Jump to…
Are you building your first website (opens in new tab) or your most recent? The best free website builders are very often provided by the platforms vying to rank as the best website builder (opens in new tab), and offer users the ability and opportunity to use and test leading platforms before investing in a paid plan.
Are free website builders good?
Free website builders are sufficient for creating basic personal or portfolio sites, but we wouldn’t recommend them for professional business sites.
As with anything you don’t pay for, there are limitations, and the best free website builders are no exception. Make sure you’re aware of the limits placed on you in terms of tools, features, and general capabilities and elements such as storage, number of pages, and bandwidth.
While you won’t get the full range of services paid plans offer, and intrusive advertisements are something you’ll have to accept on certain platforms, free website builders are ideal for trying out leading builders before you sign up to premium plans.
By utilizing free trials and free-forever plans, you can get the best possible experience of a range of top services without spending a dime.
In our guide below, we’ve evaluated, reviewed, and ranked the best free website builders. In studying and exploring their free elements, limitations, advantages and disadvantages, and their performance against key factors such as customer support, site creation tools, and much more, we aim to help you find the best free builder for your site.
The 3 best free website builders right now
What are the best free website builders?
If you’re looking for a free website builder with great functionality, you can’t go wrong with our top three providers: Wix, Webflow, and Zyro.
Wix is the best all-round website builder, and we found it to be the best ecommerce (opens in new tab) and small business (opens in new tab) site creator, with its competitive free plan offering access to the full builder.
Webflow is the free builder of choice for those with more advanced experience in site creation, and allows you to create two sites with the full range of tools before you might upgrade to its paid plans. Zyro is a great beginner’s option even with limited creative freedom, offering excellent ease-of-use and some nifty AI tools.
Weebly offers free ecommerce applications with its free plan, while WordPress is the industry leader for content creators and bloggers. In turn, Strikingly, Site123, Jimdo, Webnode, and Mozello each offer different types of sites and various free packages.
| Website builder | Storage | Bandwidth | Adverts on sites? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wix (opens in new tab) | 500MB | 500MB | ✔ |
| Webflow (opens in new tab) | N/A | Unlimited | N/A |
| Zyro (opens in new tab) | 500MB | 500MB | ✔ |
| Weebly (opens in new tab) | 500MB | 500MB | ✔ |
| WordPress | 3GB | Unlimited | ✔ |
| Strikingly | 500MB | 5GB (a month) | ✔ |
| Site123 | 250MB | 250MB | ✔ |
| Jimdo (opens in new tab) | 500MB | 2GB | ✖ |
| Webnode | 100MB | 1GB | ✖ |
| Mozello | 500MB | 1GB | ✔ |
The best free website builders available
Wix is arguably the best all-around website builder for most people. It employs a sleek drag-and-drop UI that makes website building super intuitive. Unsurprisingly, Wix currently boasts more than 200 million users across 190 countries.
Wix’s proprietary artificial intelligence-based web design tool, WixADI, can help you set up a website after answering a few simple questions. If you would rather create your site manually, there are over 500 premade templates to help you expedite the process. You can also customize every aspect of your website using the drag-and-drop site editor.
When you sign up for a new account, Wix offers 500MB of free storage for building your first website. However, you can’t use your own domain name or create an ecommerce site on this free plan. There’s also a sizable banner advertisement displayed across each free website.
Read our full Wix review (opens in new tab); our interview (opens in new tab) with Head Product Manager Michal Bignitz; and our guide on how to make a website with Wix (opens in new tab).
While most website builders focus on ease of use, Webflow prides itself on functionality. The tool is best suited to freelance web developers and creative agencies in need of a professional visual builder, and competes with the top-level builders such as Editor X (opens in new tab) in this regard for advanced users.
The service is able to accomplish any web design task without the need for coding. Want to create a custom slideshow for your favorite posts? Done. Need a parallax hero section to decorate the top of your website? No problem. Webflow gives you full control over your website, whether or not you know HTML and CSS.
Webflow has a forever-free plan that allows you to publish up to two websites on its .webflow.io subdomain. This plan requires no credit card details to subscribe. Additionally, both free and paid themes are available, as well as a host of additional plugins to enhance the functionality of your site.
Read our full Webflow review (opens in new tab).
Zyro is a website builder from Hostinger (opens in new tab), our choice for the best web hosting (opens in new tab) service provider. The drag-and-drop editor is very easy to use, and boasts a huge collection of AI-based features to automate the process of creating a new website.
Zyro has over 150 templates for users to choose from. The platform is very easy to use and is best for simple projects that don’t require advanced design features. Zyro is a new player in the website builder space, which means it’s regularly updated. One such update is the great AI-based content writing tool that automatically writes web pages and blog posts for your site.
Zyro’s free plan comes with 500MB of storage space. However, there will be some non-intrusive advertisements displayed on your website. Upgrading to a paid plan gives you access to more features and removes all adverts.
Read our Zyro review (opens in new tab), our interview (opens in new tab) with CEO Giedrius Zakaitis, and our interview (opens in new tab) with Hostinger’s CMO Daugirdas Jankus.
Weebly is super straightforward. While it lacks advanced features, you will find this website builder sufficient for basic web development. Simply enter your name, email, and password, and you can set up your website in no time.
Like Wix, Weebly uses an intuitive drag-and-drop interface as well as readymade templates to aid you in the website creation process. This platform is especially good for creating ecommerce websites thanks to a fully integrated shopping cart and lots of payment options to choose from, due to Weebly’s tie-ins with Square Online.
Weebly is also very social media-friendly, allowing visitors to share content across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more.
Weebly’s free-forever plan requires no credit card details to sign up. You get 500MB of free storage and a free SSL certificate with it. However, you will be required to use a .weebly.com domain and display certain advertisements.
Read our Weebly review (opens in new tab), our comparison pitting Wix vs Squarespace vs Weebly (opens in new tab), and our interview (opens in new tab) with Square Online’s ecommerce product lead Katie Miller.
WordPress.com (opens in new tab) (not to be confused with WordPress.org (opens in new tab)) is a free website-building platform that’s ideal for bloggers and content creators. It runs on a modified version of the WordPress.org software and offers a range of features that are perfect for publishers from every niche.
Built-in analytics, site-wide search, comment systems, image galleries, and post archives are among the growing list of features offered by this platform. WordPress.com also comes with hundreds of free and premium templates and widgets to further personalize your website.
WordPress.com’s free plan offers about 3GB of storage space. However, you can’t use a premium domain name (.com, .net, etc.) and will have to make do with a .wordpress.com subdomain unless you upgrade to a paid plan. That said, this is standard for almost all free website builders.
Read our WordPress review (opens in new tab); read how to make a website with WordPress (opens in new tab); discover the biggest WordPress website (opens in new tab) mistakes; and find the best WordPress website builder (opens in new tab) plugins.
If the website you’re building is for personal rather than business purposes, Strikingly might be the thing for you. This simple website builder helps you create one-page websites with ease. You don’t get the same level of control as with Wix, but the tool is great if you want to set something up really quickly.
Strikingly offers a limited selection of templates to choose from. Customizing your site is easy, as long as you don’t want to make any massive changes. And it’s possible to keep making changes once your website is live, so you don’t have to worry about being stuck with the wrong design. You can also add a simple blog and an ecommerce store to your site or use contact forms to gather information from visitors.
Strikingly’s free plan gets you 500MB of storage, 5GB monthly bandwidth, and 24/7 customer support. There’s no free SSL certificate included, and you have to use the compulsory .mystrikingly.com subdomain. If you want your website to have more than one page, you have to upgrade to a paid plan.
Read our Strikingly review (opens in new tab).
Site123 is a great option for beginners. It lets you quickly create a standard website or blog without having to familiarize yourself with a new system. Sadly, that also means that you don’t get as much creative control over the final website as you might like.
Every website built with Site123 is fully responsive; you don’t have to apply any special effort to make templates look good across different devices and platforms. Websites are also fully SEO-optimized. Moreover, you get access to a limited collection of royalty-free images, even on the free plan. The paid plan also offers ecommerce options, should you require them.
Site123 offers 250MB of free storage, which is less than the standard for most website builders in this category. However, the biggest downside of using the platform is that your domain name is just a collection of random numbers, which looks rather unprofessional.
Read our Site123 review (opens in new tab).
Jimdo is a website builder that values simplicity over functionality. Even with no prior knowledge of website design, it’s very easy to get started, and you will end up with a nice basic website before you know it.
To make things really straightforward, Jimdo scatters little question mark tooltips across the interface to provide you with information whenever you feel stuck. You can either use the platform’s AI-based website builder, or a limited manual website builder tool and pre-made templates to start building your website.
Jimdo’s free plan only lets you sell up to five products on your website and doesn’t give you access to its analytics dashboard. You also have to use the platform’s subdomain, but thankfully, there are no annoying advertisements to contend with.
Read our Jimdo review (opens in new tab).
With over 30 million users worldwide, Webnode is a popular choice among those looking for a simple website builder with no learning curve. Sadly, it also seriously hinders your creative potential.
Webnode has a limited number of templates that can be customized to create your ideal website. Its site editor is easy to use, but offers little flexibility when compared to popular platforms like Wix or Weebly. This website builder doesn’t have much to offer in the way of features, but it’s still a decent choice for those looking for a simple solution.
Webnode’s free plan includes just 100MB of storage. You also have to use the platform’s subdomain if you go with the free plan, but it’s hidden in the footer, so at least it isn’t obvious.
Mozello is a straightforward website builder that’s great for creating multilingual websites. You also get access to some basic ecommerce features that enable you to sell up to 10 products on the free plan, which is great.
Mozello isn’t an exceptional website builder in terms of functionality or ease of use. It’s simple enough, but making advanced changes feels like an uphill battle. However, it quickly makes up for all of that with its excellent multilingual functionality. The platform also provides decent options for SEO optimization.
Mozello offers users 500MB of storage on the free plan. You have to use the platform’s subdomain, and there’s no free SSL certificate included with the plan. However, it does offer basic ecommerce support, and lets you sell up to 10 products on your online store without paying a cent.
Free website builders FAQs
What is a website builder?
A website builder helps you create a website, regardless of your levels of experience. Website builders range all the way from simple platforms through to powerful, customizable editors, and are equipped with drag-and-drop functionality, template libraries, and additional tools for areas including ecommerce stores and portfolio design.
Discover top tips when building a website for the first time in our video below:
Free website builders vs paid website builders: what’s best?
You may well be asking: how much does it cost to build a website? (opens in new tab) The answer is that this can range from between a few dollars to well over $50 a month.
Prices depend on what you need your new website to do, and you can expect to pay much more for decent ecommerce and business tools. It’s worth noting when comparing free website builders vs paid (opens in new tab) that the former can be useful, but only in certain cases.
It’s possible to build a website for free (opens in new tab) via trials or free plans, but even the best free website builders feature limitations such as advertising, branded subdomains, or heavily restricted bandwidth and storage.
As a consequence, they usually aren’t the best option for business or commercial sites, or indeed for any type of site that goes beyond small, personal site projects. However, they continue to be a brilliant method of testing a platform before committing, or training yourself on site creation.
What is a good free website builder?
Wix is our top option when it comes to the best free website builders, simply because the full website builder is included on the free plan. It does however constrain users with very limited storage and bandwidth, and any site you create will have a branded Wix domain and advertising.
How we review the best free website builders
When we review the best free website builders, we test the builder and editor by creating our own custom sites. This enables us to establish how easy or how complex the site editor is, and allows us to let you know, as a prospective user, where it might be too simple or too complicated for your level of experience.
For a free website builder, we study the limitations of a free plan or trial. Because many free-forever plans are greatly limited in comparison to paid packages, we aim to explain to you what you’ll actually get if you opt not to spend any money; as such, we also explore the paid pricing plans and what they offer in case you’re ready to invest in more advanced services.
An additional area we study is a given builder’s site uptime and response times over a two-week period. While this relates more to the hosting of the site (usually internally provided by the platform, but sometimes via web hosts), it’s a key indicator for website builders as site uptime and site response times are integral to your website’s performance, and any problems here could cost you time and money.
Additionally, we explore the tools and features included, both standard and unique to a given platform. We also trial the provider’s customer support and customer service responsiveness and knowledge, because if you’re new to website creation, you won’t be able to solve more complex problems, and the builder needs to have adequate support available as and when you might need it.
Further reading on website builders
If you’re just starting out in the world of website creation, learn how to build a site from scratch (opens in new tab); find out how to build an ecommerce website (opens in new tab) if that’s your intention. When it comes to small businesses, you might wonder why you need (opens in new tab) a website: learn top tips for creating a small business website (opens in new tab), the top tools (opens in new tab) needed to succeed, and the foundations (opens in new tab) of a successful small business site.