The 5 best free website builders in 2025

Creating a web presence can feel out of reach if you have a smaller budget or if you're looking to test out an idea before you invest heavily in it. But some of the best website builders out there have free versions that can help you get where you want to go without the price tag.

I spent a few weeks testing all the free website builders I could find, and these are the five best.

The best free website builders

• Square Online for eCommerce

• HubSpot CMS for growing businesses

• Canva for beautifully designed static websites

• Wix for robust features

• Webflow for advanced designers

What makes the best free website builder?

I've been building websites for nearly 15 years, and I'm serially in search of "the next best thing" when it comes to tech tools. While I have a couple of personal favorites, I took the time to really deep dive into each of the top free website builders, setting up multi-page websites, tweaking copy and designs, optimizing for SEO, and testing out as many features as I possibly could. 

Throughout this testing phase, I focused on a short list of non-negotiable criteria:

• Ease of use. Is the website builder easy to use, or do you need to have some knowledge of code to use it effectively? All the site builders on this list will be relatively easy for most users. I've mentioned which ones are newbie-friendly and which are better for those with more design experience. None require coding knowledge, but some do let you access the code. 

• Customization options. I assessed how easy each builder is to customize, if they offer drag-and-drop features, whether you can adjust styles, colors, and elements, and if they provide pre-designed templates. If there's a trade-off between ease of use and customization, I've tried to make that clear.

• SEO tools. Building a site is just half the battle—you also need people to find your website. I looked at the SEO tools each website builder offers, such as the ability to adjust page titles and meta descriptions, add alt tags, add schema, and upload a sitemap. If you don't need any of that, an app like Google Sites will get the job done, but all the picks on this list offer more.

• Value of free plans. Is the free plan really free, or does the builder ask you to upgrade every time you make a change? I was careful to only include solutions that delivered a truly free experience that allows you to fully launch a website. (Keep in mind that "free" always comes at a price, so be aware of the limitations of each website builder and how that affects your business, whether that's traffic numbers, number of website pages, or something else.)

A quick note on domains: Most free website builders come with a generic subdomain—ending with something like husbpot.com or canva.com—but allow you to add a custom domain with an upgraded (read: paid) plan. Keep this in mind as a possible expense (and an oft-leveraged upsell strategy) as you move forward with your website project.

The best free website builders at a glance

Best free eCommerce website builder

Square Online (Web)

Square Online pros:

• Easy website builder

• Extensive eCommerce features for online and physical sales

• Integrations for sales tax, shipping, and more

Square Online cons:

• Builder might feel overly simple

• Can be laggy at times

• Doesn't work with a VPN

The majority of free website builders included in this list are designed for businesses or individuals that want a quick and easy way to build a good-looking site. Selling an actual product often feels like a secondary focus.

Square Online, however, remains focused on the actual selling side of businesses, which is apparent when you first create your account. Instead of a "create your first website" onboarding sequence, you'll find yourself immediately immersed in a dashboard that lists out the various elements you need to get your online products up and ready to sell.

You can opt to set up your product inventory and sales tools first, or head straight to the Online menu on the left sidebar to start setting up your website (one benefit of setting up products first is that you'll be able to visualize how they look as you build your website).

Compared to others on the list, the Square Online website builder is the only one that's designed to put your products front and center. To add or edit content, you'll click on the Add Section option in the sidebar when in site edit mode, and then select the module that you want to add. Most modules include multiple layout options that help you get an aesthetic, user-friendly website without having to worry about custom coding. 

One of the great things about Square Online is that it's an easy tool to switch to if you've been selling physical or digital products through an online platform like Etsy, for example, but are wanting to own your own sales platform to have more control over traffic and sales. (In fact, Square offers an integration with Etsy, which will allow you to sync inventory between Etsy and your Square Online shop, which is invaluable to avoid having to manually update listings across channels the moment you make a sale.)

Of course, Square Online isn't just for businesses that sell online. It also offers a suite of features for brick-and-mortar stores—like employee logins, tipping options, and POS integrations.

It's really a great tool for anyone to start with a limited budget (with plenty of growth potential as you scale). And it can be extended further with its Zapier's integrations, connecting Square to thousands of other apps, so you can automatically track customers and transactions and get all your eCommerce data where you need it, building fully automated systems for your store. Learn more about how to automate Square.

Square Online pricing: Free for the website builder with SEO tools and sync with Square POS with 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Paid plans start with the Plus plan at $29/month (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction) with additional access to website themes, advanced item settings, website themes, subscriptions, and more.

Best free website builder for integrated business management

HubSpot CMS (Web)

HubSpot pros:

• Quick, easy-to-use AI builder

• Full integration with the HubSpot ecosystem for leads, sales, and more

• Community plugins to extend functionality

HubSpot cons:

• The free subdomain is relatively unusable

• Interface can be confusing to navigate and utilize

• Must pay to access some of the winning features

HubSpot is a popular marketing and sales automation platform for businesses of all sizes. It's earned a reputation throughout the years as a high-quality, flexible tool, and that definitely holds true when you take a look at the CMS product (its website builder).

The free tier gives you access to an AI builder that can give you a website layout with pre-written text and images, based on your responses to the AI prompts that walk you through your company description and choice of design. Or you can opt to select a theme and pre-designed page layout templates.

Next, customize your theme's settings (colors, fonts, and layouts) to fit your brand. For example, you can modify an existing color scheme or create your own. Then start building your site by setting up the popular pages—home, about, contact, and so on—and choosing a standard header and footer layout. HubSpot even provides a full tutorial on using the drag-and-drop editor. You can choose from a variety of modules (elements), including header, text, image, accordion, and CTA.

A suite of SEO tools ensures your website gets the visibility it needs to attract new customers or clients. There's a dedicated setup step to create your blog title, URL, and description, so it looks right in the search engines before you even publish individual posts. Then there's a whole raft of general on-page SEO settings to enter, including title, description, URL (and canonical URL), language, featured image, and additional header and footer code snippets. HubSpot also provides SEO recommendations as you add content to your page and highlights what you need to address.

The big note here is that HubSpot is meant for way more than website building. Its suite of marketing, sales, and customer support tools means you can practically run your entire business from one tool. And if you use HubSpot for more than just website-building, you can connect HubSpot with Zapier to orchestrate all of your workflows and put more resources back into your business. For example, when someone submits a form, AI can summarize their message, route it to the right team, and generate a follow-up task in your project management app so nothing gets lost between systems. Learn more about how to automate HubSpot.

HubSpot CMS pricing: Free for up to 30 website pages and 1 email automation. Paid plans start at $9/month to remove HubSpot branding and add a custom domain name.

Best free website builder for beautifully designed static websites

Canva (Web, macOS, iOS, Windows, Android)

Canva pros:

• Easy, drag-and-drop design options

• No code experience needed

• Surprisingly flexible, with just a few tricks

Canva cons:

• Website lacks functionality

• SEO is sub-par

• Value limited to websites with just a few pages

Canva has established an identity as a high-quality design tool for designers and non-designers alike. (It was recently valued at $65 billion.) While you might think of it as a solution for making fancy social graphics and presentation slides, it also offers a surprisingly impressive website builder.

Once you've created your Canva account, you'll want to select the Website option when creating a new design. This will bring you to the design interface, where you can start creating your website. Each page is built with pre-sized sections that you can add or remove as needed to get the look you need. Simpler websites (like link in bios) might only use one section, while others might use multiple sections to get enough content on the page. Keep in mind that elements can't "bleed" over from one section to the next, so if you want to do overlapping imagery or text that spans more than one section, you might need to get a little creative about how you add them to the page. (Always be sure to check the mobile preview, as well, since some elements may shift to be compatible with mobile devices). 

When you add new pages to your website, name the page the way you want it to appear in the header menu. Canva takes care of adding each page to the header menu, so no extra setup is needed there. To opt out of this, uncheck the Include navigation menu box when you publish your website. You can also opt to hide pages individually from the menu by clicking the Hide page option in the three dots menu for that page. 

Keep in mind that Canva offers both free and paid design elements. The freemium version is set up so that you can access an entire free library of assets, only paying for premium elements if you want to download your designs without a watermark. (Premium elements cost $1 per use, which is fairly affordable if you don't use a lot of them. But since the Pro plan only costs $12/month paid annually, if you're using premium elements, you might find that a Pro subscription is worthwhile.) For your website to be truly free, you'll need to stick with the more limited collection.

A Canva website won't give you the same functionality as something built on a site like Webflow or Square Online, for example, but you can get a really nice, simpler site created quickly, without ever having to worry about code. (You can do some code-based tasks, like embedding an email lead form, for example, using the Embed app in Canva's app directory.)

You can also use Canva's Zapier integration to further automate your workflows. It connects Canva to thousands of other apps, so you can automatically create new designs, upload assets, and manage projects, building fully automated, AI-powered systems for your work. Learn more about how to automate Canva.

Canva pricing: Free for accounts with one user and access to a free library of elements. You can buy paid elements individually, otherwise paid subscription plans start at $12/month for access to pro elements, the ability to add a custom domain name to your website, and more.

Best free website builder with robust features

Wix (Web, macOS, iOS, Windows, Android, Linux)

Wix pros:

• Modular, block-based page design

• Extended features available for eCommerce, mobile apps, marketing, and more

• Guided setup for SEO, website, and marketing tools

Wix cons:

• Slow at times

• Can't choose a subdomain name for free version

Wix remains one of the most popular options for businesses and individuals who are looking for a quick, pain-free way to set up a professional-looking website (using AI or building from scratch).

When you create your account, the chat prompt will ask a few key questions that it uses to set up your dashboard—as well as guiding you to choose a template (from over 900 designs!). Each looks professional and can be easily adjusted to fit your needs with one important caveat: you can't just switch templates later on. If you choose to change templates, you'll have to create a new website and rebuild from scratch.

With your template selected, you can then change fonts, add headings, include lists, and even drag and drop sections, no code needed. If you're looking for a shortcut, you can use Wix's AI chat tool to answer questions about yourself and get personalized tools, images, and text for your site. It's a somewhat slow process, but it can be helpful if you need new ideas and inspiration.

Aside from the website builder itself, Wix also offers a suite of integrations (like email marketing, for example), so you can easily use your Wix dashboard to manage processes that you would otherwise rely on multiple tools and logins for. 

Granted, the limitations of Wix's free version can hit pretty hard. The worst is that there's no way to specify your own subdomain name, for example, so you're left with something like divinely404.wixsite.com/lollipeppa, for example, which makes little sense and looks unprofessional at best. But the rest of the features may make up for it, especially if you're utilizing the SEO tools, which allow you to review things like site speed and sitemaps, as well as the ability to manage ads from inside your Wix dashboard.

As an added bonus, Wix integrates with Zapier, which means you can tie your website activity into AI-orchestrated workflows across your organization. For example, when someone fills out a form, AI can qualify the lead, add it to your CRM, and generate a personalized follow-up email. This way, every interaction on your site moves seamlessly into the right systems. Learn more about how to automate Wix.

Wix Pricing: Free for hosted website with Wix-branded ads. Paid plans start at $17/month for 2 GB of website storage and a free domain name for one year.

Best free website builder for advanced design

Webflow

Webflow pros:

• Tons of customization options

• Extended functionality with integrations and widgets

Webflow cons: 

• No AI builder

• Only 2 pages allowed on the free plan

• High learning curve for builders

Most of the free website builders on this list are designed for those with minimal to moderate design experience. They utilize drag-and-drop editors with tons of pre-designed templates to help all users achieve an aesthetically pleasing website. Webflow, on the other hand, is intended for folks with design and coding experience.

When you first create your account, Webflow emphasizes this focus by immediately asking if you have experience with CSS/HTML. While this doesn't alter your onboarding experience, it does give them the data they need to monitor customer churn, and perhaps identify whether their target clientele are the ones who are actually signing up for the app.

Once your account and test site are set up, you can get to work designing. If you have a design already, you might want to start from scratch. Otherwise, there are a few free templates—and paid ones available to purchase—if you want to reduce the time spent on building the basics.

If you're familiar with interface design, the design interface might be extremely refreshing, since each customization option is rooted in code and can be quickly edited to give you the exact look, feel, and spacing that you need. (Think containers, flex boxes, alignment, margins, padding, etc.)

Of course, a website design is only part of the equation. With Webflow, you also get built-in functionality for things like webforms and eCommerce—and can also take advantage of expanded site functionality with integrations and widgets for targeting, limiting spam, engaging customers, managing your CRM, and more.

Most free website builder plans are limited, but Webflow's seems even more intent on emphasizing that it's meant as a test feature only, as it prohibits you from creating more than 2 pages for your site. Still, it might be a good option for designers creating a portfolio website, or businesses that don't have an extensive list of pages (or a robust SEO/content strategy), and simply want something that can give them ultimate customization in terms of design. 

Plus, with Zapier, you can connect your Webflow site to orchestrated workflows that tie directly into your broader operations. For example, when someone submits a form, AI can classify the request, generate a personalized response, and update records in your CRM. Learn more about how to automate Webflow.

Webflow pricing: Free for 2 website pages, 50 form submissions (lifetime), and a Webflow.io domain. Paid plans start at $14/month (billed annually) for up to 150 pages, unlimited form fills, and more.

Should you use a free website builder?

In all cases, a free website builder will be limited in some way. In most cases, this limitation will take the form of restricting the use of a custom domain, but other limitations to watch for include number of site visitors each month, number of pages on a website, and price per transaction (for eCommerce sites).

Most businesses will opt to upgrade to a paid plan, so as you're reviewing your options, make sure to also consider what features are available at various price points, to avoid the hassle of having to switch platforms once you're able or decide to budget more financial resources toward a website.

A lot of these options also made Zapier's list of the best website builders for small business, so they can grow with you even after you've outgrown the free tier.

Related reading:

• The best landing page builders

• The best eCommerce website builders

• The best blog sites

• The best AI app builders

• The best creator platforms

This article was originally published in August 2018 by Jeff Smith and has also had contributions from Danielle Antosz and David Hartshorne. The most recent update was in September 2025.