This is the list I would have killed for in 1998: every layer of a working website, with the tools that do each job, what each one actually costs, and the catch nobody puts on the pricing page. It is filterable, it is opinionated, and it tells you which entries I have personally run and which I have not.
That last part is the whole reason this page exists rather than being another wall of links. Most resource directories are affiliate lists wearing a lab coat: every tool is "the best", nothing has a downside, and you cannot tell what the author has actually touched. So every entry here carries one of three labels, and they mean exactly what they say.
In use today on a real site of mine. I can tell you where it bites because it has bitten me.
A real project got built on it, but I am not running it right now.
I have read the pricing and mechanics carefully and have not run a project on it. These entries are described, never recommended. You will not find me calling one of them "the best" or telling you to pick it, because I have not earned the right to.
Prices were verified against each vendor's own pricing page on September 28, 2026. They will drift, because they always do; the catches drift much more slowly, which is why every entry has one.
Where the site actually lives
Every site I own is static files on a free host with the domain pointed at it. This is the layer people overpay for hardest, because hosting a small site costs approximately nothing in 2026 and plenty of companies would prefer you not know that.
Netlify
I run thisFree tierStatic hosting with drag-and-drop deploys, forms, and HTTPS included. Every site in my portfolio runs on it.
Use it when: Use it when you want a site live in the time it takes to drag a folder into a browser window, with no build pipeline and no server to patch.
The catch: It moved to a credit system: 300 credits a month free, where a production deploy costs 15 and bandwidth runs 20 credits a gigabyte. For one small site that is effectively unlimited. If you deploy constantly or run several sites off one account, do the arithmetic before you assume free means free. The next tier is $9 a month for 1,000 credits.
Cloudflare Pages
Listed, not testedFree tierStatic hosting on Cloudflare's network, with serverless functions available alongside it.
Who it is for: For someone who wants static hosting and is already inside Cloudflare for DNS, or who expects real traffic spikes.
The catch: Requests to static files are unlimited and free, but anything served by a function counts against a shared 100,000-requests-a-day free allowance that resets at midnight UTC.
GitHub Pages
Listed, not testedFree tierFree static hosting served straight out of a GitHub repository.
Who it is for: For a project whose files already live in Git and whose author is comfortable there.
The catch: It is built for project and documentation sites. There are no forms, no functions, and no dashboard, so anything dynamic has to come from somewhere else.
Neocities
Listed, not testedFree tierThe direct descendant of GeoCities: free hosting for hand-written HTML, with the old web's culture still attached.
Who it is for: For a fan site, a personal page, or anyone who wants the 1999 experience on purpose.
The catch: You write the HTML yourself. In 2026 that mostly means asking an AI to write it with you, which is how my own sites get made, but it is not a visual editor and it never will be.
The builder, if you want one
I have written full reviews of these, so this section is deliberately short. A review here carries a rating and means a real site got built on it. A profile carries none and says so.
Framer
I run thisFree tierA design tool that publishes websites. My standing pick for most people, chosen after a real redesign project this year.
Use it when: Use it when the site has to look like you hired someone, and when a non-technical partner needs to safely edit it.
The catch: Thirty pages on the free tier and still thirty on the $10 Basic plan. Past that it is $30 a month. Extra editor seats are $20 each. Full review.
Wix
I've used thisFree tierThe biggest name, and the gentlest learning curve in the business.
Use it when: Use it when the person running the site finds design tools stressful rather than empowering, and you would rather pay than learn.
The catch: $17 a month at entry and no export, ever. Full review.
Hostinger
I've used thisPaid onlyHosting, domain, email and a site builder on a single bill.
Use it when: For the tightest budget that still wants somebody else running the server.
The catch: $2.99 a month only as $143.52 paid upfront for four years, renewing at $10.99. The teaser rose fifty percent this year. Full review.
Squarespace
Listed, not testedPaid onlyThe best-looking default templates in the mainstream market.
Who it is for: For people whose site is visual and who do not want to make a single design decision.
The catch: $19 a month is the priciest entry of the group, there is no free tier at all, and the Basic plan takes 2 to 7 percent of what you sell. The profile.
The domain, which is the only part you truly own
Register it somewhere you control and never through the site builder. Platforms come and go; I have domains from the 90s that outlived every host they ever sat on. The thing to look for is a registrar that charges the same price to renew as to register.
DirectNIC
I run thisPaid onlyThe registrar my own domains sit at, including this one, some of them for well over twenty years.
Use it when: Use it when you want a registrar that has simply kept working for decades and you are not chasing the last dollar.
The catch: Not the cheapest, and the interface is from the era the domains are. Inertia is a legitimate reason to stay somewhere when the thing being protected is a 27-year-old address.
Cloudflare Registrar
Listed, not testedPaid onlyDomains sold at wholesale cost with no markup, and WHOIS privacy included.
Who it is for: For someone consolidating DNS and registration in one place who wants the renewal price to equal the registration price.
The catch: You have to use Cloudflare for DNS, and it does not register every extension. Check the current .com price in its own cart rather than trusting any comparison table, including this one.
Porkbun
Listed, not testedPaid onlyAn independent registrar with flat pricing, free WHOIS privacy and a following among people who move domains around.
Who it is for: For someone who wants honest renewal pricing without moving DNS to a platform.
The catch: Smaller company than the giants, which is the point for some people and the risk for others.
Forms, because every site eventually needs one
A contact form or an email signup is usually the first thing a static site cannot do by itself. All three of these bolt onto plain HTML without a backend.
Netlify Forms
I run thisFree tierForm handling built into the host. Add one attribute to a form tag and submissions show up in the dashboard.
Use it when: Use it when the site is already on Netlify, which makes this close to zero work.
The catch: You have to turn on form detection and then redeploy, and the form will silently do nothing until you do. I have been caught by this more than once.
Formspree
Listed, not testedFree tierA form endpoint you point any HTML form at, on any host.
Who it is for: For a static site that is not on a host with forms built in.
The catch: The free plan allows 50 submissions a month and is described as being for testing and development. The first paid tier is $10 a month billed annually.
Basin
Listed, not testedFree tierAnother hosted form endpoint in the same mold, with spam filtering.
Who it is for: For the same job as Formspree, if its limits or pricing suit you better.
The catch: Same structural caveat as any form service: your submissions live on someone else's server, so check the export path before you depend on it.
Email at your own domain
An address at your own domain is the cheapest credibility upgrade there is, and it survives leaving any platform. Most builders bundle a mailbox free for the first year and then charge, so know what year two costs.
Zoho Mail
Listed, not testedFree tierEmail on your own domain with a genuinely free tier.
Who it is for: For a small operation that wants a professional address without a per-user bill.
The catch: The free plan covers up to five users with 5 GB each, and it is webmail only: no IMAP, POP or ActiveSync, so you cannot use your own mail app with it.
Fastmail
Listed, not testedPaid onlyIndependent paid email with its own apps and a long reputation among people who care about email.
Who it is for: For someone who wants email to be a product they pay for rather than a loss leader attached to something else.
The catch: No free tier. You are buying independence, and independence has a price.
Google Workspace
Listed, not testedPaid onlyGmail and the rest of it, on your domain.
Who it is for: For a business already living in Google Docs and Calendar that wants one account for everything.
The catch: Priced per user per month and it climbs as you add people. Fine for a business, heavy for a hobby site.
The mailing list, which is the only audience you own
Platforms change their rules; your list does not. Start collecting addresses on day one even if you have nothing to send yet. This applies to a bakery exactly as much as a blog.
Buttondown
Listed, not testedFree tierA deliberately small, writer-focused newsletter tool with markdown editing and hosted archives.
Who it is for: For a personal newsletter or a build log where the writing matters more than the automation.
The catch: Free up to 100 subscribers, sending from your own domain. Past that you pay by active subscriber, and several features that are standard elsewhere, including segmentation and analytics, are $9-a-month add-ons.
Kit
Listed, not testedPaid onlyA newsletter platform built around creators, with automation and landing pages.
Who it is for: For someone who intends to run sequences and funnels rather than just send a letter.
The catch: More machine than a small list needs, and the pricing reflects that ambition.
Mailchimp
Listed, not testedPaid onlyThe default answer, and the one most people have already heard of.
Who it is for: For a business that wants the safest, most documented option and does not want to research this.
The catch: Pricing has a long history of climbing as your list grows. Read the tier you will be on in a year, not the one you start on.
Knowing whether any of it worked
You cannot fix what you cannot see, and the single most valuable tool in this entire list is free and takes ten minutes to set up.
Google Search Console
I run thisFree tierGoogle telling you directly which of your pages it has indexed, which it has refused, and what people searched to find you.
Use it when: Use it on day one of any site you want found. There is no substitute and no paid tier.
The catch: It shows you nothing before you verify, and there is no backfill, so the sooner you add a site the sooner the data starts. It is also blunt: it will tell you Google found your pages and declined to index them, which is useful and unflattering in equal measure.
Bing Webmaster Tools
Listed, not testedFree tierThe same idea at Bing, which also feeds Copilot.
Who it is for: For anyone already in Search Console who wants the other half of the picture for ten more minutes of setup.
The catch: Smaller search share, so treat it as a supplement rather than a second opinion.
Plausible
Listed, not testedPaid onlyLightweight, privacy-focused analytics with a single readable dashboard.
Who it is for: For someone who wants visitor numbers without cookie banners or a data-sharing relationship.
The catch: No permanent free tier: a 30-day trial with no card required, then $9 a month for up to 10,000 pageviews.
Umami
Listed, not testedFree tierOpen-source analytics you can host yourself, with a paid cloud option.
Who it is for: For someone technical enough to run it who wants the data to stay theirs.
The catch: Self-hosting means you are now operating a database, which is a real job that free does not cover.
Making the pages themselves good
The unglamorous layer. These are the things that decide whether the site loads fast and whether anybody clicks it in a search result.
The tools on this site
I run thisFree tierFour free browser tools I built because they did not exist: a true-cost calculator, an AI-visibility checker, a search snippet previewer, and a weekend launch checklist.
Use it when: Use the snippet previewer before you publish any page, and the visibility checker once per site.
The catch: No signup, no email gate, nothing you type leaves your browser. There is nothing to sell you here, which is the point.
Squoosh
Listed, not testedFree tierA browser tool that compresses images and shows you the quality tradeoff side by side.
Who it is for: For the very common case of a site made slow by photographs straight off a phone.
The catch: It handles one image at a time, so a large gallery is a chore.
Google Fonts
Listed, not testedFree tierA large free type library that any site can load in one line.
Who it is for: For anyone who wants their site to stop looking like the browser default.
The catch: Loading fonts from another domain costs you a little speed, and it is one more third party in your page.
Fontshare
Listed, not testedFree tierA smaller free library of typefaces from a working foundry.
Who it is for: For someone who wants type that has not already been used by ten thousand other sites this year.
The catch: A much smaller catalogue, which is the entire reason to use it.
UptimeRobot
Listed, not testedFree tierMonitoring that emails you when your site goes down.
Who it is for: For anyone whose site going quietly offline for a week would matter.
The catch: The free plan covers 50 monitors at five-minute intervals with email alerts. Faster checks and more integrations start at $12 a month.
Nothing matches that combination. Turn a filter back off.
What I actually run, in one paragraph
Since the whole point of the labels is honesty, here is the short version so you can weight the rest accordingly. Every site I own is hand-written static HTML on Netlify's free tier, with domains at DirectNIC, some of them registered in the nineties. Contact and signup forms are Netlify Forms. Measurement is Google Search Console and nothing else. When a real redesign needed a non-technical partner to be able to edit it, that project went to Framer, which is the only builder I currently pay for. That is the entire stack. It costs domain renewals and approximately nothing else, and it has survived every platform that has come and gone since 1998.
What is deliberately not on this list
Anything I could not find a real catch for, because a tool with no downside means I did not look hard enough. Anything whose free tier is a fourteen-day clock rather than a free tier, unless it is genuinely the category leader. Page builders and plugins that exist to be resold rather than used. And the whole "AI website in 30 seconds" category beyond the one profile already on this site, because speed to a finished draft stopped being the hard part some time ago.
How this list is maintained
Entries earn their way up the tiers, never down without a reason stated on the page. When I run a real project on something currently marked as untested, it moves up and the write-up changes from description to verdict. When a price moves, the whole page gets re-verified and re-dated rather than patched quietly, which is the same discipline the reviews run on. If something here is wrong, or a tool you rely on is missing, the contact form reaches me and I read everything.
Picking the builder is the one decision this list cannot make for you.
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The flagship guide: how to make your own websiteThe five builders compared at verified pricesThe four free tools