Not sure which site-building tool is best for you? After careful research, we’ve brought you the 10 best free build platforms, Wix being the best recommendation.
We used independent research to create this list to give you accurate and reliable advice. We’re always committed to honesty and transparency, and in that spirit, we don’t hide the fact that free tools aren’t the best way to build a website. For each of the platforms listed below, you’ll find pros and cons.
Each site tool undergoes a thorough research process, and we investigate key areas such as:
- Easy to use
- Design flexibility
- Value for money
- Functional quality
- Help and support
- Customer satisfaction
This helps us evaluate and compare fairly, focusing on the factors that users care most about. We even have everyday users test the site-building tool and provide subjective feedback, which helps us:
- Fully understand the best tools for beginners
- Find problems in the building platform
- Judge customer satisfaction
To date, we have applied this process to more than 50 site building platforms, all of which will bring you the most accurate results and recommendations!
Wix is very easy to use, has a lot of features, and you get 100% creative freedom with a drag-and-drop editor. While free domains aren’t sexy enough, you can customize them to reflect your brand, and Wix has an advantage over its competitors (SITE123, for example) because other brands don’t allow you to modify automatically generated domains.
Creating a web site with Wix is extremely simple, and even a fully functional modern site can be launched in a day. The attached preset template looks great and will help save you a lot of time.
Favorite features:
- Creative freedom: You can drag and drop any element anywhere to arrange it the way you want
- Template selection and design: Preset templates already have built-in menu functionality
- Undo: Undoing changes you’ve made is a small but very useful feature that you can just press CTRL+Z
- Easy to use: Text, images and backgrounds can be changed with just a few clicks, and Wix even has an image library that makes it faster
Areas for improvement:
- First load: While Wix is super simple, the rich options make the page look a bit cluttered when the editor is first loaded
advantages
- Easy to use drag and drop feature
- An extensive set of preset templates
- The free plan provides most features
- Unlimited range of customization
disadvantages
- Free plan secondary domain name is not attractive enough
- The Wix branding of the free plan is eye-catching
- Templates cannot be changed after the site is online
SITE123 is perfect for beginners who want to create a clean, beautiful, professional website and is super easy to set up, but if you want to be creative and push the boundaries of website design, SITE123 may not be the right fit. Creative freedom is limited, and the free domain you get is made up of random letters and numbers, which is a huge drawback.
SITE123 helps you in every aspect of building your site, from offering font matching to free color suggestions, to feeling like you have a designer holding your hand from beginning to end and guiding you step by step.
Favorite features:
- Level of friendliness: If you don’t have any technical knowledge and want a step-by-step guide, SITE123 is the perfect choice
- Chat support: Live chat can help you throughout the build process, which can be very useful if you run into trouble
- All creative help: Just select the industry and site name and SITE123 will create a basic site for you
Areas for improvement:
- Quality of design: SITE123 offers limited creative freedom and could help reduce frustration if the design looks more modern and attractive. Our test site was easy to build, but the results looked outdated and boring, especially compared to the Wix site
advantages
- When you first log on to the site, you don’t see any ads
- Get excellent 24/7 help and support via live chat
- SITE123 selects templates for you, making them a great choice for non-creative types
disadvantages
- Free domain names look unprofessional and cannot be customized
- The selection of site templates is not rich enough
- Limited creative freedom
WordPress.com was built for blogging purposes and includes a wide range of built-in features such as analysis, search, commenting, categorization, archiving, and more. The free plan offers decent storage, several times more than most of its competitors. If you’re trying to build a website outside of your blog, it can be tricky, and it’s not the easiest platform to use, so we don’t recommend it for beginners.
The platform is great for blogging, but it also allows you to create a stylish, modern website — especially if you have some skills. You may need more time and effort to learn WordPress.com than the previous platforms, and in our attempts to create a cake site, progress was slow and often overwhelming.
advantages
- Perfect blogging platform
- Free plan for the best domain name format
- Extensive free templates
disadvantages
- May require some coding, not suitable for beginners
- Templates and design focus on the blog
- You cannot select industry-specific templates during setup
Weebly has a drag-and-drop editor similar to Wix, which is also easy to use, powerful SEO tools, and professional free domain names, which offer a lot of room for growth. If you’re in the US, you can even sell through a free plan, but you have to pay a 3% commission on each order.
When we used Weebly to create our demo site, it felt perfect for beginners. Setting up the site was easy, but the features were much more limited than Wix, there were fewer templates to choose from, and the editing tools were somewhat outdated.
Favorite features:
- Structured themes: Although structured themes provide less creative freedom, they can be very helpful in following best design practices
- Setup is simple: Like Wix, Weebly asks you what type of site you want to create, and then provides tailored themes to help you get started
- Beginner friendly tip: Weebly makes it hard for you to accidentally remove any content, and they always help you double-check
Areas for improvement:
- Lack of creative freedom: Controlling text colors and font sizes can be a pain, some adjustments require coding knowledge, and sometimes it’s difficult to simply drag a text box up a few millimeters
advantages
- Properly named free plan domain name
- Free online sales (US users only)
- Good search engine optimization tips
disadvantages
- Free plans have limited features
- Not as much creative freedom as Wix
- The pop-up AD in the corner is distracting
This is an easy to use, free site building tool that is best suited for personal rather than commercial sites. The key point is to allow you to publish your site cheaply, easily and quickly, but not offering an intuitive editor like Wix may limit your creative control.
Unheard of with some beautifully looking modern templates that allow you to easily create basic (but stylish) one-page websites. One of the first things we noticed during our testing was that we were very friendly to beginners, showing you everything available to get you started quickly, and customizing templates was very easy — as long as you were willing to stick with the design.
advantages
- A small amount of advertising in a free plan
- 24/7 customer support via live chat
- Free plans allow you to sell a product
disadvantages
- You can only create one-page websites
- Sites built on free plans do not include SSL certificates
- The editor’s limited functionality means a lack of creative control
The team behind Jimdo is keen to help you build a free website and keep things as simple as possible to get you started quickly. If you need a convenient site to provide background information for the Facebook Store, this is a good choice. Jimdo allows you to sell up to five products for free, and it’s very easy to upgrade plans to expand the store.
The platform values simplicity and ease of use, which was evident when it was built, with question mark tools scattered throughout the editor to answer any questions you might have, and easy to upload images, change text, replace backgrounds, and so on. During setup, Jimdo asks you how to create the site and offers you two options:
- Create a beautiful website without coding
- Use a drag-and-drop editor
The first option is to use ADI, which is relatively easy but has less control over site design; The second option is the same as the competing editor and does not require any coding.
advantages
- Nice aesthetic effect
- For a minimum fee, remove ads from your site
- No Jimdo banner ads or pop-up ads
disadvantages
- Drag and drop is difficult to use
- Lack of design and creative control
- Tailored templates are not abundant enough
As the name suggests, this is a very simple site-building tool, despite some surprising privileges in the platform. The mobile editor is great for webmasters on the go, but other than that, it’s really too simplistic for hobby sites, not professional ones.
SimpleSite is primarily designed for people who want to promote self-service, and the mobile editor offers maximum flexibility to save you time. If you want a step-by-step guide through different parts of your site, you might like SimpleSite. The starter program uses animated characters to guide you through setting up each page before going into the main editor, and while this avoids missing anything important, it can be a bit tedious if you’re looking for creative freedom.
advantages
- Is very nice
- Generous free plan
- Support editing in mobile browser
- Comprehensive entry process
disadvantages
- SSL certificates are not included
- Unable to access third-party integration
- Limited customer support
- The design is a little outdated
If you don’t have a lot of time for template design, or want a quick start site builder, Webnode is probably the best choice. It’s a great free platform to build a site on, but it doesn’t offer enough room to use your creative potential compared to the other competitors on this list.
The simple and modern preset templates make it ideal for an event site, as well as taking full advantage of the bright style. While the registration process is a bit cumbersome — Webnode immediately publishes templates and you need to go to email to access the editor — once in the dashboard, you get a clean, streamlined site-building experience.
advantages
- Fast online, almost no time to learn
- No Webnode banner ads or pop-up ads, just a comment in the footer
- Design appearance for events
disadvantages
- Inflexible template design
- A slightly awkward registration process
- Small storage space
IM Creator is a stylish, free site-building tool — maybe a little too stylish to navigate sometimes. Preset templates are very attractive and can meet the needs of a wide range of industries. The editor is clean, modern and visually pleasing, making it easy to stand out from the crowd.
Compared to some of the simpler platforms on this list, IM Creator may take a little getting used to. The editor looks professional and modern, and can be tricky to navigate initially — involving a lot of clicking to display the correct menu. But once you get used to it, it’s a cool tool with a ton of incredible features.
advantages
- Eye-catching stencil design
- Students, artists and ngos can apply to use quality ad-free themes for free
- A set of basic functions
disadvantages
- Very clumsy free domain name
- No e-commerce features
- Minimalist, modern editors can be difficult to navigate
This site builder has many simple and useful features, such as blogging tools and e-commerce support. What stands out about Mozello is its multilingual feature, the free plan that allows you to set up an online store and sell up to 10 products.
The ability to build platforms is very limited and not nearly as impressive as the top five we looked at. It takes a while to get used to it, and designing the look is hard to impress, besides trying to customize the template and format it exactly the way you want it to work — it’s also hard.
advantages
- Create multilingual sites for free
- Free program enables e-commerce support
- Useful tips in the editor
disadvantages
- Very limited editing ability
- No SSL security
- Lack of customization and flexibility
Free site building tools focus
There was a time when free site building tools were out of reach, but we set out to prove that wasn’t always the case. One question we are often asked is: How do these free site building tools make money? Is there a potential pattern? Fortunately, it’s all very safe and they operate a freemium business model where customers who want to pay for extra features can make it profitable — no strings attached.
On the other hand, there are some key factors you should pay close attention to when deciding which site builder to choose. To create this ranking of site-building tools, we conducted extensive research and testing and combined it with key points for free plans:
- Clear domain name free site builder tool won’t let you connect to custom domain names, but what does automatically generated domain name look like? For example, formats such as im-creator.com/free/your name/your website can make the site look unprofessional;
- Upgrading to a paid plan has obvious benefits, so it’s good to know how much this will cost;
- No one likes a site with lots of ads, and a minimum of distractions can make your site look professional;
- Free SSL Certificate Most site-building tools include a free SSL certificate as standard, otherwise your site will be flagged as unsafe by the browser. You can purchase SSL certificates separately for about $10 / year;
- Storage Space Most free site building tools have a limit on what you can upload to your site. If you post a lot of images or videos, be careful how fast you can reach this limit.
- Easy to use Clumsy tools are frustrating to use and can waste a lot of your time. According to our research and test, most of the above platforms are easy to use;
- E-commerce features (Optional) If you need to sell products online, which slightly limits your options, keep an eye out for site building tools that allow you to sell on a free plan.
By using the process of creating a free site on each site platform, we are able to provide very accurate first-hand information.
How to create a free Website
Aside from being free, all the site-building tools on our list have one thing in common: they’re easy to set up. The learning curve and build process varies slightly from platform to platform, but the steps are as follows:
- Register an account: This will require an email address, password, and possibly a user name
- Choose a template, or answer the Design Assistant’s questions: Most platforms allow you to choose which templates to use, but some will automatically create demo sites for you based on your answers to a few questions
- Add custom content: Remove placeholder text and images and replace them with your own content
- Adjust the site design: If needed, you can test new layouts and colors, or even switch to new templates to further customize the design. Most platforms allow you to switch templates after publication, but keep in mind that Wix is not one of them
- Launch site: At this point, the site builder will generate a domain name for you and your site will be ready to be shown to the world
The whole process can take anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours, depending on how much switching you do in steps 3 and 4.
Whether it’s worth upgrading to a paid plan
Free site building tools can do a lot of things, but paid plans can offer more advanced services. Paying doesn’t have to be expensive, and for $6 / month you can stay ahead of most sites on the Internet. Common advantages of paid plans include:
- Remove Ads When you’re trying to present a professional image, no ads at all is much better than fewer ads — the upgrade plan will make your site ad-free;
- Connect the custom domain name Also, yoursite.com is better than yoursite.yourwebsitebuilder.com, more memorable;
- More storage and Bandwidth As your site grows and traffic increases, you may find that you have outgrown your free plan and need to upgrade to get enough storage so that your site can handle more visitors at once. Many paid plans offer unlimited bandwidth and storage, so you can rest assured;
- Advanced marketing and sales tools In advanced planning, the features and tools you need to take your business or hobby to the next level are usually waiting for you, make sure to at least take a look.
Although there was no pressure to upgrade to a paid plan at any stage, we thought it was always worth trying it out at some point. The idea of investing money in a new business can be disconcerting, but there is an element of fake till it’s real, and coupled with the professionalism of a paid site, you will attract more potential visitors.
conclusion
We’ve covered some of the world’s most popular site-building tools and the benefits of upgrading to a paid plan when the time is right. Basically, Wix is the best integrated site platform with lots of free features, WordPress.com is ideal for blogs, and Weebly is perfect for small businesses.
Keep in mind that free plans will always limit the features and features you can use, and while it’s acceptable for now, it turns out that frustration gets worse over time. We recommend that you take full advantage of the free plan to test different platforms, but it’s not a wise decision to stick with the free plan forever. If you are serious about your site and want others to like it, then at some point it will be necessary to upgrade to the advanced program.
A note on affiliates: Some of our stories include affiliate links to stores like Amazon, BlueHost, etc. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which helps support our work evaluating products.
