15 Best Free Website Builders (2024)

1. A Rather Simple (Though Limited) Site Editor :- Strikingly's design system allows you to start with one of a few available templates and then add sections or content blocks to your homepage. However, unless you purchase one of the premium plans, you are unable to design any kind of unique layout.

2. Good blogging tools :- The standard blogging tools like categorization, tagging, and scheduling articles are all present and well in Strikingly. We like that you can modify your blog entries using a mostly similar interface to edit the rest of your website and that you can preview how they will appear.

3. Marketing and Analytics Tools :- In addition to the standard SEO tools, you will also find email and some integrated analytics tools here. There are also sign-up forms for newsletters.‍

4. Integrate social media feeds :- The option to integrate all of your social media feeds from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram directly into your page is one of the cool capabilities in this section that goes beyond merely putting icons that direct visitors to your social media feeds.

It could not be simpler to use strikingly. Everything about it is designed to make building an effective website as soon as possible. Go right to the Pro plan, at the very least, if you are going to pay. It is the least expensive option that debrands your website with Strikingly. You can add 300 products to your store, and the bandwidth is infinite.

Additionally, rather than needing to purchase a new plan each time you create a new site, you can create up to three sites that employ the Pro features. The user also gets open access to the app store of the website builder.

Performance - The worst site speed performance, with Strikingly being the sole platform given a research grade of "poor" (2.4 out of 5). By 48%, it falls short of its leading rivals Wix and Weebly.

You can create as many free websites as you like with Strikingly's free plan. A 5GB monthly bandwidth allowance, round-the-clock customer assistance, and the opportunity to use the Simple Store feature to sell just one item per site are all included.

Strikingly's marketing is possibly the quietest of any builder to date, and the domain name structure, yoursite.mystrikingly.com, is particularly respectable.

If your free domain initially seems strange, don't worry. Site-2866940-7308-879.mystrikingly.com was the original domain name for Lucy's Cupcakes, which we quickly changed to lucyscupcakes.mystrikingly.com.

You can try a custom domain for a 14-day trial if you don't want the "mystrikingly.com" portion of your domain. However, if you want to retain it after, you'll have to pay.

Another drawback is that Strikingly's free plan lacks an SSL certificate, in contrast to all the builders mentioned above (unless you connect a custom domain). This means that anyone attempting to visit your site will see a warning that it is "Not secure."

Create a site with Strikingly is promoted in a small purple banner that appears in the bottom center of the website. We would say that the purple color of the banner is a little troublesome because it will stick out among many different page designs. However, it can mix in well if your website is primarily purple.

Squarespace's grid editor is simple to master and generates some amazing outcomes.

There are more than 140 high-quality templates available, including ones for blogs and wedding announcements. There are 18 different sorts of template options.

Your website can include as much content as you like. There is never a concern about running out of room.

Squarespace provides almost all the tools required to market your website. To expand your site, you get email marketing, SEO tools, and social media connectors.

Its advantages extend beyond aesthetic appeal. Additionally, Squarespace provides fantastic e-commerce, sophisticated SEO capabilities, and access to over 25 third-party extensions. Each of these features is simple to use without sacrificing functionality. The SEO features are some of the best we have ever seen, in all seriousness.

Sometimes, the lack of customizing options is kind of the idea. And without any doubt, building a website definitely falls under one such occasion.

The complete package: handle shipping, track inventory, provide discounts and coupons, collect taxes based on a customer's location, and sell both physical and digital goods. Although it may not be as intricate as Shopify or BigCommerce, it still has a tonne of capabilities.

You can sell an unlimited number of things for no cost, and you will not ever pay a monthly charge to use nearly all the services. However, a little portion of each transaction goes to Square, and this is true for all plans. You must also use a subdomain (eg. your store.square.site).

Even the results of a Google search can be used to advertise your items. Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel allow you to track your purchases and determine which products your customers like. Even it's own (different) email marketing tool is available from Square to assist you to expand your clientele.

Square Online provides two uncommon services, including hiring a competent designer to spruce up your website for you and sending your product line to Square for pictures. Yes, you send them your goods, they photograph them professionally for your store, and you receive them back.

Our store's setup was simple enough because of the abundantly clear instructions and searchable knowledge base. Before you get started, please, try to confirm if the online store option is even accessible in your nation. It is not offered everywhere. Otherwise, it was a short and enjoyable process.

A nice logo may make all the difference in the world for a website. The same is true for quality content. Zyro AI can assist you in producing both. Just provide some information in response to a few questions, then wait. Although we would not advise using the Awestuff precisely as it is released, it is a decent place to start if you ever find yourself in a bind.

Zyro's AI-powered heatmap enables you to identify prospective interest regions as well as parts of your website that can be difficult to notice.

Zyro provides more than 100 premium templates in numerous categories, including blog, portfolio, entertainment, and community.

Each Zyro subscription comes with tools to help you market your website and improve its search engine rankings.

WordPress is primarily a blogging platform. Almost anything else can be made to work with it, but it takes time. WordPress.com can create a good blog for you if all you want is that or a straightforward company website with a blog.

In excess of 100 As a traditional CMS, WordPress heavily relies on themes. While you do have some control over how your information is laid out, the theme you choose will make the majority of the design decisions for you. Though some themes offer extensive customization, it does not include all.

‍WordPress.com offers a feature that the original programme lacks: the option to swiftly and simply create a portfolio on your website. You just add pages to your site's Portfolio area, and some themes (like the demo theme) will show your portfolio items on those pages automatically.

There is not much to say about analytics, newsletters, or SEO. All the gang is present. Instead of WordPress itself, plugins offer a lot of the more sophisticated SEO functions; sadly, plugins are only available with expensive plans.

When compared to other builders, Webflow gives a pretty wide selection of free templates and makes it apparent which templates are suitable for specific businesses.

Webflow allows users a great deal of creative freedom, and even with its free plan, you receive a lot of customizability.

Webflow uses short keys and right-clicking to modify or add items, which greatly streamlines the design process.

Although you do have some control over the layout of your material, the template you choose will mostly decide how your site looks and feels. It is fortunate that they are attractive. However, you can change the fonts and colours, which is beneficial.

Many website builders actually offer a poor user experience on mobile devices or just do not function. One exception is Webnode, where editing your site from a phone or a tablet is quite simple.

We do, once more, adore the ability to modify blog articles essentially identically to how we edit any other website. The same types of material, such as tables, forms, maps, and more, can be included as well.

You can place some advertising on your free website using Google AdSense. Strangely, Google Analytics is only available with a premium subscription. Oh, right.

Being able to insert your own code onto the page (including such third-party tracking code) is a wonderful advantage even though it is a small quibble.

It took us only a few minutes to set up our sample site using this service, and it was in no way challenging. One benefit of using a basic, somewhat constrained site builder is that. We mentioned that the overall experience was enjoyable, and guess what? There are surprisingly few online platforms that we would consider to be actually "nice" to use.

Do not accept anything other than the Standard plan until you have run smack into the restrictions of the free plan (not "if," or "when"). Even though some of the capabilities are still somewhat restricted, it is cheap and offers you access to all the glitzy features. When your website starts to generate some revenue, only make more upgrades.

There is a tonne of templates that will build up entire pages or just specific areas of sites for you. However, it should be noted that these templates may not work with the WordPress theme you have already installed. Additionally, the majority of them are locked behind the Pro plan (including templates for things like site navigation).

That is all there is to basic content widgets. Text, picture embedding, simple photo galleries, photo sliders, and a few other helpful features are all included.  In all honesty, WordPress.com's free plan offers virtually more.

Addons to plugins do exist in the WordPress universe. These are essentially additional WordPress plugins that add new content block types to Elementor's functionality. Since, why not?

Because Elementor is essentially simply an easy way to change the visual components of your site and nothing more, your WordPress website is the only one that offers any other features, such as blogging, marketing, and SEO tools. The issue is, that it is not really a subpar product. Elementor is actually quite adept at creating bespoke websites based on WordPress without the need for coding. Once you become used to using the fundamental controls, it is also pretty simple to use.

The primary drawbacks are that the free edition has very few options and that you need some prior design experience to create much more than a nearly blank site. Oh, and we should mention that the button to access the templates, which handles the laborious work for you, is not labelled clearly, which annoyed us while we were writing this review. If you are prepared to pay, Elementor is one of the greatest site designer tools available, despite a few minor annoyances.

You have access to all features with the Personal plan for a year, which is also good for one site. Unless you intend to use it on other sites, you will not need a more expensive plan. Just remember that you will also need to pay for your hosting, whether it is on your own server or a platform like WordPress.com. This is in addition to the price you pay for Elementor.

Webs are one of the first website builders we would advise against using. When you initially browse their website and what they have to offer, everything seems to be in order. Their prices are reasonable, with plans beginning at-$5.99 monthly; $12.99 monthly; or $22.99 monthly.

What makes this option even better is that Webs gives you a 30-day money-back guarantee. All of their plans include custom domain names and emails. Webs, however, undoubtedly have certain drawbacks. Although the construction process is quite straightforward, your design possibilities will be severely constrained.

The builder itself has an old vibe, and your finished work can share that same sense. This website builder does not support some browser extensions either. Overall, using the interface is plain uncomfortable.

It is clear that Webs is not the best platform for e-commerce websites, and adding those features can be pricey. The only method of getting in touch with customer service for those of you contemplating the cheapest package, which starts at $5.99, is by email.

If you require immediate assistance, that is not ideal. Only the highest tier plan has phone help; their middle-priced plan only has live chatting and email. Reviews indicate that email support has a slow response time. A response is often anticipated in two days or less.

We can not imagine having to wait two days for a response to a crucial question regarding our website. Webs may be inexpensive and simple to use, but it just lacks luster. Your options for the kind of website you can create utilizing this platform will be severely constrained if you use older themes.

Another alternative we would steer clear of is Doodlekit. We typically avoid criticizing or disparaging websites, goods, or services, but in all honesty, there are more drawbacks with Doodlekit than advantages. It is not in the least bit user-friendly. The ability to change their templates is also very challenging.

Despite our extensive knowledge of website builders, we struggled and became perplexed while attempting to make what we believed to be straightforward changes. Although Doodlekit has over 100 themes, quantity is not always a good indicator of quality.

It would be a grave error to add the themes to your website because they are so out of date. It seems impossible to modify and alter these themes. Some of you who are seeking to save money might find Doodlekit an attractive free website builder. But we also would not advise using that.

If you are billed annually, their other options run from $10 to $40. The monthly plans begin at $14. Give the free option a try if you do not want to take our word for it. However, we would advise that you pick a better website builder and forego the effort entirely.

Yola is fairly simple to use, much like Webs. However, such simplicity comes at the expense of being quite constrained. The construction procedure is not difficult, but it does become tiresome after a time. The templates are stiff and out-of-date. The templates end up needing so many modifications that the original intent is essentially defeated.

Although they have more than 250 themes, the themes appear to have been created ten years ago. That is not ideal when you are up against websites with responsive designs and background movies. Yola offers a free plan and reasonable pricing.

However, the free plan only allows you to build three pages and comes with a Yola subdomain. You cannot create a legitimate website in that manner. The free plan's only advantage is that it provides you with the opportunity to sign up and try out the builder before you have to pay.

Pricing for annual contracts ranges from $5 to $20 each month, or $7 to $30 for month-to-month agreements. You get a personalized domain with each plan, excluding the free one. To any of the paid plans, a Yola store can be added for $10 a month. Although this sounds appealing, we do not believe you will be satisfied with the website's overall design or user experience. We have put Yola on we avoid list because of this.

No advertisements are much better than subtle ads when you are trying to project a professional image, and upgrading your package will remove adverts from your site.

Once more, yoursite.com is better and more memorable than yoursite.yourwebsitebuilder.com.

You can just outgrow your free plan as your site gets bigger and more popular. You might need to upgrade so that your site has enough storage and can handle a large enough number of simultaneous visitors.

Make sure you at least have a look at that premium plan because it frequently has the features and resources you need to advance your business or hobby.

You can not link up a custom domain name with free website builders, but how does the one that is generated automatically look? A structure like IM Creator's (I'm-creator. com /free /your name /your site), for instance, may give your site a somewhat amateurish appearance.

Knowing the cost of upgrading to a paid plan is beneficial because doing so has obvious advantages.

You already know that an ad-filled website won't appear as good as one without. You can use our screenshots to compare the advertisements on each website builder and choose the one that bothers you the least.

A free SSL certificate is typically included with website builders, although some do not (we have indicated where this is the case). Visitors will see your website as "Not secure" if it lacks an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate can be purchased separately for about $10 per year.

There is typically a limit on how much content you can submit to your website when using a free website builder. If you intend to include numerous photographs or videos, consider how quickly you might reach this limit.

Finding a website builder that checks all the aforementioned boxes but is difficult to use is pointless. Based on our investigation and user testing, we have shown how simple each website builder is to use.

This somewhat restricts your possibilities if you must sell using your free website builder. Watch out for website builders like Weebly that we have noted permit you to sell on a free plan. We were able to provide an accurate first-hand account of the procedure by actually building a free website with each builder for this post.

An email address, password, and perhaps a username are required for this.

He first fork in the road is here; while the majority of builders will let you choose a template to work from at this point, some will employ design help to create a mock-up of a website for you based on your responses to a few questions. When this is the case, we have made it clear.

Remove the placeholder text and pictures and add your own.

If you would like, you may experiment with other color schemes and layouts, or even switch to a different template, to further personalize your design. The majority of builders allow you to change templates after publishing, but Wix does not.

Your domain name will now be created, and your website will be accessible to everyone. Depending on how much you vary the actions in stages three and four, this procedure could take anywhere from 15 minutes to many hours.

The majority of website builders, but not all, come with a free shared domain like your site.wordpress.com. You must purchase the domain, which typically costs approximately $10 for the first year and $12 or more each year after that, in order to use a personalized, unique domain like yoursite.com.

Free shared hosting is offered by each website builder on our list. You will need to set up your own hosting if you want to use programmes like WordPress.org; the cost can vary, but it can start at as little as $3 per month.

You will need to hire someone to develop the website for you if you do not have the time or expertise to do it yourself. Employing a developer is unnecessary thanks to drag-and-drop builders, but you might want to find someone with design or copywriting abilities to give your website a polished appearance.

As your company expands, you can outgrow the free marketing resources provided by the majority of website builders. If you anticipate going beyond the capabilities of the free tools, look into alternatives early because email marketing services through website builders could get expensive.

Almost every e-commerce service you find will charge you a tiny fee for each sale, even if you can create an internet store for free. The actual amount varies according to the processor, but small firms often pay 2% + $0.30 for each transaction.

No advertisements are much better than subtle ads when you are trying to project a professional image, and upgrading your package will remove adverts from your site.

Free shared hosting is offered by each website builder on our list. You will need to set up your own hosting if you want to use programmes like WordPress.org; the cost can vary, but it can start at as little as $3 per month.

You can just outgrow your free plan as your site gets bigger and more popular. You might need to upgrade so that your site has enough storage and can handle a large enough number of simultaneous visitors. You can have complete peace of mind because many paid plans offer unlimited storage and bandwidth.

Make sure you at least have a look at that premium plan because it frequently has the features and resources you need to advance your business or hobby. Even while there is never any push to subscribe to a paid plan, we believe it is always worthwhile to check out a trial.

It can be unsettling to put money into a brand-new endeavor, but as the saying goes, "fake it till you make it." With the extra sophistication of a paid site, no one will be able to tell that you are not much more established.