5 Best Free Website Builders with Custom Domain
So, you are in the market for a free website builder with custom domain.
Ideal, because in this article we have our compilation list for our top picks, and we compare the features and pricing for you.
If you just want the best choice, we’ve added that right at the top of the article as this was what is most requested by our customers and what we see the best feedback with. So, that’ll be the “can’t go wrong” option.
Otherwise, feel free to explore all the options we’ve reviewed on the market to find something that might fit you a little better.
Enjoy the list!
The Best Free Website Builders with Custom Domain Specifically
Website builders make website creation a breeze. Even people coming from a non-coding background can create visually appealing websites using these tools. A free website builder that offers domain customization and analytics will be the perfect fit for this category. Have a look at the products below to choose the best free website builder with a custom domain:
1. Webflow
Webflow is a complete content management system (CMS) like Drupal, Magento, and WordPress, plus an influential website designer and builder. Webflow attempts to streamline the website creation process by offering design and development simultaneously.
Webflow allows you to export your website as full-fledged code, link it with your CMS, and host it on your server. With Webflow, you can sit back and watch how your site looks when items are being dropped into your visual canvas.
Webflow Features
Here are some exclusive features of Webflow:
Intuitive Designer: Webflow completely controls HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript in an entirely visual canvas and translates your design into clean and semantic code. You can drag in unstyled HTML elements or use prebuilt pieces for complex elements. Additionally, you can view and reorganize your page’s element structure in the navigator and ensure accessibility.
Content Management System: With Webflow, you can create customized content structures, add elements, and design virtually. You can design your search experience from scratch and control the content visibility for your visitors. Moreover, Webflow ensures you don’t lock yourself into inflexible templates, blog-centric content structures, or complex code languages.
Interactions: Webflow’s interaction and animation tools bring all the power of CSS and JavaScript into a visual tool, empowering designers to build complex, rich animations without coding. You can link your animations and motion to scroll progress to achieve effects like parallax, precise reveal animations, or progress bars.
SEO: Webflow helps you optimize your website SEO with fine-tuned controls, high-performance hosting, and flexible content management tools. You can migrate and update your site URLs without fear by creating and publishing 301 redirects. Webflow’s globally distributed, AWS-powered hosting stack keeps your site running and drives traffic.
Webflow Editor: With Webflow editor, you can create and edit the content on your page without navigating a messy backend content management system. Webflow makes optimizing page titles, meta descriptions, URLs, and open graph settings easier. Additionally, you can invite collaborators to edit your side and preview the changes before publishing.
Webflow Pricing
Webflow offers 5 Pricing options for its website builder and content management system.
The “Free” plan is priced at $0 and offers a Webflow domain, 1GB bandwidth, 50 CMS items, and 50 Form submissions.
The “Basic” plan is priced at $18/month and offers a custom domain, 500 monthly form submissions, and 50 GB bandwidth.
The “CMS” plan is priced at $29/month and offers 2,000 CMS items, 1,000 monthly form submissions, 200 GB bandwidth, and three content editors.
The “Business” plan is priced at $49/month and offers 10,000 CMS items, 2,500 monthly form submissions, 400GB bandwidth, and ten content editors.
The “Enterprise” plan has an on-demand pricing quote. It offers custom bandwidth, uptime SLAs, and 10,000+ CMS items.
2. Strikingly
Strikingly is a website-building tool that allows users to create engaging websites fast and efficiently, even without web design experience. Strikingly makes getting a site up and running easy and quick, making it an excellent choice for DIYers who want a fast, simple way to create a beautiful site without diving into the coding.
Strikingly offers email marketing options if you would like to send out newsletters, social media integration in case you would like to promote your social media on the site or the website in the social media pages, and custom domains to boost your site’s SEO. Strikingly lets you put code in your website’s header for analytics tracking.
Strikingly Features
Here are some exclusive features of Strikingly:
Templates: Strikingly gives easy, straightforward user interface instructions when building the website from the templates. Strikingly guides you in choosing a starting point and gives you an extensive list of templates. Once you have decided on what kind of site you want to build, you can select a template from their library.
Mobile Optimization: Strikingly automatically optimizes the element appearance for mobile screens to create an excellent visitor browsing experience. You can switch the element’s mobile appearance handling to manual mode and reveal additional mobile-only settings. With Strikingly, you can ensure your website runs smoothly on all devices.
Drag-and-drop Editor: Strikingly offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor to help you swiftly create a website by arranging elements. Additionally, Strikingly provides a step-by-step guide describing the functionalities of various buttons on its editor. Further, you can migrate your websites to Strikingly and preserve your existing links.
No Branding: Unlike other popular website builders, Strikingly lets you publish websites without their branding. It helps you get a professional outlook for your website and improves traffic. Additionally, you can enhance the security level of your website by restricting access without a password.
Site Analytics: Strikingly provides insight into words that would increase search engine optimization. You can see statistics like pageview, subscribers, and viewer location. With Strikingly, you gain the requisite tools for user marketing efforts. Strikingly helps you turn your website into an online store by offering eCommerce capabilities.
Strikingly Pricing
Strikingly offers 3 Pricing options for its website builder platform.
The “Limited” plan is priced at $12/month and offers 50GB bandwidth, 1GB storage per site, free SSL for a custom domain, and two limited websites.
The “Pro” plan is priced at $20/month and offers 3 Pro sites, a custom domain, unlimited bandwidth, and password protection.
The “VIP” plan is priced at $59/month and offers 5 VIP sites, 2,000 active contacts, a live chat widget, newsletters, and multiple membership tiers.
3. Wix
Wix is a website and online store-building platform for people who don’t necessarily have coding skills or designing experience. It’s an extremely flexible platform that provides absolute control over layout customization. Wix is a design-driven eCommerce tool that helps you build an online presence and churn out more sales.
Wix Features
Here are some exclusive features of Wix:
Wix Editor: Wix offers an innovative drag-and-drop online store builder with over 500 designer-made templates. You can bring your eCommerce store to life with animation, video backgrounds and scroll effects. Additionally, Wix helps you drive organic traffic with built-in SEO tools and custom meta tags.
Store Manager: With Wix, you can track orders and manage inventory from a centralized platform. It ensures your product database is regularly updated with the latest orders and item availability. Moreover, you can showcase your products and in-stock inventory with a beautiful layout.
Wix Music: Wix offers a personalized online store option for musicians to showcase their albums, tracks and playlists. Your listeners can buy your music directly from the store without any hidden commissions. Moreover, you get advanced statistics showing your most popular songs and trending albums.
Social Tools and Email Marketing: Building a social following is necessary for individual business owners to amplify their reach. With Wix, you can keep your site content fresh and post regular blogs to increase your social presence on the internet. Additionally, you can send personalized emails to prospects regarding abandoned carts or upcoming promotions.
Visitor Analytics: Wix provides insights into your store traffic and visitor behaviour. You can see which products generate more clicks or trigger purchases. Wix ensures you’re on top of the analytical data and enhances the effectiveness of your eCommerce store. Additionally, you can get periodic reports regarding sales, inventory and lead conversions.
Wix Pricing
Wix offers 3 Pricing options for its website building and eCommerce platform.
The “Business Basic” plan is priced: at $3.99/month upon annual billing. It offers a free domain for 1 Year and 20 GB of storage space.
The “Business Unlimited” plan is priced: at $4.99/month upon annual billing. It offers unlimited bandwidth and 35 GB of storage space.
The “Business VIP” plan is priced: at $7.99/month upon annual billing. It offers customized reports and 50 GB of storage space.
4. Pixpa
Pixpa is a capable website builder that works particularly well for photographers, graphic designers, artists, and other visual creatives. Pixpa shines when it comes to selling digital products.
Pixpa allows you to create professional online stores and portfolios. It is an excellent option if you are a photographer looking to build your portfolio, potentially selling prints or other products or services to your fans and followers. Pixpa also has a built-in client gallery function that allows photographers to share, prove, deliver, and market their work to clients. Clients can view their photos, create a shortlist, and even order prints from their site.
Pixpa Features
Here are some exclusive features of Pixpa:
Templates: Pixpa Platform is built especially for creating online portfolio websites for creatives such as artists and photographers. Pixpa is a clean, intuitive, easy-to-use website builder best suited to designing stunning Portfolio websites for photographers and artists. Pixpa also has powerful eCommerce website-building tools to help you create an online shop or gallery.
Mobile Optimization: Pixpa automatically optimizes the element appearance for mobile screens to create an excellent visitor browsing experience. You can switch the element’s mobile appearance handling to manual mode and reveal additional mobile-only settings. With Pixpa, you can ensure your website runs smoothly on all devices.
Drag-and-drop Editor: Pixpa offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor to help you swiftly create a website by arranging elements. Additionally, Pixpa provides a step-by-step guide describing the functionalities of various buttons on its editor. Further, you can migrate your websites to Pixpa and preserve your existing links.
No Branding: Unlike other popular website builders, Pixpa lets you publish websites without their branding. It helps you get a professional outlook for your website and improves traffic. Additionally, you can enhance the security level of your website by restricting access without a password.
Site Analytics: Pixpa provides insight into words that would increase search engine optimization. You can see statistics like pageview, subscribers, and viewer location. With Pixpa, you gain the requisite tools for user marketing efforts. Pixpa helps you turn your website into an online store by offering eCommerce capabilities.
Pixpa Pricing
Pixpa offers 4 Pricing options for its website and portfolio builder.
The “Basic” plan is priced at $6/month and offers customizable themes, mobile optimization, advanced SEO, and a free SSL certificate.
The “Creator” plan is priced at $12/month and offers social media connections, a free custom domain, 301 redirects, and a cookie information bar.
The “Professional” plan is priced at $18/month and offers an announcement bar, custom fonts, product options, and info sections.
The “Advanced” plan is priced at $25/month and offers auto-fulfillment, guest checkout, inventory management, and abandoned cart recovery.
5. Jimdo
Whether you want to set up a personal blog website or build a simple online presence for your small business, Jimdo has something for you. Jimdo is a famous website builder that allows you to create websites and online stores easily.
You do not need coding knowledge to create a site using its website editor, which is a bonus. Moreover, limited features make its site editor simple to use, so if you only need to be able to create a simple website, Jimdo could be a good fit.
Jimdo Features
Here are some exclusive features of Jimdo:
Website Personalization: Jimdo offers a rich library of pre-made personalizations and allows you to implement them swiftly. You can combine any mix of triggers and actions to create a website personalization rule that perfectly fits your unique requirements. Additionally, you can use geo-targeting to ensure your site visitors see content relevant to their physical location.
Team Collaboration: With Jimdo, you can empower your team to leave comments directly on top of a website as it’s being built without any back-and-forth over the phone. Its intuitive search bar allows you to find comment threads quickly to catch up on any conversation. Additionally, all website comments are automatically logged in one location, enabling you to track conversations easily.
Client Management: Jimdo offers a white label editor that lets you add the brand’s colors and logo. You can send automatically generated emails to your customers and provide them with site stats, analytics, and instructions. Additionally, Jimdo boosts your sales with professionally curated marketing materials.
Content Library: With Jimdo, you can build websites faster than ever by directly pulling clients’ content from a website or Facebook page into the content library. You can optimize your workflow by syncing site content with an external data set connected through Jimdo’s API. Jimdo’s content management tools enable you to organize and save clients’ images in the content library.
SEO: Jimdo increases site discoverability with local business schema, which provides search engines with reliable information about a website. It also supports IndexNow, enabling sites to submit updated content directly to search engines. Additionally, Jimdo automatically generates a site map and informs search engines about pages that need crawling.
Jimdo Pricing
Jimdo offers 4 Pricing options for its website builder platform.
The “Play” plan is free and includes a generic domain and all base features.
The “Start” plan is priced at $4.99/month and removes advertisements. Additionally, it offers a 10 GB bandwidth and 1 forwarding email address.
The “Grow” plan is priced at $9.99/month and offers contact forms, advanced SEO, fast indexing, and mobile optimization.
The “Unlimited” plan is priced at 19.99/month and offers an image library, statistics, and professional design analysis.
Why use a Website Builder at all?
A website is your platform for answering any basic questions your prospects might ask about your business and brand. It gives you the space to curate your brand’s messaging and ensure customers can find the information they need. A website allows you to share your company’s message with potential customers and helps establish trust in your company.
You no longer need to be a web developer with coding skills and lots of time and money just to make a simple website that looks professional.
If you know nothing about web development, a website builder is a fantastic tool for getting your site up and running fast. It allows you to create a beautiful, functional website without coding or design knowledge. Website builders are user-friendly frameworks equipped with custom design themes and an array of advanced website-building features that let anyone — beginners & developers alike — create a site quickly.
Why should you use free website builders with Custom Domain?
In most cases, if you use a free site builder, you cannot attach a custom domain. Fortunately, many site builders will give you free domain name registration.
Whether customized or free, the domain name is how users can find your site, read your articles, and purchase your products or services.
If you have purchased a domain name in the past or you acquired one from someone else, connecting it with your free website hosting account is easy. Once you set up your website, you can connect an entirely new domain name.
By using a custom domain, you are making a more powerful brand statement about your online business, and doing so makes it seem more legitimate. Using a custom domain connected to your business may entice customers who trust your brand to click on a link for your promotions.
A custom domain helps your customers discover you on search engines like Google, increasing your site’s search rankings.
Free Website Builders with Custom Domain, A Summary
Website builders allow business people and freelancers from non-coding backgrounds to create stunning websites that drive growth. However, only some free website builders provide a custom domain. As a beginner, you can do just as fine with a free domain of your website builder tool and later upgrade to a custom one.
Webflow offers a free plan for its website builder and also provides a custom domain. It is our suggested pick for a free website builder with a custom domain. Visit the website to get started.