The Best Free Website Builders in 2024

As an SEO-focused free website builder, Wix provides a suite of functions that work towards optimizing your site for search engines like Google and Bing. These functions are compiled in the personalized step-by-step SEO Setup Checklist, which helps you prepare your homepage for search engines and maintain your site’s SEO progress.

Wix offers free web hosting on a global content delivery network (CDN) to improve site visibility and loading times. The CDN is set up automatically as soon as your site goes live, so you can count on constant uptime and enterprise-grade data security.

In addition to its broad collection of customizable templates and convenient drag-and-drop editor, Wix offers AI assistance for website creation for users interested in a quick setup using Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence). It also supports other AI tools, like Text Creator and Section Generator, for easy customization after generating the website.

Wix offers a strong free plan and allows you to effectively build a free website. Those starting a business online can unlock advanced features by upgrading to its various paid premium plans. These plans have differing pricing and offerings and are categorized into a simple tiered list as shown below:

• Free: This plan has 500 MB bandwidth and 500MB storage space.
• Light: This option allows for 2 collaborators, comes with 2 GB storage space, and is a free website builder with custom domain (it grants you a domain for a year). 
• Core: This plan is a significant upgrade, offering 50 GB of storage space, a basic marketing suite, eCommerce capabilities, and site analytics. 
• Business: The Business plan includes 100 GB of space, a standard marketing suite, and standard site analytics and allows for 10 collaborators
• Business Elite: Aimed at scaling businesses, this plan has an advanced developer platform, unlimited storage, and an advanced marketing suite

All plans come with reliable 24/7 customer support. Wix also offers a 14-day trial period for premium plans with a money-back guarantee if you’re unsatisfied with the product.

Wix’s free plan is a great channel for small businesses, startups, or freelancers to establish a simple online presence that introduces them to potential clients. It is specifically for those intent on optimizing their site for search engines. Additionally, Wix ADI is useful for users without design or coding expertise who need to set up a website quickly.

GoDaddy integrates advanced AI technology to solve business problems. With GoDaddy Insight, businesses gain industry-tailored feedback and actionable recommendations that ensure they take impactful steps for their website.

Apart from this valuable tool, GoDaddy supports ADI and offers a range of mobile-optimized, free templates that can be customized with the user-friendly drag-and-drop editor.

GoDaddy’s free plan also has integrated marketing features that support email and social media marketing campaigns for small businesses interested in multi-channel customer engagement. You can collect email addresses through a sign-up form on your site and send up to 100 marketing emails monthly.

Finally, the free site plan offers product listing, allowing you to showcase your products. However, you must upgrade to an e-commerce plan to process online transactions and explore other e-commerce features.

Although GoDaddy offers other services, it is flexible enough to provide a separate pricing plan for the website builder. These plans include:

• Free: This plan provides website security, integrated marketing and analytics tools, 100 monthly email marketing sends, and 24/7 customer support.
• Basic: This plan lets you connect a custom domain, supports 100 email marketing sends per month, and has built-in SEO, content, and design tools.
• Premium: Aimed at offering more flexibility, the Premium plan includes email marketing tools, allows you to create and launch social ads, and facilitates booking recurring appointments.
• Commerce: This plan includes everything in the Premium plan plus advanced e-commerce features like flexible shipping options and automatic inventory.

All paid plans include website security, your own domain, mobile optimization, SEO functionalities, GoDaddy Insight, free professional email for a year, and 24/7 customer support.

Premium features are available on the free plan for a 7-day trial period. After this, you will lose access to the features, but your work will still be accessible.

GoDaddy’s free plan is best suited for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and individuals looking to quickly create a straightforward website with integrated marketing functions at no cost. Its user-friendly interface, drag-and-drop editor, and AI-assisted website building make it convenient for beginners without any design or web development experience.

Weebly’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder allows for website building and customization in minutes without coding skills. This website builder platform also keeps your website secure and encrypted with free SSL security.

More importantly, Weebly offers holistic e-commerce capabilities on its free plan. It simplifies everyday manual business hassles by offering product listings, inventory management, and a secure, mobile-friendly checkout system with an automatic tax calculator. Weebly is also perfectly integrated with Square for flawless payment processing.

Weebly has a straightforward tiered pricing system with four plans. These include:

• Free: The basic plan comes with free SSL security, basic e-commerce features offered in all plans, 500 MB storage, and SEO tools.
• Personal: This plan includes the features in the free plan, as well as the ability to connect your domain, sell digital goods, and access a shipping calculator.
• Professional: This option includes all the personal plan features and adds unlimited storage, advanced site stats, a free domain, ad and branding removal, and additional phone support.
• Performance: This plan has all the features of the professional plan and includes online payment methods, item reviews, abandoned cart emails, and priority customer support.

All plans include free SSL security, a mobile-friendly checkout system, inventory management, an automatic tax calculator, SEO tools, Instagram integration, and chat and email support.

Weebly is ideal for small-to-medium-sized business owners trying to establish or expand their online store. Whether you’re looking to create a functional online presence for your in-person business or start a small online store from scratch, Weebly’s free site plan provides everything you need to create a website.

Webflow’s free site plan offers designers and developers various visual design tools to create responsive websites. With precise control over layouts and styling, you can design your website from scratch to fit your unique brand identity and ensure it looks good on different screen sizes.

Webflow stands out as one of the best free html website builders. It allows users to design websites with a high degree of flexibility and control over the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

This makes it particularly popular among designers and developers who want to create custom, responsive websites without having to write code from scratch but still have the option to tweak the underlying HTML

While you take charge of the design, Webflow automatically generates clean CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript code for your visual canvas. However, for those not interested in building from the ground up, Webflow has a gallery of free portfolio templates, among others.

Additionally, Webflow’s free plan provides basic CMS capabilities for dynamic content management and structuring without backend programming. Users can manage up to 50 CMS items, which is particularly advantageous to creatives or small-scale online retailers who need to update their portfolios or product listings regularly.

Webflow offers two pricing plans: Site plans and Workspace plans. Under the site plan, there are two categories: General and E-commerce. Similarly, the Workspace plans are divided into unique plans for in-house teams and freelancers & agencies.

• Free: This entry-level plan has a two-page limit, 50 CMS items, 1GB bandwidth, and 1000 monthly site visitors.
• Basic: This plan doesn’t support CMS items but provides a custom domain, a 150-page limit, 50 GB bandwidth, and 250,000 monthly site visitors.
• CMS: This plan includes everything in the basic plan, plus 2000 CMS items, three content editors, 200 GB bandwidth, and 250,000 monthly site visitors.
• Business: This includes everything in the CMS plan, plus 10,000 CMS items, 10 content editors, 400 GB bandwidth, and 300,000 monthly site visitors.
• E-commerce Standard: This plan is perfect for startups and includes all the features of the CMS plan, along with 500 e-commerce items, 2000 CMS items, and a 2% transaction fee.
• Plus: This includes all business plan features plus 5000 e-commerce items, 10,000 CMS items, and no transaction fee.
• Advanced: This includes all business plan features plus 15,000 e-commerce items, 10,000 CMS items, and no transaction fee.
• Workspace Starter for In-house Teams: This free site plan is great for individual designers. It has a one-user limit and two staging sites with two pages and 50 CMS items per site.
• Core: This plan is ideal for small teams. It has a three-user limit and 10 staging sites with 150 pages and 50 CMS items per site.
• Growth: This plan is better for larger teams and includes a nine-user limit and unlimited staging sites with 150 pages and 50 CMS items per site.
• Workspace Starter for Freelancers & Agencies: This plan is ideal for users learning Webflow; it has a one-user limit and two staging sites.
• Freelancer: This plan is suitable for freelancers and offers a three-user limit and 10 staging sites with full CMS access and basic roles and permissions.
• Agency: This plan is for freelancers managing multiple clients and contains a nine-user limit and unlimited staging sites with full CMS access and advanced roles and permissions.

Finally, Webflow for Enterprise is customized to cover advanced collaboration, uncapped users, scalability, guaranteed uptime, enterprise-grade site security, and customer success. Its pricing is custom-made depending on the solutions you require.

Because of its focus on visual design and customization capabilities, Webflow is a great free website builder for artists with a knack for design and an eye for aesthetics.

Likewise, it is the ideal website builder for photographers interested in presenting their portfolio in a visually appealing, interactive, and responsive way. Overall, Webflow is perfect for professional designers and creatives who value flexibility and control over their website’s appearance and function without writing the code.

Site123’s free plan comes with an AI-powered automated site generator that facilitates quick website setup after gauging user preferences from a questionnaire. This site generator works hand in hand with TextAI to provide the text for your web pages.

The platform is well-known for its novice-friendly user interface, which further simplifies the process of customizing your generated site. It features an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, clear user prompts for site navigation, and an intuitive dashboard. It also provides an uncomplicated logo maker and a vast image library for more customization on its free plan.

Additionally, websites created with Site123 are optimized for all kinds of devices–including mobile phones, tablets, and desktops.

Mimicking the software itself, Site123’s price plans are simply categorized with one clear paid offering and the option to upgrade it with a Package Plan.

• Free: This plan has 250 MB storage & bandwidth and a Site123 subdomain.
• Premium: The Premium plan comes with 3 GB of storage and bandwidth, an online store, and a free domain for one year. 

While Site123’s offerings seem rather simplistic, with only one paid option, they also offer four Package Plan upgrades: Basic, Advanced, Professional, and Gold, depending on your needs.

The Premium plan includes a free domain for one year, removal of the Site123 floating tag, connection of your own domain, and store features. In addition, Site123 offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Site123 is the best free website builder for individuals, freelancers, and small businesses who need a simple, intuitive tool to create a standard website quickly. If you have no technical or design knowledge and prioritize ease of use and speed over design flexibility, then this platform’s free plan is just for you.

Strikingly features mobile-friendly pre-designed templates that help your site be responsive from the jump. This platform provides a straightforward website-building experience, allowing you to customize your chosen template easily using its intuitive drag-and-drop editor. Strikingly’s templates are not just functional; they are also visually pleasing, with crisp themes and legible fonts.

The website maker provides the most rudimentary level of e-commerce functionality, but even that on a free plan is a rarity. It allows you to set up a simple store with the capacity to sell one product. However, you must upgrade to a paid plan to add more products and expand your inventory.

In addition to its free plan, Strikingly has three tiered plans that have varying offerings and they get cheaper depending on the length of the subscription. These include:

• Free: This plan offers unlimited free sites, a Strikingly.com domain, five pages per site, a simple store for selling one product, 5 GB monthly bandwidth, and 500 MB storage per site.
• Limited: This plan includes everything in the free plan plus two limited sites, a connected custom domain with SSL (free for one year), a 5% transaction fee, 50 GB bandwidth, and 1 GB storage per site.
• Pro: This plan includes everything in the limited plan, plus three pro sites, 100 pages per site, removable Strikingly branding, an upgraded 300-product limit for the online store, and advanced e-commerce features.
• VIP: This option contains everything in the pro plan plus five VIP sites, no product limit for the online store, a 0% transaction fee, priority phone support, unlimited bandwidth, and 100 GB storage per site.

Strikingly offers further discounts for three-year and five-year sign-ups. All plans offer 24/7 live chat support and high-performance cloud hosting. If you have your own domain name, you can also create a professional custom email address for $25/year.

You can also test out premium plans for a 14-day trial period. While you can revert to the free plan anytime, you must remove paid features from your sites before downgrading.

Strikingly targets individuals, bloggers, freelancers, and small businesses requiring a simple, decluttered, and functional site. It is specifically tailored for presenting portfolios, resumes, and small-scale one-product or service-based e-commerce ventures.

Hubspot’s free website maker is feature-rich and offers an all-in-one website building and management approach. AI-powered tools such as the AI website generator and AI content assistant significantly simplify the process, furnishing you with a mobile-optimized site and SEO-friendly site content.

In addition, HubSpot provides SEO recommendations even on its free plan. It offers 30 responsive web pages, automated email marketing, a standard web analytics dashboard reporting site performance, and an SEO checklist with informative guides and steps for optimizing your site.

For e-commerce facilitation, HubSpot’s free plan provides startups and small businesses with a product library with up to 100 product listings – a feature most website builders offer on their more advanced plans.

Hubspot’s website builder is contained in the Content Hub and has four plans, which include:

• Free: This plan includes 30 mobile-optimized website pages, one automated email action, 100 product listings, basic SEO recommendations, and the ability to connect your own domain.
• Starter: This plan offers free tools with increased limits, such as 10 automated email actions and 1 million product listings, plus removable HubSpot branding and email & chat support.
• Professional: This option includes everything on the starter plan plus dynamic pages, AI translation, content embedding, custom reporting, 100 AI blogs, advanced SEO recommendations and analytics, and phone support.
• Enterprise: This plan contains everything in the professional plan and includes serverless functions, multiple sites, team organization, and field-level permissions.

You can chat with a sales agent for help choosing a plan or start a 14-day free trial on professional and enterprise plans.

HubSpot’s free plan is ideal for content-intensive startups and small-to-medium businesses looking to attract, engage, and retain customers. The website builder is suited to those focused on growth, seamlessly integrating intuitive website design with advanced automated marketing and e-commerce tools to help achieve business goals.

It also offers a solution to larger businesses who want to test the CRM and CMS before committing to a paid plan suitable to their large-scale needs.