7 of the best website builders for free to help small business owners and creators. |
It doesn't require you to know how to use technology or an unlimited budget to create an impressive website. Find out how seven of the best free website builders stack up.
If you're planning to launch your personal brand or launching your own small-scale business, you need a website. Your website is the home you have online. But building a website from scratch for the first time is a daunting task and costly.
It's not necessary to be a programmer, possess a keen eye for web layout, or invest the money for a professional website. The free website builders can make building your website easy, speedy and cost-effective.
In this article, we're sharing seven of the best free website builders to small and creative businesses who want to create a website that looks good without a lot of effort or an expensive price.
1.
With the intuitive web builder it is not necessary to be able to write one line of programming code in order to create your site look amazing. Create your own website with custom colors, branding styles, fonts, logos, images from stock, and a variety of content blocks you can pick from.
Within every content block, you can customize the design and content for a website that's true to you and your brand. It's possible to embed podcasts, videos as well as widgets from the 1900+ other apps directly onto your site.
Each site is equipped with an SSL certificate and are automatically optimized for mobile. It is also simple to add Google Analytics to your site to track visitors and sales.
In other words, you can create a successful and profitable web presence for yourself without investing a penny and still earn an 90.91 on the Creator Friendliness Index .
The Creator Friendliness Index uses 20 ranking factors to gauge how welcoming a firm's policies are for creators. It is highly rated across all aspects of friendliness, with a free planthat allows you to avoid the transaction fee, and a variety of currencies and integrations.
2. Wix
Wix is a builder of websites that lets users create simple websites for free. With Wix, you can set up a storefront, blog or business site by using drag-and-drop editors and many modern designs.
Wix's site builder is intuitive even if you do not have the design skills. You can also get help through Wix's special Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) tool, which uses artificial intelligence to design a custom site for your brand. Your Wix website also has an integrated SEO or search engine optimization (SEO) tools.
The main drawback of the Wix free plan is that it displays a Wix advertising banner on each page. It's hard to ensure your site looks professional, especially when it's the very first thing that visitors will see. For you to get rid of the Wix banner it is necessary to be subscribed to the Combo plan ($16/month) or higher.
Wix scores 79.22 according to the Creator Friendliness Index . The company earns points due to its no-cost plan as well as the cost-effectiveness of its paid plans. It is penalized for restricting the amount of goods a creator can sell by plans and the lack of information on support.
3. WordPress
WordPress is an open-source, free CMS (content management system) (CMS) software that's popular for its blogging platforms as well as a website building tool.
Two ways can make use of WordPress to build your website self-hosted or managed hosting.
Using WordPress for your self-hosted site is completely free. But you must consider domain registration, web hosting premium themes, expensive plugins and the costs can quickly mount to.
The other option is to build your site using WordPress.com managed hosting. WordPress.com has a free plan and several paid plans.
With the free version of WordPress.com, you can create a basic website with 1GB of storage as well as pre-installed themes and built-in SEO tools and tools, but that's about the only thing you can get.
WordPress scores 68.33 in the Creator Friendliness Index . WordPress earns points thanks to its free plans, integrations, and language support however it loses points due to its inability to provide customer service.
4. Weebly
Weebly is an e-commerce website and website builder owned by Square.
The Weebly website builder is beginner-friendly and has templates you can customize. You can add custom CSS as well as HTML. Additionally, the App Center allows you to connect extension and integrations to add functionality.
Plus, web hosting is included in all plans and you can buy your own domain name directly via Weebly. If you aren't ready to buy a domain name, you can use a free subdomain, like yournamehere.weebly.com.
Weebly has blogs that allow you to share content, and an App Center that lets you add more features, as well as analytics to help you monitor how your site is performing.
Since Square owns Weebly It's been built with eCommerce sites with ecommerce in mind. All plans, including the no-cost plan, come with ecommerce functionality to build an online shop and also sell physical goods.
The free Weebly option has some drawbacks. It has storage restrictions and it's not possible to offer digital goods. Weebly is also able to display Square ads for both Free and Personal plans. Therefore, you'll have switch to an upgraded plan for them to be removed.
In the end, Weebly is a solid choice for beginners who aren't seasoned with website design particularly if you intend to offer physical items on the internet.
5. SITE123
Site123 is an easy-to-use web-based site builder free to anyone looking to establish an internet presence. As the name implies, SITE123 makes building a website as easy as one three, two or three steps:
Select your website type. Choose from templates for a blog, business and event pages, as well as a service provider and many more.
Include your company's name, name, content and photos.
Create your own website.
All of the templates on SITE123 are fully responsive and come with free hosting on the web, 500MB of storage along with 1GB of data bandwidth.
There's a catch: the free plan limits your ability to change color, fonts, and other design elements. Upgrade to a premium plan in order to gain access to plugins, applications, and full template customizing options. Additionally, there is no free ecommerce tools.
Finally, you can't alter the templates of your site when you've already started creating your website. If you do that, you'll be losing all the content. That can be a major problem.
Bottom line: SITE123 doesn't offer much control over your creativity over the free website. If you're looking for just a basic, simple website for your company, the free plan offers the basics to make it work.
6. GoDaddy
GoDaddy is popular as a Web hosting provider as well as a domain name registrar but it also offers a free website builder that comes with a limited set of e-commerce tools. Choose a template, insert your business and content details, and you'll be able to have a website ready to start in only a couple of steps.
Your free site includes email marketing tools including one-time appointment scheduling, analytics, as well as SSL certificates. Another feature which makes GoDaddy stand out among free platforms is its 24/7 support as well as community forums. So there are plenty of options in case you're stuck.
The plan for free has limitations. It is required to have an godaddysites.com subdomain. GoDaddy will display an ad at the top of each page of your site. Such tools as SEO, regular appointments, full online store features, and custom domains are only available on paid plans.
If you're looking for a solution All things considered, GoDaddy's free service is an excellent choice for personal sites, but the heavy branding at the top of every webpage can make a corporate site appear unprofessional.
7. Jimdo
Jimdo is a basic web-based builder for free that allows you to create an online business site in a few steps:
Answer a few questions about your website.
Incorporate business information from your social media accounts.
Choose a design.
Create your own website!
The Jimdo image library gives you access to many different kinds of high-quality stock photos. You can also create contact forms for clients to contact you.
Jimdo's website creation wizard makes it easy to build a website, but it's a loss of personalization. You can pick from several pre-designed layouts as well as various color combinations.
On the free plan, you must use an jimdo.com subdomain, and there's an Jimdo advertisement on each page. There's 2GB of bandwidth, and 500MB of storage . You may have up to five pages of your site. Finally, you don't have access to any client support, meaning you're all on your own in the event that you need help setting up your site.
If you need a simple single-page website and are confident that you don't require customer support, Jimdo could be an acceptable option, however, the free version is among the most limited options on this list.
Choose a website builder designed to grow with you in mind
There are many free websites builders, but not all are made equal. When you are evaluating different choices take note at the sneaky ways in which websites add cost to a "free" tool: concealed upsells, additional charges, restrictions on the number of website pages you can build, customization options or even unremovable advertisements. You don't want to find yourself running into surprise costs when you're launching your site.
With , you can create stunning websites to promote your business in two steps. This is the most effective website builder for creators who want to build an online home base to their business without the technical headache or steep price tag.