Most of the website builders claim to have some ‘free’ option. Sounds perfect, right?
That’s what I thought too initially. However, it’s also a little too good to be true. Here are the main problems.
Problem #1 – No domain name.
You’ve spent minutes (or hours) putting your brand new ‘free’ website together and you’re almost ready to hit the Publish button to make it live to the world.
Only problem is, you still need a domain name.
The ‘free’ option that most website builders provide you with are the amateurish looking web addresses like:
- YourBusiness.My-Free-Site.com
- YourBusiness.Weebly.com
Professional? Nope.
Unique? Nope.
Think people will take you seriously? I doubt it.
Assuming this website is for some commercial or professional reason (i.e. you want to make money from it), credibility is key, and you’re going to want something that instead looks like: YourBusiness.com or YourSite.com.
Some of these website builders do provide some ‘free domain name’ offer. But there are restrictions which we’ll explore soon.
Problem #2 – Plan Limitations.
‘Free’ versions sounds great. Until you read the fine print.
Basically, you’re going to be forced to pony up some cash for basically any type of extra or upgrade. For example:
- Want to choose more than 10 themes/layouts? You need to pay.
- Want to have a personal email account like You@YourSite.com? You need to pay for that.
- Want certain features like contact form, search box or videos? You need to pay.
- Gallery? You need to pay.
- Get stuck or need help from their support? Pay.
- Want to add more than X number of images or see your site statistics? Pay.
Unfortunately, the list goes on and on and on.
Website Builders commonly claim they’re free, only to then up-sell and cross-sell you to death until eventually you’re paying more than their cheapest plan in the first place.
Problem #3 – No control over your site.
This last problem is also the worst.
Let’s say you spend endless nights adding content, writing new blog posts or adding products to your eCommerce shop.
Everything’s finally starting to fall into place and look perfect.
Until one day you go to check in on your site and it’s gone.
Not just ‘down’. But gone, gone.
Panicking, you quickly reach out to customer support (and after waiting on hold for hours), get a ‘canned response’ like the following:
“We’re very sorry, but your site violated our terms and TOS for free accounts, thus we had to disable it. If you want to get it live, you’ll need to pay for it.”
Don’t believe me? Read this, this or this.
