No longer do you need to know coding to create a site. For the past decade, drag-and-drop website builders have flourished and anyone can put together a site in a few hours.
With so many free website builders, it gets confusing. We cut the clutter and lay out the best features of the best free website builders on the market.
The Top Free Website Builders You Must Consider
Wix
Wix has been designed by an Israeli software team. It was founded in 2006 but has gained a lot of traction in the past few years since it began offering an ecommerce platform. They provide both free plans (under a sub-domain) and paid plans.
Related: Wix Review
Top Features:
- If you don’t know how to create a free website then fear no more. Wix has an intuitive WIX ADI developer that can help you build your site by asking you questions. On other hand, you could also use a feature-rich editor that uses drag and drop.
- Wix has plenty of templates with more getting added daily. The quality of the templates is quite high.
- Wix web store has on offer several plugins used for form builder, SEO, and mail management. You can add online payment options from a number of global merchants.
Weebly
Founded in 2006, Weebly is based out of San Francisco. It is now owned by Square, who are known for their payment gateway. It is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses and personal blogs and pages. They offer a free plan and several budget-friendly premium plans. The best plans are available for a mere $12 and $25 monthly.
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Top Features:
- Being a part of Square, integration with the gateway is free. Also, being a member of the same enterprise means the backend works seamlessly and payments don’t get stuck.
- Free availability of SEO and site analytics on the top-tier plan. It not only works efficiently but also reduces the hassle of managing plugins by making all data available in one place.
- You do not have a lot of customization options apart from changing images and fonts.
WordPress
WordPress is a completely free website builder software under GNU Public License, the WordPress platform is remarkably reliable and stable. This is borne out by the fact that 42% of the internet runs on WordPress CMS.
Related: How to Create A Website With WordPress
Top Features:
- Complete freedom to host on any server—self-owned or cloud. WordPress is the best free software available for creating a site.
- 50,000 plugins make it versatile and able to host anything from a streaming radio station to a shopping megastore.
- Fantastic themes available from Elementor and Divi make WordPress themes unique in every aspect.
- You can tinker with the source code, and the publishers offer complete access for customization.
- A huge number of developers make it possible to build a site at competitive prices.
Webnode
With 40 million users, Webnode has become a serious player in the world of website builders. A major plus is its simplicity and which makes it easy to create sites in a matter of hours. Wix and Weebly have lately suffered from feature creep that curbs the enthusiasm of newbie developers.
Related: Best CMS For SEO
Top Features:
- The priciest plan is a very affordable $22. It comes with 100 email accounts and unlimited bandwidth.
- In-built store function with advanced innovations such as abandoned cart recovery, store analytics, and conversion tracking.
- Exceptional translation makes the multilingual feature very authentic. Most website builders don’t get this right and mistranslations cause lost visitors and leads.
Jimdo
Headquartered in Hamburg, Jimdo is a German website builder and hosting company. Their motto reads “build a site in 3 minutes”. That’s not an idle boast. You can use it that fast due to an exceptional editor that is made to be used by small business owners.
Related: Best WordPress Plugins For Speed Optimization
Top Features:
- The priciest plan is $15 per month. Jimdo has thrown down the gauntlet when it comes to cutthroat pricing.
- That price includes free HTTPS protection, which makes it secure. Google prefers sites that carry an SSL certificate and Jimdo made it easier.
- You could use your own legacy email address and domain name.
- Customer support, though, is by email and chat, which makes it less than ideal.
Strikingly
If you tried out Wix and Weebly free plans and found them complex, then try out Strikingly. It is meant for those who want an elementary website without too many bells and whistles.
Related: Best WordPress Plugins For WooCommerce
Top Features:
- A simple free website builder that is easy to work with and manipulate.
- Strikingly offers free SSL certificates to all its sites and also payment through Stripe and Paypal.
- The more expensive plans cost $16 and $49 per month. Start out with a free site and upgrade later.
- The paid plans come with a dedicated account manager and round-the-clock support.
- Strikingly does not offer a lot in the way of plugins. This makes it hard to optimize the site for SEO and marketing.
Site 123
Site123 has a novel appeal–it is available in 70 different languages.
In the era of globalized ecommerce, this can come in quite handy for many store owners looking to expand their footprint.
Related: Best WordPress Search Plugins
Top Features:
- An enormous number of well-designed templates that are both functional and aesthetic.
- Good third-party integrations let you use plugins for site management and analytics.
- An image gallery that provides copyright free photos for use with your site. No need to buy from vendors such as Getty.
- Very polite customer service who explains any workaround, in detail, by phone and email.
Elementor
Elementor became reputed as a plugin for WordPress that provides beautiful themes. They have taken their business a step further and offer their site builder with WordPress and a hosting package rolled into one. At $89 per year, it is the cheapest way to get yourself a professional-looking site.
Related: Elementor Review
Top Features:
- One of the best drag-and-drop editors in the world makes the task of creating a website a walk in the park.
- Over 300 templates that provide site layouts. If you like simplicity, choose one and publish with your content. Elementor has a brilliant design team and your site would look absolutely gorgeous.
- 20 GB free storage is more than enough for most small businesses. Additional storage can be purchased if necessary.
- Add to the above priority support for those buying the all-in-one package and you see why Elementor has emerged as a serious player.
IM Creator
A relative newcomer, IM Creator, gives access to all their templates for free. The premium prices, though, are quite attractive at $10 monthly and $350 annually (for white label services). They started with an editor known as XPRS and now include hosting and support as a full-fledged website builder company.
Related: Best WordPress Plugins For Hotel Booking
Top Features:
- You have access to a very simple dashboard that offers site analytics. Nothing exceptional but suffices for a small business.
- IM Creator lets a site owner add HTML tags and code snippets for SEO.
- The top plan lets any hosting company remove the branding and integrate it with their services. A perfect white label solution if you own servers.
Duda
Duda is rapidly becoming a name to reckon with. They have a dependable website builder and numerous templates. Duda uses AWS for hosting and hence you can be sure that it is always up and running.
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Top Features:
- The paid plans are priced at $14 and 29 monthly. Considering you receive phone support, that is quite cheap.
- The website templates are fully customizable and you get a unique site in a matter of minutes.
- Responsive CSS makes the website suitable for desktop, mobile, and tablet. A preview pane allows you to see each page in all three modes before publication.
Which Is The Best Free Website Builder For You?
Do we have a favorite? That would have to be Wix. It offers a lot of features yet is not exorbitantly priced.
That does not mean others are not excellent. If you want a small site with a few pages almost any that we have listed will deliver. For larger sites with several hundred products, WordPress and Wix are the most trustworthy options.
