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Our independent research projects and impartial reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no extra cost to our readers.
We live in the day and age of technology and the internet. More and more people have easy access to the internet to search for the product or service they’re looking for. If you’re a business owner or are thinking of launching your dream business, having a website can help drive traffic to your product or service.
There are several web hosting sites available to people, and deciding which one is the right fit for you and your business is crucial to your success. If you’ve browsed the internet for a hosting site, you’ve probably come across a prominent web host, WordPress hosting.
WordPress is a great tool for launching your website because you can create your website exactly how you like it. If you’re searching for a web hosting site that offers you the option to build your website yourself while also offering consulting services, BuildYourSite is one you’ll want to check out. You can even use their shared hosting service for your WordPress website.
Whether you’re a new business owner or are looking for a new web hosting service, take a look at our BuildYourSite review to see if this hosting company is a good fit for you.
Knowing about the company and site you’re about to launch your business on is essential. You want to make sure you trust the company and feel confident utilizing their platform. If you’re searching for a free website builder, BuildYourSite will not be the best pick for you.
CEO and Founder Tem Balanco developed BuildYourSite back in 1997 with the mission to help business owners succeed. BuildYourSite is a one-stop-shop for most of your website needs. They offer website design, hosting, and digital marketing for clients. Consultants and designers strive to increase a business’ revenue by driving traffic to their website.
Since its beginnings in 1997, BuildYourSite has served over 12,000 clients around the world. Their hosting site is compatible across all devices so that you can reach customers anytime, anywhere.
With BuildYourSite, you can have consultants design your website for your or utilize their do-it-yourself website builder. In addition to these services, they also offer shared web hosting and private cloud hosting services.
Before signing up for any hosting site, you’ll want to compare your options. Here’s a look at some BuildYourSite alternatives to consider in your search for the right fit for you.
Our Bluehost review has determined that Bluehost is one of the best web hosting sites available. They currently serve over two million websites around the world. Bluehost is one of the more affordable web hosting options.
All three of their hosting plans come with standard features, including a free domain for a year, site analytics, free SSL certificate, WordPress installation, and WordPress automatic updates.
Their most basic plan comes with all standard features and costs $8.99 a month.
You’ll have 50 GB of website space with this plan. Their plus plan comes with unlimited websites and unmetered website space at only $11.99 per month. Finally, their preferred choice is their choice plus plan, which includes everything from the plus plan and one domain privacy.
Wix is one of the more well-known website builders and hosting sites. Similar to BuildYourSite, they offer website creation as well as web hosting.
Their creation platform gives business owners the ability to choose from 800 pre-created designs and then customize them to their liking. When you use their platform to create your website, you’ll have access to SEO tools, analytics, and a free domain for a year. The domain you choose will be a custom domain for your website.
Their pricing varies depending on which plan you choose under their three services. Their three services are website plans, business and eCommerce plans, and an enterprise plan.
Under their website plan, their Combo plan is excellent for personal use and will only cost you $14 a month. Their Unlimited plan is ideal for freelancers and will cost $18 a month. Next up is their Pro plan, which is the best value at $23. Lastly, their VIP plan gives you priority support for $39 a month.
If you need an eCommerce website, you’ll need to choose one of their eCommerce plans. The lowest price you’ll pay for one of these is $23 a month, and the highest is $49.
Wix hosting provider has a similar service to BuildYourSite’s web design, but they call it Wix Enterprise solutions. Their service to help you design your brand and build your business will run you about $500 a month, which is still significantly cheaper than BuildYourSite.
Squarespace offers almost identical services to other web creation and hosting sites. When you create a website or transfer your current domain to host under Squarespace, you’ll have access to all the features your plan includes.
If you don’t already have a custom domain, you’ll get a free one when you work with Squarespace. You’ll also get unlimited bandwidth and storage, which is unusual for many hosting sites.
For personal use, you can get a plan that is $16 a month. Squarespace’s business plan is $26 a month and the most popular choice. For eCommerce, there are two options.
The basic option is $35 per month, and the advanced option is $54. They offer considerable savings if you can pay for a year at one time.
Sh
opify is a web hosting service that gears its platform towards shop owners. Setting up your online shop is relatively easy with their platform.
They even have a business name generator if you’re struggling to come up with one on your own. This generator can help you come up with domain names as well.
While you can design and set up your online shop with Shopify, creating web pages that include lengthy paragraphs or blog posts isn’t ideal for this platform. There are three plans to choose from, and you’ll have one online store and unlimited products regardless of which plan you choose.
You can host your website on Shopify for as low as $29 a month for their most basic plan, $79 for their general plan, and $299 for their advanced plan.
You can try out Shopify for free for 14 days before you make your final decision.
Another great alternative to BuildYourSite is HostGator. This hosting site is very affordable for small businesses and even large corporations. When using HostGator, you’re using shared hosting as opposed to private hosting.
Their plans are similar to other hosting sites in the services that come with it. You get unmetered bandwidth on all plans, one free year of custom domain registration, WordPress installation, free website builder, and free domain and website transfers.
Something unique about HostGator is that with all three plans, you get access to $150 in Google Ads match credit and $100 in Microsoft advertising credit.
One significant difference between HostGator and BuildYourSite is their money-back guarantee. With BuildYourSite, you have a 30-day money-back guarantee, whereas with HostGator, it’s 45 days.
Their Hatchling Plan, Baby Plan, and Business plan are affordable at under $10 a month for their introductory offer.
GoDaddy offers users not only website hosting but also their website builder to create one from scratch. If you don’t want to build your own website, there’s the option to have one of their design professionals develop a website for you.
For those looking for web hosting options, you can host your site through GoDaddy or select a plan of theirs that allows you to host through WordPress.
If you’re just starting your business and are looking for a domain name, you can use their domain name creator to help optimize the perfect domain for your business.
Getting yourself a domain with GoDaddy only costs you $2.99 for a whole year. That’s the most affordable option of the BuildYourSite alternatives. Every business needs a professional email address where potential customers can reach out.
You can get a professional email for only $1.99 a month that matches your personalized domain. Hosting your website on GoDaddy will cost you $1 a month for the first year you use their hosting services.
Not everyone will consider this a con of BuildYourSite, but this company focuses mainly on pitching its design services. Many small business owners are searching for a hosting site where they can build their websites with ease.
They do have some solid marketing for their web builder, but the information is not nearly as descriptive as their web design services.
This con is very subjective. Everyone has their own opinion on what is expensive and what is not. But, comparing pricing to other larger web hosting sites, BuildYourSite is more costly.
For example, if you’re selling a product and are looking at the eCommerce plan, it’s pricier than other sites. However, you can utilize Shopify or Squarespace, another eCommerce website host, for significantly less a month than BuildYourSite’s option.
Even when there are cheaper options out there, you can still find free website builders. For example, the Wix website offers a free website builder tool for business owners and personal blogs.
Unlike other web hosting sites, BuildYourSite does not offer a free trial. If you search different websites, one of the first things they advertise about their website builders is that you get a free trial for a certain amount of time.
BuildYourSite offers to test their website builder as a guest, but you don’t get to launch your site as you would with a free trial to see how your business performs when it’s live and accessible to potential customers.
When you use BuildYourSite’s website builder, they don’t offer a free plan like many other sites. Their pricing pages on their website are easy to navigate, showing a comparison of each service’s pricing side by side. They offer four plans to choose from depending on your business’ needs.
The website builder starter plan is the most inexpensive at $11.95 a month. This plan is very limited in services you have access to but is a great place to start for new business owners. You get the smallest amount of gigabytes, but this may work for you if you’re a small business. The one downside to this plan is that it’s the only one that doesn’t include SEO promotion.
Their professional plan is their most popular plan for their website builder. This plan costs $18.95 a month, and you get more web pages and more gigabytes for your website.
For those looking for a platform for eCommerce, BuildYourSite offers a plan for that. The monthly price for their eCommerce plan jumps up to $44.95 a month. This price increase helps cover a shopping cart for your site and a social manager to help your business succeed.
The most expensive plan under the website builder is the business max plan. The business max is a premium plan that will cost $79.95 a month, but you get unlimited web pages and gigabytes.
In addition to everything included in the eCommerce plan, you’ll also get an additional service with this plan. One of BuildYourSite’s experts will work on your website for two hours a month to keep everything up to date and make any improvements.
All these plans list their payments as monthly, but you do have the option to pay annually for any web builder plans. Doing this will save you 15%. If you choose to make an annual payment for any of these plans, the monthly price per plan comes down to:
When you’re looking at using BuildYourSite’s web design service, there are three plans to choose from.
Their Standard Web Design plan will run you a one-time fee of $999. This plan comes with the standard web design features. It’s the most straightforward plan, but you’ll still have a unique website for your business.
The Advanced Web Design plan is their most popular service under their web design umbrella. In addition to all the standard benefits of the standard plan, you’ll also have access to professional copywriting and a month of free marketing. You get an extra four pages for your website as well. This plan will cost you $1,199.
The BuildYourSite’s Web Design and ECommerce Plan is their most expensive plan at $1,599. This premium plan will get you all services that the previous two plans have, but you get an additional five web pages, and you can sell products from your website via eCommerce.
Whether you choose to use their web design service or build your website through BuildYourSite, they offer two hosting services. Shared hosting is perfect for people who created their website on another but are looking for a new place to host and launch their website.
It’s less secure than using a private hosting service, but it still offers a high level of security.
Consistent uptime is a high priority of BuildYourSite. BuildYourSite uses a dedicated server that comes with built-in security and a monitoring system.
When you pay for any of the website builder plans, you automatically have a shared cloud hosting service included in your price. Shared web hosting is when your website is on a server that other website owners are using too.
BuildYourSite’s shared web hosting service is ideal for those looking to use their hosting for their WordPress website.
The starter plan will cost you around $149 a month unless you pay annually. In which case, the price goes down to $126.65 a month. The intel server that comes with this plan is two cores. In addition, this plan comes with an SSD storage of 120 GB, four GB of RAM, and a bandwidth of 200 GB.
The private cloud hosting starter plan comes standard with:
The most popular hosting plan is the professional plan. It costs $249 a month or $211.65 if you pay for a year. You’ll have four cores of intel with this plan and 240 GB of SSD storage, 6 GB of RAM, and 400 GB of bandwidth.
The private cloud hosting professional plan comes standard with:
The final private hosting plan is the max. The max plan is the most costly at $349 a month or an annual, monthly price of $296.66. The Intel this plan comes with six cores. The SSD storage you’ll have with this plan is 320 GB, as well as 8 GB of RAM and unlimited bandwidth.
The private cloud hosting max plan comes standard with:
These FAQs will help you determine if BuildYourSite is the right platform for you.
The payment methods you can use on BuildYourSite are strictly credit and debit cards. Some other sites allow you to pay via PayPal or other services, but BuildYourSite does not offer this option.
Acceptable payment options for BuildYourSite are:
Choosing a website hosting service is a big deal for your business. Many people have the same questions as others. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about BuildYourSite.
If you’ve decided to use BuildYourSite’s website builder, you’re able to create almost any type of website you want.
With their website builder, you can create personal blogs, websites for restaurants, services you provide, and online shops.
Keep in mind that if you’re starting an online shop, you’ll need to utilize their eCommerce plan so that your website has a shopping cart for your customers.
When you’re just getting started with your new business, you’ll need a hosting plan. BuildYourSite comes with two hosting options for business owners.
For smaller business owners, a shared cloud hosting service is probably better. It also tends to be cheaper and comes included for a limited time in a plan where you build your website or have one of their designers do it for you.
Their private cloud server services are more expensive than their shared but can provide more privacy, as the name suggests. As a result, this hosting service is generally better for larger companies that require a private server to do business securely.
The information you need to build your website depends a little bit on the type of business you’re starting or have. Starting a business requires goal setting. If you don’t have one, you’ll want to develop an initial goal for your business that you can work towards.
You can’t create a website without a name. Coming up with a name for your company may come easy to you, or it may take some time to get it perfect. Whether it’s easy or more complex, you’ll need a name before creating your website.
Finding the right design for your website is just as important as the name. You want to make sure that the design reflects your services, products, portfolio, or whatever your website is for.
You don’t want to launch a website without any content on it. The content can be the home page, product pages, blog posts, or any other content that is important to the success of your brand.
It doesn’t matter the type of website you’re trying to create. You need a hosting service to launch your site. Having a hosting provider allows your site to go live and start reaching your customer base.
Building a website doesn’t have to be complicated. With all the design tools available nowadays, it’s easier than ever.
After you’ve gathered everything you need to build your website, the name, goals, and content, you can work on the design.
Before you can start designing, you’ll need to access a site builder. Once you’ve done this, you can browse through hundreds of predesigned templates to find one that fits your brand. After you’ve found the template you like, you’re able to customize it with your personalized content and color scheme.
Once you’ve got your website designed and looking how you’d like, you can start importing your content. This content can be stock photos and other information that tells customers who you are and what you’re offering.
If you’re selling products or services on your website, you’ll want to ensure you set up a payment method before launching your site.
After you’ve put together all the finishing touches on your website, you’ll want to test it before launching it. Testing your site before going live can allow you to see it from the perspective of your potential customers.
You’ll be able to see how your graphics and other content look and if you’re happy with the finished product. The best part is if you’re not satisfied with something, you can go back and fix it before your launch.
There are benefits and disadvantages to hiring someone to build your website for you. Having someone to design your website for you can give you more time to focus on other aspects of your business and life.
Plus, design experts know how to create a website that can increase traffic to your website.
For business owners who have busy lives, hiring someone to do your web design is a good option. The only downside to hiring a designer is that it tends to be more costly than creating a website on your own.
If you’ve been browsing for a hosting company, you’ve probably seen the words unlimited bandwidth and unmetered bandwidth mentioned. While they may seem similar, and they are, there is a difference between the two.
Unlimited bandwidth means that you can download or upload as much data as you want during a specific time. Unmetered bandwidth is referring to the speed of the data transfer.
BuildYourSite offers a money-back guarantee for 30 days. If you’re not fully satisfied with whichever service you’re using, you can request a refund. They have a form you can fill out to begin the process.
Canceling your account with BuildYourSite is straightforward, you just need to give 30 days’ notice. You can fill out a cancellation form to start this process. One thing to note is that all your data will be deleted upon closing your account, so ensure that you have backed up everything you need before you cancel your account.
Overall, BuildYourSite offers some quality website design and hosting services. They have professional consultants and design experts ready to help create a website that will grow your business.
Some of their services that come with their website designers are hard to come by with other hosting services. For example, finding another web host that offers a social media manager isn’t easy. We’d recommend using BuildYourSite if you’re searching for a professionally designed website.
If you’re searching for a website building company that offers a free plan, BuildYourSite will not be for you.
Would we recommend BuildYourSite for smaller business owners without a large number of funds? Probably not.
While we’re not saying the money isn’t worth the end product, if you’re just starting up, you probably won’t have a large number of funds to spend on BuildYourSite’s web design service or their site builder.
BuildYourSite is a good option if you’re searching for an all-in-one website building and hosting provider. Just keep in mind that you can find similar services and hosting companies at a fraction of their prices.
