Website Builder Cost 2026: Intro vs Renewal Price for Six Builders

A website builder costs between $2.99 and $29 a month on the plans a small business site actually uses, at US prices read on 9 October 2026. Counted honestly, with a domain and the prepayment each offer demands, that is about $190 to $360 in the first year and about $210 to $1,090 over three years. The spread is wide because the cheapest headline price belongs to a plan that must be paid four years in advance, and the most expensive rows belong to builders whose price stays level year after year.

This page prices the same site on all six builders the standard scores, for one, two and three years. It is for anyone comparing website builder prices before committing, and it is deliberately narrow: subscription cost only. Design fees, agency quotes and the total cost of a website by other routes are a different question, and are not answered here.

The Value criterion measures two years, not one

Value for money carries 7 points of the 40 in this standard, and its definition is fixed: true cost over two years, including the renewal year. A builder cannot earn points for a promotional rate that expires. This revision adds a third year to the tables below, because one of the six now sells its lowest rate only on a 48-month term, and a two-year window would hide where that term ends. The Value marks themselves are still awarded on the two-year definition.

The scenario is the same for every builder: one small-business brochure site on the mid-tier plan most such sites need, plus one .com domain. Mailboxes are costed separately, further down, because the builders bundle them so differently that folding them into one total would hide more than it shows.

Entry prices across the six

All prices are per month in US dollars, read from each vendor's own pricing page on 9 October 2026.

Wix prices every plan for yearly billing only, from $17 a month for Light through Core ($29) and Business ($39) to Business Elite ($159); the US page carried no monthly rate and no promotion. Squarespace's annual-billing prices are $19 (Basic), $29 (Core), $49 (Plus) and $99 (Advanced); on monthly billing the same tiers cost $25, $39, $65 and $139. There is no free plan; Squarespace offers a 14-day trial instead. Webflow's site plans are Basic at $15, which has no CMS and so cannot run a blog, and Premium at $25, both billed yearly. Shopify's Basic plan is $29 billed yearly or $39 monthly, Grow is $79 or $105, and Advanced $299 or $399.

Hostinger's builder now has three plans: Premium at $2.99, Unlimited at $3.99 and Cloud Startup at $7.99. Each price applies to a 48-month term paid upfront: $143.52, $191.52 and $383.52 respectively. The plan this standard previously called Business no longer exists; Unlimited is its successor. GoDaddy's US website-builder page now sells its Airo AI Builder line-up: a $0 tier carrying 50 monthly AI credits, then three paid tiers billed annually, Starter for $9.99, Professional for $24.99 and Ultimate for $99.99. The classic Websites + Marketing prices scored in the August revision could not be re-read from a US session, so they are not repeated here.

Intro price against renewal price

The chart sets each builder's introductory monthly rate against the rate it renews at, for the plan used in this scenario.

Two facts sit behind that picture. Hostinger is the only builder of the six that publishes a renewal rate higher than its entry rate, on every plan. And GoDaddy's builder page offers an "extra discount" on the first year without printing what the plan renews at, so its renewal cannot be charted. Treat any GoDaddy renewal figure you see elsewhere as unconfirmed until it appears at checkout.

Three-year totals: plan, domain, prepay

The table adds up what leaves your account each year: the plan, the domain once any free first year ends, and the full prepayment where an offer requires one. Where a builder sells domains and publishes the renewal, its price is used (Wix: $21.35 a year for a .com). Where it does not sell domains (Webflow) or did not show a .com renewal (Squarespace, Shopify, Hostinger), an independent registrar's .com price of $11.08 a year is used, read on 10 October 2026.

Read across the rows and the order is stable after year one: Hostinger far below the rest, Webflow next, and Wix, Squarespace and Shopify within about $21 of one another over three years. Read down the Hostinger row and the reason is plain: the year-one figure is not one year of service but four. The prepayment is the price of the low rate, and it is the subject of its own section below.

The renewal cliff: Hostinger

Hostinger's renewal rates are printed beside its entry rates: Premium renews at $10.99 a month against $2.99, an increase of 268%, and Unlimited at $16.99 against $3.99, an increase of 326%. Cloud Startup renews at $25.99 against $7.99. The struck-through "regular" prices on the same page ($11.99, $18.99 and $27.99) are higher still than the renewal rates, which is a presentation choice rather than a price anyone pays.

What changed since the August revision is when the cliff arrives. Because the entry rates now apply to a 48-month term paid upfront, a buyer who takes them pays nothing more for the plan until month 49. On Unlimited, the bill then moves from $191.52 for four years to $203.88 for each year at the renewal rate, before the domain. That is still the cheapest route of the six over three years. It is also the reason the standard measures a window long enough to see a renewal at all.

GoDaddy: a new line-up and no published renewal

The August revision scored GoDaddy Websites + Marketing on intro and renewal prices that showed a structural uplift on every plan. GoDaddy's US builder page now presents Airo AI Builder instead, with plans sized by AI credits per month (Starter 150, Professional 300, Ultimate 750), and unused credits do not roll over. Professional publishes up to ten sites or apps and includes a free custom domain, and a free domain comes with each paid plan.

What the page does not show is a renewal price, or a month-to-month price. A three-year total therefore cannot be built from GoDaddy's own figures, and this page does not estimate one. GoDaddy's scorecard was awarded on the earlier line-up; the next scoring run re-reads the Airo plans before any mark changes.

The four that hold roughly flat

Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and Webflow publish no renewal increase on their plans. Their second year moves only with the domain. On Wix, the voucher pays for the domain in year one, after which a .com costs $21.35 a year, so $348.00 becomes $369.35. On Squarespace, the annual plan's free first-year domain ends, and $348.00 becomes $359.08. Shopify and Webflow do not include a domain in this scenario, so their bills are level from the first year: $359.08 and $311.08.

Webflow remains the clearest case of the four. Its pricing page shows yearly site-plan prices with no introductory rate, so there is nothing to fall off and nothing to diarise. The trade-off is elsewhere: Webflow bills a site plan and, for anyone who collaborates, a Workspace plan and seats on top. A solo owner publishing one site can stay on the free Starter Workspace; a team adding Core at $19 a month and a full seat at $39 a month changes the arithmetic considerably.

Monthly vs annual billing

Annual billing is cheaper wherever both rates are published, and the saving is large. Squarespace's Core plan costs $29 a month when billed annually and $39 when billed monthly, about 26% less; Basic is $19 against $25. Shopify's Basic is $29 billed yearly against $39 monthly, the same 26% gap. Of the six, these are the only two whose US pricing pages showed both rates on 9 October 2026. Wix, Webflow and GoDaddy showed yearly prices only, and Hostinger showed only its 48-month term.

The discount buys a commitment. Squarespace and Shopify let you pay month to month at the higher rate, which is the cautious route for anyone unsure whether they will keep the builder. On Hostinger the choice is starker: the published rate is the four-year rate, and the page reviewed did not print shorter terms. Hostinger lists a 30-day money-back guarantee on its builder plans, which is the only protection against prepaying for a tool you then abandon.

What the plan price excludes

• Domains. Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and Hostinger include a free first-year domain on the plans used here. Webflow does not sell domains, so you register one elsewhere. Wix's .com renews at $21.35 a year, and WHOIS privacy there is a paid add-on.
• Mailboxes. Hostinger bundles free mailboxes for year one: two per site on Premium, unlimited on Unlimited. A Google Workspace Business Starter seat has a $7 monthly list price on an annual commitment, or $84 a year; on 13 October 2026 Google was discounting it to $5.60 for the first 12 months, on the first 20 users. Add that to any builder in the table that does not bundle mail.
• Applications. This is the largest excluded cost, and it falls mostly on Shopify, where the plan is rarely the expensive part of running a store. Paid apps are billed separately on every builder that offers them.
• Transaction fees, if you sell. Squarespace charges 2% on store sales on Basic and 0% from Core up, with digital-content fees of 7%, 5%, 1% and 0% across its four plans. Shopify adds a third-party gateway fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced if you do not use Shopify Payments, whose online card rates start at 2.9% plus 30¢. Webflow's Standard ecommerce plan, at $29 a month, charges 2%.

The prepayment conditions nobody reads

Two offers in this set carry conditions that change their value. Hostinger's lowest rates exist only on the 48-month term: $143.52 for Premium or $191.52 for Unlimited, paid before you have built anything. The money-back window is the time to test the builder properly, not the time to start thinking about it.

Shopify's promotion reads "Try 3 days free, then $1/month for 3 months". Its pricing page does not say which billing cycle the offer applies to, and earlier reporting tied it to monthly billing. If that holds, the promotion and the yearly discount cannot both be had: three months at $1 and nine at $39 comes to $354 in year one, against $348 for a year billed annually. Check which applies at checkout before choosing.

How the Value scores fall out

The scores on this page are unchanged in this revision. Value is computed from inputs, not typed in, and two of those inputs moved: Hostinger's plan names and term, and GoDaddy's line-up. Neither is re-marked by hand. Both are flagged for the next scoring run, which rereads every input and lets the totals fall where the arithmetic puts them.

On today's figures the published marks still read sensibly. Hostinger's 7/7 rests on being the cheapest route by a wide margin over any window up to four years, with a domain and a year of mailboxes included. Wix and Squarespace at 5/7 are mid-market with no cliff, marked down because mail and apps cost extra. Webflow's 4/7 reflects Workspace and seat stacking rather than a bait rate. Shopify's 3/7 reflects a $29 entry with no brochure tier beneath it. GoDaddy's 3/7 is the mark most likely to move once the Airo renewal is known.

Value is 7 points of 40, so it moves a ranking without deciding one. The full working for all six, criterion by criterion, is in the ranking of the best website builders, and the weights are explained in how we score. To check today's price on any of the six before buying, the links go to each vendor: Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Shopify, Hostinger and GoDaddy.