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By Steve Benjamins | Fact checked by | Updated Jan 4 2022
It is definitely possible to use a free website builder in 2022— if you are okay with some tradeoffs.
I spent the last month testing the free plans of website builders and here’s the truth: website builders aren’t scrambling to give away something for free but with a little research you can definitely make it work.
To be clear, free means a free website indefinitely— not a free trial that expires after 14 days.
Best-in-class website builders. Highly recommended.
Square is the best overall free website builder.
The free plan includes a small ad in the footer of your website:
This ad is included on Square free websites.
Overview of Square Online's free plans (1:18)
These website builders are an excellent choice.
Webflow is powerful but has a learning curve. It’s what I recommend if you would like to design your own theme from scratch.
Webflow includes a small ad that scrolls with your website. It’s not very noticeable.
Webflow includes a small ad on free websites.
Overview of Webflow's free plan (1:26)
Navigating Webflow’s pricing plans can be confusing.
You’ll want to sign up for their free Account plan and then choose the Staging plan for a free website.
I asked Webflow to confirm that the Staging plan could be used for publishing a website and here’s what they had to say:
I would think of it like this: Webflow is free until you want to have more than 2 projects, if you want to host a website on a custom domain, or if you want to export code from a project.
Carrd is a website builder for one-page websites. It has an excellent free plan— so if you need a free one page website, I’d recommend Carrd.
Carrd includes an extremely small ad on free websites:
Most visitors probably won't even notice this ad.
Google Sites is the only website builder that is 100% free. They don’t even offer paid plans.
Ad isn’t even the right word. It’s more a scrolling icon that the visitor has to hover for more information. Here’s what it looks like:
This is so small... I wish Google gave the option of removing it!
Overview of Google Sites
These website builders can still work but may have a drawback.
An example of the Ucraft ad:
Ucraft includes an ad that scrolls along your website.
Jimdo is simple and straightforward with a small ad on free websites.
Jimdo's Ad
The main reason isn’t in my recommended free website builders is Jimdo’s free plan has a 5 page limit.
IM Creator has no ad on free websites. That’s awesome.
Doesn't this look nice? A free website with no ads.
Unfortunately the subdomain they give free websites is long and difficult to read. Unfortunately there is no way to edit it:
im-creator.com/free/yourusername/yourwebsitename
Webnode is a basic website builder with excellent templates and a small ad on free websites:
The ad on free Webnode websites is pretty small.
Unfortunately Webnode limits free sites to 1 GB of bandwidth— which doesn’t get you very far. None of the free website builders I recommend have a bandwidth limit.
These website builders have something that gives me pause.
Wix’s free plan is too limited to recommend.
For starters, there’s an ad that scrolls alongside the top of free websites:
This ad scrolls alongside free Wix websites.
And the free subdomain is not as friendly as other website builders:
username.wixsite.com/mysite.
A better URL would be something like:
mysite.wix.com.
Finally Wix has a 500 MB bandwidth limit on free websites. That’s really low— especially since the Wix template we tested was 1.4 MB.
GoDaddy has a sections-based editor similar to Square Online.
But unlike Square Online, GoDaddy doesn’t include ecommerce features and has a large ad that scrolls alongside your website:
GoDaddy's ad on free websites is too big for me to recommend.
Strikingly is a one-page website builder— similar to Carrd.
But unlike Carrd, Strikingly includes a pretty large ad on their free plans.
Strikingly ad.
Site123 has a free plan but I don’t recommend it.
For starters the free subdomain is a random string of numbers. When we signed up, our website was:
http://5fb7ef6699e63.site123.me/
Plus the advertisement on free websites scrolls alongside your website:
Finally even if Site123 didn’t have a large ad and a bad subdomain, I still would not recommend it because Site123 isn’t a visual, drag-and-drop editor. Instead you edit your website by filling out forms. It’s not ideal.
The ad WordPress.com puts on free websites is just too intrusive for me to recommend:
Note: WordPress.com is not WordPress.org. WordPress.org is what most people mean when they talk about WordPress— it’s the free, open-source CMS. WordPress.com is more like a website builder.
To the best of our knowledge this the bandwidth and storage limits for each website builder as of December 2020.
| Website Builder | Bandwidth | Storage |
|---|---|---|
| Square Online | Not Known | Not Known |
| Webflow | Unlimited | Not Known |
| Carrd | Not Known | Not Known |
| Google Sites | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Jimdo | 2 GB | 500 MB |
| GoDaddy | Not Known | Not Known |
| Ucraft | Unlimited | Not Known |
| IM Creator | 100 visits per day | 50 MB |
| Strikingly | 5 GB / month | 500 MB |
| Wix | 500 MB | 500 MB |
| WordPress.com | Unlimited | 3 GB |
| Site123 | 1 GB | 500 MB |
| Webnode | 1 GB | 100 MB |
You can't. There is no way to get a domain name for free, though most website builders will give you a free first year of your domain name— if you're on a paid annual plan.
There are two reasons I have not included WordPress: (1) WordPress is free for download but you'll still need to pay for a host. (2) WordPress is a CMS— not a website builder.
They do— and it's quite good. It's called Google Sites.
I think Square Online is the easiest free website builder.
Carrd. Read more in my roundup of the Cheapest Website Builders.
Squarespace has a 14-day free trial but they do not have a free plan.
No. The cheapest version of Shopify is Shopify Lite which costs $9 / month.
