Free Wix alternatives — and what free actually costs
The short answer
Several platforms have a genuinely free tier, and for some businesses that is the right choice. But free almost always means their branding on your site, their subdomain instead of your domain, and no way out — which are three things that cost real money later. If you take one thing from this page: register your own domain even if the site stays free.
On this page
Free is a real option, and this is not a page telling you not to
If the budget is genuinely zero, a free site beats no site by a wide margin, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. A café with a free one-page site that has the address, the hours and a photograph is better served than a café with nothing while it saves up.
So use one. Just go in knowing exactly what is being exchanged, because the costs are real and they arrive later.
What every free tier takes
Their branding on your site. A badge, a footer line, sometimes a banner. Customers notice, and what it signals is not "thrifty" — it is "this might not be a real business", which is the opposite of what a website is for.
Their subdomain instead of your domain. yourbusiness.theirplatform.com. This is the expensive one and it is the one that looks harmless. Every card you print, every link anyone shares, every scrap of search authority you earn accrues to their domain rather than yours. The day you upgrade, you start that from zero.
No way out. Free tiers are the most locked-in version of an already locked-in product.
Some also add adverts, limit pages, cap storage, or disable the contact form — which is the one that quietly makes the site pointless, since an enquiry you never receive is the whole return on the exercise.
The genuinely usable free tiers
Wix free. Their branding, their subdomain, adverts. The editor is capable, which is why people start here.
WordPress.com free. Same shape: their branding, a wordpress.com address, limited customisation. Not the same as self-hosted WordPress, which is free software you pay to host — a distinction that confuses a lot of people.
Google Business Profile — and this is the recommendation most people miss. Not a website, and for a local business it does more than a free site will. Free, appears on Maps and in local results, carries your hours, photographs, reviews and a call button. If you have limited time, complete this before you build anything — see what is a Google Business Profile.
A single well-made page, hosted free on any static host, if anyone around you can write basic HTML. No branding, no adverts, and your own domain — which makes it strictly better than any of the above, with the obvious catch that you need somebody to change it.
The one thing to pay for
Register your own domain, today, even if everything else stays free.
It costs about the same as a couple of coffees a year. It is the only part of your web presence that is genuinely yours, and it is the one decision that gets more expensive the longer you wait — because everything you build on a free subdomain has to be rebuilt when you move, and the links pointing at it cannot be redirected.
You can point your own domain at a free site on some platforms, and pay for a tier on others. Either way, own the name — see what is a domain name.
When to stop being free
Move when one of these becomes true, and not before:
- The branding is embarrassing you in front of customers
- You are handing out an address you have to explain
- The site is bringing in enquiries and the cap is losing them
- You want to be found for what you do rather than for your name
Notice none of those is "it feels unprofessional". Feelings are not a reason; losing an enquiry is.
What paid should get you, when you get there
The trap after leaving a free tier is paying and receiving a slightly less restricted version of the same thing. At minimum: your own domain with no platform branding, real text pages, a certificate, and the ability to change your own content.
What separates paid options from each other sits further down and rarely appears on a pricing page — whether the design is yours or a template thousands share, whether you can edit your own SEO titles, and whether the code is yours if you leave. Helm is built on that last one: a custom design you can still edit, on a domain in your name, with the code remaining yours. That is the actual gap between "not free any more" and "not rented any more", and they are not the same upgrade.
The short version
Use a free tier if the budget is zero — it beats nothing. Complete your Google Business Profile first, because for a local business it does more. Understand you are paying in branding, in somebody else's domain, and in the cost of leaving. And buy your own domain name now, whatever else you do, because it is cheap today and expensive to have skipped.