Introduction
While there are certainly times you should use paid hosting plans,
sometimes you just want to throw your latest project up quickly and be done
with it — at no cost to you.
If that sounds like your situation, you’re in luck. Below, we take an in-depth
look at how to save money with the top free (and nearly free) hosts on the
market.
5 Best
"Almost Free" Hosting Sites
While it’s easy to set out thinking you want 100% free web hosting, part of
our job is to illuminate the fine print. You get what you pay for with free
services, which often means additional fees, storage and bandwidth limitations,
and pesky ads.
And while the free hosts we recommend guarantee you can keep your free hosting
as long as you’d like, you will want to take advantage of additional (paid)
features as your site grows. Those same providers offer paid plans to upgrade
your service, however, serious site owners should strongly consider opting for
a reputable, affordable, full-featured hosting provider.
The majority of shared hosts will include a free domain, free email accounts, a
boatload of storage, and more eCommerce functionalities for the
ridiculously-close-to-free cost of between $3 and $10 per month. Here are our
favorite value hosting companies:
1. InterServer.net
$0.01 for the first month, then $5 monthly after
NO annual contracts and NO sudden price increases
Unlimited storage space, data transfers, and email
New domain is $11 with 1-month plan ($1.99 otherwise)
99.9% uptime and price-lock guarantee
Check hosting plan here www.interserver.net/shared
2. Hostinger.com
Monthly Starting Price $2.15
Unlimited everything, from bandwidth to databases
FREE site builder & WordPress performance upgrades
FREE daily or weekly backups
90+ auto-installation scripts and custom control panel
SSH access & SSL certificates
Checking hosting plan here www.hostinger.com/shared
3. Bluehost.com
Monthly Starting Price $2.95
Known for performance at a low price
Endorsed by WordPress.org team
FREE Weebly site builder
FREE Cloudflare CDN
Get 63% off today (was $7.99/month)
Check hosting plan here www.bluehost.com/shared
4. iPage.com
Featuring easy setup and superb reliability since 1998
FREE domain and FREE Google marketing included
Unlimited disk, bandwidth, and emails
FREE site builder and shopping cart
Get more than 75% off today (was $7.99/month)
Check hosting plan here www.ipage.com/shared
5. A2Hosting.com
FREE Cloudflare CDN and SSD speed boost solution
A2-optimized caching and 1-click CMS installs
Up to unlimited email addresses, domains, and databases
Advanced security features and FREE HackScan
24/7/365 Guru Crew support via phone, chat, and tickets
Check hosting plan here www.a2hosting.com/shared
9 Best "Free" Hosting Sites
6. Wix.com
A strong, browser-based website builder, Wix.com reigns supreme if you want a
simple, drag-and-drop interface for building basic sites (i.e., for portfolios,
small sites, etc.).
Note that advanced email, domain, and eCommerce features are available from Wix
by upgrading to its non-free plans. Their support isn’t always great, but it
almost doesn’t matter.
Monthly Starting Price $0.00
FREE signup with email or Facebook
Drag-and-drop designing is super easy
1-year domain free with most plans
Up to $300-worth of ad credits
Access to 1,000s of templates and additional tools in the App Market
Check hosting plan here wix.com
7. WordPress.com
One of the most well-known brands when it comes to getting online,
WordPress powers 30% of all websites. The open-source version of the content
management requires site owners to purchase and configure a web hosting plan,
but WordPress.com removes all that hassle by pairing the popular system with
plenty of online storage and support.
Even at the free level, WordPress.com allots users ample storage space.
Upgrading to plans that cost as little as $4 per month, however, unlock more
themes, advanced customization options, more storage, eCommerce functionality,
and SEO tools.
Check hosting plan here WordPress.com
8. Weebly.com
The well-known website builder also offers a variety of hosting plans that
integrate with their brilliant platform. Weebly’s templates are among the most
polished and modern you can find.
By upgrading to the $8/month plan, you can add an eCommerce store. The free
plan has no ads, but Weebly does include their branding in the footer of your
website.
Monthly Starting Price $0.00
All-in-one hosting and industry-leading drag-and-drop website builder
Start designing for FREE, upgrade to an affordable plan whenever
Easily build a blog, personal site, online store, or business portfolio
100s of FREE templates for websites and online marketplaces
$100 credit toward Google advertising
Check hosting plan here www.weebly.com/site-builder
9. 000Webhost
000Webhost, a free website hosting provider owned and operated by
Hostinger. 000Webhost has been around for 10 years and has millions of users,
which unfortunately makes it a prime target for hackers. In 2015, the
provider’s entire database was compromised with details of an estimated 13.5
million accounts stolen. Since then, 000Webhost has completely changed but many
users still remember the hack to this day.
There’s no control panel, although there are three routes should you want to
build a website: You can use the Zyro website builder, or WordPress, or just
upload your own files.
Check hosting plan here www.000webhost.com/
10. Bravenet.com
Serving more than 15 million members, Bravenet provides a full-service
hosting option for people looking for the complete package. In addition to a
drag-and-drop site builder and unlimited storage, the Canadian company is one
of the only free web hosters with an email marketing platform. Customers can
also enjoy community-building features such as message boards, mailing lists,
blogs, contact forms, polls, and other tools.
Check hosting plan here www.bravenet.com/
11. x10Hosting.com
The veterans at x10Hosting pride themselves on giving their free hosting
customers a stable and high-performance environment with the latest versions of
PHP, MySQL, and cPanel.
Unlimited storage and bandwidth is a major plus for x10Hosting, along with a
support community of more than 750,000 members.
Check hosting plan here https://x10hosting.com/
12. AwardSpace
A pioneer in the free web hosting industry with more than 10 years
experience, AwardSpace.com relies on free hosting to grow their customer base.
Their free plan, which is ad free, allows hosting newcomers to test the service
and see if they want to invest in more features over the long term.
Check hosting plan here https://www.awardspace.com/
13. 5GBFree.com
One of the newer free hosting companies on our list, 5GBFree.com focuses on
cutting-edge technology and security by recently moving to a top US-based
datacenter and using the CloudLinux operating system.
5GBFree.com stopped advertising on free accounts starting in late 2014. Support
is limited to their forums, but you will never be asked to sign a contract for
the free hosting plan.
Check hosting plan here https://www.5gbfree.com/
14.
FreeWebHostingArea.com
Without many of the bells and whistles of the more novice-friendly free
hosting plans, Free Web Hosting Area gives the more tech-savvy folks room to
explore and experiment with modern versions of PHP, MariaDB, and Apache.
Your free account will never expire so long as your site has at least one visit
each month. Free Web Hosting Area guarantees that “small sites” will never have
an ad, or you can guarantee no ads for $1 per month.
Check hosting plan here www.freewebhostingarea.com/
15. netlify.com
Netlify is an all-in-one
platform for automating modern web projects. Replace your hosting
infrastructure, continuous integration, and deployment pipeline with a single
workflow. Integrate dynamic functionality like serverless functions, user
authentication, and form handling as your projects grow
Check hosting plan here www.netlify.com/
Is Free Hosting Right For You?
Everyone likes free things, so it’s not uncommon for companies and bloggers to
forgo paid hosting options in favor of free alternatives. Unfortunately, many
of them realize quite quickly that doing so was a huge mistake.
While free hosting can be a wonderful option for budget-conscious Internet
entrepreneurs looking to get started, it’s not a feasible long-term solution to
your hosting needs. Free plans are very limited in what they can offer.
Oftentimes, the free service comes with a lot of sacrifices. Because you’re not
paying for anything, hosting platforms don’t have to provide you with the level
of customer service that they would to those who are paying each month. This
can lead to many problems, including unreliable service, lost content, and
deleted websites.
You can always start your website with a free host and eventually migrate to a
paid plan. If you still want to save some money without sacrificing on quality,
you can go with more affordable paid plans. Companies are constantly adding new
features to their hosting services. As technology advances, the costs of adding
more storage space or bandwidth goes down. So, you can easily find new customer
discounts or save money by purchasing service for multiple years in advanced.
Why We Always Recommend Paid Hosting?
The free hosts that we’ve covered in this guide are the best around when it
comes to offering quality free hosting, but they do find it hard keeping up
with demand, which means that their service suffers. Often you’ll find your
website is offline, slow, unreliable, and unusable from a users’ point of view.
This defeats the object of being online. If potential viewers, subscribers,
customers can’t access your website properly because your servers are crap,
then what’s the point in putting in all that effort to design and populate a
website with content?
Another reason why we recommend a paid host is the fact that you have 100%
control over your website. With the free services, they own your site. They
essentially own your content and can delete your website or online business at
a moments notice.
