Best Free Website Builder for Small Business

Need a no-cost website builder? Check out our rankings to find the best one.
Best overall
Wix
Wix
Starting from
$0.00
  • pro
    Easy drag-and-drop interface
  • pro
    Over 500 design options
Best for new websites
SquareSpace
Squarespace
Starting from
$0.00 (for 2 weeks)
  • pro
    Easy-to-use interface
  • pro
    Beautiful designs for sites
Best for ecommerce
Wix Ecommerce
Starting from
$0.00 (for 2 weeks)
  • pro
    Great dashboard and UX
  • pro
    Unlimited products
Best for fast setup
GoDaddy
GoDaddy
Starting from
$0.00 (for 30 days)
  • pro
    User-friendly interface
  • pro
    19 design themes
Best for control
WordPress
WordPress.com
Starting from
$0.00
  • pro
    Customizable interface
  • pro
    Thousands of available themes

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

We are committed to sharing unbiased reviews. Some of the links on our site are from our partners who compensate us. Read our editorial guidelines and advertising disclosure.

Looking for a free website builder for your small-business website? Well, you came to the right place! We looked at the best website builders with free plans or free trials and found that Wix is still our top choice with its free plan.

In our rankings below, we’ll tell you what you need to know about our favorite free website builders for business owners—including how free they actually are and why they may not work for you.

Now, let’s save you some money.

Megaphone
Full disclosure
Free site builders provide a temporary fix, but they aren’t a good long-term solution for most small-business owners (more on this below). With that in mind, we’re including both builders that have free plans and builders that just have free trials of premium plans—because realistically, you’ll want to upgrade at some point.
Wix: The affordable business website builder that doesn't skimp on good design
Wix's intuitive platform and beautiful designs make it one of the best choices for any business, regardless of your budget.

Business.org’s top free website builders at a glance

Company
Free plan
Free trial (of premium plans)
Learn more
Icon Check  Dark

Yes

14 days

Icon Close  Dark

No

14 days

Icon No  Dark

No

14 days

Icon Close  Dark

No

30 days

Icon Check  Dark

Yes

14 days

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

Wix: Best overall free website builder

Best overall
Wix
Wix
Starts at
$0.00/mo.
  • pro
    Hundreds of design themes
  • pro
    Limitless customization options

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

Strengths
pro Easy drag-and-drop interface
pro Limitless customization options
pro Extensive app market
Weaknesses
con Negative customer reviews
con No 24/7 customer support

Wix is our favorite website builder overall, and it happens to have a solid free plan that puts it at the top of our list of free website builders. So why do we love Wix? Well, for starters, this drag-and-drop platform is ridiculously easy to use (it also got our vote for the easiest site builder). Couple that with beautiful design and lots of customizability, and you’ve got yourself a near-perfect website builder for most small businesses. Plus, it just added an SEO integration with Deepcrawl specifically for Wix users.​

Wix plan pricing

Plan
Two-year cost
Annual cost
Month-to-month cost
Learn more
Wix Free

$0.00/mo.

$0.00/mo.

$0.00/mo.

Combo

$10.00/mo.

$11.00/mo.

$16.00/mo.

Unlimited

$7.00/mo.

$9.00/mo.

$22.00/mo.

Pro

N/A

N/A

$27.00/mo.

VIPN/AN/A$45.00/mo.

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

Now, Wix’s free plan does have some limitations when compared to its paid plans: less storage, less bandwidth, no Google Analytics, no custom domain (your site will live at [yourbusiness].wix.com instead of [yourbusiness].com), and Wix ads on all your pages. Also, Wix’s free plan doesn’t let you take online payments, so it won’t work for your replacement china store (but your freelance writing portfolio will do just fine). Still, you do get access to Wix’s great builder and design tools. And if you ever want to upgrade, Wix offers a two-week trial of its premium plans.

Our verdict: Wix’s free plan gives you the tools to create lovely, highly customizable websites, but most business owners will want the perks of its premium plans.

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Squarespace: Best for small-scale ecommerce

Best for small-scale ecommerce
SquareSpace
Squarespace
Starts at
$0.00 for a 2 week trial
  • pro
    Great functionality to support your store
  • pro
    Tons of built-in tools

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

Strengths
pro Easy-to-use platform
pro Beautiful designs for sites
pro Great functionality to support your store and blog
Weaknesses
con Bit of a learning curve
con So-so search engine optimization
con Functionality sometimes hidden by tabs and sidebar menu

Squarespace has beautiful style options and is incredibly simple to use. It doesn’t have a free plan, but it does have a free two-week trial of its premium plans.

So what do those plans get you? Well, gorgeous web design, an easy drag-and-drop platform, and plenty of ecommerce tools that will work perfectly for smaller online stores (perhaps your vintage coat boutique or fountain pen ink store?).

Squarespace plan pricing

Plan
Annual cost
Month-to-month cost
Learn more
Personal

$16.00/mo.

$23.00/mo.

Business

$23.00/mo.

$33.00/mo.

Basic Commerce

$27.00/mo.

$36.00/mo.

Advanced Commerce

$49.00/mo.

$65.00/mo.

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

And just as any free trial should, Squarespace lets you fully experience all that, giving you two weeks to decide whether or not it’s the right platform for you. After that, you can choose to upgrade your website to the paid plan of your choice (we recommend the Basic and Advanced plans thanks to their superior ecommerce features). So go ahead, give Squarespace a go.

Our verdict: Squarespace’s two-week free trial lets you thoroughly test this drag-and-drop builder and its solid ecommerce tools.

Pricetag
Is a free trial really free?
You know how services sometimes give you a free trial but ask for your credit card info in the hopes that you’ll forget to cancel and have to pay up? Yeah, none of the builders on this list do that. These free trials are 100% free, no credit card required.

Wix Ecommerce: Best for ecommerce

Best for ecommerce
Wix Ecommerce
Starts at
$0.00 for a 2 week trial
  • pro
    Online store that allows for multiple storefronts
  • pro
    Works with retail, restaurants, and hotels

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

Strengths
pro Great dashboard and UX
pro Unlimited products and easy processing
pro Great ecommerce tools
Weaknesses
con No barcoding options
con Expensive paid plans

Next up is Wix Ecommerce, which is an offshoot of Wix, our top free website builder. Wix Ecommerce has some unique features—like its own built-in payment processer: Wix Payments. It's not the same heft as a POS integration for your ecommerce site, but it does keep payments and website under the same umbrella.

You can't go wrong with the great dashboard and UX from Wix. But where Wix Ecommerce truly sets itself apart is in its storefront. Wix Ecommerce isn't just built for storefronts wanting to expand online—it's built for everyone. (Maybe you're a hotelier with a side business designing greeting cards. Yep, Wix can do that.)

With Wix Ecommerce you can have multiple storefronts and run retail, restaurants, hotels, and content businesses from one place. 

Wix eCommerce plan pricing

Plan
Two-year cost
Annual cost
Month-to-month cost
Learn more
Business Basic

$19.00/mo.

$21.00/mo.

$27.00/mo.

Business Unlimited

$14.00/mo.

$16.00/mo.

$32.00/mo.

Business VIP

$19.00/mo.

$24.00/mo.

$59.00/mo.

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

But there has to be a downside, right? There is: price. Moving to the ecommerce plans means you're going to be hit with a high cost for doing business with Wix. Right now, the Unlimited and VIP plans are 50% off when you subscribe for a year or more, but if you just want something basic you'll be paying over $220 per year. That could be great for you, but you're also looking at free website builders so maybe not. Good news is, Wix offers a free trial before you commit. 

Our verdict: Wix Ecommerce is a worthy platform and a free starting price only makes it more appealing. Join for Wix, stay for the great payments features.


GoDaddy: Best for fast setup

Best for fast setup
GoDaddy
GoDaddy
Starts at
$0.00 for 30 day trial
  • pro
    Low learning curve
  • pro
    Relevant content suggestions

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

Strengths
pro User-friendly interface
pro Low starting costs
pro Relevant content suggestions
Weaknesses
con Limited customization
con Mediocre SEO capabilities
con Mixed customer reviews

GoDaddy doesn’t have a free plan, but it does have the most generous free trial of any builder we’ve seen: a full 30 days. That should be plenty of time to build and try out your GoDaddy website, especially since GoDaddy was one of the easiest, fastest builders we tested. Sure, that’s largely thanks to its limited customization options, but if you’re making a simple site for your food truck, that’s probably not a bad thing.

GoDaddy plan pricing
Plan
Annual cost
Learn more
Free

$0.00/mo.

Basic

$9.99/mo.

Premium

$14.99/mo.

Commerce

$16.99/mo.

Commerce Plus

$29.99/mo.

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

GoDaddy’s free trial lets you try any of its plans and all the accompanying tools. You get access to all the features, so you can really make sure the platform does what you need it to do (especially since you have a whole month). In other words, if you intend to sell antique furniture, go hog wild and test out that ecommerce plan. And if you do decide to stay with GoDaddy after your trial, rest assured that it has some of the lower plan prices out there, so you’re getting a good deal.

Our verdict: GoDaddy’s generous one-month trial gives you ample time to test this easy-to-use builder’s features.

WordPress.com: Best for complete control

Best for complete control
WordPress
WordPress
Starts at
$0.00/mo.
  • pro
    Great reputation and user reviews
  • pro
    End-to-end control

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

Strengths
pro Near-infinite customizability
pro Thousands of available plugins and themes
pro Great reputation and user reviews
Weaknesses
con Steep learning curve
con Plugins and full SEO tools limited to top-tier plan
con Extensive customization required for best results

WordPress is a platform that can help you customize your site as much as you want—and it’s another builder with a completely free plan that you can use to build a functional website. But you should know beforehand that you’re missing out on all the features that make WordPress.com great. With its free version, you don’t get a domain, customer support, the ability to use plugins, or even CSS (cascading style sheet) customization.

WordPress plan pricing

Plan
Annual cost
Learn more
Free

$0.00/mo.

Personal $4.00/mo.
Premium

$8.00/mo.

Business

$25.00/mo.

eCommerce

$45.00/mo.

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

Those are big losses, especially since plugins and CSS customization are what make WordPress.com a uniquely powerful platform in the first place. Couple that with ads on your website, and you can see why we recommend upgrading. Even so, if you just want to see if you can learn the (somewhat complicated) WordPress platform, the free plan is a great way to try it out. Just know that if you plan on selling anything or customizing your site, you’ll have to upgrade to the Pro plan.

Our verdict: WordPress.com’s free plan is a good solution if you want to try out the platform, but you’ll need to upgrade to get the best tools and features.

Bullhorn
Want to upgrade?
All of our favorite free websites builders let you upgrade your free plan at any time. So if the features in your free version just aren’t cutting it anymore, you can upgrade to a paid plan without losing all your hard work.

Honorable mentions

Business.org's free website builders honorable mentions

Company
Free plan
Free trial (of premium plans)
Learn more
Icon Close  Dark

No

15 days

Icon Close  Dark

No

14 days

Icon Check  Dark

Yes

N/A

Icon Check  Dark

Yes

N/A

Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

Big Commerce
BigCommerce: Best for large-scale ecommerce
If you want to sell a lot of products, then take BigCommerce for a spin. This ecommerce solution offers a free 15-day trial, so you can test out all the tools and apps it has for your ecommerce website. Based on our testing, no one does ecommerce better than BigCommerce, but given its higher price tag, it might be overkill for smaller online stores.
Shopify
Shopify: Best for brand-new ecommerce businesses
Shopify is another sales-specific platform, and it offers a two-week free trial. As with BigCommerce, Shopify costs a pretty penny once that free trial is over. But for newer online stores, it could be worth the cost; Shopify has lots of tools for new businesses, like logo creators, name generators, and stock photos—all of which can help you get your action figure business off the ground in no time.
WordPress
WordPress.org: Best for back-end control
WordPress.org is a truly free site-building platform (the software has been open source since the beginning). Unlike other builders that limit the tools on their free plans, the free version of WordPress.org is the full version. Just keep in mind that you will have to pay for web hosting for your site, so maintaining a site with WordPress.org isn’t 100% free. But if you want to control everything on your site—from link colors to your hosting provider—then WordPress.org is the right free builder for you.
Weebly
Weebly: Best for brick-and-mortar stores
Finally we have Weebly, another platform with a totally free plan—plus lovely templates that are easy to customize. As you’d expect, Weebly’s free plan has some limitations. There’s no ability to sell things in an online store or accept credit card payments, for example (so your stationary business is out, but your burger joint is fine), and a free Weebly website will have both a Weebly subdomain ([yourbusiness].Weebly.com) and Weebly ads on it.
Data as of 6/7/23. Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.
Info
Wait, which WordPress?

WordPress.com is a website builder and hosting service rolled into one. WordPress.org is a free site building platform that you can use with the host of your choice. For a full breakdown, check our guide to WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.

Are free website builders a good value?

As any college student who ever waited 90 minutes in line for a free slice of pizza knows, free is great. Free works with any budget. But just like a slice of pizza might not really be worth 90 minutes in line—even if it’s free—a free website builder might not be all it’s cracked up to be. So as you create your business website, think about whether or not a free website builder is actually a good fit for your small business.

Consider professionalism, for example. If you’re selling handcrafted polyhedral dice for role-playing games, will customers really feel safe giving you their credit card information when you don’t even have your own domain name? And if you’re trying to build your culinary blog empire, will having builder-placed ads on your site distract readers from your actual content?

Bullhorn
Domain names

When you’re ready to get your custom domain, check out our list of the cheapest domain registration sites for some budget-friendly registrars.

Likewise, take a hard look at the limitations of your free website builder. Will you have enough storage for your podcast audio? Enough bandwidth for a mommy blog with large readership? And if you’re creating an online store for your succulent business, does your free plan even let you accept credit card payments?

So while we do like and recommend all the builders on this list, we really think you should use their free plans and free trials as a stepping stone to a premium plan. Test out the builder, make sure you like it—but then, get a premium plan that gives you everything you need for your small-business site.

The takeaway

Creating a do-it-yourself website for your business is a great way to save money—even more so when you find a builder that lets you create a professional website for free.

So go ahead, design your dream site on Wix. Build a beautiful new page with Squarespace. Create that ecommerce store that ties your brand together with Wix Ecommerce. Quickly set up an informational page on GoDaddy. Make that home page that directs people to your brick-and-mortar butcher shop on WordPress.

Because with the website builders on this list, you can afford to make a website that leaves an impact—no matter what your budget is.

Think you need a more specialized builder? Take a look at our rankings of the best ecommerce builders and the best blog hosting sites.

Related content

Free Website Builder FAQs

Yes, there are a number of different website builders that are free and do not require any hidden fees. Both Wix and Wordpress are actual free website builders and they offer excellent tools in building your own site. 

Each website builder requires the user to sign up for the website builder and choose a template. Each builder uses different methods but most use a drag-and-drop editor allowing the user to simply move different components where they would like to make the site their own. 

Methodology

To find the best free website builders for small businesses, we only considered website builders with free trials or free plans. From there, we looked at features, customization, design, and ease of use. We also looked at customer support, website design options, and how it worked when we used the website builder software. We also created our own website with each platform to see how it worked in practice, too.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.

Alex Kerai
Written by
Alex Kerai
Alex reports on emerging consumer trends. Previously he was a staff writer for Business.org, with a focus on inventory management and ecommerce. He also started and wrote the Simple Solutions newsletter that was delivered to Business.org email subscribers each week, featuring news and interviews with business leaders and academics across the world. His writing on consumer trends can also be seen on Reviews.org, WhistleOut.com, SatelliteInternet.com, CableTV.com, and Reviews.com. Utilizing his experience in multimedia content creation for businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions, Alex writes for businesses today.
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