Top Free Website Builders

Building a website for your personal or business needs may be a tricky and costly task. If you don’t know anything about making a site, you can’t build one on your own from scratch and most often, everyone who faces the need to create a website comes to web-making studios, which drain down the time and budget, implementing client’s wants. But there is another way: website builders that can be mastered even by people far from making websites, even ones who have never done anything like this before. And today, we’re considering ten most commonly sought-for top free website builders to show you how to build a free website, which will not drain your budget, nerves, and time.

 

The list of best free website builders

Below, we provide the list of 10 website makers and a short overview of each:

1. uKit

2. Weebly

3. Ucraft

4. Strikingly

5. XPRS

6. Jimdo

7. Google Sites

8. Wix

9. Wordpress.com

10. WebsiteBuilder.com

 

1. Description of the best free website builder uKit

UKIT is now one of the most powerful website builders that we’ve encountered on the market ever before. It allows anyone who has eyes and hands to build a website so powerful and solid as the modern online business requires. It does nearly everything for very, very competitive prices – even e-commerce sites will be much cheaper for you with its 12-dollar monthly plan than other builders may offer you for their not so very low 40 bucks and above (market’s average).

 

Advantages of this interactive builder:

1. The easy-to-use interface is understood even by people who have opened a website builder for the first time in their lives.

2. Great pricing, much lower than anything you might possibly encounter on the market for that powerful and modern builder.

3. It offers a wide variety of adjustable templates that anyone can use for over 40 categories of websites.

4. Great support service and broad knowledge database.

 

Disadvantages of this simple free website builder:

1. You cannot build powerful web stores as wordpress.com may offer but with diligence and persistence, any number of pages of the e-store is possible.

2. It’s not too powerful for blogging though it can offer you blog templates (limited to only a few pages and types of data that one can upload to the blog pages (like limited to standalone pictures but not galleries or video but not audio)).

 

Pricing model:

Currently, uKit offers 4 pricing plans: for 4, 8, 9.60, and 12 dollars a month. Even in the lowest pricing plan, it offers you something that no other website builder does:

• unlimited number of sites, domains, bandwidth, visitors, and disk space

• 24/7 support and SMS notifications for important events

• free backups

• uninterrupted hosting

• mobile friendliness.

 

2. Description of a free website builder Weebly

Weebly is one of the easiest website builders in visual implementation and has over 45 million users all over the world. It was found in 2006 and keeps growing since then.

 

Advantages:

1. Many options for small businesses, corporate, and personal sites with adjustable templates.

2. The pricing policy is good, not leaving you without pants if you opt for maximum subscription plans, offering tons of useful stuff in return.

3. SEO guides and website creation guides are useful and transparent.

 

The rated disadvantages:

1. Drag-and-drop is found somewhat limited to other visual website editors significantly losing to uKit and Wix in this.

2. You can’t restore a site to the point in time, as you can’t do the backup of your website.

 

Pricing model:

It has 7 different plans: 4 for regular sites (0, 5, 10, 20 dollars a month when paid annually) and 3 for e-stores (10, 20, 30 dollars a month). Any paid option offers an account with a free domain not connected to Weebly branding but even the basic free version of a website offers free SSL, 0.5 Gb disk storage, lead capture forms, SEO organization, and support. ‘Pro’ plan for regular sites and e-stores offers you about 50% of maximum functionality, while ‘Business’ subscription plan offers about 30 features in total to power up your e-commerce as much as one would expect.

 

3. Description of a free website maker Ucraft

Ucraft is a powerful tool to create web stores. Certainly, you can do any other site but it is specifically tuned to deliver you a store with as many opportunities as you’re ready to embrace by choosing to pay for one of its subscription plans: ‘Pro Website’, ‘Pro Shop’, and ‘BigCommerce’.

 

Advantages:

1. Has a free 14-days zero-dollar trial period.

2. Ideal for the performance of e-business. It is possible to have as many products in your store as you want, sell on eBay, Amazon, Facebook, and Yandex, have multilingual websites, 0% transaction fee, multicurrency, real-time tracking opportunity, and over 70 shipping and payment methods.

3. Taxation and invoice stuff is connected as well starting from the ‘Pro Shop’ plan.

 

Disadvantages:

1. Being powerful for e-stores, it is not as powerful for the rest of the sites though it offers you over 60 templates for a number of varying sites.

 

Pricing model:

Ucraft currently offers 3 paid subscription plans (in addition to one free). When you pay them for a year, they’ll cost ya 10, 21, and 39 dollars a month. It also offers a White Label plan for $5,600 a year perfect for large website making studios, big web design companies, and cloud hosting providers.

 

4. Description of a website builder Strikingly

This website builder was started in 2012 offering a number of possibilities to create your own website. It is not good for e-stores, as even in the maximum plan it offers you only 500 products in the store and a possibility to have 5 sites at a time. It does not offer to remove its built-in advertising when you opt for a lowest-paid subscription and only removes it when opted for ‘Pro’. Not so user-friendly; it has a little number of options and quite expensive compared to other website developers.

 

Advantages:

1. It offers great help and support.

2. Nice ease of use and it is quite easy to adjust a selected template.

3. Great for blogging sites.

 

Disadvantages:

1. E-commerce is limited.

2. It is rather hard to scale up your business.

3. Not so many templates and you can’t adjust them as freely as you would like, so the creative abilities are limited.

 

Pricing model:

It has 4 plans:

• the free one that will never end, not pushing you to upgrade to any other of existing tariff plans with anything but 5 Gb bandwidth per month

• ‘Pro’ starts with 20 dollars a month when paid monthly but if you choose a subscription for 1 year, this amount decreases to 16 dollars and drops down to 11.20 when paid for 5 years at once

• ‘Limited’ is 12 bucks a month but drops to 8 when paid annually and 7 when paid for 2 years

• ‘VIP’ is 49 dollars a month and cannot be paid on a monthly basis, only for a year. It’ll drop down to 34.4 a month if paid for 5 years at once (with maximum economy up to 528 dollars).  

Apart from that, it is necessary to buy a custom domain for $24.95 a year and a custom e-mail for $25 a year, as they are not included in the subscription money.

 

5. Description of a website builder XPRS

XPRS is a previous name for IM creator. It can create some sites but they won’t be professional or powerful. On our list, it is one of the poorest site builders that offer almost anything in exchange for the money paid.

 

Advantages:

1. About 70 templates and a possibility to create your website from scratch on a blank page.

 

Disadvantages:

1. A free name of your site looks as non-professionally as it could be having this: imxprs.com/free/username/.

2. A free version is so limited that it does not even worth mentioning.

3. It will not delete the inbuilt advertising of XPRS unless you opt for the most expensive payment option that costs 350 dollars a year!

4. No e-commerce at all. There are some widgets but they are only meager crumbs of what must be available for e-commerce processes.

 

Pricing model:

It offers you ‘Free’ for 0 dollars, ‘Premium’ for $5.95-$9.95 a month depending on how many years you pay for in advance, and ‘Pro + White label’ that costs $350 annually.

 

6. Description of a website builder Jimdo

Jimdo is one of many site builders that offer you to get online fast offering a free plan (largely limited, though). As for the rest – it is a poor choice with bad nearly non-customizable templates for a very huge price, which is tens of times higher than other options on the market.

 

Advantages:

1. It is possible to make e-commerce platforms.

 

Disadvantages:

1. Every its plan is very expensive. It is, in fact, the most expensive site builder on the market. Also, you can’t pay monthly – the only opportunity to pay is to input payment for 12 or 24 months in one go.

2. Very long support service reaction when you’re not opting for the most expensive plan (1-2 working days).

3. Basically, you can build a good site only paying nearly 500 dollars a month, while in other subscription plans, you will be very limited, still paying hefty money.

4. No restore option.

5. Poorly designed templates.

 

Pricing model:

It offers 5 pricing models: a free one, 109 dollars a month called ‘Start’, ‘Grow’ for $189 a month, ‘E-commerce’ for $239 a month, and the most expensive for $489 a month.

Money for each of the plans is billed annually.

The free plan provides 0.5 Gb storage space and 2 Gb bandwidth, with only 5 pages for a site available. Also, it gives an HTTPS possibility. The next plan adds to this 1 e-mail address, a possibility to use support, ten times bigger disk storage, 5 times bugger bandwidth, more pages, SEO, and deleting its commercial banners. ‘Grow’ and ‘E-commerce’ plans add a bit to the mentioned in numbers (the latter grabs some e-commerce useful stuff). The last plan goes for 20 e-mail addresses, unlimited storage and bandwidth + e-commerce options of the previous plan.

 

7. Description of a website builder Google Sites

Google sites provide you a set of features that are good to create a website fast making it look okay. It has a number of options to integrate with existing Google services and it is a very good tool in terms of security, monitoring, and especially storage, with large bandwidth due to the high capabilities of this huge company in cloud storage and technology. But it is not good if you want a big sophisticated site with scaling possibilities adjustable to what you really might need when there will be a need to grow.

 

Advantages:

1. It has a smooth connection to user and enterprise products of a vast line of Google’s products.

2. The interface that is familiar to hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

3. Simplicity, security, high speed, great sharing/storing opportunities are in line with what Google promotes over the past years.

 

Disadvantages:

1. It does not offer a free plan (they are all paid) but there is a 14-days trial period.

2. Limited design features like no CSS editing or a possibility to go far in your creativity when adjusting the selected template.

3. Not too suitable for big-scale long-operating websites.

4. A limited number of templates.

 

Pricing model:

For $6 a month, you get 30 Gb cloud storage, linking to Gmail, documents, 24/7 support, shared calendars, messaging, security options, and ad-free use. For 12 dollars a month, you get the same + unlimited storage, low-code app development possibility, smart search, and much more control options. For $25 a month, you get the mentioned plus vividly more control, security, administration, audit, data loss prevention, archiving, logging, and much more.

 

8. Description of a website builder Wix

It is one of the well-known site builders and there is much of ‘informational foam’ online about everything connected to Wix. Thousands of people make various reviews on this site builder and tens of millions use it. It is professional, heavyweight, and powerful in making sites and adjusting them to users’ needs. But Wix is also a heavy online tool that is highly demanding to your Internet connection and powerfulness of your PC.

 

Advantages:

1. Over 100 million users use Wix to make their websites, so it is heavily advertised and broadly known.

2. It offers hundreds of adjustable templates for every type of business and personal usage.

3. Automatic site backup.

4. Ease of use and very flexible in adjusting templates.

 

Disadvantages:

1. You can’t change the template to any extent you want, the start and end positions are fixed. Some elements can’t be deleted.

2. It is a resource-demanding software.

3. You can’t build a good e-store with Wix.

 

Pricing model:

It has 8 plans:

• if you’re seeking for business and e-commerce, try to explore its ‘Business’ plans starting from 19 dollars a month ending with 39.2 dollars a month.

• for other types of websites, explore either a free plan that will throw a number of commercial banners all over your pages or pick one of four for 5…27.5 dollars a month. Bear in mind that the cheapest plan for 5 bucks still won’t withdraw Wix advertising from your webpages.

 

9. Description of a website builder Wordpress.com

It is the most powerful website builder that is used by roughly a third of all online sites. You can adjust your pages to any extent you desire and that’s why you can scale up and down any site of any complexity and of any professional level.

 

Advantages:

1. You can do anything with your site using wordpress.com

2. Sites are professional and scalable, with loads of widgets, modules, and adjustments.

 

Disadvantages:

1. Although everyone can work with templates of wordpress.com, to receive anything of really good use, you have to have coding skills.

2. It is more than drag-and-drop visual editor, it is an advanced tool for professionals, which will definitely require from you high-level skills to build a really decent and functional site or a need to hire a person who will do it for you.

3. The price starts with 0 and ends with thousands of dollars for professional add-ons, super usable SEO optimal templates and high-end widgets. There are no simple-to-comprehend payment plans when you go pro: they are comprised of several levels and sublevels.

 

Pricing model:

You can start for free but then you will need to choose one of its 5 paid basic subscriptions:

• $3.4 for a ‘Blogger’

• $5.6 for a ‘Personal’

• $9 for a ‘Premium’

• $28 for a ‘Business’

• $50.4 for an ‘E-Commerce’.

Be aware that somehow, prices on its pricing page are displayed in Euros doesn’t matter from what country you are so in order to understand the pricing in US dollars, we’ve applied the cross-currency rate.

 

10. Description of a website builder Websitebuider.com

It is one of the builders that allow you to receive an online presence fast. But if you want more than just some poor templates and absence of critical features for a nice site, you should keep searching.

 

Advantages:

1. Blog, e-commerce, and design from scratch are possible.

2. Easy to use, great customer support, mobile friendliness, a number of templates to choose from.

 

Disadvantages:

1. Doesn’t have many must-haves like form builders, iOS and Android apps support, membership system, newsletter, multi-lingual sites creation, audio player, podcasts, donations.

2. Bad billing practices.

3. No e-mail integration.

 

Pricing model:

This site builder offers to your attention 4 subscription plans: a free one, one for $11 per month, then $14, and the last one is for 20. Bear in mind that you can’t actually pay for a month, the money is billed annually.

Within the free plan, you’ll get unlimited storage, integration with Facebook and logo builder, a small online store with 3% transaction fee, chat, and e-mail support. Premium frees you from ads, gives a free domain name for 1 year, and phone support. ‘Business’ does pretty much the same with priority support. And only ‘E-commerce’ plan frees you from limits on the number of merchandise you are allowed to have in your store, removes transaction fee, and gives advanced shipping management. In every option of subscription, you are allowed to sell digital products and accept online payments.

 

The definition of a website builder

A site builder is a complex online software allowing (nearly) anyone to build a site and to post it online for permanent hosting. Depending on a type of chosen subscription package, users of site builders receive a differing set of possibilities of such a created site. As a rule, free subscription limits users in such parameters:

• available storage place on the online disk to host your site

• a maximum number of pages available

• what type of information a user can place there and limits for the placement of information on each page

• bandwidth (a number of simultaneous connections and traffic count per month/day)

• uptime (usually significantly worse than the one in a paid subscription with load times worse as well, which is not good for SEO)

• technical features that help run the site

• shrunken statistics and SEO

• banners of the site builder all over your site

• impossibility to have a hosting without a branded name of a free site builder in your site’s name

• other types of limitations.

Moving further to one of the available paid packages, the number of possibilities increases, going up to the professional look of the site. A number of increased features may be tens of times bigger than ones proposed in a free version, including the absence of limitations on certain things (like hosted space, bandwidth, and so on).

The main goal why site builders exist in the first place is to let people start their online site fast and make it good-looking to meet a number of goals.

 

Who are the clients of website builders

Any natural person or legal entity may become a client of a site builder. And here are the reasons why:

• it is time to start your online presence or change the existing site you are unhappy with

• your business or you personally want to look more solid by obtaining your own Internet space

• you aren’t fully happy with interaction and sales possibilities that social media or online retailers offer you and you want to expand them or start something apart from social media or online retailers.

While addressing a professional website building studio or a freelancer is costly and time-consuming, site builder as an automated online tool is a solution to get online within hours of your time. Most of such building software is designed in a way to make it as simple and intuitive as possible, allowing literally anyone to get started and ended. These aren’t much more complicated than MS Word or Paintbrush and if you have seen sites on the Internet already, have experience of using drag-and-drop apps and have an idea in your head what you desire, you can perfectly and easily cope with the working process. If you need inspiration – hundreds of varying and optimally looking templates are already predesigned for your use. It is now only a matter of time to sit and make the job done.

 

How to choose the best website builder?

Every site builder presented on our list is easy to use and more or less similar to others (except Google Sites and Wordpress) and they use visual editor that heavily relies on a drag-and-drop feature, a computer mouse, and keyboard to enter your values and change objects to your taste. For not sophisticated beginners, it is just right.

When you are a more advanced user and want bigger fine-tune, you’d opt for HTML and CSS modification, which some of the site builders provide (Wordpress is the first amongst them). The more freedom a site builder offers you in changing the templates or building pages from scratch, the better professional result you will get.

So, here are some tips of advice about how to choose the right site builder for you:

1. Templates. The more, the better. It is hard to start a website from scratch, building every page from zero. So the presence of templates and their adjustment-ability is what will largely speed up your work. By the way, choosing a template looking as close to your desires as possible, you will have to spend only a few minutes on making changes.

2. Ease of customization. Each visual editor offers a certain degree of freedom. It is still limited, though. If you want more freedom (up to absolute) – opt for non-visual editors that require a user to know how to code to change (nearly) everything.

3. Features that you find useful specifically for your needs and a type of website. For a web store, as an example, everything that makes possible selecting products, viewing them, paying for them, and tracking delivery are useful. For blogs, for instance, the tools will significantly differ and include connection to social profiles of users, leaving feedbacks, shares, and comments, as well as leaving visitor’s data for possible newsletter. For company sites, you’ll need much fewer tools for interaction with users and rather opt for overviews of your products or services and their comparison alongside with company’s information. So you have to take a close look at what tools in your specific area this or that site builder offers and choose the suitable one for you.

4. Customer service. If you will face some problems, availability and speed of support service and FAQ they have will have a significant added value for you.

5. Cost. Some lightweight sites with nothing sophisticated just to signify your online presence will cost you a few bucks a month. Super powerful e-shops will drain your wallet by a few hundred dollars a month. In between them, there is a plethora of grades and options across multiple site builders for you to choose.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

• How to build a website for free step by step?

By using a visual editor for a pre-created template. Most of the site builders offer you a step-by-step wizard that will help you get rid of gaps.

 

• Where can I get a free domain name?

When your website is finished and ready to roll online, your site builder assigns your website a free name that you can change after.

 

• What's the easiest free website builder?

According to our opinion, the first place among the best free website builders 2019 goes to uKit.

 

• What is the best free site builder?

uKit is good for nearly everything but big e-shops. Ucraft and Wordpress.com are the finest solutions for e-stores.

 

• Are free websites good for SEO?

Most of them aren’t good for SEO if you use free subscription plans. In paid tariff plans, SEO is included and you can govern it.

 

• Can I upgrade my website in the future?

Yes.

 

• Which free site builder would you recommend for blogging?

Strikingly and Wordpress.com are the best to make a free website used for blogging.

 

• Which free website builder software is best for e-commerce?

Ucraft and Wordpress.com allow you to create really powerful and all-embracing e-stores that will have hundreds and thousands of pages. They are well manageable and can be updated with the change of your assortment.

 

• What is the best free website builder for small business

uKit is definitely the best one, as it supports every feature one may need to cover own business needs. In addition – it is really inexpensive, actually standing out of the crowd by the ratio of its great functionality and low price.

 

• What is the difference between free and paid website builders?

Free builders offer you a very limited number of services you can use. Every free website builder has a number of paid subscription options to largely expand the capabilities of your site, which you can use in the future if you will grow (and we hope that after you create a website for free using a website builder, you will grow). Also, you can’t download the created site, as a rule, to work with it offline.