The Record: The First Half of 2026 in Website Builders

Why this file exists

Builder Watch's automated tracking went live in July 2026, but the research behind it covers the whole industry going back years: fact-checked pricing on 51 platforms, terms archives, and the community record. This is the opening of those files: the first half of 2026, in order, so the pattern is impossible to miss.

The timeline

• January: Mailchimp guts its free plan, stranding small senders who built on it. The same month, Wix ships Harmony, its biggest AI editor bet, with the same old answer on exporting your site: no.
• May 13: Webflow consolidates its site plans. Monthly Basic rises roughly 39 percent, CMS customers are auto-migrated upward around 34 percent, and a 50GB bandwidth cap turns some invoices into multiples. One documented case: about $476 a year to over $2,000.
• June 1: BigCommerce renames its plans, cuts GMV caps roughly in half, and adds a 2 percent fee for using outside payment processors, the exact fee structure it spent years marketing against, announced on a page not linked from its main navigation.
• July: the window Square staff gave for Weebly editor support runs out its clock, with development frozen for years and subscriptions still on sale. Our deathwatch file is open.

The pattern

Every one of these moves shares a shape: the platform changes the deal, and the user cannot take the site and leave. That asymmetry is the story of this industry, it is why this watchdog exists, and it is why every story here comes with receipts. Full details on each event are in the linked files below.

About Builder Watch

Builder Watch tracks the pricing pages and health of 47 website builders every day, keeps timestamped receipts, and reports only changes we can prove. It is run by Marketing By Magnet, which also builds PISCES, an AI website builder, so you know exactly where we stand: we compete with some of the companies we cover, and we publish the receipts so you never have to take our word for anything.