> cheap site (and I mean that in a good way!)
I guess English needs different words for the German "Günstig" and "Billig". They both translate to cheap, but "Günstig" means something like cost-effective/affordable (but I guess not quite?), and is positive, while "Billig" is strictly negative.
English already has a lot of words for both meanings. It's more that American culture has designated anything low cost as being of poorer quality.
Has that changed over time? Nearly fifty years ago, when self-serve gasoline pumping at gas stations was first coming into widespread use, I (native English speaker) was in Germany and remember a slogan I saw at gas stations to promote it: "selbst tanken ist billiger tanken" (sorry if I misspelled/mis-capitalized). So it seems Billig did not have such a negative connotation then.