The most practical free routes are Wix (free plan with Wix ads and a wix.com subdomain), WordPress.com (free tier with WordPress branding), Google Sites (completely free, minimal design control), and Weebly (free plan with ads). All give you drag-and-drop builders, SSL certificates, and basic hosting at zero cost. You won't pay for the platform itself, but you will live with their branding, a subdomain like yourname.wixsite.com, and restrictions on plugins, storage (usually 500MB to 1GB), and bandwidth. Free plans work fine for testing an idea or a single-page landing page, but they hurt credibility. Customers notice subdomains and third-party ads. You also can't install tracking pixels properly on some platforms, which kills your ability to run Facebook or Google Ads retargeting. Most free tiers block e-commerce or cap you at one product. If you need a contact form, blog, or booking calendar, features vary wildly—Wix gives you more out of the box than Google Sites. For a business that wants to grow, the hidden cost is opportunity loss. A free site ranks poorly because you can't control technical SEO fundamentals like URL structure, schema markup, or page speed optimization. You're also locked into the platform's ecosystem; migrating later means rebuilding from scratch. At Ottawa SEO, we've seen clients waste six months on a free site, then pay double to rebuild properly when they realize they need a custom domain, email addresses, or better mobile performance. If budget is genuinely zero, start with WordPress.com free or Google Sites, grab a free Cloudflare account for DNS when you're ready to buy a domain ($15–20/year), and plan to upgrade within 90 days. Spend that time validating your business model. Once you have revenue, move to a $120–300/year paid plan (Wix, Squarespace, or self-hosted WordPress with basic hosting). The free phase should be a stopgap, not a strategy.