Create a free website: what the offers out there are really worth

Hosting a site, securing it, keeping it up to date and providing support has a real cost for any platform. When a service is presented as 100% free, that cost is therefore covered some other way. It is neither shocking nor hidden: it is a business model, one you are simply better off knowing about before entrusting it with your business storefront.

In most cases, the free plan serves as an entry point. It lets you discover the tool, then nudges you toward a paid plan as soon as you want to remove the ads, use your own address or unlock a useful feature. In other cases, it is your site visitors who fund the service, through the ads displayed or the use of their browsing data.

For a personal blog, a one-off nonprofit project or a test, these trade-offs are perfectly acceptable. For a shop owner, a craftsperson or a freelancer, it is another story: your site is often the first contact a customer has with you, and the impression it leaves matters.

At Flopix, we made a different choice. We do not offer a free-forever site funded by advertising, because we believe a professional storefront should feature only them. Instead, we make sure you have nothing to pay until you are convinced.

Building is free. You fill out a guided form: your business name, description, photos, opening hours, contact details. A preview updates live, in a desktop version and a phone version. No card is required for this step, and there is no code and no block editor to learn.

Publishing starts a free trial. On your first subscription, you get 3 days on the monthly plan or 7 days on the annual plan. Your site is published right away, with its custom address and its QR code. Your card is securely stored by Stripe, nothing is charged during the trial, and you can cancel from your account before it ends to pay nothing. Without cancellation, the subscription starts automatically.

After that, you stay free to choose. The subscription has no commitment and can be cancelled at any time. The price is shown clearly before any sign-up, with no hidden options and no setup fees.

If you simply want to share a personal project, a passion or a one-off event, a free-forever offer can do the job perfectly well. Take the time to read its terms, especially on advertising and data, and you will get a decent result without spending a cent.

If your site needs to bring you customers, the question is no longer "is it free?" but "does this site show me at my best?". A site with no ads, with an address in your name, readable on phones and easy to update makes the difference against a competitor. That is exactly what the free trial lets you check, risk-free.

Once you have adopted your site, you can enrich it at your own pace: a contact or quote form, customer reviews and a Google review link, an image + text block, text and a button, selling a product online through your own Stripe account, SEO with Search Console, visit statistics and a personal domain name. If budget is your main concern, our page on websites that cost too much details what to look at beyond the headline price.