The best website builders for a small business site, compared on what they cost
Five website builders, checked against their own pricing pages on 25 October 2026. What each one is best at, what it costs, and when a builder stops being enough.
A website builder is the right answer more often than agencies like to admit. If you need a clear site that explains what you do and how to get in touch, a builder will get you there faster and for less money than a custom build.
This list covers five builders that a small business is likely to consider. It is based on each company’s own pricing page, read on 25 October 2026, and not on hands-on testing of every product. We are a web agency, so we have a commercial interest in custom work; we have tried to keep that out of the ranking by stating the criteria first.
How we chose
We looked for four things, all of which can be checked on a public page:
- A plan that lets you use your own domain name.
- A published price, so you can budget before you start.
- Built-in support for the job most small sites need: showing services, taking enquiries, and in some cases selling.
- A clear way to leave, because you will want to know that before you build.
Prices change often and differ by country, so treat every figure below as a snapshot and confirm it on the vendor’s page before you buy.
The five builders at a glance
| Builder | Free plan | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | No (14-day trial) | Portfolios and service businesses that want a polished look |
| Wix | Yes | Owners who want the most flexible visual editor |
| Webflow | Yes, with limits | Designers who want control over layout and content |
| WordPress.com | Yes | Blogs and content sites; room to grow with plugins |
| Shopify | No (trial offer) | Businesses whose main goal is selling products |
Cheapest paid plan, per month
As listed on 25 October 2026. Billing terms differ, so read this as a rough guide, not a like-for-like price.
Prices from each vendor’s pricing page, read on 25 October 2026. The details, and their caveats, follow.
1. Squarespace: the best-looking default
Squarespace’s pricing page lists four plans, from Basic to Advanced, and says every site starts with a 14-day free trial that needs no credit card. The page shows two prices for Basic, $25 and $19 a month, without labelling them. It does say annual plans save up to 36%, so the lower figure is probably the annual rate.1
Online stores on the Basic plan carry a 2% transaction fee; the Core plan and above list 0%.1 Annual plans include a free domain for the first year, which then renews at standard rates.1
Choose it if you want a site that looks considered without much design work.
Look elsewhere if you need to change the structure of a page in ways the templates do not allow.
2. Wix: the most flexible visual editor
Wix has a free plan with no credit card required, and four paid plans from Light at $17.77 a month to Business Elite at $159.77 a month.2 Storage rises from 2 GB on Light to unlimited on Business Elite, and the Core plan and above add online payments and basic ecommerce.2
Two cautions from the pricing page itself. The prices include GST and change by location, and the free domain voucher applies only to a first-time yearly purchase, must be redeemed within 60 days, and cannot be used to renew a domain.2
Choose it if you want to start free and place things freely on the page.
Look elsewhere if you want predictable all-in pricing before you reach the checkout page.
3. Webflow: layout control for people who think like designers
Webflow’s Site plans start with a free Starter plan, then Basic at $15 a month and Premium at $25 a month, billed yearly. The Starter plan publishes only to a webflow.io address, with two static pages and 1 GB of monthly bandwidth.3 Ecommerce plans start at $29 a month, billed yearly, with a 2% transaction fee on Standard.3
The free plan is therefore a place to learn, not to run a business from. Webflow also has a steeper learning curve than the others here, because it exposes concepts from web design directly.
Choose it if you or your designer want fine control over layout and content structure.
Look elsewhere if you want to be live this week without learning the tool.
4. WordPress.com: the easiest route into the WordPress ecosystem
WordPress.com’s Personal plan costs US$4 a month when billed yearly, or US$9 a month on a monthly plan. Business is US$25 a month yearly.4 Plugin installation is available from Personal upward, but not on the free plan.4
Note the distinction in the name: WordPress.com is a hosted service, separate from the free WordPress software you install on your own hosting. That second route gives more control and more responsibility, and is the foundation of WooCommerce, which we compare with Shopify in another article.
Choose it if you publish regularly and want a large plugin ecosystem.
Look elsewhere if you want everything in one dashboard with no plugin choices to make.
5. Shopify: the one to pick when selling is the point
Shopify’s Basic plan is $29 a month on annual billing or $39 monthly, with online card rates of 2.9% + 30¢. Grow and Advanced cost more and lower the card rate.5 The page advertises a trial of 3 days free and then $1 a month for 3 months on the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans.5
It is built around products, orders and checkout. If you are mostly presenting a service, you would be paying for a store you do not use.
Choose it if selling products is your main goal.
Look elsewhere if you need a simple five-page site.
When is a builder not enough?
The designer Dieter Rams put the principle well in the last of his ten principles of good design:6
Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.
A builder is often the “less, but better” choice. It works well until your needs outgrow what it offers. Common signs:
- You need a feature that no plugin or app provides, and workarounds are piling up.
- You need to match a detailed brand system that templates fight against.
- Your site has to connect to your own software, for example a booking or inventory system.
- Page speed matters to your business and you cannot change what the platform loads. Our explainer on Core Web Vitals shows how to check this.
If two or more of these apply, a custom build deserves a quote. If none do, use a builder, and put the money you save into good writing and photography. Either way, a one-page brief makes every next step cheaper.
What we could not verify
We did not test the editors, templates or support of these products, so we make no claim about ease of use beyond what the vendors state. Prices are for the United States or as shown on each page in October 2026, and renewal prices were not confirmed for every plan.
Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, WordPress and Shopify names and logos are trademarks of their owners. DerekSol is not affiliated with, or paid by, any of them.
References
Footnotes
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Wix. Premium plans. Read 25 October 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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Vitsœ. The power of good design (“Good design”, About us). Principle 10, “Good design is as little design as possible”. Read 25 October 2026. ↩