How to create a website for your business for free

Can you really build a business website for free?

Yes. Several website builders let you make an account, choose a design, type in your details and publish without paying. A weekend is enough for a simple site with your hours, address, phone number and a few photos.

What you get is a real page that people can visit. What you do not get is a page that looks like it belongs to you. That difference is where the cost hides.

What do free website builders give you?

Most free plans give you the same core things: a set of ready-made designs, an editor where you click and type, and hosting, which just means the company keeps your pages online so people can open them.

• Wix says its free plan includes 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth, a set of templates, and a free Wix web address. Bandwidth is roughly how much your pages can be viewed before the plan runs out.
• Weebly lists a free plan with free security (the padlock in the browser), a shopping cart, and its own web address.
• Google Sites works with a Google account, and Google's help pages show no charge for building a site. It is plain and simple, which suits a few pages of basic information.
• Squarespace does not have a free plan. It gives every new site a 14 day trial, no card needed, then you pay.

What does a free plan cost you in other ways?

A free plan costs you in three places. Your web address, the builder's advertising, and limits on what the site can do.

Their name in your web address

On Wix's free plan, your site lives at an address shaped like siteprefix.wixsite.com/siteaddress. Wix says you must upgrade to a paid plan to connect your own domain, which is the yourbakery.com kind of address. Weebly's free plan also leaves out a custom domain.

A long address with someone else's name in it is hard to say over the phone, hard to print on a van, and easy to mistype. It also tells a careful customer that you did not want to spend anything on your own business.

Their ads on your pages

Wix's help center says a free site has a Wix banner ad at the top and a Wix icon in the browser tab, and that you need a paid plan to remove them. Weebly's pricing page lists removing Square ads as a paid feature, which means they stay on the free plan.

Limits on what the site can do

Wix's own blog says the free plan has limited bandwidth and storage, no way to take payments, and restricted access to tools like Google Analytics, which counts your visitors. If you want customers to book, pay a deposit or order online, you will probably leave the free plan quickly.

Can AI build a website for your business?

Yes, to a point. If you search for how to make a website for your business using AI, you will find builders where you describe your business in a few sentences and the tool produces a first draft. Wix, for one, says its AI tool can generate a complete website from a single prompt and that you can refine it by chatting with its assistant.

A prompt is just the sentence or two you type to tell the tool what you want. A good prompt names the trade, the town, what you sell and who your customers are.

AI is quick at the first draft. It is weaker at the parts only you know: the true story of your business, what makes people choose you, and what to leave out. Read every sentence it writes about you. If it says you offer something you do not, or invents a number or a review, delete it. A made up review on your own site can get you in trouble with customers and with regulators.

AI builders also run into the same limits as the others. A site made by AI on a free plan still carries the builder's address and ads.

How do you build a free website that is good enough?

If you decide to go ahead, this order saves the most trouble.

1. Write down what a customer needs in 10 seconds: what you do, where you are, your hours, your phone number and how to book or ask a question.
2. Gather 5 to 10 real photos of your own shop, your work and you. Photos of other people's work, or stock pictures, hurt more than they help.
3. Pick one builder and one template. Do not spend an evening comparing 40 designs.
4. Put the phone number at the top of every page, big enough to read on a phone. Most people will see your site on a phone first.
5. Open the site on your own phone and ask someone who has never seen it to find your opening hours. If it takes them more than 10 seconds, simplify.
6. Add the website address to your Google Business Profile, so people who find you on Google Maps can click through.

When does a free website cost more than it saves?

A free website costs more than it saves when it loses you a customer who would have said yes. That is hard to see, because the customer simply leaves.

• Your address has someone else's name in it, and a customer cannot tell if you are the real business.
• The site shows another company's ad above your own name.
• People cannot book, pay or ask a question without phoning in working hours.
• You spend 20 hours of your own time on it that you would have spent on paying work.
• Someone else owns the design. If you leave the builder, you usually start again from nothing.

Your time is the cost people forget. If an hour of your day is worth real money, a free site that takes 20 hours is not free.

When is it worth getting help?

A free site is a sensible start if you are testing an idea, or you only need a page that says where you are and when you are open. It is worth getting help when the site has a job to do: bringing in new customers, taking bookings, taking payments, or making a good first impression on someone who is comparing you with two other businesses.

That is the work Oiko does. We build the site on your own web address, so you own it, and we can set up booking and payments to work with it. You can read more on our page about websites for small businesses. If you want to see what the finished thing looks like, our sample work shows websites for businesses we made up, so you can judge the quality without anyone's real customers involved.

If you would like to talk it over, get in touch. It is 20 minutes about your business, and it is fine if the answer is that a free site will do.