It used to be that for Medicare agents, websites were optional. In the modern world, insurance agents need a website to take full advantage of their marketing opportunities.
They’re also a useful companion to help you market other online tools you use to serve clients. If you use a quoting platform like NCC’s Enrollment Central, for example, a custom Medicare website can help you better promote it.
We reviewed the most popular website builders based on available features and how much technical skill is needed to create a site. Here are our picks for the best free websites for Medicare agents.
What You Can and Can't Get for Free
All free website services offer:
- At least minimal options for customization.
- A custom subdomain (more on this in a moment).
- Templates that allow you to plug in your own info and get a basic site up and running.
For many independent Medicare agents, especially those just starting out or with limited marketing budgets, a free website does what’s necessary. It gives a landing page for Facebook ads and other media traffic and serves as your personalized business listing.
However, there are some features you can’t get for free. Depending on your goals, these may be deal-breakers.
- Free website services limit your available storage space and/or bandwidth usage.
- Top-level domains aren’t available on some free services and will cost extra on others.
- Your free website will have branding from the service providing it. The placement is usually subtle, but the service’s logo or ads will be there unless you upgrade your plan.
Subdomains Versus Top-Level Domains
Whether the ability to have a top-level domain is a deal-breaker for you has to do with how you intend to use your site.
Take nccagent.com, for example. That’s an example of a top-level domain. It’s short and easy to remember. If we used a subdomain – something like nccagent.websiteservicename.com – agents would have a much harder time remembering how to find us online.
If your website is mainly serving as an online business listing or destination for advertising links, you may be able to get by with a subdomain. For something more memorable, consider investing in a domain name.
While prices vary, you can usually find a domain name that works for your Medicare business for around $10 a month. You can check out available names and prices at Domain.com
The Best Free Websites for Medicare Agents
Pros:
- Websites are 100% free.
- Like other free options, you’ll receive a subdomain, but the GMB subdomain is sitename.mybusiness.site – much more memorable and professional than other options.
- All sites are mobile-friendly, so no worries about how your site looks on different screens.
- Updating a GMB website takes very little technical skill. If you can attach a file to an email or update your Facebook profile picture, you should be able to create a GMB site.
Cons:
- 100% free means 100% free. There are no optional upgrades to any part of GMB. At present, you can’t even buy a top-level domain to use with your GMB site, although that is said to be planned for the future.
- GMB restricts you to a one-page site, with no option for creating additional pages.
- This is the lightest of all the options in terms of customization. Rather than offering a number of templates to select from, GMB sites are all made with a single template, with a few different color scheme options.
- Additional features are essentially nonexistent. You can’t add social media sharing buttons or even integrate Google’s other services like Analytics into your site.
Summary:
Google My Business is a free, bare-bones option for a one-page website. Medicare agents needing something stripped down and basic will be satisfied with a GMB site, but those looking for design options, added features, and the ability to purchase upgrades might be better served elsewhere.
Pros:
- Weebly’s drag-and-drop website editor is the easiest to use of all available options.
- The free version includes custom forms for capturing leads.
- Weebly’s required branding for free sites is a subtle text link in the footer.
- If you’re interested in optimizing your website for search, Weebly includes beginner SEO tools.
- The lowest paid level is only $6/month, and it adds the ability to purchase and attach a top-level domain name. For $12/month, your top-level domain is included, Weebly’s banner ads are removed from your site, and you get access to advanced website statistics.
Cons:
- The “Free” and “Personal” website plans both display a banner ad for Weebly on your site.
- Weebly’s template selection is pretty light compared to competing services.
- Your free subdomain will be yoursitename.weebly.com, which is less professional and memorable than other options.
- Sites made in Weebly may not automatically display correctly on mobile devices, so you’ll need to tweak parts of your design to make sure clients can view it accurately on their phones.
- While Weebly’s website editor is the easiest to use, it doesn’t have a ton of design flexibility.
Summary:
If you’d like a free website you can create and customize with very little technical ability, Weebly is a great option. They also make it easy to grow your website with your Medicare business by offering reasonably priced upgrades.
Pros:
- Wix has more template options than any other free service, with hundreds of templates available. Some templates are even designed for insurance or similar businesses, giving Wix an edge in terms of free websites for Medicare agents.
- The drag-and-drop editor you’ll use to create your Wix site is highly flexible, enabling a wide variety of design options.
- Wix has built-in social media tools, including an image creator that lets you easily make images to post to Facebook and other platforms.
- If you decide to upgrade, the basic plan is $13/month, and it includes ad removal and a top-level domain that’s free for the first year.
Cons:
- The Wix editor requires a little more technical ability to use than other options.
- Free websites include a Wix banner across the top of the page.
- You can’t connect Google analytics to a Wix site with the free plan.
- In general, Wix isn’t known to have a great user experience. Experienced designers can work well on the platform, but if you have basic or even intermediate web design skills, you’re likely to find Wix frustrating.
Summary:
Wix has more features than other options, but it also requires a higher skill level. If you’re up to the technical challenge, Wix will give you a lot of freedom, but if ease of use is important to you, you may want to look elsewhere.
Pros
- Creating a Facebook page is easy. Millions of people who had didn’t even know how to spell HTML have created Facebook pages. If you can use Facebook, you can create a Facebook page.
- The list of things you can do with a Facebook page is impressive and growing. You can post messages, links, pictures, videos, and directions to your location. You can schedule events with self-registration, so you’ll know how many people will attend.
- The latest news is that Facebook is testing email marketing tools, which would make Facebook’s marketing toolbox even more complete.
- It’s easy to communicate with clients one-on-one. Facebook Messenger is the most popular messaging app in the United States, with 110 million users. Go into settings to connect Messenger to your page, and visitors to your page will see a big Message button they can use to contact you on your Messenger app.
- You can do everything on mobile. Besides the Facebook and Messenger apps, there are apps for managing your page and managing Facebook ads.
- Everyone recognizes Facebook.
Cons
- If a person visits your page, and they’re not logged into Facebook, Facebook will pester them to log in or create an account. To see what we mean, log out of Facebook, and visit your page. It’s pretty obnoxious.
- You’re limited to the tools Facebook provides, though those tools are impressive.
- You can’t use a custom domain name (like nccagent.com).
- The default Facebook page URL includes the page name and a bunch of numbers, like this: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Twin-City-Insurance/874583020. That is not a pretty URL, so you’ll want to claim a vanity URL. Twin City Insurance could swap the default URL for https://www.facebook.com/twincitysinsurance, which looks much better on a business card. This guide has everything you need to know about choosing and claiming Facebook vanity URLs.
Summary:
Facebook is an easy way to establish your web presence and has great built-in marketing tools. It lacks the flexibility of a formal website but can be an excellent alternative.
See our online lead generation article to learn how to set up a Facebook page and generate leads.
