“Online” has to mean more than an online download page
A lot of software calls itself an online website builder when what is online is the checkout. You still install something, it still only runs on one machine, and the file that matters still lives in a folder you have to remember to back up.
The test is simple. If the work only exists on the laptop you started it on, it is not online. It is a desktop program with a website in front of it. If you can open a tab on a borrowed machine, sign in, and carry on from the paragraph you were editing yesterday, it is.
8B is the second kind. The editor runs in the browser, the site lives on a server, and the thing you hand to a customer is an address rather than a file. This page is a fair demonstration of the rendering half: press “Surprise me” on the floating panel and the whole layout is recomposed in the tab, without a plugin, an install prompt, or a page reload.
Three eras of putting a page on the internet
It is worth remembering how recent all this is, because it explains why so many tools are still shaped like the era they were born in.
The first arrangement was files and FTP. You edited HTML in a program on your desk, then uploaded the folder to a host and hoped you had not forgotten one. The website was a copy of something on your hard drive, and if the hard drive went, so did the website. Everything about that model assumed one person, one machine.
The second was the admin panel. The site moved onto a server and you logged in to change it, which solved the backup problem and created a new one: you were now administering software. Updates, plugins, a theme that broke when one of them changed, and a login screen that got probed by strangers all night. The work was online; so was the maintenance.
The third is where 8B sits. There is no folder and no installation to look after, on your side or on the server. You describe what the site should be, the design is composed for you, and the published result is static HTML on a CDN, with nothing to patch, because there is no admin panel to break into. What you keep is the site itself, and an export button for the day you want it elsewhere.
Each era solved the previous one’s worst problem and inherited a new chore. The chore this time is that you need a connection, which is the trade covered further down, honestly.
Where each part of the work actually happens
“It runs in the browser” is usually said as a slogan. Here is the honest split: what your tab is doing, and what is happening somewhere else while it does.
| Step | In your browser tab | On 8B’s servers |
|---|---|---|
| Describing the site | You type a sentence | The brief is read and turned into a design plan |
| Designing it | The result renders as you watch | Type, palette, spacing and motion are composed |
| Writing the copy | You read it and push back | Headings and body text are drafted around your business |
| Editing later | You ask for a change in plain words | The change is applied and the new version is stored |
| Keeping your work | Nothing to save, nothing to lose | Every version is held server-side |
| Publishing | One click | HTML, certificate and CDN hosting go live under your address |
Nothing in the left-hand column needs a plugin, an extension, or a particular operating system. Nothing in the right-hand column needs anything from you.
Whatever machine you happen to have open
The practical argument for building a website online is not elegance, it is availability. These are the machines people actually find themselves in front of.
A Chromebook
No installer would run on it anyway. A browser is the entire operating system, which is exactly what 8B needs.
A work laptop you cannot install on
Locked-down admin rights stop desktop design software cold. They do not stop a tab.
Someone else’s computer
Sign in, do the edit, sign out. Nothing is left behind on the machine and nothing had to be set up on it first.
A tablet on the sofa
Reviewing a draft and asking for three changes does not require a keyboard, a mouse, or sitting at a desk.
A phone, between things
Fixing opening hours from a bus stop is a two-minute job when the editor is a URL rather than an application.
The machine you replace next year
Nothing to migrate, no licence to transfer, no folder to remember. You log in on the new one and everything is where you left it.
The online website builders people compare, side by side
Every tool below runs in a browser, so “online” is not the differentiator. What you can do before paying, and what you can take with you afterwards, is. Entry prices are the annual rate.
| 8B | Wix | Squarespace | WordPress.com | Webflow | GoDaddy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry paid plan | $9/mo | $17.77/mo | $16/mo | $4/mo | $15/mo | $9.99/mo |
| Free plan that never expires | Yes, the whole design step | Yes | No, 14-day trial only | Yes | Yes, 2 pages and 1,000 visits | Yes, 50 AI credits a month |
| Branding on the free plan | Nothing published, so nothing branded | Wix ads and a wixsite.com address | n/a | WordPress.com ads and a subdomain | webflow.io subdomain | GoDaddy subdomain |
| How a site starts | One sentence | Template or setup wizard | Template | Theme | Blank canvas or template | Wizard and template |
| What ships with every page | HTML and CSS, no framework runtime | Page plus a JavaScript app runtime | Page plus platform JavaScript | Theme assets, plus whatever plugins add | Static page plus Webflow’s JavaScript | Page plus platform JavaScript |
| Performance out of the box | Above 90 on every Lighthouse metric | Depends on template and installed apps | Depends on template and blocks used | Depends on theme and plugins | Good if you keep the build lean | Depends on the sections you add |
| Weight of a simple brochure page | Tens of kilobytes of markup and styles | Platform bundle before your content | Platform bundle before your content | Theme bundle before your content | Lean, until CMS and interactions are added | Platform bundle before your content |
| Mobile layout | One responsive design, composed once | A separate mobile editor to keep in sync | Responsive from the template | Whatever the theme does | Edited per breakpoint by hand | Responsive from the template |
| Take the HTML with you | Yes, on Pro | No | No | Content exports, the design does not | Yes, on paid plans | No |
| What it takes to host it yourself | Any static host: S3, Netlify, GitHub Pages, shared hosting. No server, no database | Cannot be hosted elsewhere | Cannot be hosted elsewhere | PHP and a database, wherever it goes | Static files, hostable anywhere | Cannot be hosted elsewhere |
Published entry tiers as of September 2026, at the annual rate; several of these vendors price differently by country. The performance rows are deliberately qualitative for everyone but us: a Wix or WordPress site can score anywhere between excellent and dreadful depending on its template, its images and the apps bolted onto it, so a single number in those columns would be dishonest. Ours is a number because the output is the same shape every time. WordPress.com is the cheapest of the group and the least like the others: it is a blogging platform with a site builder attached, and the design still comes from a theme you pick.
From an empty tab to an address someone can type
Making a website online is worth very little if it stops at a preview. The round trip below is the whole distance, and every leg of it happens without leaving the browser.
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Open a tab
No account is needed to reach this point. The builder loads like any other page, on any browser released in the last few years.
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Say what the site is for
One sentence about the business and the job the site has to do. Not a form, not a category picker, not forty questions before you see anything.
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Push back until it is right
Ask for a different mood, shorter copy, a section moved. Each pass re-renders in front of you rather than queuing a build.
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Put it at a real address
Publishing hands you a working URL with hosting and a certificate already attached, or points your own domain at it if you have one.
What an online builder still has to be honest about
Working in a browser buys a great deal, and it costs a little. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. Four things are worth knowing before you commit a project to any online site builder, including this one.
It wants a connection
Designing and publishing both talk to a server. A brief drop-out is survivable; a week in a cabin with no signal is not the moment to redesign the homepage.
Very large media is slower to move
A short clip is fine. Uploading a folder of raw video over hotel wi-fi will be exactly as slow as it sounds, wherever the editor runs.
Old browsers age out
Modern layout and typography need a browser from roughly the last three years. That is a low bar, but it is not zero.
Your site is not a hostage
The honest answer to “what if you disappear?” is an export button. The whole site downloads as plain HTML and CSS, and because there is no database or server code behind it, any static host will run it unchanged.
An online website maker is judged by what it leaves behind
Convenience is the reason people search for a website builder online. It is not the reason they keep the result. What matters a week later is whether the page is any good and whether a search engine can read it.
So the output is ordinary web pages: server-rendered HTML with real headings, real stylesheets and structured data attached. A crawler gets the content on the first request without executing anything, and a developer can open the export and understand it in a minute. Being browser-based changed where you work, not what you get.
The design side is the part that takes explaining, because most tools that let you create a website online do it by handing you a template rather than composing one with a design engine.
Questions about building online
Do I have to install anything to use 8B?
No. There is no download, no extension and no desktop application. 8B is a website builder online in the literal sense: you open a URL and the editor is there.
Can I build a website online for free?
Yes. Designing is free, and you do not pay to describe a site, watch it get built, or restyle it. Paying starts when you want the finished site published at an address, on the Pro plan at $9 a month billed yearly.
Does it work on a Chromebook or an iPad?
Yes, and those are among the strongest cases for it. Neither machine will run installed design software, and neither has to: the entire builder is a web page.
What happens if I close the tab by accident?
Nothing is lost. The work is held server-side rather than in the tab, so reopening the page puts you back where you were. There is no save button because there is nothing local to save.
Can I make a website online from my phone?
You can. Describing a site, reviewing the result and asking for changes all work on a phone. Longer editing sessions are more comfortable on a larger screen, as they would be in any editor.
Does an online site builder work offline?
Not meaningfully, and no honest one does. Generating a design and publishing a page both need to reach a server. What you can do offline is open the exported HTML, since the export is a normal set of files.
Which browsers are supported?
Any current version of Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge. The builder uses standard modern web features rather than anything vendor-specific, so no browser is a second-class citizen.
Do I need an account to try it?
Not to see what it makes. You can describe a site and watch it get designed before creating anything. The account step arrives when you want to keep and publish the result.
Is an online website builder slower than desktop software?
The generating happens on hardware considerably faster than a laptop, so in practice it is the other way round. What travels over the connection is a page, not a workload.
Which online website builder should I use?
If you want the cheapest possible bill and are happy picking a theme, WordPress.com starts at $4 a month. If you want a template library and a wizard, Wix and Squarespace are built around exactly that. 8B is the answer when you do not want to pick a design at all. You describe the site, it gets composed for you, and you can see the result before paying anything. The table above is the short version.
Can I move the site somewhere else later?
Yes. The export is the whole site as plain HTML and CSS: static files with no server, no database and no runtime behind them. That means any static host will serve it: S3, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, or the cheapest shared hosting you can find. Building online does not mean the result is stuck online with us.
Open one more tab and describe it
The tab you are in is all the software involved. Describe the site and the next tab composes it - on this machine now, on a borrowed one tomorrow, with nothing to reinstall in between.