A free website, and what free costs
Every builder has a free tier and every one of them charges you somehow. Here is exactly what ours charges you.
A real Clay site — built from a Google listing
Free is the most worked word in this business. It usually means a subdomain with somebody else's name in it, a banner across the top, a cap of three pages, adverts beside your opening hours, or a shop that is free until the day you sell something.
Clay's free is one thing and it takes a sentence: your site, live at name.clay.site, with a small "Made with Clay" badge on it that you cannot switch off. No card, no trial, no expiry. You see the site before any of this is asked of you.
What the free site actually is
Three things you pay for
The badge is the first thing. On a free site it sits on the page and the switch that hides it is ignored; on Pro it becomes one quiet line in the footer, which you may turn off.
The second is the address. A domain of your own is Pro, and so is running more than one site — though the clay.site address never stops working, so a printed QR code does not die when you upgrade.
The third is booking, and it is the one that costs us to say. A claimed free site draws the booking page and the server then refuses the booking. If people book you, free is not your plan.
How the free one is paid for
One paid plan
Pro is €49 a month or €490 a year, ex-VAT. There is nothing between the two — no ladder with the useful part on rung three.
The badge is the rent
Small, on the page, and a free site cannot switch it off. That is what the free site pays with.
Nobody is buying your visitors
Your visitors are counted cookielessly — a daily hash, never stored. There is no per-person record here to sell.
Questions
How long does it really take?
Most people are live in two to three minutes — search your business, pick a style, publish. There is nothing to install and no signup needed to see your site first, because it is built from your Google listing rather than from a blank page.
Is it free?
Yes. You get a live site on your own name.clay.site address with a small badge in the footer, and nothing expires. The paid plan is your own domain, the badge removed and the pro features.
Do I need any tech skills?
None. If you can type your business name, you can build a Clay site: the live page is the editor, so you tap the thing you want to change. There is no code anywhere, and nothing to install or keep updated — see the WordPress comparison for what that saves.
Can I use my own domain?
Yes — buy it wherever you like and point it at Clay on a paid plan; the certificate is issued for you. Until then the free name.clay.site address is a real one you can print, and it keeps working afterwards.
Can I remove the badge?
On a free site, no. It is a small badge on the page and the switch that hides it is ignored, which is the honest arrangement — it is what the free site is paying with. Pro turns it into one quiet line in the footer, and that line you may switch off.
Does the free site expire or get switched off?
No. Free is not a trial and nothing in it runs out. The one part that is genuinely gated is booking: a free site draws the booking page and the server then refuses to take the booking, so a business that takes reservations should read how booking works first.
When is free the wrong answer for me?
When somebody books you, when you want your own name over the door, or when you need a second site. That is the whole list: booking, a domain of your own, and extra sites at €29 a month each. Everything else on the page is on both plans.
Look at it first, decide after
Search your business, look at what it makes, then decide whether the badge bothers you. Nothing is asked for before that.