One-time pricing means you pay for the build once and own it: ours start at $1,900 for a landing page and $2,900 for a business website, with no platform fee afterwards. A subscription inverts that — from a few dollars a month, forever, and the site stops being yours to serve the moment the payments do. Neither is automatically right; what follows is the arithmetic and the failure mode of each.
What gets paid once, and what keeps coming back
The confusing part of website pricing is that both models have recurring costs — they are just different ones. Sorting them out first makes every comparison below easier to read.
| Cost | One-time build | Platform subscription |
|---|---|---|
| Design and build | Paid once | Template included; a designer is extra |
| Platform fee | None | Every month, for as long as the site is online |
| Domain | Yearly, yours | Yearly, often free for the first year |
| Hosting | Yearly or free tier, your account | Inside the plan |
| Upkeep | Optional, from $95/month | You do it, or you pay someone |
| If you stop paying | The site keeps serving | The site reverts to the platform |
That last row is the one people discover late. A subscription is not a payment plan for a site you are buying — it is rent on a site the platform keeps.
What the platforms charge
Monthly rates for the main hosted platforms, so the recurring side has real numbers rather than a shrug. Read the billing note on each row: the same platform quotes different figures depending on whether you pay yearly or monthly, and WordPress.com prices the first year below the renewal.
| Platform | Entry | Mid | Business | Top | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wix | $17 | $29 | $39 | $159 | yearly rate, paid up front |
| Squarespace | $19 | $29 | $49 | $99 | yearly rate |
| Squarespace | $25 | $39 | $65 | $139 | month-to-month |
| WordPress.com | $4 → $6 | $8 → $10 | $25 → $30 | $45 → $57 | first year → renewal |
Wix rates read off wix.com/plans, whose page states its prices are “for yearly subscriptions, paid in full at the time of purchase”. Squarespace and WordPress.com figures are the US line-ups, checked at source on 11 August 2026 from a US address; requested from outside the US the same day, both platforms serve a different set — Squarespace returns three plans with no Plus tier, and WordPress.com quotes in euros. Check yours from where you are.
The line item the subscription price hides
A plan buys hosting and an editor, not a designed site. Either you take a template as it comes or you pay someone — and on Wix that price is published, because the platform runs its own marketplace for it. On 11 August 2026 it listed 1,703 professionals, and the first page of 24 quoted “starting at” figures from $10 to $1,990, median $190.
Treat that median as a snapshot rather than a rate card: those are starting prices, 24 cards are a first page and not the marketplace, and the listing reshuffles — the same page a day earlier gave a median of $299. What it does establish is that the design step has a price on a builder too, and it belongs on the subscription side of any honest comparison.
The day the payments stop
This is where the two models stop resembling each other. Wix documents its own behaviour plainly: after cancellation the site address reverts to a free Wix URL and Wix ads appear, while the content itself is not deleted. Hosted platforms work this way by design — you are paying for the site to be served, so payment is what keeps it served.
A build you own fails differently, which is to say it mostly doesn't. Stop paying us and nothing happens to the site: the code and design files transferred to you on final payment, the hosting account is in your name, and the domain is yours. The worst case is that updates stop until you pick them up or hand them to someone else. For the detail on one platform in particular — the year-by-year arithmetic, the export matrix, what the help centre actually says — see Wix vs a custom website.
When renting is the better call
A one-time build is not the right answer to every website, and pretending otherwise would be easy to see through. Choose the subscription when:
- The horizon is short — an event, a season, a six-month experiment you expect to close.
- The whole budget for the site is under $500, where nothing worth having gets built.
- You want to make every change yourself, tonight, without emailing anyone.
- You are still deciding what the business is, and the site will be rewritten twice before it settles.
In all four the subscription is cheaper, faster and reversible, and the ownership argument is beside the point. The trade only turns when the site becomes something you rely on.
What one-time pricing looks like here
Fixed written quotes, agreed before anything starts, with the code and design files yours on final payment. Prices start at $1,900 for a single landing page, $2,900 for a multi-page business website, $3,400 for an online store, and $5,000 where the work is a custom design and build. After launch the only optional cost is a care plan from $95/month, with no minimum term.
Want the wider picture with market ranges rather than only our numbers? How much a small business website costs puts builders, freelancers and agencies side by side. Ready to price your own? The 5-minute brief comes back with a fixed number the same business day.
Frequently asked questions
Is one-time pricing for a business website cheaper than a subscription?
Not at first, and often not for years. A subscription starts at a few dollars a month, while a one-time build is a four-figure invoice — ours start at $1,900 for a landing page and $2,900 for a full site. The subscription only loses when you add it up over time and count what you hold at the end: a build you own outright, versus access that ends when the card stops working.
What do you pay once, and what do you keep paying for?
Paid once: the design and build, the content work, and the setup. Paid on a cycle no matter who builds the site: the domain, and hosting if your host charges for it. With a platform you also pay the platform itself for as long as the site is online. With a custom build there is no platform fee at all — the optional part is upkeep, from $95/month on a care plan you can stop any month.
What happens to a subscription site when you stop paying?
It reverts. Wix states that after cancellation the address goes back to a free Wix URL and Wix ads appear, while the content itself is not deleted. The pattern is the same across hosted platforms: the site stays theirs to serve, and your custom domain stops being the front door. A site you own behaves differently — stop paying us and it keeps serving, because the files are yours and the hosting bill is separate from the people who wrote it.
When is a monthly subscription the better deal?
When the horizon is short or the budget is genuinely small. A six-month experiment, a seasonal page, an event site, a first attempt you expect to throw away — a subscription is the cheaper and faster answer to all of them, and no arithmetic about year eight changes that. It is also the right answer if you want to edit everything yourself and enjoy doing it.
Does a one-time price mean no ongoing costs at all?
No, and anyone saying otherwise is selling. A domain renews every year whoever built the site. Hosting has to come from somewhere — for a static hand-coded site that can be a free tier, but it is still a service you depend on. What disappears with a one-time build is the platform fee: there is no monthly payment that keeps the site switched on, and the care plan is optional, from $95/month.