---
title: "CMS & Website Builders: ranked reviews and comparisons"
description: "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."
canonical: "https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders"
last-updated: "2026-09-16"
---

# CMS & Website Builders: ranked reviews and comparisons

> 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.

- Last updated: 2026-09-16

## Ranking

Ranked by Saaskly's editorial score (0–5). Ties share a rank. Method: https://saaskly.com/editorial-policy.md

1. **1. [Squarespace](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/squarespace-websites.md)**: 4.1/5. The 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.
2. **2. [WordPress.com](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/wordpress-com.md)**: 4.0/5. The 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.
3. **3. [Payload](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/payload.md)**: 3.8/5. The 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.
4. **4. [Webflow](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/webflow.md)**: 3.7/5. The 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.
5. **5. [Wix](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/wix.md)**: 3.6/5. The 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.
6. **6. [Kinsta](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/kinsta.md)**: 3.5/5. The 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.
7. **7. [Shopify](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/shopify.md)**: 3.4/5. The 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.
8. **8. [Framer](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/framer.md)**: 3.3/5. The 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.
9. **9. [Ghost](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/ghost.md)**: 3.2/5. The 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.
10. **10. [Hostinger Website Builder](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/hostinger-website-builder.md)**: 3.1/5. The 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.
11. **11. [Craft CMS](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/craft-cms.md)**: 3.0/5. The 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.
12. **12. [HubSpot Content Hub](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/hubspot-content-hub.md)**: 2.9/5. The 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.

## Comparison table

| Provider | Rating | Shape | Scored plan* | Month-to-month | Free plan | Visual editor | Custom code | Blog | Forms | Commerce | Memberships | Multilingual | SEO controls | API | Headless | MCP server | Export your site | Open source | UK or EU hosting | Owned in** | Russian or Chinese link | Phone support | Trustpilot (reviews) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Squarespace](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/squarespace-websites.md) | 4.1/5 | Hosted builder | £17/mo annual · £24/mo monthly (Core) | £24/mo (+41%) | Trial only | Yes | Full CSS and JS | Yes | Yes | Included | Included | Paid add-on | Basic | Yes | No | Yes | Content only | No | No | US-owned | None found | No | 3.6 (5,298) |
| [WordPress.com](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/wordpress-com.md) | 4.0/5 | Hosted WordPress | £29/mo annual · £32/mo monthly (Business) | £32/mo (+10%) | Limited free plan | Yes | Full theme code | Yes | Yes | Add-on or higher plan | Included | Paid add-on | Full | Yes | Yes | Yes | Full | Yes | No | US-owned | None found | No | 3.7 (4,151) |
| [Payload](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/payload.md) | 3.8/5 | Developer CMS | Free open source (MIT) + £22/mo hosting (2 vCPU / 4 GB VPS plus a database) | n/a | Usable free plan | No | Full theme code | Yes | No | Not offered | Not offered | Included | Full | Yes | Yes | Yes | Full | Yes | Yes | US-owned | None found | No | — |
| [Webflow](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/webflow.md) | 3.7/5 | Hosted builder | $25/mo annual · $39/mo monthly (Premium) | $39/mo (+56%) | Limited free plan | Yes | Full CSS and JS | Yes | Yes | Add-on or higher plan | Not offered | Paid add-on | Full | Yes | Yes | Yes | HTML only | No | Yes | US-owned | None found | No | 1.5 (237) |
| [Wix](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/wix.md) | 3.6/5 | Hosted builder | £16/mo annual (Core) | Not published | Limited free plan | Yes | Full CSS and JS | Yes | Yes | Included | Included | Included | Full | Yes | Yes | Yes | None | No | No | Israel-owned | None found | Yes | 3.5 (28,998) |
| [Kinsta](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/kinsta.md) | 3.5/5 | Managed WordPress hosting | $30/mo annual · $40/mo monthly (Single site entry tier) | $40/mo (+33%) | None | Yes | Full theme code | Yes | Yes | Add-on or higher plan | Paid add-on | Paid add-on | Full | Yes | Yes | No | Full | No | Yes | US-owned | None found | No | 4.8 (1,141) |
| [Shopify](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/shopify.md) | 3.4/5 | Commerce-first builder | £19/mo annual · £25/mo monthly (Basic) | £25/mo (+32%) | Trial only | Yes | Full theme code | Yes | Yes | Included | Not offered | Included | Basic | Yes | Yes | Yes | Content only | No | No | Canada-owned | None found | No | 1.3 (5,118) |
| [Framer](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/framer.md) | 3.3/5 | Hosted builder | £23/mo annual · £35/mo monthly (Pro) | £35/mo (+52%) | Limited free plan | Yes | Head and footer only | Yes | Yes | Not offered | Not offered | Paid add-on | Basic | No | No | No | None | No | No | EU-owned | None found | No | 1.6 (141) |
| [Ghost](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/ghost.md) | 3.2/5 | Developer CMS | $29/mo annual · $35/mo monthly (Publisher) | $35/mo (+21%) | None | No | Full theme code | Yes | No | Not offered | Included | Included | Full | Yes | Yes | No | Full | Yes | Yes | Other | None found | No | 2.5 (16) |
| [Hostinger Website Builder](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/hostinger-website-builder.md) | 3.1/5 | Hosted builder | £13.99/mo annual · £14.99/mo monthly (Unlimited) | £14.99/mo (+7%) | Trial only | Yes | None | Yes | Yes | Included | Not offered | Not offered | Basic | Yes | No | Yes | Content only | No | Yes | EU-owned | None found | No | 4.6 (72,268) |
| [Craft CMS](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/craft-cms.md) | 3.0/5 | Developer CMS | $220/mo annual · $240/mo monthly (Craft Cloud Pro) | $240/mo (+9%) | Limited free plan | No | Full theme code | Yes | No | Add-on or higher plan | Not offered | Included | Full | Yes | Yes | No | Full | No | Yes | US-owned | None found | No | — |
| [HubSpot Content Hub](https://saaskly.com/category/cms-website-builders/hubspot-content-hub.md) | 2.9/5 | CMS in a suite | £396/mo annual · £440/mo monthly (Professional) | £440/mo (+11%) | Limited free plan | Yes | Full theme code | Yes | Yes | Not offered | Included | Included | Full | Yes | Yes | Yes | Content only | No | Yes | US-owned | None found | No | 1.5 (1,168) |

*Scored plan: the business plan the score is set on (the cheapest plan with a custom domain and no vendor branding, contact forms, basic SEO controls and room for a fifty-page site; for a managed WordPress host, one production site with staging and daily backups), per month on annual billing at the renewal price, then per month billed monthly where that is offered, in the currency the vendor shows a UK visitor on the research date. Developer CMSs show the licence plus a stated reference hosting cost. See each profile for the VAT basis, first-term promotions and what the plan above adds.

**Owned in: where the company that owns the vendor answers to. A US-owned vendor is subject to US law (including the CLOUD Act) wherever the site is hosted. "Russian or Chinese link" records ownership, management or engineering links found on the research date, with the evidence on the profile; Saaskly marks these down in the score by editorial rule and says so.

## Articles

- [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](https://saaskly.com/comparisons/best-website-builders-cms-uk-small-business-2026.md): Comparison. 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.

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Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. See https://saaskly.com/ai-transparency.md and https://saaskly.com/editorial-policy.md.

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