Website builders in 2026: what you actually pay
Building a website yourself with a website builder seems like the cheapest way in – and sometimes it is. But the subscription is only the start of the math. Here's what the major builder platforms typically cost, what you don't see in the price, and when a ready-made website with one-time pricing pays off.
What does a website builder cost per year?
The best-known platforms typically look like this (current public prices – do check them):
| Platform | Typical price | Over 3 years |
|---|---|---|
| Wix (relevant plan) | approx. NOK 200–350/month | approx. NOK 7,200–12,600 |
| Squarespace | approx. NOK 200–300/month | approx. NOK 7,200–10,800 |
| one.com and similar | approx. NOK 100–250/month | approx. NOK 3,600–9,000 |
| FiksNett (ready-made, one-time) | NOK 5,500–20,000 once | NOK 5,500–20,000 |
One thing though: if you want an online store or booking on a builder platform, you quickly land on the most expensive plan tiers – often NOK 300–500 per month, i.e. 10,000–18,000 over three years. Before you've built anything at all.
What the monthly price doesn't show
- Your time. Expect 20–40 hours choosing a template, setting up, tweaking and troubleshooting – plus hours every time you want a change. What is your hour worth?
- Design limits. You can choose among the templates in the library. Want out of the template, you're stuck – or you end up hiring a developer anyway.
- Feature hopping. Payments, advanced SEO, custom integrations and top speed usually require the next pricing tier.
- The lock-in. Cancel the subscription and you lose the platform. Your content lives in their system – moving to your own website means rebuilding from scratch.
- Performance. Builder sites are often slower than hand-coded ones. Slow load times cost Google rankings – and customers.
When is a website builder the right choice?
There are absolutely cases where «do it yourself» is the right way to go. If you're short on budget, want to test whether your idea has legs, and have the time to learn the tools – by all means, dive in and see where it takes you.
When does a ready-made website pay off?
As soon as the website is supposed to make money – bring customers, take orders, or simply make people choose you over the competitor – the math flips. Your time is worth more than the subscription, competitors compete for Google visibility, and a fast, tailored site with a proper SEO foundation pays for itself within months. Over three years the one-time price is almost always the cheapest – and you never have to build it yourself.
Summed up
- Website builder: low threshold, but a recurring cost forever, limited design, locked to the platform.
- Ready-made website (FiksNett): one-time price, full ownership, hand-coded speed, delivered in about a week.
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Read next: what does a website cost? · buying a ready-made website – 7 checkpoints