How Much Does It Cost To Build A Website

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website? (Feb. 2024 Guide)

Written by: Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations' products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world's top hosting providers.

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Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to our team. She has written and edited for major news organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, and she previously served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. Today, she edits HostingAdvice content for clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement.

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Early in their entrepreneurial journey, aspiring site owners may wonder: How much does it cost to build a website? Web designers and developers get paid a lot, and some agencies won’t even listen to your website ideas unless the project is worth thousands of dollars.

While it might save you a few headaches to outsource your website to someone else, don’t break your budget by hiring a designer or developer for something you can actually do on your own.

That’s right, building your own website isn’t a scary, insurmountable task. Many web hosting plans offer very intuitive programs that help you create the website you’ve always wanted. Even better, they are extremely affordable. Read on to learn how you can get a top-quality website for as little as $2 to $10 per month, as well as a list of the companies that provide the tools that will help you.

Average Cost of Building a Website

Without a trusted hosting company and site builder in your corner, the cost of making a website can soar. Freelance designers typically charge $50 to $100 an hour to make a custom website. Adding the specific features you need, such as a shopping cart or PayPal, can multiply your costs dramatically. However, we’ve found the do-it-yourself website builders many premier web hosts offer are more than up for the task of creating a stunning site for a fraction of the cost.

Low-Cost Website Builder Plans

Some of our favorite hosts created their own site builder tools to help you make exactly the site you want for between $2 and $10 per month — without any coding or programming expertise.

These three hosts offer powerful and intuitive options to help you cook up your own website from scratch. What’s more, they give you at least 30 days to try out their services and get your money back. InMotion’s BoldGrid extends that money-back guarantee to 90 days.

WEBSITE BUILDER RATING
★★★★★ 4.9/5.0
  • No coding skills needed with drag-and-drop builder
  • 100s of templates with niche-specific designs
  • Add features via the App Market and Wix Events
  • Easily create ecommerce functionality easily
  • Great way to build small sites on a budget
  • Get started on Wix now.
Starting Price/Mo. $0.00
Money Back Guarantee 14-day FREE trial
Disk Space 2 GB - Unlimited
Domain Name FREE (1 year)
Wix: Our Expert's Review
Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com):

Website building is where Wix shines. The thousands of templates, the intuitive editor, the industry-leading designs that cater to a variety of specific fields and use cases — all these facets represent a platform that excels at facilitating easy web design for the non-tech-savvy user.

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WEBSITE BUILDER RATING
★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
  • No coding skills necessary with MyWebsite Creator
  • Free domain name or transfer your existing site
  • FREE social media and marketing widgets
  • Pro templates with pre-filled text and images
  • Multilingual support and tools for SEO
  • Get started on 1&1 IONOS now.
Starting Price/Mo. $1.00
Money Back Guarantee 30 days
Disk Space 10 GB - Unlimited
Domain Name FREE (1 year)
1&1 IONOS: Our Expert's Review
Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com):

If you're in need of a one-stop shop for designing and launching a website, you should be pleased to hear that 1&1 IONOS offers its own custom website building tools for both desktop and mobile devices. In addition to a free domain and email address, along with unlimited storage space, the 1&1 IONOS MyWebsite platform includes all the essentials for starting a site from scratch.

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WEBSITE BUILDER RATING
★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
  • Drag-and-drop design from custom tools
  • FREE access to hundreds of specialized templates
  • Built-in ecommerce and payment processing
  • Easily switch among widescreen, desktop, tablet, and mobile previews
  • Support for 31 languages and 99.9% uptime
  • Get started on Hostinger now.
Starting Price/Mo. $2.49
Money Back Guarantee 30 days
Disk Space 50 GB SSD - 200 GB SSD
Domain Name FREE (1 year)
Hostinger: Our Expert's Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):

Whether you're taking your first foray into website hosting or are a developer looking to save some time, a strong website builder can dramatically streamline the creation process and enable users to launch a website in five minutes or less. Fortunately for customers, Hostinger has invested heavily in crafting an impressive visual editor sure to appeal to users of all levels of experience.

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Cheap Hosting with Free Website Builders

If your budget is extremely tight, these cheap hosts offer great value with their free domain, advertising credits, and site builder for $2 to $3 per month.

Your design options might be a touch more limited with these builders, but most of these plans include eCommerce functionality. By spending so little on hosting, you can maximize your profits.

CHEAP RATING
★★★★★ 4.9/5.0
  • Unlimited everything, from storage to databases
  • FREE site builder & WP performance upgrades
  • FREE daily or weekly backups
  • Custom control panel and auto-installation scripts
  • SSH access & unlimited FREE SSL certificates
  • Get started on Hostinger now.
Starting Price/Mo. $2.49
Money Back Guarantee 30 days
Disk Space 50 GB SSD - 200 GB SSD
Domain Name FREE (1 year)
Hostinger: Our Expert's Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):

As the shared hosting market becomes increasingly saturated, unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email accounts have become surprisingly average. Hostinger, however, extends the routine, expected metrics to greater lengths — the number of websites, databases, FTP users, subdomains, and parked domains are all unrestricted for most customers.

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CHEAP RATING
★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
  • FREE cPanel integration and Softaculous apps
  • Auto daily backups and web application firewall
  • Reliable and redundant cloud servers
  • FREE SSL encryption and website migration
  • 99.99% uptime guarantee
  • Get started on HostArmada now.
Starting Price/Mo. $2.49
Money Back Guarantee 45 days
Disk Space 15 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD
Domain Name FREE (1 year)
HostArmada: Our Expert's Review
Lynn Cadet (HostingAdvice.com):

HostArmada’s cloud network spans four continents, with datacenters in Europe, the US, Asia, and Australia. Its server redundancy and website optimization features allow users to run stable and performant sites for end users across the globe while running a simplified hosting environment.

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CHEAP RATING
★★★★★ 4.8/5.0
  • 1-click install for WordPress, Drupal and 400 others
  • Unlimited email accounts, databases & bandwidth
  • 24/7 tech support for beginners and pros alike
  • 12-month or 36-month plan at $2.95 /month
  • Anytime unconditional money-back guarantee
  • Get started on ScalaHosting now.
Starting Price/Mo. $2.95
Money Back Guarantee 30 days
Disk Space 10 GB SSD - 50 GB SSD
Domain Name FREE (1 year)
ScalaHosting: Our Expert's Review
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):

It's tough to argue with a shared hosting service that comes with all-SSD storage and unlimited bandwidth, databases, and email accounts. ScalaHosting provides all the above and several other premium features for a very affordable price.

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How Much Does It Cost to Build an Ecommerce Website?

Future ecommerce site owners have specific needs. They’re looking for inventory management, 1-click Magento installs, and help with marketing their products. Our top host for ecommerce store building offers all that and more — for as little as $3 a month.

This host sometimes offers free advertising credits, which will get your brand noticed and refine the traffic to your site by sending interested customers to your online store.

MAGENTO RATING
★★★★★ 4.9/5.0
  • Cloud servers optimized for Magento stores
  • Build your store with help from a dedicated expert
  • Global datacenters with PCI and GDPR compliance
  • Transparent hourly or monthly pricing
  • Secure backups and SiteLock security
  • Get started on 1&1 IONOS now.
Starting Price/Mo. $4.00
Money Back Guarantee 30 days
Disk Space 30 GB SSD - 480 GB SSD
Domain Name FREE (1 year)
Magento Hosting Plans
1&1 IONOS: Our Expert's Review
Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com):

Boasting three Magento configurations, 1&1 IONOS serves all types of online businesses. We found the company’s cloud servers to be the perfect mix of price and performance, blending immense scalability with the affordability and support needed when...

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How Much Does It Cost to Build a Professional Website?

Maybe you’re worried a website that only costs you a few dollars to build and host can’t possibly have a professional look and feel to it. That’s where you’re wrong — The cost to build a sharp and powerful business website can still boil down to $5 to $10 a month.

The Bold Grid platform from InMotion is the only site builder that operates on WordPress, which is the Internet’s most-used content management system.

ECOMMERCE RATING
★★★★ 4.4/5.0
  • Fast and secure hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce stores
  • FREE domain, backups, SSDs, and SSL certificate
  • Server-level caching and scalable storage
  • 400+ free and paid extensions to grow your store
  • SPAM Safe™ Email with IMAP support
  • Get started on InMotion now.
Starting Price/Mo. $2.29
Money Back Guarantee 90 days
Disk Space 100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD
Domain Name FREE (1 year)
eCommerce Hosting Plans www.inmotionhosting.com/ecommerce
InMotion: Our Expert's Review
PJ Fancher (HostingAdvice.com):

InMotion Hosting boasts modern NVMe SSD storage, dedicated caching, and scalable resources to deliver blazing-fast page loads your customers will appreciate. We recommend taking advantage of the premium web host’s managed WooCommerce offerings, but new...

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What About the Cost of Building a Website for a Small Business?

If you’re a small- to medium-sized business owner, surely you’re thinking, ‘How much would it cost to build a website for a business with both beautiful designs and a startup budget in mind?’

Fret not. The cost of building a website for a small business with goals for growth is hard to beat with a host like HostGator. The company’s plans include the developed-in-house Gator site builder, unlimited storage and bandwidth, as well as around-the-clock support.

CHEAP RATING
★★★★★ 4.6/5.0
  • Host up to unlimited websites on a single plan
  • FREE SSL certificate included on all plans
  • Unlimited bandwidth & email addresses
  • 1-click WordPress installs & FREE blog tools
  • Get 74% OFF by buying 36 months upfront
  • Get started on HostGator now.
Starting Price/Mo. $2.64
Money Back Guarantee 30 days
Disk Space 10 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD
Domain Name FREE (1 year)
HostGator: Our Expert's Review
Ryan Frankel (HostingAdvice.com):

HostGator is a great compromise between performance and price. The company offers unlimited emails, MySQL databases, disk space, and bandwidth, plus one-click installs of popular open-source projects, in addition to a 99.

Go to full review »

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Good Website?

As our options above show you, a good website doesn’t have to break the bank. Hosting providers and website builders, however, aren’t a one-size-fits-all decision — think about the kind of website you want and the amount of money you’re willing to spend.

You can put together a basic website for as little as $2 or $3 per month, but slightly more established ecommerce brands or small businesses might need to invest a little more to get the performance and added features. For those folks, you should expect to spend between $5 and $10 each month.

The Cost to Build and Maintain a Website is Offset By a Great Host

Don’t let the idea of building your own website scare you into hiring an expensive outside developer or designer. Take ownership of your online presence by creating something completely on your own — our favorite website builder hosts give you all the user-friendly tools that will show you the way.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations' products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world's top hosting providers.

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