What is the best free website builder?

32 replies
Hi I need to create several websites that I would like to test with and get ranked for many different keywords. Right now I have more time than money and was wondering what is the best free or low cost website builder to use.

Have looked at sites like Weebly and Wix but wondering what else is out there.

Thanks in advance for your help guys.
#builder #free #website
  • Profile picture of the author tahoecale
    Free websites are not going to get ranked.. i would not waste my time or money on a free website. maybe if you were building a link pyramid but thats it. and if thats the case than use them all blogger, squidoo, WP, ect....
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    • Profile picture of the author Andylinks
      Originally Posted by tahoecale View Post

      Free websites are not going to get ranked.. i would not waste my time or money on a free website. maybe if you were building a link pyramid but thats it. and if thats the case than use them all blogger, squidoo, WP, ect....

      This is very true. I think you should find low cost websites to use.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by tahoecale View Post

      Free websites are not going to get ranked.
      What a bizarre view! Since when did whether a website will get ranked have anything to do with whether or not it's free?! And how, exactly, would that work?!

      Are you telling us that free WordPress blogs, hosted free at Freehostia or Byethost or 000WebHost won't get ranked?

      Or that Weebly sites don't get ranked?!

      (Even I have some Weebly sites that rank very well, and I'm hardly the world's greatest SEO enthusiast).

      I suggest you think again.

      Originally Posted by jfoster01 View Post

      Have looked at sites like Weebly and Wix but wondering what else is out there.
      Lots and lots of things are "out there". Where a site's hosted and from what CMS it's made don't normally affect its ranking potential at all.

      However, at Wix, there are two different kinds of sites available: HTML-5 ones (fine for ranking) and Flash ones (not so good for ranking, as even Wix themselves admit pretty openly).

      What's more important than how easily they rank is how safe/secure they are to use, and what the host's TOS are. For these reasons, if you want free sites, I strongly recommended free, self-hosted WordPress blogs at places like Freehostia and Byethost, where you don't have to worry about the host deleting them.

      By the way, guys, this thread's from last December. I'm "just saying".
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    I like Microsoft Expression Web 4 and Yahoo Sitebuilder. They're really good.
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    • Profile picture of the author upnorth
      I think you should consider Wordpress. Only have to buy the domains, WP is free and a high performance tool.
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      • Profile picture of the author katherineolga
        Originally Posted by upnorth View Post

        I think you should consider Wordpress. Only have to buy the domains, WP is free and a high performance tool.
        This is what I was going to suggest! Wordpress has been good to me over the years. I've gotten burned more than once while having my information hosted in other places. For instance, I had a Blogger blog deleted once and I couldn't even figure out why. My best, most profitable Squidoo lens just recently got locked so I deleted it. That's just a small percentage of the situations I've been in.
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  • Profile picture of the author benzwm02
    wordpress.org is the best. there are many free tutorials on how to set this up
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  • Profile picture of the author jamesrich1
    Not a good idea to build your business on someone elses land. At any time if they feel your breaking their rules they will shut you down. Hosting is $10 a month. Are you telling me you don't have $10 a month to invest in your business?
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    • Profile picture of the author mervp
      Originally Posted by jamesrich1 View Post

      Not a good idea to build your business on someone elses land. At any time if they feel your breaking their rules they will shut you down. Hosting is $10 a month. Are you telling me you don't have $10 a month to invest in your business?
      If a marketer is expecting to create dozens of sites, that $10 could easily be $200 or more bucks. That's a lot of cash in total monthly hosting fees for urls that may not even be making any money yet. It's important to invest some risk management into a business too, by lowering one's expenses and exposure where possible.

      If the methods for getting good traffic to them are not going to be relying on ranking the sites SEO-wise, using a free website builder could be a good option. Promote the pages through strong follow-thru traffic from videos, social media, Yahoo Answers and the like. Not everything has to revolve around the search engines or ranking position.

      And as for "owning your own land" or domain plus hosting, remember that almost nobody actually does. A domain name is something people rent for a year or more, then connect to somebody else's server space they are also renting for a fee. Depending on the policies of the registrar or webhost, they might still shut you down on a dime.
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      • Profile picture of the author Kay King
        If a marketer is expecting to create dozens of sites, that $10 could easily be $200 or more bucks.
        That is simply not true.

        You can get hosting for $6-7 a month and use add-ons to host additional sites and it won't cost you a penny more. You can get Hostgator or similar decent shared hosting and create a blog with Fantastico and not pay for a site "builder".

        For $25 a month you can get a hosting reseller acct at Hostgator and have stand alone cpanel hosting for multiple sites.

        You can build a site for free (and site building was the initial question) - but hosting for free carries some risk.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jtraits
    i would not recommend free websites as their code can end up ranking you like a spammer or something .. nowadays creating a website is really easy... phpnuke or wordpress are just 2-3 lines configuration with their readme files and moving them to a host and that's it
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  • Profile picture of the author timmor29
    Originally Posted by jfoster01 View Post

    .. what is the best free or low cost website builder to use.
    Have looked at sites like Weebly and Wix but wondering what else is out there.
    Weebly and Wix are both pretty nice but I would recommend using EXAI. I think their platform is one of the easiest to use - you'll have you websites up and running in no time. They also just came out with a free app that turns your Facebook page into a website, which is probably the quickest way to create a website.
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  • Profile picture of the author shawnirwin
    Some website builders are wordpress,webs,weebly
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    Please stop promoting your website in your posts.
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  • Profile picture of the author moneyman2010
    You can check out homestead.com..I would go with a wordpress site easy to set up and they rank good on Google..
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  • Profile picture of the author owenlee
    Using a self hosted wordpress would be good

    That site will belong to you...
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  • Profile picture of the author TimothyTorrents
    Wordpress is 100% free and you can customize most of the free themes to create a professional looking website. Look into it.
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  • Profile picture of the author mervp
    Not everybody loves Hostgator, with all respect, nor want shared hosting. I did not say the hosting fees must run that high up, but that it could run that high. The point is the cumulative cost of hosting multiple domains can run into the hundreds per month, depending on how many sites one has, or what paid service is chosen, so it's misleading to simply say "it's just $10 a month."
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    • Profile picture of the author rickwill71
      that was some great advice guys "again" people helping people
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    • Profile picture of the author tooAlive
      Originally Posted by mervp View Post

      Not everybody loves Hostgator, with all respect, nor want shared hosting. I did not say the hosting fees must run that high up, but that it could run that high. The point is the cumulative cost of hosting multiple domains can run into the hundreds per month, depending on how many sites one has, or what paid service is chosen, so it's misleading to simply say "it's just $10 a month."
      I'm with Kay. Hostgator isn't the only hosting provider that offers hosting for around $10 a month. And why wouldn't he go with shared hosting?

      If he's just starting out there's no reason for him to get a VPS or a dedicated server. I still have a few sites (10+) on my shared Hostgator account and never had any problems whatsoever.

      If he starts his business on a free platform like Blogger, Wix, a .wordpress site, ect, he's going to be very limited later on.

      And as far as domains go, GoDaddy has $.99 coupons every once in a while, so it can be really cheap to get started. I don't think ~$10 a month is misleading at all.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnlagoudakis
    I suggest wordpress.org since this is more popular and more easy to use. I hope this helps.

    Regards,
    John Lagoudakis
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  • Profile picture of the author tooAlive
    If you look around hard enough you'll find a Dreamhost coupon that gets you your entire first year for free (~$97 off).

    Combine that with the GoDaddy $0.99 domain specials, and you've got yourself a few sites up and running for literally a couple of bucks for a whole year.

    If you're serious about this biz, I don't think there's an excuse not to get started with your own self-hosted websites that can be had for less than a frappuccino at Starbucks.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      Not everybody loves Hostgator, with all respect, nor want shared hosting. I did not say the hosting fees must run that high up, but that it could run that high. The point is the cumulative cost of hosting multiple domains can run into the hundreds per month, depending on how many sites one has, or what paid service is chosen, so it's misleading to simply say "it's just $10 a month."
      Someone who asking HOW to build a site is not ready for a dedicated server or a VPS - they don't need that to get started. They need a hosting company with good training and support.

      There is no "cumulative cost" of multiple site hosting as such. I know people who run 10 sites (10 domains) on one $7/month host. I run two dozen sites on one $25 shared reseller account. That's $1/month to host each site.

      If you get a separate account for each site you build, of course the cost goes up. Some sites need their own account - but that's a totally different issue and not relevant for someone new to building sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author george b
    I used to use Free Website Builder - Moonfruit - Total website design control

    My sites always used to rank, and quickly!

    I have moved over to wordpress now though because I was limited before with what I could and couldn't do!
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  • Profile picture of the author kiwikelno1
    Komposer is excellent free and easy to use.
    KompoZer - Easy web authoring
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  • Profile picture of the author johnben1444
    Looks like WP has more votes, we can't say more..
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  • Profile picture of the author alliance
    Wordpress is amazing with all the free and premium themes and plugins available. The open source innovation makes wordpress easy to work with and the ability to design attractive websites.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nino C
    WordPress.org is the best way to go... if you are getting started with webdesign then you also want to check out Wix.com..

    Wix is free and if you want to host your site without Wix advertisement, you pay a monthly fee... Very simple to start with!

    But stil, WordPress rocks!
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  • Profile picture of the author rodsav
    I use Word press, its free and easy. It also provides good tutorials. You can search YouTube, there are plenty of how to do video's. Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author onlineworker11
    There have been some good advice earler in this thread by other users and someone mentioned weebly,that what I can reccomend also.At weebly you can set up your own business website for free,you can also buy a domainname there to get your own hosting for it. Its asy to use,you can enter html code for your capture form to your autoresponder ,upload videos and more.
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  • Profile picture of the author seohallmark
    FREE website builders are not at all FREE and they may have with twists, better option is to start your own self hosted Wordpress blogs, you can design your site that the style you want and even you can set it as a squeeze page too.

    Its only cost to register your domain, some times you can get some offers on Godaddy to register a domain and hosting you can use shared or VPS hosting to host multiple site files.

    You can use premium like free Wordpress themes and no further investment is needed, as some one suggested, you like a own boss if you've your own website.
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  • Profile picture of the author davegarcia939
    It's Wordpress. All you need is to install Wordpress and setting up themes and Plugins.
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