Best Free Website Builders Compared

Did you know you can build a website from scratch in just 20 minutes? Below, we present our top picks for the best free website builders that let you do just that—and more. After thoroughly analyzing the most popular solutions in the market, we found Wix is the best option for most users. With its integrated interface, professionally-designed templates that take the guesswork out of web design, and unmatched flexibility, we can safely say Wix is the ultimate tool for beginners and veterans alike.

The Best Free Website Builder for Most

Most free website builders lack the control and flexibility required to create a design that you actually want. But Wix makes it easy for anyone to create exactly what they’re looking for using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. 

Wix gives you total control over every aspect of your website, including the colors, buttons, images, and more. It’s the simplest way to create an eye-catching site for free, without any hassles or headaches. Wix also handles all of the backend infrastructure, security, and other technical details, so you won’t have to worry about anything. You can try Wix for free.

Hostinger offers both a completely free hosting service, as well as a paid hosting service that carries an incredibly low price, making it the next best thing to free! You do not have to pay extra for publishing tools, either. Sign up for hosting with Hostinger, and receive a free domain for one year.

With Weebly, you receive a free drag-and-drop website builder, which greatly simplifies the process of creating a great-looking website without needing to hire a professional designer. Start with Weebly for free.

The 6 Best Free Website Builders 

1. Wix – Best for most
2. Hostinger – Best for easily setting up a site you love in one afternoon
3. Weebly – Best free website builder for small business owners
4. WordPress – Best free website builder for blogging 
5. Strikingly – Best free landing page builder
6. Site123 – Best free website builder for beginners

When It Makes Sense to Use a Free Website Builder

A good website builder eliminates all the troubles that usually come along with creating your perfect website. It should be simple and easy don’t you think?.

When you’re getting started you don’t have to pay a dime to do it.

Website builders help avoid extra costs that come with hiring a developer. Developers can be expensive and often don’t create your vision how you can.

Instead, a website builder is the perfect DIY solution. 

But, wait, we’re talking about free website builders. I hear you asking, “Can I get the same quality as paying somebody for it?” 

With modern free website builders, you absolutely can, if all you need is a home for your ecommerce site, blog, company website, or the like.

When you only need a basic website, you can use these free website builders successfully. They’re ideal for those who are just starting out with a new site. Then, if your site takes off and you need more features, many of these free site builders allow you to shift to a paid plan whenever required.

The only investment will be your time in learning and building your home on the web.

#1 – Wix  — Best Free Website Builder For Most

Wix offers a free website builder that you’ll fall in love with. It powers more than 100 million websites and its flexibility continues to surprise even the most advanced users of this website builder. 

It’s not only the hundreds of templates that make Wix so customizable—the drag-and-drop editor gives you the power to control what pops off of your web page. 

So, you can create a gorgeous website without knowing one line of code. 

What we also found great was the completely hands-off approach Wix offers. 

If you don’t want to spend time designing your site, the artificial design intelligence (ADI) software will ask you a series of questions and Wix will design your site for you. 

For example, Wix will ask what industry you work in, what services or goods you provide, and a few other questions before putting together the right site for you. 

Another thing we really love is the ability to utilize the hundreds of integrations available in the Wix App Market. Which isn’t something many other website builders offer at the free level. Wix’s app marketplace has more than 280,000 apps available. 

Plus, Wix offers marketing tools and standard SEO optimization free of charge, which will help you rank higher on Google faster while also building your organic web traffic. 

Wix even includes web hosting, live chat widgets, and even more features with its free forever site builder.

Wix’s free plan includes managed security, too. The security pros at Wix monitor their data centers and sites for security vulnerabilities and make sure that everything meets the highest industry standards for data privacy and protection from cyberthreats. You don’t have to do a thing, they handle this for you.

If you want more information, we compiled a detailed Wix review. Wix excels at being extremely easy to use, yet it delivers multiple customization options (some of which, admittedly, are in its paid tiers). This is not an easy balance to create, yet Wix’s designers were successful.

Whenever you are ready to move beyond the free plan that Wix offers, it has several pricing tiers available. Having several choices simplifies the process of finding a tier that has the features you want at the price point you need.

One thing you won’t be able to get as part of the free plan is a custom URL. You can find more information about both the free version and the pricing plans at Wix.com.

#2 – Hostinger — Best For Easily Setting Up A Site You Love In One Afternoon

A lot of site builders include web hosting in their plans, but it can be hard to have confidence in the basic hosting offered alongside a free site builder.

With Hostinger, you can solve both problems, because you can pay next to nothing, $1.99 per month for hosting, and get your pick of trustworthy site builders.

Hostinger has an array of powerful yet affordable hosting plans. Yes, that means you’ll have to pay a little upfront, but you get a higher quality of web hosting for your site (which you can still build and publish for no extra cost).

Our recommendations are to use either Hostinger’s WordPress Starter package ($3.99/month for a four-year commitment) or their Premium Shared Hosting plan ($3.49/month for a four-year term).

There are cheaper versions of WordPress hosting and shared hosting from Hostinger (both $1.99 per month for a four-year commitment), so you can save more and still get quality hosting for a single site.

But if you opt for either of the slightly more expensive plans, you also get a free domain name for one year, support for multiple sites, and more storage and bandwidth.

After you determine what platform you want your site to run on and select a plan, Hostinger’s exceptional guided setup will hold your hand the rest of the way.

If you went the WordPress route, Hostinger will automatically install it and even take care of updates automatically. Plus, you can opt for a template during the setup wizard so you can shave even more time off of getting your new site published.

If you go with Premium Shared Hosting, you’ll see an offer in your Hostinger dashboard to use the Zyro website builder.

That’s a great option if you’re a little intimidated by the site building experience on WordPress, which can be complicated because there’s so much you can do on that platform.

With using the Zyro builder, you get extra help in quickly setting up your site. Use one of their templates or even use Zyro’s AI builder to whip your site up based on a few details you’ll provide it.

Either way, you get to go from zero to a ready-to-rock website with Hostinger.

And, while you do have to pay for hosting, our recommended plans won’t cost you much. Four years of Premium Shared Hosting will cost you $167.52 at checkout, but you’ll be set for the long haul on both your website builder and hosting that can scale with your site. The WordPress Starter plan will cost you just under $200 for four years.

If you’re ambitious about your new site, either hosting plan gives you the ability to grow your site and its popularity. The sky’s the limit. We have more information for you in our Hostinger review.

If you want the easiest way to get quality web hosting and a free site builder included, get started with Hostinger today.

#3 – Weebly — The Best Free Website Builder for Small Business Owners

Weebly is a user-friendly website builder designed for small businesses. It’s perfect for retailers that want to expand and sell online with an online store.

As a Square brand, you can easily integrate your physical store payments and accounting system with the website. Weebly even lets you set up an in-store pickup option for your customers. 

The drag-and-drop site builder from Weebly is easy to use and requires zero technical knowledge. It’s free and keeps your site modern with nice touches—including a mobile-friendly design.

Weebly stands out from the crowd by providing functional, sleek, and results-driven online stores. The pages are fully customizable, and you have tons of design options to choose from.

You’ll also get inventory management tools included for free. Weebly has built-in SEO optimization tools to help improve your Google search rankings. You can set up designated landing pages and forms to use for lead captures as well.

Weebly has a nice level of features for an online store that’s part of a free website building tool.

Ultimately, though, the greatest level of strength in Weebly’s free tier lies in its ability to give your small business an ability to create a blog for free. Blogs for businesses can be a nice way to generate traffic for your site, to give visitors advice on using your products or services, and to make news and announcements about your business.

If you have any questions about website building, the free Weebly community forum offers exceptional insight. Even on the free plan, Weebly gives you access to chat and email support.

Overall, Weebly has all the resources you need to build an ecommerce presence in a way that’s fast, easy, and cost-effective. Check out our detailed Weebly review for more information.

Whether you’re looking to start a small business online or to take your physical store to the web, you can get started for free with Weebly today.

#4 – WordPress — The Best Free Website Builder for Blogging 

WordPress has all the features you need to run a successful blog in a convenient package. Just pick a website theme from the hundreds of available templates and build your site out to make it look exactly how you’d like.

With WordPress, the sky’s the limit for what you want to do with your blog. It’s eminently customizable because of the dizzying array of themes, plugins, features, and tools available to you.

Now, there’s one key distinction to make here. There are two very similar yet different forms of WordPress to choose from.

First, you have WordPress.com, which is pictured above in the screenshot. This is the easiest, most straightforward way to start a blog today.

All you have to do is sign up for a WordPress account and start building your blog for free. Even on WordPress.com’s free plan, you can utilize one of dozens of themes, have a preinstalled SSL certificate, and utilize the essential features of Jetpack, a plugin that helps with security and SEO efforts.

WordPress.com’s paid plans provide bonuses like a free domain name for one year, more customization, ecommerce tools like accepting payments on your site, and more. Those start at just $4 per month.

But you can start free and build to your heart’s content until you run into any blockers on your growth.

WordPress.com is the best option if you want to quickly get a simple site off the ground in minutes, completely for free.

If you have more robust needs, want a website you can continue building out for months or years, or want complete freedom to design and shape your WordPress site into what you’re dreaming of, consider instead WordPress.org.

The big difference here is that WordPress.org is the open-source platform that WordPress.com is built upon. By using WordPress.org, you can take your site in any direction you’d like. Choose premium themes from one of the many markets on the web, add powerful ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, and so much more.

Be aware, though, that while WordPress.com comes with web hosting included, WordPress.org does not. It’s up to you to find a hosting provider so your WordPress.org site can go live.

Fortunately, WordPress itself has a list of recommended hosts. And, of those, we think Bluehost is one of the best options you can go with (even if you weren’t running a WordPress site).

Granted, while WordPress.org costs nothing to use, paying for hosting makes this a not-completely-free site building solution. But Bluehost keeps their rates extremely affordable, so you’ll actually pay less per month for WordPress.org plus Bluehost hosting than you would for any of WordPress.com’s paid plans.

Plus, you’ll get a free custom domain with Bluehost hosting, sweetening the pot overall for you.

So, if you’re comfortable with paying just over $35 for a year of quality web hosting, you can use the free WordPress.org platform to build a more complex, attractive, and incredible site than you ever could with any of the other free site builders on this list.

With WordPress, you’re really only limited by what you can dream up.

Sign up for a WordPress.com account here, or get started with Bluehost here if you want to use WordPress.org for your site.

#5 – Strikingly — The Best Free Landing Page Builder  

Strikingly offers one of the simplest website editors available. It allows you to make a full one-page website in under thirty minutes. Now that’s fast. 

Within an hour you can have the best landing page you ever created at no cost.

When you first come to Strikingly and start creating your site, you get a nice onboarding tour to walk you through picking a template and how to edit it. 

A landing page is one of the biggest tools for converting prospects, leads, and visitors, so being able to design them so well, so quickly is what makes Strikingly so unique.

You can also create unlimited one-page sites under the free plan and are given 5GB of bandwidth per month.

This is perfect for quickly building landing pages as your marketing campaigns begin and progress. Plus, being able to utilize a potentially unlimited number of free landing pages gives you plenty of opportunity to run A/B testing between strategies or segment leads through individualized pages.

Plus, Strikingly will give you simple web traffic analytics and easily integrate with your Google Analytics account so you can gain quick insight into how your landing pages are performing.

#6 – Site123  — The Best Free Website Builder for Beginners

If you are nervous about using website builder software, Site123 is the best way for a complete beginner to build a website.

In three easy steps you can establish your website and online presence. 

First, you start with selecting your website type. Site123 can quickly set up a page template for a business, a blog, an event page, or even handyman services.

Then, just add your business name and upload your content and images. Site123 will publish your site, with the whole process taking just about one hour. 

Keep in mind, with Site123 you don’t have complete creative control. But for beginners who just need a functional home on the web, this is ideal. 

Even with the array of website types and templates, your website will be mobile-friendly and SEO optimized without any complicated tasks required on your end. 

Also, you receive access to royalty-free images from Site123’s image bank, containing hundreds of stock images with no limitation of use. If you use your own content, you have 250MB of storage to utilize.

One thing to be aware of, though—Site123 only offers ecommerce functionality with its paid plan ($12.80/month). But, for a simple homepage or an online home that attracts visitors to call your physical business, Site123 is as simple and effective as it gets.

It’s okay to be apprehensive about designing your website for the first time. Site123 alleviates any concern you may have, because of their easy, hands-off, all-in-one website creation process. 

Methodology for Choosing the Best Free Website Builder

Free, usually means poor quality right? Well, not always.

With this list of free website builders, you can actually get more than you expect from a free solution. Here is how we examined these free options to pick out the best.   

Flexibility of Design

Having your hands tied when you want to add the one detail that can make your site unique is a terrible feeling. Imagine you want to add a “buy now” button in the header next to your navigation and the option is not available. 

Visitors want easy choices and an easy browsing experience. Having the right templates and color options, along with the freedom to add media where you want it, makes your site stand out and helps it become a conversion machine. 

It all depends on the type of site you want to make. If you need a unique, splashy ecommerce store, Wix and Weebly present the best bets. If you want a customizable blog, WordPress (with Bluehost hosting) is the way to go. For simpler needs, Strikingly and Site123’s free plans can do the trick.

Low Learning Curve

With a free website builder in particular, no one wants to waste time having to learn how to use it.

Wix, Strikingly, and Weebly all have very easy editors and can have you building a website in a few hours, even minutes if you use the artificial design intelligent software baked into Wix. 

If you’re new to the whole concept or a very small business that just needs a simple web presence, Site123 will take care of all the building for you, eliminating any learning curve at all.

Ecommerce Capability

Having the option to sell products or services is a common need for people building their own website. 

Most of the free website builders on this list offer ecommerce functionality and product marketing as part of their free plans. This is huge and gives you the ability to make money with minimal marketing costs. 

Wix even gives you the ability to capture leads using live chat and contact forms, use email marketing tools to make sales and manage campaigns, create promotional videos, and more. 

If you need a web store, make sure ecommerce is an option in your free website builder of choice.  

Minimal Advertising

Have you ever been on a site that had so many ads it was distracting? Weebly and Strikingly don’t put ads or their own branding on your free site, while Site123, Wix, and WordPress.com do (though they tend to be subtle and unobtrusive).

Keep this in mind if any ads are a dealbreaker. 

With Wix, it’s just a little sidebar saying the website was built with its platform. With WordPress, their general ad placements on your site help keep free features free. 

It all depends on what you’re comfortable with having on your site.

Trustworthy Brand

Even when you are selecting a free website builder, you want to have a product and brand name you can trust. No one wants to build a site for free, only to find that the no-name website builder is no longer in business six months later, forcing you to start from scratch.

Our list contains primarily well-known brands. Now, they may be known more for the paid website building tiers that they offer. But that’s okay, because you know you can trust the free tiers that they are offering, too.

Wix and Hostinger are among the biggest names in the website-building market. They offer a wide range of services for those looking to build a large online store, those wanting to create a blog, and everything in between. WordPress falls into the category of being extremely well-known, too.

The good thing about making use of well-known free website builders is that you also have the option of upgrading to a paid tier in the future, should your website’s needs change. (We’ll discuss the importance of having upgrade options next.)

Low Cost to Upgrade

Let’s face it, we all want the best deal. Free is great and may be enough to get you up and running, but what if you need more because your website or business is taking off?

This list offers the most comprehensive free plans available, but also includes affordable monthly upgrades to a subscription that can be monthly or yearly. 

Having the ability to upgrade to a paid tier after you potentially outgrow the free tier is an important consideration. After all, it’s helpful to stick with the website builder you originally used. You already understand the interface and features, so migrating to a paid tier is easier after you used the free tier.

WordPress and Weebly’s lowest paid tiers are just $4 per month and $6 per month, respectively. With both, you unlock the ability to use a custom domain and access to more marketing and ecommerce tools.

This gives you the option to select a plan you can grow into and, if you decide it’s not for you, the risk is minimal. 

Summary

The best free website builder for most people is Wix. Its drag-and-drop builder is easy to use, and the platform can accommodate a wide range of use cases.

With that said, any of the recommendations in this guide are a viable option. Some are better for blogging, while others are best for specialized websites and stunning designs. Regardless of your needs, you can use the top picks and buying guide in this article to find the best free website builder for you.