Website Builders: Sitejet and the Paid Options Print

What a website builder is

A website builder lets you create a site by dragging things around in your browser, picking a template, editing text and images visually, and publishing, with no code and nothing to install. For a lot of people it is the fastest route from nothing to a professional-looking site, and it is a genuine alternative to WordPress or building a site by hand.

We include one free with your hosting, and offer others as paid options. But before any of that, there is one thing you must understand, because it shapes the whole decision.

Read this first: builders lock you in

When you build your site with a website builder, you are committing that site to that builder. This is not a limitation unique to us, it is how builders work everywhere, but it catches people out, so we say it plainly.

If you build with a site builder and later want to switch, to WordPress, to a hand-built site, or even to a different builder, you start from scratch. The site does not convert or carry across. A builder produces a site that lives inside that builder's system, so leaving means rebuilding.

That is not a reason to avoid builders, they are excellent for the right site. It is a reason to choose deliberately at the start rather than drift into one and regret it later. If you are confident a builder suits your needs, go for it. If you think you might outgrow it into a full WordPress site, it is worth weighing whether to start there instead, our article on getting your first website live lays out all the routes.

Sitejet: free with your hosting

Sitejet is our included builder, free on your hosting, and the one we point most people to. It is a capable, modern builder: professional templates, visual editing, and a clean published site, well suited to the brochure-style websites most businesses need first, who you are, what you do, how to reach you.

You start it straight from your client portal: open your hosting service and click Edit with Sitejet Builder in the Actions menu, as described in our article on accessing your cPanel and webmail. Because it is included, it costs you nothing to try, which makes it the natural first stop if a builder is the right approach for you.

The paid builders

We also offer other website builders as paid products, for people who prefer a particular tool or want features a specific builder is known for. They work the same way in principle, visual, in-browser, no code, and the same lock-in applies to each: whichever you choose, your site lives in that builder. The current paid builder options and their pricing are on our website, and a support ticket gets you pointed to the right one if you are weighing them up.

For most people starting out, the free Sitejet builder is more than enough, and there is no need to pay for a builder until you know you specifically want what a paid one offers.

Builder or WordPress? A quick steer

• Choose a builder if you want a straightforward site up quickly, you value visual editing over flexibility, and you do not expect to need complex features later.
• Choose WordPress if you want maximum flexibility, expect the site to grow, need specific plugins, or want the freedom to change direction later without rebuilding, our WordPress articles cover it.
• Choose a builder now and accept the trade-off knowingly: a fast, easy site today, with the understanding that a future move means starting over. For many small businesses that is a perfectly sensible bargain.

Good to know

The lock-in cuts both ways, and it is not all bad: a builder site is self-contained and low-maintenance, with no plugins to update and no core software to keep patched, which is genuinely less to worry about than WordPress. The trade is flexibility for simplicity. So the honest question is not which is better, it is which suits you, and if you are unsure, ask us before you invest time building, because the cheapest moment to change your mind is before you have built the whole site, not after.