How can I create a free widget for my website?
By Zyff
Short answer
Pick a widget builder, configure it in the browser, and copy the code it produces. The building itself is free almost everywhere — what differs, and what actually decides whether a free widget is usable, is what happens after it is on your site.
Four things are worth checking before you paste anything: whether it carries the vendor's branding, whether the number of times it renders is capped, whether your visitors' data goes anywhere, and whether you can edit it later without re-pasting the code.
1. Does it put someone else's name on your site?
Most free tiers attach a small attribution link. That is a reasonable trade and it is how free tiers get paid for; the question is only whether it is small and honest, or a banner across your widget.
Be more suspicious of the ones that do not mention it at all. Attribution that appears after you have embedded the widget is worse than attribution disclosed up front.
2. Is there a view cap, and what happens when you hit it?
This is the term that catches people out, because it is invisible until it bites. Many free tiers cap how many times your widget may render per month, and the consequence is not always stated: some degrade, some show an upgrade message on your site, and some simply stop rendering.
Zyff's free plan is metered too, and states the number rather than burying it: 1 saved widget, rendering 200 times a month across every site you embed it on. When that is spent the widget pauses — it renders nothing at all until the 1st of the following month (UTC), which is deliberately better than showing your visitors an advert for an upgrade. Building, previewing and editing keep working throughout, and nothing is deleted.
3. Where does your visitors' data go?
A widget runs on your page with full access to it. A free one that loads trackers, sets cookies or reports your visitors to an analytics product you did not choose is not free — it is paid for with your visitors' data, and under GDPR the consent obligation is yours, not the vendor's.
Check the vendor's privacy page for what the embed itself loads, as distinct from what their website loads. The two are frequently different and only the first one runs on your site.
4. Can you change it later?
If the whole configuration is encoded inside the snippet, every change means editing your website again, on every page. If the snippet only names a saved widget, you edit it once and every embed updates.
The second requires an account — there has to be somewhere for the widget to live and someone it belongs to. That is a fair reason to sign in, and a very different thing from being asked to sign in before you are allowed to see whether the tool is any good.
FAQ Widget
A collapsible FAQ section with search, in four layouts.
Also asked
- Are website widgets free?
- What's the catch with free widgets?
All of these have the same answer, so they share this page rather than each getting a near-identical one of their own.