9 Best Free Website Builders 2023: The Definitive List
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In our rigorous research and testing, Wix came out on top as our overall winner of free website builder. Wix rose to the top thanks to the generous number of features it offers on its free plan. Not only that, but it received the highest customer score out of all the website builders we tested.
GoDaddy placed second because of its easy-to-use ADI builder, attractive SEO tools, and improved design functionality, while Weebly scores third as an ideal free web building choice for small businesses, especially if you’re planning to sell online, too.
We’ve tested hundreds of website builders over the years, so we’ve got a very good idea of which ones offer the best free plans. As we begin to notice uncertain economic climates heading our way, free website builders might be a wise option.
We tested every website builder on this list, and created demo websites so you can see the results for yourself. Read on to check out the full list below, and discover our expert insights on the top nine free builders.
Here are the nine best free website builders:
- Wix – Best all-around website builder
- GoDaddy – Quickest and most effective builder
- Weebly – Ideal for beginners
- Jimdo – Small online store builder
- Site123 – Great design assistance
- Strikingly – Made for simple websites
- Webflow – Best for designers
- Webnode – Quick and easy setup
- Ucraft – Best for multilingual websites
We used our own independent research to create this list, to provide you with accurate and reliable recommendations. We always aim to be as honest and transparent as possible – and in this spirit, we won’t gloss over the fact that free builders aren’t the best way to build a website. You deserve all the facts, so you’ll find drawbacks as well as pros for each builder in our list.
Free website builders come with various limitations that mean they aren’t always good for long-term growth. For example, they often come with limited storage, display advertisements on your site, and lack ecommerce tools.
During our research, we’ve paid particular attention to what each builder does and doesn’t offer. This means that by the end of this article, you’ll be armed with specific information for each builder, so you can make an informed choice about which is best for you.
We’re pretty proud of our research process, because not many sites can say they’ve carried out such in-depth testing before making recommendations. Here’s how our in-house research team go about finding the best website builders on the market.
Every single builder goes through our thorough research process. We investigate important areas such as:
- Ease of use
- Design flexibility
- Value for money
- Feature quality
- Help and support
- Customer satisfaction
This helps us rate and compare the builders fairly, focusing on important factors that users have told us matter most.
We even get groups of everyday people to test the builders out and give us feedback, which we then analyze. This helps us:
- understand exactly how easy (or difficult) beginners find the builder
- uncover any issues within the builder
- judge customer satisfaction
Lastly, we try the website builders out for ourselves, creating demo sites that allow us to get first-hand experience of a platform’s strengths and weaknesses. We aim to create a site that’s as authentic as possible, containing multiple pages. We also time how long it takes to create from start to finish.
We’ve applied this process to over 50 website builders so far – all so we can bring you the most accurate results and recommendations!
Still got questions? Read our report on How We Conduct Our Website Builder Research for a more detailed explanation.
Compare the Top 9 Free Website Builders
In a rush? Get all the key information you need at a glance with our helpful comparison table!
BEST IN TEST | |||||||
Wix | GoDaddy | Weebly | Jimdo | Site123 | Strikingly | Webnode | Ucraft |
Overall Rating 4.8 | Overall Rating 4.1 | Overall Rating 3.4 | Overall Rating 2.7 | Overall Rating 2.8 | Overall Rating 3.4 | Overall Rating Not yet rated | Overall Rating Not yet rated |
Number of templates 800+ | Number of templates 100+ | Number of templates 50+ | Number of templates 100+ | Number of templates 150+ | Number of templates 200+ | Number of templates 90+ | Number of templates 120+ |
Storage space 500MB | Storage space Unlimited | Storage space 500MB | Storage space 500MB | Storage space 500MB | Storage space 500MB | Storage space 100MB | Storage space None: 15 page max instead |
On-site advert on free plan Sticky top banner | On-site advert on free plan Bottom banner | On-site advert on free plan Slide-up ad | On-site advert on free plan Footer disclaimer | On-site advert on free plan Bottom banner | On-site advert on free plan Slide-up ad | On-site advert on free plan Bottom banner | On-site advert on free plan None |
SSL security included on free plan | SSL security included on free plan | SSL security included on free plan | SSL security included on free plan | SSL security included on free plan | SSL security included on free plan | SSL security included on free plan | SSL security included on free plan |
Not yet reviewed |

#1. Wix
Best All-Around Website Builder
Wix is by far the best overall free website builder on the market today.
Wix
Best all-around website builder
- 800+ customizable designs
- Easiest builder to use
- Tons of creative freedom
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $16 - $59 / month
Wix: At A Glance
Wix is extremely easy to use, comes packed with features, and gives you total creative freedom over your site’s design thanks to its drag-and-drop editor.
Although Wix’s free domain isn’t the catchiest, you can customize it to reflect your brand. This gives Wix an advantage over other builders such as SITE123, where you’re given a domain you can’t edit.
Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using Wix
We used Wix to create a free website for an imaginary business called Lucy’s Cupcakes – the whole building process took about half a day. Wix was easy to use, but still gave us all the creative freedom we needed to make our site look exactly how we wanted it to. We especially like the fact that our template came with the Wix Restaurant app already built-in!
What we liked about Wix:
- The creative freedom – we could drag anything anywhere, making it easy to line things up exactly how we wanted them!
- The template choices and designs – our chosen template already had a menu section built-in.
- The undo feature – simply hit CTRL and Z to undo changes you’ve made. This is a small but surprisingly useful feature.
- How easy it was – changing text, images, and backgrounds only took a few clicks. Wix even has an image library on hand, which made it even faster!
What could be improved:
- Onboarding – although Wix is super easy to use, when the editor first loads, it can look a little confusing because there are so many options. This can make Wix look more tricky than it actually is. A quick tour would make it even more beginner-friendly.
Our demo website: https://carnagelucy.wixsite.com/lucyscupcakes made with Wix
Wix Gallery
Wix had the highest customer score of any builder we put through user testing, meaning it was the platform people were most likely to recommend. It’s simple and intuitive, and scored 4.4/5 for ease of use.
With its selection of more than 800 templates – most of which are free – and a huge choice of tools and elements, like galleries, buttons, and social media icons, Wix makes creating a website easier than ever.
Wix guides you through the setup process. You choose the type of site you want to create, your industry, and your template before starting to build.
We chose the Restaurants & Food industry during setup, which gave us 68 tailored templates to pick from. (We chose the Ice Cream Parlor template).
Our chosen template came with the Wix Restaurant feature pre-installed, which made editing the example menu quick and easy.
Most Wix templates are available to users of its free plan – including the one we used to create our demo website, ‘Ice Cream Parlor.’
You can’t use a personal domain (aka a custom website address) – your domain will follow the format yourusername.wixsite.com/yoursite. So instead of lucyscupcakes.com, you’ll be stuck with a much lengthier domain, like this one: carnagelucy.wixsite.com/lucyscupcakes
Make sure to choose a professional username, and a short brand name – you’re restricted to 20 characters for the ‘yoursite’ part of your address.
With the free plan, storage and bandwidth are both capped at just 500MB. This will prevent you from using too many images or videos on your site, as well as potentially limiting how many visitors you can get. You also can’t sell any products through Wix on its free plan.
Premium plans start at $16/month. Although this may sound pricey, Wix is one of those builders where you get what you pay for. It has the highest features score out of all the builders we tested – an impressive 4.9 out of 5 – and its prices reflect this.
Among other things, Wix’s $16 per month Combo plan removes any adverts from your site, lets you use a custom domain, and increases your storage to 3GB instead of 500MB.
Wix’s most popular paid plan is its Unlimited plan, aimed at entrepreneurs and freelancers. For $22/month, it removes all ads, lets you use a personal domain, and provides unlimited bandwidth – as well as 20x more storage space than the free plan!
You will find limitations to Wix’s free plan, though. For starters, there’s a banner ad for Wix which stays in place as you scroll down the site. It’s not too in-your-face, and it’s pretty subtle compared to other builders, but still – it’s a tad intrusive and hard to miss.
The banner says “This site was designed with the Wix.com website builder. Create your website today.” Which signals to your website visitors that your website is not as professional as others. So it might be worth investing a little to remove the banner when you can.
Although you can start creating a Wix website for free, you’ll need to upgrade if you want your website to take secure payments. To sell products you’ll need to get the $27/month Business Basic plan. For the price you’ll get unlimited products to sell, 50GB of storage space, and the ability to sell via your social media channels.

Further Information
- Wix Review – If you’re looking for more information on Wix then this is a great place to start.
- Wix Pricing– We take a closer look at the costs of each Wix premium plan and what you get for your money.
#2. GoDaddy
Quickest and Most Efficient Builder
GoDaddy had the highest customer score after Wix. With its user-friendly design formats and SEO Wiz feature, GoDaddy is ideal for getting any small business off the ground.
GoDaddy
Quickest and Most Efficient Builder
- User-friendly with ADI
- Quickest builder to use
- SEO Wiz to help optimize
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $6.99 - $469.99 / month
GoDaddy: At A Glance
GoDaddy is ideal for anyone looking to create a clean, basic website in a short period of time. It’s pretty user-friendly with its ADI functionality which builds your website based on a few answered questions. From the last time we tested out the builder, GoDaddy has made some impressive changes to its design process with new and improved templates and customization tools – which is why it smoothly climbed its way to number two on our list!
The SEO Wiz feature stands out as a quick and easy function to help optimize your site, although it doesn’t have some of the more advanced SEO features like Wix.
Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using GoDaddy
When we created our demo website with GoDaddy, it was clear that the builder is nice and simple to use. By just answering up to three questions, GoDaddy got to work producing a sleek site that came with customization tools at the bottom to add a personal touch. You get to play around with themes, fonts, colour schemes and CTA buttons.
What we liked about GoDaddy:
- Mobile Optimization– yes, you also get to see what your site looks like on GoDaddy’s mobile editor view! This way you can tweak image and font sizes so it looks good on any device.
- How easy it was to set up – like Wix, GoDaddy asks you what sort of website you want to create and what your business name is, and then gives you tailored themes to work with.
- Easy SEO features– By heading over to ‘Get found by Google’ in the Settings section, you can start optimizing your website by answering a few simple questions. No need to soak up any SEO knowledge before building!
What could be improved:
- There isn’t much room for creative freedom when it comes to block elements. You can’t move or resize image blocks outside of your site’s parameter which can be annoying if you’re trying to make the layout unique to your brand.
Our demo website: https://lucyscupcakes.godaddysites.com/ made with GoDaddy
GoDaddy Gallery
In short, GoDaddy is quite easy to navigate through. The ADI functionality means anyone can create a quick, sleek site without needing any coding skills. You have a business contact page available in each free template, but it’s definitely more limited than other website builders out there in terms of creative freedom. It’s ease of use really depends on how unique you want your site to be. If you’re not too sure how you want your site to look and are pretty happy to stick with the template’s design, GoDaddy will work in your favor.
You get 22 different templates to choose from when building your free website with GoDaddy. This is pretty limited compared to Wix, which offers more than 500 templates (most of which are free), but the selection range is pretty broad in terms of overall design. Whether you’re looking for a more urban style, or something more formal, GoDaddy does have a lot on offer with its templates. You’re also free to switch up the colours depending on your brand style once you’ve chosen your preferred template!
The only downside would be that the templates aren’t that personalised to the industry you’ve chosen. For example, with our demo website, Lucy’s Cupcakes, the templates didn’t seem very food-related compared to the templates you can find on Wix.
Essentially, you get what you pay for! If you’re going for a free GoDaddy plan, there are quite a few features you won’t have access to compared to a paid plan. For example, you’ll have to deal with on-site adverts, such as a ‘Powered By GoDaddy’ banner in the footer of your website.
Additionally, GoDaddy’s free plan doesn’t come with a custom domain. Instead, it will look something like this: https://lucyscupcakes.godaddysites.com/. You also won’t have access to the full suite of customization tools, either.
If you want to get your hands on a custom domain and a no-ad website, you’ll have to upgrade to its premium plans which we’ll talk about in the next section!
GoDaddy’s cheapest plan is its Basic plan for personal use, starting at $9.99 per month. This is a discounted price if you choose to be billed yearly – the usual price is $11.99 per month. You get access to a custom domain, and the ability to send 100 emails per month for your business.
For businesses that are looking to expand, the Premium plan will work in your favor. From $14.99 per month, your visitors can book online appointments through the website, and you’ll have an impressive limit of 25,000 emails sends per month!
If you want to expand in the digital world of commerce, the dedicated Commerce plan from GoDaddy is your go-to at $16.99 per month. It has everything you need from selling on Facebook and Instagram, to connecting to marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy.
With your free GoDaddy website you don’t need to worry about pesky GoDaddy banners clogging up your website. The only mentions of GoDaddy in a free website are in your URL and at the footer of the page where it says “powered by GoDaddy.” Which we think is fair enough for a free website! Compared to Wix’s big banner that follows you as you scroll the page, this feels less intrusive.
This example shows the website and has a tiny mention of GoDaddy and no ads despite it being on the free plan! That’s really exciting news if you want your website to take center stage and stop website visitors clicking off to the website builder’s page.
The short answer is no. GoDaddy’s cheapest plan with sales features is its Commerce plan at $14.99/month. This plan has basic sales features, allowing you to sell up to 5,000 products. If you need to sell unlimited products it will cost $29.99/month (Commerce Plus plan), plus you can send up to 100,000 emails per month. In terms of transaction fees you’re looking at fees of 2.3% + 30¢ when using GoDaddy Payments.

Further Information
- GoDaddy Review – Our in-depth look at GoDaddy will tell you everything you need to know about this free website maker!
- GoDaddy Ecommerce Review – Everything you need to know about building an online store in a flash!
- Wix vs GoDaddy – We compare the differences between Wix and GoDaddy to help you decide!
#3. Weebly
Ideal for Beginners
Weebly is a great plan if you’re looking for a beginner-friendly builder. If you want to sell products on your site, note that Weebly’s ecommerce plan (also free!) is powered by Square Online, so head there if you want online store capabilities.
Weebly
Ideal for beginners
- Most scalable features
- Professional free domain
- Caters to all abilities
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $10 - $29 / month
Weebly: At A Glance
Weebly is a great beginner-friendly option, especially if you’re a small business or looking to build a simple website. Like Wix, it has a drag-and-drop editor but our research found its ease of use to be lacking in comparison to other platforms. So, your creative freedom might feel a little restricted!
In terms of website features, Weebly scores 3.5 out of 5 — a drop of 16% from our previous analysis, which we pin on its poor server response time and mobile formatting.
Setting that aside, we do love Weebly’s SEO tools, semi-professional free domain, and opportunity for website growth. And, when it comes to selling online, you can sell for free from your Weebly site (but do be mindful of the 3% transaction fee on each sale!).
Weebly is now a part of the Square Online suite of digital selling tools. So, if Weebly seems like a good fit but selling online is important to you, we’d actually recommend you go directly to Square, create an account, and take a look at the $0 ecommerce plan.
Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using Weebly
When we created our demo site with Weebly, it felt very beginner friendly – setting up the site was easy. It felt a lot more limited than Wix though, with fewer templates to choose from and more dated looking editing tools.
What we liked about Weebly:
- The structured themes – yes, we did find Weebly’s structured themes frustrating at times, but they’re helpful for following design best practices.
- The number of features – second best on features, after Wix, thanks to its huge app library, SEO guides, and blogging tools.
- Its beginner-friendly prompts – Weebly makes it difficult to accidentally delete anything; it always double-checks first, which is helpful!
What could be improved:
- Lack of creative freedom – the one thing we’d ask Weebly to improve would have to be its level of creative freedom. Having more control over the color and size of your text shouldn’t cause a headache – or require you to code. For Lucy’s Cupcakes, Weebly’s limited editing style proved frustrating when trying to arrange text over an image background, as you can’t simply drag a text box a few millimetres up.
Our demo website: https://lucycupcakesample.weebly.com/ made with Weebly
Weebly Gallery
To put it briefly, Weebly caters to all abilities but it’s not always the most user-friendly or intuitive system. It uses drag-and-drop building tools like Wix, meaning anyone can create a site using Weebly without needing to know how to code.
That said, Weebly is more limited, offering less creative freedom than Wix – which can cause problems when you’re trying to make your site look exactly how you want it. Weebly is easiest to use when you’re sticking pretty closely to your template’s design.
Weebly has seen quite a big reduction in our design scores when looking at aspects like templates, flexibility, UX design and mobile editor.
When testing out the platform with everyday people, we found a a commonality in the frustration users felt. The templates stood out to be pretty bland and lacking style. The blocks can be sticky and tough to play around with, which is a pain point for anyone trying to let their creativity flow!
Our main gripe with Weebly’s templates is the lack of creative freedom they allow. In short, Weebly’s customization options are more limited than Wix’s.
The Weebly free plan limitations are that you don’t have a custom domain, and limited storage at 500MB. Without a custom domain, your website will be named something like this: yournamehere.weebly.com. It’s fairly basic and not too clunky, but it’s not as professional-looking as a custom URL.
But Weebly also reserves phone support for paying customers – you only get access to a community forum, chat, and email support on Weebly’s free plan.
Weebly’s cheapest plan is the Personal plan, which costs $6 per month when billed annually.
We have to be honest, though – we don’t recommend the Personal plan. It won’t remove adverts from your site, and you don’t get a free domain or access to phone support. Its main attraction is that it lets you connect your own custom domain.
Weebly’s $12 per month Professional plan offers much better value for money, which is why we recommend skipping the Personal plan and heading straight for this one. You’ll get unlimited storage and remove ads from your site, among other things!
Weebly comes with the usual free plan drawback – a small slide-up on-site ad for the builder, but it’s not as a banner on your website. It’s more like a little box that takes up a small space on your actual website page.
Weebly’s adverts come in the form of a bright blue slide-up box that opens when you hover it. It depends on your perspective if this is better than a banner. On the one hand it takes up space that could be used for content, but on the other it isn’t a banner that scrolls down with you.
Yes you can! Weebly offers free unlimited products to sell, plus selling on Facebook and Instagram. The only charges are the transaction fees of 2.9% + 30¢.
If you want to sell online, Weebly is owned by Square Online. When you create a free online store via Weebly, you’ll be taken to Square Online’s site to create an account so you can access the full range of ecommerce features for your free Weebly site.
But if you want a custom domain and to remove all Weebly ads, you’ll need to get on a paid plan from $12 per month.

Further Information
- Weebly Review – Our in-depth look at Weebly will tell you everything you need to know about this free website maker!
- Weebly Pricing Guide – We take a closer look at the costs of each Weebly paid plan.
- Wix vs Weebly – We compare the differences between Wix and Weebly to help you decide!
#4. Jimdo
A Good ‘Pre-store’ Option
Jimdo is a good choice of free website builder if you want to set up an online store and sell through your site at a later date.
Jimdo
Small online store builder
- Sell for free
- ADI and coding options
- Connect online profiles
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $9 - $24 / month
Jimdo: At A Glance
The team behind Jimdo are very passionate about helping you build a free website, and things are kept simple so you can jump right in.
All in all, we’d recommend Jimdo if you need a quick and easy website to provide a backdrop for an online Facebook store or similar. You can sell up to five products for free with Jimdo, and it’s really easy (and fairly cheap) to upgrade your plan to scale up your store later down the line.
Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using Jimdo
Jimdo values simplicity, and this is obvious as you build. There are question mark tool-tips scattered throughout the editor to help you along, and uploading images, changing text, and replacing backgrounds is effortless.
What we liked about Jimdo:
- Help with designing — Jimdo offers an impressive ADI editor product, Jimdo Dolphin, which essentially creates your website for you.
- Advanced SEO tools — Jimdo automatically takes care of the SEO for you and shares a lot of helpful instructions on how to optimize your website.
- Its mobile functionality — your website will be compatible with all devices!
What could be improved:
- Its support options — the more you pay, the faster Jimdo will get back to you, so it’s a shame its free plan users are at the back of the queue for support.
Our demo website: https://lucys-cupcakes.jimdosite.com/, made with Jimdo
Jimdo Gallery
Jimdo is generally very easy to use – it was pretty smooth, but didn’t knock our socks off. It’s easiest when you’re simply replacing and adding content in the template, rather than trying to reformat it or customize it too much.
In user testing, 56% of users said they’d recommend Jimdo to a friend. We enjoyed its simplicity, while simultaneously growing frustrated at its limitations.
If you’ve tried out Wix and Weebly, you’ll find Jimdo a bit lacking in comparison. The template selection is also much more limited.
For example, we chose our industry during setup, and were then provided with a selection of templates. But the designs weren’t all relevant to the food industry we’d picked – it would have been nice to receive more tailored designs, like you do with Wix and Weebly.
The prompts at the beginning do mean you can get a website set up really quickly, and avoid the problem of being overwhelmed with choice.
The domain name format is fairly standard: your-site.jimdosite.com. For this site, for example, ours was lucys-cupcakes.jimdosite.com. This is nice and simple, but it does signal to all your visitors that you don’t have a personalized domain name. Also it’s worth noting that “jimdosite” is quite long and if your website name is also long then your URL will look unnaturally large.
Jimdo has two sets of plans – one for its ADI builder, and one for its Creator editor. We used the Creator editor when testing and building with Jimdo.
The ADI editor plans range from $9 to $39 per month, billed annually.
The Creator plans range from $10 to $40 per month, billed annually.
Upgrading guarantees you faster support response times, a free custom domain, more storage and bandwidth, the removal of adverts, and more features, such as adding email accounts.
There are also no banner or pop-up Jimdo ads with the free plan, just a tiny note in the footer. This is great news! Your website visitors won’t be bombarded with heading over to the website builder to create their own website. It also comes across as more professional.
On Jimdo’s free plan, you can sell up to five products, but you’re limited in terms of SEO functionality. You also don’t have access to the helpful analytics dashboard that comes with premium plans. Plus, your storage is limited to 500MB.

Further Information
- Jimdo Review – For more information about Jimdo, you can’t go wrong with our in-depth review.
#5. SITE123
Great Design Assistance
SITE123 is a simple to use website builder that focuses on helping you get online.
Site123
Great design assistance
- Uses ADI to build sites
- 24/7 live chat support
- Useful design guidance
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $12.8 - $97.5 / month
SITE123: At A Glance
SITE123 is ideal for beginners who want to create a nice, simple website. It’s super easy to set up, but if you want to get creative and push the boundaries of your site’s design, then SITE123 isn’t for you. It’s very limited, and the free domain you get is a jumble of letters and numbers, which is a huge downside.
Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using SITE123
The main thing we noticed about SITE123 was how much it tries to help you while you build. From creating your basic site for you, to providing font pairings and complimentary color suggestions, it feels like someone holding your hand from start to finish.
What we liked about SITE123:
- How friendly it was – if you have zero tech skills and want a fairly hands-off building experience, SITE123 is a perfect choice.
- Its chat support – SITE123’s live chat is there to help throughout the building process, which is great if you get stuck.
- All the creative help – simply choose your industry and site name, and SITE123 creates your basic site for you. It has pre-paired fonts and color suggestions to help you too!
What could be improved:
- The quality of design – it’s no secret that SITE123 provides limited creative freedom. This would be less frustrating if the designs were more modern and attractive. Our Lucy’s Cupcakes site was easy to build, but the result looks a little dated and bland, especially compared to the Wix site we made.
Our demo site: https://5f35237f568e3.site123.me/, made with SITE123
SITE123 Gallery
One thing that makes SITE123 so easy to use is its design-assisted technology. All you have to do is choose your industry from the 16 options provided, enter your website name, and SITE123 does the rest. It creates a basic site for you, which you can then customize.
When customizing, you don’t need code – SITE123 is suitable for beginners with zero building experience.
An immediate drawback of SITE123 is that it doesn’t give you a choice of templates. So unlike Wix, Weebly, and other free website makers, who let you choose a template that takes your fancy, with SITE123 you can’t choose from various pre-populated designs.
While this certainly makes it quicker and easier to set up, it also gives you less control over the look and feel of your website.
Design assistant
Instead, you’re relying on SITE123’s design assistant. You pick the type of website you want from 16 different categories (including portfolio, blog, music, and CV), before being presented with a default website design. Although you can amend the default design to some extent, SITE123 scored poorly for design flexibility overall (1.5/5).
SITE123’s customization options aren’t the most attractive or exciting around – if you want a stunning website, SITE123 isn’t really for you.
Not being able to connect a custom domain is a common drawback with free website builders, but with SITE123, it’s an even bigger problem. That’s because SITE123’s free domain is a randomly generated jumble of letters and numbers – and you can’t customize it.
The result is an unprofessional, impossible to remember domain that looks like this: 5f35237f568e3.site123.me
As you can see under domain here, there’s that ghastly jumble of numbers and letters that screams “this is not a professional website!” It doesn’t even have the name of your website in there, which if potential customers see before, might not even bother clicking on.
When you view SITE123’s plans on its website, you’ll see two options: its free plan, and a premium plan that costs $12.80 per month billed annually.
Once you’ve created a free account, however, you’ll discover a wider range of four plans, ranging from $12.80 to $34.80 per month (billed annually). SITE123 often has a sale running, so it’s worth checking for discounts if you do decide to upgrade.
SITE123 has a bottom banner ad that isn’t quite as loud on the eyes as other builders. The price you pay for a free SITE123 website is a banner that says “I built my site using SITE123” that scrolls down the page with the website visitor.
It is a super subtle banner as it blends into the bottom of the website page design, making it less in your face than other builders.
No, you can only have a store and sell products when you buy the SITE123 Premium plan. You can create a website and store for free, but to sell you will need to spend a very reasonable $12.80/month. This plan will also allow you to connect a better domain than the free jumble SITE123 offers on the free plan.

Further Information
- Our SITE123 Review tells you all you need to know about this top free website builder
#6. Strikingly
Made for Simple Websites
An easy-to-use free builder which creates simple, stylish, one-page websites.
Strikingly
Made for simple websites
- Build single page sites
- User-friendly onboarding
- Good for personal sites
Free plan available
Paid Plans: $8 - $59 / month
Strikingly: At A Glance
Strikingly is a simple, easy to use free website builder that’s best for personal rather than business websites. Strikingly’s core focus is getting you online cheaply, easily, and quickly. Because of this, you don’t have the same level of creative control as some of the more intuitive website builders, like Wix.
Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using Strikingly
One of the first things we noticed about creating a website with Strikingly was how friendly it feels. You get a quick onboarding tour that shows you around, and customizing your template is super easy – as long as you’re happy to stick to the design.
What we liked about Strikingly:
- The image gallery – if you don’t have a photographer on hand or any photos of your own, the image gallery makes it so easy to get quality pictures for your site.
- The onboarding tour – Strikingly guides you through the editor so you can be a pro in no time. There’s even a live-chat function so an actual human can help if you get really stuck.
- Simplified building – Sometimes simple is as simple does, and having a builder be so stripped back can help alleviate any design anxieties you may have had.
What could be improved:
- Performance – Worst site speed performance, Strikingly’s the only platform being recognized as “poor” with a research score of 2.4 out of 5. Underperforming against its top competitors like Wix or Weebly by 48%.
Our demo site: https://lucysscupcakes.mystrikingly.com/, made with Strikingly
Strikingly Gallery
Strikingly has a fun, friendly feel to it, despite being basic. It has a simple and uncomplicated editor that can be quite clunky at times. Anyone could build a site with Strikingly, and quickly too – as long as you don’t expect too much control. Our users wished for a more intuitive editor with more creative freedom.
Strikingly creates one-page websites with a pre-formed design of your choice. The first thing you do is choose your template. We chose the template ‘Grace’ for our practice site.
Unlike many other free website builders, you can change your template as many times as you wish once your site is live.
You’ll find editing Strikingly’s templates a piece of cake – as long as you don’t want to change things up too much. In just a few clicks, we’d customized our template to look like this:
Customization is pretty limited – when building our test site, we would have liked a little more control over our page layout.
With Strikingly’s free plan, you can create as many free websites as you please. You’ll also get a 5GB monthly bandwidth, 24/7 customer support, and the ability to sell one product per site through the Simple Store function.
Strikingly’s advertising is arguably the most subtle of any builder so far, and the domain name format – yoursite.mystrikingly.com – is especially decent.
Don’t worry if your free domain looks odd to start with. Our domain for Lucy’s Cupcakes started out as site-2866940-7308-879.mystrikingly.com – but we easily changed it to lucyscupcakes.mystrikingly.com
If you don’t want the “mystrikingly.com” part of your domain, you can try a custom domain for a 14-day trial. You will have to pay to keep it after, however.
Another downside, however, is that – unlike all the builders listed above – Strikingly’s free plan doesn’t include an SSL certificate (unless you connect a custom domain). This means your site will be flagged as ‘Not secure’ to anyone trying to visit it – not good!
In addition to this, your storage will be capped at 500MB and you can also only build websites with up to five pages on the free plan. If you want more, you’ll need to upgrade.
We’d suggest trying out Strikingly’s free plan, then upgrading to the ‘Limited’ paid plan for just $8 a month once you’re happy. You’ll get a custom domain, up to 50GB of bandwidth per month, and the ability to sell up to five products on your site, making it very good value for money.
Strikingly has a mini purple banner that pops up, bottom middle of the web page, that says “create a site with Strikingly.” We’d argue it’s a little bothersome that the banner is purple as that will stand out of a lot of page designs. However if you have a predominantly purple website it might blend in nicely.
It is an incredibly small ad for Strikingly which is good! It doesn’t even take up half the page, just that little purple box that can open up.
You can sell one product per site on your free Strikingly website using Simple Store. Then for $8/month you can sell five products, but that comes with a 5% transaction fee. The next plan up is $11.20 and you can sell up to 300 products, remove Strikingly branding, and the transaction fee goes down to 2%.

Further Information
- Read our Strikingly Review for an in-depth look at this top free website maker!
#7. Webflow
Best for Designers
Webflow is by far an ideal choice for web designers and those who can handle large amounts of customization.
Webflow: At A Glance
This website builder definitely has web designers in mind. Instead of the usual drag and drop functionality that Wix and Squarespace offer, Webflow works with padding and section block areas. This will be a pretty familiar format for users who are used to large amounts of customization but, to a beginner, this may be quite an overwhelming design process.
Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using Webflow
We went ahead and tested Webflow out for ourselves with our demo business, Lucy’s Cupcakes. The building process did take a couple of hours because of how different it is to the popular drag and drop editor that Wix offers. It’s safe to say that without any prior knowledge to using section block areas and overlays, it will be a little difficult to navigate at times. Thankfully, Webflow has a virtual design assistant which gives you an in-depth demo into how everything works before it leaves you to it!
What we liked about Webflow:
- Template choice and designs – Webflow makes it clear which templates are best for which industries, and offers a pretty big range of free templates compared to other builders.
- Creative Freedom – Webflow gives a lot of creative control to users and, even with its free plan, you have get an array of customizable features
- Efficient navigation – Webflow relies on the use of short keys and right-clicking to remove or add elements, which makes the design process a lot more streamlined overall
What could be improved:
- Ability to drag elements – although Webflow is designed with web designers in mind, it would be useful to include drag and drop editor functionality so that it is more beginner-friendly! We’ve seen how great this works with Wix in terms of improving user experience.
Our demo site: https://lucys-cupcakes-e53b96.webflow.io/, made with Webflow
Webflow Gallery
Idf you’re not familiar with section block areas and overlays, you may find Webflow a little tricky to get your head around!
Webflow relies pretty heavily on the use of short keys and right-clicking to remove or add elements, which makes the design process a lot more streamlined. You do get thrown into navigating the dashboard which can be slightly daunting at first. It’s great if you’re someone who has prior knowledge with padding functionality and won’t feel too overwhelmed with large amounts of customization.
With both free and premium templates, Webflow does a good job of identifying which templates are going to be better for your individual requirements . Although, there is no actual search functionality which limits the amount of templates on view and whether it accomodates for a certain industry.
Usually website builders have a set of templates for the blogging industry, for example, which provides a good indication as to what works for you. This is something Webflow could definitely include to make the overall user experience much more enjoyable.
Unless you upgrade to Webflow’s premium plans that start at $12 per month, you won’t have access to a custom domain name or advanced design tools.
Your domain name will look something like this lucyscupcakes.webflow.io, with the free plan which doesn’t look the prettiest!
Webflow offers two types of paid plans; General Plans and Ecommerce Plans.
There are four general paid plans which are Basic, CMS, Business and Enterprise, ranging between $14 – $39 per month billed annually (Enterprise plans you need to contact them). We’d recommend site plans for content-driven websites or blogs because it gives you creative freedom but doesn’t allow much room for large amounts of traffic. Site has an ecommerce plan that is much better suits for growing traffic and marketing tools.
Ecommerce Plan offers three choices of Standard, Plus, and Advanced plans. These plans range from $29 -$212/month billed annually.
Essentially, you’re get a lot more with paid plans, but if you just want to play about with the platform, it’s always good to give the free plan a try before you decide to buy!
Webflow’s advertising will not appear on your free site, it only shows up at the very bottom of the page in small writing.
All you’ll get is the small writing here that says “Powered by Webflow” and describing the template creators, which is really awesome for a free website!
The short answer is no. You can start an ecommerce store with Webflow by integrating certain apps that help you sell your products. But the apps themselves will cost money and they vary in transaction fees too.

#8. Webnode
Great for Events Websites
Webnode is a popular choice of free website maker with more than 30 million users around the world.
Webnode: At A Glance
Webnode is a decent choice of free website builder if you can’t commit much time to working on a template design, or want a builder with virtually zero learning curve – but it does limit your creative potential compared to other builders on our list.
Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using Webnode
When we set up our demo website, the sign up process was super straightforward. Simply choose a template to suit your needs, then customize your site using its drag-and-drop editor. There’s a quick onboarding pop-up to show you the ropes, but otherwise you’re left to your own devices.
What we liked about Webnode:
- Minimalist templates – Webnode has over a hundred customizable templates to choose from, so you can find a style that suits you best.
- Beginner-friendly tools – Don’t worry if you’re not tech-savvy because Webnode offers a small onboarding tour before you start building, and its tools are easy to use.
- Range of plans – Webnode has a variety of plans to choose from, with its Standard plan being its most popular option.
What could be improved:
- Features on cheaper plans – Webnode’s free plan is fairly limited when it comes to features. For example, the Limited free plan doesn’t come with a free domain, so you’ll need to upgrade to a higher-tier plan for added benefits.
Our demo site: https://lucys-cupcakes9.webnode.page/, made with Webnode
Webnode Gallery
It’s really easy to get set up with Webnode. The whole website building process could be done in about five minutes – now that’s quick!
There’s no real learning curve with Webnode – it’s easy to quickly find your way around and start editing your template. Some design controls are located in the settings dashboard, which can take a minute to find, but other than that, everything is where you’d expect to find it.
There’s nothing in Webnode that’s likely to cause you headaches – unless you try to do too much with it.
Webnode has clean, minimal template designs to choose from during the setup process.
You can’t change your template, so make the most of Webnode’s preview feature before you commit to a template and start building.
Webnode’s editor is very easy to use, but a lot less flexible than other free website builders like Weebly or Wix. It’s almost a drag-and-drop editor, but not quite.
You can move elements around, but they will conform to predetermined designs. For example, if you move an image from the middle of the page to the right, the page design will change to accommodate this, rather than simply letting you drop the image where you want it. It lends itself really well to building simple, minimalist sites – we recommend it for events websites rather than, say, business websites.
That said, we chose the ‘Joe’s Coffee Palace’ template for our cupcake website, and were pleased with the results.
One of the big drawbacks to Webnode is the limited storage you get on the free plan. You only receive 100MB storage, which is five times less than most of the other builders on our list.
Webnode has a helpful storage tracker in the settings dashboard, which shows you just how much storage you’ve used. This is good for knowing when it’s time to upgrade.
Your free Webnode domain will represent your brand to a certain extent, but you can’t customize it like you can with Wix.
The domain we got for our cupcake website looked like this: lucy-s-cupcakes0.webnode.com – not so bad as the SITE123 free domain, but not ideal either.
Also the Webnode free plan doesn’t provide password protection, backups, or ecommerce – you’d need to upgrade to unlock these features.
Webnode’s cheapest paid plan costs $3.90 per month – this is a basic plan that’s main benefit is letting you connect your own custom domain.
To increase your storage you’d need the $7.50 per month Mini plan, and to remove the small Webnode ad from your site you’d need the $12.90 per month Standard plan.
Luckily, Webnode’s ad is very small and subtle, placed in the footer of your website.
No, you’ll need an ecommerce plan to start selling with Webnode! Its Standard ecommerce plan begins at $12.90/month and goes up to $31.90/month.

#9. Ucraft
Strong on Design and User Experience
Ucraft is a very image-drive website builder, making it an ideal choice for ecommerce websites that really want to show off their products!
Ucraft: At A Glance
Ucraft is ideal for website owners wanting to focus on user experience. The image-driven platform lets you showcase your products or services in a bold fashion from large visuals, to flashy fonts. Ucraft is pretty user friendly with easy-to-use templates and simple customization tools on the left-hand side. The main focus on aesthetics really makes this builder enjoyable for the user. A top choice if you’re going for a colorful, urban style!
Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using Ucraft
The onboarding process for Ucraft is pretty straightforward. When signing up, you get asked to choose your template from a variety of categories, and to type in your subdomain name – Ucraft then gets to work creating your site.
Like the other website builders listed, we used Ucraft to create a demo website for our imaginary business, Lucy’s Cupcakes.
Its drag-and-drop editor is a little clunky at times, and the general design experience isn’t always so friendly, but Ucraft’s tools are easy enough to get to grips with. Also, with the platform being so image-driven, it could be tough to get all the relevant, ‘word-y’ information onto your site.
What we liked about Ucraft:
- Its onboarding steps – Once your account is set up, Ucraft provides a checklist of steps to tick off so you can make sure your website is ready for launch.
- Content blocks – Ucraft’s drag-and-drop editor revolves around the content blocks of the page, and it’s super easy to add new elements on to your site.
- Template variety – When you create your website, you can choose from a range of templates to suit different industries and needs, such as events or restaurants.
What could be improved:
- Reliance on visuals – Ucraft’s templates really emphasize visuals (which can be a great thing too!), but if you want more text elements or text-heavy pages, Ucraft might not be the most suitable choice.
The design process was, overall, super fun to play around with and you can achieve a lot of page character when using Ucraft. Here’s what we managed to create:
Our demo site: https://lucyscupcakes.ucraft.site/, made with Ucraft
Ucraft Gallery
Ucraft isn’t the easiest of platforms to use when comparing to other builders! It can be pretty restrictive when it comes to changing up the content blocks, and if you’re looking to amend the sizing of images and text blocks when creating galleries, you may be better with Wix which gives you a lot more creative freedom.
With Ucraft being a very image-driven builder, its templates are really focused on large images covering the page, rather than text. What’s great is that the templates are provided with an information button to allow users to identify what/who the template is designed for. Ucraft templates are pretty slick and clear with minimal content – the visuals are clearly doing all the talking!
As you can expect, you definitely get what you (don’t) pay for!
Ucraft’s free plan only limits you to 15 website pages, and there are a bunch of things that you end up missing out on.
You don’t get access to SEO tools, designer or blogging tools, and you can’t do any selling on a free plan! If you’re looking to sell online, you’re better off upgrading to any of its pro plans which opens up the doors to data management services and access to Ucraft 24/7 support.
The design process itself is a lot more limiting on the free plan, even if you’re just trying to create an online presence.
In terms of your domain name, though, Ucraft is one of the better ones. It’ll look something like this: yoursite.ucraft.site. This still allows you to put your brand front and center.
Premium plans start at $10 per month when billed annually. Although this may sound pricey, Ucraft does have a pretty good value for money with the array of features you get in return.
You’ll receive a free domain with all three of its pro plans and gain access to all the Advanced tools, such as multilingual options, custom fonts, and more than 20 integrations.
You can select either the Pro Website plan (which is its most popular plan), Pro Shop, or Unlimited plan. The more premium you go, the bigger the price tag, so make sure you have a rough idea of the tools you’ll need before selecting one.
In addition to only getting a 14-day free trial, your website will have Ucraft banner running along the bottom of any free website. The only way to get rid of this is to upgrade to a Pro plan.
You can’t sell on Ucraft’s free plan. Instead, you need the $10 per month Pro Website plan to sell up to 15 products. However, data management tools don’t creep in until you upgrade to Pro Shop for $21 per month, so that might be your best option if you want to build an online store.

What’s Important in a Free Website Builder?
Free website builders may have once seemed too good to be true, but we set out to demonstrate that this is not always the case.
A question we often get asked is just how do these free website builders make their money? Is there something sketchy going on? Luckily, it’s all super safe and above board. These website builders operate on what’s known as a ‘freemium’ business model, whereby the customers who want to pay for extra features effectively fund those who are happy with a limited plan – no strings attached.
That said, there are some elements that you should pay close attention to when deciding on which free website builder you choose.
To create this ranking of the best free website builders, we drew upon our extensive research and user testing for each website builder as a whole, and combined this with a specific focus on their free plans, paying close attention to whether or not the builder ticked these boxes:
Clear domain name
Free website builders won’t let you link up a custom domain name – but what does the auto-generated one look like? For example, a format like IM Creator’s (im-creator.com/free/yourname/yoursite) could make your site look quite unprofessional.
Low upgrade cost
Upgrading to a paid plan comes with clear benefits, so it’s good to know how much this would cost.
Minimal advertising
You don’t need us to tell you that a website plastered in ads won’t look as good as one without! Our screenshots should help you evaluate the ads of each website builder, and decide on the least intrusive option for you.
Free SSL certificate
Most website builders include a free SSL certificate as standard, but a couple don’t (we’ve flagged when this is the case). Without an SSL certificate, your website will display as ‘Not secure’ to visitors. You can buy an SSL certificate separately for around $10/year.
Sufficient storage
Most free website builders have a cap on the amount of content you can upload to your site. If you know you want to include lots of images or videos, be mindful of how quickly you’d hit this cap.
Easy to use
There’s no point in finding a website builder that ticks the boxes above, only to discover it’s clunky and frustrating to use. We’ve given an indication of how easy each website builder is to use, based on our research and user testing.
Ecommerce functionality (optional)
If you need to sell through your free website builder, this limits your options a little. Keep an eye out for website builders we’ve flagged as allowing you to sell on a free plan, like Weebly.
By going through the process of creating a free website with each builder for this article, we’ve been able to give a really accurate first-hand account of the process.
How Do I Create A Free Website? (Step-by-Step)
One thing all the website builders in our ranking have in common, aside from being free, is that they are easy to set up – they wouldn’t have made the cut otherwise! The process and learning curve differ slightly from builder to builder, but here are the steps you can expect:
- Sign up with the website builder. This will require an email address, password, and possibly a username.
- Choose a template, or answer questions for the design assistant. This is the first fork in the road – most builders will let you select a template to work off at this stage, but some will use design assistance to mock up a website for you based on your answers to a few questions. We’ve specified when this is the case.
- Add in your own content. Get rid of placeholder text and images, and replace these with your own.
- Tweak and customize your design. If you want to, you can customize your design further by testing out new layouts and colors, or even switching to a new template. Most builders let you switch templates after publishing, but keep in mind that Wix doesn’t.
- Press publish! At this point, your domain name will be generated, and your site will be live for the world to see.
This process could take anything from 15 minutes to a few hours, depending on how much you switch up in steps three and four.
Is It Worth Upgrading to a Paid Plan?
As we’ve seen, free website builders can do a lot – but paid plans allow for a lot more. And paid doesn’t have to mean expensive; you can take advantage of premium features from as little as $6/month.
The most common advantages of paid plans include:
Removing ads
When you’re trying to give a professional image, no ads is a whole lot better than subtle ads – and upgrading your plan will leave your site ad-free.
Connecting a custom domain name
Again, yoursite.com is a whole lot better than yoursite.yourwebsitebuilder.com, and a whole lot more memorable, too.
Access to more storage and bandwidth
As your site grows and your traffic increases, you may find you simply outgrow your free plan. You may need to upgrade to have enough storage, and so that enough people can access your site at once. Many paid plans offer unlimited storage and bandwidth, so you can have total peace of mind.
Advanced marketing and sales tools
The features and tools needed to take your business or hobby to the next level will often be waiting for you in that premium plan, so make sure you at least take a look!
While there’s no pressure to upgrade to a paid plan at any stage, we think it’s always worth checking out or trialling at some point. It can be nerve-wracking to invest money in a new business, project or hobby, but there’s an element of ‘fake it till you make it’ here; with the added professionalism of a paid site, nobody needs to know that you’re not far more established.

Best Free Website Builders: Conclusion
We’ve guided you through the pros and cons of nine free website builders, as well as the advantages of upgrading to a paid plan when possible. You’re now equipped with everything you need to pick a website builder, and to put your digital pen to digital paper.
Let’s have a quick recap…
Our list of the top nine free website builders ranks Wix as the best all-around builder, with tons of free features, while GoDaddy is great for SEO and design functionality.
Weebly is ideal for beginners and offers a completely free ecommerce plan through Square Online if you need to sell online.
Here are the nine best free website builders:
- Wix – Best All-Around Website Builder.
- GoDaddy – Quickest and Most Effective Builder.
- Weebly – Ideal for Beginners.
- Jimdo – Small Online Store Builder.
- Site123 – Great Design Assistance.
- Strikingly – Made for Simple Websites.
- Webflow – Best For Designers.
- Webnode – Quick and Easy Setup.
- Ucraft – Best for Multilingual Websites.
Just remember that free website builders nearly always limit the features and functions that are available to you – you may be ok with this now, but it could prove extremely frustrating further down the line.
While we always recommend making the most of free plans to build, play, and experiment with different builders, we never recommend staying on a free plan forever.
If you’re serious about your website, and want other people to take it seriously too, then at some point you will need to upgrade to a premium plan.
There’s no rush, though – none of the builders on this list have a time limit on their free plan, so you can stay on them as long as you like, until you’re ready to take your site to the next level.
In the meantime, enjoy trying out your favorite free builders – come back and let us know which one you liked the most!
FAQs
It’s also worth noting that Wix came first in our ‘Value for Money’ testing, despite its higher starting price of $16 per month (billed annually). You get what you pay for – it’s the best overall website builder on the market today.
Strikingly is great for creating modern websites quickly, but only lets you sell one product through its free plan. Mozello is more limiting in terms of design, but lets you set multiple languages for your site, and lets you sell up to 10 products on its free plan – great for selling internationally!
There are currently no free services, but check out our article on the Best Cheap Web Hosts if price is your main consideration when choosing a provider.
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