Essentee Blog
Web design and management articles, guides and even the occasional rant.
Build a website for free
It is possible to build your website for nothing.
But it is very hard to build a website for nothing, put no work into it and have it make you a lot of money.
But you may just want a cheap foot in the door. Almost all the free website designs require you to pay for the hosting so you can expect to incur some costs along the way. You will have to pay to register a domain name and features such as search optimisation elements are frequently only available with paid versions.
What these services do give you is a reasonable looking, basic site without the cost of a designer or developer setting it up for you. So if you have a lot of the know-how already and can do the work and put the time in yourself - go for it.
While building a simple website is not that hard, building an effective business website takes knowledge, skill and hard work.
One thing for sure - the skills of experienced, capable web strategists, designers and marketers are valuable and you won't get them free or even cheap so dial down your expectations accordingly.
Free Web Design or Build Services
Disclaimer: We have not tried all of these services, and have based the list on a consensus of review sites and our own experience. We've played around with some of them, and some of them make quite nice looking sites. But we've never tried to build a business and make money using them so buyer beware! Most of these are hosted outside of NZ so your search engine optimisation will take a hit from the geolocation factor.
| Service | Description | Totally Free? |
| Google Sites | Easy to setup and build a site. Choose from a limited range of templates. Little control over size, placement of elements. The interface feels clunky. |
Yes |
| Wix |
Popular with creatives because it creates good looking sites. Wix builds a flash-based site, so good if you want to use animation. But Flash is not good if you want your site to be found by the search engines. Has basic store with PayPal or Google Checkout. You will also need to use the seperate mobile website builder if you want people to access it from any Apple product like an iPad. You choose the design elements and add content, social icons and media. |
Yes but the free version runs ads on your website |
| SquareSpace | Makes very nice looking sites quickly and easily with huge range of options, but page limits apply. No ECommerce ability. Templates can be customised. You will need to register your domain seperately, but has the usual range of widgets including search engine optimisation components. Good support | No - starts from $12 USD per month |
| SnapPages | Easy to use, will need pro account for a custom domain name. Limited marketing options but widgets for Google maps, photos, Twitter updates etc Uses a Flash based builder but outputs in HTML. Limited template customisation options | Yes |
| Webs | Simple, with a range of features that can get tricky. Has some ECommerce ability. Not easy to customise and seem to be some issues getting support. Can redirect your own domain to webs site. Only two levels of navigation but this is probably enough for most. Need paid version for search engine optimisation ability. | Yes but runs ads |
| Jimdo | Fast, intuitive editor. Lots of templates but only two levels of navigation. Has payment capability in the store. Need pro plan to get search engine optimisation capabilities. Good range of the ususal widgets for photos, social services etc. | Yes but runs ads |
| Webnode | Some limitation to designs, but easy to build sites and allows optimisation of pages for search. Can redirect your own domain or register via webnode. No limitation on navigation levels, comes with usual widgets to add video, images etc. Limited ecommerce options on free version. | Yes but small Webnode banner runs on site |
| Websitebuilder | NZ based, Free website builder. Price is based on size, traffic allowances and use of services. Has comes with site builder wizard, simple stats, photo galleries, etc | No - hosting starts at $15.00 NZD per month |
| Ediy | NZ based. Web builder allows you to upload pictures etc, choose from a template. 30 day free trial. | No - hosting starts at $19.0 NZD per month |
For more reviews on website builders including the ones above, go see Websitetooltester.com or Website-builder-reviews.co.uk
