Wix, Squarespace and friends advertise “free websites”. Millions of small businesses sign up — then discover what free actually costs. An honest comparison with owning your own site.

What “free” gets you

A subdomain like yourbusiness.wixsite.com, the platform’s ads on your pages, and no ability to connect your own domain. No business can live there — which is the point. Free is the funnel to the paid plan.

What the paid plans really cost

A business-grade builder plan runs roughly $20–$50 per month — $240–$600 a year, every year, forever. Ten years of a $30 plan is $3,600 in rent. And it is rent: stop paying and the site is gone.

The exit problem

The part that stings later: builder sites can’t move. There’s no export that works anywhere else — the design, the pages, sometimes even the blog posts are locked to the platform. Outgrow it and you start again from zero.

The ownership route

Your own domain (from $14.94/year) plus hosting at $65/year, with WordPress installed in one click — free software the whole industry runs on. Total: under $85 a year, and every part of it is yours: move hosts, change designers, export everything, anytime.

“But builders are easier” — are they still?

That used to be the trade-off. Now AI writes your pages, tweaks your design and even updates your site when you ask it to — the drag-and-drop convenience argument has mostly evaporated. Our free builder guide shows how people do it in an afternoon.

When a builder IS the right call

Fair’s fair: a hobby page, a one-weekend event, something you’ll delete in three months — a builder is fine. For a business you plan to still have in five years, pay rent or own the place. Same maths as always.