Small UK charities and CICs face the same wall as clubs: you need a credible website, you have no budget, and nobody on the team is a web designer. The good news is that "free" is a genuine option now. The catch is that "free" means different things on different platforms, and the differences matter when you are a charity.
What "free" actually means
- Free forever, with limits. You get a real, permanent site with caps on pages, storage or features, and usually the builder's branding in the footer. Good for charities that need a lasting presence without a bill.
- Free trial. Full features for a couple of weeks, then it stops unless you pay. Fine for a quick test, risky if you forget the end date.
- Free but you pay for the essentials. The build is free, but a custom domain, removing ads, or taking donations costs extra.
For a charity, the first kind is usually what you want: something that will still be there in two years without anyone remembering to renew a subscription.
What a charity needs that a generic builder often misses
A charity site has a few specific jobs a club site does not: showing your registered charity number (expected on fundraising pages once you are above the registration threshold), a short honest privacy policy for GDPR, and cookie consent that genuinely blocks tracking until a visitor accepts — a rule small charities miss most often, because many builders' default banners track anyway. We cover the detail in our charity website legal requirements and GDPR for small charities guides.
The honest comparison
Wix and WordPress.com both have free tiers with their own branding and adverts; Squarespace is trial-only. These are capable but assume you will design the site yourself. Purpose-built charity tools exist but often expect a monthly budget. The trade-off is usually time versus money: the cheaper the tool, the more evenings a volunteer spends on it.
Where Natterio fits
Natterio's free plan is permanent — one site, three pages, no card, ever. You answer a few questions about your charity and it writes the pages and publishes a real site in about a minute, which removes the "nobody has time to build it" problem rather than just the cost. Cookie consent that actually blocks tracking until accepted, UK-hosted data with real export and deletion, and an easy footer for your charity number are handled at the platform level. When you are ready for your own domain or a members area, paid plans start at £7/month — but the free site is designed to be genuinely enough on its own. Build your charity's site free, or browse example charity and community pages first.
None of this is legal advice for your specific charity — check the Charity Commission's own guidance for anything registration- or income-specific to you.