Turn your link in bio into a Milkshake website to say more, sell more and share more. Although it only offers three types of shapes and the navigation bar feels pretty basic, the program is a great solution for beginners who want to create their own HTML pages without getting lost in technical jargon and coding.Make a free website on your phone in minutes. Here’s how our in-house research team go about finding the best website builders on the market.Web Page Maker is a WYSIWYG web editor with a quick hands-on approach and accessible features.The template choices and designs – our chosen template already had a menu section built-in. The creative freedom – we could drag anything anywhere, making it easy to line things up exactly how we wanted them! We especially like the fact that our template came with the Wix Restaurant app already built-in! Wix was easy to use, but still gave us all the creative freedom we needed to make our site look exactly how we wanted it to. understand exactly how easy (or difficult) beginners find the builderWe’ve applied this process to over 50 website builders so far – all so we can bring you the most accurate results and recommendations!Still got questions? Read our report on How We Conduct Our Website Builder Research for a more detailed explanation.Expert Insights: What We Thought Of Using WixWe used Wix to create a free website for an imaginary business called Lucy’s Cupcakes – the whole building process took about half a day. We investigate important areas such as:This helps us rate and compare the builders fairly, focusing on important factors that users have told us matter most.We even get groups of everyday people to test the builders out and give us feedback, which we then analyze.
![]() This can make Wix look more tricky than it actually is. Onboarding – although Wix is super easy to use, when the editor first loads, it can look a little confusing because there are so many options. Wix even has an image library on hand, which made it even faster! How easy it was – changing text, images, and backgrounds only took a few clicks. This is a small but surprisingly useful feature. Lack of creative freedom – the one thing we’d ask Weebly to improve would have to be its level of creative freedom. Its beginner-friendly prompts – Weebly makes it difficult to accidentally delete anything it always double-checks first, which is helpful! How easy it was to set up – like Wix, Weebly asks you what sort of website you want to create, and provides you with tailored themes to help you get started. The structured themes – yes, we did find Weebly’s structured themes frustrating at times, but they’re helpful for following design best practices. It felt a lot more limited than Wix though, with fewer templates to choose from and more dated looking editing tools. Its chat support – SITE123’s live chat is there to help throughout the building process, which is great if you get stuck. How friendly it was – if you have zero tech skills and want a fairly hands-off building experience, SITE123 is a perfect choice. From creating your basic site for you, to providing font pairings and complimentary color suggestions, it feels like someone holding your hand from start to finish. Our Lucy’s Cupcakes site was easy to build, but the result looks a little dated and bland, especially compared to the Wix site we made.SimpleSite’s free plan limits you to 15 pages on your site, which should be fine for a new hobby website. This would be less frustrating if the designs were more modern and attractive. The quality of design – it’s no secret that SITE123 provides limited creative freedom. It has pre-paired fonts and color suggestions to help you too! Web Page Maker Free SSL CertificateMostWithout an SSL certificate, your website will display as ‘Not secure’ to visitors. Free SSL certificateMost website builders include a free SSL certificate as standard, but a couple don’t (we’ve flagged when this is the case). Minimal advertisingYou don’t need us to tell you that a website plastered in ads won’t look as good as one without! Our screenshots should help you evaluate the ads of each website builder, and decide on the least intrusive option for you. Low upgrade costUpgrading to a paid plan comes with clear benefits, so it’s good to know how much this would cost. These website builders operate on what’s known as a ‘freemium’ business model, whereby the customers who want to pay for extra features effectively fund those who are happy with a limited plan – no strings attached.That said, there are some elements that you should pay close attention to when deciding on which free website builder you choose.To create this ranking of the best free website builders, we drew upon our extensive research and user testing for each website builder as a whole, and combined this with a specific focus on their free plans, paying close attention to whether or not the builder ticked these boxes: Clear domain nameFree website builders won’t let you link up a custom domain name – but what does the auto-generated one look like? For example, a format like IM Creator’s (im-creator.com/free/yourname/yoursite) could make your site look quite unprofessional. You aren’t actually able to amend the mobile version of your website when you’re working from a desktop, while SimpleSite’s premium plans are relatively expensive overall compared to other website builders should you want to access more features.While it does have a free plan, the premium options range from $11.25 to $26.25 per month, billed annually.And as with Strikingly and Mozello, SimpleSite’s free plan doesn’t include an SSL certificate, leaving your site exposed – a big disadvantage in our eyes.Free website builders may have once seemed too good to be true, but we set out to demonstrate that this is not always the case.A question we often get asked is just how do these free website builders make their money? Is there something sketchy going on? Luckily, it’s all super safe and above board. Outlook for mac save spaceKeep an eye out for website builders we’ve flagged as allowing you to sell on a free plan, like Weebly.By going through the process of creating a free website with each builder for this article, we’ve been able to give a really accurate first-hand account of the process.One thing all the website builders in our ranking have in common, aside from being free, is that they are easy to set up – they wouldn’t have made the cut otherwise! The process and learning curve differ slightly from builder to builder, but here are the steps you can expect: Ecommerce functionality (optional)If you need to sell through your free website builder, this limits your options a little. We’ve given an indication of how easy each website builder is to use, based on our research and user testing. Easy to useThere’s no point in finding a website builder that ticks the boxes above, only to discover it’s clunky and frustrating to use. If you know you want to include lots of images or videos, be mindful of how quickly you’d hit this cap. Sufficient storageMost free website builders have a cap on the amount of content you can upload to your site. Get rid of placeholder text and images, and replace these with your own. Add in your own content. We’ve specified when this is the case. This is the first fork in the road – most builders will let you select a template to work off at this stage, but some will use design assistance to mock up a website for you based on your answers to a few questions. Choose a template, or answer questions for the design assistant. This will require an email address, password, and possibly a username. ![]()
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