Choose a website platform and hosting without overpaying
Website builder, WordPress or a static site? How to choose for a small business, read hosting prices honestly and avoid the renewal and add-on traps.
Published
Most small businesses do not overpay because they picked the “wrong” platform. They overpay because of first-year discounts, add-ons ticked at checkout, and paying for a setup far bigger than they need. Here is how I would choose, written so you can do it yourself.
Start from what the site must do
Answer these before looking at any product:
- Who edits the site, and how often? You every week, or a developer twice a year?
- Does it sell? A few products, hundreds of products, bookings, memberships?
- What must connect to it? Your email, a booking system, an accounting tool, a CRM?
- What is the budget per year, including the domain, email and your own time?
The three common choices
| Website builder (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify) | WordPress on hosting | Static site (Cloudflare, similar) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Owners who edit often and want one bill | Content-heavy sites, many plugins and integrations | Sites that rarely change, need speed and low cost |
| Running cost | Monthly plan, rises with features | Hosting plus paid plugins; varies a lot | Often $0 for hosting |
| Maintenance | Done by the platform | You must update core, plugins and PHP | Very little; no server to patch |
| Moving away later | Usually a rebuild | Possible, plugins complicate it | Easy: it is plain files |
| Main risk | Paying for higher tiers to unlock one feature | Outdated plugins (most hacks start there) | Editing needs a developer or a simple editor setup |
There is no single winner. A florist who changes the homepage every week is often happiest on a builder. A consultant whose site changes twice a year can run on a static site for almost nothing. A shop with many integrations may genuinely need WordPress or Shopify.
Reading hosting prices honestly
- Look at the renewal price, not the first-year price. Introductory prices often apply only to the first term; the renewal can be several times higher. It is on the checkout page or in the terms, usually in small print.
- Untick add-ons you did not ask for: “site security”, “SEO tools”, “privacy protection” bundles, extra backups you could get elsewhere. Some are useful; decide each one on purpose.
- Keep your domain separate from your hosting if you can. It makes moving host later much easier.
- Email is a separate decision. Free email bundled with hosting is often the weakest part. A proper mailbox service usually costs a few dollars per person a month and survives a change of host.
- Check what “backups” means: how often, how long they are kept, and whether restoring costs extra.
Signs you are paying for too much
- Your site gets a few hundred visits a month but you are on a “business” or “pro” hosting plan.
- You pay for a page builder, a form plugin and a security plugin that all overlap.
- You pay yearly for several tools you set up once and no longer use.
Where I can help
I can look at what you pay today and what your site actually needs, and send a written recommendation: keep, downgrade, or move, with the expected yearly cost of each option. No sales pitch for a particular host. Describe your current setup.