10 Free Website Builders:

 1. Webnode – Modern Editor with Some Limitations

A short while ago Webnode completely revamped their editor, making it very modern. The themes they added are stylish and responsive. A pity you can’t choose a completely new theme after your initial choice. Working with Webnode is very intuitive and also here (surprise) you have the option of upgrading to a paid plan.

Webnode offers a low-cost variant at $3.95 per month (which they fittingly call Limited) essentially allowing you to use a domain name you already own and to contact their premium support. The small ad will stay with this option. Unfortunately, there is no ecommerce option in the free plan and also the blog is very basic.

2. Wix – The International Heavyweight

The biggest of them all is Wix. They have more users than any other site builder and it’s easy to see why. It’s packed with unique features and great templates. According to our tests, it’s the best choice to create a paid site – but what about a free one? Does it fare just as well in this arena?

Well, it depends on what you are looking for. It’s great that they hardly have any restrictions on the free plan in terms of features and templates. On desktop computers, they place a pretty visible ad at the top of your website that is sticky (i.e. it will stay even when you start scrolling the page). Fortunately, on mobile phones, it far less visible and also not sticky. To use your own custom domain name, you’ll need the Combo plan at least, which is ₹125 per month.

3. Weebly – A Great Website Builder with One Downside

Weebly is one of the largest site creators out there and hits the top spots in our ranking table. But since we are mainly looking at the free plans here, we have to judge our contestant with slightly different criteria. The free plan is where Weebly doesn’t shine quite as bright, mainly due to the very visible ad in the website’s footer that even sports a mouseover effect.

4. Ucraft – Connect Your Domain for Free

This is an interesting product as they are the only ones that allow you to connect an existing domain name for free! They even include SSL at no extra cost. Their cheapest paid plan is called Pro, starts at $10 per month and includes pro features such as multilingual sites.

Ucraft is a relatively advanced website builder, allowing you to fine-tune your styles such as fonts, colors, and spacings. Overall, we found it more complicated, though, than other free website builders as the editor isn’t quite as self-explanatory.

Let’s hope that this business model can work long-term. They are giving away quite a lot for free (which is great!) but it makes us wonder if this is sustainable.

5. Webstarts – Best Free Option?

When it comes to Marketing, Webstarts is not exactly shy. With almost 4m users, they claim to be the #1 Rated Free Website Builder (without actually saying who rated them). To be fair, Webstarts’ free plan is a solid choice. It includes access to all the important features such as the blog, and you can even activate the online store.

The product feels similar to Wix – in that all the elements can be moved around quite freely. In the feature and template departments though, you’ll find a lot less variety. What we don’t really understand is that Webstarts doesn’t offer a mobile-optimized website view in their free plan. Neither will your website be SSL encrypted.

6. Jimdo – Website Editing (also) via App

The good thing about Jimdo is that it won’t cost you an arm and a leg even if you decide to go premium one day. Their cheapest Jimdo Creator plan at $10 per month and will allow you to use a proper domain. But even if you have no intention of ever upgrading your Jimdo website they offer a pretty nice package.

Their (pretty limited) selection of templates is not only free but fully compatible with smartphones and tablets (responsive). There’s also a mobile app that you can use to build and edit your site. And in contrast to most other site builders, Jimdo also lets you use the online store – up to 5 articles for free.

Then there is also Jimdo Dolphin, which targets complete beginners. It comes with only the most essential features but promises to guide you through the website building process with ease and the support of their intelligent assistant.

7. Site123 – Easy as 1-2-3?

Site123 claims to be “by far” the easiest website builder, and while their tool is certainly not too difficult to use, we’d say that there are even more user-friendly ones. What’s great about their builder is that they have some pretty good looking themes that are all responsive. Paid plans start at $9.80 per month and include a basic ecommerce store as well as an email marketing tool. Be prepared to receive multiple daily emails after signing up. Free websites show a little banner stripe at the bottom of the page.

8. Mozello – Free Multilingual Websites

This Latvian company is one of the smaller players worldwide. What strikes us about Mozello is that they allow you to create a multilingual website for free – something you won’t get anywhere else. The range of features includes a blog, an online store and decent SEO options. Fortunately, the advertisement is just a link in the footer that most of your visitors won’t even notice. 500MB of free storage is included and should be enough for most of us.

The downside is that the editor, albeit easy to use, is really limited compared to its competitors’. Certain elements like a gallery can only be added to a specific gallery page-type, for example. This makes Mozello rather inflexible.

9. Strikingly – Free One-Page Layouts

“Don’t lose your visitors under the weight of a heavy, confusing website” says Strikingly, a website builder from California. That’s probably why they want you to put all your content on a single-page. If you’d like to create multiple pages, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan. To be fair, they have some pretty decent templates to choose from and the website editor is easy to understand, even for beginners. If you ever leave the free plan, you’ll be charged at least $16 per month.

10. One.com – Not Free, but a Cheap Website Builder

One.com doesn’t have a freemium plan like its competitors. They charge you from the beginning but the costs are very reasonable. Of course, your website will be ad-free. Optionally, you can add a proper domain name directly. There’s only one snag: you are limited to 5 pages, otherwise it’s getting rather expensive.

If all you need is a small, ad-free website with its own proper domain name, One.com could be a great fit. Oh, and if you’d rather use WordPress instead of their own site builder you can do that too. Best of all, there won’t be any page limit!