Best Free Website Builders 2025

Websites used to be a luxury: If you couldn’t code, you had to hire expensive agencies. Today, you can create your own website without any coding or web design experience — thanks to website builders. Some of these builders are even completely free.

We’ll introduce the best free providers and explain the limitations you’ll face if you don’t pay for your website.

Professional websites cost money. You need web hosting, a domain, and tools to create the website — and these resources are rarely free.

If you use a website builder, you’ll usually pay a monthly subscription fee that covers all necessary services. However, some providers also offer a free plan, following the motto: “build for free, pay for hosting.”

This means you can use the builder for free and publish your website on the provider’s subdomain. In return, there are some limitations, like storage limits or prominently placed provider branding (more on that later).

If you can accept these "imperfections" on your website, maybe because it's a personal website or you just want to try out the builder without commitment, there are several free options to choose from:

Wix ranked first in our comparison of the best website builders because this all-rounder combines a wide range of features, user-friendly handling, and impressively flexible design tools into a successful overall package.

With over 800 design templates and numerous elements you can configure in detail, your creativity is less restricted compared to other providers.

The range of features is also extensive. Whether it's ecommerce, blogging, content management, SEO, or marketing, Wix is excellent in almost every niche and covers most needs with built-in tools or first-party applications. And if a feature is missing, you can browse the packed app store.

If you want to create a free website with Wix, you'll have to accept the usual limitations like the domain and ads, as well as missing features.

Storage is limited to 500 MB, 1 GB of bandwidth, and you can't integrate Google Analytics. Additionally, you can't accept payments — you'll need to upgrade to a business plan for that. This means online stores can't be run on the free plan.

Unlike Wix, Webflow is less suitable for beginners. This hybrid of a website builder and content management system (CMS) requires some understanding of coding principles (or at least a willingness to learn them).

Instead of working on your content without any connection to the backend, you organize it in so-called containers, where you can edit it using classic builder tools like drag-and-drop.

This makes Webflow more complex than most other website builders in our review, but it also offers significantly more freedom. Unfortunately, Webflow is not yet available in German.

Webflow's free version has strict resource limits: Your website is limited to two pages, 50 CMS items, 1,000 visitors, and 1 GB of bandwidth. Additionally, you’ll miss out on features like password protection for your site, project transfers to other Webflow accounts, or code export.

Strikingly focuses on one-pagers and simple websites that don’t require complex or highly customized designs. Compared to all-rounders like Wix, its design options are much more limited.

With Strikingly, you create your website using section templates and predefined layouts that are only slightly customizable. You can’t freely arrange elements with drag-and-drop, and the design options are minimal. So, you’re not really designing with Strikingly.

Strikingly is especially suitable for beginners who want to create a simple and functional website without much technical knowledge.

With Strikingly's free plan, you can create simple websites with up to five pages. There is a monthly bandwidth limit of 5 GB, and the total storage of your website cannot exceed 500 MB.

You can only offer one product per page, making the free plan suitable only for mini-shops. Additionally, there is a 5% transaction fee.

SITE123 also limits design options on purpose to make the user experience as convenient and beginner-friendly as possible. This approach works well, as even complete beginners can quickly create an attractive and functional website with just a few clicks and modifications.

Your freedom in the editor is quite limited. Instead of drag-and-drop, it follows a puzzle-like approach: you can't freely add elements like in other editors but can only personalize the pre-made subpages provided by SITE123. Options include team pages, galleries, or contact forms.

Along with SITE123 branding and an assigned subdomain, the free plan limits your storage and bandwidth to 250 MB each. Free users also cannot access the website builder's ecommerce features.

Webador is also best suited for simple projects like small online shops, personal blogs, or websites for clubs and small businesses.

Webador's editor is user-friendly and should be easy for beginners to master. All key aspects of website creation, from navigation to content editing, are straightforward.

Unlike Strikingly and SITE123, you can arrange content using drag-and-drop, giving you a bit more freedom with the layout:

However, Webador's features are limited: design templates can only be customized to a certain extent, the templates are quite generic, and there are hardly any industry-specific options. This makes Webador less suitable for larger and more complex projects.

Webador’s free plan lacks most advanced features: you can’t run a multilingual website, add a search function, or create custom forms. Opening an online store is also not possible.

Webnode is another quick-start website builder that emphasizes accessibility. Its editor has a gentle learning curve, making it easy for beginners to create a website. Around 200 templates are available, designed for quick personalization with your own content.

Instead of full drag-and-drop freedom, Webnode’s editor lets you arrange elements like puzzle pieces within a predefined grid, which significantly limits design flexibility. There are only a few elements available: standard blocks like text, images, buttons, and similar. On the bright side, an HTML section is included.

The design settings are hardly worth mentioning: You can't manually adjust your website's colors, only choose complementary colors and predefined palettes.

Webnode is only worth considering for users without extravagant needs who want to quickly and effortlessly create a functional website.

The free plan limits your storage to 100 MB and bandwidth to 1 GB. Like most providers, you can only create an online store as a paying customer.

Jimdo also focuses on beginners with its website builder. However, it offers two different editors to choose from:

With its predefined layouts and designs, Jimdo – at least in the simple editor – makes it hard to go wrong. Unfortunately, the feature set is not yet fully complete, partly due to the split between the two editors. For example, blogging tools are currently only available in the pro editor.

With Jimdo's free plan, you can use all basic features and publish your website with a Jimdo subdomain. However, storage is limited to 500 MB and bandwidth to 2 GB.

You can only create five subpages, and features like SEO tools, analytics, and legal text assistance (e.g., for privacy policies) are missing. Online stores are only available with paid plans.

Weebly is unfortunately no longer up-to-date: The beginner-friendly website builder, now owned by financial services provider Square, has been somewhat neglected and hasn't been updated in a while. The interface is clunky and outdated, the selection of templates and layouts is limited, and support is slow.

Weebly does shine in ecommerce — and this is where its connection to Square pays off. As a sales platform, Weebly is quite powerful, offering a wide range of features, flexible product management, and integrated sales and marketing tools.

You can even run an online store with Weebly's free plan, though it only supports selling physical products, not digital products.

With Weebly's free version, you'll have to accept Weebly branding and a subdomain. Additionally, advanced features like password-protected pages, site analytics, digital product sales, and phone support are unavailable. Storage is limited to 500 MB, though Weebly doesn't seem to strictly enforce this limit.

GoDaddy is another website builder for beginners that keeps users on a tight leash: Instead of freely editing and arranging elements, you simply fill the pre-designed blocks provided by the builder with your own content, like text and images.

This makes website design almost foolproof but limits your creativity and the uniqueness of the results.

GoDaddy's website builder is best for simple projects and users who prefer not to worry about design and layout. In our review, the editor also struggled with significant performance issues, which made working with it less enjoyable.

With GoDaddy's free plan, you get a GoDaddy domain and can't open an online store. Once you choose a paid plan, it isn't possible to switch back to the free version.

The exact steps depend on the website builder you choose. However, the following steps are always necessary:

How this looks in practice depends on the website builder you choose. Here you can find detailed step-by-step tutorials for some platforms from our reviews:

As mentioned earlier, free plans from website builders are more suitable for personal or smaller projects, as they have some significant drawbacks compared to premium versions:

Of course, you can always upgrade from the free plan to a premium plan with a custom domain.

If you want to sell products and accept payments, the selection of free options becomes limited. However, there are some ecommerce builders and shop systems with free plans that we've compiled for you here:

Your own website, completely free? This is possible with website builders, but it comes with some limitations.

The issues with free plans are always the same: If you don’t pay, you’ll have to live with an unappealing provider domain and branding on your website. Additionally, storage space and bandwidth are often limited, which can restrict your site’s growth. Free websites are also not ideal from an SEO perspective.

For simple projects, personal blogs, and trying things out, free plans are often good enough. Upgrading to a premium version is also easy with all providers. Detailed reviews of 15 website builders can be found in EXPERTE.com's comprehensive builder comparison.