13 Best Free Website Builders of 2024 (Pros & Cons)
If you’re looking to build a website for free without hiring a web developer, you probably wonder what the best website builders are. This blog post will reveal the best free website builders in the market today.
Wix
Squarespace
Bluehost Builder
Strikingly
Free website building software is becoming popular nowadays. That’s because not everyone can afford to hire a developer or design a website from scratch.
While building your first website might seem complicated, you need the right website builder tools to simplify everything.
However, with the vast options of website builders in today's market, it can be challenging to choose the best one for your needs. In this article, we have taken significant considerations like design, ease of use, and security in mind and reviewed the top 13 free website builders that can assist you in creating your website.
Best Free Website Builders to Create a Website
Below are my recommendations for the 13 best free website builders and what each of them has to offer you both in their paid and free plans.
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Bluehost Builder
- Strikingly
- Webflow
- 10web
- Weebly
- Carrd
- Jimdo
- Webnode
- Ucraft
- Mozello
- Site123
1. Wix
Best for Small Businesses
The simplicity of Wix is why I recommend the site builder. I especially love their drag & drop editor, which enables even a total beginner to launch a website in minutes. Wix ranks overall as the best free website builder for people looking to get their first website online with fewer hassles.
Wix is among the most popular website builders with a whopping market share of 200 million users. The platform makes creating a website straightforward and fast, making it a go-to free website builder for beginners, freelancers, and small businesses.
One of their unique tools is the Wix ADI which uses artificial design intelligence (AI) to help you create a website fast. Basically, you just input the details to the AI builder that you want your website to incorporate, and the tool will automatically create a website that matches the design preferences.
Key Features
Easy to Use
Wix gives you more control to build a professional-looking website without knowing how to code. Their intuitive drag & drop editor and the AI page builder enable everyone to create a website fast even though it's their first time creating one.
800+ pre-built templates
unlike other website builders, Wix provides a vast number of professionally built design templates. Each template is categorized into the type of website you want to build. Whether you want to create a portfolio site, a blog, or a business website Wix got you covered.
Wix editor
the page builder has the simplest-to-use editor that gives you more creative design control. You can drag elements and columns and add visual effects to your webpage. If you are new to the platform, you can create a demo website and familiarize yourself with the editor before signing up for their paid plans.
Wix ADI
the design tool allows you to create a great website using artificial design intelligence quickly. Using the Wix ADI, you get a wholly designed site with text and graphics built-in after answering a few questions. This saves you more time figuring out the best templates to use that complement your desired aesthetic and business brand.
Integration with marketing tools
Wix has an inbuilt marketing platform that you can integrate and boost your site conversions. The platform allows you to set up triggers based on your visitors' actions, segment your audience, create customized email marketing campaigns, optimize your site for search engines and monitor your website visits.
Wix mobile editor
the platform allows you to create mobile-friendly web pages.
Wix owner app
apart from creating mobile-friendly pages, Wix has a mobile app that allows you to manage your website right on your mobile devices. With Wix App, you can share your blog posts, live chat with your audience, track your website performance, and fulfill orders for your online shop, just to mention a few.
Wix app market
the platform has over 250 apps that you can integrate with your website to add more functionalities and grow your business. Whether you want to create popups to boost your site's conversion or want to set up an online store for your website, there's an app for that.
Wix Pricing
Wix offers a free plan and seven paid plans.
The free version allows you to build your website but does not include a custom domain. This implies that your website will end with a wixsite.com extension domain and have a banner ad at the top indicating that your website is built using Wix.
The website builder offers paid packages in two-tier plans: the ‘Website’ and ‘Business’ plans.
- Custom Domain
- 1GB Bandwidth
- 500MB Disk Space
- 24/7 Support
- Free Custom Domain
- No Wix Ads
- 2GB Bandwidth
- 3GB Disk Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- 10GB Disk Space
- SEO Booster App
- Visitor Analytics App
- Priority Customer Support
- 35GB Disk Space
- Professional Logo
- Lead-Capture Forms
The ‘Website’ plan has four paid packages.
- Connect Domain: costs $4.50 per month
- Combo: costs $8.50 per month
- Unlimited: costs $12.50 per month
- VIP: costs $24.50 per month
- 500+ Ecommerce Templates
- Unlimited Products
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Sell on Instagram, Facebook, etc.
- 20GB Storage Space
- Multiple Currencies
- Sell on Amazon & eBay
- Modalyst Dropshipping - 250 Items
- Sell Subscriptions
- 35GB Storage Space
- Priority Customer Support
- Unlimited Modalyst Dropshipping
- 50GB Storage Space
- Upload Unlimited Videos
- 500 Auto Sales Tax Calculations
Learn more about Wix pricing or beautiful examples of Wix
Wix’s ‘Business’ plan includes three pricing packages.
- Business VIP: costs $35 per month
- Business Unlimited: costs $25 per month
- Business Basic: costs $17 per month
2. Squarespace
Best for Creatives
Squarespace is the best free website builder to create a professional, sleek, and modern-looking website with minimal effort. The platform is best suited for creative professionals who want to showcase their work without digging into the technical details of web design.
Squarespace is one of the top-rated site builders in the market today. The platform is known for its classy design and ease of use, enabling even beginners to create great-looking websites. You can choose from a collection of beautifully-designed templates or start with a blank canvas and design something original.
The website builder allows you to integrate a blog into your website easily. If you are an artist and want to create a blog with visual-rich content, Squarespace is a fantastic site builder platform worth trying.
Key Features
AI-powered page builder
finding a suitable template for your business can be time-consuming. But while using Squarespace, their artificial design intelligence builder asks you a few questions about the type of website you want to build and then recommends the best template for your site.
Aesthetic designs
the page builder has a collection of beautiful and professionally built website templates. If the appearance of your website is your priority, Squarespace is the best free website builder to get started with as a beginner.
Excellent support
Squarespace offers 24-hour support to their customers through live chat, email support, and Twitter support. They also have a collection of educational video tutorials, an insightful knowledge base, and a community forum to help you tackle your problems.
Integration with marketing software
to help grow your business, Squarespace has a marketing software platform you can integrate with your website. You can connect your website to your favorite social media platform, easily optimize your site for search engines and launch email campaigns using their inbuilt email marketing tool or Mailchimp.
Squarespace’s extensions
the website builder platform has over 33 carefully selected third-party plugins to help you manage, add extra functionality to your site, and grow your business website.
Custom domain
Squarespace plans give you a free domain for your first year. If you have a domain, you can easily connect it with your Squarespace website and give your business a unique touch of your brand.
Blogging
unlike other website builders, Squarespace enables you to add a blog section to your website and share valuable content with your audience. Their blogging module comes with various outstanding templates and powerful analytics to track the performance of your blog posts. You can also add the commenting feature using Disqus to engage with your readers.
E-commerce integration
if you plan to sell products online, Squarespace offers a comprehensive e-commerce platform. They offer templates and tools to launch your online shop where you can add your payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.
Squarespace video studio
the platform offers an app to help you grow your website with the power of video content. Using the app, you access numerous templates that you can use to create and edit your videos.
Pop-ups and banners
Squarespace allows you to boost your website’s conversions by using promotional popups and banners.
CSS and JS customization
if you know how to code, you can improve the appearance of your website using CSS and JS. This enables you to customize your website to your liking further.
Squarespace Pricing
- Mobile-Friendly Websites
- 100+ Templates
- Free Custom Domain
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- 2 Contributors
- Ecommerce Functionality
- Unlimited Products
- 3% Transaction Fees
- Custom Code (CSS & JS)
- Unlimited Contributors
- 0% Transaction Fees
- Point of Sale
- On-site Checkout
- Product Reviews
- Facebook and Instagram Selling
- Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Advanced Shipping
- Advanced Discounts
- Subscription Selling
- Commerce APIs
Learn more about Squarespace pricing or Squarespace ecommerce examples
Technically, Squarespace does not offer a free plan. But they do offer a 14-day free trial in all their plans. You can create a demo website using their templates and get to know the platform better before going for their paid plans.
Squarespace offers four paid plans.
- Personal: costs $14 per month
- Business: costs $23 per month
- Basic Commerce: costs $27 per month
- Advanced Commerce: costs $49 per month
3. Bluehost Website Builder
Best for WordPress Sites
Bluehost Builder has an intuitive interface and an exhaustive range of pre-made WordPress sites templates customizable with your images, text, and color choices. The platform is easy to use, making it the best free website builder for WordPress beginners who want to create beautiful websites yet are confused about where to start.
Bluehost Website Builder is a compelling alternative for anybody seeking to create WordPress sites without design experience. Bluehost is a big name in the hosting business, reputable for their simple dashboard in building a WordPress site.
Unlike most website builders, the Bluehost Builder is built on top of WordPress CMS and is fully integrated into Bluehost's web hosting services. The platform does offer a custom website-building interface in the Bluehost dashboard, but still, you need to install the WordPress script to be able to manage your website’s backend.
That means you can customize and expand the capabilities of your site with the huge array of WordPress plugins available in their directory while still building it with Bluehost Builder's editor.
Key Features
300+ design templates
want to build any WordPress site from scratch, no worries. Bluehost Builder provides over 300 WordPress themes templates that you can choose from depending on your industry. The design templates are easily customizable to build a website of your choice.
Blog management
Bluehost Website Builder enables you to add the blog section to your website. You can create a blog page with separate areas for displaying your blog posts and then manage them right from the Website Builder.
The setup wizard
the website builder includes intuitive website setup steps to configure your website's basic features, settings, and layouts, such as choosing the appropriate template that matches your business brand and changing your website logo and topography.
Free marketing tools
Bluehost Website Builder avails free marketing software that you can use to grow your business website. You can effortlessly build landing pages, integrate an email marketing tool using Creative Mail, add social share buttons and even create custom forms for your website.
Drag-and-drop editor
Bluehost is the best free website builder for people who have no prior experience in building WordPress websites. Their editor lets you drag elements or sections, drop them to your page, and customize their content easily.
SEO settings
The site builder enables you to create search-engine-friendly pages. The platform allows you to add the SEO title and meta descriptions for your pages.
E-commerce feature
Bluehost Website Builder makes it easy to set up an online shop if you are planning to sell products online on your website. Using Woocommerce, you can create an online store in just a few clicks, integrate with your payment gateways, upload unlimited products and install a shipping plugin.
Responsive mobile editing
Bluehost Website Builder templates use AI to make your web pages visually responsive on mobile devices automatically. You don't have to manually edit your pages to be friendly on mobile devices.
Custom CSS
the platform allows you to change the layout of your website using CSS. If you know how to code, this is a plus feature to help you gain more control of your web pages.
Free domain
when you sign up for the Bluehost website builder, you get a free domain name for your website valid for one year.
Image library
the platform has unlimited free stock photos that you can upload and use to build your free websites.
Bluehost Website Builder Pricing
- Bluehost-Certified Themes for WP
- WordPress-Optimized Hosting
- Drag-and-Drop Page Builder
- Free Domain Name
- Unlimited Websites
- Free Daily Backups for 1st Year
- 40GB SSD Storage
- Yoast SEO Free
- Unlimited Products
- Store Analytics
- 100GB SSD Storage
- Multiple Payment Options
Learn more about Bluehost pricing or Bluehost review
Since the website builder is based on WordPress, you’ll need to buy a hosting account with Bluehost to gain access to Bluehost Builder’s features for free.
Bluehost Builder comes with three pricing packages:
- Basic: costs $2.95 per month.
- Pro: costs $9.95 per month.
- Online store: costs $24.95 per month.
4. Strikingly
Best for One Page Websites
I love Strikingly because it takes care of many technical details for you, such as hosting and mobile optimization. The platform has a simple and intuitive interface, with all essential features integrated into a single dashboard. It is the best free website builder for beginners who want to design professional-looking one page websites in minutes.
Strikingly’s main selling point is the ease of use and attractive aesthetics of its design templates that enable you to create one page sites or minimalistic landing pages.
The platform features an intuitive visual editor which allows you to build your site by simply dragging and dropping content blocks wherever you want them to appear on your landing pages.
Strikingly is a great platform to try if you are looking for the best free website builder to create an online portfolio, simple landing pages, or a basic business website.
Key Features
Simple blogging platform
Strikingly avails a blogging function that you can add to your site. The blogging feature is simple to launch and use and has the essential tools to create your first blog. That is from a minimalistic content editor to analytics features that will help track the performance of your blogging site.
Social media Integration
Strikingly allows you to connect your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter account to your website, where you can show your social media feed directly on your website. With such, your web visitors can follow up on your updates across the social media channel that you are in.
Inbuilt analytics
tracking your web visitors has been made accessible on Strikingly. On this website-building platform, you can see how many people visited your website, their geographical locations, and whether they use mobile or desktop devices.
Easy to use website editor
Strikingly has the most straightforward website editor. Their page-building tools allow you to easily drag elements to your page, edit your templates and publish your website immediately. The reason is to keep everything simple and avoid wasting time trying to figure out how some functions work.
E-commerce integration
do you want to sell products online? Strikingly offers all the basic features you need to launch your online shop where you can connect it with Stripe and Paypal to receive payments from your customers.
HTTPS Connections
to enhance the security of your website, Strikingly makes sure that your website uses the secure transmission protocol. This ascertains that your website is safe for your website visitors.
Form builder
the website builder platform enables you to create signup forms and contact forms for your website. This enables your website visitor to enroll in your service, sign up for your newsletter, and receive feedback from them through contact forms.
Strikingly Pricing
- 190+ Mobile-Friendly Templates
- 1GB Storage
- 50 GB Bandwidth
- Sell One Product
- 24/7 Chat Support
- 3 Sites (100 pages max)
- 20GB Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Up to 300 Products
- 2% Transaction Fees
- 5 Sites (100 pages max)
- 100GB Storage
- Unlimited Products
- 0% Transaction Fees
- Priority Customer Support
Strikingly has a free version but has many limitations and does not include a custom domain.
However, their paid plans are charged as follows.
- Limited: costs $12 per month
- Pro: costs $20 per month
- VIP: costs $59 per month
5. Webflow
Best for Designers
Webflow gives you more design creativity control in creating your website. While the platform may look complicated to a beginner, Webflow allows you to create great-looking websites without coding.
Webflow is a unique website builder that combines website building functionalities with a CMS. The platform works as a website builder, but it also carries high-level customizations for content management systems like WordPress and Drupal.
Unlike most CMS, where you need to code Webflow eliminates the barrier and makes it easy to build a great-looking website without coding. However, its editor is not the simplest to hang around as a green beginner. The platform offers a plethora of technical customizations, making it not the best fit for beginners who want to set up a website in minutes.
Key Features
In-depth learning materials
since Webflow can be technical for beginners, they have included a library of over 400+ free lessons showing you how to use their platform to create a website.
Advanced design customization
Webflow is the best free website builder for web designers. The platform offers over 100 professionally designed website templates that are highly customizable and gives high-level control of HTML5, CSS3, and JS, all in a drag and drop functionality.
Webflow Editor
the platform features an advanced content editor, which gives you more creative control over your content. Webflow Editor enables you to create content easily and optimize it for search engines.
Integration with your tools
to add more functionality to your website, Webflow allows you to integrate your favorite app to your site and create effective workflows using Zapier.
Visual aesthetics
Webflow is the best free website builder to add dynamic elements to your website and make visually appealing. The website builder allows web designers to add a scrolling parallax, animations, trigger interactions, and present effects without necessarily using CSS and JS to add the effects.
Ecommerce integration
Webflow avails all the essential tools you need to sell online. You get access to many templates that you can use to create an online shop, integrate your payment system, and include automatic tax calculations for your customers during checkout.
Robust SEO tools
unlike other website builders that offer basic SEO features, Webflow goes a step further by allowing you to edit your schema markup, update your sitemaps and manage your 301 redirects.
Impressive free web hosting
Webflow offers free web hosting and allows you to connect your custom domain to your website. Their hosting is powered by AWS, which includes 100+ data centers to give your visitors outstanding speed performance regardless of their location.
Webflow Pricing
Webflow offers a free plan which allows beginners to familiarize themselves with their editor and create stunning free websites. On the other hand, its paid packages are offered under three categories.
- 40+ Mobile-Friendly Templates
- 50GB Bandwidth
- Unlimited Storage
- Add Custom Code
- Site with 100 Pages
- 2000 CMS Items*
- 200GB Bandwidth
- On-site Search
- 3 Content Editors
- API Access
- 10000 CMS Items*
- 400GB Bandwidth
- Advanced Security
- 10 Content Editors
- Customer Success Manager
The Site Plans are most suited for content creators and marketing websites. Here’s the pricing structure for the Site Plans packages.
- Starter: this is Webflow’s free plan.
- Basic: costs $15 per month.
- CMS: costs $20 per month.
- Business: costs $45 per month.
- Enterprise: you need to contact them to get a custom pricing
- 100 Ecommerce Templates
- 2000 CMS Items*
- 500 Ecommerce Items*
- 2% Transaction Fee
- 10000 CMS Items*
- 5000 Ecommerce Items*
- 10 Content Editors
- 0% Transaction Fee
- 10000 CMS Items*
- 15000 Ecommerce Items*
- 15 Content Editors
- 0% Transaction Fee
Learn more about Webflow pricing
The Ecommerce Plans are suited for eCommerce websites.
- Standard: costs $42 per month
- Plus: costs $84 per month
- Advanced: costs $235 per month
The Workspace Plans are suited for web design teams and cost as follows.
- Starter: the free plan allows only two hosted sites
- Core: costs $28 per month.
- Growth: costs $60 per month
- Enterprise: you need to reach out to their sales team and get a custom pricing
6. 10Web
A Full-Stack Platform for WordPress Sites
10Web is a website-building platform that aims to give users an all-in-one powerhouse solution for WordPress sites. The platform provides the essential tools, services, and systems you need to build WordPress websites optimized for speed and quality—features that other website builders can hardly provide.
With 10web, there is no need to install third-party plugins or themes as they are all part of the platform. This is beneficial because everything is vetted beforehand, which means you don’t have to worry about buying extra tools such as premium cache plugins to improve the performance of your website.
Key Features
PageSpeed booster
to enhance the excellent speed performance of your website, 10Web comes with an inbuilt speed optimization plugin. The 10Web Speed Optimizer plugin automatically handles your caching, minification, async CSS, and JS files and enables lazy image loading. The platform is integrated with the Google PageSpeed Module to enable users to get the best page speed score on the platform.
Powered by Google Cloud
10Web uses Google Cloud to give your website an outstanding uptime and speed performance.
AI-powered Elementor based builder
the platform comes with a builder that uses artificial intelligence to design your website. You just need to enter your site’s URL, and the AI will automatically set up your website using the most appropriate design. The page builder is based on Elementor but includes all the Elementor Pro addons and more to help you customize your website even better.
Real-time backup
10Web offers automatic backups for your website, which are saved on reliable cloud storage platforms like Amazon S3 and Dropbox. This ensures that your website is secure such that in case of any technical fault, a hack, or accidental delete, you can restore the most recent backup of your website.
Automated Website SEO
this is the most exciting feature on 10Web. The platform includes an SEO toolset to optimize your website for search engines. 10Web Website SEO enables you to generate XML sitemaps, monitor and fix 404 errors, add canonical URLs and includes a search analytics feature to monitor the keywords that lead visitors to your website—just to mention a few of the many features that their SEO tool offers
Professionally built templates
the platform has over 20 pre-made designs that you can choose from. The templates are highly optimized for mobile devices, lightweight and stunning.
50+ premium plugins
10Web comes with a vast array of essential premium WordPress plugins, which you access all for free. This is beneficial since you don't need to spend extra cash buying a premium plugin for your business website
10Web Pricing
- AI Website Building
- 25K Visitors
- 10GB Storage Space
- 24/7 Live Chat
- 75 GB of Auto Backups
- 60K Visitors
- 15GB Storage Space
- WordPress Multisite
- 250 GB of Auto Backups
- 180K Visitors
- 50GB Storage Space
- Priority Support
10Web does not offer a free plan in their solution to create free websites. But they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee in all their paid plans.
Here is 10Web’s pricing structure.
- Personal: costs $10 per month
- Premium: costs $24 per month
- Agency: costs $60 per month
Their AI Builder is offered as a separate package in case you are not using 10Web to host your website. The AI builder standalone package costs $25 per month.
7. Weebly
Best Free Website Builder for New and Small Websites
If you’re looking for the best free website builder that’s easy to use and comes with a lot of design flexibility, Weebly is your perfect match. Weebly is a drag-and-drop web-building platform best suited for small businesses or new bloggers who want a simple way to create a website.
For one thing, Weebly offers a vast selection of templates. You'll find a template that fits your business no matter what industry you're in. The templates are highly customizable, so you can tweak them until they're just suitable for your brand and content.
Key Features
Weebly app center
the app center allows you to find tools that you can use to add additional elements and functionality to your website. For example, you can add a restaurant reservations widget, 123ContactForm, or even a social media feed.
Free SEO tools
Weebly enables you to create SEO-friendly websites easily. Every website you create using the platform comes with an automatically added sitemap, SEO-friendly HTML formatting, meta descriptions, image alt, and a mobile responsive design.
E-commerce tools
Weebly avails essential tools that you need to sell products online from your website. The platform comes with a fully integrated cart system set up automatically for you to create an online store immediately. You can track all your store inventories from your online store, integrate your payment system, and even include an automatic tax calculator.
Unlimited storage
Weebly allows you to increase your own web space by scaling up if your business is rapidly growing and you’re running out of storage.
Powerful drag and drop builder
Weebly features a user-friendly site builder that you can use to create a blog, landing pages, or an eCommerce website. You can drag and drop your content element to your page, add dynamic content on the header like a video, easily edit the text, and add full-width image backgrounds to your pages.
Blogging enabled
if you are a content creator, Weebly offers free templates that you can use to build your blog. The platform has a sidebar customization feature and a comment feature using Disqus for easy comment moderation.
Custom form
Weebly allows you to create contact forms, survey forms, and RSVP lists using their drag and drop editor and easily embed them on your website.
Video embedding
You can easily embed videos from Youtube or Vimeo on your website using this feature to engage your audience and record a great time on the page, which is essential for SEO and conversions.
Hosting plus security
Weebly includes cloud hosting in all their paid plans and free plans to enhance a secure environment for your website. They protect your website against DDoS attacks and include an SSL certificate to ensure that your website is safe for your website visitors.
Weebly Pricing
Weebly offers its pricing in two major categories. The “website” category and “online stores” category.
- 60+ Mobile-Friendly Templates
- Sell Unlimited Products
- SEO Tools
- Chat & Email Support
- No Weebly Ads
- Free Domain
- Unlimited Storage
- Phone Support
- PayPal Payments
- Request Reviews via Email
- Abandoned Cart Recovery Emails
- Priority Support
Learn more about Weebly pricing
The “Website” category has four major pricing packages
- Free: This plan allows you to create a free Weebly site with Weebly’s free subdomain.
- Connect: costs $5 per month
- Pro: costs $12 per month
- Business: costs $25 per month
The “online stores” category offers three plans
- Pro: cost $12 per month
- Business: costs $25 per month
- Business Plus: costs $38 per month
8. Carrd
Best for One-Page Websites
Carrd is a free website builder suitable for creating one page sites and simple landing pages. I especially loved their fuss-free dashboard that allows you to design your first web page in less time.
Unlike other website builders, Carrd does not offer blog integration functionality. If you are planning to share content with your audience or want to customize your template beyond its basic settings, Carrd website builder will fall too short in your options.
However, if you want to build simple one page sites for free quickly, Carrd is an ideal option. You can easily create a personal profile or a simple landing page using the platform.
Key Features
Mobile responsive
Carrd templates are mobile-friendly. The platform allows you to check how your pages appear on mobile devices and optimize them automatically.
Minimalistic design templates
Carrd offers a collection of over 75 simple free premade websites with fewer design capabilities. This is to help you minimize destructions and allow you to create your web page in less time. You can use the templates to create minimalistic landing pages for free.
Clean user interface
the platform offers an easy-to-use editor dashboard. They offer fewer options to allow beginners to create free websites. Carrd gives you a quick tour with highlighted instructions on using their tool if you are new to the platform.
Widgets embedding
Carrd enables you to embed important widgets to your page. You can embed a custom signup form, payment forms, contact forms, and third-party widgets like Stripe, PayPal, Gumroad, and Typeform.
Google analytics integration
Carrd enables you to track the performance of your pages by allowing you to integrate them with a Google Analytics tracking ID. This way, you can analyze the source traffic of your website and how long your website visitors spent on your website.
Carrd Pricing
Carrd offers a free version with all the basic site-building features. They also offer a 7– day free trial to their paid plans. Here’s the cost of Carrd paid plans.
- Pro Lite: costs $9 – $29 per year for 3 to 25 websites
- Pro Standard: costs $19 – $339 per year for 10 to 500 sites
- Pro Plus: costs $49 per year for 25 to 500 sites
9. Jimdo
Best for Small Business Websites
Jimdo is more than just a website builder—it's an entire ecosystem of tools that help you create your site and grow your digital presence. The website builder is created to cater to small business needs. Jimdo's free plan has a library of free templates allowing you to create pretty much any kind of website, be it a blog, an online portfolio, or an online shop.
You also can set up a custom domain and get free web hosting in all their plans.
Key Features
Flexible layouts
Jimdo allows you to customize your design templates using their drag and drop editor to match your brand. Their templates are mobile responsive and have an impressive page load speed.
Form builder
using Jimdo, you can create contact forms and allow your website visitors to contact your business.
Image library
the website gives you access to a library of free stock photos that you can use to build your website.
Statistics
the free website builder platform has an inbuilt analytics platform that gives you basic data on your page traffic. Jimdo allows you to connect your website with Google Analytics for more in-depth analytics.
GDPR compliance
Jimdo enables you to create a GDPR compliant site by helping you automatically create legal pages and add a cookie policy banner to your website.
Blog functionality
if you plan to incorporate blogging into your marketing strategy Jimdo has a module. Using their blog integration, you can create a post, schedule it, include social sharing buttons, integrate the commenting system with Disqus, and categorize your blog posts.
Logo creator
using Jimdo Logo Creator, you can design your website's logo in a few steps. The platform has a vast collection of icons and fonts that you can easily customize their color to match your business brand. You also get full usage rights of the logo, all for free.
Online-store
Jimdo makes launching your e-commerce website reasonably painless in their free plan. You can design your online store using one of their templates, easily add your products and integrate your payment gateways on your website. You can also track and manage your product inventories and quickly indicate how many items are available.
Jimdo Pricing
Jimdo Pricing is categorized into a “website” plan and an “online store” plan.
The “website” plan offers four packages.
- Play: this’s Jimdo's free plan. It allows you to create free sites but does not include a custom domain name.
- Start: costs $9 per month
- Grow: costs $15 per month
- Unlimited: costs $39 per month
The “online store” plan is best suited for e-commerce sites and includes three packages.
- Basic: costs $15 per month
- Business: costs $19 per month
- VIP: costs $39 per month
10. Webnode
Ideal for Small Blogs and Web Portal Websites
Webnode is the best free website builder for small business owners who want to create a blog, a webshop, or a web portal to create a robust online presence.
Their massive selection of free website templates allows you to make a website for any industry. If you're looking for something particular, like a business theme geared toward fashion and retail, or an eCommerce template for your online store, you'll find it with Webnode.
I probably loved it most because of its blog tool, which has decent capabilities than other website builders' blogging tools. It has an easy-to-use backend editor that provides a few themes for your blog page and allows you to add media like videos and images.
Key Features
Create a multilingual website
Webnode supports over 20 languages, allowing users to create websites using different languages.
Intuitive page builder
Webnode features an easy-to-use editor to drag and drop design elements to your page. The platform also has a collection of free websites and templates that you easily customize as your own.
Free domain
you get a free custom domain name for your website if you choose Webnode paid plans. The domain also comes with a domain privacy feature to protect your WHOIS information from the public.
Speed and security
the platform makes sure that your website is optimized for performance. Webnode offers free website hosting on reliable servers and allocated enough infrastructure for high performance. You also get an automatic backup for your website, making it easy for you to restore your website in case of a technical glitch.
Create over 100 email accounts
Webnode website builder enables you to create professional email accounts for your employees. Each account comes with 1GB of storage where you can easily integrate it with your email providers like Google and Outlook.
SEO tools
Webnode gives you access to various SEO tools to help you grow your business. You can track your website's traffic sources, add meta descriptions to your page, and customize your URL for better usability.
Free plan
Webnode offers a free solution where you get all the core Webnode features and a Webnode subdomain.
A vast collection of design templates
Webnode offers a plethora of mobile-friendly templates for almost every industry. You can customize every design to match your business branding.
Extensive image gallery
worried about where to get high-quality images for your website? Well, Webnode has you covered. The platform avails a collection of copyright-free images that you can easily add to your website and make it stand out.
Widget Integrations
Webnode allows embedding widgets and adds more functionality to your website using their HTML embed feature.
Visual effects
impress your visitors using design aesthetics such as scroll parallax and dynamic elements such as video background.
Membership registration
website owners can restrict access to particular pages by allowing visitors to register first to access the platform. This is ideal if you have a web portal where you want your website visitors to sign up first to access a specific resource or service.
Blog templates
Webnode offers a variety of blog design templates for any industry. Their blogging functionality allows you to display your blog posts in different styles, add pictures and videos, and include social share plugins to your blog posts.
Easy online store creation and management
with Webnode, you can set up an online shop for free. The platform has customizable store design templates which are mobile-friendly. You can offer discounts and free shipping as part of your promotional package. Webnode also has a great store management platform where you can handle your customers' orders, update their status, and integrate payment gateways.
Webnode Pricing
Webnode offers four pricing packages in their default website building platform.
- Limited: starts at $3.90 per month
- Mini: costs $7.50 per month
- Standard: costs $12.90 per month
- Profi: costs $22.90 per month
11. Ucraft
Best for Creating Multiple Website Types
If you're looking for a website builder capable of creating small eCommerce sites quickly and painlessly, you can't go wrong with the Ucraft website builder.
Ucraft offers everything you’ll need to create stunning free websites. The free solution gives you access to all core features, including Ucraft's mobile editor, access to professionally built templates, a free SSL certificate, and Google Analytics integration.
From their 120+ sleek templates, you’ll notice that the platform is tailored for visual-rich websites. And if you are struggling to pick any of their templates you can choose a demo website from their library and check the overall layout of your website content.
Key Features
Great designer tools
Ucraft enables you to create sleek and highly responsive websites quickly. The platform has over 100 pre-made blocks that you can drag and drop to your web page. Using their designer tools, you can add multiple header and footer tags, add visual effects to your page elements, and create customized 404 error pages.
Create a multilingual website
The website builder automatically translates your pages to multiple languages. This includes your notification emails, checkout pages, and invoices.
Create password-protected pages
if you want to restrict access to specific pages from your audience, Ucraft enables you to do so. This way, only the registered or authorized members can access it.
50+ Payments integration
Ucraft allows you to integrate up to over 50 payments gateways. This allows you to receive payments from a large audience without limitations.
Feature-rich e-commerce system
e-commerce functionality is something that Ucraft has heavily invested in. The platform has all the essential tools you need to sell products online. You can sell digital products like E-books, downloadables, and music. Ucraft's e-commerce package includes up to 20+ shipping methods, an automated tax calculator, currency selection feature, inventory tracking metrics, and a store management app, just to mention a few.
Free web hosting
Ucraft offers free hosting for their free plans. You can create your first website using Ucraft for free and bring it online. All of this posting is powered by Google Cloud to ensure your website's excellent uptime and performance.
Blogging enabled
the website builder allows you to integrate a blog into your website. The blogging module allows you to schedule your post to be automatically published later, add categories to your posts, and include a comment form and social sharing buttons to enable your readers to share your content on social media.
Inbuilt logo maker
using Ucraft, you can create a logo for your business right on their editor.
Powerful marketing software integration
Ucraft allows creating an effective marketing channel by allowing you to integrate your website with over 50 marketing tools. This involves email marketing software like MailChimp, social tools like Facebook fee, analytics tools like Hotjar, and live chat tools like Zendesk chat.
Great SEO tools
Ucraft enables you to optimize your search engines and boost organic traffic. The platform generates an XML sitemap for you, so you don’t have to do one manually. You also get control over your Robot.txt file, add 301 redirects for content that has been permanently moved, convert images to WebP format, and customize your metadata.
Ucraft Pricing
Ucraft plans are categorized into ‘Personal’ and ‘Branded.’
The ‘Personal’ is best suited for new and small websites. Here are various pricing packages for Ucraft personal plans.
- Free: this Ucraft's free plan allows you to create a multi-page website.
- Pro Website: costs $10 per month.
- Pro Shop: costs $21 per month.
- Unlimited: costs $69 per month
The ‘Branded’ plans are best suited for creating larger and white-labeled websites.
- PayGo 1: costs $39 per month
- PayGo 2: costs $69 per month
- PayGo 3: costs $109 per month
Ucraft also offers a 14-days trial on their paid plans and includes a free domain name.
12. Mozello
Best for Simple Digital Storefronts
Mozello focuses on helping beginners create a minimalist website and online shop for free. The platform takes care of the technical aspects of creating a website, such as web hosting, and allows you to focus on building your business website.
I love the fact that you can create a multilingual website using Mozello. Their website builder auto-translates your website into 15 different languages allowing your website visitors to use the website in their desired language.
Key Features
Free domain
Mozello offers first-timers a free domain name in all their paid plans, but you get a domain with a mozello.com extension for their free plan.
Great e-commerce tools
Mozello offers essential tools that you need to create your online store. This includes integrating multiple payment systems like Paypal, Stripe, Braintree, and Bank transfers. You can also offer discounts to your customers and create customizable checkout forms and emails.
Marketing software
the website builder allows you to integrate marketing tools into your website and grow your business. You can easily integrate Google Analytics to your website and track your traffic, add a Facebook pixel and integrate any tool to your website using HTML.
Build multilingual websites
Mozello allows you to create your website in 15 different ways, widening your customer base.
Mobile responsive
all of Mozello's templates are mobile responsive, thereby saving you the hassle of manually editing your website for mobile devices.
Developer-Friendly
you can easily use Mozello to create highly customized web pages if you are familiar with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. On your Mozello site, you can also connect custom applications with your website.
Mozello Pricing
Mozello offers one of the most affordable paid plans. Their website builder is free to use. Here are Mozello's pricing packages.
- Free: the plan is free to use and includes all the basics features of a page builder.
- Premium: starts at $8 per month.
- Premium Plus: costs $18 per month.
13. Site123
Best for Portfolios and Basic Business Sites
Site123 is a cutting-edge free website builder that makes it easier and faster to establish a website. Packed with a powerful suite of features, this user-friendly website builder makes it simple to create a beautiful website quickly. And with their affordable plans and flexible pricing, it's easy to see why Site123 is one of the most popular website builders available today.
SITE123 provides website building technology that eliminates the need to know how to code. Other than dragging and dropping different design layouts and elements, SITE123 provides you with a pre-selected list of pre-made designs from which to create your website. While this limits one's design creativity freedom, it also allows for making a website relatively straightforward.
Their themes are well-designed, and they allow you to sell things through your website.
Key Features
Create an online store
Site123 has the easiest website builder platform to create an online shop. The platform gives access to eCommerce templates that you can use to customize your online store. I especially love that you can integrate Wire transfers to your website to receive payments from your buyers and integrate payment gateways like Paypal, Braintree, 2Checkout, and Stripe. You also can manage your store inventories and track your stock automatically. Other eCommerce features like currency selection, coupon systems, automatic tax, and shipping are also included.
Blogging configuration and templates
the site builder offers blog templates to help set up a blog quickly. The blogging module includes a comment feature to enable your visitors to leave their feedback and an RSS feed to efficiently distribute your blog updates to your audience.
Responsive websites
Site123 understands the need to have a mobile responsive website. Their templates automatically adjust according to the screen devices used by your visitors. That way, you can rest assured that your site is mobile-friendly.
Free hosting
Site123 allows you to host your built website on their platform on their free plan. You don't have to pay for hosting a third party to have your website online.
Online booking tools
do you want to schedule appointments with your clients online. Site123 has a tool for that with all the features you need in your scheduling tools.
Custom form builder
using the platform, you can create signup forms, contact forms, and the rest using their builder tool and easily embed them on your website.
Inbuilt email marketing
Site123 allows you to grow your business using the power of email marketing. The website building platform avails an emailing marketing tool where you can create newsletters and market your products to your list.
Third-party plugins integrations
Site123 allows you to connect your desired web app to your website to add more functionality to your website.
Image and icons library
Site123 has a collection of free stock images and icons that you can use to build your website and make it appealing.
Site123 Pricing
Site123 offers a premium and free plan.
Their Free plan includes all the essential features you need to create free websites. The Premium plan costs $5.80 per month and allows you to connect a custom domain to the website. You also unlock more features and resources.
Free Website Builder FAQ
Free site builders are an excellent option for website creators looking to make free websites quickly. Most free builders will walk you through everything from choosing the suitable theme to adding your logo to writing content for your page.
If you just need a basic or one-page site, a free website builder could help.
However, free sites builder will not help if you want to create multi-page sites hosted on a custom domain name. You would want to go for a paid website builder to unlock most features.
It’s possible to create a free website as a beginner. Follow this setup process for making a website without paying a dime.
– Find a website builder: there are a lot of website builders online. The best free website builder I would recommend is Wix. The platform has a free plan that allows you to launch a website with a customizable free subdomain.
– Create a perfect site domain: a domain is your website’s online brand name. Since free builders only allow you to create a subdomain, give your website a name that reflects your business. For Wix, your domain will be in the form of yourdomain.wixsite.com. You can register a domain right from the platform and connect it to your website if you want a custom domain.
– Choose the best design template: most free site builders offer a sleek library of customizable templates. You can choose the template that best portrays your business industry. In case you’re confused about which template to choose, you can pick any demo website in their library and preview it to check if it accomplishes your desired aesthetics.
– Customize your template: this setup process includes tweaking your template by adding content, uploading images and your logo, and adding other relevant page elements to your web page.
– Preview your website: you’ve just created your first own website. But before you publish it online, you need to check the design and test it to see how it appears to your visitors. Platforms like Wix have a preview feature to allow you to test your demo website.
– Now publish your site: once you feel that everything is done and you have exhaustively customized your design template, you can hit that “publish” button and make your website accessible on the internet.
Apart from creating free websites, most website builders allow you to create a free domain name. The only downside is that their free plans only allow you to use a subdomain from your site builder. For example, if you are using Wix, your domain will be in the format of yourdomain.wixsite.com. This way, everyone will know that your website is built on Wix. Simply put, you don’t get a custom domain for your free website.
Yes, there are.
First off, free site builders tend to be pretty limited in what they allow you to do. Their free plans usually only allow you to select from a few templates and make minor changes to them, and you have fewer options for adding features or customizing your site.
Other free website builders do not allow you to create a website with multiple pages or a custom website URL. They only offer a free subdomain and limited web space, making them not the perfect solution for advanced users.
Unfortunately, free website builders tend to perform poorly in SEO.
First of all, let's talk about performance. If you're using a free plan, you have no say over what speed your site will load—and that can be a problem for SEO. Your site needs to load quickly for search engines to give it high rankings.
Secondly, most free plans offer limited tools for search engine optimization. In the technical SEO part, the free platforms fall flat.
And then there's the issue of trust: Google knows that free websites are often riddled with spammy links and low-quality content, so they don't rank very highly in the first place.
The best eCommerce website builder with outstanding eCommerce features is Mozello. The site builder allows you to sell up to five products on their free plan. Other best Mozello alternatives are Strikingly, Squarespace and Weebly.
Wix is the overall free site builder for blogging. Their blog templates are responsive across all devices. They also include analytics, a comment section, and social sharing tools. Other Wix alternatives are Squarespace, Weebly, Site123, and Strikingly.
Premium subscription-based website builders, as one might anticipate, offer far more sophisticated functionality than free ones. As a website creator, you gain access to better website infrastructures and search engine optimization tools. On the other hand, free plans limit your design creativity and website resources and do not come with a custom domain.
Free Website Builder Comparison: Which One Should I Choose?
Free website builders make it easy to create a website, blog, portfolio, and more in minutes, regardless of previous coding or design skills. All you need is a free account on one of the site builder platforms. Since they are free, they are also easy, to begin with, and can be a great place to learn the basics if you plan on moving up to paid software later on.
We mentioned that each builder above offers something unique, and that's true. But suppose you're particularly interested in gaining more creative control of your website in terms of design and functionality. In that case, you'll likely have a strong preference for one option over another.
After reviewing the top free website builders listed above, I discovered some great platforms for creating free websites. Here are my top options for the best free website builder.
Wix
Squarespace
Bluehost Builder
Strikingly
Webflow
We have also compared different free site builders and how each of them stacks up against each other for more detailed reviews.