8 Best Cheapest Website Builder Companies in 2023
Finding the cheapest website builder that still has the features you need is challenging. There are many good options out there, but most force you to give up important things to bring down the price.
That‘s why we compared all the lower-priced website builders to find the ones with the best overall offering. We looked at their features, pros and cons, and who can benefit from them the most.
Discover how they stack up in the comparison table below.
Published: January 20, 2022
Top Cheapest Website Builders in 2023
1. WordPress.com
WordPress.com is still the gold standard when it comes to website builders. Besides being the cheapest website builder for blogs and news sites, it provides enough customization to build just about any type of website. Additionally, it offers one of the most generous feature sets of all the options listed here. Full Review
- In-depth customization options
- Third-party plugin integration
- Diverse and well-designed themes
WordPress.com is still the gold standard when it comes to website builders. Besides being the cheapest website builder for blogs and news sites, it provides enough customization to build just about any type of website. Additionally, it offers one of the most generous feature sets of all the options listed here. Full Review
2. Wix
Thanks in part to a concerted marketing effort, Wix is quickly becoming the most popular website builder. And it's using that success to improve its already-impressive features and offers continually. Full Review
- Excellent reputation and continuously improving features
- The most options of any builder
- Balances simplicity with good customization
Thanks in part to a concerted marketing effort, Wix is quickly becoming the most popular website builder. And it's using that success to improve its already-impressive features and offers continually. Full Review
3. Weebly
Weebly's most significant selling point is how easy it is to use. Even a complete beginner can make affordable websites in minutes after a short tutorial. And it has a lot of great features for businesses that need a simple web presence. Full Review
- Ideal for small businesses
- The simplest editing software
- Good SEO optimization options
Weebly's most significant selling point is how easy it is to use. Even a complete beginner can make affordable websites in minutes after a short tutorial. And it has a lot of great features for businesses that need a simple web presence. Full Review
4. Strikingly
Strikingly is the right choice if you want to build a single-page website. It's pretty much unrivaled in functionality and design. It's a little lackluster outside of that niche but still delivers strong performance overall. Full Review
- Outstanding single-page layouts
- Full customer support on all pricing plans
- Online store with five products on the basic plan
Strikingly is the right choice if you want to build a single-page website. It's pretty much unrivaled in functionality and design. It's a little lackluster outside of that niche but still delivers strong performance overall. Full Review
5. HostGator
It's almost a shame HostGator's primary activity (web hosting) overshadows its outstanding website builder. This builder has everything you'll need to create a professional-looking website, and the hosting is included to boot. Full Review
- Cheapest website builder service with hosting included
- Unlimited storage on all plans
- Straightforward integration with all major social platforms
It's almost a shame HostGator's primary activity (web hosting) overshadows its outstanding website builder. This builder has everything you'll need to create a professional-looking website, and the hosting is included to boot. Full Review
6. Webnode
There's very little to complain about with Webnode. It has top-notch themes, excellent e-commerce features, and a super-simple drag-and-drop builder. It even has some advanced SEO features built-in. Full Review
- Excellent for multilingual sites
- Included email hosting
- Highly intuitive and straightforward builder software
There's very little to complain about with Webnode. It has top-notch themes, excellent e-commerce features, and a super-simple drag-and-drop builder. It even has some advanced SEO features built-in. Full Review
7. uKit
If your main priority is paying as little as possible for a website, you don't need to look any further than uKit. Despite the low price, its feature set is quite decent, and it only falls short when it comes to advanced customization. Full Review
- Highly responsive site design helps SEO
- Can turn a Facebook page into a website
- A diverse app library
If your main priority is paying as little as possible for a website, you don't need to look any further than uKit. Despite the low price, its feature set is quite decent, and it only falls short when it comes to advanced customization. Full Review
8. Zoho Sites
Zoho Sites is another company whose main activity draws attention from an otherwise superb product. Zoho Sites may not be the most prominent builder out there, but it has all the features you'd expect from a premium builder with only a few minor drawbacks. Full Review
- Zoho office suite integration
- In-depth customization for advanced users
- A streamlined setup process that gets your site up in minutes
Zoho Sites is another company whose main activity draws attention from an otherwise superb product. Zoho Sites may not be the most prominent builder out there, but it has all the features you'd expect from a premium builder with only a few minor drawbacks. Full Review
From $4.80/month
Best Cheapest Website Builder Reviews
- Rating: 9.9
- Price: $0.00/month
- Storage: From 6 GB
- Templates: Several thousand
- Customer reviews: Above average
- Customer support: Via help center and forums
WordPress.com needs little introduction since it runs almost half a billion websites worldwide. And its reputation as the best cheap website builder is well-deserved.
Originally a blogging platform, WordPress still retains some of its blog-focused roots. So, the Personal plan is best for just that—personal blogs.
This plan includes a domain for a year, which automatically renews after that at its regular price. Plus, it has some of the most generous storage offers of all the options on this list.
You‘ll also get a pre-installed SSL certificate and unlimited email support. The support is average at best, but it‘s what you can reasonably expect for such a cheap plan.
The WordPress website builder is also excellent in terms of features, allowing unparalleled control and customization of your site.
However, there‘s a bit of a learning curve, so complete novices will have a rough start. But once you get the hang of it, you‘ll realize the flexibility you get is worth the trouble.
Pros | Cons |
Excellent customization | Doesn’t support drag-and-drop building |
Serves as a platform to over a third of the web | Best support options limited to high-tier plans |
Integrates numerous third-party plugins | |
Fast and simple setup |
- Rating: 9.9
- Price: From $0.00/month
- Storage: From 500 MB
- Templates: 800+
- Customer reviews: Above average
- Customer support: Via help center, support tickets, and phone
Wix is genuinely an exceptional website builder. It‘s fair to say that it does everything exceedingly well—It‘s easy to use, has fantastic design options, and excellent customer support. It‘s arguably the best affordable website builder with e-commerce scaling.
It even has outstanding e-commerce features that rival dedicated e-commerce platforms.
The Wix website builder is easy to operate and gives you a ton of control without requiring a significant time commitment. Perhaps the only drawback is that you can‘t change templates on the fly, so you‘ll need to start your website over if you‘re unhappy with the one you picked.
However, it‘s worth noting that Wix‘s free plan is quite limited. Still, it‘s our top choice when it comes to free website builders today. The paid plans are low-cost by any standards, starting at only $4.50 per month.
For most people, it makes sense to use the second-lowest price tier of $8.50 per month. It gets you six times the storage and a free domain for a year.
That‘s why Weebly is a top-notch low-cost website builder with excellent value for money that businesses on a tight budget definitely appreciate.
Pros | Cons |
The most user-friendly builder software | The basic plan doesn’t include a domain |
Excellent plans designed for businesses | Wix sites load marginally slower than some competitors’ |
Hundreds of professionally designed themes | |
A 14-day money-back guarantee |
- Rating: 9.9
- Price: From $0.00/month
- Storage: From 500 MB
- Templates: 65
- Customer Reviews: Average
- Customer Support: Via phone, chat support, and help center
What Weebly lacks in fancy features, it makes up for with functionality and price. Plus, it‘s the cheapest website builder for small business owners.
If you need a website creator with minimal cost and without a lot of the bells and whistles that you probably won‘t use anyway, Weebly is the right choice for you. It has drag-and-drop functionality, a decent template library, and builds responsive websites.
You won‘t find as many options as in some other builders in terms of templates, widgets, and plugins. But that‘s not necessarily a bad thing.
The somewhat limited options are excellent if you only need to create a web presence for your business fast. With Weebly, you can quickly build an attractive website without spending too much money or time, making it the best low-cost website builder for brick-and-mortar stores.
You can even build a bare-bones online store with Weebly for a lot less than you‘d pay at an e-commerce platform.
But any Weebly review would be remiss if it didn‘t mention you need to bring your own domain. Weebly can help you host your site, but that comes at an additional cost.
Pros | Cons |
Super simple website editor | Not great for blogging |
Good mobile app for site management | Expensive e-commerce plans |
Allows you to export your site | |
Fast site loading |
- Rating: 9.8
- Price: From $0.00/month
- Storage: From 1 GB
- Templates: 199
- Customer reviews: Average
- Customer support: Via help center and live chat
Strikingly‘s almost singular focus as one of the best-value website builder tools out there is one-page layouts. In other words, its tools, themes, and features are all geared toward making a single-page masterpiece.
If you think a single-page design is limiting, you‘d probably be surprised. There are many examples of single-page layouts that get their point across much better than multiple pages.
Within that scope, Strikingly is a cheap website builder and hosting provider that‘s hard to beat. You‘ll get a free domain for the first year, and you can publish up to two sites on the most basic plan.
Moreover, you can try out some small-scale merchandising with Strikingly. With the basic plan, you can sell up to five products on your website with no transaction fees from Strikingly. But if you‘re planning on starting a dedicated e-commerce endeavor, there are better options.
Strikingly really only has problems in two areas. One is SEO optimization, as you can only optimize the most fundamental aspects of your site.
And the other is advertising. To get rid of the “made with Strikingly” ad, you‘ll have to at least spring for the Pro plan, which puts it squarely in the not-so-cheap category of cheap website builders.
Pros | Cons |
24/7 live chat support on all plans | Limited SEO optimization |
Ideal for single-page layouts | Advertising even on paid plans |
Excellent value for money | |
Swap themes without building a new site |
- Rating: 9.7
- Price: From $3.84/month
- Storage: Unlimited
- Templates: 4,500
- Customer reviews: Above average
- Customer support: Via phone, email, and live chat
You may already know HostGator as one of the top-notch cloud hosting providers. And that‘s probably why its website builder tends to fly under the radar. But it definitely isn‘t only that. HostGator is, in fact, one of the cheapest website builders and hosting providers.
If you need a simple website and domain name ASAP, you could do a lot worse than HostGator. When you sign up for a hosting plan, you get a free domain registration for the first year.
And here‘s the kicker—all Gator website builder plans include unlimited storage and bandwidth.
Despite already being among the cheapest website builders, Gator Builder also frequently offers introductory pricing. So, at any given time, you‘re likely to run into a great deal.
Gator Builder is incredibly simple and straightforward to use as far as functionality goes. Plus, it has a brief tutorial that goes over everything you need to start putting together your site.
And it has streamlined social media integration, making it perfect for piggybacking off your already-active social accounts.
The only gripe you might have is that the features are too rudimentary for some applications. But if you want to start a blog or make a quick site to advertise your business or service, this is the best and cheapest website builder for you.
Pros | Cons |
Easy social media integration | Missing some advanced building features |
Responsive site design | |
Decent analytics included on all plans | |
Unlimited bandwidth and storage on all plans |
- Rating: 9.7
- Price: From $0.00/month
- Storage: From 100 MB
- Templates: 98
- Customer reviews: Average
- Customer support: Via email
Webnode isn‘t a niche website builder by any stretch. Over 40 million websites use it, so its feature set aims for broad appeal. Still, it‘s likely the most-affordable website builder for multilingual sites.
If your goal is to pay as little as possible, Webnode‘s Limited plan could be the right choice for you. It‘s undoubtedly affordable and comes at $3.90/month. But it really does justice to its name—it‘s limited in some crucial ways.
You‘ll only get 100 MB of storage and a gigabyte of bandwidth allowance. And you‘ll need to bring your own domain.
If those limitations aren‘t an issue, you can get to work with the easiest and cheapest website builder with this feature-set you‘re likely to find.
Like most mass-market website builders, it‘ll fall short when it comes to complex design elements.
If you want a little more functionality, you can get it with the Standard plan for $12.90 a month. Thanks to this plan, Webnode got close to being the cheapest online store builder available.
And its biggest claim to fame is multilingual support. You can create your site in up to two languages on the Standard plan and more on higher price tiers.
Pros | Cons |
Multilingual support | The basic plan is severely limiting |
In-depth SEO optimization | Premium support exclusive to higher-tier plans |
Solid blogging platform | |
A 15-day money-back guarantee |
- Rating: 9.5
- Price: From $2.50/month
- Storage: Unlimited
- Templates: 350+
- Customer reviews: Above average
- Customer support: Via email and live chat
uKit is the cheapest website builder in 2021, and it‘s a full-fledged website builder that still offers a modicum of range and options despite its rock-bottom pricing, which starts at only $2.50 a month, after a 14-day free trial.
However, that low price is only available if you‘re willing to pay for two full years of uKit. Otherwise, it‘s still an affordable website builder at $5.00 per month, if you prefer to pay monthly.
The issue with uKit is that it‘s pretty good at most things and spectacular at a few of them. It has a wide selection of themes, but they‘re relatively homogenized. So you get a vast selection of very similar themes.
The elements and themes are built to be responsive almost to a fault. Your website will look ideal on any screen, but that responsiveness comes at the cost of customization.
And uKit‘s customization options, while good, fall short of other inexpensive website builder choices.
The one gem in uKit‘s crown is the option to turn your Facebook page into a website. If you have an established Facebook presence, you can have uKit turn its content into a website. And with a few minor editing decisions, you can have a website in minutes.
Pros | Cons |
Easy app integration with many popular services | Strictly responsive options hinder customization |
Excellent theme library | Premium support exclusive to higher-tier plans |
Highly responsive design options | |
Excellent blogging platform |
- Rating: 9.4
- Price: From $0.00/15 days
- Storage: From 500 MB
- Templates: 35
- Customer Reviews: Average
- Customer Support: Via email, phone, and support center
Zoho Sites falls into a similar bucket as HostGator‘s Gator Builder. Which is to say, it‘s technically an ancillary service to Zoho‘s primary focus—business management software. And it‘s also the most affordable website builder with CRM integration.
But don‘t let that fool you. Zoho Sites is still an excellent and cheap website maker with a fully streamlined process that gets your site up in no time.
It shouldn‘t take more than 20 minutes to get a functional site up and running.
Zoho Sites is pretty straightforward in terms of functionality. It‘s a drag-and-drop website builder where adding and removing elements is a cinch, even for complete beginners.
The biggest drawback is a five-page limit on the starter plan. In our experience, five pages is a sort of no man‘s land. It‘s often not enough to fully develop a multi-page site, and there are better options for single-page sites.
Still, overall, it‘s a good website builder for the price. And if you‘re already a Zoho software user, it‘s a no-brainer. Zoho Sites allows streamlined integration with Zoho software, making it an ideal choice in that case.
Pros | Cons |
Your site can be up in a few minutes | Relatively few plugins to choose from |
High quality, responsive templates | Basic plan limited to only five pages |
Custom CSS and HTML customization | |
Zoho software integration |
How to Choose the Cheapest Website Builder That Still Delivers
There are many great website builders available, with more entering the market. And the overarching theme you‘ll notice is that they generally offer similar features.
So choosing one that fits your needs is a lot like choosing a pair of jeans—the little details count!
Although it may seem reasonable, picking the builder that costs the least isn‘t the cheapest way to build a website that‘s functional. Taking value into account will net you much better results, so here are the features you should look for:
Design Features
Before you even start looking for a website builder, try to create a mock-up of a site, even if it‘s just on paper.
That‘ll give you an idea of what design features are the most important. After all, what good is a cheap website builder if it can‘t make the site you want?
These are some of the key elements you should look for:
- Themes and templates—The main point of a website builder is to start the building process halfway done with a template. So one of the first things you want to do is check the templates to find one that makes sense for your site. Most display them prominently on their sites.
- In-depth customization—Do you need (or want) custom CSS or HTML elements? Not all builders support that degree of control.
- E-commerce functionality—A cheap e-commerce website builder is likely to have limited functionality and little room for growth.
Ease of Use
Even if you‘re the most experienced web developer in the world, an easy-to-use builder is generally a better choice than the overly complex one.
There‘s no point in choosing a complicated option unless it provides useful features in return. Think about your goals and how the builder helps you accomplish them.
You may find the cheapest online website builder, but it won‘t be worth the savings if it requires lots of coding and editing.
In the main, stick to drag-and-drop builders unless there are massive benefits of not doing so. And usually, more plugins and integrations are better since they make certain operations a lot easier.
Set a Realistic Budget
Believe it or not, a free website builder can often end up being more costly than an inexpensive one.
How?
Free builders always include a few big asterisks, and the main one tends to be advertisements and a branded domain. Those sorts of things are a massive problem for most business websites and immediately break trust with visitors.
So, an unbranded webpage free from advertisements is often well worth the investment.
And here are a couple of other things to look out for in terms of pricing:
- Annual billing is always cheaper—The longer you commit, the better deal you‘re likely to get.
- Beware of introductory site builder pricing offers—You want to make sure the great price you find stays great in future billing periods.
- E-commerce functionality always carries a heftier price tag than a plain website with no online store. There‘s no practical way of getting around that.
Hosting and Domain Name
Keep in mind that there‘s more to a website than just lines of code. That code has to live somewhere, and that somewhere can add a substantial cost.
Even the best website builder software can‘t save you from hosting charges. So it‘s a good idea to look for bundle deals.
Many website builders, such as the Wix site builder and Gator builder, include the price of hosting and a free domain on certain price tiers. You‘ll often find these bundles end up costing less than unbundled options, even when the alternative has a lower sticker price.
SEO Features
No one makes websites to store them on a hard drive and put them on a shelf. The point is to get your site seen.
To do that, you‘ll need to work on search engine optimization, at least a bit.
Ideally, the cheap website maker you choose will already be SEO-optimized to an extent. But you should also make sure it allows you to control some or all on-site optimization features like:
- Meta elements—Things like page meta descriptions, image alt tags, and other metadata make a big difference for SEO.
- Sitemaps—XML sitemaps give browsers the ability to scan and index your site, which is crucial for SEO.
Customer Support
Just because you‘re settling for the least expensive website builder, it doesn‘t mean you‘re not entitled to decent customer support.
However, many website builder services scale their support options based on the price tier. Unfortunately, those are the ground rules, and part of getting a website builder for a low price is going without a degree of service.
The main takeaway is this:
If you need less help and support, you can probably get away with paying less. So, weigh that into your calculations when reading through these website builder reviews.
Conclusion
It‘s always difficult to check all the boxes for an item when you‘re trying to be frugal. And that‘s also valid for finding the best inexpensive website builder.
You‘ll have the greatest chance of finding the perfect builder for your needs if you adhere to these three principles:
- Consider the full value of what you‘re getting for the price, including hosting, domains, etc.
- Be realistic about your needs. Ultimately, some features are just worth paying for, even if they‘re pricey.
- Reputation is important. If a website builder has widespread adoption, it‘s usually for good reasons.
FAQ
What is the best and cheapest website builder?
For people with a little bit of web development experience, that would be WordPress.com. For those entirely unfamiliar with web design, it‘s Wix.
There are cheaper options out there, but being overly thrifty can end up costing you money by missing out on useful features. So be detailed when making a website builder price comparison. Don‘t only look at the price, but also compare the characteristics.
If you‘re dead set on getting the cheapest one, uKit is the most economical option with all the trappings of a full website builder. Carrd is even more affordable, but it‘s extremely limited in functionality.
Which free website builder is best?
Wix‘s free plan is the best free website builder for most users. It almost seems like Wix can do no wrong when it comes to building websites. It has vast template and plugin libraries, a foolproof drag-and-drop interface, and highly responsive design elements.
Its only real drawback is that if you choose it, you‘re locked in for life. It doesn‘t let you export your website to any other service.
So, if you‘re only interested in a website builder software with no strings attached, WordPress.org is the most popular and best option.
Which is the easiest website builder?
Weebly is a website builder that best marries ease of use and price.
Its onboarding process is quick and straightforward. With a short introduction and tutorial, you‘ll be ready to access its full potential in no time.
It‘s also not limited to simple functions. Weebly has got you all covered if you ever need advanced customization, as it allows CSS and HTML code editing in all its themes.
So besides being among the cheapest website builder tools on the market, Weebly is also very straightforward.