Saaskly

CMS & Website Builders

Website builders and CMSs compared on the plan a business actually needs and what it costs on both billing bases, whether a non-developer can build and run the site, how it does on search and speed, what it plugs into (CRM, payments, an API and an MCP server), whether you can take the site elsewhere, and who owns the vendor and where your data sits.

12 platforms reviewed·How we test

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1TOP PICK
SquarespaceFeaturedThe best all-rounder for a UK small business that will build its own site: Core is £17 a month on annual billing or £24 billed monthly, stated ex VAT in pounds, with unlimited contributors, forms, a blog, scheduling, a shop with no platform fee and a built-in cookie banner. What to know: export gives you blog posts and page text only, there is no phone support at any price, the pricing page wears a permanent "50% off" badge that hides the real price, and the 2024 domain-hijack episode sits on the Squarespace Domains side of the business.
4.1/ 5
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2
WordPress.comFeaturedThe hosted route into the CMS that runs the most websites: the Business plan is £20 a month in year one, renews at £29 on annual billing or £32 billed monthly, and unlocks 60,000 plugins, any theme, staging, SFTP and an official MCP adapter. Full WXR export, unlimited users and real-time backups. What to know: the owner, Automattic, controls WordPress.org and is in unresolved litigation with WP Engine, cut its core contributions in 2025, laid off 16 percent of staff and put its founder on leave and back within a week in September 2026; the pricing page does not say whether VAT is included.
4.0/ 5
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3
PayloadFeaturedThe CMS Saaskly runs on, and the developer's pick here: open source under MIT, TypeScript configuration, a generated admin panel, REST, GraphQL and local APIs, field-level access control, free localisation and an official MCP plugin, owned by Figma since June 2025. What to know: a business owner cannot build with it alone, there is no visual editor, no native forms or commerce, and Payload Cloud, the vendor's own hosting, is closed to new customers during the Figma transition, so you self-host or find a developer who will.
3.8/ 5
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4
WebflowThe agency standard for marketing sites: CSS-level design control, a real CMS, an official MCP server on every plan including the free one, and SOC 2 and ISO 27001 on record. Premium is $25 a month on annual billing or $39 billed monthly. What to know: Webflow prices UK buyers in US dollars only, the May 2026 restructure lifts some renewals, code export needs a second paid Workspace subscription and never includes your CMS content, there is no SLA below Enterprise, and Trustpilot sits at 1.5 on billing complaints. You will want a designer.
3.7/ 5
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5
WixThe most complete toolbox for a non-designer: a free-form editor, 2,000 templates, the Harmony AI builder, native multilingual, bookings, a CRM and email marketing built in, and the broadest official MCP server in this category. Core is £16 a month on annual billing at list, half that in the first term when the rolling 50 percent promotion is on. What to know: Wix's own help centre says "your site must run on Wix's servers", so nothing exports but CSV data; the month-to-month price appears only at checkout; and the public page shows US dollars to UK visitors most of the time.
3.6/ 5
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6
KinstaThe managed host to put real WordPress on: Google Cloud with a London data centre you choose per site, staging, daily backups, Cloudflare Enterprise CDN and firewall on every plan, ISO 27001, 4.8 on Trustpilot and 24/7 chat in eight languages, from $30 a month for one site. What to know: Kinsta prices in US dollars only, sells through a configurator rather than a price list, has no phone support, adds paid extras for hourly backups and update testing, and leaves you to bring the WordPress knowledge or the freelancer.
3.5/ 5
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7
ShopifyThe row for a business that mainly sells online: Basic is £19 a month on annual billing or £25 billed monthly with no cap on pages, blog posts or storage, unlimited products, 16,000 apps, four official MCP servers and a UK entity billing in pounds. What to know: the ladder from Basic to Plus is about staff seats and card fees, not content; you pay 2 percent extra unless you use Shopify Payments; product exports leave images behind as links; Trustpilot is 1.3 but mostly from shoppers, not merchants; and the plan that used to be called Shopify is now Grow.
3.4/ 5
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8
FramerThe fast-growing designer's builder from Amsterdam: a design-tool canvas, AI agents on every paid plan, GBP prices, a 300-location CDN on Pro, and public SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 reports on a Vanta trust centre. Pro is £23 a month on annual billing or £35 billed monthly. What to know: Basic caps at 30 pages so Pro is the first plan a fifty-page site fits, there is no code export or self-hosting path by design, no official MCP server, no SLA below Enterprise, refund wording that names the EU and Turkey but not the UK, and a 1.6 Trustpilot led by AI-credit billing shocks.
3.3/ 5
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9
GhostThe best tool here for a business built on a newsletter and a site: memberships, paid subscriptions and email sending are native, Ghost takes 0 percent of subscription revenue, the code is MIT and the JSON export moves between Ghost(Pro) and self-hosting without conversion. Publisher is $29 a month on annual billing or $35 billed monthly at 1,000 members. What to know: there is no contact form at any tier, pricing rises on an audience slider in US dollars, support is email only, and the foundation that runs it is a Singapore non-profit that left the UK in 2016.
3.2/ 5
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10
Hostinger Website BuilderThe cheap end done competently: an AI and drag-and-drop builder with 400 templates, a UK data centre, ISO 27001, ecommerce with no platform fee on the Unlimited plan and a Lithuanian, privately held owner. Unlimited is £4.49 a month on a prepaid 12-month term. What to know: every term is paid upfront, the renewal is £13.99 and a single month is £14.99, so the advertised price is a third of what you pay in year two; export leaves behind styles, store, forms and submissions; the top plan has two names; and native forms and custom code are not documented.
3.1/ 5
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11
Craft CMSThe agency editor's CMS: structured content, Matrix fields, live preview, native localisation, GraphQL and a UK region on Craft Cloud. Pro is a $399 per-project licence renewing at $99 a year, or Craft Cloud Pro at $220 a month on annual billing with the licence included. What to know: the code is source-available, not open source, a developer builds and maintains everything, there are no native forms or commerce (Craft Commerce is a $1,199 licence), no first-party MCP server, no Trustpilot presence and a Cloud SLA only on Enterprise.
3.0/ 5
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12
HubSpot Content HubThe website that lives beside the CRM: drag-and-drop pages, forms straight into contacts, memberships, multi-language, native cookie consent, 99.95 percent measured uptime and an official MCP server, from a NYSE-listed company with UK entities and pounds pricing. What to know: Starter caps at 30 website pages, so the plan a fifty-page site needs is Professional at £396 a month on annual billing or £440 monthly with three seats; HubSpot's Trustpilot is 1.5 with 51 percent one-star and fresh auto-renewal complaints; and export is HTML and API pulls, not a site.
2.9/ 5
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Comparison

Best Website Builders and CMS for UK Small Business in 2026: Squarespace Wins, WordPress.com Runs It Close, and Two Builders Will Not Let You Leave

We compared twelve website builders and CMSs, hosted builders, WordPress and developer CMSs in one grid, on the price of the plan a UK small business actually needs on both billing bases, whether an owner can build and run the site, search and speed, integrations and MCP, whether you can take the site elsewhere, and who owns the vendor. Squarespace wins, WordPress.com is close behind, Payload is the developer's pick, and Wix and Framer offer no way out.