When it comes to managing fast-paced marketing projects, it’s all about how quickly you can get your project from zero to success. Whether you are part of an agency or an in-house marketing team, one of the largest requests for digital teams is creating landing pages.
These pages usually have to be done to meet a tight deadline as they are the basis for social media and email marketing campaigns where you can drive traffic to.
Landing pages are a valuable asset as they can be the first thing your new customer or client sees when you have invested big budgets into a new campaign, and you want to convert these new prospects to become loyal customers. That’s why some businesses spend thousands of dollars to create a targeted landing page.
This may sound like a lot but can be absolutely justified when you consider that landing pages need a good deal of thought and skill to be put together, with a team of developers, web designers and project managers.
With more and more platforms offering email marketing tools and easy-to-use website builders, you can now also find ways to build your landing pages on a small marketing budget.
We take a look at free landing page tools that will allow you to create pages with a tight marketing budget.
What Is A Landing Page?
When you are running a specific marketing campaign, you need to direct visitors to your website where they can buy your products or services. If you send your new prospective customers to your homepage you run the risk that they can’t find what they are looking for.
Instead, you can direct them to a specifically designed landing page where they can find everything they need to know for their purchase.
There are a few things to bear in mind when you want to create a successful landing page that converts.
Strategic Goals
Just like any other part of your marketing plan, landing pages need a clear goal which should be clear before you start designing your page. For example, you need to think about if your landing page wants to convert for product/services sales, email newsletter sign-ups, app downloads and others.
Ideally you want to set yourself a specific target with key performance indicators that you can gauge from previous campaign experience. You should set a target number, for example, for conversions, page visits or other goals you measure the success of your marketing strategy.
A Clear Call-To-Action
Once you set your goal, you can think about what you want your call to action be. CTAs are one of the most important parts of your landing page. They should tie in with your goals and objectives, and support the rest of your content on the page.
Clear And Concise Copy
We all face a lot of content every day, and the shorter you can make your content to bring your message across, the better. Make sure your copy is aligned with your tone of voice.
When visitors land on your page, they already showed a certain interest, so you have to guide them through to exactly what they are looking for.
Simple Forms
With every click and piece of information your visitors have to part with, they should get closer to the goal (purchasing a product/service, a download, a sign-up).
This is the reason why you need to keep your forms clear and easy. If you want someone to sign up for your newsletter, just ask them to put their email address in, or if you want someone to buy a product, stick to the basic billing and shipping information and a confirmation screen.
This creates a slick order process for the customer, and you can always ask them for more information later.
Images And Fonts
If you don’t have a brand guide that includes campaign designs or advises on how to use images and fonts on a website page, it’s best to keep the use of images on your landing page to a minimum.
Place a couple of convincing images on the page, and allow a larger font, together with your calls-to-action buttons, to convey your message. The larger font allows the eye to focus on what’s important on the page, and it’s easier to read.
Just bear in mind to only put your key messaging in a larger font, and keep everything else, like information, in a smaller font.
Navigation
The main difference between your normal website and your specific landing page is that it does not have to include the usual site navigation. Instead, you can add clickable links as your call-to-action, and possibly some links to more information. You can also include a link to your homepage with your logo.
What You Will Need In A Good Free Landing Page Builder Tool
With the essentials for a landing page in mind, there are a few important and vital features your new landing page builder tool will need. While some are nice-to-haves to help optimize your new campaigns, others are an absolute must-have for lead generation.
Easy to use
You want the tool to be easy to use as you need to set up your pages quickly.
Good Looking Design
Designing a landing page is an art in itself because they are all geared towards usability, so you need a tool that has both a clever design that converts, and templates that you can edit quickly and easily.
Call-To-Action Buttons And Forms
One of the most important for lead generation are CTA buttons and forms to capture new leads and customers, so make sure that you can include call-to-action buttons and forms with your landing page tool.
Responsive And Mobile-Friendly
With the majority of social media and email campaigns being opened on tablet and mobile, it’s absolutely vital that you can create responsive landing pages.
Social Sharing Options
The more of your customers share your landing page on social media networks, the greater your reach to more prospects, so make sure to check whether your free website page tool allows for social sharing.
Email Marketing Software Integration
This could be a big time saver. If your new landing page builder tool automatically integrates with your email marketing software, you can capture all your leads’ data in one place. It’s also worth checking if you could integrate the tool with your CRM.
Google Analytics Tracking
Together with data flow, you want to ensure that you can track the success of your landing page, as this will give you valuable insights into your users and individual campaign key performance indicators.
A/B Testing
If you have a large number of users visiting your landing pages, it’s useful to test what works and what doesn’t. Not every free landing page builder tool offers this feature but it’s definitely a nice-to-have.
Comparison Of Our Best Free Landing Page Builders For 2022
Here are our best 2022 free landing page builder tools in comparison, including the number of landing pages you can create on their free plan and useful features.
As many free landing page builder services offer an unlimited number of landing pages, with other handy tracking and integration features, it’s important to take a closer look at their templates, design and ease of use, which can help you save time and money when you create your campaign pages.
Carrd
Carrd is a relatively new platform on the page-website market. Created by a former template designer, Carrd has some great features, including modern and responsive templates for well-layed out landing pages. Carrd also offers profiles, portfolios and other single-page site designs that allow you to capture new customers.
Their free plan includes up to three sites, with some features, like forms, limited unless you upgrade to their paid plan. However, with $9 a year Carrd is one of the cheapest landing page builders on the market, and offers some solid features.
Pros
There is no commitment to sign up or login, so you can jump straight in and start building landing pages. The sleek, modern interface is easy to navigate and goes hand in hand with the large selection of smart-looking templates on offer.
You can easily integrate Carrd with email marketing tools like Mailchimp, MailerLite and GetResponse to make sure subscriber data is all in one place.
Cons
While the platform is simple to use, Carrd’s interface works differently to some other page builders. For example, some of the text formatting isn’t quite straightforward. You need to use markup code and HTML to change some text styles which requires CSS knowledge.
And even with this, you cannot change the font, which could be a no-go for some as a certain font may be part of your marketing brand guidelines.
Best For
Integration. While Carrd offers cheap and affordable plans, it’s best suited if you want to use your own domain and integrate your preferred email marketing software.
ConvertKit has been around on the landing page builder market for a while but it’s a newcomer to free landing page building. They introduced their free plan only in early 2020, and it’s a great offer.
With unlimited landing pages, forms and tracking, ConvertKit’s free plan even gives you a customizable domain. The slight disadvantage, the limit of 1,000 subscribers.
Pros
If you have a clear SEO strategy, then ConvertKit offers you some solid SEO options to have your landing pages indexed on search engines, like Bing and Google.
One more plus for SEO enthusiasts, ConvertKit allows you to choose a custom domain. Together with the option of building an unlimited number of landing pages, you also get a great choice of templates with up to 50 modern designs.
Cons
One of the biggest disadvantages of ConvertKit is the usability of the tool. You can’t drag and drop elements, which has become a standard in almost all website builders over the past years.
Another downside is that you are mostly stuck with the templates and customization is unfortunately very limited. Same for reporting which is on the light side.
Best For
Beginners. This is a basic landing page builder tool with unlimited pages and a free custom domain. Although the SEO options are great, the tool’s usability is clunky and you will need patience to find your way around. Try ConvertKit’s free landing page builder tool
HubSpot
HubSpot have grown a lot in recent years. They put some serious work into their improving their email marketing software, CRM and landing page builders. HubSpot’s free page builder plan comes with 20 pages, which unfortunately aren’t free of HubSpot branding but there is a whole range of good page features on offer.
Pros
With the 20 pages in their free plan, you can choose from 17 templates. The page design is basic but very effective.
One of the better features we have seen, especially good for beginners, is their tips on how to optimize pages. For example, they give you a list to check if your page is mobile friendly and if your SEO settings are all in place.
One of the features that made HubSpot so popular right from the start was that you can use it primarily as a CRM where you can manage and store all your leads. Together with its email marketing side, HubSpot is a strong platform for campaign management.
Cons
Similar to the majority of other free landing page builders, HubSpot’s free plan doesn’t include a customized domain, and you need to upgrade to their Starter plan at $50 per month if you want a custom domain.
The available content blocks for their free page builder are somewhat limited, for example, you do not get building blocks for events, testimonials or maps.
One other disadvantage of the free plan is that you don’t get the integration with Google Analytics.
Best For
All-in-one service. HubSpot is very strong if you are looking for an all-in-one service with email marketing, CRM and landing pages.
This makes it also scalable for your marketing campaign activities if you decide you want more than 20 pages and upgrade to include more features in the future. Try HubSpot’s free landing page builder
Jimdo
German company Jimdo offers free landing pages, unfortunately with ads that are placed at the bottom of each page. Jimdo’s free landing page builder plan has similar restrictions to others.
The domain structure is not customizable. It doesn’t offer email marketing as an integration but you can embed forms and code snippets to external email marketing software.
Pros
This is a truly easy-to-use page building tool. Content blocks and the editor is kept simple. One big plus is that all templates have been designed responsively, so they will always display great on tablet and mobile devices.
Cons
There is little flexibility in changing the structure of the template which means you can’t optimize your landing pages effectively.
Best For
Ease of use. You can create basic landing pages quickly and easily with Jimdo. If you need more features and functionality, it’s worth looking at their affordable pro plan. Try Jimdo’s free landing page builder
Mailchimp
Predominantly known for its email marketing software, mailchimp also allows you to create and edit landing pages for free. These pages are included in their ‘Forever Free’ plan, together with 10,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 subscribers.
Pros
Just like with MailerLite, Mailchimp’s editor for landing pages is easy to use and offers a range of customization options. You can add tracking for Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel or Mailchimp’s own data tracker.
Besides customized emails, you are also able to set up trigger automations which send out automatic emails as per a defined event.
Cons
Mailchimp’s landing page builder is limited to only a few templates, although their designs aren’t bad. Unfortunately, you are not able to fully customize Thank You and Confirmation pages, and some of the form editing settings are a little light.
Same as with other landing page editors, mailchimp does not give you a customized domain unless you upgrade.
Best For
Integrated email marketing. If you are looking for an integrated email marketing service with inbuilt landing page editors that give you the option to send campaigns to more subscribers, then Mailchimp is a good option. Try Mailchimp’s free landing page builder
MailerLite
There is a great advantage in using email marketing software together with a landing page builder. It keeps all your content for landing pages and email campaigns, as well as all data of your contacts, in one place. This makes it easier to manage, and you can also create ad-hoc marketing campaigns quickly.
MailerLite is very similar to Mailchimp and HubSpot. It combines email marketing and landing page editor, both of which are very easy to use. MailerLite’s free plan includes 5 public landing pages and 12,000 emails per month to up to 1,000 subscribers.
Pros
MailerLite’s editor for landing pages uses a simple drag and drop design for content blocks, so you can customize your landing page effectively. You can edit form fields and select what email list your form submissions go to.
Together with options for SEO settings to have your landing pages indexed, social sharing is also included. Another plus is the automation emails that are triggered when someone subscribes, including welcome emails and drip email campaigns.
Cons
This might be a disadvantage or a plus for flexibility, you don’t get any email templates included with the free plan, which means you are free to build your own with their visual editor.
Same as with other free landing page builders, MailerLite only offers a free generic domain to host your page. For a custom domain and other features, you will need to upgrade to their paid version for $10 per month.
Best For
Beginners and experienced marketers. MailerLite offers a solid page builder interface with some nice templates, good customization options for content and managing automations.
Perhaps a little less known than Mailchimp or HubSpot, Omnisend is an email marketing provider focused on ecommerce. They include a landing page builder with their free plan, which offers users access to plenty of pro features and unlimited pages.
Pros
You can create minimalist and effective landing pages with Omnisend’s editor. However, if you are looking to add lots of content to your landing page, Omnisend is slightly more limited. On the plus side, you can edit confirmation messages and error notifications, as well as GDPR fields.
Cons
The caveat of Omnisend’s landing page editor is that you can only edit the background of your page without any other layout or design customization options available.
One of possibly the greatest negatives of Omnisend is that to be able to publish your landing page, you need to connect your account to an online store and sign up to a 14-day trial (which you can downgrade to a free plan later). This takes some time to setup so not ideal if you want to jump straight into creating content.
Best For
Online store owners. Omnisend’s best feature is their ecommerce focus where you benefit from strong email features like discount codes, in-depth sales reports and automation emails. Try Omnisend’s free landing page builder tool
Site123
The name is a clear indicator of what you can do with Site123’s website builder: pick your design, add content and features, and launch. You don’t have to setup a whole website though. Site123 allows you to create single landing pages.
Pros
A big plus for your international marketing campaigns, Site123’s editor is available in more than 20 languages. While the editor is not very flexible on some features, it’s easy to use and their customer support team is fast at hand if you need help.
Cons
Unfortunately, Site123’s free plan means you have to put up with ads, like floating banners and footer tags, on your landing page.
Best For
Languages. Their editor’s basic and beginner-friendly interface is perfect if you are not looking to create complicated landing pages. The large choice of languages is a plus for international marketing teams and campaigns. Try the free landing page builder tool from Site123
Strikingly
As a full website builder, Strikingly specializes in single-page websites. Their free plan allows you to create an unlimited number of landing pages. You can try out some of the features but you won’t have access to all of them. Just like with other landing page builders, you get a Strikingly domain and ads on your page with the free plan.
Pros
Strikingly’s range of templates has plenty of designs to choose from. The editor is easy to use and you can select different layout options for each section.
A great plus is the preview tool to check how your landing page looks across different devices on desktop, tablet and mobile. Strikingly’s free plan also comes with Google Analytics integration and visitors stats.
Cons
Strikingly is definitely a little weak on forms which give you only a few form fields to choose from.
As the editor is not integrated with an email marketing tool (and there is no option to do so either), contact data is sent to a dedicated email address and saved in Strikingly, which might make it more difficult for you to create smooth running marketing campaigns quickly.
Best for
Complex landing pages. Strikingly is ideal if you want to build content pages with more than just the standard lead capture blocks.
Ucraft’s website builder comes with a modern and sleek interface to create engaging landing pages. Their free plan enables you to connect your own domain for free, and if you want to use forms then you are asked to use your own domain.
As a free landing page editor, Ucraft pages have a small ad displayed at the bottom.
Pros
The drag and drop functionality of the editor makes it really quick and easy to put your pages together. You can add basic elements like buttons, images and galleries as well as videos.
Ucraft allows you to integrate forms with Intercom, Google Sheets and Mailchimp to capture your data in one place.
Cons
While the content editor is very flexible, you are slightly restricted in what type of content blocks you can drag and drop into your page, for example, if you want to add a form, it’s best to pick a template that already includes one.
Best For
B2C. Ucraft uses some bold designs and templates which are more suited to targeting consumers rather than for B2B. You can use their well-designed templates for events, product launches, fun app downloads or capture new customer interest for your brand.
It might be surprisingly as Webnode is a little smaller than Weebly but with 30 million registered users, their website builder is quite successful. Webnode is well known for their multi-language sites, and although they don’t offer specific templates for landing pages, you can use any of their page templates to design a single-page layout.
Pros
While you can’t get away from an ad being displayed on the page, it is not intrusive. Their templates are really well designed and for your SEO strategy you can modify the SEO settings of your landing page.
You can build multilingual pages with Webnode but that’s only available for their paid plan subscribers.
Cons
If you are looking for a contact form with Webnode’s free plan, then you’ll be disappointed. They are super light on form options, although you can add order forms, reservations and subscriptions.
One other disadvantage with Webnode’s page builder tool is that it seems to lack some of the more advanced customization options, like editing button text.
Best For
Multi-language. The free landing page builder from Webnode is not the most powerful nor easy to use tool. The better features are on paid plans, especially when you want to build landing pages in multiple languages. Try Webnode’s free landing page building tool
Weebly
A clear competitor to Wix, Weebly comes with a reputation to be one of the easiest website builders on the market. Their interface doesn’t offer specific single landing page templates, you can edit the decent collection of Weebly’s templates down to single pages to fit your campaign.
You can only publish the site if you are happy to use their domain structure and display a Weebly ad.
Pros
The Weebly editor is very straightforward and not difficult to use which makes it much easier to pick up for beginners. They offer you a decent amount of flexibility to edit your site design, content and multimedia, as well as forms.
If you choose to add some of their integration apps, then you can integrate Weebly with external email marketing tools.
Cons
Just a handful of templates means you are limited to some standard designs. One slightly irritating feature, there aren’t any inbuilt options to enable automations and if you want any site stats, you need to upgrade to their paid plan.
Same as with other free site builders, you’ll have to stick with their domain structure, or you can choose to pay to use your own domain.
Best for
Usability. Weebly offers a flexible site builder tool that’s simple to use. If you are looking for more advanced features, like automation, you would need to upgrade. Try the free landing page builder tool from Weebly
Wix
Wix are better known for their popular, modern website builder service, but you can also use their editor to create slick landing pages. They have a large selection of website templates to choose from and roughly 30 landing page designs that can be fully edited. You’ll have to be happy with a Wix domain for your url and displaying Wix ads on your page.
Pro
You cannot fault Wix on design flexibility. The editor gives you free choice with placing all content elements wherever you like. There are also a lot of different content types to choose from, from galleries, images and videos to testimonials, maps and many more.
Your contacts’ details get saved in a specific list on Wix, or you can also add third-party apps so the data flows straight into your email marketing tool, including Mailchimp, Contast Contact, AWeber and more.
Wix also supports automated trigger messages, so you can set up Welcome or Thank You emails.
Cons
When you look at Wix’s page editor, you can see there is a lot included and some beginners might feel a little overwhelmed by all the great choices of options. It will take a little bit of time and patience to get to know all the features.
If you want to use your own domain name, you will need to upgrade to their paid plan.
Best For
Fully-featured website. Whether you want to build a website or just a single landing page, Wix offers an all-round solution.
Especially more design-focused ecommerce professionals and marketers who want as much flexibility with their design as possible would like all the many features Wix provides. Try Wix’s free landing page editor
Dedicated Landing Page Builders (With A Free Trial)
We featured a list of great free landing page builder tools with strong features marketers and content managers will love.
However, the majority of the tools we looked at were focused on creating entire websites, so some features are quite different to dedicated landing page providers who only allow you to single pages. This can be a great plus particularly for marketing agencies who need to build individual pages for clients.
For this very reason, we decided to include a couple more landing page builders that are not free but offer a free trial for 14 days so you can try them out and see what works better for you.
Landingi
Landingi is one of the more affordable landing page builders on the market. Their plans start from $29/month when paid annually, and this price includes unlimited landing pages. Compared to other dedicated landing page builders like Instagpage and Unbounce, this is great value for money.
Pros
The difference to this dedicated landing page editor and the other free page builders we looked at is that it’s geared more towards marketing agencies. You have much greater flexibility with domains, so you can create up to 5 custom domains.
You are not restricted to templates and can edit the HTML which allows you much greater flexibility in what page design and style you can create.
Saying this, Landingi does offer some fantastic-looking templates that are easy to amend and publish with a straightforward interface. All of the pages are responsive so they will look great on mobile, tablet and desktop.
Cons
One thing which works differently with Landngi compared to the rest of the page builders we looked at is form integration. You will have to remember to manually integrate your form with your CRM or email marketing software each time you set up a new page unless you copy a previous template.
Best For
Agencies. This is a great tool for busy marketers and agencies who want to set up multiple domains. Landingi allows you to create landing pages with much more flexibility than many other free page builder tools. Try out Landingi’s free 14-day trial landing page builder
What Free Landing Page Tool Is Right For You?
With a greater collection than ever for landing page builders, we are spoilt for choice, and you can select the right page builder with features that work for you, your marketing team and your budget.
We looked at 13 free page builder tools, all with some exceptional benefits to create budget-friendly landing pages saving you time and money on your marketing campaigns.
Summary Of Our Best Picks
Our top 13 free landing page builders all have some very powerful features. Here is our summary of the landing page builders that might be right for you:
Landing pages with trigger automation emails: MailerLite, Mailchimp, Omnisend, Wix
All-round website builds: Wix
Ecommerce landing pages: Mailchimp, Omnisend
Inbuilt CRM:
Flexibility with design and templates: Wix, Weebly
Hi, my name is Mark Matthews, and I help to run several businesses through managing their mailing services.
I have a clear and good understanding of what a company or person should consider when choosing between options. I also have a lot of experience when it comes to managing businesses in general, from the best organizational and scheduling apps to use, to teaching owners how to create engaging emails.
