Updated October 2026
A website builder charges for the editor, the templates, the store and the hosting together. Once a site is static (plain files), only the hosting is left, and hosting plain files is one of the cheapest things on the internet.
| Item | Typical cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | Yearly renewal at your registrar | The one cost you cannot skip. Keep it renewing. |
| Hosting | Free on Netlify, Cloudflare Pages and GitHub Pages for small sites | Free tiers cover far more traffic than a small business site gets. |
| HTTPS certificate | Free | Issued automatically by all of the hosts above. |
| Form handling | Free to a few dollars a month | Static pages need a relay service to send form submissions by email. |
| Amazon S3 and CloudFront | Usually cents per month | Pay per use; cheapest at scale, most settings to manage. |
Each free plan has limits on bandwidth, build minutes or sites per account. A restaurant or studio site with a few hundred visits a day stays far inside them. Check each host's current limits page before choosing; they change from time to time.
Free hosting means you set it up: upload, connect the domain, check HTTPS, keep a copy of the files. It takes an hour once. If that hour is worth more than a few dollars a month, managed hosting is the better deal.
StaticExit is not affiliated with Squarespace, Inc., Netlify, Cloudflare, GitHub or Amazon Web Services.