Top 16 Best Free Website Builders
Updated on 08 November 2023
You are keen to launch your personal or small business website to get feedback from visitors but you don’t really want to pay technical people. Well, you can build your website painless without getting your hands dirty with coding. Creating a website has been never as easy as now. In this guide, we are going to review the top 16 best free website builders for you.
1. Wix
The URL you will get for free will look like this:
accountname.wix.com/customname
Here is a demo website by Wix:
Coworking Barcelona
Wix is the most recognised website builder in the market. It has been used by more than 100 million across 190 countries. No matter whatever your skill is, it enables you to set up your innovative website by its flexible and user-friendly interface.
With Wix, it takes only a couple of minutes to create and publish your business or e-commerce website and sell products to the world. It is suitable for anything from personal online portfolios to small business websites.
Creating a professional website with Wix is intuitive and easy to use drag and drop editor is a piece of cake. The editor toolbar is extremely versatile and flexible. You have the option to use a wide range of website elements ranging from a simple button to e-commerce.
You can also rotate or resize an element just by a single click. The best is that thanks to such a great editor, you can build an amazing professional website and still have a full creative power without knowing a word of coding.
Unlike most builders which impose a limitation on how elements can be moved around, the editor lets you freely move the page element and finish your work pixel by pixel. Plus, it is one of the few website builders that let you add animation to your text and graphics. But make sure you don’t use it too often!
Wix is not only the best drag and drop website builder in the world, but includes some beautiful and professional website templates, most of them free. A website template is a prebuilt layout designed for a specific business type.
The most remarkable advantage of Wix is that it covers hundreds of industries, more than most competitors. No matter your niche, you will find dozens of exceptional templates to math. Once you have found a related template, you can use the drag and drop feature of the editor to modify and customize it as a pie.
For some types of projects, Wix offers Artificial Intelligence Design (ADI). As the name indicates it is a smart assistant that helps you create your website. For example, it will connect to your social medial automatically, generate contact forms, or offer a suitable design for your website.
Unfortunately, once you have set a template for your site you cannot switch to a new one. Certainly, you can edit the design in a template without any trouble but switching to an entirely new template is not allowed.
You will find some limitation in the free plan. You cannot connect your own domain name. You have to rely on clunky subdomain names such as username.wixsite.com/siteaddress., you should stick to only 500MB storage and bandwidth limit which is not enough for most business sites.
if you have a lot of images or get many visitors on your website you can quickly run out of resources. Besides, you can’t sell products through an online payment.
Wix includes a banner ad on every page of free websites which is fixed as the user scrolls the site. It is subtle but a little bit intrusive.
2. Weebly
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Weebly is one of the best free website builders. Similar to Wix, Weebly has a very intuitive drag and drop editor as well as a great SEO tool, ideal for small businesses that want to be found on Google Search. It is the only the website builder offering unlimited bandwidth with a free subscription.
You will get a range of templates to choose from, although not as many as Wix, which are designed for most niches including blogs, events, and portfolios. Using drag and drop, you can create website quickly and effectively in a painless manner.
The free plan imposed some limitations on starters. Although you have unlimited bandwidth, your storage is still limited to 500MB. Ecommerce tools is not available. To sell product through your website or get access shopping card you should upgrade to the Pro or Business plan. Plus, you cannot connect a custom domain name to your website. The good news is that they provide solid and short subdomains. The subdomain looks like: yoursite.weebly.com.
Like almost all website builders, Weebly inserts an Ad in free websites, A banner ad that is a little distracting. But if you can tolerate this kind of Ad, Weebly is the first recommendation for small business.
3. Pixpa
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If you are looking for a versatile, easy to use website building solution then you might want to check out Pixpa - an all-in-one, DIY website builder platform.
Pixpa’s main strength is in its comprehensive portfolio website building capabilities. This makes it ideal for professional photographers, artists and designers, as well as small businesses. Additionally, an extensive e-commerce set-up and online store builder, SEO manager and integrated marketing tools etc make Pixpa an ideal platform for creative professionals and businesses to build and grow their online presence.
Since it is a no-code platform, you need no advanced technical skills or coding knowledge to build your website with Pixpa. The platform offers a whole range of pixel-perfect, mobile-optimized and responsive templates that can be fully customized using the simple but powerful visual editor and drag and drop page builder.
Pixpa does not offer a freemium model with free plans, however, you can test drive the service by signing up for a 15-day free trial. The pricing plans are all-inclusive and extremely affordable starting from as little as $3 a month and going up to $16 a month. All sites come with SSL security and 24x7 customer support through email and livechat.
4. Strikingly
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Strikingly is known as the best one-page website builder. When you register for a website you get a preformatted website with default sections. The editor is simple and effective. You should only click on an item to edit and publish. No coding or design experience is needed.
It among the few website builders that implemented built-in e-commerce for starters.
With their simple store, you can easily connect to PayPal or Stripe and start selling products. However, in the free plan the number of products is restricted to 1 product per website. Unlike most other website builders, you can change your template as much as you want. That is promising!
With the free plan and a generous 5GB storage, you can enjoy creating unlimited free sites as well as 24/7 support. You have no option to use a full domain name in the starter plan, but you have the opportunity to use decent Strikingly.com subdomain names. A flying ad is still included in free websites but it most subtle of any builder so far. It appears only after user starts scrolling the website.
5. Ucraft
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The best thing is that in the free plan you can connect your own domain name to your new site. This feature is not offered by many free website builders. If you prefer not to pay for a domain name, they can also provide you an elegant subdomain: yoursite.ucraft.net.
Apart from this, you can use Google Analytics is enabled in your free website, a great tool for site statistics and SEO.
You can choose from a vast selection of modern and customizable templates. They cover almost all professions from blogs to success shops, making life easier for Busy Creators.
They also include a fixed ad in the bottom of free websites. Unfortunately, it looks a bit invasive.
6. Site123
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It is the best is the way to get online fast. With Site123, you can establish your business website in simple three steps: Select your website type, upload your content and publish your site.
As a drawback, they don’t offer a template collection like other free website providers. Instead, you should pick template form 11 different categories (including portfolio, blog, music and CV). Of course, you are free to edit this template utilizing available tools. The best is that all default designs are responsive and mobile-friendly.
There is a 500MB storage an 1GB bandwidth limit in the free plan. You should pay $12.80 per month to remove the floating tag sitting on your website.
7. Jimdo
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If you are tired with awkward Ads in other builders, you may consider migrating to Jimdo. They don’t include a distracting popup in free pages but a tiny text ad in the footer. Moreover, they provide a pretty fair subdomain: yoursite.jimdofree.com.
Jimdo has an outdated editor and templates looks obsolete. If you can live with this it is recommended for websites in the presale stage.
8. WordPress
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Made for blogging, WordPress.com is a powerful tool to broadcast your ideas to the world. It is equipped with all power of its big brother WordPress.org (Most used CMS) such as analytics, a search feature, comments, display categories, archiving, etc., but with the simple use of a website builder.
They give you a nice domain name: yoursite.wordpress.com. They also offer a 3GB storage for the free plan. But, the term “Powered with WordPress” is included in footer of every site. The major downside is that they insert random ads into free websites. You have no way to control ad content.
9. Webnode
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Setting up a website with the Webnode is as easy as riding a bicycle. With Webnode, you can create your online store and sell your products in the matter of minutes. That ‘s why is it popular among 30 million users all around the world.
Working with Webnode’s editor is very easy but less flexible than other website builders. If you have a limited time to build a website it may stay on top of your preference list. It is more suited for event-based websites such as parties or wedding.
10. IM Creator
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You can create eye-catching websites in IM Creator. It helps you to quickly design and publish your website. What makes IM Creator outstanding is that is only ad-free online website builder. For white-labeled businesses like students, artists and non-profit organizations they completely remove their ads via application. However, for everyone else they put a large and clumsy ad on free websites.
The subdomain is long and unpractical but it let you use your own domain. A feature that is not offered by many free website builders.
IM Creator suggests a simple and intuitive editor but it is a little overwhelming and less creative than industry-leading interfaces.
11. Mozello
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Mozello is best known for supporting multilingual blogs and websites. It also offers features such as blogging, SEO, google analytics and social networks totally free.
In the free plan, you get a decent subdomain name and use maximum 500MB storage. The best is that you are free to sell up to 5 products directly via PayPal. It is more generous than any other builder in the industry.
The drawback is that it has a very limited editor which lacks flexibility and customization. Besides, unlike most of its competitors, it doesn’t offer any SSL certificate.
For personal or small business website at the early stages, we recommend starting with Wix, Weebly or Strinkly. WordPress.com offers great tools for bloggers. You can quickly get online and connect to your customers with Site123 or Webnode. Other free website builders also suggest wonderful features that worth trying them out.
12. Webstarts
The URL you will get for free:
customname.webstarts.com
Demo website:
Business Coaching
When it comes to free hosting, Webstarts is a major player in the field. They host more than 4 million sites and claim to the #1 Rated Free Website Builder in 2019. To be fair, the free plan of Webstarts is not the best offered in the industry, but it includes some cool features such as a generous 1 GB cloud storage, unlimited pages, and free blogging tools.
When you signup to their free plan, you have not access to advanced features such as search engine submission and optimization and even contact forms and galleries. You can not use custom domain names too; you are restricted to subdomain names offered by the site.
The free plan lacks support for mobile devices and they will put an advertisement on every page of your site. The advertisement isn’t very intrusive and can be closed by your websites’ users for once and ever (Unlike many other free website builders, it doesn’t appear again when scrolling).
The editor of Webstarts somehow is similar to Wix, it gives you the freedom to control every object of the screen, but it’s starting to show its age and is not optimized for mobile devices.
13. Bookmark
The URL you will get for free:
https://yourname.bookmark.com
Demo website:
Bakery
The latest trend in the website building is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create and customize websites based on customers’ needs and niche. This looks like magic but the website builder asks you some questions and your website appears in a glance.
Similarly, you need to enter your niche and branch into Bookmarks’ AIDA(AI Design Assistant) and your website will be ready in less than two minutes. Then the only thing left to you is uploading your images and customizing pages to make them more appealing.
The free plan comes with a 500MB storage and 1 GB/moth traffic as well as subdomains offered by the site. Like other free websites, the basic plan includes unwanted ads. The ad is a full-width fixed bar at the bottom of the page that invites users to create websites with Bookmark.
Here is the getting start video for this AI-powered website builder:
Youtube link
14. Zyro
The URL you will get for free:
https://yourname.zyro.com
Demo website:
Test
It belongs to the same holing that own Hostinger, a relatively well-known hosting company. They use 000webhost for free web hosting services and Zyro to offer website builder. But unlike its siblings 000webhost, it doesn’t provide domain hosting in the free plan.
They provide 500MB storage plus monthly traffic of 500MB. To sell products online, you should at least upgrade an eCommerce plan that cost $19.9 a month.
They have a lot of templates for business that you can use for your website, but most templates are not responsive and in term of design had fallen ahead of time. Zyro puts ads on your website looks a bit intrusive but it is not a thing that you can’t live with.
If you are familiar with WordPress and don’t matter that your site will go off for an hour every day, you could use 000Webhost instead. They offer 300MB space and 3GB bandwidth level for free. The best is that can connect your own domain name to your free hosting panel. And for those that are paranoid of backup, with daily backups, they can download and even restore them quickly.
15. Google Sites
The URL you will get for free:
https://sites.google.com/site/
Demo website:
Resume
Google has recently redesigned its free website builder. Now it is cleaner, more modern, and easier to use. Building websites with Google Sites is super is super-easy, but it is not a feature-rich website builder. You should choose from 6 templates available. Though, it’s more suited to personal websites or for those that want to create an online portfolio or a website for upcoming events.
16. Webflow
The last but not least in our list is Webflow. It’s a very powerful and feature-rich website builder, not a beginner-friendly builder. This website targets designers and developers and enables them to create cool websites and export clean and semantic HTML and CSS files for projects. The free plan imposing using a subdomain like xxx.webflow.io for your websites and supports up to two projects. The ads on free websites are so small that it is neither intrusive nor distracting. If you are not familiar with HTML and coding you may feel that you are in a cockpit. Don’t worry, there are many intuitive website builders on our list to help you.
For personal or small business websites at the early stages, we recommend starting with Wix, Weebly, or Strinkly. WordPress.com offers great tools for bloggers. You can quickly get online and connect to your customers with Site123 or Webnode. Other free website builders also suggest wonderful features that worth trying them out.
