Is Google Sites really free?

Yes - genuinely free, including hosting, with a Google account. You only pay if you connect your own domain name (roughly R150-R250/year for a .co.za). There's no paid tier, no trial, no catch in the pricing itself; the limits are in what the tool can do.

Can I use Google Sites for my business?

You can, and for a brand-new business it's a reasonable week-one move: free, live in an afternoon, no technical skill needed. The trade-offs are generic design, very limited SEO control, and no proper enquiry flow - so treat it as a temporary web presence, not the plan.

What are the disadvantages of Google Sites?

The big five: you can't control technical SEO (no schema markup, limited titles/metas), templates look like templates, forms are Google Forms rather than a WhatsApp or email enquiry flow, e-commerce doesn't exist, and your site depends on a platform Google can change or retire - as it did with Business Profile websites in 2024.

Does Google Sites work for SEO?

Poorly, past the basics. Google indexes Google Sites pages, but you can't add schema markup, fine-tune titles and descriptions properly, or fix Core Web Vitals - the levers that decide competitive local searches like "plumber Pretoria East". A one-page Google Site rarely outranks a purpose-built local site.

Google Sites for an SA Small Business: What It Can(’t) Do

Google Sites is genuinely free, genuinely easy - and this post will tell you honestly what it's good at before it tells you where it runs out. If you're a South African business owner trying to build a free Google website this week, read the first half. If your free site has been live for months and produced nothing, the second half explains why, with real fixes and real prices.

What Google Sites actually is

Google Sites is Google's free website builder, included with every Google account. You pick a template, drag blocks around, and publish to a sites.google.com/view/yourbusiness address - or connect your own domain for the price of the domain alone (R150-R250/year for a .co.za).

It is not the same thing as a Google Business Profile (the map listing), and it's not the retired "Google My Business website" product - Google shut that down in 2024, which is why thousands of SA businesses suddenly lost their free sites. If that was you, this post is your map.

What Google Sites does well

Honesty first - for some situations it's the right tool:

It's actually free. No trial, no upsell tier. Hosting included.
Live in an afternoon. No code, no hosting setup, no designer.
Fine for a temporary presence. A new business that needs something linkable this week - a menu, opening hours, a contact number - is well served for week one.
Good for internal pages. Team handbooks, church schedules, school notices: perfect.

If your total requirement is "people who already have my link can see my details", stop reading and go build it. Genuinely.

What Google Sites can't do (and won't tell you)

The limits only matter when you want strangers to find you - which is what a business website is for.

1. No real SEO control. You can't add schema markup (the structured data that wins map packs and rich results), can't properly manage titles and meta descriptions per page, and can't influence Core Web Vitals. For competitive local searches - "plumber Pretoria East", "hair salon Centurion" - you're bringing a pamphlet to a knife fight.

2. It looks like a template. Your customers may not know why the site feels generic; they'll just trust it slightly less. Design is a trust signal, and Google Sites caps yours.

3. No proper enquiry flow. South African customers convert on WhatsApp. Google Sites gives you embedded Google Forms - no forms-to-WhatsApp, no instant notification flow, no tracked conversion events. Enquiries leak.

4. Your own domain handling is quirky. Connecting a custom domain works but is limited - no proper redirects, no fine control over how www and non-www resolve, which splits whatever small SEO authority you build.

5. No selling. No cart, no PayFast or Yoco, no order emails. E-commerce simply isn't in the product.

6. Platform risk. Google retired its Business Profile websites in 2024 with a redirect deadline. Google Sites is more established, but the lesson stands: a free platform can change under you, and you can't take the site with you.

The honest decision framework

Stay on Google Sites if: your customers all arrive by referral or social media, you need zero Google search traffic, and the site is a business card. The free option is genuinely enough - don't let anyone (including a web designer) tell you otherwise.

Move to a real build when any of these become true:

You want to appear when strangers search for your service in your area
You're losing enquiries because contacting you takes effort
You quote "I'll send you my website" and feel a flicker of embarrassment
You want to sell online

What the upgrade actually costs

The week you decide your business deserves better, the honest numbers look like this: a professional fixed-scope build in South Africa runs R5,000 to R20,000 once-off. At STRKR every price is published - the R5,000 Portfolio type (3-4 pages, fast, SEO-ready, live in a week) is the natural first step up from a Google Site, and the R7,500 Business type adds the five-page local-SEO structure that competitive suburb searches require.

The difference isn't cosmetic. A purpose-built site ships with schema markup, green Core Web Vitals, forms that reach your WhatsApp, and Google Search Console wired from day one - every lever Google Sites keeps locked.

Keep the free tools that work

Moving off Google Sites doesn't mean leaving Google's free ecosystem - the opposite:

Google Business Profile stays your most important free asset: it's the map listing, reviews and calls. A real website makes it work harder (Google cross-checks the two).
Google Search Console (free) shows which searches find you.
Google Analytics 4 (free) shows what visitors do.

Google Sites was never the valuable part. The account, the profile and the data are - and they all plug into whatever you build next.