Best Free Website Builders In Canada For May 2024

GoDaddy is a go-to for many online entrepreneurs buying domains for brands they may or may not build someday. Its website builder lets you take the next step to get your online brand up and running.

With a free plan, you can set up a website using the drag-and-drop editor and built-in themes. You can set up an online store with PayPal payments and upgrade to access more payment options.

A free site comes with a yoursite.godaddysites.com domain and, if you upgrade to a paid account starting at $119.88 CAD per year ($9.99 CAD per month with an annual term), you’ll get a custom domain free for one year.

A free site comes with on-platform email and social media marketing and limited website templates and images through GoDaddy Studio.

Learn More: Read our GoDaddy Website Builder Review

Who should use it:

GoDaddy’s website builder is built with any kind of online business in mind—from content to coaching to products. But it emphasizes e-commerce and customer service features that make it the strongest fit for online stores. As long as you’re OK accepting payments through PayPal, you can set up your online store for free.

Wix offers a free website builder plus several paid tiers you can upgrade to for more features as your business grows.

The free builder comes with a similar experience to the paid versions. You get access to customizable drag-and-drop site templates, free stock images, web hosting and mobile responsive design. Email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) tools and client management tools are built in.

With a free account, you’ll use an assigned address, which is a little clunky compared with competitors: accountname.wixsite.com/siteaddress. You get up to 500 MB of storage and 500 MB of bandwidth. Like many free builders, Wix shows ads on your site and it’ll show the Wix favicon next to the URL rather than your logo.

Learn More: Read our Wix Review.

Who should use it:

Use Wix to build an online presence for your brick-and-mortar business like an accounting firm, financial planning, small law business or other services.

Best known for email marketing tools, Mailchimp has grown to cover all your marketing needs.

Mailchimp’s free website builder includes a drag-and-drop editor with the same user experience (UX) as its email management service. You get access to free themes and designed colour palettes, and you can set up your own colour palette to match your brand.

Mailchimp’s builder doesn’t include a domain, so you can’t start 100% free. You’ll have to buy a domain from a third party, which usually costs about $10 CAD for the first year and follow the instructions to point it at your Mailchimp site.

As you grow, you can upgrade to paid plans for more features, including paid email marketing plans if your list grows beyond 2,000.

Who should use it:

With its free e-commerce and appointment scheduling features, a Mailchimp website is a good fit for micro businesses selling things like physical products or coaching.

Weebly has long been a popular choice for e-commerce, so it’s no surprise that the payment processing company Square, Inc., acquired it in 2018.

Weebly’s free website builder includes robust e-commerce tools for selling physical products, including an online store, unlimited items, item badges and options, inventory management, coupons and Square gift cards. The drag-and-drop builder includes SEO tools and lead capture, and you can upgrade to use Weebly Promote for email and social media marketing.

Who should use it:

With robust e-commerce tools, Weebly is a good option for anyone selling products online. Its free version lets your customers order items online to pick up in your physical store, or you can upgrade to sell digital goods, calculate shipping costs and print shipping labels to send items directly to your customers.

Learn more: Read our Weebly Review

WordPress has been the dominant force in free website development for years as its WordPress.com service was among the first professional online website builders to give you the domain, hosting and design you need to get going totally free.

With a free site using the cloud-based WordPress.com builder, you get a drag-and-drop editor with dozens of themes, a yoursite.wordpress.com domain and hosting.

WordPress displays ads on your free site, and you can’t access e-commerce tools without upgrading to a paid account. However, the cost to upgrade is lower than most competitors—the lowest-price plan is just $59 CAD a year, and you can remove ads and collect payments.

If you want a more customizable site with access to the open-source plugins WordPress is known for, you can build a self-managed WordPress site using the software from WordPress.org.

WordPress.org is better known for its paid website builders, but it’s possible to use the software for free.
You need to find free or cheap web hosting, and you can download free WordPress themes to use the drag-and-drop editor and CMS. This requires more tech know-how than any cloud-based option, so you might need to hire a WordPress developer to set up the site for you.

Who should use it:

WordPress is designed for blogs and includes one of the most robust content management systems broadly available. That functionality could be unnecessary or overwhelming unless content is central to your business, so WordPress is best suited for content-based businesses, such as blogs, magazines, news sites and other online publications.

Webflow is a no-code drag-and-drop website editor that offers more design customization than many others. The builder is intuitive and easy for nearly anyone on your team to adopt, with an editor reminiscent of word processors that most will be familiar with.

The builder supports website animations and scroll-based parallax for a modern interface and dynamic design.

The back end is intuitive and uncomplicated. Webflow includes a built-in CMS to manage a blog or other site content, including SEO features, but its options aren’t as robust for content-based sites as a builder like WordPress.

Who should use it:

Webflow is a growing favourite among emerging tech start-ups. It offers modern design options that help you keep up with competitors—without putting all of your resources into website design and maintenance.

Ucraft is a free website builder with a drag-and-drop editor, hosting, CMS and e-commerce functions. You can build and publish a website for free and connect it to your own domain—a function that’s unusual for totally free site builders.

The platform also includes a logo maker and a blogging platform with paid plans, so you’ll have everything you need to get a new business operational for a low monthly price.

Who should use it:

Ucraft is a free alternative to Squarespace and could be a better option for small business owners who need a no-frills static website to establish an online presence for a low cost.

SITE123 is a basic, easy-to-use site builder that offers packages tailored to small businesses, e-commerce, bloggers and more. You can get a site operational for free with a subdomain under site123.com or upgrade to a premium plan to get additional features and a free custom domain for a year.

SITE123 offers website templates, as well, so you don’t have to start your design from scratch. However, the templates feature simplistic, outdated designs that don’t keep up with the modern design trends some competitors support.

Who should use it:

SITE123 might be a simple and affordable option for a small business or project that needs a quick and easy online presence.

Jimdo is a free website builder designed to help small businesses get online quickly and easily. You can create beautiful mobile-optimized page designs. Customizing is easy with an editor that offers flexibility without complexity. Do note that a free site is published at a subdomain of jimdosite.com and displays ads.

The builder lets you add an online store or appointment scheduler starting at $19 USD ($25.67 CAD) per month, and you won’t pay transaction fees for online orders. Jimdo’s logo creator is also free to use, so you can design a logo and get the file formats you need to promote your business online and in print.

Who should use it:

Jimdo is a simple and affordable platform for start-up online retail businesses. If you’re moving your brick-and-mortar online or starting an e-commerce business from scratch, it could be one of the easiest and most frugal ways to do it.

Strikingly is a straightforward website builder with simple, mobile-friendly designs for landing pages, e-commerce and blogs. You can add an e-commerce store with its Simple Store feature—you can even sell up to one product with a free account.

Strikingly offers everything a simple business needs to get online, but its design options aren’t particularly striking. You can build a simple page, but the platform lacks modern design features like animation and more complex layouts.

Who should use it:

Strikingly is a good fit for a small business that needs a simple online presence and doesn’t have design resources.