An AI website, a Wix site or a custom build: what each costs and how long it lasts

Plan prices are the ones each company shows a Canadian visitor, read twice on its own pricing page on October 19, 2026, on annual billing, for the plan each company marks as recommended or most popular for a business site with a blog, forms and an online store, or otherwise the cheapest plan that fits (10Web’s AI Starter, though 10Web marks AI Ultimate as best value; Framer’s Pro, because Basic stops at 30 pages). Framer has no built-in store, so its row is the plan with a blog and forms. Most also sell cheaper plans without a store.

Sources, each read twice on October 19, 2026: Wix, Framer, GoDaddy, Squarespace, Durable, 10Web and Hostinger pricing pages. Taxes extra. Three-year totals are 36 months at the annual-billing rate; Wix’s two- and three-year plans, shown only after sign-in, can cost less, and GoDaddy’s annual price includes a first-year discount and it publishes no renewal price, so its three-year total is likely low. Hostinger’s CA$4.99 is a promotional price that needs 48 months (CA$239.52) paid on day one, which covers all three years; it renews at CA$23.69 a month after month 48. Wix shows only yearly prices on its public plans page. 10Web’s AI Starter plan allows 10,000 visitors a month. Meridian15’s build range is the one it publishes for larger brand and ecommerce sites; Meridian15 hosts and manages the sites it builds under a Website Care Plan starting at CA$100/mo plus GST. The client registers and pays for its own domain.

On plan fees alone the builders win by a factor of 20 or more, and for a small site that is the right comparison. For a large site it leaves out the work. A builder’s monthly fee buys software and hosting. It does not buy a finished sitemap, finished writing for 40 pages, the photography, the design system, the integrations or the hours someone on your team spends building and maintaining it. A custom build’s price is mostly that work. For scale, Calgary studios that sell set packages start a 4 to 12 page business site at a median of CA$3,250 before GST, in our read of 19 Calgary studios’ prices.

An AI website builder

The benefit is speed and price. A builder like Durable, Hostinger, GoDaddy Airo or Framer turns a short prompt into a draft site in minutes, with hosting included and nothing to install. In our view, for a new business testing an idea, or a sole trader who needs to be findable this week, that is a real product at a fair price.

What it is not, in our view, is a large site yet. The draft is built from what your prompt said, and the plans are metered: Framer’s Pro plan includes 150 pages (more cost CA$27 a month per 100, up to 700), 10Web’s starter plan allows 10,000 visitors a month, and several tools ration AI credits.

A Wix site

Wix’s Business plan includes 100 GB of storage, 25 lead-capture forms and standard ecommerce, with hosting and security monitoring included. In Meridian15’s July 2026 study of 350 Calgary business homepages, every Wix site in the sample shipped structured data, a rate only Squarespace matched. In our view, a capable owner or a template designer can build a good mid-size Wix site.

The ceiling is the platform. A Wix site can hold up to 298 pages, including up to 100 static pages, and you build within what the editor and its apps allow.

A custom build

A custom build is designed around your business, your customers and your content, and coded to do exactly what the site needs: the integrations, the booking flow, the store, the speed budget. You decide what every page loads. With a Meridian15 build, the code, design and content are the client’s once the build is paid for, so the site can move to another host or another studio whenever the client asks; until then, and for as long as the client wants, Meridian15 hosts and manages it. Whoever builds your site, get ownership in writing: under the Copyright Act, an assignment only counts in writing, signed by the owner (section 13(4)).

The cost is money and time. Meridian15’s larger builds run 4 to 8 weeks or longer from kickoff, depending on scope, and motion-led builds 1 to 3 months.

This is the question that decides what the next redesign costs. Each company’s own help pages, read twice on October 19, 2026:

Sources, each read twice on October 19, 2026: Wix (export, products, orders, blog posts, cancelling), Squarespace (export, products, cancelling), Hostinger (code export, content export, expiry), GoDaddy (export, downgrading), 10Web, Durable help pages, and Framer’s two help articles, one and the other.

No method-published survey of how often businesses redesign their websites exists that we could find, so the honest answer is a list of the things that force a rebuild, each from the company’s own documentation. Where the timeline is our opinion, it is labelled.

Wix: until a new template or a newer Wix editor

Wix decides when the platform changes. Wix began moving Editor X sites to Wix Studio automatically, one way, with no revert, though Wix says the move needs no rebuild. Sites on the classic Wix Editor cannot be migrated to Studio, and Wix launched a third editor, Harmony, in January 2026, which classic sites cannot migrate to either. Wix also says you cannot switch an existing site to a different template, so a redesign that starts from a new template is a new site. Leaving Wix means rebuilding the site itself; the domain can move, and products and orders export to a spreadsheet. Our opinion: a large Wix site lasts until the next redesign, or until you want features only a newer Wix editor has.

AI builders: as long as the product exists in its current form

The vendor’s roadmap sets the lifespan. Wix retired its first AI builder, ADI, on November 10, 2024: published ADI sites were moved into the Wix Editor, and unpublished ADI sites inactive for six months or more were deleted. GoDaddy retired its Airo Plus plan on September 30, 2026, moving those accounts to Airo AI Builder; existing sites stayed as they were. Where a builder exports only content, a redesign or a move is a rebuild of the design. Our opinion: plan on the AI builder’s site lasting as long as the product does, and not longer.

Custom: scheduled maintenance, and a redesign when the business needs one

A custom site has no platform that can force a redesign, but it does have scheduled upkeep. The software it runs on has published support dates: Node.js long-term support lines end on fixed dates (version 22 on April 30, 2027, version 24 on April 30, 2028), and the Astro framework Meridian15 builds on released Astro 5 in December 2024, Astro 6 in March 2026 and Astro 7 in June 2026, with security fixes for the previous major version only. Hosts announce runtime changes in advance: Netlify ended Node.js 18 and 20 for Build Plugins on June 16, 2026. Our opinion: budget for planned maintenance every 12 to 30 months, and redesign when the business changes, not when a vendor does.

Every option: Google and accessibility

Some changes reach every site. Google replaced First Input Delay with Interaction to Next Paint as a Core Web Vital on March 12, 2024, and since July 5, 2024 content that is not accessible at all with a mobile device can no longer be indexed. Ontario has required WCAG 2.0 AA for organizations with 50 or more Ontario employees since January 1, 2021. Alberta has no private-sector website accessibility law in force as of October 2026: the Accessible Alberta Act, a private member’s bill, was defeated on March 23, 2026. On Wix and most builders you wait for the platform to respond to changes like these; on a custom site, or a builder that gives you the code, you or your developer make them.

• An AI builder if you need a simple site this week, you are testing a business idea, and you accept that you may rebuild later.
• Wix if you want a mid-size site you or a designer can maintain without a developer, and you are comfortable staying on Wix for the life of the site.
• A custom build if the site is a main sales channel, it needs integrations or a store beyond what a builder’s plans and apps offer, or you want to own the code and be free to move it to any host.

Plan prices, page limits, export rules and cancellation terms were read on each company’s own pricing page, help centre and terms on October 19, 2026, twice, in two separate page loads, for the plan each company marks as recommended or most popular for a business site with a blog, forms and a store, or otherwise the cheapest plan that fits (10Web marks AI Ultimate as best value, but AI Starter is the cheapest that fits), as a Canadian visitor. The replace and refresh triggers come from the same companies’ own help pages and announcements, the Node.js release schedule, the Astro documentation, Google’s own documentation, Ontario’s accessibility regulation and the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. No company named here paid for or reviewed this post. Meridian15’s own figures are the build range it publishes, its build timelines and its Website Care Plan.

The limits: plan prices change, and several companies changed theirs or their products in the past two years, so check the live page before you buy. Where a timeline is our opinion rather than a published fact, it says so.

In our view, a builder is cheap to start and, where the site cannot be exported, expensive to leave. A custom build is expensive to start, and what it costs to keep is a Website Care Plan starting at CA$100/mo and planned maintenance on dates you can see in advance, with no platform deciding when it ends. For a small site, start cheap. For a large site that sells, price the whole life of the site, not the first month.

If you are weighing a rebuild, tell us what the site needs to do and we will tell you which of the three fits, including when the answer is not us.

• Custom Web Design vs. Website Builders (Wix, Squarespace, Webflow)
• Wix vs Shopify vs WordPress vs Webflow. What Each Website Builder Actually Costs a Calgary Business.
• How Much Does Web Design Cost in Calgary? (2026 Pricing Guide)
• Website Redesign Services: Scope, Cost, and Timeline