What Counts as a Cheap Website Builder?
For this comparison, cheap means the plan you would actually publish on: the lowest tier that lets you use your own domain and does not put the platform's branding on your pages. That is a deliberately unglamorous definition, because the alternative is comparing free tiers against paid ones and calling it a ranking.
On that basis the entry prices here run from £1 a month to £19 a month, and the spread is not really about quality. IONOS and Fasthosts both start at £1 as an introductory rate. Bluehost is £1.48 on a three-year term and Webador £2.25 for the first year. Wix is £9 with no introductory discount at all, Squarespace £12, and Shopify £19 because it is a shop rather than a website. Three platforms — Wix, Webador and Site123 — also have a genuinely free tier with no time limit.
The Three Costs That Catch People Out
Almost every complaint about a cheap website builder traces back to one of three things, and all three are visible before you buy if you know to look.
1. The renewal rate, not the intro rate
Introductory pricing is standard in this market and it is not a trick, but the second-year figure is the one you will live with. IONOS moves from £1 to £16 a month. Bluehost's One Site plan goes from £1.48 to £6.67. Webador roughly doubles, from £2.25 to £4.50. Wix and Squarespace do not do this at all, which is a real advantage that never shows up in a price comparison table. Whichever you pick, put the renewal date in a calendar the day you sign up.
2. Monthly billing versus annual
Every advertised figure on this page assumes you pay for a year or more upfront. Pay month to month instead and the same plan costs materially more: roughly a third more on Squarespace and Shopify, 16 to 28% more on Wix, and around double on Webador, where Lite goes from £2.25 to £6 a month. Bluehost's headline £1.48 needs a full 36 months paid in one go. If cashflow matters more than the total, that premium is the price of flexibility — just do the arithmetic before deciding it is not worth it.
3. What is genuinely included
A £1 plan with a domain, SSL and email included is cheaper than a £1 plan that charges for all three. Domains typically run £10 to £20 a year, so a free first-year domain is worth more than the difference between most of the plans here. Bluehost, Fasthosts (from Standard) and Squarespace all include one. Two providers — Base44 and Site123 — bill UK customers in US dollars with no published sterling price, so their real cost also depends on the exchange rate and any non-sterling fee your card issuer adds.
Free vs Cheap: Which Should You Choose?
A free plan and a cheap plan solve different problems. Free is for deciding — building the pages, seeing how the site reads, working out whether the project is real. The cost is a platform subdomain and platform branding on your pages, which is fine for a hobby project and wrong for anything you would put on a business card.
A cheap paid plan is for committing. Your own domain, no branding, and in most cases email and a bit of support. The practical route for most people is to build free first and upgrade the week before you start telling people about it. If free is where you want to stay, our comparison of free website builders covers those properly, and our main website builder comparison ranks the whole market rather than just the cheapest end of it.
How Cheap Is Too Cheap?
There is a floor, and it is usually about storage, order limits and exits rather than price. Site123's Basic plan is around £8 a month but includes roughly 3 GB of storage, allows PayPal only on its cheaper tiers, and offers no full site export if you decide to move — so the cost of leaving is rebuilding. Base44's free tier is metered in message credits rather than pages, so heavy editing runs out of allowance rather than disk space.
Those are not reasons to avoid either platform; they are reasons to check the limit that applies to what you are actually building. The question is never "is this cheap" but "is this cheap for the thing I am doing".
Our Cheapest Picks by Situation
- Lowest first-year cost: IONOS or Fasthosts at £1 a month. IONOS gives you more templates; Fasthosts gives you UK hosting, UK support and a renewal rate shown at checkout.
- Lowest cost with no commitment: Wix's free plan, then £9 a month when you are ready. No introductory rate means no unpleasant year two.
- Lowest sustained monthly cost: Bluehost at £1.48, if you are genuinely willing to pay 36 months upfront.
- Cheapest paid plan outright: Webador's Lite at £2.25 a month for the first year, renewing at £4.50.
- Cheapest way to sell: Shopify at £19 a month. More than everything else here, and still less than making a brochure builder pretend to be a shop.
- WordPress on a budget: Bluehost's One Site at £1.48 a month with a free domain, SSL and CDN included.
Final Thoughts
The cheapest website builder in this comparison is not the one with the lowest number on the banner — it is the one whose two-year cost, included features and limits match what you are building. On that basis IONOS takes the top spot for the balance of price and what comes with it, Wix wins on starting free, and Fasthosts wins if UK hosting and support matter to you.
Prices and promotions in this category change often. Every figure on this page was checked in September 2026 against each provider's own UK pricing, and where a provider does not publish sterling prices we have said so rather than quietly converting one. Check the current rate on the provider's own site before you buy, and read how we rate if you want the detail behind the scores.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the cheapest website builder in the UK?
On introductory pricing, IONOS and Fasthosts are joint cheapest at £1 a month, with Bluehost's One Site plan at £1.48 on a three-year term just behind. For the cheapest paid plan without a multi-year commitment, Webador's Lite is £2.25 a month for the first year. All four rise on renewal, so compare the second-year figure as well as the first.
Is a cheap website builder good enough for a business site?
Yes, for most small businesses. Every platform in this comparison produces a mobile-responsive site with SSL and reasonable load times on its entry plan. The limits you hit first are usually storage, the number of products you can sell, or how much design control you have — not whether the site works.
Are there genuinely free website builders, or is it always a trial?
Three platforms here have a real free tier with no time limit: Wix, Webador and Site123. In each case the site runs on a platform subdomain and carries platform branding. Squarespace and Shopify have trials rather than free plans, and IONOS and Fasthosts offer a 30-day money-back guarantee instead.
Why does my cheap plan get more expensive after the first year?
Because the low figure is an introductory rate. IONOS goes from £1 to £16 a month and Bluehost's One Site from £1.48 to £6.67. Wix and Squarespace are the exceptions: their prices do not step up, so the first month and the third year cost the same.
Do these prices include VAT?
Generally no. Wix, Squarespace and Webador all publish their figures before VAT, so add 20% unless you are VAT-registered and reclaiming it. Two providers, Base44 and Site123, bill UK customers in US dollars with no sterling price list, so the amount that leaves your account also depends on the exchange rate and any non-sterling fee your card charges.
Will a cheap plan make my website slow?
Not by itself. Entry plans typically share server resources, which matters at high traffic rather than at the volumes a new site sees. Load speed on these platforms is far more often decided by oversized images and too many add-ons than by the plan tier. Fasthosts includes SSD storage even on its cheapest plan.
Do cheap plans include a domain and an email address?
A free first-year domain is common: Bluehost and Squarespace both include one on their entry plans, and Fasthosts includes one from Standard at £4 a month. Email is less consistent — Fasthosts includes business email from Standard, while several platforms treat mailboxes as a paid extra. Since a domain costs roughly £10 to £20 a year on its own, a bundled one is worth more than most of the price differences here.
How much storage do the cheapest plans give you?
It varies far more than the price does. Fasthosts' £1 Starter plan includes 50 GB of SSD storage, while Site123's Basic tier is around 3 GB. For a typical brochure site none of these is a constraint; for an image-heavy portfolio the difference is the whole decision.
Can I get WordPress on a cheap plan?
Yes. Bluehost's One Site plan at £1.48 a month on a three-year term is built around WordPress and includes a free domain, SSL and CDN, which gives you thousands of free themes and plugins. The trade-off is that you are maintaining WordPress yourself rather than using a managed editor.
Can I move my site to another platform later?
It depends heavily on the platform, and it is worth checking before you commit rather than after. A WordPress site on Bluehost can be migrated to any WordPress host. Site123, by contrast, offers no full site export, so leaving means rebuilding. Wix lets you change plans freely but not templates once a site is published.
