How to host a small business website for about $10 a year
Overview
Anyone can build and run a fast, professional website for their business for about $10 a year. Website builders like Squarespace and Wix start at about $175 a year, and more once the free first year of your domain ends. I wrote this for small businesses, but the same setup works for any simple site: a portfolio, a wedding, an event, or a side project.
What's changed: Free hosting has been around for years. What kept small businesses on website builders was the editor: changing a simple site meant writing code. Now AI can write your website from a plain-English description and help you iterate on it, whether that is new wording, a new page, or a fix for how it looks on phones. That reduces the need to pay for a UI builder every month.
Goal: a professional website on your own domain, with unlimited customization, for about $10 a year.
Requirements:
- Your own domain, like yourbusiness.com
- Looks good and loads fast on phones
- Secure (the padlock in the browser)
- Email at your domain
- Easy to update without hiring a developer
Out of scope: online stores, bookings, and customer logins. Those need more than a simple site, but often you can just link out instead, like a "Book now" button to Calendly or a "Shop" link to Etsy.
I did this with my own wedding website. I built it myself so the fonts, colors, icons and overall style matched the invitations and signs I made. For RSVPs, I linked out to The Knot so I did not have to store and manage everyone's responses.
Options
Option A: An all-in-one website builder, like Squarespace or Wix. You pick a template, edit it with drag and drop, and pay a monthly fee that covers hosting. The domain is usually free for the first year only.
Option B: A simple site on a free host, with your own domain. A simple website (developers call it a static site) is just a handful of files: a page of text, some styling, maybe a few images. A free host stores those files and serves them to visitors, and your domain points at the host. There is no server to maintain and nothing to update. You need four pieces:
| Piece | Your options | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | Any domain registrar, like Cloudflare, Porkbun, or Namecheap. Compare the renewal price, not just the first year. | About $10.46 a year, same price at renewal |
| Hosting | A free host for simple sites that allows business use, like Cloudflare Pages or Netlify | Free |
| HTTPS (the padlock in the browser) | Included with all of the hosts above | Free |
| Email at your domain | Free forwarding to the inbox you already use (many registrars include it), or a full business mailbox like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 | Free for forwarding. Workspace is $7 a month on an annual plan. |
Comparison
When I priced this out, here is how the cheapest plans compared:
| Option | Cost | Custom domain |
|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | $15.20 a month (about $182 a year), billed annually | Free for the first year only, then standard renewal rates |
| Wix | $14.50 a month (about $174 a year) | Free for the first year only |
| This setup | About $10.46 a year | That is the cost: the domain itself, same price every year |
Those are the entry-level plans. Plans with more features cost more.
| Website builder | Simple site + free host | |
|---|---|---|
| Yearly cost | About $174 to $182 for the entry-level plans, more for higher tiers, plus the domain after year one | About $10.46 for the domain |
| Customization | Limited to the builder's templates and features | Unlimited. If you can describe it, AI can build it |
| Editing | Drag and drop | Describe what you want in plain English. Easier than drag and drop, and you can fully describe your vision |
| Online store, bookings, logins | Built in | Link out to another service |
| Ownership | Locked in. You cannot export the site, just some of the content | You own the files and can move them anywhere |
| Maintenance | Handled by the platform | Nothing to maintain |
Recommendation
For a simple small business site, go with Option B. It meets every requirement for about $10 a year, it is fast, and you own everything. The one thing you give up, a drag-and-drop editor, matters much less now that AI can write the changes for you.
Best for: people who are not afraid to build something and learn as they go. You do not need to know how to code, but you should be comfortable trying things, checking the result, and asking AI to fix what looks off.
If you want to understand what AI is writing for you, learning website basics is not hard and there are a lot of good free resources. W3Schools has beginner-friendly tutorials for HTML (the content and structure of a page) and CSS (the colors, fonts and layout).
Choose a website builder instead if you need an online store or bookings, or if you would rather pay monthly than touch a file.
Implementation plan
The steps are about the same no matter which options you pick. Each one includes an example using Cloudflare, with a link to detailed instructions.
- Buy your domain. Choose your domain name, like yourbusiness.com, and buy it from a registrar. Look at the renewal price, since some registrars offer a cheap first year and then charge much more. Your registrar usually also manages your DNS, the settings that tell the internet where your domain points.
For example: Cloudflare sells domains at cost, so renewal is the same price as the first year. Step-by-step: Register a new domain (Cloudflare). - Create your site files. If you do not write code, AI can do it. Describe what you want in plain English, for example: "Make a one-page website for my bakery in Denver with our hours, a few photos, a short About section, and our phone number and email. Keep it simple and mobile friendly." Save what it gives you as
index.html. The free plans of Claude and ChatGPT can both do this. They have daily message limits, so a bigger change might take a second session. To change the site later, paste in your current file and describe the change. Paid plans add tools like Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex that can create and edit the files on your computer for you, so you skip the copy and paste.
For example: Use the free plan of Claude or ChatGPT with a prompt like the one above. - Test your site. Open the html that you generated in a browser and test it. Make sure it looks and works the way you want. Go back to the pervious step to fix or change things.
- Connect your domain. Your host tells you which DNS records to add, and you add them wherever your DNS is managed.
For example: If your domain is on Cloudflare, open your Pages project, go to Custom domains, and add it. Cloudflare creates the DNS record for you. Step-by-step: Custom domains (Cloudflare Pages). - Make sure HTTPS works. All of these hosts support SSL (the padlock in the browser that shows your site is secure) for free. Visit your site with
https://and check that it shows.
For example: Cloudflare issues the certificate when you add your custom domain. Once the domain shows as active, check for the padlock. - Verify your domain with your host, if it asks. This proves the domain is yours and stops anyone else from connecting their site to it. Most guides skip this step. Do not.
For example: With Cloudflare Pages and your domain on the same Cloudflare account, this is handled for you. Other hosts, like GitHub Pages, have you add aTXTrecord to prove ownership. Step-by-step: Verifying your custom domain for GitHub Pages. - Set up email. Decide whether you only need to receive email at your domain (free forwarding) or also send from it (a paid mailbox).
For example: Cloudflare Email Routing forwards [email protected] to a business gmail [email protected], for free. Step-by-step: Route emails (Cloudflare).
Other considerations
- Business use. Not every free host allows it. GitHub Pages is meant for personal, project, and organization sites, and its terms do not allow using it as free hosting for an online business. Cloudflare Pages and Netlify both allow business use on their free plans, which is why the examples here use Cloudflare Pages.
- Traffic limits. Cloudflare Pages does not limit bandwidth for simple sites on its free plan. Netlify's free plan uses monthly credits and pauses your site if you run out, so keep an eye on usage there.
- Traffic spikes. A simple site handles sudden traffic well because there is no server or database to overload. Cloudflare serves your pages from its network around the world.
- Moving later. Your site is just files, so moving to another host takes minutes. If you decide you do want to go with a UI builder you should be able to copy and paste your code in and go from there.
- Growing features. When you need more than a simple site, start by linking out to a service. If you outgrow that, your content comes with you.