The real cost of a "free" website
Every website builder has a free plan, and every free plan is designed to be outgrown. That is not a scandal — servers cost money — but it helps to know what you are paying with when you are not paying with money.
The four currencies of "free"
1. Attention. Free plans show the builder's ad or banner on your site. A "made with X" badge is honest; a full ad bar on a business site is not something you want a customer to see. On Malpera the free plan shows a small badge in the corner; paid plans remove it.
2. Address. Free plans put you on a subdomain of the builder. That is fine for trying things out and bad for a business card. Your own domain is a paid feature almost everywhere, including here (from the Starter plan).
3. Limits that hit later. Page counts, bandwidth, form submissions per month, storage. The painful ones are the limits you discover when a customer tells you the form stopped working. Read the free plan's limits for forms and storage, not just pages.
4. Time. The real cost of a free template builder is the weekend you spend dragging boxes. If an AI builder gets you to a working site in ten minutes, the hours saved are worth more than the plan.
Free AI credits are different from a free plan
AI builders meter AI work in credits or tokens because each request costs them real money. A free allowance lets you build something; it does not let you keep building forever. Malpera gives 200 welcome credits once (enough for a small site or a first version of an app) and then charges only for what you use, at the real AI cost. We think that is fairer than a monthly allowance you lose if you do not use it — but it also means the free plan is a trial, and we say so.
What you should expect to pay
For a small business site or app with hosting, SSL, a form that works and your own domain, €15-30 a month is the honest range in 2026 across builders. Below that something is subsidised and will change; far above it you are paying for features you do not use. Malpera's Starter plan is €19 a month and includes hosting, your domain, the builder and 1,500 credits — roughly a new site plus a few dozen edits each month.
The hidden cost nobody prices: lock-in
The expensive mistake is not the monthly fee, it is building two years of content on a platform you cannot leave. Before you choose, check three things: can you export the code, can you export the data, and does the site keep working if you stop paying? On Malpera the answers are yes (full source download), yes (table export), and the published site stays up on the free plan with a badge.
A fair rule of thumb
Pay nothing while you are experimenting. The moment the site brings you a customer, pay for the domain and the plan — and make sure what you pay buys you a site you own.