Free Website Builders

If you're new to site building and just want to try it for free, you can use these products as free website builders - in addition to paid services, they enable creating your own website for free with some restrictions.

They give you a chance to test your netwriting skills. You can create a website for free and cancel the project at any time if something goes wrong, or switch to a paid version if you are totally delighted with the result and want to remove restrictions and include additional features.

One of the best things about online website builders is that the content of your website is stored separately from the layout. At any time, in a few clicks of the mouse, you can easily change the appearance of your site - the template, colors, fonts, etc., without ever having to retype any information.

The reviewed free website builders are the current leaders in their fields - an extremely easy-to-use online website builder for creating small sites, an online service for small business, an advanced website builder, and a popular tool offered by many hosting providers...

1&1 Website Builder

This is a popular online builder, which anyone can use to quickly create small websites without the need of HTML programming skills or expensive desktop software. It's suitable for those who just want to make small professional looking websites very quickly, easily and inexpensively - affiliates, home and small businesses, families, hobbies, sports teams, etc.

When you buy a domain name at 1&1 ($6.99/year), the builder comes free and has restrictions like other free website builders: no more than 5 pages and you are not allowed to insert custom HTML into them. If you need more pages you have to buy a hosting package (from $3.99/month).

Building a website is a five-step process...

Choose your layout from a library of 120 website templates.
Refine your design - choose your favorite graphic and pick the font size, text color, and navigation button style.
Edit your content with easy to use online editor.
Add extra features like Flash animation, a counter, feedback forms, guest books and more.
Publish your website.

In comparison to other free online website builders the main advantage of 1&1 Website Builder is no advertising even in the free version. The main disadvantage is less options when customizing your template and page layout.

1&1 also offers cheap domain registration and a wide variety of hosting plans.

More details...

Office Live Small Business

It provides everything you need to grow, promote, and manage small business online. You can create a professional online presence including domain name, hosting, design tools, site traffic reports, and more. All you need is a computer and an Internet connection.

The basic account is free (it's ad supported). You get a good online WYSIWYG website builder, 500 MB of online storage space, a custom domain name, and up to 100 business email accounts. You can also upload existing pages from your computer.

If you register your domain name through Office Live Small Business, it's free for the first year and $14.95/year thereafter. You can also redirect your existing domain name from a different domain registrar.

The advanced features are available for a fee...

E-Commerce - a full featured shopping cart and accepting credit card payments.
E-Mail Marketing - mailing lists, sending newsletters and promotions.
Search Marketing - advertising your business on popular search engines.
More email accounts, storage, additional domain names.

More details...

Site2you

This tool takes a different approach to site creating than other free website builders - one time fee package. You can make a complete website with unlimited pages for one flat fee.

First of all, you get a 7-day free trial account and can try your skills creating your website for free. After switching to the registered account, you get two weeks of access to your website as you develop it. You can make the unlimited quantity of downloads or direct file transfers to your hosting company servers.

They won't delete your website from their base after you have finished it. If you need to make further changes to it, you can either do them yourself or use their 10-day or 1-month access plan (for a small fee) to make updates and download or transfer your website again.

They offer a powerful online editor and hundreds of high-quality professional website templates to choose from. (Site2you partners with TemplateMonster - one of the world's leading website templates providers.)

Click here to try the Site2you website builder for free.

Site Studio

Unlike other reviewed above free website builders, this browser-based solution for website design and construction from Positive Software Corporation isn't a standalone tool. It's a software that hosting providers can install on their servers to help users build professionally looking websites without knowing anything about FTP, HTML, or imaging software.

Key features of Site Studio:

Simple to use: Site Studio guides you step-by-step, providing simple choices regarding color, style and images. There is no software to buy, and no code to learn.
Layout templates: Site Studio provides over 1000 professionally designed templates. The content of your website is stored separately from the layout. This way, you can completely change the look and feel of your website in a few clicks of the mouse, without ever having to retype any information.
Customizable color schemes: Site Studio includes a number of built-in color combinations that look great with any layout. But if you want to add a little originality to your site, all the colors can be changed, either by using a point-and-click color picker, or typing in the color as a hex number.
Complete control over images: you can upload your own images without having to leave your browser. The required images, including logos, rollover buttons and sidebars, can also be generated automatically in the colors you want, with the desired text.
Variety of pages: Site Studio includes a lot of predefined page templates: About, Links, Download, Firm Profile, Survey Form, FAQ, Catalog, ICQ Contact Center, Site Map, Contact Us, Services, Add-A-Cart Catalog, Amazon.Com Web Store, etc. Generic Page template enables creation of custom pages that do not fall into any other categories. Advanced users can copy-paste existing HTML pages and create Web pages based on their own HTML code.
One-click publishing: The website is published with one easy click. But even after publishing, you can go back and change it as much as you wish.

Many hosting providers offer this website builder for an additional fee. However, here is an inexpensive hosting service which provides clients with Site Studio for free...

IXWebHosting
Unlimited disk space and bandwidth for $5.95 a month. Additionally, you get a unique (dedicated) IP address for your site.

See Resources: Inexpensive Web Hosting for more details about this hosting provider.

See also...

Business Website Builders
These tools are rather comprehensive marketing platforms for those who want to build a professional, popular, and profitable Web business (not just a website).

What's New

How to Create a Website
One-page guide for beginners.

Inexpensive Web Hosting
How to choose a fast and reliable service from the bulk of cheap hosting solutions.