed just about anything if you have a plugin that gives you the embedding code, or if you are a bit more technically proficient. That said, it’s not designed for e-commerce. You could embed something such as Ecwid, but that’s not where its strength lies, and there isn’t a group of e-commerce features.

Pricing

Google Sites is free. The default hosting without ads and drag-and-drop website builder is completely free and doesn’t place ads on your site. You will need to purchase a custom domain separately from the provider of your choice if you don’t want to use a subdomain. And, as part of the Google Workspace ecosystem, Google Sites can use your storage upgrades with paid Workspace plans if you need more oomph for your site.

Customer Service

There are email support and community support channels. I’ve used both with mixed results on my own website. However, if you want more robust support, you’ll need to get it through a paid Google Workspace plan.

Reputation

Google Sites is pretty much overlooked in the world of website builders, and you won’t find much information on the usual review aggregators. That said, if you dig into other social sites, the feedback from actual users is overwhelmingly positive while recognizing its limits for things such as e-commerce.

HubSpot’s website builder is designed to be used with its Content Hub product as part of a robust management system to drive conversions. However, this CMS can be used stand-alone in some cases.

Features

HubSpot’s drag-and-drop builder offers free themes, a nice selection of editable content blocks, access to over 1,500 third-party apps, native HubSpot integrations and SEO tools, depending on the plan you choose.

HubSpot’s content tools are powerful and a more robust system than is available on most platforms that offer an introductory free plan. Ultimately, it makes HubSpot an attractive scalable option that grows with your business.

Pricing

HubSpot’s website builder is free but it includes HubSpot branding and only one page. Paid plans start at $20 per month but then have a steep jump to $500 and $1,500 per month. Pricing plans also include limited seats (users) without additional costs.

That said, the free plan is perfectly serviceable for non-e-commerce sites, especially with the ability to point to a custom domain, until your business grows to need those additional features and support the added cost of a paid plan.

Customer Service

Along with most platforms, support channels vary by how much you pay. Free plans have only community support, the first paid plan adds email and live chat and higher-tier plans include phone support.

However, my test of customer service live chat asking to confirm which plan level had e-commerce capability went poorly. The rep said he had no idea what information I wanted, ended the chat immediately and disabled feedback. I’ve talked to more polite AI bots.

Reputation

HubSpot has a great reputation with users frequently praising how the Content Hub system helps bridge sales and marketing to work with multiple content streams for a smoother buyer journey. That said, many mention a steep learning curve on some of the Content Hub tools while praising the initial ease of getting started.

Wix has come a long way since it started as a JavaScript-based builder. It’s an extremely flexible no-code-needed builder with frequently expanding tools.

Features

Wix does a great job of focusing on features businesses need. In addition to drag-and-drop editing, standout features include marketplace selling and built-in analytics (with paid plans). I am especially impressed with the improved SEO tools that make it much easier to manage your visibility to search engines.

Unfortunately, the AI website generation feature still needs a lot of work. Results are often bland and poorly laid out, so I find I spend more time trying to fix the results than it takes to just build from a template.

Pricing

Wix’s free plan is pretty standard, with features limited by hosting capabilities as well as having ads and only subdomain capability. Paid plans start at $17 per month billed annually, but you’ll have to jump up to the $29 per month Core plan if you want to unlock e-commerce features. There’s also a set of Studio builder plans with better hosting features for the cost, but they’re often hidden for most users.

To me, Wix seems to take a page out of Shopify’s pricing schema, where there is a lot of pressure to upgrade rapidly for relatively simple features or to remove very low storage caps. That said, Wix can be a great deal, depending on what features you need and if you can wait for your website to grow as your business grows.

Customer Service

Wix has a lot of tutorials and videos walking you through using the website builders. For items where you need a bit more help, 24/7 help is a click away from your account. You’ll have to convince the AI chatbot you really need a live person though. Higher-tier plans get priority support.

Reputation

Wix’s reputation is admittedly a bit of a mixed bag. Although SEO capabilities are vastly improved, the memory of websites that were basically invisible to Google still tends to pop up in reviews. Otherwise, its reputation is solid as a DIY website builder and host. Wix’s longevity and continuing improvements are hard to beat.

Learn more: Read our full Wix review.

Based in China, Strikingly seems to be determined to make a name for itself quickly with more features at lower prices than many competitors.

Features

Strikingly offers a pretty standard drag-and-drop editor that most users will pick up quickly, although some items may take more time to master. Standout features include a simple store (one item for testing with the free account), analytics and a robust visitor management suite with live chat.

Pricing

Strikingly offers flexible payment options with monthly, annual and multi-year contracts and discounts that rise with the length of term you sign up for. While I wouldn’t recommend signing up for any company for multiple years right away, once you’ve decided Strikingly fits your needs, locking in pricing at almost half the cost of monthly billing on some plans for five years could be an attractive offer.

Customer Service

Live chat, email support and an extensive knowledge base including video tutorials are available on all plans. The VIP paid plan also gets phone support and a dedicated account manager. When I tested live chat, Strikingly responded within a few minutes with a clear answer and an offer to email a chat transcript for my records.

Reputation

Reputation is where it falls apart for Strikingly. Granted, Trustpilot is notorious for one-sided angry reviews, but the sheer volume of reports on unauthorized charges is concerning. On the other hand, G2 reviews are glowing and highly praise the website builder portion of the service. However, there is still an undercurrent of billing problems and a lack of customer service as well.

Learn more: Read our full Strikingly review.

Designed for creating a lot of websites fast, Duda is a great option for indie web designers who need a white-label solution built on powerful cloud hosting.

Features

Duda focuses on its web builder and trusts Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide actual hosting as part of Duda’s service plans. This move means Duda punches well above its weight for secure cloud hosting.

Duda’s website builder is created with agencies and resellers in mind with features such as export capabilities. It even powers the more widely known GoDaddy. It’s built for speedy website creation with drag-and-drop editing, widgets and an app store to expand website functions. There’s also an AI text assistant that helps with translations, grammar and content creation.

Pricing

Pricing for Duda honestly feels a bit like buying credits for a microtransaction mobile game. Your monthly plan includes credits towards things such as AI uses and site credits. E-commerce capability can be added to main plans for an additional cost. Those plans start at $8 per month billed monthly on top of your primary plan costs.

While the 14-day free trial takes some of the sting out of the unclear pricing, anytime I have to listen to a sales pitch or jump through hoops to see exactly what something will cost, I proceed with caution.

Customer Service

Duda offers a strong knowledge base and plenty of video tutorials. G2 even awarded the company a Best Relationship award in its 2024 fall awards lineup. That said, unless you’re logged in, it’s radio silence. Neither sales nor customer support responded to test inquiries.

Reputation

As a white-label builder, Duda gets less public attention from reviewers than many other beginner platforms. That said, it consistently racks up awards from G2, with users praising ease of use but lamenting the small app store.

Learn more: Read our full Duda review.