Create a website for free — three routes and where each one ends

A website can be had for nothing, and it is not a trick — three routes lead to a working address without spending anything. Each has a precise limit, and all three have it in the same place.

The limit does not fall where you would expect. A free site is not uglier or slower — it can be both attractive and fast. It is that what is free is the place where something exists, not the place where it is meant to be found and to look like it is yours.

Below: the three routes, what each gives you, and the bill for the one that most often turns out right.

Three routes to a site without spending anything

They differ not in price — all three start at zero — but in what stays in your hands. The only criterion that matters a year later.

Route one: a builder's free plan

The fastest and most commonly chosen. Open an account, pick a template, type in the content — the site works the same day.

The limit sits in the same place at every provider. On Wix's free plan the site runs on a wixsite.com address, carries the provider's branding, and connecting your own domain requires a paid plan — Wix says so itself. It caps at 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth and cannot accept payments; on Wix's own account, neither can the entry paid plan. Webflow's Starter gives a webflow.io address, two static pages, 1 GB of bandwidth and fifty form submissions.

The practical consequences are three, and all of them concern credibility rather than technology:

• The address is not yours. yourcompany.wixsite.com/site on a card, an invoice or an email signature says something about the company before anyone clicks.
• Somebody else's brand is on your site. Not taste — a statement that you invested nothing in this.
• Content is hard to get out. Moving off a closed builder means rebuilding the layout anyway, and some providers export nothing beyond the data. Covered separately.

When it is enough: when the site has to exist — because somebody asked, because there has to be somewhere to send people, because an idea is being tested. A correct choice, and nothing embarrassing about it.

Route two: WordPress.org — the engine is free, the rest is not

The system is free and there is no licensing catch. The catch is elsewhere: WordPress.org is software, not a service — it has to stand on something, and that costs.

You need hosting and a domain. And here appears the mechanism that spoils most "free website" arithmetic: the price you see at purchase is a promotional first-year price.

Prices read from published German price lists on 10 September 2026:

So the real start can be close to nothing — about €23 in the first year on the promotional route. From year two it is roughly €144 a year, and that is the figure to plan against.

The promotional year is not how hosting works; it is one business model, and both are sold openly side by side. IONOS steps eleven-fold from month thirteen. Netcup runs no promotion and says so on the page: "The prices of our webhosting packages are valid for the entire term and not just for the first months." On that route the bill is about €45 a year including the domain — the same in year one and year five. Picking a provider that does not discount the first year is the whole fix, and checking costs nothing.

What those few dozen euros buy: your own address, no one else's branding, and a content database that is yours. The only route you can walk away from carrying what you built.

The mistake that costs most: WordPress.com is not WordPress.org

Two names differing by one suffix, meaning two entirely different things — the commonest misunderstanding on the subject.

WordPress.org is the free engine above, installed on your own hosting. No plan, no subscription, no provider who could change their mind — only a bill for hosting and a domain.

WordPress.com is one company's commercial service built on that engine, with a free plan and paid ones above. It behaves like a builder: the free plan means an address in the provider's domain and its branding, and your own domain starts at the Personal plan — €48 a year.

The consequence is single but important: if somebody says "we'll set you up a free WordPress", that means something completely different depending on which version they mean — and the two differ in the cost of leaving. From your own installation you take the database and the files. From WordPress.com, as much as the export allows.

Route three: a Google Business Profile instead of a site

The most underrated and, for some companies, the best. The profile is free, appears in search results and on maps, and takes reviews, photographs, opening hours and a phone number — what somebody wants when they type your company name or a service in their area.

It is not a website and does not pretend to be. You will not tell the company's story or build an offer across several pages. What it does is solve local findability better than a free site in someone else's domain, because it sits where people look.

When it is right: local services, where the customer searches for "plumber near me" rather than a company name. Setting up a profile we cover step by step, and local visibility has its own hub.

Creating a website for free — step by step

The order that saves most time is the opposite of the intuitive one: content first, tool second. Most free sites fail not because the builder was hard, but because after choosing a template there was nothing to put in it.

Step 1 — write down what has to be on the site. Four or five items: what you do, for whom, why you, how to get in touch. One sheet. This decides whether the site leads anywhere.

Step 2 — gather photographs. Your own, even on a phone, beat stock. A picture of work, the team or the premises does more for credibility than any template.

Step 3 — only now choose the route. With content in hand the choice takes a quarter of an hour: you can see whether you need five pages or a profile will do.

Step 4 — publish the imperfect version. A site that exists with a current phone number beats a better one still being made in month three.

Step 5 — check three things before circulating the address: that the form or number works, that it opens on a phone, and that a search engine can see it. The first two take five minutes, the third goes through our test.

The process fits into one afternoon, provided step one is done. Without it, it stretches across weeks and usually ends in abandonment.

Does "free forever" exist

"Free forever" appears in offers regularly. It is less often untrue than it is a promise nobody can guarantee, because it concerns a provider's future business decisions.

Not theoretical. Hosts that offered a free plan for years can withdraw it or shut down — 000webhost closed, and Freenom stopped issuing free domains. The sites on them stopped working, and their owners found out from an announcement.

The closest example is from the same yard as route three: Google spent years allowing a simple site to be built from a Business Profile, then withdrew it, so those addresses stopped working and traffic went to the profile. Companies whose only site was there were left without one overnight — we described what to do then. Not an accusation against Google: even the largest provider withdraws free features when they stop paying.

The risk is asymmetric, and that is the right way to see it. If the free site is a test listing, losing it costs an afternoon. If it is the company's only address, printed on cards and invoices, it costs orders of magnitude more — and the decision will be taken without you.

The rule: the more that address matters, the less it should depend on somebody else's decision. Your own domain costs under a euro in the first year on a promotional rate and about €12 a year afterwards — the cheapest insurance in the whole bill, because even if the provider disappears the address stays yours and moves with you.

Free templates — what to watch for

Templates are the main selling point of free plans and save the most work. Three things worth knowing before you pick the best-looking one.

The demo is not how it looks with your content. Templates are designed around photographs in perfect proportions and text of a chosen length. The same layout with your logo and three sentences of offer looks entirely different. Pick one whose blocks match the content you have, not what you would like to have.

Simpler is usually better. A template with animations, sliding sections and full-screen video looks impressive in a demo and can be a wall on a phone with a weak signal. The fewer moving parts, the fewer things to break.

Changing template can mean rebuilding. In some builders switching theme after publication means laying the content out again, because blocks do not carry across. An argument for an extra quarter of an hour on the choice — not on looks, but on whether it has the sections you need.

What the customer sees

The credibility argument reads as snobbery, so reduce it to the moments where the address is visible and means something.

In search results. The address sits under the title. yourcompany.com and yourcompany.wixsite.com/my-site say two different things about what stage a company is at — legible before anyone clicks.

In email. The contact address on a free setup usually stays with Gmail or Outlook. A mailbox on your own domain costs extra, but it is visible in every message you send — more often than the site.

When someone asks for a quote. A B2B customer checking a supplier before a call draws conclusions from the address and the provider's badge in the footer. Not always consciously or fairly — but they draw them.

That does not mean a free site disqualifies you. It means its cost is real, only paid in a different currency — and it is worth knowing when that currency becomes dearer than about forty-five euros a year.

How to leave a free site when it stops being enough

Leaving is easier than it looks, provided you plan it. Three steps:

Domain first. Buy your own, even while the site still sits in a builder. A few euros, and from then everything you build is built under an address that is yours. Many builders let you connect it once you move to a paid plan — and then the move does not wipe out your search position.

Content next. Copy the text into an ordinary document and download the photographs at original resolution. The part you really do not want to write twice — and with closed builders the export is sometimes impossible.

The tool last. Only with a domain and content in hand do you choose where the site stands. Then the choice is technical and reversible — not a situation in which you rewrite the company from scratch because a plan ran out.

If the move concerns a site that already means something in search, the order and the redirects matter critically — a separate guide.

What a "free" site really costs after a year

The three routes across two years, using only items you can point at on a price list:

The conclusion often surprises: the difference between "free" and "your own" is, on the cheapest sensible route, about forty-five euros a year. Less than one phone contract — and the only amount here that buys anything durable. It is also the row where reading the renewal price before buying does all the work: the same choice made carelessly costs three times as much from year two.

To price a variant with a paid theme or plugins, we have the maintenance cost calculator. The full recurring bill, with its four layers and its renewal traps, we set out separately.

When a free site is the right choice

Not a question about company size or budget. It is about what the site has to do.

Free is enough when the site has to exist: to confirm the company is real, give a contact, show work to somebody who already knows you. When you are testing an idea and do not yet know whether there is a business in it. When the business is starting and every euro has a more urgent use.

Free stops being enough in four situations, all recognisable in advance:

• The address appears in your materials. Cards, invoices, quotes, signatures. Somebody else's domain there costs credibility every time.
• The site has to be found in search. No hard block, but free plans usually limit what can be configured — and without your own domain you build the standing of an address that is not yours.
• Somebody besides you edits content. Collaborator limits usually start at the paid plan.
• You start selling something. Payments and shops are absent from free plans or carry limits that end at the first success — on Wix neither the free plan nor the entry paid one can take payments.

A fifth is separate, because it does not depend on you: a free plan is free until the day the provider changes its mind. That genuinely happens, and we describe it with examples under free hosting.

What cannot be bought for zero

Three things get treated as free when they are merely deferred.

Content. Text and photographs are the only part you cannot download with the template. You can write it yourself — and then it costs your time, which nobody counts.

Visibility. A site that exists is not a site anyone will find. A free address in someone else's domain starts from a worse position, and there is no way around that without your own domain.

Time to learn. A builder is simple, but arranging a site that leads to contact is a different skill from moving blocks. A real cost, and the most often underestimated.

The conclusion: for nothing you can have an address. For around forty-five euros a year — ownership. The rest of the bill, whichever route you take, is in your time anyway.