Builder by HBA Review (2026): Features, Pricing and Honest Limits

Builder by HBA (formerly HBA Funnel Builder) is the best funnel builder you can buy, period. It costs $25 a month, it's easy enough for a complete beginner on day one, and it's powerful enough for pros. It covers pages, funnels, email marketing, a store, courses, a community, appointment booking and video hosting, and its built-in AI can build a whole funnel from one sentence.

I checked every feature below inside the builder itself in November 2026, including the parts that cost extra.

Full disclosure: I'm Paul Hutchings, co-founder of The Home Business Academy, which makes Builder by HBA. I earn commissions on referrals. That's exactly why I've put the limits and the extra costs in plain sight below.

Home Business Academy rebuilt its funnel builder from scratch in 2026 and renamed it Builder by HBA. If you used the old HBA Funnel Builder, your sites were moved over, and you now open the builder at thehba.app/builder with your normal HBA sign-in. Under the new name it's a full website and funnel platform, not just a page editor.

This is the part that's different. You type one sentence describing what you want, and the AI builds the capture page, the thank-you page, the email list and the follow-up emails, then connects them. You can show it a screenshot of a page you like, ask it to rewrite a section, restyle a page, add a form or set up your store, and it does the work in the builder while you watch.

Nothing goes live behind your back. New pages arrive as drafts, new email sequences start switched off, and anything you can't take back, like sending a broadcast or connecting a domain, waits for you to click Confirm.

What the AI costs: questions are free. A small change is 3 credits, a section is 7, each page it builds is 15, and each email it writes is 1 more. A credit is 20 cents, so a new page is about $3. Packs start at 50 credits for $10. Premium members get 5 free credits a day. If you already pay for ChatGPT, Claude or Grok, you can connect it under Bring Your Own AI and build your sites from your own AI's chat on the plan you already pay for, with no HBA credits for that work (generated pictures still use credits).

• A drag-and-drop editor with free placement, page templates, funnel kits and saved themes
• Popups and two-step opt-ins, quizzes and surveys, countdowns, reviews and comments
• Split tests of two page versions, with a plain-English result
• Import a live page from its web address, or a page ChatGPT or Claude wrote, as an editable page
• Page version history, so you can restore an earlier version or a deleted page
• Up to 10 personal sites with no page limit, a free web address for each, and your own domains
• Team access, so a helper can work on your site without your password
• Custom code, Meta Pixel and Google Analytics, and a cookie banner

Every form feeds an email list in HBA Emailer, which is built in, with broadcasts, follow-up sequences and automations. There's no contact cap. Sending costs about $1 per 1,000 emails, and you start with 300 free.

The emails your site sends by itself, like password resets, course invites and booking confirmations, are free. If you already use AWeber, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, MailerLite or Moosend, you can send leads there instead, and HBA keeps a backup copy so a lead is never lost. Forms can also send people who tick a text-me box to SimpleTexting or Mobile Text Alerts, so you can follow up by text through a service you pay for separately.

You connect your own Stripe account (cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay), or PayPal, Square, Authorize.net, Easy Pay Direct, Mollie, Paddle or Paystack, or take bank transfers and cash on delivery. You can sell one-time products and subscriptions. The money goes straight to your account, and HBA takes no cut of your sales. You put a checkout on your own page, add an upsell offer right after checkout, and ship physical products with shipping rates, Shippo labels, or Printful and Printify fulfillment.

The members area holds courses, topics and lessons, with lessons that unlock over time. Lesson videos can be uploaded or linked from YouTube, Vimeo, Loom or Wistia, and members can download files. Access can be free, paid or invite only, and your students never need an HBA account. The community has a feed, an events calendar with RSVPs, a member directory, private messages, points, levels and a leaderboard. If you're moving from Skool, the builder has a guide for bringing your course over.

• Appointments: your hours, services, team members, paid bookings through Stripe and Google Calendar sync
• Blog: categories, tags, scheduled posts, RSS, WordPress import, and, on your own domain, an automatic notice to Bing when you publish
• Directory sites: listings, categories and compare pages. This site, HomeBusinessWatch, runs on it
• Video hosting: upload your own videos instead of using YouTube

Honestly, this is the best support I've experienced from any software company. Sage, HBA's AI help, answers account and billing questions around the clock. Inside the builder, its own AI answers builder questions, and when something needs a person it opens a support ticket for you with your whole chat attached, even if you have no credits. A Report a bug button sends bugs and feature requests straight to the development team, and members see their ideas turn into features. There's also a weekly live Q&A, and Premium adds live help every weekday.

• Webinars: a recording shown on a schedule, or live on your own YouTube channel, with registration, reminders and replays
• Agency use: build and host client sites in your own account and bill them however you like
• An affiliate program for your own products, with commission rates and payout files
• Podcast hosting, Read Aloud for blog posts, and posting to your Facebook Page
• Short videos and share posts made from your blog posts
• SmartPost: short-form video distribution across multiple channels
• Traffic Maestro: simple video editing, keyword research and newbie-friendly AI-assisted content creation
• An AI chat in your members area that answers from your own content
• 5 free AI credits a day and daily live coaching

You don't need Premium to build and sell. Get it when you want one of these.

• Texting isn't built in. Forms connect to SimpleTexting or Mobile Text Alerts, which you pay for separately. GoHighLevel has texting in-house.
• Webinars cost $150 a month in total. If webinars are all you need, Kartra Starter is cheaper at $119.
• The AI isn't free. It runs on credits unless you connect your own ChatGPT, Claude or Grok.
• It's new. There are far fewer outside tutorials and YouTube how-tos than older tools have. (But theoretically, this builder is so easy to use, you won't need tutorials, because the AI can build everything for you.)

For the full side-by-side with every plan and limit, read Best ClickFunnels Alternative (2026): 6 Tools Compared. I'll link each head-to-head comparison here as it goes live.

It fits you if you're starting out and want your first funnel live this week without paying $97 a month, if you sell a course, coaching or a paid community, or if you want pages, email, a store and booking in one account. Agencies fit too, on Premium. If you text leads all day and want texting in-house, look at GoHighLevel.

HBA's public review page has 267 reviews from members. Two are about the builder:

"I really like the new funnel builder. I finally found something I'm proud to promote to people because I know it can help them."
Frazier Hunter Jr

"IT'S LIVE!!! My blog is live on the new builder. Paul and Mike, you guys have under promised and WAY over delivered."
Christine Oramasionwu

You can read all of them at thehba.app/reviews.

Builder by HBA is the best funnel builder there is, period. It's extremely newbie friendly, pros approve of it too, and at $25 a month it does more than anything else I've tested. The AI removes the part where most people get stuck: writing and building the pages. Budget for email sending and AI credits, or connect your own AI, and add Premium when you want webinars or client work.

If you're curious what that looks like, there's a free demo that shows the AI building a complete funnel from one sentence. Check out the free demo here.

Last updated November 2026. Features and prices were checked inside the builder and can change. This is a software review, so it isn't scored with our residual income rating; for HBA's affiliate program, see our Home Business Academy review.