Comparing 11 of the Best Free Website Builders [2023]

What is a Free Website Builder?

There are many websites that market their web building platform as "free" for building a business website, online portfolio or ecommerce shop. We’ve done the research here to help future web content creators find the most free website builder software available. There is a lot to sort through and compare, all the pricing plan pages and conspicuous limitations, fees and conditions. 

Overall the search criteria here is simple. Get the most features for the lowest cost, and we are shooting for free. That said, there are different levels of free: free software, free hosting and an ad-free experience.

What’s the Catch with These Free Site Building Websites?

You may have heard nothing in this world is free. How does that phrase translate to the world of simple, “free” labeled site builders? Here are some of the problems you might commonly encounter:

• Branding - It contains a notification bar, a badge, or some other somewhat unobtrusive site builder branding

• Limitations - A withholding of “premium” features which are raised into higher tier pricing plans. These may include access to plugins, advanced seo, and the most devastating is the ability to connect to a custom domain. In this way the free plan is pay gated.

• Ads - The free site builder software may place ads on your webpages to offset the fact they are giving away a free website experience. 

• Content Restrictions - constraints on the size of your site, number of sites, bandwidth and storage limits, even page view/visits.

A Quick Comparison of "Free" Site Builder Pricing Plans & Their Limitations

GoDaddy

• Free plan uses a subdomain, but no ads

• Source: https://www.godaddy.com/en-sg/websites/website-builder/plans-and-pricing 

Wix

• Displays ads

• Source: https://www.wix.com/premium-purchase-plan/dynamo 

Weebly

• Displays ads

• Source: https://www.weebly.com/pricing?lang=en 

Wordpress

• Displays ads, must pay for hosting separately

• Source: https://wordpress.com/pricing/ 

Webflow

• webflow.io subdomain; $14 to actually connect to custom domains

• Limited bandwidth and functionality

• Source: https://webflow.com/pricing 

Site123

• Limited storage, bandwidth and subdomained

• Source: https://www.site123.com/pricing 

Carrd

• Subdomained

• limited functions no forms or widgets in pro lite plan

• Source: https://carrd.co/pro 

Yola

• Yola Ads displayed on site

• 2 Pages limit, limited storage 1gb

• Source: https://www.yola.com/pricing 

GitHub Pages

• Repository of web files, where coding and markdown are required.

• From what we can tell, it could be entirely free. It isn't clear what limitations there are on bandwidth or requests.

• Also, making a business website seems to be in violation of their terms of use. Prohibited uses: "GitHub Pages is not intended for or allowed to be used as a free web-hosting service to run your online business, e-commerce site, or any other website that is primarily directed at either facilitating commercial transactions or providing commercial software as a service (SaaS)."

• Source: https://github.com/pricing 

Framer

• Free plan locked to a subdomain with limited bandwidth

• Framer banner ad

• Source: https://www.framer.com/pricing/ 

Google Sites

• Completely free

• Free hosting

• Free SSL Certificate

• No tiers, conditions or limitations imposed

• There is a tiny, semi-transparent "Report Abuse" button in the bottom left.