You can get a business website for free in the UK, but every free option charges you in something other than money: adverts on your pages, an address with someone else’s name in it, or your own hours. The question worth asking is not whether it is free, but which of those you are paying with.
What happened to Google’s free business websites?
Until 2024, a Google Business Profile could make a simple website for you, at an address ending in business.site. Google switched them off: from March 2024 they redirected to the business’s profile, and from 10 June 2024 they stopped working altogether, showing a “Page not found” error.
The profile itself was not affected, and it is still free. It is what puts you on Google Maps and in the list of businesses under a local search, which for many trades brings more enquiries than a website does (local SEO, explained covers why). How to set up a Google Business Profile goes through it. If an old link to a business.site address is still on your van, your cards or your social profiles, it now leads nowhere.
The free options that exist
Wix’s free plan. You can build and publish a site without paying. Wix’s own help pages say what the catch is: free sites show Wix adverts on every page and use a Wix address, something like yourname.wixsite.com/yoursite. Connecting your own domain and removing the adverts both need a paid plan. If a paid plan later lapses, the site goes back to the Wix address and the adverts return.
Squarespace has no free plan. It has a 14-day trial, with no card needed, during which the site is private. After that, you pay or the site is closed to you.
Google Sites is free with a Google account and has no adverts. You can connect a domain you already own; buying one through Google needs a paid Workspace plan. It was made for team pages and documents, though, so it has no booking, no shop, and little control over how the page appears in search results. It can work as a holding page. It is a hard way to run a business site.
A Facebook page, or an Instagram profile. Free, quick, and where some customers already look. You do not own it, it does not appear the way a website does in local search, and anyone without an account sees less of it. Do I need a website if I have Facebook? weighs that up.
What a free website costs you
Nothing on that list sends an invoice. Each charges in something else.
- Adverts that are not yours. On a free Wix site, the first thing a visitor sees may be an advert for Wix. A customer comparing you with a competitor on their own domain notices.
- An address that is not yours. yourname.wixsite.com is harder to remember, harder to put on a van, and moves with the platform rather than with you. A .co.uk of your own renews at anywhere from about £5 to over £20 a year depending on the registrar (prices read in October 2026), and .com or .co.uk covers which to pick and who should own it.
- Email at that address. A free site gives you no email at your own domain, so you stay on a Gmail or Hotmail address.
- Your time. Writing the pages, taking the photos, fixing the form when it stops sending. That is the largest cost of a free site and the one nobody puts a figure on. Count the hours at what an hour of your time is worth to the business.
“Free website, pay monthly”: what that offer means
Some studios advertise a free website. Read what follows the word. It almost always means no build fee, then a monthly fee with a minimum term, an exit fee, or terms about who owns the site until a certain point. That is not a trick. It is a way of paying for the build over time, and it can be good value. It is not free, and the terms are the part to read. Website monthly fee: what it should cover, and what is fair has the four questions to ask before signing.
We sell that model, so here is ours stated plainly. There is nothing to pay up front, and £29, £45 or £65 a month. The site, and the domain if we registered it, are ours until the twenty-fourth payment and yours from then. You can cancel in any month and owe nothing; what you give up by leaving early is the site and the address. Plans in full are on pricing.
When free is the right answer
A free site is reasonable when you are testing an idea, when you have more time than money this month, or when you need somewhere to point people for a few weeks while a proper site is built. Start with the Google Business Profile, because it is free without a catch and does more for a local business than anything else here.
Free stops being cheap when the site has to bring in work. By then the adverts, the borrowed address and the hours usually cost more than a paid plan would. Wix or a studio is the next decision, and how much does a website cost in the UK puts every route side by side over two years.
Already running a free site and not sure it is doing its job? The free review looks at it and at what you are found for on Google, and says what is worth changing.
Official sources
The pages behind the points above, all read in October 2026:
- Websites made with Google Business Profiles are turned off - Google Business Profile Help (archived copy, March 2024): the redirect to the profile from 5 March 2024, the “Page not found” error after 10 June 2024, and that Business Profiles themselves were not affected. Google has since removed the notice from its help centre.
- Upgrading your Wix site - Wix Help Center: Wix adverts on every page of a free site, the wixsite.com address, a paid plan to connect a domain and remove the adverts, and the site reverting to the Wix address when a plan expires.
- Pricing - Squarespace: no free plan, and a 14-day free trial with no card needed.
- Start a Squarespace trial site - Squarespace Help Center: the site is private during the trial, and there is no access to it after the trial until you upgrade.
- Use a custom domain for your site - Sites Help: connecting a domain you already own, and that buying one through Google Sites goes through a Google Workspace plan.
- Google Sites - Google Workspace: Sites described as a tool for team and project sites.
- How much does .uk cost? - Nominet: the wholesale price registrars pay for a .uk or .co.uk, £3.90 a year before VAT, which is the floor under any retail price.
- .co.uk domain names - Gandi: one registrar’s renewal price of £23.96 a year including VAT, read in October 2026, as the upper end of the range.
