The best free websites builders

To ensure online visibility, having a website is essential. However, many small businesses lack the funds to hire professional developers. This is where free website builders shine, offering accessible solutions for creating websites at no cost.

The best free website builders

• Google Sites for basic sites (without SEO)
• Weebly for simple, no-fuss websites
• GetResponse for email-focused businesses
• Wix for an all-around site builder
• HubSpot CMS for growing businesses

What qualities define a free website builder?

A great free website builder stands out for its intuitive interface, diverse template selection, robust features, and responsive customer support, all without any cost to the user.

Here are more detailed criteria to consider when building a free website:

1. Ease of Use: Opt for a platform with a simple and intuitive interface that doesn’t require coding knowledge. Drag-and-drop editors and pre-designed elements can streamline the website-building process.
2. Templates and Customization: Look for a platform that offers a diverse selection of professionally designed templates tailored to various industries and purposes. Ensure that these templates are customizable, allowing you to personalize them with your branding elements, colors, fonts, and content.
3. Features and Functionality: Assess the platform’s features and functionalities to ensure they align with your website goals. Essential features include mobile responsiveness, SEO optimization tools, blogging capabilities, e-commerce integration, contact forms, galleries, and social media integration.
4. Scalability: While starting with a free plan, consider the platform’s scalability options as your website grows. Check if the platform allows you to upgrade to premium plans or integrate additional features and functionalities seamlessly.
5. Support and Resources: Prioritize platforms that offer reliable customer support through various channels like live chat, email, or community forums. Additionally, comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and knowledge bases can be invaluable resources for troubleshooting issues and learning how to maximize the platform’s capabilities.
6. Pricing and Limitations: Understand the limitations of the free plan, including storage, bandwidth, branding, and ads. Evaluate the pricing structure of premium plans to determine if they offer value for additional features and functionalities that may be necessary for your website’s long-term growth.
7. User Reviews and Reputation: Research user reviews and testimonials to gauge the platform’s reputation for reliability, performance, and customer satisfaction. Platforms with a strong track record and positive feedback from users are more likely to provide a satisfactory website-building experience.

Best free website builder for basic sites (without SEO)

Google Sites

Google Sites offers a simplistic website-building experience with limited customization options and lacks built-in SEO tools. While suitable for beginners or experimentation, it may not be ideal for achieving high search engine rankings.

Users can start with a choice of pre-made templates or a blank canvas and then adjust the style, color, and fonts using a selection of six themes or by creating their own. However, customization is restricted, such as being unable to individually edit elements like button colors without altering the entire theme. Additionally, button sizes are predetermined, requiring users to create custom themes to bypass these limitations.

Despite its limitations, Google Sites is user-friendly, resembling the interface of Google Docs. Projects are saved directly to Google Drive and can be easily shared with collaborators. While lacking explicit SEO settings, users can set custom page paths, although relying on Google to handle SEO optimization may leave some users apprehensive.

• Google Sites pricing: 100% free; no paid plans. 
• Ease of use: Easy to use. Similar to using Google Docs.  
• Customization options: Limited. Choose from 12 templates and 6 themes for the look-and-feel of your site. Ideal for someone who doesn’t have a ton of website experience. 
• SEO tools: Non-existent, surprisingly.   
• Value of free plan: Limited. Suitable for beginners, hobbyists, or dabblers, but not as good as Weebly or Wix

Best free website builder for simple, no-fuss websites

Weebly

Weebly, a product of Square, is a free website builder that comes with certain limitations. While it’s perfect for creating straightforward websites like portfolios or blogs, it lacks advanced features such as e-commerce functionality and seamless social media integration.

Upon signing up, users are prompted to choose between Weebly for personal websites or Square Online for business websites. Opting for the personal option grants access to a straightforward builder interface with essential features.

Users can easily modify templates by selecting and editing various elements like text boxes and images. The platform offers a limited but well-designed selection of templates, and users can add features like buttons, contact forms, and slideshows with ease. Additional functionalities can be integrated through the Apps tab, though most come with a fee.

Weebly ensures website security with SSL encryption and facilitates easy customization of the favicon. Users can also access a mobile version of their site and manage SEO settings, including page title, URL, and meta tags.

While the free plan includes Weebly branding and domain, the paid plans offer limited additional benefits. For example, connecting a custom domain costs $10 per month. If users require more advanced features, it may be advisable to consider alternative tools.

• Weebly pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $10/month.
• Ease of use: Very intuitive. If you want to change something, just click on it. 
• Customization options: Not as customizable as other platforms, like Wix, but that makes it ideal for someone who doesn’t have a ton of website experience. 
• SEO tools: Very basic, but better than some site builders that offer almost nothing.   
• Value of free plan: Decent, but not outstanding

Best free website builder for email-focused businesses

GetResponse

The majority of free website builders listed here operate independently as standalone platforms. This is because many available tools offer free website building capabilities, yet most of them fall short in quality. While you can create a somewhat decent website, it often lacks scalability and essential features necessary for growth.

However, GetResponse, primarily known as a comprehensive marketing tool focusing on email marketing, offers a remarkably impressive free website builder. The process begins by specifying your website-building preferences, such as selecting a template or utilizing the AI-powered builder. I opted for a business template, which made it effortless to customize basic elements like fonts, sizes, and images, as well as adding new sections like testimonials. Notably, I found it easy to modify button shapes, sizes, and alignments, and delve into advanced settings such as shadow effects, border styles, and colors. Additionally, hiding page elements on mobile devices was a simple task with just a click.

Overall, I was impressed by the extensive features of GetResponse’s free website builder, and the user interface didn’t feel overwhelming. Everything I needed was readily accessible, requiring no extensive searching.

• GetResponse pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $13.2/month.
• Ease of use: Very intuitive, especially for how much you can adjust.
• Customization options: GetResponse offers hundreds of templates and easy drag-and-drop features in the templates. 
• SEO tools: Limited but sufficient. You can edit meta and alt tags and optimize for mobile.  
• Value of free plan: Great. You can build and launch a site, add your own domain, and manage up to 500 newsletter contacts—all for free.

Best free all-around website builder

Wix

Wix stands out as one of the leading drag-and-drop website builders available, but does it live up to its reputation? For those seeking to create a simple yet functional website without being overwhelmed by choices, Wix proves to be a dependable option.

To begin, users can inform Wix about the type of website they require and specify any additional features such as a blog, chat functionality, forms, or an online store. With over 900 professionally designed templates categorized by type, users have a plethora of options to choose from, each easily customizable to suit their needs. Alternatively, users can opt for Wix’s ADI feature to have the platform create their website automatically, although results may be underwhelming.

While templates may load slowly initially as they populate information, the wait is justified by the robustness of Wix’s editor. This editor allows users to make extensive modifications to their chosen template, including changing fonts, adding headings, creating lists, and dragging and dropping sections, all without the need for coding or navigating through multiple tabs. Despite having years of experience with WordPress site builders, I found Wix’s interface to be intuitive and user-friendly.

• Wix pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $14/month. 
• Ease of use: Easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. I found it intuitive, but beginners might get overwhelmed; if so, they also offer a free AI website builder option called Wix ADI.
• Customization options: Very customizable—you can add forms, a blog, eCommerce features, and even create custom videos.  
• SEO features: Quite a few! Wix also does a good job of explaining what each feature does and walks you through each process, even for off-site tools like Google Analytics. 
• Value of free plan: Excellent. While some builders try to make you upgrade on every other feature, Wix includes most features to some degree with the free plan

Best free website builder for growing businesses

HubSpot CMS Hub

HubSpot is a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software and inbound marketing solutions. It offers a suite of tools for marketing, sales, and customer service teams to attract, engage, and delight customers. HubSpot’s platform includes features such as email marketing, social media management, content management, lead generation, and analytics.

• HubSpot CMS pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $20/month.
• Ease of use: Easy to use. Smooth operation. Guided prompts.
• Customization options: Select from hundreds of free and premium templates and 47 modules (elements) to build a site that fits your brand style. 
• SEO tools: Get SEO recommendations as you create content on pages. Customize further by adding code snippets to header/footer and defining a canonical URL. 
• Value of free plan: Great free plan to get started. You probably want to upgrade to a premium plan to remove the HubSpot logo and use a custom domain with a more manageable and memorable URL