Published: Apr 24, 2023, 12:28pm
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Your business needs a website—full stop. That might cause chills for some small business owners, but it doesn’t have to. With the help of one of the many great website builders on the market today, you can get your business online in less than an hour—and for free.
In this review, we’ll look at the best free website builders for small businesses, based on the features and factors that matter most to small businesses, such as ease of use, price and selling tools.

Featured Partners
1
Hostinger
Price per month
INR 149 onwards
Features
Affordable hosting plans, free SSL certificates, optional Hostinger Minecraft and VPS server
Free trial
30 days
At upto 83% off on Hostinger’s Website
2
HostGator
Price per month
INR 149 per month (for the first three years, INR 99 per month)
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
E-commerce in entry-level plan
Yes
On HostGator’s secure website
3
BlueHost
Price per month
INR 169 onwards
Features
Affordable hosting plan, free domain name, free CDN
Free trial
30 days
On BlueHost’s Website

INR 149 per month plus 3 months free and INR 249 per month at the time of renewal

Yes

30 days

INR 149 per month plus 3 months free and INR 249 per month at the time of renewal

Yes

30 days

Hostinger offers three plans, each plan comes with specific features for hosting your ecommerce website. You can analyze and choose the plan that suits you the best. For instance, if you wish to build a simple website, the Simple web hosting plan will work fine for you. But, if you want more functions and capacity like a WordPress staging tool, daily backups and unlimited data then the best choice for you would be Hostinger’s business plan. You can run up to 100 websites.
The hosting services of Hostinger includes cloud hosting, VPS hosting, WordPress hosting and the Minecraft server. The range of use cases help you to make a better choice in scaling your website with the precise features you require. Hostinger currently has over 1,597,691 website owners. It provides top-notch security features like Cloudflare protected nameservers, automatic backups and with 99.9% uptime guarantee so, you cannot miss a customer.
Hotinger eCommerce website is time-saving as it is effortless order management and inventory. It gives you the leverage to sell almost everything from products to services, be it physical or digital. It is a beginner-friendly setup where no coding is required. It has designer eCommerce templates with a responsive and automatic design that fits any screen be it a laptop, tabloid or mobile phone. The list is endless as Hostinger also offers the host a great suite of resources that includes custom domains, low-rate regular backups, email accounts and unlimited free SSL certificates.
Who Should Use It:
Hostinger is one of the best ecommerce hosting services available in India. It’s on a custom-built hPanel with advanced features that makes it ideal for beginners and professionals.
Free; premium plans start at $9.99 INR 49 per month

No

Beginner-friendly site editor and e-commerce available in free plan

Free; premium plans start at $9.99 INR 49 per month

No

Beginner-friendly site editor and e-commerce available in free plan

GoDaddy is a go-to for many online entrepreneurs buying domains for brands they may or may not build someday. Its website builder lets you take the next step to get your online brand up and running.
With a free plan, you can set up a website using the drag-and-drop editor and built-in themes. You can set up an online store with PayPal payments and upgrade to access more payment options.
A free site comes with a yoursite.godaddysites.com domain and, if you upgrade to a paid account starting at $119.88 INR 696 a year, you’ll get a custom domain free for one year.
A free site comes with on-platform email and social media marketing and limited website templates and images through GoDaddy Studio.
Who Should Use It:
GoDaddy’s website builder is built with any kind of online business in mind—from content to coaching to products. But it emphasizes e-commerce and customer service features that make it the strongest fit for online stores. As long as you’re OK accepting payments through PayPal, you can set up your online store for free.
Free; $10 INR 770 per month

No

Appointment scheduling and e-commerce included in free plan

Free; $10 INR 770 per month

No

Appointment scheduling and e-commerce included in free plan

Best known for email marketing tools, Mailchimp has grown to cover all your marketing needs.
Mailchimp’s free website builder includes a drag-and-drop editor with the same user experience (UX) as its email management service. You get access to free themes and designed color palettes, and you can set up your own color palette to match your brand.
Mailchimp’s builder doesn’t include a domain, so you can’t start 100% free. You’ll have to buy a domain from a third party, which usually costs about $10 INR 770 per month for the first year and follow the instructions to point it at your Mailchimp site.
As you grow, you can upgrade to paid plans for more features, including paid email marketing plans if your list grows beyond 2,000.
Who Should Use It:
With its free e-commerce and appointment scheduling features, a Mailchimp website is a good fit for microbusinesses selling things like physical products or coaching.
Free; web hosting for as little as $4 INR 160 per month

Yes

Fully customizable and low-cost plans to connect your domain

Free; web hosting for as little as $4 INR 160 per month

Yes

Fully customizable and low-cost plans to connect your domain

WordPress has been the dominant force in free website development for years as its WordPress.com service was among the first professional online website builders to give you the domain, hosting and design you need to get going totally free.
With a free site using the cloud-based WordPress.com builder, you get a drag-and-drop editor with dozens of themes, a yoursite.wordpress.com domain and hosting.
WordPress displays ads on your free site, and you can’t access e-commerce tools without upgrading to a paid account. However, the cost to upgrade is lower than most competitors—the lowest-price plan is just $48 INR 1,920 a year, and you can remove ads and collect payments.
If you want a more customizable site with access to the open source plugins WordPress is known for, you can build a self-managed WordPress site using the software from WordPress.org.
WordPress.org is better known for its paid website builders, but it’s possible to use the software for free. You need to find free or cheap web hosting, and you can download free WordPress themes to use the drag-and-drop editor and CMS. This requires more tech know-how than any cloud-based option, so you might need to hire a WordPress developer to set up the site for you.
Who Should Use It:
WordPress is designed for blogs and includes one of the most robust content management systems broadly available. That functionality could be unnecessary or overwhelming unless content is central to your business, so WordPress is best suited for content-based businesses, such as blogs, magazines, news sites and other online publications.
Free; $14 around INR 1,148 a month to connect your own domain

No

Drag-and-drop page designer, CMS and e-commerce

Free; $14 around INR 1,148 a month to connect your own domain

No

Drag-and-drop page designer, CMS and e-commerce

Webflow is a no-code drag-and-drop website editor that offers more design customization than many others. The builder is intuitive and easy for nearly anyone on your team to adopt, with an editor reminiscent of word processors that most will be familiar with.
The builder supports website animations and scroll-based parallax for a modern interface and dynamic design.
The back end is intuitive and uncomplicated. Webflow includes a built-in CMS to manage a blog or other site content, including SEO features, but its options aren’t as robust for content-based sites as a builder like WordPress.
Who Should Use It:
Webflow is a growing favorite among emerging tech startups. It offers modern design options that help you keep up with competitors—without putting all of your resources into website design and maintenance.
Free; $120 around INR 9,800 per year to include blogging

No

Drag-and-drop builder, CMS, and e-commerce

Free; $120 around INR 9,800 per year to include blogging

No

Drag-and-drop builder, CMS, and e-commerce

Ucraft is a free website builder with a drag-and-drop editor, hosting, CMS and e-commerce functions. You can build and publish a website for free and connect it to your own domain—a function that’s unusual for totally free site builders.
The platform also includes a logo maker and a blogging platform with paid plans, so you’ll have everything you need to get a new business operational for a low monthly price.
Who Should Use It:
Ucraft is a free alternative to Squarespace and could be a better option for small business owners who need a no-frills static website to establish an online presence for a low cost.
Free; $12.80 around INR 1000 per month to include a free domain

No

Drag-and-drop editor, email plans, website templates

Free; $12.80 around INR 1000 per month to include a free domain

No

Drag-and-drop editor, email plans, website templates

SITE123 is a basic, easy-to-use site builder that offers packages tailored to small businesses, e-commerce, bloggers and more. You can get a site operational for free with a subdomain under site123.com or upgrade to a premium plan to get additional features and a free custom domain for a year.
SITE123 offers website templates, as well, so you don’t have to start your design from scratch. However, the templates feature simplistic, outdated designs that don’t keep up with the modern design trends some competitors support.
Who Should Use It:
SITE123 might be a simple and affordable option for a small business or project that needs a quick and easy online presence.
Free; $9 INR 300 per month to use your own domain

Yes

Modern design, fee-free e-commerce

Free; $9 INR 300 per month to use your own domain

Yes

Modern design, fee-free e-commerce

Jimdo is a free website builder designed to help small businesses get online quickly and easily. You can create beautiful mobile-optimized page designs. Customizing is easy with an editor that offers flexibility without complexity. Do note that a free site is published at a subdomain of jimdosite.com and displays ads.
The builder lets you add an online store or appointment scheduler starting at INR 300 $18 per month, and you won’t pay transaction fees for online orders. Jimdo’s logo creator is also free to use, so you can design a logo and get the file formats you need to promote your business online and in print.
Who Should Use It:
Jimdo is a simple and affordable platform for startup online retail businesses. If you’re moving your brick-and-mortar online or starting an e-commerce business from scratch, it could be one of the easiest and most frugal ways to do it.
Free; $12 around INR 984 per month to use your own domain

No

Drag-and-drop builder, live chat, and memberships

Free; $12 around INR 984 per month to use your own domain

No

Drag-and-drop builder, live chat, and memberships

Strikingly is a straightforward website builder with simple, mobile-friendly designs for landing pages, e-commerce and blogs. You can add an e-commerce store with its Simple Store feature—you can even sell up to one product with a free account.
Strikingly offers everything a simple business needs to get online, but its design options aren’t particularly striking. You can build a simple page, but the platform lacks modern design features like animation and more complex layouts.
Who Should Use It:
Strikingly is a good fit for a small business that needs a simple online presence and doesn’t have design resources.

To determine the best website builders for small businesses, Forbes Advisor did a deep dive into the industry and determined the top 10 contenders in the field based on their strengths, such as those that were suited better for local business, easier to get your site up and running faster or geared more toward bloggers. We scored these providers across four categories of features using 14 different metrics that were weighted to favor features that small business owners find valuable in a site builder.
Offering a website building plan for free was a given expectation to qualify for our list, so providers were then gauged on the merits of what was available with their free plans and then by how affordable and valuable their paid plans were to users. The more value a user was able to get from upgrading to paid website builder plans, the better a provider did in this category. More affordable pricing plans were also looked upon favorably. This accounted for 20% of our weighted scoring.
One catch that comes with some free plans is that there are either few features available or that the features are only available for additional fees. For general features, we looked at what a web builder offered as part of its base plan and then what was available either through upgrading to paid plans or by paying for add-ons, such as plugins. Some of the features we considered essential in base plans included offering the ability to create mobile-responsive sites, drag-and-drop functionality, unlimited storage and bandwidth, email marketing and social marketing tools. Features accounted for 40% of our total score.
How well real users of these website builders viewed their experiences with them was also important to our final review. We turned to third-party review sites, such as G2, and Trustpilot, looking to gauge their opinion of each provider in regard to usefulness, customer support and other factors. Seeking reviews of at least 3.5 or higher out of 5, we were able to get a clearer picture of the best website builders available today. These accounted for 10% of the total score.
Tying all of this together, we also ranked additional criteria such as ease of use, stand-out and detailed features, popularity and value for the money. Altogether, these criteria made up 30% of the final score.
Which website builder is the best fit for you or your team depends on what your business needs. Consider these factors as you choose the right tool for you:

Featured Partners
1
Hostinger
Price per month
INR 149 onwards
Features
Affordable hosting plans, free SSL certificates, optional Hostinger Minecraft and VPS server
Free trial
30 days
At upto 83% off on Hostinger’s Website
2
HostGator
Price per month
INR 149 per month (for the first three years, INR 99 per month)
Drag-and-drop editor
Yes
E-commerce in entry-level plan
Yes
On HostGator’s secure website
3
BlueHost
Price per month
INR 169 onwards
Features
Affordable hosting plan, free domain name, free CDN
Free trial
30 days
On BlueHost’s Website

Even with a free website builder, getting your business online might come with a few startup costs, including:
A website builder is a platform that lets you create a website without having to code or design it yourself. Website builders typically have drag-and-drop tools that make it easy to add text, images and other elements to your website.
The cost of a website builder varies, depending on the features and services you need. However, most website builders have free plans that let you create a basic website. You can usually upgrade to a paid plan to get more features and services.
No, you don’t need an e-commerce website to sell online. However, an e-commerce website can make it easier to manage your inventory, take payments and track your sales.
There are a few different ways you can build an e-commerce website. You can use an e-commerce platform such as Shopify or BigCommerce, which provide everything you need to get started. Alternatively, you can use WordPress with a WooCommerce plugin or Ecwid plugin. Finally, you can use a DIY website builder such as Squarespace.
Dana Miranda is a certified educator in personal finance (CEPF) who has been writing and editing since 2011, covering personal finance, careers and digital media. She’s written about work and money for the New York Times, CNBC, The Motley Fool, The Penny Hoarder, a column for Inc. and more. Dana has taught journalists, writers and editors how to write for the web through Utah Valley University, Queen’s University at Kingston, ACES: The Society for Editors, the National Association for Independent Writers & Editors, online courses and private trainings. Find her at danasitar.com.
Kelly is an SMB Editor specializing in starting and marketing new ventures. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. Additionally, she manages a column at Inc. Magazine.

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