5 Best Free Website Builders for Small Businesses in 2022

Free website builders allow small businesses, startups, and solopreneurs to establish a credible online presence quickly, easily, and at no cost. After comparing several contenders, we identified the five best free website builders for small businesses. They offer beginner-friendly interfaces and built-in tools for marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and ecommerce, as well as modern, ready-made templates and versatile design tools.

• Wix: Overall best free website builder for small businesses, and best built-in marketing and SEO tools
• GoDaddy: Top free website builder with 24/7 engagement and conversion tools
• Weebly: Best choice for a free, ecommerce-ready website builder
• Webnode: Great templates for fast, free small business website creation
• Mozello: The free website builder with the most intuitive interface

Best Free Website Builders for Small Business at a Glance

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*Based on a 12 month contract

Wix: Overall Best Free Website Builder for Small Businesses

Wix wins out as the best free website builder for small businesses for several reasons. First, its drag-and-drop editor offers you the most control over your website’s design. While your site will have Wix branding, this is the best option if you want a website that looks custom-designed to stand out and establish credibility for your brand online. Start with one of the hundreds of premade templates or even a blank template.

We found that Wix has built several essential search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing tools that are accessible in the absolutely free-forever version. For example, you can set up Facebook and Instagram advertising and Wix’ artificial intelligence (AI) will manage and test your ads and optimize your budget. Create coupons, sell gift cards, and set up a loyalty program to incentivize repeat customers.

Don’t have a logo yet? Wix has you covered there too with a built-in logo maker (although you will have to pay from $49 to $99 to download the files). Still, compared to the cost of hiring a professional graphic designer, this is very reasonable—and fast. You can also create and purchase business cards right from the dashboard.

The SEO tools available to you in Wix’ free website builder are also notable. Add your Google Analytics ID to access all your site’s data and access your website’s site map in order to add it to Google Search Console. Set page-level title and meta descriptions. Answer a few questions and Wix will provide you with a checklist of ways to better optimize your site.

Wix Pricing & Features

*Based on 12-month prepayment. Save more with two- or three-year commitments or pay monthly at a higher rate.

Is the Wix Site Builder Easy to Use?

We found the Wix website builder very easy to use, with the caveat that there are so many ways to change the look of your site it could be more design flexibility than is needed for some small businesses. Take a look at the step-by-step instructions to get a better idea of what it takes to build a Wix website.

Webnode is a better option for those who want to get a site up as quickly as possible as its templates are well-developed. Likewise, Mozello’s intuitive interface makes it a good choice for those wanting to build and publish a website easily and in a short amount of time.

Wix is well-known for the design freedom you get in its true drag-and-drop site editor. In other words, you can literally drag elements around on the live editor, so you’re not limited to the preset content blocks. To edit any area on a page is as easy as selecting it. However, you can’t change templates without starting over, so be sure to spend time before selecting from the fast template library.

One downside of Wix’ free website builder is that small businesses and startups can’t sell online without upgrading to the first ecommerce plan at $27 per month. However, with paid plans starting at just $16, you may be able to gain some ecommerce functionality through apps in the marketplace. Alternatively, the best free website builder for ecommerce is Weebly’s Square-powered site builder.

Our Expert Opinion

Wix is the best free website builder for small businesses wanting maximum design freedom and solid SEO and marketing tools needed to grow. While upgrading to paid plans is more expensive than some other site builders, being able to extend your site’s functionality through apps and integrations could be more than worth the cost.

Try Wix

GoDaddy: Free Website Website Builder With the Best 24/7 Engagement & Conversion Tools

GoDaddy’s site editor is the best free website builder for small businesses wanting 24/7 site visitor engagement and conversion tools to grow their business. Service-based businesses can use the native appointment booking feature to allow customers to set appointments for services, and sales-oriented businesses can use it to get prospects to set up appointments for sales presentations or demos.

All GoDaddy plans, including the free version, include chatbots that can engage with your site visitors 24/7. A “Hello” chatbot will prompt site visitors to indicate what they want to talk to you about, while the “Order” chatbot detects order-related inquiries. The chatbots then send the intelligence gathered to your inbox so you can help prospects and customers find what they need more efficiently.

GoDaddy’s paid plans enhance your ability to grow with new features added at each tier. However, you will need a pricier upper-tier plan to accept payments with appointment bookings, set up events or classes, or have an online store. At $24.99 per month, for example, the regular cost of GoDaddy’s ecommerce plan price is less expensive than Wix’ ecommerce plans, which start at $27.

The free plan includes access to the GoDaddy Studio, where you can create branded content such as a logo for your website and images for ads and social media posts. However, some templates are limited to paid users. Even so, for a startup or solopreneur in need of a logo and graphics, the GoDaddy Studio represents added value.

Connect your company’s social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) and business listing accounts (Google Business Profile and Yelp) to create and post content from the GoDaddy site builder. Use the Marketing Planner to be ready with content for upcoming holidays, observances, and other seasonal events. You can even monetize your site by adding Google AdSense to your site.

GoDaddy Site Builder Pricing & Features

*With 12-month prepayment

Is the GoDaddy Site Builder Easy to Use?

The GoDaddy site creation and editing interface is easy to navigate and use. However, keep in mind that it’s not a true drag-and-drop editor, nor does it come with the extensive customizations and templates offered via Wix. To get started, read our article detailing how to build a website with GoDaddy.

Like Wix, which also tops our list of the best drag-and-drop website builders, there are settings for page-level SEO. However, to access GoDaddy’s “get found on Google” tools requires you to upgrade to a paid plan. GoDaddy’s free and lower-tier plans don’t include online store ecommerce functionality, so if you want to sell online from day one, choose Weebly.

Our Expert Opinion

If your operation is service-based or sales-oriented, GoDaddy is the best free website builder for your small business. Clients can book appointments or set up sales demos and chatbots interact with site visitors 24 hours a day to increase engagement and conversions.

Try GoDaddy

Weebly: Best Ecommerce-ready Free Website Builder

Weebly, which is owned by Square, is hands-down the best free website builder for ecommerce. Most free site builders don’t include ecommerce capabilities until the highest-tier plans, but with Weebly, you can host an online store for free with unlimited products and multiple payment transaction options.

Weebly actually has two different site editors for building small business websites. However, as the Weebly editor is only available to non-commerce sites, we reviewed the Square editor for the purposes of this list.

Like Wix, there are numerous apps you can add to spike sales, boost traffic, engage via social channels, and more, but app access requires a paid plan. However, you do have the ability to add SEO details for your website and its pages, and you can even embed code into headers and footers, such as Google Analytics and Search Console tracking code.

With Weebly, you can also add users and set permissions. Admins have access to everything, whereas authors can view and edit select pages and settings, and users with dashboard permissions can only view and manage stats, forms, and comments.

Weebly Pricing & Features

*With 12-month prepayment, or pay monthly at a higher rate

Is the Weebly Site Builder Easy to Use?

Like GoDaddy, Weebly’s site editor is section-based with limited customization. Unlike most of the other free website builders on this list, you can’t just add a section by hovering over the site builder. Instead, you have to drag sections from the left-hand menu and then add content into them. To learn more, check out our step-by-step instructions on how to build a Weebly website.

One big plus with Weebly is that you can swap out your theme any time without losing all of your previous work, unlike most other site builders. It doesn’t offer as much design freedom as Wix, but for those who want a simple site with the flexibility to easily change templates, it may be a faster way to build your site.

Our Expert Opinion

None of the other top website builders for small businesses come close to matching the ecommerce functionality you get with Weebly. Sell services, products, and even accept donations without upgrading to a free plan, while knowing even more functionality is available when you do.

Try Weebly

Webnode: Best Templates for Fast Site Design

To be honest, the free version of Webnode is not going to offer enough storage, bandwidth, or essential features for many businesses. Still, if you just need of a basic site but you want it to look professional and modern, this may be a great option for you.

Webnode is also the best drag-and-drop website builder for small businesses that anticipate needing to scale with multilingual sites. While Mozello includes multilingual website capabilities starting with the free version, it only offers about six language options, whereas Webnode listed about 20.

We chose Webnode as the best option for building a website quickly because it has hundreds of modern, premade, multipage templates. This makes it easy to customize a template and publish your small business website in a matter of a few hours, at no cost, and with no need for previous web design or coding experience.

Another standout feature is that like Weebly, you can invite collaborators to help you design, add content, and manage your site. It’s also easy to add site and page-level SEO settings ensure your new website can get found online.

Webnode Pricing & Features

*Based on a 12-month subscription. Save up to 50% with longer-term commitments.

Is the Webnode Site Builder Easy to Use?

Like Wix, Webnode made our list of the best drag-and-drop site builders in part due to its clean, intuitive interface. It’s easy to use and Webnode helpfully also includes access to a stock photo library, so you can quickly build a professional-looking website for your small business even if you don’t have your own image library.

In fact, one of the best things about Webnode is that its templates are so well-built and feature-packed that customizing your site is simple and requires very little time. For example, a restaurant template comes with everything from predesigned menus to online ordering and reservations.

Webnode is a standout on this list of the best free website builders for small businesses as the only one including free professional emails in its paid plans. For example, 20 are included with the Standard plan and 1,000 are included for those subscribing to its highest-tier plan.

However, one of Webnode’s main drawbacks is the limited storage and bandwidth (even with paid plans). If you need max storage and bandwidth in a free website option, choose GoDaddy. Alternatively, check out the best website builders for photographers, which have features that cater to content-heavy sites.

Our Expert Opinion

We are truly impressed with the stellar templates and prebuilt pages you get with Webnode. They make it easy to create a professional-looking website in a matter of hours. If speed-with-style is of the essence in your website building process, choose Webnode.

Try Webnode

Mozello: Most Intuitive Free Website Builder Interface

We found that Mozello has the most intuitive and user-friendly interface of all the top free website builders. This allows for fast, frustration-free website design. It doesn’t have nearly as many templates to choose from as Wix or Webnode, but those available cover a variety of industries and design styles.

Having an intuitive interface can’t be discounted when it comes to ease and speed of site design. For example, when you click on “extras,” you can quickly change your cookie notice or add share buttons to your website, either of which could be easily overlooked if you needed to go find these settings with other site builders.

It’s also easy to find various settings, such as where to update your SEO settings and attach your Google Analytics ID for tracking. If you want to change the look of your site, that’s easy too, although you need to do that before spending a lot of time customizing your site or adding content, since you’ll have to start over if you choose a new template.

Besides Weebly, Mozello is the only other free website builder on this list to include ecommerce at the free plan level. However, it doesn’t come near to offering the same level of features as Weebly in this regard.

At the free level, you’re allowed just five products with Mozello vs unlimited products with Weebly. For unlimited products with Mozello, you have to upgrade to the highest plan tier at $18 per month (paid annually).

Mozello Pricing & Features

*With an annual subscription, or pay quarterly at a higher rate

Is the Mozello Site Builder Easy to Use?

Thanks to its intuitive interface, Mozello is one of the easiest ways to build a free small business website. The menus are simple and well-organized, and your changes are applied quickly, so even if you need to make a lot of changes before you’re happy with the final design, it shouldn’t take too long.

Where Mozello falls short design-wise in comparison to free website builders like Wix and Webnode, in particular, is the lack of prebuilt content blocks front-loaded with images. This makes it harder to visualize what a section will look like after you add it to the site. It also currently offers far fewer templates than Wix and Webnode.

Our Expert Opinion

After testing many free website builders, we felt that Mozello provided the most intuitive interface. Plus, it’s one of few to provide ecommerce in a free version. This makes Mozello a cost-effective and user-friendly option, even though you might find it falls short as to the number of templates and prebuilt content blocks available to you when building a site.

Try Mozello

How We Evaluated the Best Free Website Builders for Small Business

To be considered for our list of the top website builders for small businesses, providers have to offer a free-forever plan that provides enough features for a basic small business website. To determine which are the best of the best, we considered what you get within free plans, affordability of entry-level paid plans, as well as ease of use and our own firsthand expertise.

Learn more about each of our evaluation criteria by clicking the tabs:

Our top pick for the best free website builder is Wix. Not only is it user-friendly, but it also provides the most design freedom and customizability, including essential SEO and marketing tools small businesses need to create and grow an online brand presence. It’s free to use, forever if you want, so there’s no risk to check out this site builder today.

Visit Wix

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is it OK for a business website to use a subdomain?

Ideally, businesses will purchase and use a top-level domain (TLD) name (i.e., businessname.com) vs a subdomain. However, starting with a subdomain via a free site builder is a valid option, especially when budget makes it a necessity. Plus, there are many instances where businesses create subdomains under their TLD (e.g., app.businessname.com). Find out more about what a subdomain is and how best to use them.

How do I get a domain name?

If all you need is a domain name, your best bet is to use a domain name registrar, such as Domain.com or any that made our list of the best domain registrars. Keep in mind that many web hosting companies and site builder plans include a free domain, so it’s worth checking if that comes with the provider you plan to use before buying one. For example, Wix and Mozello both include domain names with paid website builder plans.

Is WordPress a free website builder?

WordPress is a free, open-source content management system (CMS). While you can use it to build a blog using a WordPress.com subdomain for free, it’s not sufficient for a small business website. At a minimum, your cost to build a WordPress website will include web hosting ($3 to $10-plus per month), and many businesses also purchase premium themes ($29 to $79-plus) and plugins (from free to hundreds of dollars per month).

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