I need to renew my website soon. The domain renewal is cheap, but GoDaddy’s website builder will cost $71 for the year. If I don’t renew the website builder, are there other ways to edit my site without using GoDaddy’s builder? What options are out there, and what would they cost?
I don’t know much about hosting or managing websites, so please explain simply.
People will probably tell you to ‘use WordPress’ or ‘try Jekyll,’ but honestly, if you’re asking this, maybe you should hire a web developer.
Reese said:
People will probably tell you to ‘use WordPress’ or ‘try Jekyll,’ but honestly, if you’re asking this, maybe you should hire a web developer.
I get that. But many of us started in the same boat. If you want to give it a shot and experiment, go for it!
Reese said:
People will probably tell you to ‘use WordPress’ or ‘try Jekyll,’ but honestly, if you’re asking this, maybe you should hire a web developer.
Hiring a developer might end up costing you way more than $71, just a heads-up.
If you don’t renew the GoDaddy website builder, you won’t be able to transfer it easily to another platform. You might have to start over from scratch. Without knowing the purpose of your site, it’s hard to give good advice. If it’s personal, you could use a free site builder. If it’s for business, you should go with something that’s hosted and SEO-friendly. And for e-commerce, you’ll need a shopping cart system. Can you give more details about what you need the site for?
@Cleo
Actually, you can change hosting plans on GoDaddy and move your site to another hosting provider. But yeah, I agree, you should get someone who knows what they’re doing. But saying you can’t transfer is not entirely true.
I think you should go with Squarespace for something easy. If you need a store, try Shopify.
Honestly, just hire a web developer. It will save you the headache.
GoDaddy’s website builder is definitely overpriced. But their basic hosting is usually affordable. For a small business site, their economy hosting might cost you $12 a year, and the domain will be around $10 a year.
You could install WordPress, but there’s a learning curve. WordPress itself is free, but if you want a nice template, many of the good ones come with a price.
I used to design sites using Webpage Maker. It’s a bit old-school, but for simple sites, it’s super easy to use. Costs about $50 for the software as a one-time fee.
If you own the domain, you could set up a server at home. I made a LAMP server using a Raspberry Pi and got a static IP from my ISP. With a bit of research, you could figure this out too 
You mentioned you’re not familiar with hosting, so Squarespace might be your best bet. Everything’s handled for you—hosting, admin, security. WordPress is my favorite CMS, but it requires some coding knowledge or paying someone to maintain it. Maybe not the best fit if you want something easy to manage.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! Just to clarify, we’re not running an e-commerce site or a business. We mainly post articles about baseball, so while we’d love to make some money from ads or affiliates, we’re not trying to go all out.
We’re totally fine with rebuilding the site from scratch as long as we can keep our articles. We appreciate the web developer suggestions, but we’re keeping it pretty simple.