Free domain website builder plans, read line by line
Four providers will register a domain name for you at no charge when you buy an annual plan. None of them is giving you a domain. Each is paying the first year of a registration that renews at a price you have probably not been shown, on a record whose contents decide whether you can ever leave. Here are the terms, quoted from the pages they are published on.
A free domain website builder plan is a bundle of two unrelated purchases: a subscription to some software, and a one-year registration of a name in a global registry. The subscription is a service you can stop. The registration is an asset with an expiry date, a contact record and a set of transfer rules written by ICANN rather than by the company selling you the plan. Confusing the two is how people end up paying a stranger to get their own business name back.
This page sets out what each of the four major offers actually gives you. It does not compare plan prices, storage limits or template counts — those belong on a different kind of page, and they change more slowly than the thing that actually catches people out.
What the words "free domain" are doing on that order form
Read the offers closely and the same sentence appears in all four, with different decorations. Squarespace's help centre states that eligible sites on an annual billing plan "include one free custom domain for one year", and that the domain "is free for the first year, starting from the date it's registered or transferred". Hostinger's support pages describe the free domain as valid for one year, available when you buy a new eligible plan on a twelve-month or longer billing period. GoDaddy's terms attach the offer to the initial purchase term of an annual plan. Wix issues a voucher.
In every case the provider is paying a registry fee on your behalf for twelve months. The second year is yours. That is not a scandal and it is not hidden — but it is stated once, in help documentation, and never on the button you click.
All four attach conditions, and two sets of them catch people out more often than the price does. Wix's help centre says the voucher comes with "selected yearly or multi-year Premium or Studio plans", is "not included when renewing a plan or upgrading an existing plan", and must be redeemed within two months of the purchase. It also cannot be used to renew or extend a domain you already own — it only buys a new registration. Hostinger's eligibility notes exclude monthly plans, upgrades, renewals and billing-cycle changes.
So the offer is narrower than it sounds. It is a discount on a first registration, available once, at the moment you first pay for a year.
The register: four offers, on their registration terms
The ordering below is not a ranking of website builders. It ranks the terms of the domain offer — how conditional the free year is, how clearly the renewal and transfer rules are published, and how much of the name stays under your control while the plan is running.
| Provider | Free for | Offer conditions, as published | Domain privacy | Getting the name out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | First year, from the date registered or transferred | Annual billing only; excludes monthly and Mobile Start plans; must be claimed within a year of joining an eligible plan; cancelling during the free year forfeits the offer | Included at no charge on all Squarespace-registered domains | No fee charged to transfer away; unlock the domain first |
| Hostinger | One year | New eligible plan on a 12-month or longer term; excludes monthly plans, upgrades, renewals and billing-cycle changes | Described as included | Standard registrar transfer after the ICANN lock |
| Wix | One year, by voucher | Selected yearly or multi-year plans; first-time plan purchase only, not renewals or upgrades; redeem within two months; new registrations only | Offered as Private Registration; must be switched off before a transfer | Documented transfer-away route; code sent to the registrant contact |
| GoDaddy | The initial purchase term | Annual Website Builder, Web Hosting or Managed WordPress plan; renews at the then-current price; a $0.20 ICANN fee applies per domain per year | Offered as a separate product | Standard registrar transfer after the ICANN lock |
Nothing in that table is a judgement about the software. GoDaddy sits at the bottom because its free-domain offer is the most tightly bound to the initial purchase term and the least specific about what happens after it, not because it is a poor registrar — it is one of the largest in the world. Squarespace sits at the top because it publishes the most about the parts that matter later: privacy at no charge, a stated absence of transfer-out fees, and a documented transfer price page.
Year one is a voucher. Year two is a price you have not seen.
Here is the asymmetry that defines this entire category. Every provider publishes a first-year price in large type on a marketing page. Almost none of them publishes the renewal price anywhere a prospective customer can find it.
What each offer prints for year one, and for the years after it
Squarespace
Hostinger
Wix
GoDaddy
Wix's domain pricing page, read on 21 September 2026, listed a first-year .com at €9.90 and a first-year .org at €5.86. Its help article on renewal pricing lists no figures at all, saying instead that cost "differs depending on several factors" — extension, local currency, term length, privacy and tax — and pointing you at your own subscriptions screen. Squarespace's help centre says a domain "will renew at the annual TLD price" without printing the number, and its renewal article sends you to the domain search page to look it up. GoDaddy publishes a dedicated help article for the task of checking your own renewal price, which tells you something about how hard that task is.
The practical consequence: you cannot compare these offers on renewal cost before you buy, because three of the four will not tell you. What you can do is price the same extension at an independent registrar on the day you sign up and keep that number. If the builder's renewal turns out to be materially higher, that gap is the real cost of the convenience, and it recurs every year for as long as you own the name.
Two details worth carrying: the first-year figure is often a promotional registration price rather than the registry's standing rate, and a name the registry classifies as premium is priced separately and is usually excluded from a free-domain offer entirely. There is more on where to look in what your domain renews at.
Whose name goes on the registration record
This is the question that decides everything else, and it is the one almost nobody asks at checkout.
The four lines that decide whether the name is yours to move
A domain registration has a registrant — the holder of record. If that is you, the name is an asset on your side of the table and the provider is a supplier. If the provider has registered the name for its own account and given you the use of it, you have a licence, and licences end.
The major builders describe the domain as registered in your name. Wix's own blog states that Wix is an ICANN-accredited registrar for .com and .net and a reseller for other extensions it sells. Hostinger's support pages describe the domain as registered in your name with Hostinger as the accredited registrar. Squarespace's help centre says that once registered you "own it and can keep it as long as you'd like", and names Tucows as one of its registrars.
Those are the vendors' own words, which is exactly why you should go and check the record rather than trust the sentence. The record is public, it takes a minute to read, and the method is on who owns the domain your builder registered. One detail matters more than the rest: the registrant contact email address. That mailbox receives the transfer authorisation code, and if it points at an address you cannot open, you have a problem that is tedious to fix and impossible to fix in a hurry.
The mailbox is a separate purchase, and it lapses separately
A free domain is not a free email address. Nothing about registering yourbusiness.com creates a mailbox at [email protected]; that needs a mail service, and the builders mostly resell somebody else's.
What happens when each one stops being paid for
The domain
Loud. The failure shows on the page itself.
The mailbox
Silent. After expiry you will “no longer be able to read, receive, or send email” from the account.
Wix sells business email as Google Workspace. Squarespace has offered a free year of the Google Workspace Starter plan to sites signing up in their first year on its higher tiers, after which, in its own words, "your Google Workspace account renews at the standard rate". GoDaddy's email products are Microsoft 365 seats, and its Email Essentials free trial comes bundled with other products and upgrades into the paid plan when it renews.
The shape is always the same: a free or discounted year on a per-user subscription that becomes an ordinary recurring bill. And the failure mode is worse than an unexpected invoice. Wix's help centre is blunt about what happens when a business email subscription expires — you will "no longer be able to read, receive, or send email" from the account. A domain you forget to renew takes the website down, which you notice within a day. A mailbox that lapses stops accepting mail silently, and the people trying to reach you get a bounce you never see. The full anatomy is in business email with a website builder.
The exit test
Before you accept any provider's domain offer, ask one question: what does the published procedure for leaving look like?
Three separate sixty-day windows, each started by a different event
From the creation date
A new registration cannot move for its first sixty days.
From a previous transfer
Moving back to the original registrar is the one exception.
From a change to the registrant details
Only if you did not opt out before making the change — the one lock you can trigger yourself.
Not "can I leave" — the answer to that is governed by ICANN's Transfer Policy and is yes for every generic top-level domain. The useful question is whether the provider documents the route, because a vendor that has written the transfer-away article has decided not to fight you over it.
Three rules apply to all of them regardless. A domain cannot be transferred within sixty days of its creation date. A domain that has just been transferred is locked for a further sixty days. And a change to the registrant details can trigger a sixty-day lock of its own unless you opt out before making the change — which is why updating your contact address in the middle of a move is the single most expensive click in this whole subject. The procedure, in order, is on transferring a domain away from a website builder.
How to take the offer without getting stuck
The offer is usually worth taking. A year of registration is a genuine saving and every one of these providers is a legitimate registrar. Take it with four things written down.
- Check the registration record within the first week and confirm the registrant contact email is an address you will still be able to open in three years. Not the builder's own address. Not a staff mailbox.
- Price the same extension at an independent registrar on the day you sign up, and diary the renewal date with that number attached.
- Keep the mailbox decision separate from the website decision. If the mail matters, buy it directly from the mail provider so that cancelling a website plan can never take your email with it.
- Note the creation date. It starts the sixty-day clock, and nothing you or the provider does will shorten it.
If any of that feels like more admin than the free year is worth, the alternative is unremarkable: register the name yourself at Namecheap, Dynadot, IONOS or GoDaddy, point it at whichever builder you choose, and keep the two decisions in separate boxes forever. That is what pointing a domain at a builder without handing over the zone is about.