How much does it cost to build and host a website in 2019?

There are many reasons why having a personal / business website is essential. But how much does it cost to build and host a website in 2019?

Here are a few options. Spoiler: I switched from WordPress to Publii in July 2019.

Six website builders with monthly subscriptions (quoted prices = paid annually), offering hosting on their own servers

We will compare ad-free plans. These solutions cost between £6 and £10 per month. To give you an estimate of these providers' popularity, I've mentioned the approximate amount of daily visitors on their business sites, according to Myip.ms. 

Obviously the cost doesn't include the time spent on the creation of the site itself (either on your own or using an agency / a freelancer). The main issue with this option is that you're hosted on their server, which makes it difficult to change provider (compared to a WordPress site, which can easily be duplicated from one hosting company to another).

Besides the providers listed below, you can also try SITES by GOOGLE, which is 100% free including the possibility to connect your own domain. It's a great way to create a basic landing page, a small site for an event, etc. Hosted on Google's servers, your basic site will be pretty fast.

WEEBLY (c. 1 530 000 daily visitors on their website).

If you want to remove ads, you'll have to pay £9 per month

WIX (c. 1 190 000 daily visitors on their website)

Their basic ad-free plan starts at £6 per month.

SQUARESPACE (c. 438 000 visitors per day on their website)

Slightly more premium, starts at £10 per month.

Note: you can export the CONTENT (not the JS, CSS,...) of a Squarespace site to WordPress.

STRIKINGLY (c. 29000 visitors per day on their website)

Starts at $8 per month, paid annually (£6)

UCRAFT (c. 6700 visitors per day)

PRO starts at $10 per month, paid annually (£7.5)

TIP: SIMVOLY (c. 4070 visitors per day)

Starts at $12 per month (£9). This tool goes far beyond the traditional website builder, offering a very smart multistep funnel builder, great to convert visitors into customers.

 

Five self-hosted solutions for the open source free WordPress package

which you can download on WordPress.org (c. 1 330 000 visitors per day on WordPress.org). Most of the entry-level packs start at roughly £2 per month.

There's a small learning curve for WordPress but it offers wider possibilities and is almost 3 times cheaper on a monthly basis for beginners (excl. domain cost, sometimes offered by the full-service providers listed above).

Bluehost (c. 256 000 visitors per day), starts at £2.07 excl. VAT per month

HostGator (c. 199 000 visitors per day), starts at £2 per month

DreamHost (c. 23100 visitors per day), starts at £2 per month

Gandi.net (c. 23 700 visitors per day), starts at £2.1 per month if you're a Gandi customer (disclaimer: I'm a - happy - Gandi customer)

SiteGround (c. 7500 visitors per day), starts at £2.95 per month

MOBIRISE, a free solution based on Bootstrap

I've just come across a free solution to create a Bootstrap-based website, a Dutch startup called MOBIRISE.

You create your site via a native app for Windows or Mac. It's free and you can host your site anywhere (Amazon S3, Google Cloud, GitHub Pages,...). It requires some extra expertise compared to the hosted Google Sites solution I mentioned earlier. I haven't tried Mobirise yet but it looks neat and intuitive for a simple project.

PUBLII, open course static site builder

Read my full article (July 2019).