The short answer: on the plan alone, a DIY builder is cheaper than us. Wix's entry plan is £9 a month on annual billing, which is £324 over three years. With us the website is built free and Starter is £39 a month, which is £1,404 over the same three years. We are not going to dress that gap up. What matters is what sits inside it, because a builder plan buys software and nothing else. Every job the software cannot do stays on your desk.
Key takeaways
- UK entry plans on annual billing, checked 28 September 2026: Wix Light £9 a month, Squarespace Basic £12, GoDaddy Basic £7.99.
- Those headline prices assume a year's commitment. GoDaddy's own UK plan page presents them as a 52% to 60% saving against paying monthly.
- Year two is the real price on some platforms. GoDaddy Basic renews at £12.99 a month against £7.99 at sign-up, and Premium renews at £22.99 against £11.99.
- Three-year totals at those rates: about £324 on Wix Light, £432 on Squarespace Basic, £408 on GoDaddy Basic once the renewal lands.
- With us the website is built free and Starter is £39 a month, £1,404 over three years, and you pay nothing until it is making you busier. Own it outright for £299 once instead.
The plan prices, checked tonight
These are the entry plans, on annual billing, in pounds.
| Platform | Entry plan | Three years at that rate |
|---|---|---|
| GoDaddy Basic | £7.99 a month, £12.99 on renewal | about £408 |
| Wix Light | £9 a month | £324 |
| Squarespace Basic | £12 a month | £432 |
| Wix Core (sells online) | £16 a month | £576 |
| Squarespace Core (sells online) | £17 a month | £612 |
The plan figures come from Startups.co.uk's UK price tables, published 21 August 2026 and checked again tonight. GoDaddy's match its own UK plan page, which we also read tonight.
Two things a table like that cannot show you. The first is that annual billing means paying the year in one go, so Wix Light is £108 out of the account on day one, not £9. Paying month to month instead costs more: Wix Light goes to £11.50 a month, Squarespace Basic to £16, GoDaddy Basic to £12.99.
The second is that Wix does not publish a plain pound figure at all. Its pricing page says prices and currency vary by location, that the dollar amounts are shown for reference only, that tax depends on your billing address, and that the final price can be seen on the purchase page before payment completes. The number you budget with is not a number you can read until you are most of the way through checkout.
Year two is the price, not year one
Some platforms charge one price to get you in and another to keep you. GoDaddy's UK builder is the clearest example: Basic signs up at £7.99 a month and renews at £12.99, Premium at £11.99 and renews at £22.99, Commerce at £13.99 and renews at £26.99. Hostinger runs the same shape harder, with a Premium plan at £2.99 a month on a 48-month term that renews at £10.99.
That is why three-year maths beats monthly maths when you are choosing. Run GoDaddy Basic out properly and it is £95.88 in year one, then £155.88 in each of years two and three, for about £408. On the shelf it looked like the cheapest option in this article. Over three years it costs more than Wix Light.
None of this is hidden. It is printed, and almost nobody reads to the end of the basket. Check the renewal price rather than the sign-up price before you commit, whoever you buy from, including us.
The line no pricing page carries
Your hours. No builder sells you a plan with your own time costed into it, which is convenient, because time is usually the biggest number in the whole exercise.
You need two figures of your own, and only you have them. The first is the hours it takes to get the site live and looking like a business rather than a template. The second is the hours each year spent keeping it current: new prices, new staff, a service you no longer offer, photos that are two haircuts out of date. Multiply both by what an hour of your time is worth, and you have the part of the bill that never appears on a pricing page. A Saturday spent on a template is a Saturday not spent on a customer.
For some owners that arithmetic lands in favour of doing it themselves, and we will say so. For most of the local businesses we build for, it does not come close.
What ours costs beside it
The website is built free and Starter is £39 a month. Over three years that is £1,404, against £324 for three years of Wix Light. The difference is £1,080, which is £30 a month. Here is what that £30 buys, in full, so you can decide whether it is worth it.
It buys the build itself: a page per service, written from your real reviews, your services and your photos, approved on your phone before anything goes live. It buys hosting, the SSL certificate kept renewed so the padlock never drops, backups, security patches and uptime monitoring. It buys small changes whenever you need them, which means your hours, prices, a new photo or a new service page get done by us rather than sitting on your list. Last, it buys the monthly work of getting you found: up Google, and cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot when someone asks them for a business like yours. Cancel any month, no minimum term, no exit fee. Under the Busier Guarantee you pay nothing until the site is making you busier, measured on your own Google numbers.
If none of that appeals and you just want the site, own it outright for £299. Same build, paid once, you take the files and host them anywhere, and there is no monthly fee to us ever. Against £324 for three years of Wix Light, £299 once is the cheaper line on the page, with one honest caveat: a builder plan includes hosting and this option does not, so hosting and upkeep become yours to arrange. A domain is £25 one-off if you need one, and if you already own one it stays in your name and we point it at the site for nothing.
When a builder is the right answer
If the website is a side project, if nobody's booking depends on it, or if you genuinely enjoy the building, a builder at £9 a month is good value and you should use one. Same if you want to edit every word yourself at eleven at night without asking anyone. That is a real preference and no amount of pricing maths beats it.
Where it stops making sense is the site that went up in a weekend three years ago and has not been touched since: old prices, a member of staff who left, a phone number that goes to a phone nobody carries. That site is still costing £9 a month. It is just not earning anything back. If that describes yours, the cheaper fix is usually not a new plan. It is our website rescue, which rebuilds what you have on your own content and domain, free with Starter at £39 a month.
Cost is not the only reason people leave these platforms, either. When a builder read the 600 most recent one-star reviews across five platforms, support failures beat price complaints by roughly ten to one: we went through that research in why people actually quit Wix and Squarespace.
Check what you already have first
Before you price anything, find out what your current site is doing wrong. Our free scan runs at least 48 checks on any UK business website and gives you the fixes in priority order, with no call and no form in the way. Plenty of owners find the problem is three things they can fix themselves in an afternoon, which is a cheaper answer than anything in this article.
If the answer turns out to be a rebuild, our web design page sets out how we work, and every price we charge is published.
Common questions
Over three years, is a DIY builder cheaper than you?
On the plan line, yes. Wix Light is £324 over three years and Starter is £1,404. On the £299 outright option, no: £299 once is less than three years of any paid plan in this article, though you then arrange hosting yourself. Neither comparison counts your own hours, which is where most of the real difference sits.
What happens to my site if I stop paying the £39 a month?
Starter has no minimum term and no exit fee, so you can cancel any month. If you want to keep the site permanently, the £299 outright option hands you the files to host wherever you like. Your domain is always in your name, not ours.
I already have a Wix or Squarespace site. Do I have to start from scratch?
No. Website rescue rebuilds an existing site on your own content and your own domain, hand-coded, free with Starter at £39 a month. You keep your text, your photos and your address on the web.
How can your website be free when theirs costs £9 a month?
Because the £39 a month is the product and the build is not. We are not selling you software. The website is built free, and the £39 pays for the work that follows it, which is the part that actually brings customers in. If the site never makes you busier, the Busier Guarantee means you are not paying for it.
What your missed calls cost you.
£780 a month
£180 a week, £9,360 a year, going to whoever answers first.
These are example numbers. Change them to your own. Worked out as 5 missed calls a week, times £120, times the 30% who would have booked, then over a month (52 weeks divided by 12).
A receptionist that answers every call in seconds, day or night, is £149 to £399 a month. It has to pay for itself in the first month, or you get every penny back, setup included.
Hear it answer as your businessWant the version of this with your name on it?
Run the free scan on your current site, 48-plus checks including AI search, no charge, or ask for your free website: we build it first, then the systems that get you booked. £39 a month keeps us working on it to bring you more customers, and you pay nothing until you’re busier. There is no obligation either way.