Is Framekit Free in 2026? What You Get at $0

"Free" in website software usually means one of three things: a trial with a clock on it, a plan that publishes something you would be embarrassed to send anyone, or a plan that is genuinely free until the exact moment it becomes useful.

It is worth knowing which one you are signing up for before you spend a weekend on it.

This is a plain account of Framekit's free plan: what it publishes, what it deliberately withholds, how long its storage actually lasts in real client work, the one fee that applies at $0, and the specific moments when it stops being the right plan.

Framekit is an AI website builder for photographers, filmmakers, designers and creators, and a free plan is a permanent tier of a paid product that publishes real work without a card, as distinct from a trial that expires.

Full disclosure: this is our own free plan, so the useful thing we can do is document its ceilings rather than its features. Every limit below is read from the shipped product, and the section on when to leave the free plan is deliberately specific, because a free tier that quietly stops working is worse than one that tells you where it ends.

What the Free Plan Actually Publishes

The free plan is not a preview. It publishes a live, indexable website that clients and search engines can reach, and the pages it produces are the same pages the paid plans produce, built by the same AI and served from the same hosting.

Concretely, at $0 you get:

• Up to 10 site pages, which holds a home page, an about page, a contact page and six or seven project pages
• 10GB of storage, pooled across your site, client galleries, video review and store files
• Unlimited client galleries, limited by storage rather than by count
• Unlimited decks, with the AI slide writer, full-screen presenting, a share link and PDF export
• A working store that sells digital downloads and takes real card payments
• Video review links with timecoded comments, at up to 500MB per file
• Password protection and download PINs on galleries
• 500 signup form entries a month
• Hosting, SSL and a CDN, with no bandwidth metering or traffic ceiling

In one linethe free plan is missing an address and a badge, not a product.

What It Withholds, Stated Plainly

Two things, and they are the same two on every free tier in this category. Being specific about them is more useful than a feature grid.

Your own domain. A free site is published at a framekit.ai subdomain. You cannot point yourname.com at it until Starter at $9 a month. If a URL is going on a business card, an invoice or a pitch deck, this is the line you will cross.

The Framekit badge. A small credit sits in the corner of the published site. It is not an overlay or a watermark across your images, and it goes away on Starter.

What is not withheld, which is where free tiers in this category usually differ: image quality is not reduced, galleries are not capped in number, the store is not disabled, decks are not watermarked across the slide, and there is no expiry date on any of it.

The One Fee That Applies at $0

The free plan carries a 5 percent transaction fee on product sales, charged on top of normal card processing. This is the part of "free" worth reading twice, because it is the only way the free plan costs you money.

Worked on a real product, a $29 preset pack:

Card processing is 2.9 percent plus 30 cents on that price, charged by Stripe on every plan including this one, per Stripe's published pricing. No platform removes it.

The number that mattersat low volume the fee is cheaper than any subscription. Selling $300 a month costs you $15 a month in platform fees, which is less than the $39 plan that would remove them.

The free plan is not a compromise at that volume, it is the correct financial choice, and we would rather say so than upsell you.

In one linethe free plan's fee is real, and below roughly $780 a month in sales it is still the cheapest way to sell.

How Long 10GB Lasts in Real Work

Storage is the resource that decides when a free plan ends for most people, so the useful way to describe it is in jobs rather than in gigabytes. Here is what 10GB looks like against the work a photographer or filmmaker actually delivers in a season.

• A delivered client gallery of 40 edited JPEGs at full resolution is roughly 1GB. So about ten live deliveries at once.
• A wedding of 900 images at 12MB each is about 11GB, which does not fit. Wedding photographers are a Starter or Pro case from day one.
• A portfolio site with 30 to 50 images is a few hundred megabytes, so the site itself is rarely what fills the pool.
• Video has its own sub-cap inside the pool: 3GB of the 10GB may be video across galleries and review.

The lever that extends it most is the obvious one nobody does: delete delivered galleries once the client has downloaded. A gallery that has served its purpose is holding storage for no reason, and clearing it frees the space immediately.

Photographers who do this routinely run a first year on the free plan that would otherwise have ended in month four.

In one line10GB is about ten live client jobs, and housekeeping roughly doubles that.

When the Free Plan Stops Being the Right Plan

There are four specific moments where the free plan runs out, and they arrive in a fairly predictable order. Knowing which one is coming for you is more useful than a feature comparison, because each has a different and quite cheap answer.

When the URL goes on something physical. A business card, a comp card, a printed rate sheet, an invoice. A framekit.ai subdomain reads as a free account to anyone who knows the category, and $9 a month fixes it permanently.

This is the most common reason people upgrade and it has nothing to do with features.

When you deliver a file over 500MB. The per-file video ceiling on the free plan is 500MB for both galleries and review. A highlight film clears that regularly. Starter takes it to 1GB and Pro to 2GB.

When storage runs out mid-season. Ten live deliveries is a real ceiling for a working photographer in a busy month. Starter's 50GB is about fifty.

When product sales pass roughly $780 a month. That is $39 divided by 5 percent, the point where the fee costs more than the Business plan that removes it. Below it, stay. Above it, moving saves money immediately.

Our full pricing guide works that crossover through with numbers.

Is a Free Plan Good Enough for Professional Client Work?

For delivery, largely yes, and this surprises people.

Client galleries on the free plan are unlimited in number, carry password protection and download PINs, and are not commission-bearing, so a photographer can deliver professionally at $0.

The gap is not capability, it is the address: those galleries live on a framekit.ai subdomain, and a client who bookmarks the link is bookmarking us rather than you.

For the portfolio itself, the answer is a qualified no, for the same reason. A portfolio is a sales asset and the domain is part of the pitch.

Nobody has lost a job over a subdomain, but the professionals we talk to upgrade within the first month and not because they ran out of pages.

In one linethe free plan can do the work, and the $9 plan makes it look like your work.

Free Framekit vs the Other Free Plans in This Category

Every free plan in this category withholds something, and the only real question is which limitation you can live with. Comparing them on what they give you is close to useless; comparing them on what they hold back tells you which one fits your work.

• Against a free gallery plan that takes a commission: several gallery platforms give generous free storage and then take a percentage of print or download sales. Framekit takes no commission on gallery delivery at all, on any plan, because there is no print store to take it from. The flip side is that there is no print store, so if prints are your income, their commission is worth paying. We compare those in the free client galleries guide.
• Against a free single-page builder: a one-page tool at $19 a year is cheaper than our $9 a month and better if one page is genuinely all you need. Our free plan gives you ten pages and a store at $0, which is the better deal only if you will use them.
• Against a free trial: the main difference is time. A 14-day trial forces a decision on a schedule that suits the vendor. This plan does not expire, so you can build the site, sit on it for two months, and decide when the work justifies it.

How to Get the Most Out of the Free Plan

Five habits materially extend how long the free plan lasts, listed in rough order of impact. The first one alone is usually the difference between outgrowing the plan in month four and running a comfortable first year on it.

1. Clear delivered galleries. The single biggest lever. Set a rule: two weeks after a client downloads, the gallery comes down.
2. Keep video off the site. Site video is capped at 15MB on the free plan, and a video host embed does not touch your storage at all. This is what we would recommend on a paid plan too.
3. Resize before uploading. A gallery does not need 40MB masters for a client proofing pass. Export at delivery resolution.
4. Use the store even at 5 percent. Below the crossover the fee is cheaper than upgrading, so there is no reason to wait to start selling.
5. Build the site before you buy the domain. The site is published either way, so you can see the finished thing and then decide whether the address is worth $9 a month. It usually is, but you will know rather than guess.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Framekit free forever, or is it a trial?

It is a permanent free plan, not a trial. There is no expiry date, no countdown and no card required at signup, and the site stays published for as long as you keep the account.

What ends a free plan is a limit rather than a clock: running past 10 pages, 10GB of storage, the 500MB per-file video ceiling, or needing your own domain.

Does the free plan put a watermark on my images?

No. There is no watermark on images in your site or your client galleries, and image quality is not reduced.

The only branding is a small Framekit badge in the corner of the published site, which is removed on the Starter plan at $9 a month.

Decks made on the free plan carry a small Made with Framekit credit in the corner of each slide, also removed on Starter.

Can I use a custom domain on the free plan?

No. A free site is published at a framekit.ai subdomain, and pointing your own domain at it requires Starter at $9 a month, or $84 a year on yearly billing.

If a custom domain at zero cost is non-negotiable, no builder we have tested offers it with a full free site, and the closest option is a general free site host with a much weaker portfolio result.

Does Framekit take a commission on client gallery delivery?

No, and not on any plan. Gallery delivery is commission-free on the free plan and on every paid plan, because Framekit has no print store to take a cut from.

The 5 percent fee applies only to products sold through the Framekit store, which is a different thing from delivering photos to a client.

How many client galleries can I have on the free plan?

Unlimited in number. Galleries are limited by storage rather than by count, so the real answer is about ten live deliveries at roughly 1GB each, and more if you clear galleries once clients have downloaded.

This is worth checking against gallery platforms that cap the number of active galleries on their free tier, which is a much harder ceiling to work around.

What happens if I go over 10GB?

New uploads stop until you either free space or upgrade. Nothing already published is deleted or taken offline, and your live galleries keep serving clients.

Freeing space is immediate: delete a delivered gallery and its storage is available again straight away. Starter at $9 a month takes the pool to 50GB and Pro at $19 takes it to 300GB.

Can I sell products on the free plan?

Yes, with a real checkout that takes card payments, on your framekit.ai address. The platform fee is 5 percent on top of card processing. On a $29 product that is $1.45 to us and about $1.14 to Stripe, leaving $26.41.

Below roughly $780 a month in sales, staying on the free plan and paying the percentage is cheaper than any plan that removes it.

Is the free plan enough for a student portfolio?

For most students, yes, and it is the case the free plan fits best. Ten pages covers a course portfolio with several case studies, the AI writes a first draft you can rework, and nothing expires before graduation.

The one thing to plan for is the address: if you are applying for jobs, a custom domain reads better than a subdomain, and $84 a year on yearly billing is the cheapest full-site upgrade in this category after single-page tools.

Will my free site be found on Google?

Yes. Free sites are indexable, server-rendered and include sitemaps and structured data, so there is no SEO penalty built into the plan itself.

What a subdomain does cost you is the long-term compounding: search equity accrues to framekit.ai rather than to your own domain, so if search is part of your plan, moving to your own address early is worth more than moving later.

What is the catch with Framekit's free plan?

Two, both stated above rather than buried: the framekit.ai subdomain with a small badge, and the 5 percent fee on product sales. There is no third one.

There is no expiry, no image downgrade, no gallery count limit, no bandwidth metering and no card required.

The plan is financed by people upgrading when they outgrow it, which is why the limits are real ones rather than artificial annoyances.

Should I start free or go straight to a paid plan?

Start free unless you already know you need a custom domain this week. The free plan publishes the same site the paid plans do, so you can see the finished result with your own work in it before deciding.

The people who should skip it are photographers delivering weddings, who will pass 10GB immediately, and anyone whose URL is about to be printed on something.

Final Verdict

Framekit's free plan is free in the sense that matters: it publishes a real, indexable site with your work on it, delivers unlimited client galleries, makes unlimited decks and takes real money through a real store, with no card and no clock.

The two things it holds back are the domain and the badge, and both are worth exactly the $9 a month it costs to remove them.

Who should not use it. Wedding photographers, who will pass 10GB in the first month and should price Starter or Pro from the start. Anyone delivering video files over 500MB, which the per-file ceiling refuses.

Anyone whose income is print or album sales, because Framekit has no print lab on any plan and a gallery platform's commission will earn you more than our zero saves.

And anyone who needs a custom domain at no cost, which this plan does not offer and, honestly, neither does anything else that produces a site worth showing.

Who should. Everyone else, and for longer than they expect. If your product sales are under roughly $780 a month, the free plan is not just adequate, it is the cheapest correct answer, and moving off it early costs you money.

Related readingthe full plan-by-plan pricing guide, the best free client galleries compared, and what client galleries cost across the category.

Free-plan limits read from the shipped product in September 2026. Card processing figures from Stripe's published pricing, checked the same month.