Best Free Website Builder for Small Business

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.

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.​

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.

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?).

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.

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. 

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 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’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 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.