Last Updated on July 14, 2026
You can build a business website for free. It is genuinely possible, it takes an afternoon, and for some businesses it is the right call.
But nobody who tells you it is free is telling you what it costs.
The bill arrives later. Usually about the time the site starts working.
First, the honest answer
Yes, free website builders work. Wix, Google Sites, Canva’s site tool and half a dozen others will give you a live page today without a card.
No, the free tier is not a business website. Free plans put you on their subdomain, usually show their branding, and cap what you can do. You will have something like yourbusiness.wixsite.com/yourbusiness, and on most free plans, an advert for the builder on your own page.
That is fine for testing an idea. It is not fine for quoting a customer.
So the useful question is not “can I build a site for free”. It is “what am I actually trading, and is the trade worth it right now”.
The mistake most people make
They build the free site, put the link on their van, hand it out at networking, print it on the leaflets.
Then, eighteen months later, the business is working and they want to look like a real company. So they buy a domain. And they discover that everything they built is stuck inside a platform that was never designed to let them leave.
The site was free. The exit is not.
We tested this properly. When we ran the exit test on AI website builders, the pattern was consistent: getting in takes two minutes, getting out takes a fight. Free platforms are the same story with a lower entry price.
You are not buying a website. You are choosing a landlord.
The three costs nobody mentions
1. The domain, which is not optional
A free plan gives you a subdomain. Someone else’s brand, then a slash, then you.
Customers notice. Not consciously. They just trust it slightly less, and you never find out why they went elsewhere.
A .co.uk domain is not expensive. Registration is often a few pounds in the first year, and renewals typically land somewhere in the £6 to £16 a year range depending on the registrar. Check the renewal price, not the first-year offer. That is where registrars make their money.
Call it £10 to £15 a year. This is the one thing you should not do for free.
Do this even if you do nothing else: buy the domain now, before you build anything. It is the only part of your website you can genuinely own, and it is the cheapest thing on the list.
2. The upgrade cliff
Free plans are the ground floor of a staircase. Removing the ads and connecting your own domain means moving to a paid tier.
As of July 2026, the entry tiers look like this. Wix Light is around £9 a month paid annually, or £11.50 month to month. Squarespace’s cheapest tier is around £12 a month annually, or £16 month to month. Both figures are the price of looking like a real business rather than a hobby.
That is not a scandal. It is a business model, and it is a reasonable one.
But it means “free website” usually turns out to mean “free for a bit, then £110 to £190 a year, forever”. Budget for it honestly at the start, rather than discovering it the week you need to look credible. Our full breakdown of UK website costs has the numbers for every route.
3. The AI visibility cost
This is the new one, and most people have not caught up with it yet.
More customers now ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI for a recommendation before they search. Those systems read your site. They need to find a clear business name, what you do, where you do it, and how to contact you, in a form they can actually parse.
Free-tier sites are often the worst offenders here. Thin pages, generic template markup, no proper business information, a subdomain that gives no signal about who you are. Our research on the AI readiness of UK small business websites found that a large share of them are effectively unreadable to AI, and the cheap end of the market is where that concentrates.
You can be invisible to AI for free. It is not much of a bargain.
The actual free route, step by step
If free is right for you, do it properly. This is the version that will not embarrass you.
Step 1. Buy the domain anyway (£10 to £15)
Yes, this breaks the “free”. Do it regardless. Your business name, or your trade and your town. Buy it from a registrar with a sane renewal price. You can point it at a paid plan later without losing anything.
Step 2. Pick one free builder and stop researching
The differences between the free tiers matter far less than whether you finish. Wix and Google Sites both work. Pick one. Do not spend three evenings comparing them. When you outgrow it, our website builder reviews will still be here.
Step 3. Build five pages. No more.
- Home: what you do, who for, where, and a phone number above the fold.
- Services: one section per thing you sell. Plain words, not marketing words.
- About: a real photo of a real person, years in the trade, any registration or accreditation.
- Reviews: even three real ones, with names and towns.
- Contact: phone, email, area covered, and a form that actually goes to your inbox.
That is a business website. Everything else is decoration.
Step 4. Write it so a human and a machine both understand it
Say the town. Say the trade. Say the qualification. “Gas Safe registered plumber covering Leeds and Wakefield” beats “Your trusted local heating solutions partner” in every measurable way, including with AI.
Step 5. Do the free things that matter more than the site
Google Business Profile, finished properly. Reviews, requested every job. Listings on directories that are actually alive.
For a local service business, these will bring you more work than the website will. The site’s job is to catch the person who checks you afterwards, and to not lose them.
Step 6. Test it on your phone, on 4G, standing outside
That is how your customers will see it. Most owners only ever look at their site on a laptop on home broadband. When we speed-tested 24 real UK business websites, ten failed on a fast connection. If it is slow or the phone number is hard to tap, you are losing enquiries you will never hear about.
When free is the right answer
When free is right
- You are testing whether the business works at all
- You have no customers yet and no revenue
- Your enquiries come from Google Business Profile, referrals, or the phone, and the site is just a credibility check
- You will buy the domain anyway, and upgrade when the work comes in
When free is wrong
- You are quoting jobs over £1,000
- You are in a trade where trust is the whole sale
- You are printing the URL on anything physical
- Anyone in your market already looks properly professional online
The threshold is roughly this. If a single job would cover a year of hosting, stop optimising for free and start optimising for enquiries.
The Whito view
Free is a trade, not a discount.
You are trading a small amount of money now for a larger amount of hassle later. Sometimes that is a good trade. When you have no revenue and no proof, it is often the right one.
But go in with your eyes open. Buy the domain. Know what the upgrade costs. Understand that a free site is a starting position, not a destination.
The business that never outgrows its free website has a bigger problem than its website.
Whito takeaway
Buy the domain. It is £12 and it is the only part you own.
Build five pages on a free plan. Say what you do, where, and how to reach you.
Finish your Google Business Profile before you touch the site again.
Upgrade the day the work justifies it, not the day the ad annoys you.
And before you spend another hour on anything “free”, read what free marketing actually costs you.
Structure before scale.
