IONOS Website Builder Pricing: How Much Does IONOS Cost?

IONOS offers affordable website builder plans, with its monthly fees ranging between $9-$75 (when you pay for a year upfront). As this is pretty middle-of-the-road pricing when compared with other providers, IONOS scores 3.1/5 for value for money in our research.

That said, it’s a pretty good deal if you only want to set up a very small online store.

To help you find out if IONOS website builder is the right tool for you, we’ll look at all of its pricing plans in detail. We’ll cover the real cost after new customer discounts, and look into the perks and downsides of each plan.

Here at Expert Market, we’ve been researching different website builders for 15 years. We keep track of changes to IONOS (formerly known as 1&1) and its competitor products as they change over time. So you can trust us to give you accurate advice.

IONOS Pricing Plans: A Breakdown

If you want to build a regular website without any payment features, you can choose from these IONOS price plans (renewal prices per 12 month contract, ignoring new customer discounts):

• Starter ($9 per month) = $108 per year
• Plus  ($15 per month) = $180 per year
• Pro ($25 per month) = $300 per year

If you want to create a website with an online store, IONOS has four price plans (renewal prices per 12 month contract, ignoring new customer discounts):

• Starter ($19 per month) = $228 per year
• Plus ($25 per month) = $300 per year
• Pro ($50 per month) = $600 per year
• Expert ($75 per month) = $900 per year

IONOS’s website builder pricing is occasionally discounted for the first six or 12 months. However, this tends to make pricing really confusing to work out over the long-term, so we’ve only included the pricing without discounts. This gives you clarity over the basic costs.

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

• Email inbox (unusual for a website builder)
• Advice from your IONOS personal consultant (very uncommon)
• Customer support through phone, email, live chat, and social media (fairly common)
• Over 17,000 royalty-free images for your website (fairly uncommon)
• Free domain for one year (most competitors offer this)
• Free SSL certificate (almost all competitors offer this)
• Professional themes and templates (universal)

It is worth noting that other features offered will vary by price plan, so we’ll take a closer look at each of those below.

IONOS Starter – $9 per Month (One Year Contract)

 If you’re a first-time IONOS user, you can sign up to the Starter plan for only $5 for the first six months. Otherwise, the lowest you can pay to build your own website with IONOS is $9 per month if you pay for a year in advance. That brings the total contract cost to $108 per year.

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, an email inbox with 2GB of storage space, and professional templates that include pre-built sections for faster, easier setup.

You’ll get a competitor tracking dashboard to trigger alerts on your rival’s Google’s search rankings and social media activity. That helps keep you up to date with the competition, so you can adjust your business strategy.

Moreover, you’ll unlock 10GB of memory to create a maximum 10 pages for your website. You can also customize 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. 

However, the Starter plan doesn’t include access to an online booking tool or IONOS’ Ranking Coach, which provides SEO guidance for your pages and will help improve the visibility of your website on search engine results pages. You only get those at the Plus and Pro packages, respectively.

You also can’t edit or change the layout of the pre-built elements in your chosen templates. That can lead to frustration if you have a precise web design in mind. You have to upgrade to Plus if you want to add or rearrange design elements on the page.

In this light, Jimdo looks like a better alternative. For the same price of $9 per month, you can subscribe to Jimdo Start and access better customization tools than IONOS Starter. However, you’ll only get 5GB of storage space with Jimdo Start compared with 10GB with IONOS Starter. Check out our full review of Jimdo for more detail.

IONOS Starter (Online Store): $19 per Month

For a total of $144 (for the first year, renewing at $228 thereafter), you’ll get all of the above with IONOS Starter, plus the following ecommerce features:

• Sell retail (B2C)
• List 500 products (maximum)
• Accept PayPal, credit card, and other payment providers
• Real-time shipping quotes from a range of mailing services
• In-store pickup
• Adjust pricing according to variants, like color or size
• CSV (spreadsheet) data import
• Strikethrough pricing
• Automatic “on sale” or “sold out” labels
• Customize cart using widgets

Here are some of the things you can’t do with this plan:

• No connection to: Google Shopping, Amazon, or eBay
• No connection to POS
• No B2B sales
• No direct debit payment
• No product-level inventory control
• No store management app
• No stock control at product level
• No manual order editing
• No bulk invoice printing
• No real-time parcel tracking
• No ability to configure shipping per product
• No wish lists

Is IONOS Starter Website Builder (With an Online Store) Good Value for Money?

Yes, compared with major competitors like Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy. IONOS Starter is cheaper than the basic ecommerce plan from all three of those providers.

BUT, the entry-level IONOS ecommerce platform is not the cheapest way to build an online store. Jimdo Business is $1 cheaper per month than IONOS Starter (with an online store). But Jimdo’s creators recommend listing a maximum of 100 products with their platform, to keep your website running smoothly. That’s 400 less than the upper limit of IONOS’ basic ecommerce plan.

AND the very best deal is Square’s free plan, which allows connection to its POS, plus Apple Pay and Afterpay, (but not PayPal). Although Square charges commission fees per sale, there are no monthly subscription fees to pay, and no limit to the number of products you can list.

IONOS Plus – $15 per Month (One Year Contract)

IONOS Plus costs $180 for one year’s contract (equivalent to $15 per month). Otherwise, you can choose month-to-month payment, costing $18.

With IONOS Plus, you get five times the storage of the Starter plan: 50GB of webspace and 12GB of email storage. This plan offers better flexibility as you can customize the templates and add custom HTML to your website. You can move images and text blocks around the page, unlike on the Starter plan, which limits you to IONOS pre-built design elements.

But the ultimate distinction between IONOS Plus and IONOS Starter is that the former 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, and location. 

Like the Starter plan, Pro gives you access to customer support through live chat, phone, email, and social media. It’s worth mentioning that this is where IONOS one-ups our website builder front-runner, Wix, which doesn’t cater to customer inquiries via email. 

IONOS Plus (Online Store): $25 per Month

For $300 for a one year contract (equivalent to $25 per month), everything above is included, plus the following ecommerce features:

• Sell retail (B2C)
• List 5,000 products (maximum)
• Accept PayPal, credit card, and other payment providers
• Real-time shipping quotes from a range of mailing services
• In-store pickup
• Adjust pricing according to variants, like color or size
• CSV (spreadsheet) data import
• Strikethrough pricing
• Automatic “on sale” or “sold out” labels
• Customize cart using widgets

These are the new features gained compared with the Starter Plan:

• Take bookings online
• Connection to Google Shopping
• Connect to Lightspeed Retail POS
• Ability to configure shipping per product
• Store management app

Here are some things you don’t have with this plan:

• No connection to: Amazon or eBay
• No connection to POS from Clover or Square
• No B2B sales
• No direct debit payment
• No product-level inventory control
• No stock control at product level
• No manual order editing
• No bulk invoice printing
• No real-time parcel tracking
• No wish lists

IONOS Pro – $25 per Month

When you need to scale up your website, IONOS Pro is available for $25 per month (you must pay for the entire year upfront, though). At this plan level, you get access to an SEO tool that improves the chances of your website getting found through search engines, including Google.

There is no month-to-month price because contracts are 12 months.

Like Plus, you have the flexibility to customize the templates, including your color scheme and elements, and even add custom HTML to your backend. 

Moreover, Pro offers unlimited storage space and pages, which is a huge distinction from the other plans IONOS offers. It also employs active email syncing on all devices and 50GB of inbox storage, giving you sufficient space for daily business emails.

IONOS Pro (Online Store): $50 per Month

This plan costs $600 for a one-year contract, which works out to $50 per month. You’ll get all of the above, as well as these ecommerce features:

• Sell retail (B2C)
• List 10,000 products
• Accept PayPal, credit card, and other payment providers
• Real-time shipping quotes from a range of mailing services
• In-store pickup
• Connection to Google Shopping
• Connect to Lightspeed Retail POS
• Adjust pricing according to variants like color or size
• CSV (spreadsheet) data import
• Strikethrough pricing
• Automatic “on sale” or “sold out” labels
• Customize cart using widgets
• Ability to configure shipping per product
• Store management app

And here are the new features gained when compared with the Plus Plan:

• SiteAnalytics Plus (improved insights)
• B2B selling options: tax exempt customers and VAT ID for EU sales
• Real-time parcel tracking
• Offline synch with POS
• Product-level inventory control
• Stock control at product level
• Manual order editing
• Bulk invoice printing
• Scheduled pickup
• Wish lists

Here are some features you don’t have with this plan:

• No wholesale B2B selling
• No connection to: Amazon or eBay
• No connection to POS from Clover or Square
• No direct debit payment
• Customer group discounting
• Volume discounts

Does IONOS have a free plan?

Unfortunately, IONOS doesn’t offer a free trial or plan. You’ll have to pay upfront to start building a website, with a 12-month minimum contract on the majority of its plans. However, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee on IONOS plans.

If you’re concerned about pricing, Wix has a generous free plan, but it does include Wix-branded adverts.

IONOS Costs: Billing Cycles, Ongoing Costs, and Hidden Fees

Sales tax is not included in the listed price of any IONOS website builder or ecommerce (online shop) plans. This will be added on at the checkout page.

All of IONOS’ website builder plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee, replacing the free trial that competitor products offer (and IONOS doesn’t). You should know that all contracts are on auto-renew, so don’t get caught out if you’re intending to end your journey with IONOS.

IONOS Starter and IONOS Pro both have 12-month minimum contracts. This means that, unlike the majority of website builders (including Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy), IONOS doesn’t offer a discount for paying upfront. This is because there is no monthly payment option.

The exception to this is IONOS Plus, the only plan with the option to pay monthly. In this regard, it’s the most flexible pricing plan IONOS currently offers.

You’ll also have to pay for your domain renewal after the first year. Depending on your desired web domain, this will likely cost between $4-$35 per year.

How Does IONOS Pricing Compare With Other Website Builders?

IONOS receives a below average score of 3.1/5 in our value for money analysis – the average being 3.9/5 among the website builders we investigated.

This may come as a surprise, given the offers emblazoned all over the IONOS website for $1 per month subscriptions. But the true cost of the website builder has to be calculated over time, specifically over the length of the entire contract (which is 12 months, in most cases). 

Truth be told, IONOS isn’t one of the best ecommerce platforms on the market. There are plenty of stronger competitors. 

Shopify is arguably better value for money than IONOS, because you can sell unlimited products on its Basic plan for $29 or $39 per month (depending on billing cycle). IONOS Pro, by contrast, costs $25 or $50 per month and limits product listings to 10,000. The only caveat is Shopify charges transaction fees per sale, whereas IONOS doesn’t. So, whether it’s better value for money will largely depend on the price points and volume of your sales.

Although Shopify pricing can seem steep, it’s worth investing in because its inventory management tools and multichannel selling options can help you scale your online sales more effectively than IONOS.