This hub covers website builders: the hosted platforms that let you publish a site without a developer, and the ones designers pick when they want more control.
The real question in this category is not which builder looks best. It is what happens when you want to leave. Wix sites cannot be exported at all. Squarespace exports content but not layout. That lock-in is worth more thought than the monthly price.
Watch the billing basis too. Most builders advertise the monthly equivalent of an annual plan paid up front, so the price on the pricing page is not what you pay month to month.
Guides in this category
Alternatives guides
- 9 Best Wix Alternatives in 2026 (Free + Paid, Tested) — Nine builders compared, including free and self-hosted options.
- 8 Best Shopify Alternatives in 2026 (True Cost Compared) — Eight ecommerce platforms with their true cost at real order volumes.
- 8 Best Squarespace Alternatives in 2026 (Prices Verified) — Eight builders compared, including the one that lets you take your site with you.
- WordPress alternatives — Craft, Drupal and four more, plus what a migration really costs.
- Etsy alternatives — Big Cartel, Amazon Handmade and four more, with every fee broken out.
Best AI tools for…
- Best AI Website Builder in 2026: 9 Tools Ranked on Price, Output and Ownership — Nine builders that generate a site from a prompt, tested.
Every website builders tool we have priced
Each page lists the full plan line-up, what the free tier actually allows, and the questions buyers ask most. Prices were checked against the vendor’s own page on 5 September 2026.
- Framer — Design-tool-style website builder that publishes production sites, credit-metered. From $10/month (Basic)
- Squarespace — Template-led website builder known for design quality, with a 14-day trial. From $19/month (Basic, billed annually)
- Wix — Drag-and-drop website builder with AI site creation and a free starter plan. From $17.77/month (Light, billed yearly)
How we pick the alternatives
Every list here starts with the same three tests. Does the tool actually replace the thing it is compared against, or only part of it? What does it really cost once the free tier runs out? And is the price we quote the one the vendor publishes today, rather than the one it charged last year?
We check pricing against the vendor’s own page and date every figure. Where a plan is metered — credits, GPU time, seats, transcription minutes — we say which limit runs out first, because that is usually what decides whether a cheaper plan is genuinely cheaper.
Ratings on tool pages are aggregate scores from third-party review platforms, published with their review count so you can weigh them yourself. They are not our own test scores.
WordPress is not dying, and that matters for your decision
W3Techs measures WordPress at 40.3% of all websites, a 58.8% share of sites using a CMS at all. The next largest is Shopify at 5.4%, then Wix at 4.2%, Squarespace at 2.4%, Joomla at 1.1% and Webflow at 0.8%.
That matters practically rather than as trivia. It means you can hire a WordPress developer in any town at any budget, and that whatever obscure thing you need, a plugin already exists. Those are real advantages and they are the main thing you give up by leaving.
What has aged is not WordPress but the plugin-heavy way most WordPress sites are built: a core install plus twenty to thirty independent projects, each with its own release schedule and security record. Nothing breaks until a plugin update meets a PHP version bump on a Friday. Our WordPress alternatives guide is about removing that burden rather than escaping the software.
Check what an export actually contains
This is where website migrations go wrong, and it is knowable in advance.
Squarespace exports a single WordPress-format XML file covering pages, blog posts, text blocks, embeds and one gallery page. It does not carry product pages, album pages, event pages, index pages, folders, audio blocks, custom CSS or your style settings. A blog moves cleanly; a shop does not. Our Squarespace alternatives guide has the specifics.
WordPress exports posts, pages, categories, tags and comments as WXR. What does not transfer is page builder layouts, which are stored as shortcodes or block markup and become unreadable elsewhere. If your site was built in Elementor or Divi, expect to rebuild every page by hand. That is usually the largest line in a migration quote.
Etsy and marketplaces export product data but never the customer relationship, because the platform keeps the email address.
Whatever you are leaving, export your URL list and map every address to its new home before you switch anything off. Search traffic is the asset you are actually risking.
Marketplace or your own shop?
For anyone selling, this is the real decision, and it is a trade between traffic and margin.
A marketplace brings buyers with their cards out. You pay in commission, in competing beside near-identical listings, and in not owning the customer. Etsy takes a $0.20 listing fee, 6.5% of the sale, payment processing, and 15% of any order that came through Offsite Ads, which on an ad-driven order approaches a fifth of the total.
Your own shop keeps almost all the money and all the customer data, and sends you exactly the traffic you generate, which on day one is none.
The honest answer for most sellers is both, sequentially: stay on the marketplace while it is your main source of orders, open your own shop alongside, put a card in every parcel, and move repeat buyers across over a year. Our Etsy alternatives guide covers it.
Free hosting is genuinely viable now
A pattern that recurs across this category: for a portfolio, a brochure site or a small business site, hosting can cost nothing.
You write in Markdown, a generator like Hugo, Astro or Eleventy turns it into HTML, and GitHub Pages, Netlify or Cloudflare Pages serves it free. Pages load in well under a second, there is no database to patch, and nobody can raise your rent.
The trade is honest: no drag and drop, and you edit text in files. In return the bill is zero permanently. This is what people mean when they search for “Squarespace alternatives github”, and it is the cheapest legitimate answer in the category.
Frequently asked questions
01 Wix or Squarespace?
Squarespace produces better-looking sites with less effort and charges no store transaction fee from its Core plan. Wix gives more layout freedom and a larger app ecosystem. For a design-led site, Squarespace; for a complicated one, Wix.
02 Can I move my site to another host later?
Not easily. Wix sites cannot be exported. Squarespace exports some content as WordPress-compatible XML but no layout or styling. If portability matters, self-hosted WordPress or a static site is the safer starting point.
03 Are the advertised prices monthly?
Usually not. Wix states its displayed prices are for yearly subscriptions paid in full, and Squarespace shows annual-equivalent figures by default. Paying month to month costs roughly a third more.
04 Which plan do I need to sell products?
On Wix, Core at $29.77 a month is the first tier with ecommerce. On Squarespace, Core at $29 removes the 2% store transaction fee that Basic charges, which usually pays for itself quickly.
05 Is Framer a real alternative to these?
For marketing sites, yes, and designers generally prefer it. Its limits are content volume: 30 pages on the $10 plan and 150 on the $30 plan, so it is not built for large content sites.
06 Do these platforms include hosting and a domain?
Hosting, SSL and a CDN are included on every paid plan across all three. Most annual plans also include a custom domain free for the first year, renewing at standard rates afterwards.
07 Is WordPress outdated?
No, on any measure that can be checked: W3Techs puts it at 40.3% of all websites and 58.8% of the CMS market, several times the next largest. What has aged is the plugin-heavy way most WordPress sites are built, which is where the maintenance burden comes from.
08 Can I move my Squarespace site somewhere else?
A blog, yes. Squarespace exports a WordPress-format XML with pages, posts and one gallery page. It excludes product pages, album pages, event pages, index pages, folders and custom CSS. Export products separately as CSV and expect to rebuild a storefront by hand.
09 What is the cheapest way to run a website?
A static site: write in Markdown, build with Hugo, Astro or Eleventy, and host free on GitHub Pages, Netlify or Cloudflare Pages. No database, nothing to patch, and no hosting bill. The trade is that you edit files rather than dragging blocks around.
10 Should I sell on a marketplace or my own shop?
Both, in that order. The marketplace brings buyers and takes commission; your own shop keeps the money and the customer data but brings no traffic on day one. Run both, put a card in every parcel, and move repeat buyers across over a year.
11 How much does Etsy actually take?
A $0.20 listing fee, 6.5% transaction fee on the total including shipping, payment processing, 2.5% currency conversion where it applies, and 15% on any order arriving through Offsite Ads. On an ad-driven order that can approach a fifth of the sale.
12 What breaks when I migrate a website?
Page builder layouts from Elementor, Divi or a proprietary builder do not transfer and must be rebuilt, which is usually the biggest cost. Redirects, forms and anything a plugin stored in its own tables also go. Posts, pages and images export cleanly. Map every URL before you switch off the old site.