IONOS Website Builder Pricing: How Much Does IONOS Cost?

IONOS offers the most affordable website building plans today, with monthly fees for as low as £1 per month, with its highest plans costing upwards of £25 per month. This gives IONOS an overall rating of 3.1/5 in our independent deep dive into the top website builders in the UK. 

In this pricing guide, we’ll explore all of IONOS’s plans in detail, along with its included perks and features, to help you find the most suitable one for your business.

Here at Expert Market, we’ve been researching different website builders for years. Our research experience shows a change in price trends across website builders like Hostinger. Additional fees, such as transaction fees and plug-ins, also change from time to time. To help you navigate through these changes, we’ve got the answers right here for you. Read on to learn more! 

IONOS pricing summary

IONOS’s pricing plans: a breakdown

Starter – £9 per month

We’re starting this pricing guide with IONOS’s entry-level plan, Starter, available for only £9 per month. Our in-house team of researchers say it’s perfect for creating a website because it offers all the essentials to start a business: a free domain for the first year, professional email with 2GB of storage space, and professional templates that include pre-built sections for faster, easier setup.

Even on its basic plan IONOS will give you access to Marketing Radar, a valuable tool that allows you to monitor your website’s presence on social media, review websites, and online directories. A bonus is that you can also track the performance of your competitors on Google’s search rankings and social media sites. IONOS collects this data for you and then provides it via an easy-to-read feed, so you can easily find any items on your website that require attention.

Moreover, you can unlock 10GB of webspace and create 10 pages for your website. You can also customise your colour scheme if the pre-selected ones aren’t to your liking. This plan offers a fast way to set up your website – just choose your theme, insert your content, and it’s ready! It also grants you access to over 17,000 royalty-free images that you can use for your pages. 

If you’re a first-time IONOS user, you can sign up to the Starter plan for only £5 for the first six months. 

However, the Starter plan doesn’t include access to an online booking tool and IONOS’s Ranking Coach, which can help provide in-depth SEO guidance for your pages. You also can’t edit or change the layout of the pre-built elements in your chosen templates. Still, you can enjoy IONOS’s Onboarding Wizard tool and Project Guidance Dashboard, which can help you handle your projects more efficiently. If you want to unlock a comprehensive SEO tool and a more fluid website editing experience, Squarespace offers this in its basic plan, Personal, available for £12 per month. It’s costlier than IONOS, but it has more features you can take advantage of.

Plus – £15 per month

Plus offers the best value for money among IONOS’s plans. This is because first-time users can sign up for only £1 for the first 12 months, then pay £15 per month afterwards. 

It also lets you enjoy five times the storage of the Starter plan: 50GB of webspace and 12GB of email storage. This plan offers better flexibility as you can customise the templates and add a custom HTML to your website’s backend. You can move around your elements and photos, unlike the Starter plan, which limits you to IONOS’s pre-built elements and designs. The ultimate distinction between this and the basic plan is that it offers SiteAnalytics and an online booking tool. 

While the online booking tool will give your site’s visitors a convenient way to book your services, SiteAnalytics will collect the essential metrics about your website’s performance, including the length of time a visitor stays on your page, browser type, location, and dwell type. Dwell type is a crucial SEO metric that depicts the time a user spends analysing a web page before returning to search results. A low dwell time on a web page most likely indicates that the page did not match the user’s search intent. By understanding your site’s dwell time, you’ll gain a better understanding on how to ensure that your content stays relevant for your visitors, possibly helping you improve your conversion rates (such as sales).

Like the Starter plan, you can access its wide array of over 17,000 royalty-free images, a one-year free domain, Marketing Radar, the Onboarding Wizard tool, and 24/7 customer support through live chat, phone, email, and social media. It’s worth mentioning that this is where IONOS one-ups our website builder top-runner Wix, which scores an overall 4.9/5 in our independent research. This is because Wix doesn’t cater to customer inquiries via email, and you’ll have to upgrade to their most expensive plan to receive priority customer support. 

Pro – £25 per month

IONOS’s last pricing tier is the Pro plan, available for £25 per month. Our research finds it as the best for improving your website functionality and SEO because it offers a comprehensive package of website and marketing tools for larger businesses who cater to a wider clientele or want to scale their online presence.

Like the Plus plan, you have the flexibility to customise the templates, including your colour scheme and elements, and even add custom HTML to your backend. It also includes IONOS’s Marketing Radar tool, which tracks your brand’s presence in significant digital channels such as social media, online directories, and review websites. It then organises this data for you in an easy-to-read stream, allowing you to quickly identify any issues that require your attention. This can help your business improve its online presence and scalability, so you can stay on top of your competitors. Additionally, you’ll have access to the upgraded SiteAnalytics Plus tool, a valuable tool that generates and exports PDF reports of the essential metrics of your website’s performance.

Moreover, the Pro plan offers unlimited webspace and pages, a huge distinction from the other plans IONOS offers. It also employs active email syncing on all devices and 50GB storage, giving you sufficient space to send, receive, and store important emails and documents.

The cherry on top of this package is IONOS’s search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, the Ranking Coach Essential. It’s a simple, do-it-yourself tool that guides and assists you in completing tasks to improve your search engine ranking. It uses video instructions and step-by-step guides for the tasks, providing helpful insights about Google’s SEO ranking factors, such as keyword support and mobile responsiveness. This can further improve your scalability as it can boost your ranking on Google searches, which helps customers find your site faster.

Does IONOS have a free plan?

Unfortunately, IONOS doesn’t offer a free trial or plan. You’ll have to pay upfront to use its services and start building a website. 

If you’re looking for a free website builder, we recommend choosing the top scorer in our website builder research, Wix (4.9/5). Unlike other website builders, you can start creating your website with Wix without necessarily upgrading to its Premium plan. However, it’s worth noting that Wix’s free plan only unlocks its basic features, so you won’t have a free domain or SEO analysis tool, which IONOS offers in its Starter plan, available for as low as £1 for the first 12 months. Signing up for this plan will link you with IONOS’s website builder for a year, and your contract will automatically renew afterward.

IONOS costs: Billing cycles, ongoing costs, and hidden fees

All of IONOS’s website builder plans grant you access to the following:

• 24/7 customer support through phone, email, live chat, and social media
• Competitor tracking using Marketing Radar
• Free domain for one year
• Free SSL certificate
• Professional themes and templates
• Onboarding Wizard tool
• Over 17,000 royalty-free images for your website

IONOS subscription fees are billed monthly, except for domain names. You can choose either a monthly rolling contract or a 12-month contract. If you opt for the latter, you can enjoy the marked down prices we mentioned earlier and get a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you opt for a monthly rolling contract, you can cancel your subscription at any time, but you’ll miss out on the introductory offers. Renewal prices, on the other hand, vary depending on your package and needs. But in a nutshell, you’ll save more if you opt for a 12-month contract with IONOS. 

It’s also worth noting that IONOS’s prices are exclusive of 20% VAT, so you’ll have to add that on top of your monthly subscription fees. 

How does IONOS’s pricing compare with other website builders?

IONOS receives an above-average score of 3.1/5 in our value for money analysis, but it does offer one of the lowest entry points among the website builders we’ve investigated. For as low as £1 for the first 12 months, you can unlock its medium-tier plan, Plus, and its flexible customisation offers. It also includes helpful tools and resources to boost your website’s functionality, like the SiteAnalytics tool, which provides metrics on visit length, dwell type, and visitor location. 

However, IONOS has limited website features and design functionality to ensure your website is sleek and efficient. Our research suggests that you’ll get more value for money with Jimdo, which scores an excellent 4.5/5 in our value for money analysis. It offers a free plan, unlike IONOS, that unlocks its basic features so you can create a functional website for your business. Moreover, its entry-level subscription plan, Start, costs a low £9 per month, which is at par with IONOS’s Starter plan, except it has more features you can utilise as you build your website.