What “Free” Actually Includes on 10 Website Builders

What does a free website builder include? Rarely what the signup page implies. We read the published plan terms of ten builders, and every zero on every pricing page arrived with conditions attached: an advertising banner here, a contact form that stops answering after fifty submissions there, a URL with somebody else's brand in it, and in one case a product with a published shutdown date. This page is our evidence locker — builder by builder, what $0 actually buys, taken from each company's own terms.

If you want conclusions rather than clauses, our ranking of the best free website builders orders all ten by how usable each free tier really is. This page is the supporting evidence, and the builders below appear in that same order — best free tier first.

Google Sites: genuinely free, genuinely plain

Google Sites is the only product here with no paid tier lurking behind the free one — there is nothing to upsell you to, which explains a great deal about how the other nine behave. Any Google account can publish at sites.google.com/view/sitename with no advertising; in our checking, the only marking on a published site appears to be a small footer bar, not a promotional banner. The structural limits are generous to the point of comedy: up to 10,000 pages per site and 15,000 images.

It is also the lone mainstream builder that connects a custom domain for $0 — up to five per site, on personal Gmail accounts (Google documents the setup). The trade: rigid templates, no stores, no custom code, and a distinct intranet-page aesthetic. Our full Google Sites review measures that ceiling properly.

Framer: a real design tool with a thin pipe

Framer's free plan is the most tool for the least money on this list: 30 pages, ten CMS collections holding up to 1,000 items, 500 AI credits, published to sitename.framer.website with a “Made in Framer” badge you cannot remove without paying.

The pipe, not the page count, is the constraint: 1 GB of bandwidth a month, which an image-heavy portfolio can burn through in one good day of traffic. The exit is at least clean — Framer's Basic plan costs $10 a month billed yearly and includes a free custom domain. Note that billing is per site, so a second project is a second $10.

Carrd: three one-pagers, hold the forms

Carrd gives you three free sites, permanently, at sitename.carrd.co with a small branding link in the footer. For a plain one-page bio or a link hub, that is a complete product at $0.

The free tier excludes custom domains, forms, widgets and custom code, so the moment a one-pager needs to do anything, you are shopping. Mind the decoy while you shop: the famous $9-a-year Pro Lite still does not include a custom domain. That requires Pro Standard at $19 a year, billed annually up front — which, to be fair, still undercuts every rival's monthly price.

Webflow: a two-page sandbox

Webflow's free Starter plan hands you the full designer and then a two-page site: 20 CMS collections, 50 CMS items, 1 GB of bandwidth, published to sitename.webflow.io with a fixed badge in the corner.

The clause we keep in a frame: free sites get 50 form submissions in total. Lifetime, not per month. A portfolio's contact form simply stops answering one day, and the remedy on offer is a paid Webflow site plan — Basic runs $15 a month billed yearly since the May 2026 repricing, which bought a custom domain, 300 static pages and 10 GB of bandwidth.

Wix: the free plan as a billboard

Wix gives away more editor than anyone — the complete drag-and-drop builder, 500 MB of storage, no credit card, no expiry. What it does not give away is the page itself: every free site carries Wix advertising and lives at username.wixsite.com/sitename. Your account name, then your site, as a path — the longest free URL of the ten.

Monthly bandwidth sits somewhere around 500 MB to 1 GB at the time of checking — Wix does not publish a clean figure. No custom domain, no selling. The cheapest exit is the Light plan at $17 a month billed annually, about $204 a year. The full accounting, domain-voucher fine print included, is in our Wix free plan review.

Strikingly: unlimited sites, borrowed name

Strikingly is the only builder here offering unlimited free sites — each with up to five pages, 500 MB of storage, a 5 GB monthly bandwidth allowance, and even a simple store with one product per site.

Then it signs your work. Free sites carry the Strikingly logo in the footer, and the site title gets suffixed “on Strikingly” in browser tabs and search results — your name never appears alone in Google. Going ad-free with a domain means the Pro plan at $16 a month billed yearly; the $8 Limited tier connects a domain but keeps the branding, a half-step priced like a whole one.

Jimdo: free forever, five pages

Jimdo's free Play plan is honest and thin: five pages, 500 MB of storage, 2 GB of bandwidth, HTTPS, a sitename.jimdosite.com address, and Jimdo advertising on the page. One small mercy in the terms — legal and system pages do not count toward the page limit.

The clause to read twice sits on the paid side: Jimdo sells no monthly billing at all. Paid plans such as Start at $11 a month run on 12- or 24-month contracts with a 14-day cancellation window after signup. Miss the window and you own the year.

GoDaddy: the publish button on a sales funnel

GoDaddy's free tier does publish — a real page at yourname.godaddysites.com, assembled by its Airo AI, wearing GoDaddy branding. What it will not do: custom sections, custom code, or selling anything.

The fine print starts before the free tier does: signup places you on a 7-day premium trial that downgrades silently when it lapses, features and all — the full sequence is in our GoDaddy free website builder review. If you go in anyway, GoDaddy's paid plans start at $9.99 a month billed annually — renewal higher.

Weebly: free, with a deadline

Weebly's free plan — 500 MB of storage, a username.weebly.com address, a Square ad in the footer, SSL — still accepts signups today. That is the strangest sentence in this report.

Weebly is shutting down in 67 countries: sites go offline September 27, 2026, and accounts with all stored data are permanently deleted December 26, 2026. Everywhere else, the product idles in maintenance mode — no new features in over a year, the mobile app delisted, the community forum closed. Our Weebly free plan review is, in practice, a migration notice.

Squarespace: there is no free plan

Squarespace is on this list to answer a question, and the answer is no: there is no Squarespace free plan. There is a 14-day trial, no card required — and a trial site cannot be shared publicly until you pay, which makes it a build sandbox rather than a website.

After the 14 days, nothing survives for free. Keeping your work costs at least the Basic plan at $19 a month billed annually — roughly $228 a year — before domain and email renewals stack on top. We track every expiry clock in how long you can actually stay on a free plan.

The pattern, once you've read ten of these

Line the terms up and one shape repeats. A free tier's job is to be publishable but not presentable: the ads, badges and borrowed subdomains are calibrated so the site works, and still embarrasses you slightly in front of a client.

The second shape is the domain hook. Wix's voucher demands redemption within two months and a stored card that auto-renews the domain at full price; Squarespace and GoDaddy give the domain away for year one and collect $10–23 a year thereafter; Jimdo's Start plan does the same at $20 a year from year two. First-year generosity, list price forever. We unpack it in our guide to free website builders with a free domain and the broader catalogue of free-plan upgrade traps.

If advertising is your dealbreaker, the honest field narrows fast — see which free website builders have no ads. And when you are ready to pick one, our ranking of truly free website builders resolves this whole ledger into an ordered list.