Affordable website design

Affordable website design, coded for you, from €1

Affordable website design that you really own costs, with me, €1 at the order then €79 a month on the Visibility plan, or €1 at the order then €39 a month on the Essential plan. In both cases I design and code a unique site for your business without a template or a page builder, the hosting, backups, security monitoring and content changes are included, and the code belongs to you from day one. This page compares the four ways to get a cheap website for a small business today, with prices captured on 27 August 2026, the traps that cost money later, and the cases where a builder is enough.

What can you buy today with a small website budget?

Online builders such as Wix, Squarespace or WordPress.com cost the least per month, as long as you do all the work yourself. As displayed from Switzerland on 27 August 2026, Squarespace lists Basic at 15 CHF a month, Core at 21 CHF and Advanced at 27 CHF. WordPress.com shows Personal at 5 CHF a month for the first year, Premium at 10 CHF the first year, Business at 30 CHF the first year and Commerce at 54 CHF the first year, billed every 12 months. On the US site, Wix lists Light at $19 a month, Core at $29, Business at $39 and Business Elite at $159. Those prices cover the tool and the hosting, not the evenings spent picking a theme and writing the text.

Subscription agencies sell a WordPress site against a monthly fee, and the terms differ a lot from one offer to the next. The offers below are French, captured on 27 August 2026. At ALEO, the pricing page shows a WordPress site from 69 € excluding tax a month. At Nematis, the offer starts from 89 € a month for a site on a preset structure, with a custom site sold separately. At WebAB, expect 29.99 to 59.99 € excluding tax a month plus a 199 € setup fee, on WordPress and with no commitment. At WebGazelle, the page shows from 99.90 € excluding tax a month with a 24 month minimum, and the site becomes the client's property only at the end of the commitment. Le Site Français offers 49 € and 99 € excluding tax a month with no commitment, presented as a rental.

A freelancer on a one off quote is still the classic way to get a cheap website with no monthly fee, paid once against a single quote. Rates vary enormously with the country, the experience and what the quote covers, and I point further down to my detailed article rather than squeezing them into one misleading number here. Check above all what happens the month after the site goes live, because a fixed price covers the build and rarely the hosting, the backups, the security updates and the small changes that every site needs. If the freelancer changes trade, you're left with a site nobody watches, and that's the moment a cheap website starts to cost money.

My monthly plan sits between the builder and the agency, and the difference is ownership, since the site is designed and coded for you and belongs to you from day one. The Essential plan costs €1 at the order then €39 a month, and includes a unique site designed for your business with no template and no WordPress, hosting, daily backups, security monitoring, technical fixes, text and image changes within 48 working hours and a monthly report. The Visibility plan costs €1 at the order then €79 a month and adds, every month, 4 pages and 4 articles on verified keywords and a report on your local search positions. Both plans are detailed on the pricing page, with the first year total at the top of every quote.

Solution	Price captured	Who owns the site	Who does the work
Wix	Light $19 a month, Core $29, Business $39 (US site, 27 August 2026)	The site lives inside the Wix tool	You
Squarespace	Basic 15 CHF, Core 21 CHF, Advanced 27 CHF a month (as displayed from Switzerland, 27 August 2026)	The site lives inside the Squarespace tool	You
WordPress.com	Personal 5 CHF the first year, Premium 10 CHF the first year, Business 30 CHF the first year a month, billed every 12 months	Hosting stays with WordPress.com	You
Subscription agency	From 29.99 to 99.90 € excluding tax a month across the French offers captured, with a 24 month commitment at some	Depends on the contract, sometimes only at the end of the commitment	The agency, on WordPress or on its own tool
Freelancer, fixed quote	One quote paid once, see the article on website costs	You, once the invoice is paid	The freelancer, then nobody after launch
Essential plan	€1 at the order then €39 a month, €469 for the first year	You, code and domain in your name from day one	Me, build, hosting, security and changes
Visibility plan	€1 at the order then €79 a month, €949 for the first year	You, code and domain in your name from day one	Me, with 4 pages and 4 articles a month on top

05 The plans

How much does an affordable website that you own cost?

01 Essential

Essential

The website, the hosting and the updates, with nothing else to manage on your side.

€1

at the order

then €39 a month

Your site online in less than 48 hours after the order
A unique website, designed and coded for your business
Hosting, daily backups and security monitoring
Technical fixes and updates included in the plan
Text and image changes delivered within 48 working hours
Monthly report on traffic and uptime

That is €469 excluding tax for the first year, then €39 a month, cancellable any month with one month's notice.

Choose Essential

02 Visibility Most complete

Visibility

Everything in Essential, plus the content that puts your site on your trade's keywords and brings you customers.

€1

at the order

then €79 a month

Everything in the Essential plan
4 pages and 4 articles a month, written on verified keywords for Google and AI search engines
Each page targets one more keyword, so after a year your site answers close to a hundred searches in your trade
Monthly report on your positions for local searches

That is €949 excluding tax for the first year, then €79 a month, cancellable any month with one month's notice.

Choose Visibility

Monthly plan excluding tax, 12 months minimum, then cancellable with one month's notice. The domain name and the source code belong to you from day one, with a full export of the site within 15 days on request, free of charge, even during the commitment.

Card payment, secured by Stripe. You pay the order and the first monthly payment, then each monthly payment is charged on the same date. Would you rather get a quote and talk first? Write to me.

Why does a cheap website so often end up costing more?

The first trap with cheap website design is ownership, because a site you rent, or one that lives inside a closed tool, isn't yours. At WebGazelle, the pricing page states that the site becomes the client's property only at the end of the 24 month commitment, and Le Site Français presents its plans as a rental. Before you sign, ask who holds the domain name, who owns the code and what leaving mid contract costs. With me, the domain is in your name, the code is yours from day one, and a full export of the site is delivered within 15 days on request, free, even during the commitment.

The second trap is the template, because a cheap site built on a theme looks like thousands of others and bends badly to your business. A template dictates its page order, its blocks and its proportions, and every deviation needs a workaround that slows the site or breaks the layout on a phone. At Nematis, the offer from 89 € a month covers a preset structure, with the custom site billed separately, which amounts to saying that the low price buys the model and not the fit. A site designed and coded for you doesn't have this problem, since each page is drawn for what you sell, and no two of my clients ever get the same site.

The third trap is speed, because a cheap website loaded with modules and scripts loads badly on a phone on 4G, and visitors leave before they've read the first line. Builders and WordPress themes carry a generic layer built to cover every possible case, and that weight stays even when you use a tenth of the features. A site coded for you contains only what your pages need, and before every launch I run the site through a check on speed, accessibility and technical SEO, whichever plan you chose.

The fourth trap combines the lack of upkeep with a hidden commitment, two things the advertised price never shows. A cheap site delivered and then abandoned piles up missed updates, missing backups and forms that quietly stop sending, and my article on website maintenance details what that upkeep covers. On the other side, a low monthly fee can hide a long commitment, like the 24 month minimum shown at WebGazelle, or a setup fee, like the 199 € excluding tax at WebAB. With me, the commitment is 12 months, then the plan can be cancelled any month with one month's notice, without a financing company or a lease behind the contract, and the first year total sits at the top of every quote.

When is a builder enough, and when does this plan win?

A builder is enough when the site is a personal project, a test page or an activity that doesn't yet have customers to convince. If you want an address, a few photos and a contact form for a weekend project, a Squarespace plan at 15 CHF a month or a Wix Light plan at $19 a month does the job, and you keep control of everything. I've written what to know before building a free website, and the limits described there apply to entry level paid plans too. The day the site has to bring in customers, the hours you spend on it have a cost the monthly fee never shows.

The plan wins when your site has to find customers and you have neither the time nor the wish to build and maintain it yourself. For €39 a month on Essential, the site is designed and coded for your trade, hosted, backed up, monitored and changed within 48 working hours when your hours or your prices move. For €40 more a month, Visibility adds 4 pages and 4 articles every month on verified keywords, and that regular work is what moves a site up in Google. I've described on the pay monthly website page how this compares with renting.

A custom fixed price project becomes necessary when the site goes beyond a brochure site, with an online shop, a booking system, a client area or business features. None of these are included in either plan, they're quoted separately on top of the monthly fee. On Essential, an extra page gets a small quote, which is enough for almost every brochure site but not for a catalogue of products to sell online. If your project falls into that category, the custom website design page explains how I price that kind of work, and the monthly plan remains possible for the brochure site, with the business module billed a single time.

06 The price

Why this price does not lower the quality

The price comes from how the site is built and maintained, not from a sacrifice on the design or the code.

A site designed and coded, not a template

No purchased theme, no page builder. The layout, the copy and the code are written for your business, after research on what your competitors do and on what your customers type into Google. Two clients never receive the same site.

Performance and security are measured

Before going live, every site passes a check on speed, accessibility and technical SEO, and it does not ship until the score is where it should be. A fast, clean site costs less to host and maintain, and that saving is in the price.

Automation pays the difference

Hosting, backups, monitoring and the monthly report are automated, and I have spent sixteen years building this kind of tooling. Human time goes to the design, the copy and your change requests, not to the repetitive tasks others bill you for every month.

No financing, no hidden clause

You pay €1 or €1 at the order, then a monthly plan for twelve months, with no credit company and no lease contract. The first year total sits at the top of the quote, and the domain and the code stay yours, with an export of the site within 15 days on request.

What does an affordable website really cost over three years?

Over three years, the Essential plan costs €1,405 excluding tax, which is €469 for the first year then €39 a month, with no hidden fees. The Visibility plan comes to €949 for the first year, with the content work included every month. Those totals sit at the top of every quote, because a monthly fee alone doesn't allow a fair comparison, and I'd rather you did the maths before signing than after. To compare with a builder, add the paid options you'll need to the subscription price, and above all your own hours, which remain the real cost of a site you build yourself.

For a single quote from a freelancer or an agency, I've gathered the real ranges in my article on how much a website costs, with what each bracket buys and the questions to ask before accepting. Always compare the sum over three years, build included, adding the hosting, the backups, the updates and the changes you'll ask for, because those lines are what separate a cheap website from an expensive one. A low fixed price followed by three years without upkeep regularly ends in a site rebuilt from scratch, and that rebuild never appears in the starting price, while the monthly plan avoids that step, since the site is maintained every month by the person who coded it.

What do people ask most often about affordable website design?

Does affordable website design on a monthly plan mean I own the site?

With me, yes, the site is yours from day one. The domain name is registered in your name, the source code belongs to you, and you can ask for a full export of the site, delivered within 15 days and free, even during the 12 month commitment. That isn't the case everywhere, at WebGazelle for example the pricing page states that the site is the client's property only at the end of the commitment.

Why not simply take a Wix or Squarespace site instead?

You can, and for a personal project or an activity with no customers to convince, it's often the right choice. As displayed from Switzerland on 27 August 2026, Squarespace Basic costs 15 CHF a month and Wix Light $19 a month on the US site. In exchange you do everything, the site lives inside the tool, and nobody counts your hours. The monthly plan is for people whose site has to bring in customers.

What does affordable website design on the Essential plan include?

Essential costs €1 at the order then €39 a month and includes a unique site designed and coded for your business, hosting, daily backups, security monitoring, technical fixes and updates, text and image changes delivered within 48 working hours, and a monthly report on traffic and uptime. An online shop, a booking system and a client area are quoted separately, on top of the plan.

How long does it take to launch a cheap website for a small business?

Count on less than 48 hours between the order and the launch, depending on how quickly you review. I first deliver a complete first version of the site, you send back your remarks, I adjust, then the site goes live after your approval. Before that launch, every site passes a check on speed, accessibility and technical SEO, whichever plan you chose.

How does cancellation work after the 12 month commitment?

After the first 12 months, the plan can be cancelled any month with one month's notice, with no financing company behind the contract. You ask for the full export of the site, I deliver it within 15 days, free of charge, and you host it wherever you like, since the code and the domain name are already yours. After that, only the service delivered each month gives you a reason to stay.

Why does a site coded for me load faster than a builder site?

Because it contains only what your pages need. A builder or a generic theme ships scripts and styles for every possible case, including the ones you never use, and that weight is paid on a phone on 4G. Before launch I check the speed, the accessibility and the technical SEO of every page, and the monthly report then shows you that the site stays up and stays fast.

08 Compare before you sign

A site coded for you, at the price of a kit site

01 The code and the domain name are yours from day one, with an export of the site within 15 days
02 No WordPress and no page builder, every page is designed and written for your business
03 Speed, accessibility and technical SEO are measured before the site goes live

Among the French offers under 100 € a month we reviewed in August 2026, none displayed these three commitments together.

See both plans Start my website