Google's Free Website Builder Is Gone: Open Source Alternatives

If you run a small local business (a cafe, a salon, a plumbing service, a garage), you may have had a small, free website that Google made for you. It lived at an address ending in .business.site, it was created automatically from your Google Business Profile, and for a while it was a perfectly good way to have a presence online without paying anyone or learning anything.

Then it disappeared.

Google turned those websites off in March 2024. For a few more months the old .business.site links redirected visitors to your Google Business Profile, but that redirect stopped on June 10, 2024. Since then, anyone typing your old web address, or clicking a link on a flyer or a business card, has landed on nothing at all.

If that is you, you are not alone, and you did nothing wrong. Countless very small and local businesses used these free one-page sites precisely because they were the easy option. This article explains what actually happened, why it keeps happening to free website tools, and how you can rebuild something better: a real site that you own and that nobody can switch off on you again.

What actually shut down (and what did not)

Let us be precise, because Google has had several products with confusingly similar names.

The thing that shut down was the website feature of Google Business Profile. When you set up your business on Google (so you show up on Maps and in Search with your hours, phone number, and photos), Google used to offer to spin up a simple one-page website for you automatically, hosted at a yourbusiness.business.site address. That is the feature that is gone. Google's own notice confirms the timeline: the sites were turned off in March 2024, the temporary redirect to your Business Profile ended on June 10, 2024, and after that the old URLs stopped working entirely.

Two things that sound similar are not affected: Google Sites (the builder that comes with Google Workspace) is a different product and still runs, and the older "classic" Google Sites was already retired in 2023, which is a separate story. If your site lived at a .business.site address, you were using the Business Profile website feature, and that is the one this article is about.

Your Google Business Profile itself still exists. You still appear on Maps and in Search. What you lost is only the little website that used to hang off it.

The pattern: why free website tools keep vanishing

This is frustrating, but it is not new, and understanding the pattern helps you avoid it next time.

When a big company gives you a free website builder, the website is never really the product. It is a feature meant to keep you inside their ecosystem. When that feature stops serving the company's goals, it gets shut down, and your site goes with it, regardless of how much it mattered to you.

It has happened again and again. Apple retired iWeb. Adobe killed Muse (we wrote about open source alternatives to Adobe Muse). Wix wound down Editor X (there is a piece on what open source offers instead of Editor X). Square is shutting down Weebly. Each time, business owners who did nothing wrong woke up to find their site gone or on borrowed time.

The common thread: your site lived on infrastructure you did not control, in a format you could not take with you, at the mercy of a decision made in a boardroom you will never see.

There is a different way to do this.

What "open source" actually means for you

"Open source" is the term most people search for and recognize, so we use it too. But the idea that really protects you has an older, plainer name: free software, or libre. The word "free" here is not about price. It is about freedom: the software belongs to everyone and to no one, it is a shared digital common, and that means nobody can shut it down, buy it up, or quietly retire it the way Google retired your Business Profile site.

For a small business owner, that turns into three concrete promises:

1. You own your site. Your pages are plain HTML and CSS files. You can copy them, back them up, move them, or hand them to someone else. They are yours, not a company's.
2. You can host it anywhere. Because it is just standard web files, you can put your site on almost any hosting service, including free static hosting. You are never tied to one company's servers.
3. Nobody can switch it off. No single company owns the tool, so no single company can decide to end it. Even if the people who make it walked away tomorrow, the code belongs to the community and your site keeps working. This is the whole point of libre: the thing you rely on cannot be taken away from you.

And that community is a real, welcoming place: Silex has a free software community you can join.

The honest trade-off: these tools ask a little more of you than a fully automatic, one-click product did. That is the subject of the next section.

What to look for in a replacement

Before we get to specific tools, here is what actually matters when you are choosing where to rebuild:

• Do you own the output? Look for a tool that gives you real, standard HTML and CSS files, not a locked format that only works on one platform.
• Where can you host it, and at what cost? The best answer is "anywhere, including free static hosting." That also removes the risk of a free tool that later starts charging or shuts down.
• Can you edit it later without a developer? Look for a tool that connects to a simple content editor (a "headless CMS") so non-technical edits stay easy.
• How much technical comfort does it assume? Be honest with yourself. Some tools are genuinely beginner-proof; others assume you know a little about how web pages are built.

Open source alternatives

Silex

Silex is a free, open source visual website builder. You design your pages by dragging elements around on a canvas, and Silex produces clean, standard HTML and CSS that you own outright. There is no monthly fee, no account you can be locked out of, and no company that can retire your site. It is licensed under the AGPL, which is the legal guarantee that it stays free and open.

You can open the editor and try it in your browser right now, and there is a library of templates to start from rather than a blank page.

Let us be straight about the fit, because you deserve honesty rather than a sales pitch. Silex is a real visual builder, and it assumes you are comfortable with a few basic web concepts: the idea of pages, sections, and a little styling. It is not a fully automatic, one-click product like the Google site that filled itself in from your business listing. There is no automatic import that will pull your old .business.site page across; that page is gone and cannot be exported.

Because of that, Silex is an excellent fit in two situations:

• You are the freelancer or agency who helps local businesses get online. Silex gives you a fast, no-lock-in tool to build clean sites your clients own, host cheaply, and never lose to a shutdown.
• You are a small business owner willing to take one step up from the fully automatic tool you had, in exchange for a site that is genuinely yours.

If you would rather not build it yourself, that is completely reasonable. You can find a freelancer or agency through our services page to build it for you on Silex, so you still end up owning the result.

Once your site is built, you can connect a headless CMS so that everyday edits (new hours, a new photo, a seasonal message) are as simple as filling in a form, no code required.

Webstudio

Webstudio is another open source visual builder, positioned as an alternative to Webflow. It offers a polished drag-and-drop interface, but it follows an "open-core" model: the core is open source while some hosting and advanced features are paid. That difference matters. Open-core does not carry the same free software guarantees as a fully libre tool. Its paid layer works much like freemium, and how much freedom you actually keep has to be judged case by case, unlike Silex, which is fully libre under the AGPL with nothing held back. It is still worth a look if Silex does not fit your taste, though like any visual builder it assumes some comfort with how web pages are structured.

WordPress (briefly)

WordPress powers a huge share of the web, is open source, and with a page-builder plugin can produce a simple business site, backed by an enormous ecosystem of themes and people who know it. The trade-off for a very small site: it needs its own hosting with a database and regular security updates, which can feel like a lot of machinery for a single page. Worth the flexibility for some, more than others need.

Rebuilding: setting honest expectations

There is no getting around one hard fact: your old Google Business Profile website cannot be recovered or imported. Google turned it off, and there was never an export button. So this is a rebuild, not a migration. The good news is that a one-page local business site is genuinely small, and you already have everything you need to recreate it. (If all you really need is a single link-in-bio style page, we cover open source options for that too.)

Here is a realistic path:

1. Gather your content. Your business name, what you do, address, phone number, opening hours, a few photos, and a short description of your services. Most of this is still visible on your live Google Business Profile, so you can copy it straight from there.
2. Pick a starting point. Start from a Silex template that roughly matches what you want, then swap in your own text and photos.
3. Build the page. Open the editor and arrange your sections: a header, your services, your hours and location, and a clear way to contact you.
4. Get a proper domain. This is the moment to move off a free platform address for good. A domain like yourbusiness.com is inexpensive, it is yours, and nobody else can switch it off. Point it at your new site.
5. Host it. Because Silex outputs standard files, you can publish a simple site to free static hosting. No monthly fee, no lock-in.
6. Make future edits easy. Connect a headless CMS so you can change content later without touching the design.

If any of that feels like more than you want to take on, that is a perfectly good reason to hand it to a freelancer or agency. The difference from before is that whoever builds it, you own the result.

FAQ

Can I get my old Google Business Profile website back? No. Google turned these sites off in March 2024, the temporary redirect ended on June 10, 2024, and there was never an export option. This is a rebuild from your existing business details, not a recovery.

Is my Google Business Profile itself gone too? No. Your Business Profile still exists, and you still appear on Google Maps and in Search. Only the little website feature that used to attach to it was shut down.

Is this the same as Google Sites shutting down? No. Google Sites (the Workspace product) is still running. The older "classic" Google Sites was retired in 2023, which is a separate matter. This article is specifically about the .business.site website feature of Google Business Profile.

I am not technical at all. Is Silex right for me? Silex is a real visual builder that assumes a little comfort with how web pages are put together, not a fully automatic tool. If you are willing to take one step up, it is very capable and you own the result. If you would rather not, you can hire a freelancer or agency to build it on Silex for you.

Will a new site cost me anything? Silex itself is free and open source. A simple one-page site can be hosted on free static hosting. The main small cost worth paying is your own domain name, which is inexpensive and, unlike a free platform address, genuinely yours.

Can I edit the content myself after it is built? Yes. You can connect a headless CMS so that everyday changes like hours, photos, or a short announcement are as easy as filling in a form, with no code involved.

The point of all this

The Google Business Profile website was free, and that felt like a good deal until the day it was switched off. The lesson is not "never use free tools." It is "own the thing that matters."

An open source builder like Silex gives you exactly that: a real site, in standard files you keep, hosted wherever you like, that no company can retire out from under you. It asks a little more of you at the start. In return, this is the last time you have to rebuild because someone else made a decision about your business.

Related reading: Weebly is shutting down, and what open source offers instead, open source alternatives to Editor X, open source alternatives to Adobe Muse, and open source alternatives for a link-in-bio page.