For US contractors · 8 min read
AI website builders for contractors: what they cost
What Wix, Squarespace and Hostinger actually charge a contractor, with the billing period attached and the date they were checked — and why almost every comparison page leaves that part out.
What the big three actually charge
Every advertised price on this page is a real number from the vendor's own pricing page, read on 24 August 2026. The reason that sentence is here at all is that it is the part almost every comparison of these products leaves out, and the part that decides what you pay.
The headline figure is never the whole deal. One of these three quotes a price that assumes you pay a year up front. One quotes two different prices depending on how often you are billed and most write-ups only ever repeat one of them. One quotes a price that requires a four-year commitment and roughly quadruples when it renews.
| Builder | Cheapest paid plan | What that price requires | What it becomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wix | $17 a month, Light | A year paid up front | Unchanged while you keep paying yearly |
| Squarespace | $11 a month, Basic | A year paid up front | $16 a month if you pay month to month |
| Hostinger | $2.99 a month, Premium | Four years paid up front | $10.99 a month when it renews |
Note. Wix states on its own pricing page that displayed prices are for yearly plans paid in full. That is not hidden and it is not a trick — it is simply not the same number as a monthly bill, and it is quoted as though it were on page after page.
The billing period is where the money is
Squarespace is the clearest case, because it publishes both numbers side by side and they are far apart. Paid annually the ladder runs $11, $18, $32 and $71 a month. Paid month to month the same four plans are $16, $25, $45 and $89. That is not a rounding difference. On the plan most small firms end up on it is a little over forty per cent more for the same product.
So a comparison that prints one figure and no billing period has not simplified anything. It has picked one of two true numbers and thrown away the thing that decides which one applies to you. If you are not certain you will still want the site in a year, the monthly figure is your figure, and it is the one least likely to be on the page you are reading.
Tip. Before you compare anything, decide whether you are paying yearly or monthly. Then compare only the figures that match that choice. Half the apparent differences between these products vanish at that point.
The four-year price and the renewal price
Hostinger's Website Builder is the cheapest headline in this market and the one that needs reading twice. Premium is advertised at $2.99 a month. That rate is for a 48-month term, charged as $143.52 at the start, and the vendor's own page states that it renews at $10.99 a month.
Both numbers are honest and both are published. The problem is which one gets repeated. A contractor comparing $2.99 against $17 is comparing a four-year prepayment against a yearly one, and the gap he thinks he is seeing is not the gap he will pay. Over the second term the cheap option is nearer three quarters of the expensive one.
The same shape repeats up the range: Unlimited is $3.99 renewing at $16.99, Cloud Startup $7.99 renewing at $25.99. None of that is concealed. It is simply two numbers where most write-ups print one.
Read before you buy anything
- Billing period
- Yearly or monthly, and which figure you were shown
- Term length
- One year, or four
- Renewal rate
- What it costs after the first term ends
- Total up front
- The single charge that lands on the card today
Why the comparisons you have been reading are wrong
This is not a claim about anyone's honesty. It is a claim about a pattern, and it is checkable in about ten minutes.
Of the pages currently answering this search, none states a vendor's billing terms correctly. One that presents itself as the careful exception does state billing periods and gets them wrong, which is worse than staying quiet, because a reader who notices the effort trusts the number. One quotes a plan tier for a vendor that does not offer such a tier. One is seventeen months old and carries no per-product prices at all, only a general industry range. One is a dead link that returns a 404 while the rest of that site is live. One ships a broken price on its own call to action, where the number should be and is not.
The one page presenting itself as independent discloses, in its own words, that its rankings take into account commercial agreements with providers, and that the page contains affiliate links. That disclosure is to its credit. It is also the answer to why a ranked list of these products is worth less than the prices underneath it.
Note. Three of the five results answering this search are AI website builders ranking themselves first in their own comparison. That is not a scandal, it is what the format is for. It is worth knowing before you read any of them, including this one.
We build one of these, so we are not going to score them
Grafter is an AI website builder. If this page ended in a table with us at the top, you would be right to close it, and you would have read the fourth vendor-written ranking on a search that already has three.
What we can do instead is the part that is actually useful and that nobody else on this search has done: publish what the alternatives charge, with the billing period and a date attached, and be wrong in public if any of it changes. Our own price is on the pricing page and it is the only page here that quotes it, so a figure cannot be right in one place and stale in another.
If what you need is a five-page site with a phone number, photographs of finished work and a form that reaches you, all three of the builders above will do it and so will we. The decision between them is rarely the software. It is the billing period, whether you can take the site with you, and how much of your own time it costs to fill in.
What actually decides it for a contractor
Price is the easiest thing to compare and rarely the thing that matters. Four questions separate these products in a way the monthly figure does not.
- Can you take it with you. If you leave, do you get the site, or only the domain and your photographs.
- Where do leads land. A form that emails a shared inbox nobody reads is not a lead system, and a form that goes nowhere at all is worse than no form.
- Who writes the words. Every one of these will lay out a page. None of them knows your service area, what you charge, or which two jobs pay your wages.
- How long it takes you. The real cost of a cheap builder is usually the evening you spend fighting it, priced at whatever your hourly rate is.
Tip. Whatever you use, put the phone number in the header as a tap-to-call link and do not make anyone scroll to find it. On a trade site that single detail brings in more calls than the choice of platform.
How to check every number on this page
- Open the vendor's own pricing page. Not a comparison, not a review, the vendor's.
- Find the billing toggle. It is usually a small yearly and monthly switch above the plans, and it changes every number underneath it.
- Read the small print under the cheapest plan for a term length. Four years is a term length, not a discount.
- Look for the word renews. If it appears, the figure beside it is the price you will actually be paying this time next year.
- Write down the date you looked. Any page quoting a price without one, this page included, is asking you to trust a number whose age you cannot see.
Note. If you check these and find one has moved, the table above is wrong and we would rather know. The contact page reaches a person.
Common questions
- Which is cheapest for a contractor?
- Over a first four-year term, Hostinger, by a distance. Over one year paid monthly with no long commitment, Squarespace Basic at $16 is the lowest of the three. The answer genuinely changes with how long you intend to keep it and how you choose to be billed, which is why a single ranked list is not much use.
- Do any of these know about contractor licensing?
- No, and be careful here. There is no national US register of electricians or plumbers — licensing is done state by state, and in some trades the business and the individual are licensed by different bodies. No AI builder can look yours up, and none of them should write a number it was not given. Type your own licensing details in, and check them on the page before anybody else sees it.
- Is a website builder enough, or do I need an agency?
- For most contractors with fewer than about ten employees, a builder is enough and the money is better spent on photographs and a Google Business Profile. An agency earns its fee when you have several locations, a real advertising budget, or somebody internally who will keep the site fed. Neither answer depends on which builder you pick.
- Why does this page not rank the builders?
- Because we sell one of them. A ranked list written by a vendor tells you what that vendor sells, and three of the pages answering this search already do exactly that. Prices with billing periods and a date are the part we can publish without a thumb on the scale.