Review- Best Free Website Builders for Beginners

Table of Contents

by Lesley Haught

original post: 5.20.2020
revised: 4:20.2021

Thinking about monetizing your passion for making jewelry? Wondering if your handicraft skills will fetch you money? Or, looking for ways to offer tuition online? A simple website could connect you with hundreds or even thousands of potential customers.

Every new business deserves a website.

The website design should represent the business, enable promotion and serve as a platform for sales when necessary. New entrepreneurs hardly have the budget to hire pro designers and web developers. They need an easy-to-use and free builder that they can use on their own.

“How do I create a free website?” – is a question we often hear budding entrepreneurs asking. If you are among one of them, you should check out these five website builders if they want to create a functional and navigation-friendly website similar to most businesses in their sector.

You too can build a website that is elegant and functional, but doesn’t cost alot. The five website builders summarized below are free or have free versions for beginner-level users.

WordPress.org

There is not one website owner or admin who has not heard or used WordPress. It is the most popular website builder for more than one reason.

It is user-friendly and you don’t need to code to customize the template design and layouts. Apart from that, here are some other features that make WordPress.org much better than WordPress.com.

What advantages do WordPress.org free features bring to the user?

Beginners can always utilize WordPress website page builders along with their choice of free themes from WordPress.org to build their from the ground up.
Page builders accommodate different basic template files. You can choose one section of the website to display one template or change the template using the visual composers in your page builder.
Troubleshooting while working with WordPress.org is quite easy since you can have access to round-the-clock support, apart from dedicated forums of the open source website builder developers.
Plug-ins and tools can extend the functionality of your site. You can check out PayPal Plus and PayPal Express Checkout Payment Gateway for updating your site functionalities.
MonsterInsights, Yoast SEO, OptinMonster, and Auto-Install Free SSL by WordPress.com are ideal if you want to check the status of your SEO, and update the SSL certificate.

WordPress.org makes website building not only free but also enjoyable, easy and rewarding for first-time website designers.

Wix

Wix is a great choice for beginners like it is for pros and celebs (even Heidi Klum and Gal Gadot use Wix!). You should definitely check out this site builder if you are looking to build a clean and small website.

What advantages do Wix free features bring to the user?

The excellent and intuitive drag-and-drop website builder allows all users to build their site without using a tinge of code.
You can choose from hundreds of free complete templates now available for all sites.
The Wix Apps are superbly easy to add irrespective of the type of site you are creating.
Wix comes with web hosting and domains for your business. You can choose to customize your domain name by opting for the paid version.
You can add photo galleries, payment gateways, one-click “add-to-cart” and analytics plugins from the app market
Wix comes with a preview option for both desktop and mobile. You can build a mobile-friendly website with Wix easily.

Wix is the easy solution if you are searching for a pre-built fundamental structure of a site that you can build on.

Weebly

Weebly is another popular name among the easy-to-use website builders. It is perfect for beginners, who want to set up a small website for their small business. However, it has limited drag-and-drop functionality, and Weebly is more rewarding for those comfortable with a bit of coding.

What advantages do Weebly’s free features bring to the user?

Weebly comes with a new collection of brilliantly designed responsive templates with complete customizability.
Weebly customer support center has several helpful SEO guidelines for all sorts of websites.
Your site can be automatically mobile-friendly and you can preview it before launching your site.
The Weebly App Center has a collection of the latest one-click installation tools for SEO, sales, social media marketing, and analytics, like Facebook Like, Simple Table, Text Animation, and FAQ.
The site builder allows you to adjust and edit on-page and off-page features that contribute to site SEO like meta descriptions, meta titles, alt text to images and canonical URLs.
The free plan supports hosting and other technical needs.

You can delve deeper into your site code by using an HTML/CSS editor to modify your site design, but that’s a feature most beginners refrain from using.

SITE123

SITE123 is a site builder that comes with a free plan. You can easily build small portfolios, simple corporate sites and light business websites using SITE123.

What advantages do the SITE123 free features bring to the user?

SITE123 comes with a live chat feature that offers complete support for the beginner-level website builders.
The builder categorizes its templates into business, portfolio, and online store, before going into further in-depth categorization.
All new-generation SITE123 templates are completely responsive.
It offers free domain name registration for all brands.
Although SITE123 has options for upgradation, you can try their free features, and tools for as long as you want.

According to users, creating a website with SITE123 is as easy as filling out a pre-laid-out form. Whatever form of content you include, SITE123 will display it correctly.

Google Sites

Looking to build a basic working website? Then Google Sites is a good choice. It’s comparatively straightforward and easy-to-use even for beginners.

What advantages do the Google Site free features bring to the user?

Google Sites uses a drag-and-drop editor that is superbly visual and intuitive. You can click to add images or edit text.
The new Google Sites version offers 30+ templates for various site types. However, these templates are not 100%responsive.
You can choose from the 50+ themes on Google Sites and customizing them is superbly easy for even the first-time user.
“Gadgets” are the Google Sites equivalent of plug-ins or apps. You can add PayPal buttons to your site using the “embed code” option.
Google Sites also offers 6 different layout options for your site. You can choose multiple layout sections for one webpage.

You need to use the classic version if you want pre-designed templates since the new Google Sites does not offer templates anymore.

At the same time, Google Sites lacks a live customer support team that can help you troubleshoot in case you run into trouble building your website. However, you can check the exhaustive collection of support articles that contain all the information you may need to resolve any issues.

Let us know which platform you try and how it worked for you!

About the Author

Lesley Haught is a professional writer, web developer and CEO of WebBuildersGuide.com. When he’s not building websites or writing, he enjoys marketing and photography. All opinions in this non-sponsored post are his own.