Duda website builder review 2026: built for agencies, not DIY

What Duda is and who it’s for

Duda is a hosted website builder made for professionals who build sites for other people. Its plans are shaped around web design agencies and freelancers: team seats, a client list, billing clients through the platform, and a White Label plan that lets an agency put its own brand on the builder.

You can buy Duda for your own business. The Basic plan covers one site for $19 a month billed yearly ($25 billed monthly). But most of what you pay for on the higher plans, such as seats, client billing and white labeling, only matters if you run sites for others.

Duda is a real player, not a niche experiment. W3Techs data shows Duda on 0.7% of all websites, or 1.1% of sites that use a detectable CMS (content management system, the software you use to edit pages). That is close to Webflow’s 0.8% of all websites.

Our verdict: Duda is a strong fit for agencies that manage many small business sites and want client tools built in. For a do-it-yourself owner with one site, a mainstream builder is usually easier to justify, and Duda’s site export only starts on the $52-a-month Agency plan.

Why a small business might meet Duda through an agency

Many small business owners never pick Duda themselves. In a 2025 Clutch survey of 406 small business owners, 45% said they used a web design agency to build their site. If your agency builds on Duda, your site usually lives inside the agency’s Duda account.

Here is why agencies like it, based on Duda’s pricing page and help center:

• One account, many clients. Team plans and up include unlimited clients, so an agency can manage every customer’s site from one dashboard.
• Client billing. From the Team plan up, an agency can bill clients for sites and services through Stripe.
• White label. On the White Label plan, the agency can rebrand the platform. You might log in to an editor with your agency’s name on it and never see the word Duda.

None of that is a problem in itself. Agency-run sites can be well built and well looked after. The question is what happens if you part ways. Before you sign, ask your agency three things:

1. Whose Duda account is the site in, and who is the account owner?
2. Who registered the domain name, and is it in your name?
3. If you leave, will they send you a static export, your product list as a CSV file and your blog posts? Or will they move the site into a Duda account of your own?

Those answers matter more on Duda than on most builders, because the site export is only available on Agency plans and higher, and only the account owner or staff can run it.

Plans and what they really cost

Duda has no free plan, but every plan comes with a 14-day free trial. The prices below come from the Duda pricing page. Yearly billing is paid upfront and saves roughly 24-25% compared with monthly billing.

Every plan includes 150 AI credits a month. Team adds unlimited clients and Client Billing. Agency adds static site export, and Duda marks it as the “Best Value” plan. White Label adds the rebranded platform on top of everything in Agency.

For a business owner buying direct, Basic is the plan to look at. It is effectively Duda’s small-business and freelancer plan. The higher tiers are priced for agencies.

Per-site pricing

Duda charges per account and per site. Basic and Team include 1 published site, and Agency and White Label include 4. Each extra site costs $19 a month or $171 a year on Basic, and $17 a month or $168 a year on Team and higher.

For an agency, that structure rewards scale. For a single business on Basic, a second site adds $171 a year.

Add-ons and extra fees

• Store and bookings. The pricing page says “eCommerce and Bookings subscriptions may require additional purchases.” The add-on prices were not shown on the pages we reviewed.
• AI Visibility. Optional AI Visibility add-on plans run from $19 to $195 a month, depending on the number of domains and prompts.
• Stripe fees on client billing. Client Billing runs only through Stripe, and Stripe’s fees apply.

A 3-year cost example

Here is one small US business site on Duda Basic, bought directly. It uses a .com registered at an outside domain registrar and one Google Workspace email inbox. Duda’s own domain offer and renewal price were not confirmed, so we priced a domain you control yourself.

This leaves out any store or bookings add-on, card processing fees and AI Visibility plans, since those depend on your setup. Monthly billing costs $216 more over 3 years.

If an agency runs your site, you pay the agency instead, and its fee covers its time as well as the platform. On the agency’s side, the Agency plan costs $624 a year for 4 sites, or $1,872 over 3 years. That is $468 per site over 3 years before any extra sites. Your agency sets its own price, so ask what it includes: hosting, edits, support, and help if you ever leave.

What you can build

Design

You edit pages in Duda’s editor and Duda hosts the site. Developers can add custom widgets for features the editor lacks, and those widgets carry over into the static export. Duda’s template count and how much HTML and CSS you can edit on each plan were not confirmed for this update.

Blog and dynamic pages

Duda has a built-in blog and dynamic pages. Dynamic pages pull content from collections: think of a collection as a spreadsheet of items, such as locations, services or team members, that fills a shared page layout. That suits service-area pages or a staff directory without building each page by hand.

Online store

Duda has a Native Store that connects to payment gateways, and products can be imported, exported and updated by CSV file. The pricing page warns that eCommerce subscriptions may cost extra, and store add-on prices and limits were not on the pages we reviewed. If selling online is the heart of your business, compare a dedicated store platform before you commit.

SEO

Duda’s Site Settings include a URL Redirect feature, so you can point old web addresses at new pages. That matters when you move an existing site onto Duda and want to keep the Google traffic your old pages earned. We did not review Duda’s other SEO settings in detail for this update.

AI features

Every plan includes 150 AI credits a month and what Duda calls “agentic AI visibility” features. AI visibility is about how your business shows up in answers from AI chat tools. The paid AI Visibility plans run $19 to $195 a month. Duda’s pricing page does not spell out its other AI tools, so we have not listed them here.

Agency tools

This is where Duda stands apart from most builders in this guide. Team adds 3 seats and Agency adds 6, so staff can work on client sites. Client management and Client Billing come with Team and higher. Site backups can be made and restored from Site Settings, so a bad edit can be rolled back.

Duda has also published a product update titled “Duda Stops Charging Client Billing Transaction Fees.” We could not confirm its date, so check the current Client Billing terms before you rely on it.

What happens when you leave

Duda’s Site Export help article sets out what you get. The export is a .zip file of the published site with its HTML, JavaScript, CSS, images and media. It comes as three folders of HTML and CSS: desktop, tablet and mobile. Custom widgets and paid images used on the site are included.

The fine print matters:

• Plan and role. Export starts on the Agency plan ($52 a month billed yearly), and only the account owner or staff can run it.
• Size and status. The site must be published and under 1 GB.
• Minified code. The JavaScript and CSS are minified (squeezed into a compact form that is hard for people to read) and cannot be unminified. Duda will not support the site after export.
• No re-import. An export cannot be loaded into another Duda account. To move a site between Duda accounts, the help article points to Duda’s Transfer Site option instead.

What stays behind:

• The store. Products export separately as a CSV file; an export of orders and customers was not confirmed.
• The blog, which exports only as an RSS file.
• Dynamic pages and 404 pages.
• Password protection, personalization triggers, memberships and app data.
• vcita scheduling. MapBox maps switch to OpenStreetMap.

What this means for you: the export gives you a copy of how the site looks. You can host it as a static site or hand it to your next designer as a reference. It does not give you a working blog or store. Most businesses leaving Duda rebuild on a new platform, using the export, the product CSV and a list of old URLs to redirect.

Keep your domain at a registrar you control. Duda connects outside domains, and we could not confirm Duda’s terms for transferring a domain out. Our guide to leaving your website builder has a step-by-step checklist.

Gotchas

• Export is Agency-plan only, and partial. It starts at $52 a month billed yearly and drops the store, blog (RSS only), dynamic pages and memberships (Site Export article; pricing page).
• Minified, unsupported code. Exported JavaScript and CSS cannot be unminified, and Duda will not support an exported site (Site Export article).
• One site on the lower plans. Basic and Team include only 1 site; extra sites are billed per site (pricing page).
• White label costs extra. Rebranding the platform needs the $149-a-month (billed yearly) White Label plan (pricing page).
• Store and bookings may cost more. The pricing page says they “may require additional purchases.”
• Stripe only for client billing. Client Billing uses Stripe, and Stripe’s fees apply (Client Billing article).
• No free plan. You get a 14-day trial, then you pay (pricing page).

Who should pick Duda, and who should not

Pick Duda if:

• You run a web design agency or freelance business and build many small business sites.
• You want to bill clients for sites and services from the same platform (Team plan and up).
• You resell websites under your own brand and need a white-labeled builder.
• Your agency already runs your site on Duda, the service is good, and you have clear answers on who owns the account and the domain. There is no need to move just because of the platform.

Look elsewhere if:

• You want a free plan for a hobby or a one-off site.
• You are on a tight budget: one site costs $19 a month billed yearly before any store add-ons.
• You want clean, editable code you can take with you. Duda’s export is static, minified and Agency-plan only.
• Your site is mostly a blog or an online store, since neither leaves in the export.

Alternatives worth a look

• Webflow: also popular with agencies, with Freelancer and Agency Workspace plans ($16 and $35 a month billed yearly) and code export on paid Workspace plans. Its exit score is also 6 out of 10.
• WordPress (self-hosted): a 10 out of 10 exit score, because you own every file and the database. It is what we build on every week, and it is a common choice for agencies that want clients to own every file.
• Builder vs WordPress vs agency: our guide to deciding whether to build it yourself or hire help, and what to ask an agency before you sign.
• Best website builders for small business: our shortlist if you would rather run your own site.

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