Enter your business details to see what each option would cost you. Prices are live from our database and shown in pounds sterling.
For a UK small business or sole trader the questions worth asking an AI website builder are the ones its pricing page does not answer: whether the bill is in pounds or dollars, what VAT does to the figure, where the data from your enquiry form goes, what the cookie rules require of a site that tracks visitors, and which plan takes a .co.uk. This guide works through each from stored data, and every figure is read live from the same database as the table below.
How this list was put together
Fit sets the order of the picks; neither price nor rating does, and commission never decides who appears. Behind each pick is a read of the vendor's UK pricing page, from which we keep the true month to month price where the vendor publishes one (Wix does not, so its figures are annual and the table says so), plus the plan each feature sits on rather than a bare yes. The table beneath this guide costs 14 builders at your own numbers, and the full comparison and buyer's guide sets out the method in full.
The picks are drawn from the template-based builders with a flat plan price. The chat-driven app builders in the table price by AI credits, the way Lovable's pricing model describes it (pricing model row: Base plan plus AI credit consumption), so their plan price is a floor and heavy editing adds to it. They build applications; a business website that describes what you do and takes an enquiry does not need one. If yours does, Lovable vs Base44 is the comparison to read.
Pounds or dollars: which picks bill in sterling
Start here, because it changes what every other figure means. Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.com publish a price in pounds (local pricing rows: Wix Yes, genuine GBP rate card; Squarespace Yes, genuine GBP rate card; WordPress.com Yes, genuine GBP rate card). Hostinger publishes its own sterling prices too, though its entry plan happens to share its digits with the US-dollar one.
Durable bills in US dollars (local pricing row: No, US dollars only). The pound figure in the table is a conversion at a recorded rate; the amount that reaches your statement is set by your card's rate on the day, and your issuer may add a foreign transaction fee.
The picks for a UK small business
Wix suits a business that wants to be online for nothing today and keep a shop in reserve. Its free plan publishes a live site (free plan row: Yes, publishes live on a wixsite.com subdomain with Wix branding), a .co.uk needs a paid plan (custom domain row: Paid plans only (Light and above)), and a shop is gated by plan (online shop row: Core and above). Its backend (backend row: Yes, via Velo (database, auth, backend code)) is only relevant if the site may one day need customer logins. Editor seats are capped per plan (team members row: 2 (Light) to 100 (Business Elite), hard caps), so a bookkeeper and a designer with logins can push you up a tier. Wix vs Squarespace sets it against the next pick.
Picture a quiet January and that is the case for Squarespace: the subscription can simply stop (contract: None, monthly or annual) and start again when work picks up. A .co.uk is part of every paid plan (custom domain row: All paid plans). Selling is a question of which rung rather than whether: every paid plan can take an order, and the entry plan hands over a commission that the next plan up removes (online shop row: All plans, commission-free from Core). The number of AI generations you get is written down for each plan (10 one-time (Basic), 20/mo (Core), 120/mo (Advanced)). What Squarespace does not offer is a free plan; the trial is private and unindexed (free plan row: No, 14-day trial only), so nobody finds the site until the first payment clears.
Ask one question of WordPress.com: what happens if you leave? The answer is that the site goes with you to any other WordPress host (export row: Yes, it is WordPress), which is what makes it the pick for a business that wants to own rather than rent. Along the way it puts no cap on who can edit (team members row: Unlimited on every plan, including free) and lets you try its AI builder before paying (free plan row: Yes, publishes live on a wordpress.com subdomain with ads). Two limits: a shop lives only on its top plan (online shop row: Commerce plan, bundles WooCommerce), and it does not publish a number for AI usage (AI usage row: Not published as a number).
Hostinger suits a business with several websites, because one subscription covers several (sites per plan: 3 (Premium), unlimited (Unlimited)) where Wix covers one (sites per plan: 1 per plan). The subscription is a hosting plan with the builder inside it (hosting row: Yes, it is a hosting plan); the domain comes free for the opening year and is then a renewal line on the bill (custom domain row: All plans, free for the first year). Editor seats are not published (team members row: Not published), and a shop needs its upper plan (online shop row: Unlimited plan and above).
Durable earns its place on one condition: you invoice after the job and have no accounting software yet. Meet it and the bundled customer list and invoicing (integrations row: Built-in CRM and invoicing, limited third-party) save you a second subscription. Fail it and the reasons against stack up: a dollar bill, no shop on any plan (online shop row: No), and a generator you steer rather than a page you lay out (templates row: AI-generated, limited manual control). In its favour, the AI allowance is published for each plan (10 AI chats/mo (Free), 1,000 (Launch), unlimited (Grow)). The UK edition of Durable vs Wix covers the service-site decision in full.
VAT on software from an overseas supplier
All of these vendors are overseas suppliers. If you are VAT registered, check whether the invoice charges UK VAT or leaves you to account for it yourself under the reverse charge, and book it accordingly; if you are not registered, the amount on the invoice is your cost either way. We do not record whether each listed price includes VAT, so read the invoice rather than the pricing page before you put the figure in your books, and tell the vendor you are a business.
Your .co.uk, and who holds it
Every pick connects your own domain on a paid plan (custom domain rows: Wix Paid plans only (Light and above); WordPress.com Paid plans, free for a year on annual and longer terms; Durable Launch and above). Where the builder registers the domain, make sure the registrant is you or the company, not the builder and not an agency, and that you can get the transfer code. What moves with you is the domain. What usually stays behind is the site itself: of the picks, only WordPress.com's export row says yes, and on Wix, Squarespace, Hostinger and Durable it says no (export rows: No, No, No, No), which makes a change of builder a rebuild on those four.
Any builder that stores what people type into your enquiry form is handling personal data on your behalf, and UK GDPR makes you responsible for knowing where it is kept and saying so in your privacy notice. That applies to all of the picks, so before the first enquiry arrives, find out where submissions are stored, who at the vendor can see them, and how you get them out. On Durable the customer list lives inside the subscription with no export (export row: No), so take a copy regularly rather than relying on the site as your only record.
Cookies are the separate question. PECR requires consent before a site sets cookies that are not strictly necessary, and the treatment of analytics cookies was being amended through 2025 and 2026, so check the ICO's current guidance before you switch on a builder's visitor statistics. We hold no consent-tooling field for any builder. Publish a test page, open it in a private window, and look at what is set before you have clicked anything; a brochure site with no tracking has nothing to ask consent for.
Paying monthly or a year up front
Wix bills a year at a time (billing basis: Annual only; contract: Annual, paid in full up front): the monthly figure in the table is a year's fee spread across the year, charged once. The other picks are stored on the basis Squarespace's row shows (billing basis: True monthly). Some advertise a headline well below that figure. Hostinger's contract row reads None on monthly, up to 48 months to get the advertised rate, so the front-page price assumes a long prepayment. WordPress.com's contract row reads None on monthly, up to 3 years for the advertised rate, and its committed terms are introductory rates that renew higher. In both cases the table shows the real monthly price.
Which to choose
Decide in this order. Do you want the bill in pounds? Then Wix, Squarespace or WordPress.com, or Hostinger if you run several sites; Durable means a dollar bill. Will the site ever take payment? Then not Durable, and the plan each of the others gates its shop to. Do you invoice after the work and have no accounting software yet? Then Durable's customer list and invoicing earn their place. Then how you want to pay and leave: monthly with no contract points to Squarespace; a free start and a year up front points to Wix; several sites on one bill points to Hostinger; the right to take the site elsewhere points to WordPress.com. Set Websites, Users and Sell online? in the calculator below and read each estimate in pounds at your own numbers.
