Website builders are wildly overpriced

A mobile phone and desktop interface depicting a website builder

“There needs to be a website builder for the little guy. I feel like that’s an untapped market.” —Justin, my coworker

Every two years, I’m faced with renewal options for both of my websites: nalvarez.net and djnicky.net. I built and host these with Zyro, which was recently bought by/merged with Hostinger. My personal site was purchased on a basic Zyro plan for $36 and that lasts two years. During my 2022 renewal, they grandfathered me in at that price, so once again my renewal cost was $36 for another two years.

Then, this week, I get an email from Hostinger reminding me it is time to renew my website hosting plan. So you can imagine my surprise when I check the invoice to find a whopping $167 charge for the same two year plan. That’s a 363% increase in price. To my knowledge, there has not been any groundbreaking new features (unless you count the merger as a “feature”) and I’m even more puzzled as to why they wouldn’t honor a plan I was already using the past four years.

Like any enterprising and frugal would-be website owner should do, I started shopping around for other website builders. I don’t mind recreating the site from scratch. In fact, it gives me the opportunity to try new things and break from the status quo. I did a redesign of my personal site about a year ago, and a redesign of that maybe two year prior, so change is not the issue. I checked out “top 10” articles, Reddit posts, and other sources for ideas on who I should switch to.

Turns out, I was getting a deal with Hostinger.

From Wix to Weebly, Squarespace to GoDaddy, all of them wanted at least $10/month and some were much higher. I don’t need all the bells and whistles — let me put some photos in, create five or six pages, and rearrange text where I want it — and I’m happy. But I find it ludicrous that asking for that basic functionality would put me out upwards of $120 per year. Some cheaper options I found are traffic-limited. Not that I’m getting more than 1,000 visitors per month, but it’s not something I want to worry about going over. Even if I were to go with that option, for $5/month, I would be limited to a single page.

I’m now faced with a difficult decision: bite the bullet and purchase another two year plan, or move to a self-hosted Wordpress site. Keeping a bunch of servers around is great for polishing my system administration skills but really shines in situations like these. Most folks would need to pay for a VPS. I think that’ll be the plan: Wordpress. I’ve got a couple weeks to figure it out, but it’ll be a good challenge and an opportunity to redesign the site. Who knows… it’s Wordpress, so I might just move the blog over there.

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