Kieran Tie
Launching something new into the world might feel sweet—but there's no sugar-coating the fact that it's hard work.
Even the most experienced business owners struggle with the time and effort required to design a website, collect leads, and grow their audience. Companies employ entire teams of designers, developers, and copywriters, spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to create a single landing page.
For the rest of us, that level of investment just isn't possible. Online creators like yourself need to make the most of every dollar—but this doesn't mean you need to skimp on design.
Even if you're on a tight budget, you can still create beautiful, high-converting landing pages to grow your audience and business—and many tools also let you launch new landing pages without paying a cent.
To help you choose the right landing page builder for your online business, we've tested the top 9 free landing page creators out there. The tools we tested run the gamut from basic form pages to complete site designers, and while most offer additional features on paid plans, each tool lets you design and host a landing page for free.
We judged each tool based on ease of use, the overall design of the final page, and how long it took to create each page—each tool also includes a general overview of features, pros and cons, and why you might choose that particular tool over the others.
Before we dive into the list, though, let's look at the essential features you should look for in a free landing page builder.
What to look for in a free landing page creator
No matter what you're promoting, every landing page you create should include the same essential elements: an engaging headline, thoughtful and focused copy, eye-catching design and imagery, and a single call to action.
Now you could create all this from scratch and design a completely new page each time you launch a new campaign—but busy creators like yourself can benefit from using a dedicated landing page creator to speed up the process.
Here are the top things you should look for in a free landing page creator:
Landing page builders should be easy to use
The best landing page creators have almost no learning curve. Once you have your landing page copy written, you should be able to go from signing up to launching your first landing page in under 15 minutes. This includes choosing a template, adding your content, selecting images, creating your signup forms or CTA button, and connecting your forms to your email marketing tool of choice.
If you find yourself struggling to find your way around the tool or to make fundamental changes to your design or content, it might be time to look for another tool.
You should have flexibility and control over your designs
Both free and premium landing page builders should offer a wide range of beautiful, ready-made templates and designs to give you a headstart. Adding videos, images, text, and other content to your landing pages should take only a few clicks—you shouldn't need to know any code to create your first landing page.
For those of you who enjoy tweaking every pixel (you know who you are), your chosen tool should also give you the flexibility to make custom design and styling changes where needed.
Landing pages should integrate with the tools you're already using
Most landing page creators give you the option of connecting forms directly to your existing email marketing or customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Besides saving you the time and effort of manually adding leads, these integrations let you automatically deliver lead magnets, build your email newsletter, or collect webinar registrations.
Each landing page should work well across all different devices
Mobile devices now make up nearly half of all web traffic, so your landing pages must work across different screen sizes and device types. Landing page templates should be mobile-friendly out of the box, without requiring extensive styling changes to make them work on mobile.
You should have some insight into your landing page performance
Each landing page should also integrate with Google Analytics or offer built-in analytics tracking, so you know how many people visited your page and how many are signing up for your offer. By measuring how your landing pages are performing, you'll be able to identify opportunities for improvement and increase your conversion rate over time.
The top 10 free landing page creators
The best free landing page creators make designing a beautiful, mobile-friendly landing page to boost your online advertising campaigns, grow your email list, promote an upcoming webinar, or validate a new product idea a piece of cake.
We looked at dozens of landing page builders, and picked out the top nine free landing page builders (pro tip: click each link to jump straight to the review of that tool):
We then thoroughly tested each tool by recreating the landing page for our Essential Creator's Toolkit.
The original landing page we recreated to test each free landing page builder.
The goal wasn't to match the design exactly—instead, we tried to get a complete landing page up and running in under 15 minutes.
So without further ado, let's jump into our first free landing page builder!
Carrd
Carrd is more than just a free landing page builder—it's a powerful platform for creating simple, responsive sites. Carrd lets you spin up a new single-page website for any purpose in just a few minutes—from personal profiles to portfolios, landing pages, webinar signup pages, and much more.
Recreating this landing page in Carrd took only 5 minutes.
Carrd offers a wide range of templates to get you started—you don't even need to create an account until you're ready to publish your site. The editor is straightforward—you can quickly add blocks for text, images, videos, forms, and links, as well as containers to align items side-by-side and controls for fixed headers and footers. Click any block, and a sidebar opens to let you edit the contents and style of the chosen element.
The size of each block adjusts automatically for mobile devices, and there's a handy mobile preview button to switch the editor into responsive mode. When your design is ready, publishing your site is as easy as adding a title and URL (or linking a custom domain), and clicking Publish.
The one major downside of Carrd is that the free version doesn't let you include a contact or signup form. The free version is excellent for quickly creating a click-through landing page or a simple portfolio, and lets you build up to 3 sites with Carrd branding and a “.carrd.co” URL. To add a contact form or link a custom domain, though, you'll need to spring for the Pro Standard plan—which, at only $19 per year, is a bargain.
If you're looking to launch a new product or service quickly and don't want to spend a ton of time or money on a new website, Carrd is a fast and flexible choice.
Ucraft
Like Carrd, Ucraft is a website builder that offers a free version for creating landing pages. Targeted at small business owners, online creators, and bloggers, Ucraft aims to be the easiest way of building a clean and responsive landing page in minutes.
Ucraft's free landing page builder makes it easy to get started.
Like Carrd, every element in Ucraft's landing page builder can be dragged and dropped anywhere on the page, so you won't need to know any code to create a beautiful landing page. The free plan gives you 18 templates to choose from—although upgrading to the paid plan for $10 per month unlocks an additional 52 more templates.
The downside of Ucraft? Since it's primarily a site builder, landing pages feel like a bit of an afterthought. Nearly every content block beyond simple text and buttons requires the paid version. The free version lacks some basic integrations and lead generation forms, which could be a dealbreaker for many online business owners. Another strange limitation of the platform is that you can't change your template after creating your site—once you've chosen a design, you're stuck with it.
Overall, Ucraft's landing page builder is easy to use—although some features do lag behind the alternatives on our list.
ConvertKit
And of course, you can now launch your first landing page and start collecting emails in ConvertKit for free! It's the easiest way to launch your next project, validate your idea, or grow your audience.
Launch your first landing page and collect subscribers for free in ConvertKit.
We've taken all the best features of free landing page builders and combined them with our best-in-class email platform. Best of all? There's no need to learn any code. What used to require buying a domain, setting up hosting, installing WordPress, choosing a theme, and adding an opt-in form can all be managed in one tool.
You can validate your next business idea, organize a meetup, build a pre-launch list for your online course, book, or podcast, host an online workshop, or even build a professional-looking personal site and launch a newsletter in just a few minutes.
Our free plan includes all the landing page and form-building features of our paid version, including:
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- 25+ beautifully designed templates for many use cases including products, ebooks, podcasts, videos, and more
- Custom domains: bring your own or use one of our ck.page domains
- Beautiful photos from Unsplash-, all yours to use for free
- Dynamic forms to gather any information from your subscribers as tags and custom fields
- Fully mobile responsive so they look great on all devices
- Thank you pages to get your subscribers to take the next step (Coming soon!)
- Customizable incentive and confirmation emails to give away a lead magnet
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Once you've got initial traction and you're ready to start emailing your subscribers, you can instantly upgrade to a paid account to unlock the full power of ConvertKit broadcasts, automations, and integrations. It's the easiest way to launch your next creative project.
Launchrock
Launchrock is part of the Startups.com network, which offers a range of courses, podcasts, and a community for startup founders and online creators. Launchrock is one of a handful of software tools they offer—it's billed as the fastest way to create a new site and acquire customers.
Launchrock's landing page design is confusing but usable.
After signing up, creating a new site in Launchrock is relatively straightforward. The setup wizard lets you choose whether you're launching a product, service, mobile app, or event, add a name and choose a template. I chose a simple template for the above example and was able to add text blocks for the title, landing page copy, and signup form. Inserting anything more complicated, though, seemed to require adding a custom code block—not a great user experience, although this restriction may be lifted in premium versions.
Launchrock does offer a free plan, although they don't list any information on their pricing page about what's included. I signed up for a free account and dug around, and could not find anything that appeared to be restricted on the free plan, other than the missing content blocks I mentioned above. I could even connect a custom domain to my site, and track analytics, something most free landing page builders don't offer.
If you're launching a simple site on a tight schedule, Launchrock is a solid contender, although some of the other choices on our list are a little easier to use.
Landbot
Landbot is somewhat unique in the world of landing page builders. While most landing pages are static, Landbot lets you create interactive, conversational landing pages that engage visitors and guide them through signing up for your lead magnet, webinar, or product.
Landbot's conversational landing page builder makes setting up your own landing page bot easy.
Landbot's delightful signup process uses their own chatbots to guide you through creating an account. You can choose between Casual or Elegant styles for your landing page, and customize colors to match your brand.
After setting up your page, you can either embed your chatbot in an existing website or grab the share link to access the page directly. You can arrange blocks within the drag and drop builder to send messages or prompt visitors with questions, collect email addresses from leads automatically, or even take over the chat yourself.
The free version of Landbot restricts you to 100 chats per month and 30 blocks within each bot, but this is plenty for many online creators. Free users can also take advantage of the Zapier integration to automatically add leads to your existing CRM or email service provider, as well as the integrated Google Analytics functionality for tracking the success of your landing pages.
Premium plans start from 30€ per month and unlock additional integrations, unrestricted chats, and allow you to remove the Landbot branding from your sites.
It's definitely not a traditional landing page, but Landbot is an excellent option for learning more about your audience and giving them a unique experience.
Landen
For startups looking to launch a website or landing page in a hurry, Landen is a strong contender.
Reproducing this landing page in Landen took only a few minutes.
Landen offers a step-by-step landing page questionnaire to help you quickly create a page that meets your needs. You can choose to create a full site, a campaign landing page (for collecting leads) or an idea validation landing page (for products that don't fully exist yet), and the tool will suggest which content blocks you should add to meet your goals.
Clicking each element opens a sidebar to edit the contents and style of the component—pre-designed block options range from email capture forms to pricing tables, testimonials, and FAQs. While the templates on offer are limited, they give you enough flexibility to make your designs stand out, while also looking great on tablets and mobile devices.
The free version of Landen is great for creating Coming Soon pages or guiding users toward other sites, and you can collect emails and export them manually from within the Landen app.
The free plan doesn't include the ability to integrate with your email service provider, however, which could be a dealbreaker for some online creators. Upgrading to the cheapest Startup plan costs $29 per month, and unlocks email integrations, as well as enabling custom domains and removing “Made with Landen” badge from your pages.
Even with the restrictions on their free plan, Landen is a reliable option for launching a new product or service.
Google Sites
I almost left Google Sites off this list, since it isn't technically a landing page creator. But it is free, and with their recently-updated interface, it turned out to be one of the better ways to create a lead generation landing page.
Google Sites is a speedy option for creating a simple lead generation landing page.
Adding a form to a Google Site is a little unwieldy, but it's not impossible. You first need to create your form separately using Google Forms, at which point you can select it from the list in the Google Sites editor. Once added, the form will automatically match the style of your landing page, and you can drag it (along with other content blocks) around the page to adjust the layout.
Since the designer is tightly integrated with other Google products, you can also collaborate on your landing page designs with other Google users and quickly embed spreadsheets, calendars, maps, and other design elements.
Once your landing page is ready, it's completely free to publish—if you use G Suite for your business, you can even link your custom domain. The only downside of what's otherwise a cheap-and-cheerful tool is that it's missing many familiar features from other landing page creators, like a wide range of templates and integrations with other tools (although Google Forms' Zapier integration can resolve some of these roadblocks). But, if you just need to throw together a quick form for validating a new product idea or generating leads, Google Sites is hard to go past.
ConvertFlow
ConvertFlow offers similar features to the other landing page builders on our list—with a few smart additions.
ConvertFlow's landing page editor is powerful and easy to use.
ConvertFlow offers a variety of responsive landing page templates for different needs. You can choose to host your landing pages directly within their platform, or you can embed your forms in other sites. Editing and styling content takes a single click, and you can switch between desktop and mobile views to ensure your landing pages look great across every device.
ConvertFlow's real party trick is multi-step forms. Instead of requiring users to fill out lengthy email forms, the designer lets you break forms up into two pages—the first with an easy-to-answer question, and the second with the remaining form fields. By breaking forms up into more manageable steps, users feel less intimidated by lengthy forms, and you get more signups—it's a win-win.
The free version of ConvertFlow has a restriction of only 500 unique site visitors per month. Depending on your business, you could exceed this limit quickly, in which case you'll need to upgrade to their cheapest paid plan at $39 per month. Paid plans also unlock custom domains and the ability to remove the “powered by” badge from your landing pages.
For a free landing page creator, ConvertFlow certainly brings a lot to the table.
Grapedrop
I began testing Grapedrop expecting it to be just another landing page builder and was pleasantly surprised to discover one of the most powerful editors and flexible feature sets from our list.
Grapedrop's landing page designs are crisp and responsive.
Grapedrop gives you complete control over their page design. After choosing from a range of templates, the editor has options for customizing practically every element of the design, with options ranging from spacing to CSS transitions. This flexibility does make the learning curve a little steeper than some of the other tools on our list, but the provided templates make getting started quick and easy. You can search Unsplash directly to find stock images that make your designs pop, and all the templates are mobile-friendly.
While Grapedrop still has the usual downsides of most free landing page tools—you need to upgrade to remove their branding, and forms are limited to 10 submissions per month—you can add a custom domain on their free plan, something most other free landing page creators don't offer. Upgrading to their Basic plan removes most restrictions for only $4.90 per month.
If you love tweaking every pixel of your landing page designs, Grapedrop might be the hidden gem you've been searching for.
Readymag
Readymag is another free site builder that can handle much more than just landing pages.
Readymag makes creating a landing page quick and easy.
Readymag targets their platform squarely at online business owners who might have less experience with web design and tailor their user experience to match. Signing up for an account drops you straight into an extensive guided tour of the product, walking new users through each step of the landing page design process. Readymag includes over two dozen modern templates to choose from, with custom fonts from Adobe Typekit built-in so you can make your designs pop—a generous perk most other landing page builders ignore.
Readymag's free plan includes a generous 10 pages—plenty for launching a handful of landing pages for your new ventures. Free sites have a small branding badge added and require you to use a Readymag subdomain that isn't exactly memorable—something like www.readymag.com/u/[user ID number]/[your URL]. If you want a custom domain or other features like Google Analytics integration, you'll need to spring for the Creator plan at $16 per month.
Overall, Readymag is a great platform for online business owners looking to get started with their first landing pages.
Ready to launch your next landing page for free?
Beautiful landing pages shouldn't require a team of designers, developers, and copywriters—and they certainly don't need to cost a fortune. The best free landing page creators make it fast and easy to launch your new product, validate your idea, or gather leads and customers for your online business.
No more excuses: it's time to launch your ideas into the world! Sign up for our free landing page builder today, and you can build a landing page and start collecting subscribers in just a few minutes. I'm looking forward to seeing what you can create!
