Website Builder Deals, Tested and Picked by Us

The right answer depends on what your business actually does. If you are primarily selling products, look for a platform with strong inventory management and built-in payment processing. If you are a service business or creative, design flexibility and booking integrations matter more. A general brochure site for most trades or local businesses has different requirements again. The offers on this page are all from platforms we have tested across these use cases, so the review score next to each one reflects real-world performance, not just feature lists.

Entry-level paid plans typically start between £8 and £15 per month billed annually. Mid-range plans with more storage, custom domains, and basic ecommerce sit around £15 to £30. Full ecommerce plans with no transaction fees tend to run £25 to £45 per month. Most platforms also offer a free tier, but these carry the platform's branding in your URL and are not suitable for a business site. It is also worth checking the renewal rate before you commit. Introductory pricing can look very different from what you pay in year two.

Several platforms compete hard on introductory pricing, with plans advertised under £3 to £5 per month at launch. The catch is that these rates are almost always for the first billing period only, and renewal prices are significantly higher. When comparing costs, look at the annual renewal rate rather than the headline offer, factor in whether transaction fees apply to your sales, and check whether the plan you need is actually the introductory one or a tier above. We track the current deals on this page so the price you see is what is actually available right now.

Yes. The platforms we review are built for non-technical users. You pick a template, add your content, and publish. The only point where you might hit a wall is if you need something very specific, such as a custom booking flow or an unusual checkout configuration. Most platforms handle this through third-party app integrations rather than requiring any code.

Good enough for most small businesses. The platforms we test all allow you to set page titles, meta descriptions, and image alt text. Clean URLs and basic technical SEO are handled automatically. Where they fall short of a custom-built site is in fine-grained control over site structure and schema markup. That gap matters more as you scale, but for most small business sites at the early stage it rarely makes a practical difference.

Website builders are hosted, all-in-one tools: you pay a subscription and everything including hosting, security, and updates is handled for you. WordPress.org is self-hosted software you install on your own hosting account. WordPress gives you far more flexibility and ownership, but it requires more technical confidence and ongoing maintenance. WordPress.com, the hosted version, sits somewhere in the middle. We have reviewed both approaches and the right choice depends on how much control you need versus how much time you want to spend managing a site.

You can, but it is not painless. Most platforms do not export your design or page layouts. You can usually export your content such as text, images, and product data, but you will need to rebuild your site structure on the new platform. It is worth picking the right tool at the start rather than planning to migrate later. Our questionnaire takes about two minutes and is designed to help you work out which platform fits your situation before you commit.

It depends on the scale and type of selling you plan to do. For large product catalogues with complex shipping and inventory needs, you will want a platform built specifically for ecommerce. For smaller catalogues or service-based selling such as bookings, subscriptions, or digital downloads, a general-purpose builder with ecommerce features built in is usually sufficient and cheaper. The key questions to ask are: how many products do you need to list, do you need to manage stock, and will you be shipping physical goods or delivering digitally?