Website builder free trial: what a free AI website builder actually gives you
Overview & Key Takeaways
A free tier is not a discount. Every builder we have audited, what each free plan grants, and the three things it withholds — your domain, your search results, or the price of year two.
A free tier is not a discount. It is a different product, and its price is paid in something other than money. The pages that rank for this question are the vendors' own funnels — GoDaddy's fifty AI credits a month, Squarespace's free trial, Wix, Canva, Weebly, Website.com's thirty days, and Google Sites as the one free builder that is not selling anything — plus a listicle of trial lengths and a forum thread asking the question the funnels do not answer: which free tier is actually free?
The answer is that the free tiers differ from each other in a way the trial list never shows. One of them hands you a site that cannot be found. Several hand you a site that does not live at your address. One hands you a site that stops existing after a month. And two of them hand you a free domain whose second-year price is not published.
The free tiers, and what each one withholds
| Builder | What the free tier gives you | What it withholds |
|---|---|---|
| Weblium | A site | Your search results. The free tier is de-indexed with mandatory noindex tags, so findability and a custom domain both wait for the $99/year Pro plan |
| Jimdo | A site, on a *.jimdosite.com address | Prominent Jimdo branding, the SEO tools, visitor analytics, and custom-domain connectivity |
| Site123 | A site, and a free domain for year one | Custom-domain connection is strictly prohibited on the Free tier, which is also capped at 250 MB of storage and bandwidth and carries a branding badge |
| Durable | A site, on a *.durable.site address | Custom domains, which start at the $22/month Launch plan |
| B12 | Thirty AI credits a month | Your own domain — the site is locked to *.b12sites.com |
| Mixo | A free plan, and that is all the captured page states | Custom-domain connectivity, and the rung that would carry it — the captured page publishes no price at all |
| Relume | The editor and the component library | Publishing — the free plan cannot publish the site |
| Wix | A site, on a *.wixsite.com address | Your own domain. Wix's own words: "Replace your free Wix URL (username.wixsite.com/sitename) with a custom domain". A Premium plan is what unlocks it, and its "free domain for 1 year" is a 60-day voucher for a new domain — so the year-two renewal is still unpublished |
| Squarespace | A site, and a free domain for year one | Premium domains, and a renewal at markup — $20+/year for a .com |
| Strikingly | A site, and a free domain for year one | The renewal price: the second year is published at $24.95/year |
| Hostinger, IONOS | A site, and a free domain for year one | The year-two renewal rate, which is not stated on the sales page |
| Base44 | 25 AI message credits a month, up to 5 apps | Your own domain — the free tier cannot connect a custom domain at all, and the free domain on Starter covers year one on yearly billing only |
| Replit | Daily Agent credits and one published app | The month. The published deployment goes down after 30 days, and the "Made with Replit" badge can only be removed on a paying tier |
The two AI builders the page one puts first are the sharpest of them. One will not give you your address; the other will not give you the month.
Every row has the same shape: the free tier gives you a site and takes back the part of it that belongs to you. A subdomain is a landlord's address — you cannot bring it with you, and on some tiers you cannot replace it without paying. A first-year domain voucher is a lease with the rent marked to be disclosed. And a free tier that de-indexes the site is free of the one thing a business buys a website for.
Which is why the market's own words need reading carefully. Base44's page says "Create a website with AI for free — hosting, security, and analytics included", and the summary above this query says you can build a full website for free with it. Both are true, and both are about a site on somebody else's address. What the free tier does not include is the third thing: your own name on it. So the honest version of the claim is "a website for free", not "your website for free" — and the difference is exactly the row above.
Three questions to ask before you start on a free tier
- Is the address yours? A
*.yoursite.comsubdomain is a decision
somebody else made for you. A tier that prohibits custom domains has decided your domain.
- Can a search engine find it? One free tier in this site's audit is
de-indexed by design, and another withholds the SEO tools outright. A free site that cannot be indexed is a brochure.
- What does it cost in year two? Where the free domain is a first-year
voucher, the second year is where the price appears — and in three of the audited cases it is not published at all.
Where Zeso sits
The honest version: Zeso's free tier is one page, static, free forever, with a domain registered through Zeso at cost ($14.99/year for a .com, tracking wholesale registry pricing). It is not a trial, so there is no renewal to be surprised by and no card to be charged. How much should a website cost? has what the builders actually charge, and How to read a hosting price honestly has the six cells a price has.
What the free tier does not include is the rest of the platform. App Hosting is $15/month billed annually, and its free first year is by invitation: it requires a domain registered with Zeso, and from month thirteen it renews at the published Pro rate, which is shown to you before you claim it rather than on the first invoice. Static sites and App Hosting is where that line is drawn.
And the part that decides it: the document is yours. The site is an open JSON SiteSpec and a set of static files, and you can take them with you. What happens to my website if I cancel my builder subscription? is the honest version of that question, and How to export your website is the procedure. What is a website as a service compares the four ways of getting a site, and what each of them leaves behind.
Sources
- The audited builder pages on this site, each with the free-tier terms as
the vendor publishes them and the date they were read.
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Related guides & connected surfaces
- Lexicon & Q&A
Website design cost: how much should a website cost in year one and year two?
What the builders actually charge, and what they renew at.
- Documentation
What is a website as a service — and what it costs in year two
The other ways of getting a site, and what each of them leaves behind.
- Solution Architecture
Local SEO services, without the retainer
What a free one-page site can and cannot do for a local business.
- Lexicon & Q&A
What is a SiteSpec — the JSON document a site actually is
A SiteSpec is the declarative JSON a site compiles from: pages, theme, sections, collections, locales. One document, every renderer, and portability that is a compile rather than a rescue.