The first real decision about an author website is not the colours or the font. It is whether you build it yourself with WordPress, or rent a finished one from a hosted builder. Both can give you a good site. They ask very different things of you, and the price on the sign-up page is the smaller part of it.
This guide sets them side by side in money, in hours, and in how well each fits the way fiction authors actually work.
The short answer
- Choose WordPress if you want control over every detail, plan to sell books directly from your own site, need a particular plugin, or simply enjoy building things.
- Choose a hosted builder if you would rather spend your hours writing, and want the site to keep itself running.
The rest of this page is the reasoning, so you can check it against your own situation.
First, which WordPress?
There are two, and the names cause no end of confusion.
- WordPress.org is the free, open-source software. You rent hosting from a company of your choice, install WordPress on it, and run it yourself. This is what people usually mean by “a WordPress site”.
- WordPress.com is a hosted service run by Automattic, using the same software. It works like any other hosted builder, with plans from free upwards. The free plan shows ads and uses a wordpress.com address; every paid plan removes the ads and lets you install plugins.
Everything below about “WordPress” means the first: the self-hosted software. WordPress.com sits with the hosted builders.
What each really costs
| Option | Money, each year | Your time |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress on your own hosting | Hosting at about €40–150 a year (introductory prices often rise on renewal), a domain at €10–20, €0–100 for a theme, and up to €200 a year for paid plugins | A weekend to set up; half an hour a month for updates, backups and checks |
| WordPress.com | Free with ads; paid plans from $48 a year, billed annually | An afternoon to set up; little upkeep |
| Squarespace or Wix | About €130–350 a year on an annual plan | An afternoon to a weekend to lay out the pages; little upkeep |
| A builder made for authors | From free to about $240 a year | An hour or two to fill in your books; almost none after |
Prices were checked on 16 October 2026. They are approximate, change often, and depend on your currency, so check each service before you choose. The pattern is steadier than the numbers: WordPress is cheap in money and expensive in time, and the hosted builders are the reverse.
Time: the cost nobody budgets for
A self-hosted WordPress site is a small piece of software that you now look after. WordPress itself, your theme and each plugin all release updates, and an update can occasionally break something the others relied on. Most WordPress security holes are found in plugins rather than in WordPress itself, so every plugin you add is one more thing to keep current. You will also want backups, and a plan for the day the site shows a white screen the week before your launch.
None of that is difficult, and plenty of authors do it happily. But it is real time, it tends to arrive when you least have it, and it is time not spent on the next book. On a hosted builder, all of it is somebody else’s job.
Design: a blank canvas or a finished look
WordPress, Squarespace and Wix all hand you a page builder. That is freedom, and it is also work: you decide where every block goes, on every page, and you keep the pages consistent as the site grows. Authors with a strong visual sense often love it. Many others find that the site ends up looking like the template they started from, after a weekend spent moving blocks around.
A builder made for authors goes the other way. You choose from a handful of themes, and the theme makes the layout decisions. You lose freedom; you gain a site that looks finished on the day you sign up, and stays consistent however many books you add.
Books are not pages
This is the difference that matters most to fiction authors, and the one general builders hide best. A book has a title, a cover, a blurb, a series and a number in it, formats, a release date and a list of shops. On Squarespace, Wix or a plain WordPress theme, a book is a page you design by hand. The series page is another page, where you type the same titles again in order, and the home page is a third place you update when the next book comes out. Change a buy link and you may need to change it in three places.
In a builder made for authors, a book is a record. You type it once, and the theme puts it on its own page, on its series page in the right order, and on the home page when it is the newest. WordPress can get close to this with a free book plugin such as MyBookTable or Novelist, at the cost of one more plugin to keep updated.
Search engines: closer than people think
All of these can rank well. What decides whether your site appears when someone searches for your name or your books is mostly the same everywhere: a clear title on every page, a description, a page for each book, fast pages that work on a phone, and links to your site from the places you appear online. WordPress needs an SEO plugin for some of this. The hosted builders do the basics for you, and a builder made for authors can go further, describing each book to search engines as a book with an author and a series. If you want the full list, the guide to making an author website has it.
Leaving, if you ever need to
Ask how you would leave before you start. A self-hosted WordPress site is yours entirely: you can move it to another host whenever you like. WordPress.com exports your posts and pages in a file the self-hosted version can import, though not your theme or plugins. Squarespace exports only part of a site, and Wix sites cannot be moved to another host at all; you rebuild them somewhere else by hand.
On Draft Margin, one button emails you everything: books and chapters as Markdown, settings as JSON, Members as a spreadsheet and every file you uploaded. The why it is free page says more about how leaving works, and what happens if the platform ever closes.
Which suits which author
A debut, one book
Keep it simple. A hosted builder will do, and you can move later when the second book needs a series page. Do buy your domain now.
A series author publishing wide
A builder that understands books and series will save you the most time, because the reading order and the buy links for every store are the whole job.
An author selling direct
If you sell ebooks and signed paperbacks from your own shop, you need a real store. WordPress with WooCommerce, or a dedicated shop platform, is the right tool, and the cost in time is worth paying.
An author who blogs a lot
If the blog is the heart of what you do, with categories, guest posts and years of archives, WordPress was built for exactly that and remains the best at it.
A traditionally published author
Your publisher handles the shop pages; you need a home for your name, your books in order, a bio and a contact page. Anything simple and well made will do, so choose whatever takes the least of your time.
The bottom line
If you would enjoy running a website, WordPress will repay the effort, and no hosted builder will match its freedom. If you would rather the website ran itself, choose a hosted builder, and if your books are the point of the site, choose one that knows what a book is.
Draft Margin is a hosted builder made for fiction, and it is free: no ads, no paid plan. Open the live demos, with real books in them, or compare the themes. If you are comparing author builders, our look at Pub Site and its alternatives goes through the field honestly.