The Real Cost of a “Free” Website Builder

Wix lets you make a site for $0, and Squarespace starts at $19 a month. A site I design and build starts at $2,400, plus $79 a month for hosting and care. On price alone, that looks like an easy call.

It isn't quite, so here is the math over three years: what each option costs in cash, what it costs in your time, and what you get for the difference. I build websites for a living, so weigh my view accordingly. The numbers are all here, with links to where they come from, so you can check them. Prices are as of October 2026.

What "free" gets you

Wix's free plan puts your site at a Wix address (yourname.wixsite.com/sitename) with Wix branding on it. To use your own domain and remove the branding, you need one of its paid plans (Wix plans). Squarespace has no free plan: every site starts as a 14-day trial (Squarespace pricing).

For a business, a free plan is a demo. The real starting point is a paid plan.

What the builders cost

Wix's prices are for a yearly plan paid up front. A few things those numbers leave out:

• Your domain. Yearly plans on both include a free domain for the first year. After that it renews at the builder's rate.
• Email. An address at your own domain is a Google Workspace subscription either way. Squarespace Core includes one account free for the first year.
• Selling. Squarespace Basic adds a 2% fee on online store sales, on top of card processing.
• Apps. Booking, reviews and other extras from each builder's app market can carry their own monthly fees. Check the listing before you count on one.
• Tax, which neither price includes.

What a Popproxx Starter site costs

Starter is a five-page site I design and build for you: $2,400, paid half now and half before launch, or $2,160 if you pay in full.

From the day it launches, the care plan is $79 a month. That covers hosting on Vercel with SSL, daily backups, uptime monitoring, and security and dependency updates. It's month to month, with 30 days' notice. It doesn't include changes to your content or design: those are $150 an hour, billed in 15-minute increments with a 30-minute minimum, or $675 for a prepaid block of five hours. A new phone number and two new photos is usually half an hour, $75.

Three years of Starter comes to:

• $2,400 + 36 × $79 = $5,244, paying in two halves
• $2,160 + 36 × $79 = $5,004, paying in full

Side by side

Wix Light

$612

Squarespace Basic

$684

Wix Core or Squarespace Core

$1,044

Wix Business

$1,404

Popproxx Starter, paid in full

$5,004

Popproxx Starter, in two halves

$5,244

In cash, the builder wins. A Starter site costs about $3,600 to $4,600 more over three years, or roughly $100 to $129 a month.

What the difference pays for

Your hours. On a builder, you are the designer: you choose a template, write every page, find photos, check each page on a phone, and set up the forms and the search settings. Most of that comes at the start, and again whenever the site needs a redesign. Only you know how long it takes you, so put your own rate on it. If your time is worth $50 an hour, the gap above is 72 to 93 hours over three years, about two to two and a half hours a month. If the site would take you more than that, the build costs you less.

A design for your business. A Starter site is designed for your business rather than fitted into a template, with two rounds of revisions on the design before it's built. You can see what that looks like in my work.

Owning what you paid for. The code of a site I build stays yours. A Wix site can't be moved to another host (Wix Help Center). Squarespace exports certain content to a file for WordPress; the design stays behind, and images don't export in bulk (Squarespace Help Center). If you ever leave a builder, you rebuild.

What stays the same. Either way, someone else runs the servers: a builder hosts and patches your site, and so does the care plan. And either way, changing your content takes your time or someone's paid time.

Four questions to answer first

1. Who will build it, and when? If the honest answer is "me, on weekends, eventually", count those weekends at your own rate.
2. What does the site have to do? A page with your hours and phone number is a different job from one that has to win quotes or take bookings.
3. Who will change it? On a builder, you will, whenever you like. On a site I build, you can't edit the pages yourself: changes are $150 an hour, and the edit-your-own blog ($500) lets you publish posts on your own.
4. What happens if you outgrow it? On a builder, outgrowing the plan means a bigger plan; outgrowing the platform means a new site.

When a builder is the better choice

A builder makes sense when:

• you enjoy making the site yourself and have the hours,
• you need something online this week, or
• you're testing an idea, and $5,000 over three years is more than you want to bet on it.

Those are real reasons. Start there, and come back when the site needs to bring in work.

When a build pays for itself

A build is the better buy when:

• the site has to bring in work: calls, quotes, bookings,
• your hours are worth more spent on the business than on the site,
• you want it to look like your business, not a template, or
• you want to own the code, so the site can move without starting over.

Starter is the smallest of three plans: Deluxe is seven pages for $4,080 and Premium is ten pages for $6,720, each with the same $79 care plan. See what each plan includes, or start with yours.