10 Cheapest Website Builders of 2025 – Forbes Advisor

When you’re selling digital goods like memberships or courses, Squarespace is hard to beat. Its website builder comes with the ability to build paywalled content without integrations or coding something yourself. I played around with uploading some videos, and it was easy to import them from YouTube or upload them from my device. One drawback: there’s a video storage limit on every plan except the Advanced plan, so if you’re serious about selling digital content, it’s almost a guarantee you’ll have to upgrade.

Squarespace lets you add paywalled videos to your store.

Squarespace has a built-in tutorial that takes you through crafting your site, which makes it really easy to get up and running. If you are a total beginner to website design, all of the pop-ups and tips will be a lifesaver, but if you have some experience, you might feel like they’re holding you back.

Learn more: Read our full Squarespace review.

There’s a reason Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce website buildersin the business—it’s good. It walked me through every step of setting up my new online store, making it easy to add new products and design my layout. There is an option to use AI to design your store in seconds, but I opted for a free theme instead. I only added a couple of test products, but you have unlimited products on every plan.

Shopify has a setup guide that takes you through every step of building your site.

Shopify has a lot of built-in features, but if you can’t find what you want, there’s probably an app for it. Along with most all-in-one solutions, many features are dependent on the plan you purchase. For example, if you want B2B features or phone support, you’ll have to jump to the highest-tier plan, which is too expensive for most businesses. As for its other support options, Shopify was pushy with its AI virtual assistant, and it took me a few minutes to connect with a real person via live chat.

Learn more: Read our full Shopify review.

WordPress.com is one of the world’s most popular content management systems and offers strong SEO tools, which also makes it one of the best blogging platforms. You can even use it for information sites or a product catalog. That’s not to say you can’t set up an e-commerce store—you can, it’ll just take fiddling with plug-ins to get it to work. There are thousands available from both the WordPress team and private developers.

WordPress.com’s site builder is a little tricky if you don’t have experience.

I’ve used WordPress a lot for my own personal and professional sites, and every time, I find it a bit confusing to use. The themes and drag-and-drop editors just aren’t as intuitive as Shopify or Squarespace. For example, I could not for the life of me figure out how to add a featured image to my homepage on WordPress. And unfortunately, there wasn’t a guided tutorial or pop-up tips to help me. For this reason, I probably wouldn’t recommend WordPress if you’re a complete beginner to the website builder world.

Learn more: Read our WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org comparison.

If you already operate an in-person business but want to reach an online audience, Square will help you get there—especially if you already use its point-of-sale (POS) system. It was super easy to build a free website from my account. Compared to other website builders on this list, like Shopify or Squarespace, the tools are a bit simple. If you’re looking for an extremely customizable design, this service won’t work for you. Also, you can’t use themes on the free plan, which really limits your design options.

Square’s website builder lags behind the competition when it comes to features.

The other cool part? If you already have your products set up in Square POS, they’ll already be in Square Online, ready to be inserted on your website. It can cut down on the time it takes to build your website. Square also has a few checkout features its competitors don’t, like abandoned cart emails and gifting options.

Learn more: Read our full Square review.

GoDaddy might be best known for its domain registration, but it also has website building. It even made our list of the best portfolio website builders.

It started me off with an AI-generated site like Hostinger—there was an option to skip it, but I like to live dangerously. I think this AI generator did a great job doing what I asked—it created a colorful and fun website that didn’t just look like stock images tossed in randomly. There was also a built-in tour that guided me through each step of the website-building process. I also liked that there was a checklist, so I knew the next steps to take.

GoDaddy created a fun and usable website from my AI prompt.

One of the biggest drawbacks, however, was customer service. I had to wade through the AI virtual assistant to finally get to a live chat representative. And even then, it felt like they were just copying and pasting answers without really taking the time to read my questions.

Learn more: Read our full GoDaddy review.

If you’re looking to make a splash in web design, Duda is a cheap website designer that offers robust white-label solutions that can help you churn out websites for clients. It’s built for speedy website creation with drag-and-drop editing, widgets and an app store to expand website functions.

Duda’s AI site ran with my description and created something I’d feel comfortable using.

I used the AI assistant to set up my website for me. After telling it a bit about my business and choosing the colors and fonts, it spit out a site that, like with GoDaddy, I’d feel comfortable using without many tweaks. I also like how it has other fun features, like the ability to add personalized rules to a page, like pop-ups for visitors on specific devices or first-time visitor videos.

One problem I noticed when signing up was that customer service isn’t super responsive. I got a 403 Error at first because I was using a VPN, and Duda didn’t have live chat to talk to, so I had to troubleshoot the problem on my own.

Learn more: Read our full Duda review.

There were some nice templates in the Strikingly website builder, but I decided to use the AI builder to see how it works. It gave me three options to choose from, but unfortunately, I did not like any of them. All three variations used stock photos that weren’t appropriate, and the design itself was rather bland and would take a lot of tweaking to be appealing. However, the editor was easy to navigate and change global site settings.

Strikingly’s AI-generated website felt lackluster to me.

I chose Strikingly as the best for visitor management because it lets you have multiple membership tiers so you could have different types of paid access to content. It also lets you send newsletters to up to 2,000 active contacts with its highest tier plan. This sounds good, but if your site takes off, you may quickly outgrow these limitations. You can upgrade to the Audience Plan for an extra $10 a month to boost these limits.

Learn more: Read our full Strikingly review.