Why Use a Free Website Generator?

Building a website can feel overwhelming, especially without coding experience. Free website generators have changed that — you can publish a clean, professional site in under an hour, no developer required. The catch is that the options have multiplied. Knowing which one to pick saves you from a week of trial-and-error.

Roughly 60% of small businesses still don't have a website. That's a real gap, and the tools to close it are now free. A no-code builder gets a freelancer, indie founder, or small business online without a contractor. Most platforms now ship with SEO features, mobile-responsive templates, and industry-specific layouts, so you can start with something that already looks intentional rather than a blank page.

What to Look for When Choosing a Builder

The features that actually matter when comparing platforms:

A clean editor. The best builders have an intuitive drag-and-drop interface so you spend time on content, not learning the tool.
Template variety. A wide selection lets you find a starting point that fits your industry and aesthetic.
Customisation depth. Look for tools that let you tweak colours, fonts, spacing, and layouts — not just swap out text.
Built-in SEO. Meta tags, sitemap generation, and structured-data support shouldn't be premium-only features.
Documentation and support. Tutorials, knowledge bases, and a responsive help team matter most when you hit a wall.

Also check whether the platform scales with you. If you might add an online store, blog, or membership area later, pick something that supports those without a migration. Reading user reviews on Capterra or G2 surfaces the rough edges that marketing pages don't mention.

Five Free Builders Worth Knowing

Five tools that consistently come up when indie founders compare options:

1. Strikingly

Strikingly's strength is simplicity. The free tier gives you an unlimited single-page site, which is exactly what most freelancers and personal portfolios need. Templates are modern, mobile-responsive, and editable without touching a stylesheet.

For a freelance photographer, Strikingly works well as a portfolio with a hero image, a project grid, and a contact form. Built-in analytics show how many visitors came through and which sections held them longest — useful when deciding what to feature next.

2. Wix

Wix is the heavyweight option. Drag-and-drop editing, an enormous template library, and an AI-driven setup tool (Wix ADI) that asks a few questions and produces a working site in minutes. The free tier carries Wix branding and a wix.com subdomain, but it's enough to validate an idea before committing.

A small business — say, a local florist — can lean on Wix's e-commerce add-ons to take orders, integrate with Google Maps, and connect a Mailchimp list. Wix's app marketplace adds bookings, live chat, and review widgets without any code.

Where Wix shines is flexibility. The cost is page weight: sites built on Wix can be slow if you don't curate the apps. Run any build through a free website grader before launch.

3. Webnode

Webnode's standout feature is multilingual sites — useful for any business serving customers in more than one language. The free tier handles up to 100 MB and a Webnode subdomain, with template options that scale from personal blogs to small business pages.

A travel agency targeting French and German tourists alongside English-speaking customers can build one site with three language variants and let Webnode handle the URL routing. The translation work is still yours, but the infrastructure is solved.

SEO controls (meta titles, descriptions, alt text) are exposed by default rather than hidden behind a paid tier — important if organic traffic matters to your business model.

4. SITE123

SITE123 takes the opposite approach to Wix: instead of giving you every option, it walks you through a guided setup. Answer a handful of questions about your business and the tool drafts a starting layout. For someone who wants to be live in 30 minutes, that's the right trade.

A working musician building a quick presence — bio, tour dates, music links, merch — can finish on SITE123 in an evening. The included email tools let you collect addresses and send updates without a separate platform.

5. Carrd

Carrd is the indie favourite for single-page sites. Beautifully designed, mobile-first, and dead simple. The free tier covers most use cases — link-in-bio pages, product launches, personal landing pages, "coming soon" pages.

A startup pre-launching a product can use Carrd to build an email-capture page in 20 minutes, then plug it into Mailchimp or ConvertKit. The Pro tier (about $19/year) unlocks custom domains and form integrations, but most people don't need it on day one.

Limitations of the Free Tiers

Every free plan has trade-offs. The common ones to know about:

Subdomain branding (your-name.wix.com instead of your-name.com)
Storage and bandwidth caps that bite when traffic grows
Mandatory ads or platform branding on the page
Limited or no e-commerce features
Restricted SEO controls on cheaper tiers

Most indie founders start free, validate the idea works, and upgrade when traffic or revenue justifies the spend. That's a fine pattern. Be aware of which limitations would actually block you and which are cosmetic — the platforms are good at making cosmetic limits feel urgent so you upgrade early.

For an honest comparison of pricing tiers across these platforms, sites like TechCrunch and indie review hubs publish updated round-ups every few months.