Your church needs a website but has no budget for one. Maybe you’re a new church plant meeting in a living room. Maybe your church has been around for decades but never prioritized an online presence. Maybe the budget committee said no. Whatever the reason, you need to get online for free — and you need it to actually look respectable.
Good news: you can build a functional, decent-looking church website for $0 in 2026. The trade-offs are real — limited customization, platform branding, no custom domain — but for churches that need something online now, free works. This guide ranks your free options, walks through the best one step by step, and helps you decide when it’s time to upgrade.
In This Guide
Free Church Website Options, Ranked
One clarification before the list. Several church platforms advertise “free,” but mean free giving, not a free website. Tithe.ly is the common example: its giving product genuinely costs $0/month forever, but Tithe.ly Sites — the website builder — is $19/month after a 30-day trial and no longer has a free tier. The three options below are the ones where the website itself costs nothing, indefinitely.
#1: Wix (Free Plan) — Best Overall
Wix offers a permanently free plan with access to the full template library and the drag-and-drop editor. The design capability on the free plan is genuinely good — you have real creative freedom, and a Wix free site can look like a site somebody paid for, which is not true of the other free options.
What you get for free:
- 500MB storage and 1GB bandwidth
- Access to all templates and the drag-and-drop editor
- Wix Events app for event management
- Contact forms and a basic blog
- Mobile optimization
Trade-offs: Wix ads display on your site, and you get a branded URL (username.wixsite.com/church) rather than a custom domain. There is no built-in online giving — but you can embed a free giving form, which we cover below.
Why it’s #1: It produces the best-looking free church website by a wide margin, and the gap that used to count against it — no built-in giving — closes completely once you embed a free Tithe.ly, Givebutter, or PayPal giving form. The ads are the real cost, and for many churches they are worth tolerating for a site that looks credible.
#2: Google Sites — Simplest, and No Ads
Google Sites is completely free with any Google account, and unlike Wix it shows no advertising at all. It is the most limited option here and also the fastest: if your church needs service times, an address, and a contact page online, Google Sites gets it done in under an hour.
What you get for free:
- Unlimited pages, no ads, no storage anxiety
- Google Drive integration (embed docs, maps, videos, forms)
- Mobile-responsive layouts
- Custom domain with a Google Workspace subscription (otherwise a sites.google.com URL)
Trade-offs: Very limited design control, no blog, no native events, and forms only via embedded Google Forms. It looks like a Google product, and visitors can tell.
Why it’s #2: No ads is a bigger deal for a church than it sounds — a gambling or weight-loss ad next to your service times undoes a lot of goodwill. If your church would rather look plain than look commercial, put Google Sites first instead of Wix. Google Workspace is also free for registered nonprofits, which gets you a custom domain at no cost.
#3: WordPress.com (Free Plan) — Most Scalable
WordPress.com (not self-hosted WordPress.org) offers a free plan with a basic site builder. It is more limited than Wix for design, but it has the strongest upgrade path — if you later move to a paid plan or migrate to self-hosted WordPress, your content comes with you.
What you get for free:
- 1GB storage
- Basic themes and customization
- Full blog functionality
- Basic pages and navigation
Trade-offs: WordPress.com ads, no custom domain, a very small free theme selection, and no plugins — which means no church-specific features at all.
Why it’s #3: Pick it only if you already know you will grow into self-hosted WordPress. The free tier itself is weaker than both options above.
The Church-Specific Option That Isn’t Free: Tithe.ly Sites
It is worth knowing why this one keeps coming up in “free church website” advice, including older versions of this guide. Tithe.ly Sites is the only builder that ships church sections — sermons, service times, events, giving — already built. It used to offer a free branded site tier. It no longer does: it is $19/month after a 30-day free trial.
But here is the part that is still free, and it is the single most useful thing in this guide: Tithe.ly Giving costs $0/month forever — you pay only per-transaction processing fees (2.9% + $0.30 on card, 1% + $0.30 on ACH) — and it embeds into any website, including a free Wix site or a Google Site. So the church-specific feature that used to justify picking Tithe.ly is available to you without paying for Tithe.ly’s website builder at all.
The zero-budget combination we’d actually recommend: a free Wix or Google Sites website, plus an embedded Tithe.ly (or Givebutter or PayPal) giving form. Total monthly cost: $0. If you can find $19/month later, Tithe.ly Sites is a reasonable upgrade — but it is an upgrade, not a starting point.
Step-by-Step: Building a Free Church Website with Wix
Wix is our top free recommendation, so here’s the walkthrough. The giving step is the one most churches skip — don’t, because it’s free and it’s the whole reason a free site can still function like a church site.
- Create a free Wix account at wix.com. Choose “Website” and skip the upsells — the free plan is selected by simply never entering payment details.
- Pick a template from the Religion / Community category rather than starting from a blank canvas or Wix ADI.
- Set your colors and fonts to match your church’s existing branding. Don’t overthink it — two colors and one font pairing is enough.
- Add your essential information:
- Church name and logo
- Service times and address
- A welcoming homepage message
- Pastor’s name and photo
- Contact information
- Set up online giving by creating a free Tithe.ly Giving account (or Givebutter/PayPal), then pasting its embed code into a Wix HTML block on a dedicated /giving page. This costs nothing beyond per-transaction fees.
- Add your first sermon — embed a YouTube or Vimeo link rather than uploading files, which would eat your 500MB storage. See our YouTube embed guide.
- Add 2-3 upcoming events.
- Publish your site and share the URL with your congregation.
The whole process takes 2-4 hours. You don’t need every page perfect on day one — get the essentials live and improve over time. For a broader guide, see how to build a church website, and for the pages you’ll eventually want, our essential pages guide.
The Real Trade-Offs of Free
Free websites work, but they come with limitations that matter for churches:
No Custom Domain
Your URL will be something like username.wixsite.com/church or sites.google.com/view/yourchurch — not yourchurch.com. This affects how professional your church appears, makes the URL harder to remember, means you can’t have email at your domain (info@yourchurch.com), and limits your SEO potential. For domain name advice, see our tips guide.
Platform Branding
Free plans display the platform’s branding (ads on Wix, “Powered by” badges on others). This signals to visitors that the church didn’t invest in its web presence. For a church trying to make a strong first impression, this undermines credibility.
Limited Features
Free plans restrict storage, bandwidth, customization options, and features. You may not be able to host sermon audio files, display enough photos, or create all the pages you need. As your church grows, these limitations become painful.
When to Upgrade from Free
Free is a starting point, not a destination. Consider upgrading when:
- You’re ready for a custom domain. This is usually the first trigger — yourchurch.com looks dramatically more professional than a platform subdomain.
- You’re running out of storage. Sermon audio and event photos consume space quickly.
- You need more design control. Your free template’s limitations are frustrating your ability to represent your church well.
- You want to remove platform branding. Ads or “Powered by” badges undermine your church’s presentation.
- Your church has a regular operating budget. If you can afford $16-50/month, the upgrade is worth it for any church with a consistent congregation.
For a full cost breakdown of paid options, see our church website cost guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a free church website good enough?
It depends on your situation. For a church plant, a temporary community outreach page, or a church that truly has zero budget, a free website is vastly better than no website. But if your church has any regular operating budget, spending $16-50/month on a proper platform produces a significantly better visitor experience. Free is good for getting started; paid is good for growing.
Can I accept donations on a free church website?
Yes. Online giving does not require a paid website — Tithe.ly Giving, Givebutter, and PayPal all cost $0/month (you pay only per-transaction fees) and give you an embed code or a link you can put on any free site. You don’t need a paid website to accept online donations — you just need a giving tool and a link to it. See our online giving guide for all options.
Can I switch from a free plan to a paid plan later?
Yes. Wix and WordPress.com both upgrade from free to paid without losing your content. Tithe.ly Sites has no free tier to upgrade from — it starts at $19/month after a 30-day trial — so moving there means rebuilding. If you switch platforms entirely (say, from Wix free to Squarespace), you’ll need to rebuild your site — but your content (text and images) can be manually transferred.
How long does it take to build a free church website?
A basic church website with service times, a welcome message, contact information, and a giving link can be built in 2-4 hours. A more complete site with multiple pages, photos, sermon links, and event listings takes 8-16 hours spread over a few days. Don’t wait for perfection — publish the basics and improve over time.
What’s the absolute minimum a free church website needs?
Five things: (1) Church name and a welcoming sentence, (2) Service times, (3) Physical address with a map, (4) Contact information (phone and/or email), and (5) A link to give online. Everything else is valuable but not essential for day one. Get these five things online, then build from there. For the complete list, see our essential pages guide.
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