What are the best free website builders?
I want to set up a website advertising my services as a Restaurant Consultant. I'm toying with website ideas. First and foremost, I want it to look professional, be fairly easy to find and navigate, and showcase my expertise. I also possibly want the website to be interactive with simple questions to restaurant owners, managers, chefs, etc. Later, I'd like it to be fully interactive so that complex and detailed problems could be solved online.
With those points in mind, are there any free website builders worth it (like Wix, .Com)?
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Jun 5, 2018
I would actually recommend you not to go after free options since they usually provide quite poor utility and quality. I once knew a man who wanted to create a company website with decent income while using free resources on literally anything from their business cards to templates of letterheads https://poweredtemplate.com/brochure-templates/letterheads/free/index.html of their official papers. Long story short their website turned out quite terrible so eventually, they had to hire me to create a decent website.
Jun 4, 2018
You can use any of these free website builders: http://www.beautifullife.info/web-design/15-best-free-website-builders/. The benefit of using any of these website builders is that you can drag and drop content wherever you want. They also allow you to heavily customize the design of your web pages, without any coding knowledge.
Jun 3, 2018
There exists a great number of good website builders, but it has to be noted, a free version has limited features. Also using a website builder you will have a template for web design. In case you want to have something unique, I recommend taking a look at modern projects that focus on new directions in web design like that one on https://snowfox.tech . Personally, I think such projects suggest a fresh idea for webmasters. Hopefully, this information will be useful for you!
May 3, 2018
There are several website builders. Some of the famous ones are WordPress, Wix, Weebly, & Squarespace.
May 3, 2018
If you decided to use a website builder, I recommend reading online reviews that include information about each website builder. I find it to be very convenient as you can compare the most popular web builders and choose a proper one. Personally I used a review on http://www.bestfreetemplates.info/builders.php and really liked it, as it includes pros and cons of every web builder and it helped me to understand which one to choose. Hopefully, this information will be useful for you!
Dec 21, 2017
Use the service from https://weblium.com for this purpose. It is a perfect solution for those who want to build a website without any knowledge of HTML/CSS etc. I have created a couple of great websites with their help and I am very happy with what I have
Jan 24, 2017
Squarespace is my favourite free website builder. But is you want to build a professionally looking website, I recommend you to go with one of these bootstrap themes: https://www.templatemonster.com/bootstrap-website-templates/ . Using it will save you hours in developing your project.
Jan 20, 2017
I would suggest using either Wix or Webnode. Here's some info on them, if you're interested - http://www.beautifullife.info/web-design/15-best-free-website-builders/. Wix is easier to handle, but Webnode offers some pretty good deals, and I like its templates more. Hope it helps!
Apr 4, 2015
The most important thing now is that the website has a responsive design. As of April 21st, Google will lower the search engine rank for those sites that are not mobile friendly. Free site builders don't offer this. They offer mobile-optimized views. This is not the same thing. In addition, many less expensive web hosting companies include Flash in the platform and the search engine bots can't crawl through that code.
If you have additional questions or need assistance, let me know.
Mar 30, 2015
You hit the nail on the head with your issue! Because I know this excellent site http://www.webbuildersguide.com/free-website-builders/ where you can find necessary information for you!) I think that, exactly here, you can make your wishes come true!) Using this site you will create your ‘dream’ absolutely free of charge and, in my view, it is an important advantage!) The most important is the correct use of your opportunities!) To my mind – any issue has ‘solution’, but you must make every effort in order to ‘transform your intentions into reality’!) You have all chances for development of your idea! I wish good luck you! =)
Mar 24, 2015
When you're using anything "free" there is someone or something paying the cost. The entity paying the cost has complete control. In this case, if you use a free site, that means someone has control over what you think is your website. They can take down your website all together without any kind of warning. I'm sure you don't want to give anyone that much power in your business.
With that said, even if you're on a small budget, you can find hosting for about $10 and get a nice Wordpress theme for less than $100. I like the Genesis platform, but there are other good ones out there.
I like Wordpress because it's very flexible and it can do pretty much anything you want it to with the right plug ins.
Mar 21, 2015
Other's have already spoken about the value of hiring a professional and given, what I feel is good advice on what to do if you really have no money to do that. So I'll just add my 2 cents for what it's worth as I've actually written articles on what the actual cost of "free" can be for your business. Here's a few that I think apply:
"You Get What You Pay For"
http://www.jvmediadesign.com/blog/business/cheaper-web-design/
"The high cost of 'free' when it comes to web design."
http://www.jvmediadesign.com/blog/business/the-high-cost-of-free-web-design/
(This one was written by one of my team)
"The DIY Dilemma: Why a Do-it-yourself Website May be a Bad Idea: Part 1"
http://www.jvmediadesign.com/blog/design/the-diy-dilemma-why-a-do-it-yourself-website-may-be-a-bad-idea-part-1/
Mar 17, 2015
Some day I'm going to write an article about the cost of a "free" site. My advice is to hire a professional. They'll complete the work much faster, it'll look much more professional, and you'll avoid all the mistakes of a noob.
Image is everything, and a cheap site essentially means you are not the leader in your field. Yes, you'll get some clients through your cheap website, but you'll lose many more than you'll ever realize.
My 2 cents...
Mar 17, 2015
I'd say any text editor along with great understand in Web coding in general. But for most starters WordPress has helped quite a lot and is the best recognised tool for Web Dev with friendly UI.
Mar 16, 2015
From my experience, and I'm a senior web developer/designer, free websites are very limited and made for very very simple businesses.
If money is an issue and you don't have budget for website, and still want to have something online, then go with free websites builders. I think GoDaddy is probably the worse, Squarespace is probably the best.
If you are making money from your service and want to make money with your website then forget about free websites. They can't be complex and can't solve detailed problems-which is something you have listed as your idea or requirement. You can't make them interactive either.
My suggestion is purchase a hosting and install WordPress. Depending on your budget you can buy a premium theme and find a unicorn (designer and developer in one person) or build custom theme from scratch. Premium themes can be buggy and robust and might have way too many things that you will never use, but they usually have very good design.
Custom theme from scratch is highly customizable and will look exactly the way you want it to look. Since you need some custom coding you will probably need a developer with advanced coding skills. If you don't write content yourself, then you will need a copywriter too.
You will have much more chances to monetize your site now since WordPress is very SEO friendly. There are also many free plugins and learning curve is not that steep.
In conclusion, I'd like to say that I don't think free websites are worth it as I have moved a few clients from Squarespace to WordPress upon their request (they were not happy with SS).
Mar 16, 2015
Hi Evan ,
You can check list and reviews of some famous website builder here:- http://fatbit-tech.weebly.com/blog/fatbit-shares-best-website-builder-reviews-to-help-you-choose-the-best
Best Wishes,
Daljeet Kaur
Mar 15, 2015
Will people find your website? From my experience, actually, a professional Facebook Page with a strategic advertising campaign drives orders of magnitude more customers to Restaurants than static websites (through which customer engagement and feedback is basically zero). I would strongly suggest trying this out for yourself and doing a compare and contrast with any website you choose to build. Remember, FB is where people socially are and Restaurants are, in the main, a social not corporate affair.
Mar 18, 2015
Chad, I agree. I have written extensively on "Don't Put All Your Digital Eggs into One Online Basket". I wasn't suggesting not having a website - I was suggesting that we need to use all the tools which come to hand today, together, in optimal ways. For a start-up company, FB is how to get your message out and say "I'm here, I'm here" - once established then everyone knows your "shop" is there and this is when a website - which is after all just a shop window will start working for you. In other words, when you start a website, your shop window is down a back alley where there is no footfall. FB allows you to put signs up in neon on the high street pointing to your shop.
Mar 15, 2015
People always think free is good enough, I don't. With free-ware I've to do it myself. Hiring a professional web designer doesn't cost that much. And don't forget the hours you are learning the free-ware and creating your site, you could also do what you're good in "consulting restaurants". So using free-ware still costs you time and money. I would suggest to look around for a good web designer.
By the way hiring means knowing what you want to get delivered ;-) !
Mar 14, 2015
Just make sure that you register your domain in a register and not with the free site builder provider or you might end up tied up when you want to move on to a decent site, quite often you will find that you will have to wait for the domain to expire to buy it again and point it to your desired name servers, you risk loosing it if that ends up by being the case, otherwise you might have down time if they allow you to transfer the domain.
Mar 14, 2015
In my opinion, you need to have a professional build your site, especially if you are a consultant. You wouldn't go to a butcher to do brain surgery would you?
Free and cheap look exactly that way - free and cheap. We can spot them as soon as the site loads.
Have a copywriter do your copy and website developer do the site.
I am not a copywriter or website developer. I am a business coach/consultant and I know what I am talking about.
I agree that Facebook is a great advertising platform. I start to disagree where you suggest that Facebook replaces a website. As a business owner I would never want to hang my hat on something I don't own or have control over. Facebook could change their terms of service at any time. Google could stop indexing Facebook pages. Furthermore, you lose control over your Google search terms and rankings. A website isn't that great of an expense and well worth it in the end. To me, it's more important than a phone for this type of business.