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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.