Best Places To Build A Free Website (Tried & Tested)

Want a website but don’t want to hand over a credit card before you’ve even started? Good news — you don’t have to. We’ve spent years watching readers ask the same question: what is the best place to build a free website? So the team sat down, signed up for the major free plans ourselves, built test sites on each, and worked out which ones are genuinely worth your time and which ones are really just a free trial in disguise.

This guide walks through the best free website builders available right now, who each one suits, and the catches to watch for before you commit.

First, what “free” actually means

Almost every free website builder makes money somewhere. Before you pick one, it helps to know the three common trade-offs:

• A branded address. Free plans usually give you a subdomain like yoursite.platform.com rather than yoursite.com. You can upgrade to a custom domain later.
• Ads you don’t control. Some platforms display their own advertising on your free site.
• Limited storage, features or e-commerce. Free tiers cap bandwidth, plugins, or the ability to sell products.

None of these are dealbreakers — they’re just the price of free. The trick is choosing a platform whose trade-offs you can live with, and ideally one you can grow into rather than out of.

The best free website builders

1. WordPress.com — best for blogs and long-term growth

WordPress powers a huge slice of the internet, and the hosted version at WordPress.com lets you start for nothing. The free plan gives you a real, capable site with a subdomain, a solid set of themes, and the most respected publishing engine going around. If you think your project might get serious — a blog that grows an audience, a portfolio you keep adding to — this is the platform with the most room to move. The official WordPress.com support documentation is genuinely good if you get stuck.

Best for: bloggers, writers and anyone who wants a future-proof platform.
Watch for: the free plan shows WordPress.com ads and limits plugins — serious customisation needs a paid plan or a self-hosted install.

2. Wix — best for design freedom without code

Wix is the platform people reach for when they want a polished site and have never touched a line of code. Its drag-and-drop editor lets you place anything anywhere, and the template library is enormous. The free plan is fully functional for a simple site — a small business landing page, an event, a CV.

Best for: visual people who want full layout control.
Watch for: Wix branding and ads on free sites, and the fact that you can’t switch templates later without rebuilding.

3. Google Sites — best for the fastest possible build

If you just need a page up today — a club, a school project, an internal team hub — Google Sites is hard to beat. It’s completely free, has no ads, and ties straight into Google Drive, Docs and Calendar. It won’t win design awards, but it’s reliable and genuinely effortless.

Best for: simple informational sites built in under an hour.
Watch for: very limited design control and no real e-commerce or blogging features.

4. Carrd — best for a one-page site

Sometimes you don’t need a whole website — you need one good page. Carrd builds beautiful single-page sites: a personal profile, a link hub, a product launch, a simple portfolio. The free plan covers up to three sites and looks far more expensive than it is.

Best for: personal landing pages and link-in-bio style sites.
Watch for: it’s deliberately single-page — if you need multiple sections and a blog, look elsewhere.

5. GitHub Pages — best for developers

If you’re comfortable with a bit of code, GitHub Pages hosts static websites straight from a code repository, free, with no ads and surprisingly generous limits. It’s the quiet favourite among developers for portfolios and documentation. The official GitHub Pages documentation walks you through it.

Best for: developers, technical portfolios and project documentation.
Watch for: it’s static-only — no built-in database or server-side features.

How to choose the right one for you

Strip away the marketing and the decision is pretty simple:

• Planning to blog or grow an audience? Start with WordPress.com.
• Want a great-looking site and don’t code? Wix.
• Need something live in an hour? Google Sites.
• Just need one strong page? Carrd.
• Comfortable with code? GitHub Pages.

Our honest advice: pick based on where you want to be in a year, not just today. Migrating a site between platforms is tedious, so it pays to start somewhere you can grow.

Don’t forget security — even on a free site

A free website is still a real website, and that means it can still be targeted. Make sure whichever platform you choose serves your site over HTTPS (all the ones above do), use a strong, unique password, and turn on two-factor authentication. If your project ever grows into something that collects visitor information, it’s worth reading our guide on how to protect your website from data breaches before you go further.

It’s also worth knowing the warning signs of dodgy “web services” — we’ve covered scam websites that charge you for verification you should never have to pay for.

Ready to go a step further?

Once your free site is live, the natural next questions are about doing it well — writing content people actually read, and understanding the unwritten rules of publishing online. Our piece on the blogger’s code is a good place to start, and if you’re using your new site to learn, these tech education opportunities you can learn at home pair nicely with a portfolio site to show off what you’ve built.

Free website builders compared at a glance

When is it worth upgrading to a paid plan?

A free plan is the right call while you’re testing an idea, learning, or running something small and personal. It becomes worth paying for when one of these is true: you want your own domain name for credibility, you need to remove the platform’s ads, you’re selling products and need proper e-commerce, or your traffic is bumping against the free bandwidth cap. The good news is that every platform on this list lets you upgrade in place — you won’t have to rebuild from scratch. Start free, prove the concept, and pay only once the site is earning its keep.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use my own domain name on a free plan? With Google Sites and GitHub Pages you can connect a domain you already own at no extra cost. WordPress.com, Wix and Carrd include a branded subdomain on the free tier and charge to connect a custom domain.

Will a free website hurt my search rankings? No — search engines rank pages on content and quality, not on whether you paid. A branded subdomain looks slightly less professional, but it won’t stop you ranking.

Can I move my site to another platform later? Yes, though it takes effort. WordPress.com makes exporting easiest. This is exactly why we suggest choosing based on where you’re heading, not just where you are today.

Is a free website safe? The platforms here all serve sites over HTTPS and handle security updates for you, which makes them safer than a poorly maintained self-hosted site. Your job is a strong password and two-factor authentication.

The bottom line

There has never been a better time to put yourself online for free. WordPress.com is our overall pick for anyone serious about growing a site, Wix wins on design, Google Sites is unbeatable for speed, Carrd nails the single page, and GitHub Pages is the developer’s choice. Every option here can take you from nothing to a live website in an afternoon — the only thing left to do is start.