How to Make a Website for Free: Honest Guide for India

How to make a website for free in India: what free really means, verified limits of Google Sites, WordPress.com, Wix, Canva and Carrd, and when to upgrade.

Published 14 July 2026 by Web Hippo in Web Dev

Yes, you can learn how to make a website for free and have it live today. The catch is in the word "free". Every free plan trades something away: your own domain name, an ad-free page, storage, the ability to take payments, or control over how Google shows your pages.

This guide is for Indian business owners who want a working site without spending money yet: a Kukatpally tuition centre, a home baker in Pune, a freelancer who needs a portfolio. We compare the realistic free options using limits checked on each platform's own pages, walk through one recommended build step by step, and give you a checklist for deciding when free is fine and when it is costing you customers.

What "Free" Really Means When You Make a Website

A website needs three things: a <strong>domain</strong> (the address, like yourbakery.in), <strong>hosting</strong> (the computers that serve your pages) and a <strong>builder</strong> or code to create the pages. Free plans give you hosting and a builder. They almost never give you a domain of your own.

Instead you get a <strong>subdomain</strong>, an address that sits under the platform's name, such as yourbakery.wixsite.com/home or yourbakery.carrd.co. It works, and Google can index it. But it is hard to say out loud, looks temporary on a visiting card, and you cannot take it with you if you switch platforms.

The other trade-offs show up again and again:

  • <strong>Ads or branding:</strong> WordPress.com shows its own ads on free sites; Wix, Canva and Carrd add a "made with" badge or banner.
  • <strong>Storage and bandwidth caps:</strong> fine for a few pages of text and photos, tight for video or a large product catalogue.
  • <strong>No payments:</strong> most free plans cannot run a checkout.
  • <strong>Limited SEO controls:</strong> you may not be able to edit page titles, meta descriptions or add analytics tracking.
  • <strong>Lock-in:</strong> your pages live inside the builder. Moving later usually means rebuilding.

First, a Correction: Google Business Profile Websites Are Gone

Many older Indian guides still recommend the free website you could create inside Google My Business, with a business.site address. That option no longer exists. Google turned these sites off in March 2024 and redirected visitors to the Business Profile until 10 June 2024, as Search Engine Journal reported from Google's notice. After that date the old links stopped working.

Your Google Business Profile itself is still free and still matters a great deal for local customers. It just needs a real website to link to now. If a business.site address is still sitting in your profile, flyers or WhatsApp catalogue, replace it. Our guide to ranking on Google Maps covers the profile side.

The Best Free Website Builder Options, Compared

There is no single best free website builder. The right one depends on whether you need your own domain, a blog, a one-page profile or just something that looks good on a phone. Here is what each free plan actually allows.

Google Sites for business: the underrated free choice

Google Sites is free with any Google account, shows no ads and, unusually for a free builder, lets you connect a domain you already own. Google's help page on custom domains says you add the domain under Settings, verify ownership through Search Console if asked, and allow up to 48 hours for it to go live. The downside is design: templates are plain, and SEO settings are thin. For a clinic, CA office or tuition centre that needs "who we are, what we do, where we are, call us", that is often enough.

WordPress.com Free: good for writing, limited for business

The WordPress.com pricing page lists 1 GB of storage, basic themes and seven days of stats on the free plan. It also states that free sites display WordPress.com ads to visitors, with no plugins and no custom domain. It suits a personal blog. For a business, showing someone else's ads beside your services is a poor first impression. Note that WordPress.com (the hosted service) is different from the free WordPress software you install on your own hosting.

Wix Free: the best design tools, the most visible branding

Wix's own explainer, Is Wix really free?, lists up to 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth, a wixsite.com address, Wix branding (and sometimes ads) and no way to take payments on the free plan. The editor is the most flexible of the free builders, which makes Wix a good place to design and test a site. It is a weaker place to stay free for long, because the Wix banner is prominent.

Canva and Carrd: fast one-page sites

If your business already designs posters in Canva, its website feature turns a design into a scrollable page in minutes. Canva's help centre says Canva Free users can have up to five live websites on the free my.canva.site domain, with a "Designed with Canva" footer that cannot be removed on the free plan. Carrd is similar: clean one-page sites on a carrd.co address, with custom domains, forms and branding removal reserved for its paid Pro tiers. Both work well as a link-in-bio page or a single event page, less well as a main business site.

GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages and Netlify: free hosting for code

These are free hosts for static sites, meaning plain HTML pages with no database behind them. They allow your own domain and show no ads, but you (or a developer) write the code. Read the rules carefully: GitHub's Pages limits say it is not meant to run an online business, e-commerce site or SaaS product, so a business brochure site is better placed on Cloudflare Pages or Netlify. Our explainer on static vs dynamic websites covers when a static site is enough.

How to Make a Website for Free with Your Own Domain: Step by Step

For most small Indian businesses, we'd start with Google Sites plus a domain you buy yourself. Hosting is free, there are no ads, and the domain stays yours if you later move to WordPress or a custom build. Strictly speaking, this is "free except the domain". Here is the route.

  • <strong>1. Buy your domain in your own name.</strong> Pick a short .in or .com from any registrar, using your own email and login, not a freelancer's. This is the one thing you pay for.
  • <strong>2. Create the site.</strong> Go to sites.google.com with the business Google account, pick a template, and add four pages: Home, Services, About and Contact.
  • <strong>3. Write for the customer, not the search engine.</strong> Say what you do, where, for whom and how to reach you in the first screen. Add your phone number, a WhatsApp link and an embedded Google Map.
  • <strong>4. Publish.</strong> Click Publish, choose a web address and keep the site Public so search engines can find it.
  • <strong>5. Connect your domain.</strong> In Settings, open Custom domains, click Start setup and follow the instructions for your registrar. If asked to verify ownership, add your domain as a Domain property in Google Search Console and paste its TXT record into your DNS settings.
  • <strong>6. Wait and check.</strong> DNS changes can take up to 48 hours. Then open the site on mobile data, not just office Wi-Fi.
  • <strong>7. Link everything to it.</strong> Add the new address to your Google Business Profile, Instagram bio, WhatsApp Business profile and visiting cards.
Own the domain from day one The most common problem we see in small business audits is a domain registered in a former employee's or freelancer's account. Register it yourself, turn on auto-renew, and keep the login with the business owner. A free website on a domain you control is worth more than a paid one on a domain you don't.

Prefer WordPress.com or Wix? The steps are the same in spirit: sign up, choose a template, add the four core pages, publish on the free subdomain, then upgrade only when you want your own domain. Our Hindi guide, website kaise banaye, walks through the general process in Hindi.

Free Is Fine or Upgrade Now: A Decision Checklist

This is the checklist we use when a small business asks whether its free site is holding it back. If you tick anything in the right-hand column, free is probably costing you more than it saves.

When Free Stops Being Enough

The tipping point is usually money flowing through the site. The moment you run paid ads, every visitor costs you something, and a slow page, missing tracking or a distracting banner wastes that spend. The same applies if the site needs to take bookings or payments, which none of the free builder plans above support.

Search visibility is the other trigger. A basic Google Sites page can rank for your business name, but competitive local and service searches need control over page titles, content structure and speed. That is where a WordPress install on your own hosting, or a properly built site, earns its cost. If you are weighing hosting options, our guide on how to host a website explains the choices.

The True Minimum Cost of a Proper Small Business Site

If you follow the Google Sites route, your true minimum cost is the domain renewal each year and nothing else. Our website cost guide for India puts a domain at roughly ₹800–₹2,000 a year, and a DIY template site on paid hosting at ₹5,000–₹50,000 in total, depending on theme and plugins.

Beyond that you are paying for time and skill: copy that converts, good photos, speed, tracking and someone keeping it updated. A free site you built yourself in an afternoon is a sensible start. When it starts carrying ad spend or sales, our web development team can rebuild it on your own domain without losing what already works.

Frequently Asked Questions

<em>Last checked September 2026. Free plan limits, branding rules and pricing change often; confirm them on each platform's own pricing page before you commit.</em>

This article was written by Web Hippo, a goal-based digital marketing agency in Hyderabad, India. Get in touch for a custom growth strategy.