Everyone can not afford to spend hundreds or even thousands of euros every year to create and maintain a website. Most people cannot or will not pay for a website that is no more than a fun hobby. Fortunately, several very good website builders offer you options to set up your website for free.

But if you choose a free website builder, there are often many restrictions that you can only prevent by upgrading to a paid plan. This article discusses some of the best free website builders. We will provide an overview of the available functions and limitations so that you can decide whether one of these free subscriptions meets your needs.

Wix

Few website builders are more famous than Everywhere on the internet and even on TV, there are enormous advertisements or advertisements from Wix. That is why it is no surprise that many people who want to build a website choose Wix.

Wix offers several options if you want to set up a free website. If you want to build your website from the ground up, you can choose to use the editor for dragging and placing elements. But you can also choose to answer a few simple questions so that Wix can offer you support while creating your website. There are also different templates available that you can adjust to create a website quickly.

We find the builder for dragging and placing elements one of the biggest advantages that Wix has to offer. We chose to answer a few questions about our website and Wix showed us different designs that were pretty good. The builder for dragging and placing elements is one of the best features that Wix has to offer. There is also an extensive App Center available with both free and paid apps that you can use to add features to your website.

One of the disadvantages of using Wix is ​​that there are many limitations. This is especially true if you opt for the free version. To start with, we were assigned a Wix subdomain with a URL that is not optimized for SEO and Google search results.

If you opt for the free version of Wix, ads will also be displayed on every page of your website. Even the favicon of your URL contains an advertisement in that case. You get a limited storage space and bandwidth of 500 MB, so you cannot add media files to your website. You also have no option to set up a webshop via your website.

If you choose to upgrade your subscription, you get the following functions:

• Up to 20 GB extra storage space
• More bandwidth, up to unlimited bandwidth with the most extensive subscription
• Free domain name
• Possibility to add an online store
• Function for e-mail campaigns
• App to make your website work faster
• The free version is very suitable if you have a start-up or want to create a personal website with, for example, blog posts. In all other cases, it is better to opt for a paid subscription.

Site123

Just like other website builders, Site123 offers you the possibility to create a website easily using a large number of templates that you can edit. The provider has, among other things, templates suitable for websites about music, events, photography, restaurants, and CVs. It is important to mention that all of these options are fairly similar. That is, the designs of these templates are all about the same.

We think it is a great advantage that Site123 offers you the possibility to encode your web pages in more than 80 languages ​​so that you can create a multilingual website. Because the needs of international customers are increasingly different today, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to offer a website in multiple languages.

If you opt for the free version, there are considerable restrictions. You only get 500 MB of storage space and a bandwidth of 1 GB. Also, you will be assigned a subdomain from Site123 and this means that advertisements will be displayed on the pages of your website. Furthermore, you will not receive an e-mail address if you use the free version. And only if you take out a paid subscription, you have the option to add a web store to your website.

We think one of the biggest disadvantages of Site123 is that the templates are very similar. Although there are many different templates, it seems that the provider has developed one template and used it as the basis for different variants. The disadvantage of this is that your website will look a lot like other websites developed with the help of the Site123 website builder.

If you choose to upgrade your subscription and take out a paid subscription from Site123, you will get the following features:

• Free domain name
• More storage space and bandwidth
• Ability to remove Site123 ads
• Functions for email marketing
• E-commerce options

This platform is ideal for standard websites and this website builder is particularly suitable for users who want to create an informative website in multiple languages. But because of the limited storage space and bandwidth, this option is not suitable if you want to create an extensive site.

SimpleSite

As the name suggests, you can quickly build a website with SimpleSite. The free websites are not optimized for mobile devices and you can choose from a handful of themes to create your website.

Compared to other free website builders, the major advantage of the free version of SimpleSite is that you get access to all functions to sell products through your website. We offer collectibles through our website and with the free SimpleSite subscription it is possible to sell up to five products. Besides, it is possible to integrate PayPal so that payments can be processed more easily. We have chosen to sell some of our more expensive items such as billboards through our website.

Of course, there are several restrictions if you choose the free version:

• Your website is limited to 15 web pages
• You can add a limited number of 300 images to the entire website
• You can add up to 600 seconds (10 minutes) to video files
• Limited font and design options
• Mandatory use of a SimpleSite subdomain name
• No email address
• SimpleSite ads on every webpage

If you want to upgrade, you have two options: Pro and E-commerce. With these subscriptions you get the following options:

• Unlimited number of pages
• Unlimited number of images and video files
• Unlimited font and design options
• Free domain name
• No ads
• Five e-mail addresses

The possibility to sell products online (five with the Pro subscription and an unlimited number with the E-commerce version)

We find it a disadvantage that the SimpleSite templates are rather simple and that the free subscription in this area does not offer many variations. The design options are also limited. We found the templates quite dated and they resemble the designs that website builders had to offer 10 to 15 years ago.

The free subscription is ideal for small websites or web stores and is suitable for users who want to collect money in the short term or want to sell a small number of products via a website. If you want to use a website for other purposes, it is a good idea to opt for a paid version.

For more details to know about website builders visit: clasywebsitebuilders.com