The Real Cost of a Small Business Website: Borg Sites, Wix and Bluehost Line by Line

Key takeaways

• Three years of plan cost: about $454 to $525 for Borg Sites Orbit, $639.72 for Wix Light, $143.64 for Bluehost Starter.
• Those numbers are not comparable, because only the Borg Sites one includes six hours a year of somebody else's work.
• Extra Borg Sites edit hours are billed from $79 an hour on the entry tiers down to $49 on Enterprise.
• Bluehost's $3.99 price requires a 36 month term, so its renewal at $9.99 falls outside a three year comparison.
• Borg Sites offers five day money back on hosting only, and Wix offers 14 days on premium upgrades.

Every website platform advertises a small number. What you pay is the small number plus a domain, plus a renewal, plus whoever does the work. This week the arithmetic runs honestly for Borg Sites, Wix and Bluehost over three years.

Every price below was checked on 21 September 2026. Prices move, so treat the method as the useful part and check the numbers yourself.

The case we are pricing

A five page site for a local service business, with a contact form, a handful of photos, a custom domain, and roughly one content change a month. No store yet.

Borg Sites

Orbit Hosting and Care is $13.99 a month. It covers up to five pages, 50 GB of media, a free custom domain for the first year, and 30 minutes of managed edits a month. Orbit and above also carry a $1 first month on monthly billing, and yearly billing is twelve months for the price of ten.

Monthly billing over three years: $1 for the first month, then 35 months at $13.99, which is $490.65. The domain is free in year one and renews at the Orbit rate of $16.99, so add $33.98 for years two and three. Total: about $525.

Yearly billing over three years: three years at ten months' price, which is $419.70, plus the same $33.98 of domain renewals. Total: about $454.

Both figures include the 30 minutes a month of edits.

Wix

Wix Light is $17.77 a month, and Wix states that its displayed prices are for yearly subscriptions paid in full at purchase. Three years is $639.72. The domain is free for the first year on any paid plan, and Wix does not publish the later renewal rate on its plans page, so it is left out here rather than guessed at.

Then add the work. You build it yourself, which costs time rather than money, or you pay somebody. Whatever that costs in your area, it is on top, and it recurs every time the site needs changing.

Bluehost

Bluehost has the lowest sticker and the most conditions attached to it. Starter is $3.99 a month, and that price requires a 36 month term, so three years costs $143.64 paid up front. Renewal is $9.99 a month, which is where the number changes in year four. Business is $6.99 renewing at $13.99, and eCommerce Essentials is $14.99 renewing at $21.99. Weekly backups and a CDN are included on all three, which was not always the case and removes two old objections.

What $143.64 buys is an empty WordPress install. Theme, plugins, page building, security hardening and updates are yours, and so is anything you pay somebody else to do.

Reading the three numbers honestly

Put side by side, three years of plan costs are roughly $454 to $525 for Borg Sites Orbit, $640 for Wix Light, and $144 for Bluehost Starter. Those are not comparable products, and anyone presenting them as a like-for-like table is selling something.

The Borg Sites figure includes six hours of somebody else's work a year. The Wix figure includes none. The Bluehost figure includes none and also assumes you can administer a server-side content system. The gap between $144 and $525 is not a price difference. It is the labor, and the only question that matters is whether you have the time to supply it yourself.

Where the honesty cuts the other way

Borg Sites is not automatically cheapest and does not claim to be. If you already run WordPress competently, Bluehost at $3.99 a month is unbeatable on raw cost and this whole category is not for you. If you want to redesign your homepage at two in the morning, Wix's editor is worth paying for, and Borg Sites' managed edit minutes are a queue rather than a keyboard.

Extra edit hours beyond the plan allowance are billed, and the rate depends on your tier: $79 an hour on Launch and Spark, $74 on Orbit, $69 on Galaxy, $64 on Supernova, $59 on Nebula, $54 on Quasar and $49 on Enterprise. A business that changes its site weekly should budget for that rather than assume it is free. Borg Sites' one-time Design builds start at $750 and reach $3,900, which is real money next to a $17.77 subscription.

One number worth knowing before you commit

Borg Sites offers five day money back on hosting: cancel within five days of your first Hosting and Care charge and the hosting payments are refunded in full. Design builds, first-year domain registrations and one-time add-ons sit outside that. Wix states a 14 day money-back guarantee on premium upgrades. Read both before you pay for a year up front.

What to watch next

Watch the renewal. Bluehost's 36 month term means the increase arrives after the comparison window above, not inside it, which is exactly why three year tables flatter it. The full ladder is at borgsites.com/pricing.