Creating a website doesn’t have to be expensive. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, blogger, artist, or small business owner, you can skip the hard part with free website builders. The best free website creator provides powerful tools and features to help you establish a professional online presence.
You may have tried several website makers only to find hidden costs, limited customization options, and poor performance. Quit struggling to find cost-effective solutions without compromising essential features and ease of use.
Our experts have conducted in-depth research and curated a list of the top 5 free website generators, highlighting features to look out for, followed by instructions on how to pick the right one for your needs.
The Top 5 Best Free Website Builders for 2024 at a glance
- Wix – Best Overall Free Website Builder
- Squarespace – Best for Small Business
- Webflow – Best Free Website Builder for designers and creatives
- Weebly – Best for eCommerce stores
- Jimdo – Best Free Website Builder for Beginners
Best Free Website Builder for 2024 – Complete List
After testing various platforms, we evaluated and ranked the top five free website builders based on ease of use, features, and pricing. Here are our findings:
1. Wix – Best Overall Free Website Builder in 2024
Wix is, according to our tests and analysis, the best free website builder and one of the most user-friendly drag-and-drop editors on the market.
But is it as good as everyone says it is? If you are looking to build a website for free and customize it your way without getting stuck, Wix is an excellent choice.
If you choose to generate your website without AI, you must select or type in the website you want to create, such as an online store, blog, or portfolio. With Wix, you can choose from 900+ fully functional templates or use the AI website builder to start creating your free website.
The templates are designed to fit your chosen niche or industry, so take your time to browse through the available options to select the one that fits your brand.
Creating your free website with Wix is easy; anyone could do it – mainly because the drag-and-drop editor allows you to customize your chosen template and tailor your site to fit your brand.
After that, you can optimize your site’s visibility with built-in SEO tools. Likewise, you can integrate free apps from the market to enhance your website functionality and grow your business.
Wix is at the top of our ranking because it offers ease of use for creating a free website. Once your website is ready to be published, you will need to connect a custom domain name and go live.
Features
Wix is the #1 rated free website builder with a complete website design solution. It offers thousands of built-in design features that can help you turn your idea into a remarkable website experience.
What sets the best-rated website maker apart is its industry-leading collection of website templates. This tool’s flexibility allowed us to customize the template to fit our brand’s unique identity. You can also change your site’s look by tweaking the color and fonts of your theme with ready-made styles.
Our hands-on experience with Wix shows that they have incorporated AI to make creating your free website straightforward. The Wix AI text creator helps generate SEO-friendly content for your website and builds new site sections of your choice with a brief summary of what the text should include.
This AI capability is a game changer, allowing you to create images, design a logo, write product descriptions, and generate eye-catching emails. You can also play with your site’s layout by allowing AI to arrange your website content with a click and choose the one that fits most.
During our testing, we also discovered that Wix provides a comprehensive SEO toolkit that helps tackle technical SEO (structured data, rendering) and offers control (custom URLs, tags). Wix integrates with SEO tools such as Google Search Console and Semrush for keyword research and performance tracking.
Another standout feature is the marketing integrations, which allow you to reach potential clients with email and social media marketing, Facebook ads, and Google ads. The free email marketing plan allows you to send up to 200 emails and schedule new social media posts with customized templates at no cost.
To conclude, we recommend Wix as the best free website builder due to its customizable dashboard, which lets you set up and manage your business on the go.
Plans and Pricing
Our thorough investigation reveals that Wix is one of the leading free website builders in the market. Wix offers a generous free plan, allowing you to use their website editor to create a free website and showcase your online presence without needing a credit card.
You can build a basic website and add essential content. However, you can’t connect your domain name for a professional touch (though a Wix subdomain is included for free). This means that while Wix allows you to create a free website, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan to explore other features.
We like that they allow you to try their website builder free for 14 days for any of its cheap premium plans.
While you’ll need to provide payment information upfront, this trial functions more like a risk-free grace period. If you’re unsure if a premium plan offers the features you need, the 14-day money-back guarantee allows you to explore its full potential.
The entry-level paid plan starts at less than $20 per month. It removes Wix branding from your site, grants you 2 GB of storage space, and allows you to collaborate with another team member.
You’ll also gain access to Wix’s light marketing suite, which includes essential tools to help you promote your website and attract visitors. The Light plan also offers a free domain name for the first year, allowing you to establish a custom website address.
If you need more storage space or advanced features for eCommerce platforms, consider choosing the higher plans.
Pros
- AI-powered design tools
- Intuitive and user-friendly editor interface
- Built-in business and marketing tools
- Advanced SEO tools
- App market with hundreds of third-party services
- 900+ designed templates for several businesses and niche
- Affordable pricing and 24/7 customer support
- Free domain for 1 year on all paid plans
Cons
- Wix websites are not transferable to another hosting provider
- Limited storage and branding on every page with the Free plan
2. Squarespace – Best Free Website Builder for Small Businesses
Another excellent option for a free website builder is Squarespace.
Like Wix, Squarespace offers a 14-day free trial, allowing you to create a website and build your brand using their impressive suite of tools. The user-friendly interface provides an easy and intuitive way to experience their website builder features at no cost.
Creating a website with Squarespace is straightforward, though it might be technical for beginners. Before selecting a professionally designed template for your site, you will need to answer a few prompts. These prompts include details about your site’s purpose and primary goals, such as selling products and services or publishing a blog.
Squarespace offers two options for creating a free website. You can use Squarespace Blueprint AI to build a custom website or choose from professionally designed templates.
We found the latter more effective, as it provides the flexibility to select the template that best fits your brand. What sets this site builder apart is that you can easily explore and switch to other templates if you change your mind later.
The free trial allows you to start with your chosen template design and continue to customize it with new styles, sections, and pages.
Features
One major reason Squarespace is our #2 favorite pick for the best free website creator is its user-friendly design tools.
The website maker offers a drag-and-drop editor with a smart grid that makes it easy to point and click. This allowed us to try each of the available features and tools.
Squarespace offers a suite of marketing features to attract the right people to your site by integrating advanced SEO tools, social tools, and branded email campaigns. We found these features to be exceptionally useful because they allow you to grow your audience and convert site visitors into customers.
If you are interested in selling physical products or services, Squarespace also offers a variety of specialized tools for selling anything online. You can set up your online store by adding products to your inventory and adding payment or subscription plans.
Squarespace Scheduling goes beyond appointment booking for clients. You can manage individual or team calendars, accept secure payments, and send automated reminders via email and text message.
During our testing with Squarespace, we discovered that Squarespace Analytics allows you to check how your site is performing. It provides powerful insights into traffic and sales and offers a clear picture of your visitors’ engagement through visual data reports.
When you finish editing your site, you can check its desktop and mobile views and preview your site. We loved how this website creator enhanced the user experience by allowing us to click on each menu to see how it would look when visitors interact with it.
Create a free website with Squarespace
Plans and Pricing
While the free trial allows you to explore the Squarespace platform and build a website, you must subscribe to publish your site.
Squarespace offers a range of pricing plans to suit different needs and budgets. The Personal plan, starting at a little above $15 per month when billed annually (saving you 36% compared to the monthly rate), is an excellent option for getting started.
This foundational plan equips you with everything you need to create a beautiful, mobile-friendly website. You can choose from a library of stunning, customizable templates to match your brand identity and claim a free custom domain name for the first year with an annual plan, establishing a professional online presence for your business or brand.
Squarespace Personal also allows you to send invoices directly through the platform and even sell digital products like downloadable content or memberships, opening up possibilities for monetization.
Pros
- Free for 14 days with no credit card required
- Fully customizable drag-and-drop Fluid Engine editor
- Free SSL on all plans
- Send invoices for free
- Squarespace Blueprint AI
- Free custom domain
- Up to 200+ beautifully designed templates
Cons
- Limited customization options
- Lacks advanced eCommerce functionalities
- Limited app integrations
3. Webflow – Best Free Website Builder for Designers and Creatives
While Webflow is not our top choice for the best free website builder, its unique visual design canvas makes it a favorite among designers and creatives.
Our experience confirms that this platform is not beginner-friendly and can be challenging to use. However, if you are comfortable styling elements and building layouts, you can create a free website using pre-built templates.
Webflow offers tons of customization options that resemble the Photoshop interface. The designer lets you adjust the layout display and change colors, fonts, and classes. We appreciated the ease of use when we followed a set of Webflow essentials to build our site faster. You can add and replace images and customize your content for visitors worldwide.
What impressed us the most was the video tutorials that clearly explained how to use all the features in the website generator. We immediately noticed an improvement in our understanding of the website maker to create a responsive design. Since our test site is automatically on the free starter plan, we were able to finish our editing and publish.
Features
Webflow offers features like custom forms, animations, 3D transforms, and interactions to create stunning websites without writing a single line of code. With Webflow, you can integrate eye-catching animations like hover and scroll effects to create dynamic user experiences. The style panel allows you to achieve your desired layout with precise control over element size and positioning.
You can also use the navigator to reorganize sections of your website, such as the container, navigation bar, headings, and columns. Webflow’s built-in CMS allows you to manage your website content effortlessly. You can add, edit, and publish blog posts, news articles, or other dynamic content directly through the platform.
Webflow also offers eCommerce integrations. You can follow guidelines to set up, design, and launch your store. In terms of SEO support, Webflow enables you to add alt tags, define your title, and create a meta description. Webflow also automatically generates a sitemap for you, guiding search engines through your website structure for faster crawling and indexing.
Another important reason we like Webflow as a free website builder is its ability to improve site functionality with third-party integrations from the app marketplace. We found this feature useful because it allows you to connect free, powerful tools to supercharge your Webflow site.
A screen size preview feature ensures your website looks perfect on any device. While Webflow is not the easiest platform, it’s impressive for a free website creator.
Plans and Pricing
The free Starter plan provides basic functionalities for prototyping and design. You can build your website’s structure, experiment with layouts, and access features like a staging subdomain for development purposes. However, the Starter Site plan has limitations on features like custom domains, content management, form submissions, and bandwidth.
You can upgrade to the Basic plan for less than $15 monthly. It enables you to connect your website to a professional custom domain name and build a website with up to 150 pages to accommodate your content needs.
The Basic plan also allows you to collect leads and user feedback through website forms, with a limit of 500 monthly submissions.
Before publishing, you can preview your website with clients or colleagues and enjoy moderate traffic support. This plan offers 50 GB of bandwidth and can handle up to 250,000 monthly visitors, compared to the free plan, which can handle a maximum of 1k visitors.
Pros
- The free plan is valuable
- Free and paid templates
- Multiple customization options
- Walkthrough videos to navigate the tools easily
- Extensive integration with third-party apps
- Free workspace plan for freelancers and agencies
Cons
- Not easy for newbies
- No AI integration
- The SEO tools are not easy to find
4. Weebly – Best Free Website Builder for eCommerce stores
Although Weebly by Square is not the #1 rated website builder, it’s one of the most trusted choices for building free e-commerce websites.
It’s widely adopted for setting up online stores because of its built-in e-commerce functionalities like inventory management and support for various payment options.
Weebly eCommerce by Square allows you to create a free website that grows with your business. Their powerful website creator offers access to design your web page with all-in-one eCommerce tools to simplify orders, shipping, and payments. We found the interface to be intuitive and user-friendly, with easy-to-navigate tools and features.
You can create new sections within the Weebly website creator and add elements like contact forms, titles, images, and text. Once you are done designing the site, you must set up a custom or free Square domain before publishing.
Features
Weebly stands out with its user-friendly drag-and-drop website maker and mobile-responsive themes. We recommend this integrated eCommerce platform to build a professional website with an online store. This website maker’s flexibility allowed us to create an easy website without technical experience.
Furthermore, Weebly allows you to integrate apps to make your site and business more powerful. Some of the apps are made by Weebly, while others are third-party apps that boost traffic, spike sales, and get social.
Since Weebly is fully optimized for creating free eCommerce websites, you can add many items, such as customer reviews, coupons, and gift cards, and manage your orders’ pickup and shipping.
Weebly also offers powerful SEO tools to help search engines find your site. You can add your site description, meta keywords, and more advanced optimizations like SEO-friendly HTML formatting and alt tags on images and page descriptions from the settings.
Another feature that impressed us was the Weebly mobile app. We like how this website generator allows you to build and manage your website on the go. You can download the Weebly app for Android, iOS, and iPad to stay connected and respond to your readers’ comments.
Plans and Pricing
Like Wix and Webflow, Weebly also offers a free plan to build and publish your basic site. What we liked about this is that it comes with free eCommerce tools like inventory management, quick shop for faster checkouts, and more.
You will also get free marketing tools like SEO to rank your site in search engines and customized forms to collect leads.
However, the free plan has limitations on features, storage space, and customization options. For instance, you can’t connect a domain to your website, and you’ll see Square ads all over it.
The Personal plan starts at a little above $9 monthly. It allows you to connect a custom domain and sell digital goods. However, it still misses essential features such as phone support, a free domain, and no ads.
Likewise, Weebly offers higher-tier plans, like Professional and Performance, for those who need access to the full features, including password protection and advanced site stats. Our experience suggests that this will ensure you get access to the best tools and functionality.
Pros
- The basic plan is free and costs $0
- Set Up an online store to sell for free
- Easy for beginners
- App Center for third-party integrations
- Free eCommerce and SEO tools
- Chat, email, and phone support
Cons
- Limited phone support
- Lack of customization options
- Poor social media integrations
- Limited marketing tools
5. Jimdo – Best Free Website Builder for Beginners
Jimdo is not the best overall, but it is an excellent choice for beginners who need to create a free website. You can utilize the intuitive website creator to build a business website, online shop, and portfolio website.
We were happy to discover that you can use Jimdo Artificial Intelligence to simplify and speed up your website creation process.
With Jimdo, you can create a free website with no coding required or use the editor for coding experts to build one from scratch. It also has a virtual setup wizard that prompts you to answer questions about your website’s purpose, target audience, and preferred style.
The wizard will generate a personalized website structure and design. You can then customize it further or use it as a starting point. We don’t like that you cannot choose from multiple templates and are only presented with one or two options to start editing your site.
Unlike Wix, Jimdo’s website creator offers fewer customization options. The website maker allows you to easily add, remove, and arrange elements and pages, change button shapes, and add animations. However, you cannot drag and drop content blocks to build your website’s layout.
Features
Jimdo Dolphin editor is specifically designed for beginners. You don’t have to scroll through endless template galleries because the ADI builder will generate a personalized website design tailored to your needs.
However, the Dolphin Editor (AI website builder) can feel restricted. You can try out Jimdo Creator (drag-and-drop website editor), which allows you to customize elements such as text, headings, photos, social media icons, and galleries.
Unfortunately, the SEO settings are basic. You can only edit the page title and description with the free plan.
Plans and Pricing
Jimdo’s Play plan is a perfect starting point for beginners. It lets you familiarize yourself with the website generator and build up to 5 pages for free. However, the free plan comes with limitations, such as ads, 2 GB bandwidth, and 500 MB storage. This is only ideal for running a free basic website.
Also, your website address will use a Jimdo subdomain instead of a custom domain name. Sadly, Jimdo doesn’t provide customer support for users on the free plan.
The Jimdo Start plan is an excellent option for individuals, small businesses, and anyone who wants a professional website with essential features. For more than $10 per month, you can unlock features like an ad-free website, custom domains, email, and lead capture forms.
Jimdo doesn’t offer a free plan for online stores. The cheapest basic plan costs less than $20 per month and includes all the tools to kickstart your small store.
Pros
- AI-based website builder
- Free plan
- Mobile friendly
- Access to copyright-free photos
- Edit and customize your site’s look and feel anytime
Cons
- Lack the flexibility to choose a template
- Limited SEO features
- No customer support for the free plan
- Limited features and customization options
- Not US-friendly (shipping and tax codes)
How to Choose the Best Free Website Builder for You
Choosing the greatest free website builder requires careful consideration of several key factors. First and foremost, ensure that the builder allows you to publish your website, not just create it. Some free platforms may offer impressive design tools but restrict you from going live without a subscription. Confirm that your chosen builder provides full functionality even at the free level.
Ease of use is crucial, especially if you’re not technically inclined. Look for a website creator with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that lets you easily add and arrange elements. A good builder should offer a smooth user experience, enabling you to create a professional-looking website without needing extensive technical knowledge or coding skills.
Templates are another important aspect. High-quality, customizable templates can make your website stand out and align with your brand. Check if the builder offers a variety of templates suitable for different types of websites, whether you’re creating a blog, portfolio, or online store. The ability to tweak these templates to match your style is also a big plus.
SEO tools are essential for making your website discoverable by search engines. A great free website generator should include basic SEO features like meta tags, keyword support, and easy integration with Google Analytics. These tools help improve your site’s visibility and attract more visitors, which is crucial for your online success.
Lastly, consider the free storage and bandwidth offered by the website builder. Some free plans come with limited resources, which can hinder your site’s performance as it grows.
Ensure the builder provides enough storage for your content and sufficient bandwidth to handle your traffic. Also, responsive design is non-negotiable. Your website should look and function well on all devices, from desktops to smartphones, ensuring a great user experience for all visitors.
Why Use a Free Website Builder?
If you are just starting and need to build an online presence, a free website builder allows you to create, design, edit, and publish your content without spending a dime. By using free website creators, you can easily figure out whether a provider offers the necessary customization options and support you need.
However, when you use a free website generator, you will be forced to display ads on your site and unable to connect to a custom domain. Hence, it is important that you upgrade from a free plan to a paid one to get access to more features.
Free Website Builders FAQs
Here are some of the frequently asked questions about free website generators.
Is Wix website builder completely free?
Wix offers a free plan that allows you to build and publish a website, but it includes Wix branding and limited features. To remove ads and access premium tools, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
How to publish a website for free?
To publish a website for free, you can use a platform like Wix, Webflow, or Weebly, which offers free plans. Simply sign up, create your website, and publish it with the platform’s subdomain.
What are the advantages of using a free website builder?
Free website generators allow you to create a website without any initial cost, making them ideal for beginners or those on a tight budget. They also provide easy-to-use tools and templates, enabling you to get your site online quickly.
When should I upgrade from a free plan to a paid plan?
Consider upgrading to a paid plan when you need more advanced features, such as custom domain names, better design options, increased storage, or the removal of platform ads. Upgrading is also beneficial if you’re looking to create a more professional and credible online presence.