The true cost of a 'free' website builder

You've seen the adverts. "Build your website in minutes." "No coding needed." "Free forever."

Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy Website Builder, and a dozen others all promise the same thing: a professional website without the professional price tag. And for a lot of small business owners, it's tempting. You're busy running your business, you don't know HTML from HTTP, and spending £500 or more on a website feels like a gamble when you're not sure it'll bring in any work.

So you sign up. You pick a template. You drag and drop your way to something that looks decent. You hit publish.

Six months later, you're wondering why your phone isn't ringing.

That isn't a scare story. It's what tends to happen when you don't know exactly what you're paying for.

What "free" actually means

Let's get the obvious bit out of the way. None of these platforms are truly free for a business website.

Wix's free plan puts Wix branding on every page. Your web address looks like yourname.wixsite.com/yourbusiness, which isn't something you'd want printed on a van. You get adverts you can't remove, limited storage and no way to use your own domain.

To get rid of the branding and use your own domain, you need a paid plan. In the UK, that's currently:

• Wix: £7.50 to £24 per month (billed annually)
• Squarespace: £13 to £35 per month (billed annually)
• GoDaddy Website Builder: £6.99 to £14.99 per month (introductory, renews higher)
• Shopify: £25 to £344 per month (if you sell online)

These prices go up. Every year or two, the monthly fee ticks upward. You don't get a say in it. You either pay or lose your site.

The maths nobody does

Most people skip this sum: add it up over a few years.

Let's take a typical small business on Wix's "Light" plan at £17 per month. That's £204 per year. Over five years, you've paid £1,020. Over ten years, £2,040.

And that's just the platform fee. It doesn't include:

• Premium apps or plugins (£3–15 per month each)
• A professional email address (usually another £3–5 per month)
• Stock images if the free ones don't fit (£10–30 per image)
• Someone to fix it when you break the layout (time or money)
• The hours you spent building it yourself instead of doing paid work

A professionally built small business website typically costs from a few hundred pounds with a budget-friendly provider to a few thousand with a freelancer, as a one-off. You own it outright, and the only running cost is hosting, which is around £5–15 a month or included in a package.

Over five years, the professional site costs less. Over ten years, it costs dramatically less.

Cost isn't even the biggest problem, though.

You don't own your website

This is the bit that catches people out.

When you build a site on Wix or Squarespace, you don't own a website. You're renting space on their platform. The design, the page structure and the features all live on their servers, in their own format.

If you decide to leave, you can take your text and images. That's about it. You can't take the design. You can't take the functionality. You can't export your site and host it somewhere else. You start from scratch.

Compare that to a standard HTML website. You own every file. You can host it anywhere. You can move it to a different server in an afternoon. You can hand it to a different developer and they can work on it immediately. There's no lock-in because there's no platform to be locked into.

For a business, ownership matters. Your website is an asset. It should work like one.

The SEO problem

Google doesn't care what platform you built your site on. That's technically true. But in practice, platform-built sites have a harder time ranking well, and here's why.

Page speed. Builder sites carry a lot of baggage. They load JavaScript and CSS for features you aren't using, and they often serve images larger than they're displayed. Google has used mobile page speed as a ranking signal since 2018. Many builder sites score well below 90 on Google's PageSpeed Insights for mobile, where a well-built static site can score 95 or more.

Code quality. Builders tend to produce cluttered HTML, with layer upon layer of containers, inline styles and scripts nobody asked for. Search engines prefer clean, well-structured markup, and it makes a real difference to how easily Google understands your pages.

URL structure. You get limited control over your URLs. Some builders force parameters or subdirectories that hurt your SEO. With a custom site, every URL is exactly what you want it to be.

Structured data. Schema markup (the code that helps Google display rich results like FAQ dropdowns, star ratings, and business info) is either unavailable or difficult to implement on most builders. On a custom site, it's straightforward.

If your business depends on people finding you through Google, as most local businesses do, the platform you choose has a real effect on your visibility.

What you're actually limited to

Template builders look flexible until you need something specific.

Want a booking form that connects to your calendar? That's a premium plugin, £8 per month. Want to accept payments? Another plugin, plus transaction fees. Want a gallery that loads fast? You'll need to compress every image manually because the platform doesn't do it properly. Want to add a feature that isn't in their app store? You can't.

Every "app" or "plugin" on these platforms is another recurring cost, another point of failure, and another layer of code slowing your site down.

On a custom-built site, features are built to your requirements. No app store. No compatibility issues. No monthly fees for basic functionality.

The maintenance trap

"Easy to update" is the promise, and it's half true. Changing text and swapping pictures is straightforward enough on most builders.

But maintaining a website is more than updating content. It's:

• Keeping the design current as platforms change their editors
• Fixing layouts that break when the platform updates
• Managing plugin updates and compatibility
• Monitoring performance and uptime
• Handling security (even on hosted platforms, your account can be compromised)

When something goes wrong on a builder, you're limited to the platform's own support: forum posts, chatbots and tickets that can take a couple of days. Hiring a developer rarely helps, because the problem is usually in the platform itself.

With a standard website, any developer can work on it. The code is accessible and portable. Problems get solved, not worked around.

What this looks like in practice

These are typical of the situations people bring to us. Details vary, but the pattern is familiar.

A tradesperson has been on a builder for two years, paying around £15 a month for the plan, £5 for email and £10 for a booking plugin, which comes to about £360 a year. The site takes over four seconds to load on a phone and sits on page three of Google for their main search.

Rebuilt as a static site, the same business pays a one-off fee and a monthly hosting charge that also covers email, SSL, backups and an AI assistant. The pages load in about a second, and with the basics of local SEO in place, the site has a fair chance of reaching page one.

A small shop selling a dozen products pays a monthly plan fee plus a transaction fee on every sale. Over a year, the fees alone can cost more than a simple custom shop would have.

A consultancy builds on a builder, then finds it can't add the client portal they need. The only option is to rebuild from scratch, after a year and a half on a platform that couldn't grow with them.

When a builder does make sense

To be fair, there are situations where a template builder is the right call:

• You need something online today. If you're starting a business and need a basic presence within 24 hours, a builder gets you there.
• You're testing a business idea. If you're not sure your business will work and you want to validate before investing, a cheap builder is a sensible first step.
• Your budget is genuinely zero. If you have no money at all, a free Wix page is better than no website.

But if you're running an established business, or you're serious about getting customers through your website, a builder is a false economy. You're paying more for less, and you're building on rented ground.

What to look for instead

If you're ready to invest in a website you actually own, here's what to ask any provider:

1. Do I own the files? You should be able to download your complete website and host it anywhere.
2. Is it built on standard technology? HTML, CSS and JavaScript, rather than a proprietary platform or framework that ties you in.
3. What's the ongoing cost? Hosting and domain renewal. That's it. No per-feature charges.
4. How fast does it load? Ask for a PageSpeed Insights score. Anything below 80 on mobile is a problem.
5. Is it accessible? Your site should work for everyone, including people using screen readers. The Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments, and if you sell to EU customers the European Accessibility Act has applied since June 2025.
6. What happens if I want to leave? If the answer involves "you'd need to rebuild," walk away.

In short

A "free" website builder costs you:

• More money over time than a professionally built site
• Slower pages, which rank lower and lose visitors
• Control, because you're renting rather than owning
• Room to grow, with limited features and flexibility
• Visibility, with weaker SEO out of the box

A professional website costs more upfront. But you own it, it's faster, it ranks better, and it grows with your business.

If you're on a builder and wondering whether to switch, ask us for a free website audit. We'll tell you honestly what your current site is likely costing you in traffic and enquiries, with no obligation.

Get your free website audit →

Or see our website packages to compare what you get for a one-off investment versus years of platform fees.

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