Best Cheap Website Builders [Under $10]

Simplicity and power, that’s what Site123 is all about.

It’s an excellent option for first-time website builders and for creating cheap shopping sites. Despite its affordable price, it offers a lot of range.

It has everything you need to build web pages, plus great mobile support, ecommerce capabilities, SEO tools, and even free hosting.

Ease of Use

Much like the name implies, using it is as easy as one-two-three. You simply select a template, add your content, and hit publish.

It’s that easy!

If you’re very new to building, Site123 will even give you an automated tour explaining all the different tools on the site, and showing you how to use this simple website builder.

Summed up, Site123 is an easy tool to use and a fantastic solution for first-time website owners. 

Features

Site123 offers a good feature set.

From its builder to SEO tools, and its eCommerce support.

Let’s take a look.

Builder

To start, the builder itself is very straightforward.

It doesn’t require any coding knowledge.

You simply shift and add elements as you see fit. It’s a WYSIWYG web builder. While it is intuitive, we found that it could sometimes be a bit rigid about what you can place where.

Besides that, it’s a great builder that gets the job done well.

SEO Tools

A website that can’t be found via search index won’t be of much use to you or your viewers. That’s why Site123 ensures every site created with it is search engine optimized! 

It has everything you would expect for SEO purposes like meta tags and an automatically generated sitemap for easier navigation and crawling.

Already have a professional website and want to switch?

Not a problem. Site123 supports 301 redirects so you can build a new site, while keeping the SEO edge of the old one.

Lastly, you can use Google Webmaster Tools through Site123. Just toggle the setting to connect your account.

eCommerce Support

Site123 gives you absolutely everything you need to set up your online store and get it running.

To begin with, there are a bunch of ecommerce templates. Each one is quite sleek and contemporary, but not too adjustable.

That’s fine however as they’re optimized for maximum engagement with potential buyers.

Past that it gives you everything you need for a cheap yet quality online store, such as order tracking, the tools to easily accept payments, set shipping costs and taxes, create coupons, and manage your inventory.

You can also decide what currencies to display.

Multi Language Website

The multi language feature is fantastic.

Site123 will automatically translate website text for you. You can then manually edit the translations if something is amiss, or you can download the website text and send it to a professional translator for polishing.

Once you get it back you can paste it in for accurate multilingual support.

This combined with custom currency means you can greatly expand the potential market of your website.

Other Features

Those are just a few of Site123’s features, but there are a lot more including:

• An image and video library
• Multisite or single page selection
• Email marketing
• Social media support
• Blogging tools

Integrations

Most of Site123’s integrations come via Zapier.

You can connect basically anything you’d ever need.

For analytics, you can link tools like Google Analytics.

You can also choose from a host of live chat software to provide support for your visitors. 

You can also make use of most third-party webmaster tools to further improve your site’s performance. The costs are minor where they exist, maintaining the overall low-cost web design Site123 provides.

While it doesn’t have that much in the way of direct integration, the Zapier integrations work well and cover all of your bases.

User Reviews

Site123 doesn’t have a high volume of reviews, but the ones we saw are overwhelmingly positive.

Users love the price and utility of the builder most of all.

Complaints mainly centered on the aesthetic.

As we mentioned, the customization can be a bit rigid, and the templates aren’t as diverse as those of some of the alternatives listed here.

It’s a small issue though as the templates are solid on their own.

Site123 Plans and Pricing

Site123’s site builder pricing is extremely straightforward. There are only two plans. One is free, but limited, while the other is the premium plan and includes everything at a cheap price. 

The free plan includes 250MB of storage, 250MB of bandwidth, and a subdomain.

This is serviceable if you’re going to be using the site as a basic blog, but it won’t get you far if you’re going for anything more complicated. It also puts Site123 branding on your site.

The premium plan costs $12.80 a month.

It comes with a free domain for your first year, 10GB of storage, 5GB of bandwidth, removes Site123 branding and offers full eCommerce functionality. This puts it in the running for the best website builder for small businesses. 

The premium plan is a great deal given the price and functionality it offers.

Our Verdict

Site123 is a fantastic cheap website builder.

Along with all the functionality of its premium plan, mobile-friendly building, and more, you get a year’s free hosting to further your savings.

Its toolset offers a great balance of form and functionality, plus its Zapier support means you can connect basically anything you’d need.

The only downside is the limited nature of the free plan, but this is offset by just how affordable the premium plan is, delivering a truly quality site building experience on an excellent budget.

If you’re a photographer or a designer, Pixpa will fit you like a glove. With it, you can create a business out of your portfolio.

It is an intuitive website builder with ecommerce functionality for visual content creators.

Thanks to its unique toolset  Pixpa stands out, defining a niche of its own.

In order to review Pixpa properly, we tested it extensively.

Ease of Use

Pixpa is one of the easiest to use  DIY website builders.

Through its intuitive, functional drag-and-drop site building interface you can upload and publish content seamlessly. You can customize pages, sections, and galleries in a couple of minutes.

The frontend provides a whole breadth of functionality, but if you need to do some fine-tuning, you can use custom and change directly the HTML code.

Among other things, you can add:

• Field texts
• Headers
• Buttons
• Social media handles
• Fonts
• Colors
• Alignments on photos and blog posts

You will find all these settings in the editor’s menu. From it, you get access to the main dashboard, Pixpa website design options, online store functions, and much more.

Pixpa Features

Pixpa is a specialized platform with a remarkable array of handy tools.

Check them out and visualize how you can make your online presence felt.

Templates

You can choose from 100 different Pixpa themes that are responsive and optimized for visual content.

They are modern and sleek, with a variety of layouts for your portfolio—grid or list view, fixed or dynamic, etc.

The Pixpa theme library is flexible. On your web

 page, you can arrange the items and web sections as you wish.

SEO & Marketing Tools

Pixpa helps you with creation and promotion. Its marketing-oriented features and SEO tools will increase your conversion rates and rank higher on Google.

The SEO suite allows you to add the necessary meta titles and descriptions, as well as tags.

And while the above is fairly standard fare, the social media integrations are quite impressive. With them, you can post photos or videos on social media easily and automatically.

The Gallery Apps helps you add your brand name and contact information as watermarks.

On top of that, Pixpa puts at your disposal pop-ups, social links, and an announcement bar.

But that’s not all!

The Store option links your landing pages to your product pages, boosting your sales funnel tremendously.

eCommerce

Should you decide to sell, it is easy to attach price tags to goods, list their specifications, and launch special deals with Pixpa.

Next, set up shipping rules, taxes, and your preferred payment processors.

To round up this impressive offering, you can create ecommerce galleries to boost product exposure and customer engagement.

Client Galleries

Pixpa’s client proofing tool is a unique feature, particularly useful for photographers.

With it, you can share entire photo galleries with your customers.

In return, they can give you feedback and suggest changes directly through the platform.

It is an excellent collaborative process.

Pixpa Plans and Pricing

First off, you can take advantage of the Pixpa free trial. Without any credit card info, you can test most of the platform’s features for two weeks.

Should you like what you see, there are four payment options to choose from:

• Light - $3/month 
• Personal - $7/month
• Expert - $10/month
• Business - $16/month

The smallest plan comes without a custom domain and with relatively severe limitations on what you can build.

The Personal plan provides all the necessary features, free domain name, and allows you to host 300 images.

The main advantages of the Expert plan, besides the lack of limitations, are the ecommerce functionality and the professional advice you can receive from a Pixpa expert.

The Business plan allows you to have up to 1,000 products and discount codes, over 100GB of storage space

Our Verdict

Pixpa is a niche solution but a superb one

It is sublime for people who want to display and sell visual content online.

The platform is super affordable and comes with an extremely powerful and easy-to-use site builder.

13 years ago, three Israeli developers introduced WiX — a simple website creator for building excellent website on a budget.

Venture capital companies quickly saw the opportunity and backed the site builder with millions of dollars through four rounds of funding.

WiX certainly put the money to good use.

In 2019, the company rose to 150 million clients in 100 countries and over 1,800 employees behind its back.

WiX dropped successful commercials during the Super Bowl halftime several times already, featuring the likes of Gal Gadot and Brett Favre.

Ease of Use

Building a website is a breeze when you’re using a drag-and-drop builder. Everything is self-explanatory, and you don’t have to be a coder to understand what is going on.

That's what WiX is all about, effortless website building.

The solution simplifies your tasks as much as possible and lets you structure a page with no previous experience or any coding knowledge.

Over 600 free and paid WiX templates take care of the visual outlook of your websites. Hundreds of more plugins wait for you to utilize them for site enhancements and optimizations.

In short, WiX is one of the easiest website builders out there.

WiX Features

WiX is an extremely affordable website builder and hosting provider.

In fact, the company offers a fully-featured package completely free of charge. That alone is enough for some people, but it does come with certain limitations. These include using a WiX subdomain or displaying its pesky ads.

Beyond that though, what can our $10 buy us with WiX?

You can opt-in for the Combo plan, coming at around $8.50/mo, which will remove the ads and let you connect your own domain.

Still, your account will come with a limit on storage space (2GB) and monthly bandwidth (3GB).

You can avoid the latter by choosing the next tier plan.

Keep in mind, we are talking about website building service without ecommerce functions. If you want to add some, you have to choose an online shop deal.

Still, there are some unique perks, regardless of the plan you choose.

WiX ADI

WiX wants to help you build stunning websites even if you’re not a web designer. Its Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) tailors your experience, ensuring no two websites look and feel alike.

The algorithm asks you some questions to better understand your project and offers the best visual layouts for it.

Then you can customize the themes, change fonts, colors, background, everything.

DIY web designs at the tip of your finger.

WiX Corvid

This one is for the web and app developers out there, who need a more sophisticated webmaster platform. Corvid is a comprehensive development platform with tons of useful features:

• Built-in IDE
• Integrated databases
• SEO compatibility
• Frontend APIs
• Secure cloud storage
• Marketing tools

Launching a new app has never been easier.

Integrations

There are over 100 apps you can integrate with the WiX platform. We are talking about industry-leading tools, which every aspiring entrepreneur can utilize to boost their project. Apps like:

• MailChimp — email campaigns
• Salesforce — cloud CRM
• Hubspot — sales and marketing
• ZenDesk — ticketing and customer service

Scalability sells, and WiX is well aware of that.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 3/5 (3,827 reviews)
• Capterra score — 4.4/5 (8,554 reviews)
• Sitejabber score — 1.9/5 (508 reviews)

Despite its apparent benefits, customer reviews about WiX are not alwayst flattering. Digging deeper, you can easily see the common denominators — shady cancellation policies and lack of adequate support.

This combination can prove dangerous in the long run, so keep a close eye on your renewal dates and future fees.

The cheapest website builders can sometimes cost us a fortune.

WiX Plans and Pricing

• Free
• Connect Domain — $4.50/mo
• Combo — $8.50/mo
• Unlimited — $12.50/mo
• VIP — $24.50/mo

Every new WiX user can easily start with the free plan and test the waters before making a choice.

Once you decide to upgrade — the prices are fixed for the selected billing period. WiX domain renewal rates depend on the extension of your choice.

Our Verdict

WiX is a top choice if you’re looking for a self-hosted platform to quickly and easily build a beautiful website.

All you need to do is choose one of the hundreds of fantastic designs and add functionalities you like – custom forms, calendars, social media icons, even a shopping cart.

Entry-level deals are a bit limited, so you better double-check if WiX adequately suits your budget and needs.

Webnode is one of the most established website builders. Founded in 2008, it has over 40 million customers.

But does size translate into being the best DYI website builder?

Find out what Webnode can do below.

Ease of Use

Webnode has a drag-and-drop editor that’s fairly easy to manage.

You can move items around the page with a fair bit of freedom in positioning.

All the settings—like page hierarchy and SEO tools—are arranged into tabs at the top of the editor. Finding everything is easy

The shopping cart editor is straightforward too, though the design is a bit rough. You can add products and handle things like specific shipping details fairly easily.

That said, there are a few annoying aspects to this website builder software.

For instance, you can’t simply drag new elements to the page from a menu. Instead, you have to find the line between two different elements and click on it to add a new one.

It’s also tough to change the dimensions of an element block on a page. It’s not challenging once you know what to do, but it feels unintuitive.

Though some features could be improved, the builder is fairly beginner-friendly.

Webnode Features

Webnode has plenty of tools in its arsenal.

Here are the key ones.

Drag-and-drop Builder

Webnode has a straightforward builder interface where you can add elements to a page and move them around through simple drag-and-drop.

You can also set up private or restricted pages.

It’s great for running a membership site or sharing content with only specific people. Very few other affordable website builders allow such a level of control.

You can add elements like text blocks, maps, image galleries, and more. Webnode also has a rather decent form builder tool built-in.

And if that’s not enough, the builder allows embedding custom HTML elements for even more freedom.

Some other settings include changing website templates, configuring site color schemes, picking different fonts, running backups from the builder, and more.

It’s an overall excellent tool for building DIY websites.

eCommerce Features

Standard plan and above let you add an online store to your website. You can add products, manage orders, set up product categories, and everything else you need to sell items.

There are also some advanced tools you can use. They include running discount codes and SEO settings to help you reach more users and sell more products.

Overall, Webnode is a decent builder if you have some merch to sell on a  professional website.

Multilingual Tools

Webnode lets you create versions of your website in different languages.

You can simply choose to add another language from the site builder controls. The builder will take care of setting up all the pages.

You can set up two different languages on the Standard plan and unlimited on larger plans (as long as you don’t go over your storage quota).

If English is not your native language, the builder itself is available in 21 languages. There’s a good chance your preferred language is supported.

The cheap website builder is great for the international market.

Integrations

Webnode has integrations with Google Analytics and Google AdSense. They can give you great insights into visitor activity and ad performance.

There are no other integrations.

Webnode focuses on developing its own features to help you keep a website running.

User Reviews

Webnode has somewhat poor reviews.

Out of 290+ comments on TrustPilot it scored only 2.9/5 stars, meaning it’s not doing so hot compared to the other best website builders.

The main issues are about shabby customer service.

Most testimonials align with our tests, ranking Webnode high among the user-friendly website builders. Its interface and the overall site-building functionality deserve praise.

Webnode Plans and Pricing

Webnode lets you try building a website for free.

If you want to go online, though, you would need one of its paid plans.

They are:

• Limited—200MB storage, 1GB bandwidth, $3.90/month
• Mini—1GB storage, 3GB bandwidth, free domain, 1 email account, $7.50/month
• Standard—3GB storage, 10GB bandwidth, free domain, 20 email accounts, $12.90/month
• Profi—7GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, free domain, 100 email accounts, $22.90/month
• Business—15GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, free domain, 1000 email accounts, $31.90/month

Note that the first two plans, although great for affordable websites, are severely limited in features.

They don’t allow multi-language sites, ecommerce, or backups.

They even feature Webnode branding, which is sort of silly for a paid plan.

The larger plans are powerful. They are more suitable for building robust websites or selling products.

Our Verdict

Webnode is an excellent simple website creator.

You can build an affordable simple site or a robust online store through relatively straightforward commands.

It’s one of the top cheap site builder options in the market.

Weebly started out in 2006, aiming to become the easiest and cheapest ecommerce website builder in the business.

Fast forward to recent days, the company reports over 50 million active customers and spans four offices — in San Francisco, New York, Scottsdale, and Toronto.

Weebly’s success caught the attention of financial giant Square Inc., which acquired the platform in 2018.

So how are things looking for the prominent site builder today?

Ease of Use

Customization-wise, it’s all good under the hood.

Weebly supports drag-and-drop functions, and page modification is a real breeze.

You get a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get), which means you can review each edit in real-time.

Weebly lets you choose between 70 stunning themes for the visual outlook of your pages. Templates are not that customizable, but look so good you wouldn’t really need any tweaks.

Weebly Features

Weebly aims to be the most preferred solution for building cheap shopping sites.

It comes with website hosting and building tools, but looking at the plans a few concerns arose.

As it turns out, our $10 can only get us the Connect plan, which is very limited in functionality.

To be fair, Weebly adds ecommerce functions and a ton more options in the $12 package – significantly cheaper than most of the competition.

But we tested the entry-level deal, so let’s see what it packs.

A 500 MB account, free SSL, and basic SEO tools — that’s not bad for starters.

Weebly has other reasons to shine as well:

Advanced Image Editor App

Weebly is a budget builder that’s all about customizations, and your visuals are a big part of that.

The platform provides an advanced image editing service to create stunning galleries, resize photos, add filters, and more. The price is rather steep, though, as $19.95 will let you edit only three images.

Weebly provides Square proprietary pic-processing app that can be installed from the Apple App Store. It is free to use and does a great job at optimizing images. It is not the only took out there that does that, but our in-house photo expert was quite happy with it.

The 4.8 rating received from about 700 reviews also testify to its usefulness.

Customize your HTML and CSS

Your design opportunities are practically limitless with Weebly.

With a bit of coding knowledge, you can access and modify your HTML and CSS, further refining the look of your website.

Integrations

Weebly’s app center is undoubtedly one of the best selling points.

You can integrate the cheap website builder with over 350 third-party add-ons to add some extra pizzazz for your visitors. It’s worth noting that only about 40 come for free.

You can choose apps from five distinct categories:

• eCommerce
• Communication
• Marketing
• Social
• Site tools and Features

The actual integration is seamless, even for beginners, so it all boils down to your imagination.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 2/5 (588 reviews)
• Capterra score — 4.3/5 (1,679 reviews)
• Sitejabber score — 1.8/5 (133 reviews)

Digging around the Weebly reviews, you will notice an alarming trend.

There has been a surge of negative comments in 2018, about the same time Square Inc. acquired the site builder.

Downgraded features, no-explanation account closures, slow (or non-existent) support — far too many horror stories have been circling around to dismiss them that easily.

Fortunately, the Weebly team took note, and the services stabilized in the past couple of years. Still, the damage in user perception persists.

Weebly Plans and Pricing

All plans include free SSL. You can connect your domain on any of the paid plans, but the Personal still includes ads.

The more advanced plans include analytics, removal of Weebly ads, password-protected directories, and more.

All plans are geared toward ecommerce activity.

• Free — $0.00/mo
• Personal — $6.00/mo
• Professional — $12.00/mo
• Performance — $26.00/mo

Weebly’s advertised prices are only available if you prepay your subscription for a whole year. Should you decide to opt for month-to-month billing, your fees would go up by 30-60%.

Getting a domain name from Weebly comes for free for the first year.

However, renewals start from $19.95 afterward, which is pretty steep compared to most other cheap web design tools online.

Our Verdict

Weebly is a no-brainer for beginners and brands that look for a stylish solution for their business.

It’s a versatile platform with loads of design and third-party integration options.

No wonder more than 30,000,0000 websites today are built with Weebly.

Zyro is a relatively new cheap website builder owned by parent firm Hostinger. While you can use it to create blogs and the like, its specialty is building ecommerce stores. Its combo of a drag-and-drop editor and AI-powered tools makes that a breeze.

Let’s see how it performs and whether it’s budget-friendly.

Ease of Use

Zyro is very easy to use. The web-based app has a minimalist look and feel. After creating a free account, you’ll find “My websites,” “My domains,” subscription options, and Zyro’s roadmap at the top of your screen.

It doesn’t take much time to figure out how to use each one. Everything needed to build a cheap website is labeled and stacked in a logical order making navigation easy. The tools, which we’ll get into next, are simple to use, and everything “does what it says on the box.”

All in all, Zyro provides great ease of use. Anyone can pick it up and start building in minutes.

Zyro Features

Zyro has all the fixings one can expect from an affordable website builder, along with a few neat extras.

Let’s run through them.

Drag-and-Drop Builder

When you click to create a website, the drag-and-drop editor opens. You can decide whether you want the AI to design a template for you, pick a pre-built one, or start from scratch.

We prefer to build “do it yourself websites” from scratch. However, those with less experience would benefit from the other two options.

To create a page, simply drag and drop the elements you want and tweak them to your liking. You can use the website builder for free.

Then, once you’re done, you can buy a plan and launch your site.

eCommerce Features

The builder offers the option to add store pages.

Selecting it will generate a store template you can then adjust. Like most good website makers, Zyro lets you switch between mobile and desktop views to make sure everything looks good.

The platform offers full integration with Stripe to make payment management straightforward. Naturally, you can also add product images and descriptions. You can write the descriptions yourself or leave them to the AI.

We discuss the latter option next.

AI tools

Zyro has three main AI tools that are included in every plan—the AI writer, the AI brander, and the heat mapper. It’s one of the best AI blog builders we’ve seen.

The AI writer will write blogs or product descriptions. It is competent and produces coherent writing, but it does lack depth. We’d suggest you don’t rely on it completely. Instead, use it as a framework that you can then edit based on your specifications.

The AI brander will generate a name for your website, a slogan, and even logos. If you’re familiar with AI, you can tell the logos are AI-generated. Still, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The logos are usually more abstract—an interesting shape with a color palette that fits.

Heat mapping will show you which elements of your website are likely to get the most clicks even before you launch your site. Once your professional website is up and running, you can also get real feedback through the Hotjar integration.

Speaking of integrations…

Integrations

Zyro has many integrations that are focused on helping you optimize engagement. It offers two Facebook integrations—FB Pixel and FB Live Chat.

FB Pixel will help you track visitors for remarketing, while FB live chat will help you talk to visitors in real-time and manage their requests. You can also connect Zyro with WhatsApp and communicate with customers there.

As we mentioned, Stripe is available to take and manage payments, and Hotjar provides heat mapping. Finally, the Google Analytics integration will give you rich data on your site performance.

User Reviews

We checked out some Zyro reviews to see whether users think it is a good option for low-cost website design. It has pretty good ratings—4.6 stars on TrustPilot and 4.7 stars on G2.

Users love the utility and the responsiveness of the support team. For a good reason, too. The support team is quick to answer concerns and solid on follow-through.

Next, we checked Reddit. Zyro frequently features in discussions of good and affordable website builders.

The only complaints we saw were from users wanting more depth from the AI. Some reviewers also criticized the lack of custom scripts, but that problem was solved.

Zyro has since buffed its website builder software. Good to see they take users’ requests into account.

Zyro Plans and Pricing

Zyro has four price plans. While they do have a standard cost, Zyro regularly offers discounts, so we include those here.

• Zyro Basic—$8.90 per month (average discount price—$2.90)

This basic plan gives you 3GB of bandwidth and 1GB of storage. In addition, you get everything you need to blog and begin establishing your brand, including the AI tools.

• Zyro Unleashed—$12.49 per month (average discount price—$3.90)

From this plan upward, all provide unlimited bandwidth and storage, a free domain for one year, and marketing and analytics tools in the form of integrations. It’s an excellent selection of affordable website builder features.

• Zyro eCommerce—$24.49 per month (average discount price—$9.90)

This is THE plan for full ecommerce. You can list up to 100 products, manage shipping and tax, create gift cards, and more.

• Zyro eCommerce Plus—$29.99 per month (average discount price—$14.90)

This plan includes everything you need for a truly expansive ecommerce operation. Aside from all the previous features, you can list 2,500 products and list them on Amazon.

Last but not least, all Zyro plans come with free hosting.

Our Verdict

Zyro is one of the cheapest website builders around. Not only can you get everything you need for under $10, but the AI tools can save you money you’d spend on copywriters and branding specialists.

It’s great whether you’re going for an ecommerce or another type of website. Plus, with its free version, you can try it out and pay only if you like the final product.

If you haven’t heard of WordPress in 2022, you must’ve been living under a rock for the last few years. The open-source software has been taking the site builder market by a storm and now powers hundreds of millions of websites worldwide.

WP.com is the commercial version of the most popular CMS.

Owned by Matt Mullenweg’s company Automattic, the WordPress website builder flaunts some impressive numbers.

• 37,500,000+ hosted websites
• 15,500,000,000+ pages online
• 41,700,000+ new posts every month
• 60,500,000+ monthly comments
• 300+ employees
• Top 50 website in Alexa

Overwhelming stats, I know.

But is WP.com really budget-friendly?

Ease of Use

Now, if you’re already somewhat familiar with WordPress, you’ll have no trouble dealing with this one. I mean, it’s the same framework, same backend, same everything.

And if you are a WordPress fanboy like myself, you’ll know that a teeny bit of coding knowledge can do wonders for your WP project.

But what if you are a complete newbie?

Total beginners might find the solution on WordPress.com a little confusing at first, especially compared to more user-friendly website makers like WiX or Weebly.

My best advice would be to try the self-hosted option on WP.org first, and switch later when you feel confident enough.

WordPress.com Features

So what can we purchase with our ten bucks?

It seems we will be skipping the entry-level deal and landing on the second WP tier — the Premium plan.

This gives you 13 GB of web space, as well as an SSL certificate, free domain for the first year, and access to a wide variety of free and premium themes.

All that for just $8.00 per month.

The marketing and monetization tools are an excellent addition if you plan to make money off your online project.

You are getting the best for less, so to speak.

Building an online shop and directly selling your goods is unfortunately available only with the Ecommerce package, which is way beyond our budget.

What else is there?

Mobile and Desktop Apps

Mobile devices are slowly becoming an integral part of our lives. A whopping 66.5% of the world population owns at least one smartphone. So, site-building apps have to be as versatile as possible.

WordPress.com lets you use your mobile device to access your websites, do edits, view notifications, the works.

Site management has never been easier.

Social Sharing Options

Having the best content today is simply not enough. You have to get yourself heard, and social networks are one of the best ways to reach a broad audience.

In that regard, WordPress.com offers one of the cheapest website builders with social sharing options included. Connect your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, and always keep your fans in the loop with your fresh content.

Integrations

WordPress is all about scalability and customization. Its hosted version certainly follows those principles.

You can integrate WP.com with over 350 third-party apps and services to give your site visitors a unique look and feel.

We are talking about real gems like Hubspot, Zoho, Google services, and a ton more.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 4/5 (3,097 reviews)
• Capterra score — 4.6/5 (9,666 reviews)
• Sitejabber score — 4/5 (1 review)

Matt Mullenweg is no pushover. He made sure there were a number of good reasons to celebrate WordPress as the best platform to build a website. Free or commercial, the WP solutions are known for their quality, versatility, and helpful resources.

So WordPress.com’s high scores and flattering reviews are anything but surprising.

The only thing they can do better is addressing adverse claims. A lot of them don’t really hold ground, and you can see WP.com representatives trying to clear things out from time to time.

That’s the thing — “from time to time” won’t cut it if you want to build up a flawless reputation.

WordPress.com Plans and Pricing

• Free
• Personal — ~$4.00/mo
• Premium — ~$8.00/mo
• Business — ~$25.00/mo
• Ecommerce — ~$45.00/mo

Even though WP.com’s pricing is rather reasonable, there is a huge gap between the Premium and Business plans. The first one still gives you access to the WYSIWYG web builder, but the latter is where you can feel the full power of the industry-leading software.

When you make your choice, keep in mind the system will bill you for the whole year. Still, you can cancel within the first 30 days and get a refund.

Our Verdict

If you’re already familiar with the open-source version of the most popular CMS, you will love your experience with WordPress.com. You can take advantage of WP’s evergrowing theme gallery and plugin library to really make your website stand out.

Great community, always ready to assist in times of trouble.

Ucraft is a site building tool with a very modern feel to it.

Logical, given that the company is still making its baby steps in the industry.

Ucraft was founded in 2014 by a group of web designers. They had decided that everyone should have an easy way of expressing and promoting their thoughts and ideas.

In just five years, the company grew to 145,000+ clients and 300 trained professionals in 3 strategic locations — the US, Russia, and Armenia.

Ease of Use

The Ucraft environment consists of blocks. They carry different functionalities and various editable elements. The blocks themselves can be moved around and modified…to a point.

You can edit some elements, but not all of them. You can move blocks around, but you can’t just put them wherever.

That being said, Ucraft gives us a cheap website builder that is incredibly easy to understand.

You can quickly tell it was designers who developed this tool — from the editing interface to the 60+ stunning themes available. Absolute eye candy of an app.

Ucraft Features

The fact you can employ ecommerce features even on the most budget-friendly plan is one of Ucraft’s top competitive advantages.

The Pro Website deal comes at $10/mo, which is perfect for our wallet.

And, boy, is it a doozie!

The package is quite robust and contains all kinds of neat options for shopping carts, contact forms, buttons, and maps. You can have up to 50 products for sale, physical or digital. Downloadable goods cannot exceed 100 MB per file.

You can closely monitor and optimize your performance with a variety of SEO and analytics tools.

Sounds great, and that’s not even half of it.

Logo Maker

If you’re just launching a new online business, you’ll have to spare some time to refine your brand first. One of the most important elements would be your logo.

Ucraft might be a cheap website builder, but your design freedom is almost limitless. There are over two million free vector icons at the user’s disposal and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor for the fine details.

Build Multilingual Websites

Most online websites cater to an international audience. That’s not very surprising, considering that’s the very purpose of the internet – bringing us together.

By default, your website and backend will be in English, but you can utilize a Ucraft plugin and translate everything in the language of your choice. Sure, the translations are not always perfect, but you can perfect them with some minor editing.

Integrations

This cheap website builder integrates well with a bunch of other apps and tools to further refine your user experience.

You can find live chat software, CRM platforms, audio/video players — anything that might help you better connect with your audience.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 4.5/5 (356 reviews)
• Capterra score — 4.7/5 (103 reviews)
• Sitejabber score — N/A

Clients seem to love Ucraft, and that’s the best sign they’re doing something right.

The majority of online reviews about the platform complement various aspects of the service — from the interface to the great designs and fantastic support.

The last one I tested for myself and was delighted with the help I got. The operators sometimes took a while to respond, but when they did — it was always on point.

Even with the few negative reviews, the customer care team was always there to lend a hand in the most polite way possible.

Ucraft Plans and Pricing

• Free
• Pro Website — $10.00/mo
• Pro Shop — $21.00/mo
• Unlimited — $69.00/mo

As per Ucraft’s terms, you have to prepay the year in advance to take advantage of the prices above.

All accounts renew automatically at the end of the billing period. The provider will notify you in advance in case you have other plans. At any point, you can upgrade and add the unused time toward your new choice.

Your best bet is to start with the 14-day free trial and see if you like this cheap site builder. It’s completely risk-free as you don’t have to leave any CC or billing information.

Our Verdict

Ucraft is a great choice for startups and SMBs for easy entry in site building. It’s a versatile tool with a rich set of features. The ecommerce features are a particular highlight, making building and managing an online shop practically effortless.

You already know the name. You know the face as well — the friendly blue/yellow gator is back.

Snappy has been the HostGator mascot since its first steps in web hosting. 17 years later, he signifies one of the most successful companies on the market.

HG offers a full range of services — shared, VPS and dedicated servers, cloud, and reseller.

Naturally, the company dips its toes into cheap website building solutions as well.

Ease of Use

The Gator Website Builder is simple and easy to use…at moments too simple.

The interface is quite familiar, but even if this is your first time building a website — you will quickly understand what’s what.

That being said, while you can drag and drop different elements, you are limited to the general template structure and fixed positions.

To compensate, HostGator gives you over 200 themes and designs to choose from. You’ll surely find something that matches your vision.

Gator Builder Features

Our wallet reminds us that we are on a budget here, so we’ll probably have to settle with some entry-level deal.

Well, not with HG, we won’t.

The Gator platform is definitely up there with the cheapest website builders. Unlocking all the features and services comes at just around $9.20/mo.

This includes SSL certificates, backups, site analytics, priority support, and the cherry on top — ecommerce solutions.

All in all, robust packages, but you might find them insufficient, compared to WiX or WordPress.com.

You can certainly enjoy these, though:

Drag-and-drop Site Builder

Even though the cheapest website builders can brag with some big-name clients, their primary targets are smaller to mid-sized businesses and personal projects.

You have to make everything easy for them.

The Gator Builder does an excellent job of simplifying user experience. All options are self-explanatory, so you won’t have to waste a lot of time reading tutorials and guides.

Unmetered Storage and Bandwidth

Storage and traffic limits can slow down your business growth, so HostGator’s website builder completely removes them. Every client can utilize as many resources as needed, as long as they don’t go over the fair usage policies.

This can be a double-edged sword as it gives customers a false sense of safety they’ll never need to upgrade your deal. In reality, there are all kinds of other obstacles like CPU, RAM, inodes, etc., which keep you from hogging all server resources.

Integrations

The Gator Website Builder can integrate with third-party tools, but that’s just as much as I can give you.

The company page didn’t mention any of that, so I tried the live chat.

I got contradicting information on two different occasions — one operator told me MailChimp pairing was not possible, while the other confirmed that it is.

In the end, I learned you could use the HostGator HTML editor to integrate third-party code, but the support team couldn’t reach a consensus on which apps were actually supported.

So let’s agree to put a big question mark for HG in this section of our website builder comparison.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — N/A
• Capterra score — N/A
• Sitejabber score — N/A

HostGator is mostly known as a web hosting provider, so it’s impossible to get reviews for its website builder alone.

Still, HG’s general reputation is… let’s say, iffy.

Even though HostGator has millions of clients, it operates on the quantity-over-quality principle. The provider might serve the average Joe pretty well, but you can forget about adequate support or feature abundance.

Gator Builder Plans and Pricing

• Starter — from $3.84/mo
• Premium — from $5.99/mo
• Ecommerce — from $9.22/mo

HostGator lacks a free plan or a trial to test the service, but the price is as lucrative as they come. The platform lets you build cheap websites with an eye-catching design, and you can even run an online store for under $10.

Keep in mind the above prices are good with a two-year prepayment. Shorter billing cycles carry a smaller discount.

Our Verdict

HostGator might not have the best online reputation, but its Gator Builder tool is surprisingly flexible and user-friendly. This site-building platform shines with perfect uptime scores and affordable pricing. Ideal for smaller and personal projects

The Gator Builder is better suited for self-learners as the support team is rarely of any help.

Ukit is a website building tool that just celebrated its 6th birthday.

This drag-and-drop solution lures in beginners and startups with а clean interface and low learning curve.

Ukit is a project by Moscow-based web development company uCoz Media.

Fully compatible with HTML5 and CSS3, the platform is ready for action.

Ease of Use

Ukit is pretty simple to utilize to its fullest.

You can drag and drop elements to your website and modify the content through a WYSIWYG editor.

A gallery of over 350 templates awaits for you to make your pick. That sounds great, but when you check out a few, it feels like you’ve seen them all.

A big horizontal slider, header and footer menus, and social buttons — not very creative.

Still, the themes are editable so you can impress your audience with amazing DYI web designs.

uKit Features

All uKit hosted deals pack a lot of heat.

The low rates didn’t take a toll on the feature set, which is excellent. Even on the most basic plan, you are still getting unlimited space and bandwidth, Google analytics, SMS notifications…

Oh, and did I mention daily backups?

Yeah, those are in the deal as well. Plus:

Mobile-friendly Designs

Acknowledging the need to serve the now-dominant crowd of mobile users, uKit’s in-built design layouts are all responsive. This means that your website will appear at optimal sizes regardless of the screen – desktop, laptop, mobile, or tablet.

Ukit lets you play around with the design options as well. You can modify backgrounds, change color schemes, rearrange menus – the final result will be all-fitting.

Free SSL Certificate

SSL certificates are an integral part of your website security. They surround your traffic with 256-bit encryption, keeping all important data safe from prying eyes.

It’s not uncommon for simple website builder tools to neglect the importance of this add-on. Not uKit. Every client gets a free SSL regardless of their chosen deal.

Integrations

Ukit doesn’t flaunt such a wide variety of integrations like WiX and Weebly do, but that doesn’t mean you’re left without any.

All the essentials are here:

• MailChimp
• Soundcloud
• Ecwid
• SlideShare
• LiveChat

Let’s not forget your favorite social networks — integrations with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are all possible. You can go as far as showing posts from your FB feed on your Ukit website.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 3.5/5 (2 reviews)
• Capterra score — N/A
• Sitejabber score — N/A

As you will notice by uKit’s review scores above — not much to see here, folks.

The major review websites grow silent when it comes to this Russian budget builder. Even Reddit is like “Who?”

The few client testimonials I found were pretty dated, with over a year passing since the last one.

uKit Plans and Pricing

• Minimal — $5.00/mo
• Basic — $10.00/mo
• Ecommerce — $12.00/mo
• Pro — $15.00/mo

As mentioned, Ukit’s advertized prices are for a month-to-month billing plan, so you can expect a further discount with a longer prepayment.

Not sure if this site builder is your cup of tea?

No worries, as you can take advantage of a 14-day free trial and test the waters before you take the plunge.

Our Verdict

Ukit offers users a great-looking web platform with a focus on impressive designs. The interface is clean and functional, and the in-built editor offers a straightforward user experience.

There are very few reviews about this provider, but you can take advantage of the free trial before you make a final decision.

Strikingly is one of the more recent players in the site-building field.

Founded in 2012, the venture became the first Chinese startup to graduate from the Y Accelerator – the same company that mentored the first steps for businesses like Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox.

Strikingly was one of the first blog builders that recognized the rise of mobile technology and tailored its products accordingly.

Smart move, but is it enough to keep them in the game?

Ease of Use

The Strikingly platform only lets us build one-pager websites, which comes with its pros and cons.

On the one hand, you have a newbie-friendly environment, which is relatively easy to master. Navigating the interface is straightforward, and the templates are clean and aesthetically-pleasing.

On the other hand, things are way too basic at times. Your scalability is very limited, just the same as your theme customization options.

In short, Strikingly might be great for a simple blog or portfolio page, but outgrowing the platform is relatively easy as well.

Strikingly Features

There are three Strikingly plans to choose from:

Our budget-fitting choice, the $8/mo Limited plan, looks rather barren in terms of features. Your monthly traffic caps at 50 GB, and you can utilize that for up to two websites with limited functionalities.

Still, Strikingly continues to be one of the best tools to build a cheap online store.

Simple Store for Ecommerce

Simple Store is a solution that enables you to build affordable websites with a shopping cart feature. You can integrate your shop with Stripe or PayPal – two of the most prominent payment vendors out there. Enter your email and start accepting payments right away.

Strikingly does not apply fees on your transactions, letting you maximize your revenue.

Sign Up and Contact Forms

Regardless of your business, you need to ensure you’re constantly connected to your customers. Strikingly’s customizable online forms come as a great way to achieve it.

Launching a new service? Need to provide client support? Or maybe you just need some unbiased feedback? Online forms are the answer.

Integrations

There are a whole bunch of hefty Strikingly apps. Their installation is еasy, but the impact is visible immediately — photo galleries, audio players, chat messengers — the Chinese platform seems to have it all.

That being said, the variety of apps is quite narrow, compared to WiX or Weebly, for example.

It would’ve been nice if the Strikingly developers were actively working on creating more add-ons, but sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 2.5/5 (13 reviews)
• Capterra score — N/A
• Sitejabber score — N/A

Unlike many of the cheapest website builders on the market, there isn’t a lot of info about Strikingly online. That might be due to a low number of clients, or simply a sign that things are going smoothly.

Still, from what I’ve read (and experienced), some areas just beg for improvement.

The customer support is super slow, and they rarely help with more than basic solutions. The company charges clients extra for the simplest technical help, even when it concerns its own services.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, Strikingly.

Strikingly Plans and Pricing

• Free
• Limited — $8.00/mo
• Pro — $16.00/mo
• VIP — $49.00/mo

As with Weebly, you can get the best price with yearly prepayments. Even better, with Strikingly, you can pay upfront for a whole five years and save a total of $500+ in the process.

Of course, such a long-term commitment is always risky. But if you feel confident in your provider, it can be a real game-changer.

Our Verdict

Strikingly is an all-in-one tool that doesn’t limit you on the type of website you can build. You can find successful bloggers, profitable online shops, and stunning portfolio websites, all powered by this website builder software.

Strikingly offers 24/7 support assistance via email and chat, which can prove invaluable if you hit any bumps along the road.

Carrd is a one-man project that officially came to be around 2015. The founder was a long-time developer who decided to branch out and offer a complete site-building solution to its customers.

Carrd knew it would be hard to overcome industry leaders like WiX or Squarespace, so it focused on four specific niches:

• Portfolios
• App landing pages
• Blogs
• Business cards

Was it a successful move?

Let’s have a look.

Ease of Use

Carrd lets you create one-pager websites, but that’s about the only limitation you have with web design software.

It’s a state-of-the-art platform with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. Once you choose a stylish template, you have plenty of customization options to make your site design unique. Clickable elements will reveal possible modifications, and you’ll be ready to publish your project in no time.

Carrd lets you add over 100 elements on your page, making it suitable for both big and small websites.

Carrd Features

The site builder offers four premium packages, but even the highest-tiered one is just $99/year, so our $10/mo budget is more than enough to get the full experience.

Just one look, and you’ll know you’ve found something special.

A gallery of hi-res images, code embedding, page redirects, password protection – Carrd definitely offers more than the average website builder software.

You can find some neat advanced options as well – the detailed attributes settings were a particular highlight for us.

What’s more:

Google Analytics

Monitoring your traffic activity and user behavior gives valuable insights for your future business strategy. Carrd’s platform allows for easy integration with Google Analytics – the leading tool for website data analysis.

Just get your tracking ID and apply it to your new one-pager – as easy as 1-2-3.

Custom Forms

Carrd is also taking online forms to the next level. You can easily create much more than the average contact or signup box. Enjoy a ton of advanced customization options and third-party widgets that will add extra functionality to your forms.

Integrations

You have access to your website code, which makes Carrd easily pairable with all kinds of add-ons. Among the most popular integrations, you can find Facebook, PayPal, Stripe, and Typeform.

Embed the widgets directly in your code and give your website an extra oomph.

User Reviews

• G2.com score — 4.4/5 (8 reviews)
• ProductHunt score — 4.6/5 (53 reviews)
• MyBestWebsiteBuilder score — 7/10 (362 reviews)

Carrd is not a high-profile platform, so you wouldn’t get much accurate information from the website builder reviews.

Most testimonials were outdated but rather positive. The amazing designs and huge range of customization options were often the high point of client comments.

The general lack of support seems to be the only concerning thing from user reviews.

Carrd Plans and Pricing

• Pro Lite — from $9.00/year (3 plans)
• Pro Standard — from $19.00/year (4 plans)
• Pro Plus — from $49.00/year (4 plans)

Most website builders offer 2 or 3 packages, but Carrd gives you a choice between 11 (yes, eleven) deals.

The plans are custom-tailored and mainly differ in the number of projects you can host.

The prices? More than affordable.

Even if you jump straight on the Pro plans, you can enjoy all Carrd perks for less than $5/mo.

You can test the services before committing, but the free trial is available for 7 days only.

Our Verdict

Carrd is a stylish one-page builder with loads of in-built options and advanced settings. The platform is an ideal choice for portfolio pages, microblogs, and business card websites.

Carrd is really flexible in its pricing, offering an affordable solution for every pocket.

You cannot compare website builders and overlook Voog.

This modern-looking platform comes from the Baltics, namely Tartu, Estonia. One of the founders, Priit Haamer, also co-founded Fraktal (web-editing software) and Sixfold (logistics solutions).

Voog is more of a boutique site builder — the small core team likes to ensure every client becomes a friend and treated as such.

How is that working for them?

Let’s see.

Ease of Use

Even by looking at the company website, you can tell that Voog is a unique platform.

Everything is looking very modern and stylish – a great indication that these people know their stuff. So their know-how should surely reflect on the platform versatility, right?

Well, to an extent, yes.

While Voog is very intuitive and user-friendly, your creative freedom is not limitless. You can utilize various themes and visuals, but only modify the basics like color, text, and position.

You can’t mess around with advanced customizations either. A pity, as Voog can really make cheap websites look good.

Voog Features

The Estonian site builder offers potential customers a choice of three paid plans — Standard, Plus, and Premium. They cover the needs of web projects in different stages of their development.

Our $10 are barely good enough to fit in the Standard plan. Let’s see what that gets us:

5 GB storage space
3 users
30 pages
Up to 3 products
It’s not a lot, not by a long shot.

Good things often come with a catch. Ecommerce is a great example.

You can build affordable websites and sell your goods, but you are only limited to three products, and Voog even charges you a 3% transaction fee for every sale.

So what makes this particular builder stand out?

Voog is a champion when it comes to building multilingual websites. You can serve your content to a much wider audience and grow your popularity outside your own country.

And it’s quite easy too. A few clicks and you can translate your text in English, German, French, Spanish, whatever.

A bit strange that Voog is not emphasizing that feature in its advertising. And there’s more:

Built-in SEO Support

Voog lets you optimize your websites for search engines as well. We’re talking about search-friendly URLs, metadata, link structure – there are plenty of options to improve your technical SEO.

Who wouldn’t want affordable websites that are easy to find?

Enterprise-grade Options

Most site builders are way simpler than a full-blown CMS. That’s why their target audience is often smaller businesses that need an easy entry into the online world.

Voog is one of those providers that cater to enterprises as well. The company partners with web hosts to complement their services and give more value to the end user.

If that’s what you’re looking for, you can apply and get more info through Voog’s website.

Integrations

When it comes to integrations, this affordable website builder doesn’t give you more than the basics. You have your Facebook and Twitter plugins, Youtube and Vimeo players, Google services like Maps and Calendar.

There are precisely 12 third-party integrations offered on the Voog website.

Hopefully, this is just the beginning, as Voog deserves to evolve more.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — N/A
• Capterra score — N/A
• Sitejabber score — N/A

Sorry guys, nothing to see here. When your product is so low-key, so is the information about it online. Still, operating for so many years without getting a single negative testimonial might signify you are on the right track.

I will keep an eye for you, just in case something new pops up.

Voog Plans and Pricing

• Standard — ~$8.80/mo
• Plus — ~$14.40/mo
• Premium — ~$43.10/mo

Voog is not the cheapest tool in our website builder comparison. In fact, it just barely made the call price-wise.

Keep in mind our budget is only good if you choose to prepay for the whole year. Month-to-month billing is possible, but the rates go up to around $11 — $12 even for the cheapest deal.

You can take full advantage of the Voog platform on the Premium plan, but the price leap there is humongous for most startups and small businesses.

Our Verdict

Voog is a great all-around tool that gives you enough control and support to help you take your first steps in site-building. The interface is nice and clean, and you can utilize stylish pre-built templates or your very own DIY web designs.

Still, when you take all features into account, the prices could be a little lower, making the whole deal more cost-effective.

Format is a pretty interesting entry in the contention for the best cheap website builder.

Instead of catering to all audiences, this specialized site builder targets the design/photography niche.

That strategy seems to work like a charm.

Today, Format proudly boasts over 50,000 clients from 190 countries using the company's services. The number of images on the servers exceeds 7 billion.

Yeah, let those numbers sink in for a moment…

Ease of Use

The Format builder likes to ease users in so every new client goes through a setup wizard to determine your:

• Skill level
• Project scope
• Future requirements

So far, so good.

The interface is rather simplistic but takes some time to fully grasp.

The editor is not drag-and-drop but not overly complicated as well. If you’re familiar with the WordPress dashboard and how it works, you’ll also enjoy this one.

Format gives you a choice of over 80 stunning pre-designed templates.

The focus on the artsy niches is clearly shown here. The DYI websites you can make with this tool look nothing short of spectacular.

Format Features

Everything on the Format platform boils down to images sooner or later. The account limitations are no exception.

Our money is only good for the Basic plan, but its price tag of $7/mo (down to $4/mo if paid annually) means we are left with budget to invest elsewhere.

So what can we do with that?

• Design up to 15 pages
• Utilize up to 100 images
• Use your own domain
• Get SSL protection

Doesn’t sound too bad, but not impressive either.

Photographer-oriented Designs

Format doesn’t restrict what type of website you can create. Still, you will quickly notice the strong focus on photographers, illustrators, architects, and all kinds of visual artists.

Format templates look amazing and follow the latest design standards.

Showcasing your photos has never been so satisfying as with this cheap website builder.

Image Copyright Protection

One of the things we liked best about Format is the image copyright protection option.

It’s a wonderful feature that keeps your images from being downloaded or used without authorization. It’s a common practice among people and media outlets nowadays, so it’s good to know you’re all protected in that aspect.

eCommerce & Prints Marketplace

Format is a surprisingly good site maker for ecommerce activities. Granted, it truly shines in this regard with its most expensive plan, but it is a commission-free tool, which cannot be said for the majority of the most popular ecommerce site builders.

What's more, it gives you the option to print your work in the highest quality and ship it worldwide.

Integrations

The Format platform is so geared toward DYI web designs that you have every right to expect possible integrations with photo editing software. Each account easily pairs up with handy tools like Adobe Lightroom and Capture One.

How about posting your favorite work online?

Simply integrate your Instagram feed with Format, and your fresh website posts will appear automatically on your social media account.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 2.9 (3 reviews)
• Capterra score — 4.8/5 (206 reviews)

Just like Voog, information about Format on review websites is pretty scarce.

Still, digging hard enough, we found a bunch of positive client testimonials on sites like Capterra and SiteBuilderReport. Users there speak highly of Format and its overall performance.

One of the aggregators ranks the platform as #1 in Photography website builders.

Format Plans and Pricing

• Basic — $7/mo
• Pro — $15.00/mo
• Pro Plus — $25.00/mo

The three Format plans all offer a 14-day trial for new clients to test the service.

After the promo period, the site builder pricing is quite reasonable. You already know the drill — pay for a longer period, get a better price.

Still, you need to pay extra for some essentials like email services and domain renewals, and they are quite costly.

But if your goal is to build a remarkable portfolio or personal page, Format is hands down the best value website builder you can find.

Our Verdict

Format is for all you aspiring and professional photographers out there.

The company offers a flexible tool packed with advanced options for photo editing, creating your own designs, printing them out, shipping them worldwide, and much more.

The best thing is that all pages are fully responsive and mobile-optimized by default, leaving you one less thing to worry about.

Format is an amazing low price website builder for visual creators.

Jimdo is our European contender for a cheap site building tool.

The company headquarters is in Hamburg, Germany, and later opened offices in Munich and Tokyo, Japan.

Jimdo offers services in two directions — Creator and Dolphin.

Creator is the drag-and-drop professional website builder with an emphasis on control and customization power. Includes hosting services.

Dolphin is the solution for the less-experienced. It offers an AI-powered web builder that automates your web development almost completely.

Let’s learn more about Creator.

Ease of Use

Jimdo’s backend appears clean and straightforward at first sight. Editing page elements is easy enough, yet a little restrictive. You can modify things like colors or font, but cannot really change the overall structure of the template.

My advice would be to check out the Jimdo template gallery and see how the premade themes look. If they can warm your heart — by all means, go for Jimdo.

Jimdo Features

Let’s get one thing straight — this platform barely matches the cheapest website builders on our list.

Of the five Jimdo Creator plans, our budget can only get us the Pro deal (just barely).

This means that for $10, we can expect an ad-free environment with 5 GB web space and 10 GB bandwidth. You get a domain name as a bonus, free for your first year with Jimdo.

If you want to create an online shop, the Pro plan lets you sell up to 15 products.

No need to worry about optimizations for your mobile users — all themes are responsive and offer the best view on all screen sizes.

What else can Jimdo do for you?

Copyright-free Images

If you can’t create your own designs, chances are, you’ll be looking and stock footage websites for your visuals. Such images are subject to different copyright rules, and getting them mixed up happens more often than not.

Jimdo supports its own extensive gallery of layouts and photos, all free of licensing fees and obligations. You’re still getting stylish designs while making it easy on your budget.

GDPR-compliant Legal Texts

GDPR compliance is a big topic nowadays, and many businesses are still struggling to comply with the new rules.

Luckily, Jimdo comes with an in-built Legal Text Generator, which lets you build a professional website without the risks of failing the data protection regulations.

Integrations

Jimdo pairs up well with some handy third-party tools. You can integrate the platform with chat messengers (LiveChat), lead generation software (OptinMonster), or booking systems (Bookeo).

I can personally recommend the Powr app, which adds a ton of useful plugins and customizable elements to your website.

Just another way to take your budget builder to the next level.

Jimdo lets you easily connect with your social media peeps as well — syncing your content with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram has never been easier.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 4/5 (372 reviews)
• Capterra score — 4.3/5 (9 reviews)
• Sitejabber score — 5/5 (1 review)

People are mostly speaking highly of Jimdo — they love the ease of use, the in-built functionalities, and its overall look and feel.

Another great sign is that most negative reviews date a long way back, over a year and more. Plus, Jimdo representatives are always there to try and clear things out.

It’s not all roses and butterflies, though.

A couple of more recent reviews suggest the situation might not be so picture-perfect. Clients detected outages, which Jimdo confirmed but never reported, keeping its uptime spotless.

That, plus the inability to reach support when you need to, seem to be the most pressing concerns for the affordable website builder.

Jimdo Plans and Pricing

• Free — $0.00/mo
• Start — $9.00/mo
• Grow— $15.00/mo

Just barely fitting our budget, the Jimdo site builder is an all-round useful tool for personal and low-demand websites. Prices on the official page show the monthly rates, but you need to prepay for either a 12 or 24-month period.

Your account will automatically renew at the end of this period, so if you want to discontinue the service, make sure to cancel your Jimdo plan in advance.

Our Verdict

Jimdo is one of the cheapest website builders with such a strong focus on flexibility. Start with a personalized business domain and create beautiful, mobile-optimized pages without any coding knowledge.

Suitable for local businesses, music bands, real estate companies, and freelancer projects.

IM Creator (or simply IM) was founded in 2011 by Jonathan Saragossi, the former VP of Design for WiX.

At first, the platform mostly suited personal and family projects, but kicked off 2015 with an upgrade. The new IM builder utilized a flat UI so all website designs could be responsive and fitting all device screens.

Today, over 17 million websites run on IM Creator.

Ease of Use

IM Creator relies on a block-based architecture, which can take some getting used to. Adding blocks with different functionalities is relatively easy, but you cannot freely move them around and position them as you see fit.

The lack of Undo/Back button was also frustrating, to say the least.

Once you get used to this cheap website builder, things get relatively painless. You can do pretty much anything with only a couple of mouse clicks – resize blocks, set up display formats, edit site sections.

IM Creator Features

Regardless of the package you choose upon signup, IM will first create a free account for you. This is the best choice for students and non-profit organizations who are looking to build a beautiful website for free.

The platform includes web hosting and lets you connect your domain name for better branding.

IM Creator places no ads on any of the accounts, no matter if you’re a paying customer or not.

The other things we’ve found interesting:

Optimized for Ecommerce

Most cheap website builders make a clear distinction between standard and ecommerce websites, putting the latter in a separate category.

IM Creator has none of that.

All solutions are fully optimized for handling online shops and dealing with ecommerce clients. This includes credit card checkout, shipping options, and site analytics tools.

Next-level Scalability

You can forget about the annoying limits with IM Creator.

Build a tremendous one-pager website or grow your project to thousands of pages – you are the master of your online progress.

In fact, IM has been praised by some of the biggest media outlets, like CNN, TechCrunch, and The New York Times.

Integrations

This affordable website builder doesn’t shy away when it comes to utilizing other third-party tools. Again, the most focus is on the ecommerce functionalities, offering add-ons like Ecwid, Shopify, and PayPal.

Among the other useful widgets, you can add testimonial boxes, embed YouTube videos, display working hours, and many more.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 4.6/5 (317 reviews)
• Capterra score — 4.8/5 (40 reviews)
• Sitejabber score — N/A

Online client reviews say a lot of great things about IM Creator:

“Simple, fast builder, and excellent support”

“Absolutely my best web editor”

“Perfect for artists”

Keeping a spotless reputation is not a top priority for many popular site builders, but IM Creator seems to be an exception to the rule.

IM Creator Plans and Pricing

• Free
• Premium – from $8.00/mo
• White-label – from $350/year

IM Creator seems to have a solution for any budget.

The Free plan is ideal for accommodating student projects and non-profit organizations.

There are three Premium deals that start from $8.00, prepaid for the year in advance. Those will perfectly fit startups and small businesses.

If you are a web designer or developer with lots of clients, you can go ahead and become an IM Creator reseller, building your own brand around this reliable platform.

Our Verdict

IM Creator is a versatile tool with amazing design options. While it takes some time to master, the interface is easy to use without any prior coding knowledge.

IM might very well be the cheapest ecommerce website builder, supporting shopping cart functionalities on all of its plans.

If you are into providers with a lot of experience, look no further than 1&1 Internet.

The company first saw the light of day in Germany, in the distant 1988, back where most of us didn’t yet have computers. By 2019, the European provider already amassed 8 million customers on 90,000 servers in 10 worldwide locations.

That puts 1&1 at the #2 spot for hosts with the biggest market share.

Last year was pivotal for the company as they merged with cloud specialists Profitbricks and rebranded as 1&1 IONOS.

But can the “old dog” compete with the cheapest website builders in 2022?

Ease of Use

When you are trying to appeal to the mass user, you have to make your products and services as accessible as possible.

1&1 strives to apply that principle as well, and its site building tool is easy and intuitive for both beginners and more advanced webmasters. You have a good choice of professional-looking templates, neatly divided into categories, depending on your industry.

Can it qualify as the best personal website builder, though?

Far from it.

The themes, albeit easy on the eye, are not really customizable. You can fill the sections with content, but you can’t move them around or restructure them as you wish.

All in all, the 1&1 IONOS Website Builder lacks capabilities for creative freedom, but still offers a stylish design and seamless navigation.

1&1 IONOS Builder Features

The first thing you will notice about the 1&1 plans is the fact there are just two of them — one for websites and one for online shops.

Narrowing down the product choices is a double-edged blade. The host will either create one monster of a deal that contains everything needed for an online project or will just pack the bare necessities for the mass client.

1&1 IONOS falls in the second category.

There are a few highlights — some neat business widgets, social media functionalities, and the ability to build multilingual websites. Plus:

Lifetime Domain Included

If you decide to compare website builders, you will quickly notice that most solutions come with a subdomain from the provider. At most, you might be lucky enough to get a free domain for the first year.

But no business can go far without brand identity, and 1&1 IONOS fully understands that.

You’re not only getting a no-cost domain name upon signup, but this extra will continue to be free as long as you remain a 1&1 client. The domain remains yours even if you decide to switch providers as long as you pay the yearly fees.

MyWebsite Image Editor

You can easily discover the designer in you with IONOS’s MyWebsite Creator tool. Play around with brightness, saturation, contrast to give even more life in your images.

Familiar with Instagram filters?

This solution supports all kinds of cool overlays, stickers, and effects that are sure to spark your creative freedom.

Overall, it’s evident 1&1 IONOS is trying to provide a really cheap website builder, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of features and extras.

Integrations

One aspect in which 1&1 is doing well is undoubtedly the third-party integrations.

The platform offers an environment that utilizes widgets as the main source of functionality improvements.

And boy, do you have plenty of them!

Adding a new plugin takes no more than a few clicks, and the variety is impressive. You can boost your website with anything, from online scheduling and map planner to breathtaking photo galleries and event management tools.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — N/A
• Capterra score — N/A
• Sitejabber score — N/A

As with other web hosts that offer its cheap site builder as an extra service, we have to judge 1&1 IONOS by its overall reviews.

Well, what can I say — you don’t stay in business for over two decades without doing something right.

Plenty of 1&1 clients agree the German provider is a gem. The company figured out how to tweak its servers for optimal performance and backed its solution with friendly and helpful support.

Things generally look fine, but I noticed that an influx of negative reviews on TrustPilot in the last few weeks.

1&1 IONOS is doing a commendable job in addressing client issues, but it would’ve been even better if it prevented them in the first place.

1&1 IONOS Plans and Pricing

• Starter — $5.00/mo
• Plus — $10.00/mo
• Pro — $15.00mo

There are no free plans or trials with this German provider. As mentioned, you can start on the Starter package and get a $1 rate for the first month.

Unlike many competitors, the 1&1 IONOS prices come with month-to-month billing, making it one of the cheapest website builders out there.

Our Verdict

1&1 IONOS offers a powerful site-building solution with everything needed to lift a new business off the ground. While not very feature-packed, the platform integrates well with tons of third-party apps, making it even more versatile.

Another renowned name on our list, GoDaddy is the biggest hosting provider and domain registrar in the world.

Today, the company accommodates over 19 million client websites and 78 million domain names.

You can find anything, from performance tests to client reviews, in our detailed GoDaddy review.

But let’s focus on GD’s website builder plans and what they have to offer.

Ease of Use

You get a simple-looking WYSIWYG web builder with drag-and-drop functions.

GoDaddy focuses on fast and easy site creation, so you can have a working page in literally less than an hour.

That takes its toll when you want to dig a little deeper and fine-tune certain design elements or page structure. Forget about any fancy customizations and look for a template that appears perfect right off the bat.

At least you have plenty of choices design-wise.

There are hundreds of themes compatible with the GoDaddy website builder, and you can easily add stunning images and galleries to your pages.

GoDaddy Builder Features

GoDaddy is not one of those companies that charge heaps for its hosting services.

So I was rather surprised to find the site builder prices are on the high side:

Our budget can only cover the Basic plan, which is not super impressive when it comes to features. You have the standard server SSL, SEO tools, and limited resource options.

The Basic plan also lets us create one social media listing and up to five social posts and comments per month.

Luckily, there are a couple more head-turners.

GoDaddy InSight™

The proprietary InSight™ technology lets GoDaddy take full advantage of its massive client base. By analyzing all websites under its hat, GD figures out what works well and tailors its suggestions accordingly.

InSight offers actionable tips about your sales, pricing, or social media presence, making it an invaluable tool for marketers and product managers worldwide.

Email Marketing Campaigns

When done right, emails can still be a powerful way to reach your audience and promote your business.

The GoDaddy Website Builder comes with a full suite of tools, which aim to boost your marketing efforts. All solutions are well-suited to the novice users and require no previous technical knowledge.

Integrations

You can find a bunch of GoDaddy tutorials online, explaining the functionalities and third-party integrations of the simple website builder.

When you try to apply the tips, though, chances are you will quickly hit a wall.

The reason behind that is the switch that GD made from its older tool to the more modern-looking GoCentral platform.

Online information about it is rather scarce, but you can find resources for the more common integrations like YouTube, FaceBook, Instagram, and more.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — N/A
• Capterra score — N/A
• Sitejabber score — N/A

Similar to the Gator Website Builder, online reviews encompass all GoDaddy products and not just this specific service.

If you’ve ever read our past reviews about VPS hosts and domain providers, you’ll know that GD is far from perfect. The company maintains some controversial practices and lacks adequate support operators to help clients in depth.

Only choose if you know how to build a website from scratch.

GoDaddy Plans and Pricing

• Basic — $6.99/mo ($9.99/mo upon renewal)
• Standard — $10.49/mo ($14.99/mo upon renewal)
• Premium — $13.99/mo ($19.99/mo upon renewal)
• Ecommerce — $14.99/mo ($24.99/mo upon renewal)

GoDaddy’s advertised rates for new clients tie you to an annual contract.

Still, you have options to test the platform before you make a final decision. You can take advantage of a 30-day free trial available for all accounts.

The best part? You don’t need to leave any credit card or billing details, so there is no risk of automatic charges if you forget to cancel.

Our Verdict

Hundreds of millions of people already trust GoDaddy’s services. The provider can work miracles for beginners and smaller businesses with low resource demand.

Still, the poor support and limited performance keep GoDaddy from being up with the best cheap website builders.

A lot of new companies saw the light of day during the dot-com bubble.

One of them was Freewebs, a freemium hosting and site-building service founded in 2001, later renamed to just Webs.

For the next few years, the company has been growing in leaps and bounds. So much so, that it reached 18 million unique visitors checking its cheap tools online every month.

That’s when online printing service Vistaprint stepped in and acquired Webs for a reported fee of $117.5 million.

Unfortunately, the service started going downhill since then, and owners did little to improve the situation.

So what is left of the once-famed site builder?

Ease of Use

Right off the bat, you can tell this platform hasn’t seen any updates in a while.

The interface is quite rudimentary, which might appeal to the novice user. Once you start working with it, you’ll quickly realize there is not much to the Webs editor.

You get to choose a template and modify its color scheme, font style, and background image. As there is no access to the HTML/CSS code, you cannot go wild with any advanced customizations.

The themes look out-of-style as well, which is not a good sign. The web design software constantly evolves, and Webs doesn’t seem to be keeping pace.

Webs Features

Webs still supports its free services, as well as three premium plans:

• Starter — for small and personal websites
• Enhanced — for growing businesses
• Pro — for online stores

Our $10 budget fits well within the entry-level plan.

What do we have here? Not much, really.

No ecommerce capabilities, no custom emails, no phone or chat support. You don’t even have access to premium templates.

At least Webs doesn’t limit you when it comes to the number of pages you can create, as long as they fit within the 1 GB storage cap.

What else is there?

SEO Booster

Small businesses need all the help they can get when going online. That’s why Webs comes with a set of tools that aim to drive more traffic, generate leads, and optimize your websites for search engines.

The platform makes a full site audit as well, pointing out flaws and giving you priceless improvement tips.

Easy Local Listings

Connect with even more customers by appearing in local searches and business catalogs. Webs only needs your contact details, and they will list your website in over 100 directories like Google, Yahoo, and YellowPages.

Integrations

Webs adds extra functionalities for website makers via widgets you can find in its web store. The choice is reasonable, but again — you won’t get anything new or updated.

It’s like a game of roulette — you spin the ball and hope it lands where you bet.

You can integrate a few major platforms with Webs, most notably Stripe and ClickDesk.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 2.5/5 (2,073 reviews)
• Capterra score — N/A
• Sitejabber score — 1.5/5 (79 reviews)

Clients do not shy when it comes to pointing out Webs mistakes.

The most common “victims” of that dissatisfaction are the support operators and builder functionality. No company reps appear present to defend the reputation of this online business.

It’s like Webs left things on autopilot for quite some time.

Webs Plans and Pricing

• Free
• Starter — $5.99/mo
• Enhanced — $12.99/mo
• Pro — $22.99/mo

Prices on the Webs.com website look a little fishy.

Say you want to build affordable websites with the Enhanced deal, at $12.99, and click to purchase.

Once you choose a site name and template, you see the packages again. This time, the same plan goes down to $8.70/mo.

Cool, let’s do that.

On the last step, you fill your billing info. As it turns out, the low rate comes with a 2-year contract.

Should you choose a 1-year deal, the rate changes to $9.99/mo. Month-to-month payments come at $16.99 with a $10 setup fee.

That’s a lot of numbers, and none of them match up.

That apart, Webs’s prices look reasonable until you find out what you get for your money — barely anything.

Our Verdict

Webs is a beginner-friendly option to build cheap websites. The platform offers flexibility and creative freedom without being too flashy. Getting a page online is one thing, but Webs can also assist in promoting your business – SEO insights, local listings, and marketing tools are all part of the deal.

SiteBuilder.com focuses on its services, and information about the company is very scarce. As far as we’ve gathered, the provider operates from Burlington, MA, and aims to create a platform that brings site-building efforts down to a minimum.

No noteworthy facts or achievements, so let’s get down to business.

Ease of Use

Once you sign up for SiteBuilder’s services, you will be prompted to choose a template for your site design. There are several niche categories for themes. Even if you don’t find yours – all layouts are fully customizable, so you can make your DIY web designs look as you wish.

Navigating around was simple enough, and there aren’t tons of unnecessary features that clog your menus.

SiteBuilder.com also offers additional support in the form of live chat and a rich knowledge base for common client questions.

SiteBuilder.com Features

SiteBuilder’s self-hosted platform lets you choose between three plans – Pro, Premium, and Ecommerce. You can test any of them for under $10/mo for starters, but come renewal our budget is only good for the first deal.

All the packages include a domain name (free for the first year), web hosting, and customizable templates. The higher tiers are not that impressive as well – the Premium only adds priority support, and the Ecommerce lets you build an online shop.

On top of that:

Global CDN

Having a content delivery network behind your back can help significantly if you’re serving an international audience. It caches essential site elements in a system of interconnected servers, delivering them from a location closest to the user.

A reliable CDN not only optimizes your website performance but also reduces the load on your physical machine.

Marketing Tools

Building a cheap website for your business is one thing, but making it visible for your target audience requires a different set of skills.

SiteBuilder.com equips you with all kinds of perks in that aspect – email campaign options, SEO booster tools, free ad credits.

Getting yourself seen has never been easier.

Integrations

SB.com’s platform is not very robust out of the box, but you can improve your experience with numerous third-party integrations.

You can utilize a bunch of helpful Google tools (Analytics, Maps, MyBusiness) and add them in just a few mouse clicks. Industry-leading email solutions like MailChimp and ClickSend also partner with this small network builder to give users an enhanced online presence.

User Reviews

• Trustpilot score — 1/5 (164 reviews)
• WhoIsHostingThis score — 2.7/5 (11 reviews)
• Sitejabber score — 1/5 (2 reviews)

Existing clients have less than flattering words to say about their experience with SiteBuilder.com. Most of the reviews around the Web have the minimum possible rating, which should be alarming for any serious business.

Customers often feel helpless with SB’s support, and ecommerce users seem to run into all kinds of payment and integration issues.

This certainly looks more than a targeted PR attack against SiteBuilder.com, so you should carefully test before committing long-term.

SiteBuilder.com Plans and Pricing

• Pro — $5.20/mo ($13.00/mo renewal)
• Premium — $6.30/mo ($15.75/mo renewal)
• Ecommerce – $9.40/mo ($23.50/mo renewal)

At first glance, it seems as if a $10 budget can buy you everything with SB.com. Prices are as low as $5.20/mo, and even the Ecommerce deal is just $9.40.

In reality, there are some ifs and buts.

To get those introductory rates, you have to commit to a two-year prepayment. Once the initial period is over, the standard prices start from $13.00 for the entry-level deal.

Our Verdict

SiteBuilder is a simple and straightforward tool, but far from the best DIY website builder. The platform doesn’t offer much in terms of functionalities, and the dedicated support is rarely of any help.

You can find SB a good fit for small blogs and non-commercial projects.