So you’ve decided you want to start a website. Lucky for you, there are plenty of free website hosting providers that can get your site up and running in no time. But with so many providers to choose from, how do you know which one is right for you?
To help make your decision, I’ve compiled a list of the top 12 free website hosting providers, based on features, ease of use, and customer feedback. So whether you’re just getting started or you’re looking for an upgrade, read on for my reviews of the best free hosting services out there.
Why “Free” Website Hosting Services might not be the best option
Most people recognize that having a website is one of the best ways to get their message out there. However, when you’re just starting building yours, you may not want to spend money on it.
This is why “free” website hosting services are so popular. But, before you login and create your account, you should consider the drawbacks of free web hosting.
The first drawback of free web hosting is that it’s not always reliable. You may have frequent outages where your website goes down unexpectedly. This can be incredibly frustrating and cost you valuable time, not to mention, lost of organic search visibility and customers.
Another drawback of free web hosting is that it often comes with very limited resources and tools. This means that your website may be extremely basic in appearance and functionality, leaving a bad impression on anyone who visits your site. If you want to stand out and make a great impression, you will need to upgrade to a better web hosting service.
In addition, free web hosting often comes with ads that are placed on your website and in your visitor’s browser. This is usually not very professional and can turn people away from your site as well.
The majority of people seek convenience and value.
Though there are many companies that advertise free website hosting, it’s important to remember that there is no such thing as a free hosting.
In order to offer hosting services, a company needs to purchase server space and maintain it. Additionally, they need to provide support for their customers. Therefore, when you use free website hosting, you are essentially paying for your hosting with your time and attention, rather than money.
There’s always a catch to everything.
Running a website hosting service requires significant investment.
If companies offering free website hosting don’t make money, they’ll go out of business.
Hosting providers make money in several ways, some more insidious than others. These include displaying ads on your website, limiting your traffic, causing downtime, locking you into their platform, and upselling other services. The ads displayed on your site may not be inline with your brand identity or could even be from a competitor.
Using free website hosting is almost always a bad idea, except for in cases where you’re using it for testing purposes.
Your business deserves more than a cheaply made, free website. If you’re on the fence about whether or not to spend money on your website, here you have the VPS Hosting Provider, it is worth it.
But what if you don’t have a lot of money to spend?
You can still create a professional and functional website by opting for a more budget-friendly hosting option, such as shared hosting or managed WordPress hosting. These options are much more affordable than VPS hosting, though they are not as strong as a VPS Hosting, you can still get a higher level of service and performance than if you go with a free website hosting.
If you’re a non-profit or student in need of free website hosting, look no further! This article will provide you with everything you need to get started.
It is our duty as experts in successful online marketing to point out the details, so you can make an INFORMED decision.
Should I use a low-cost full-featured website hosting provider?
Although every free website hosting company on our list promises that you can keep your website up for no cost, we suggest that anyone who is committed to their website should think about using a low-cost full-featured web host.
These shared hosting companies will give you quite a lot for only $2.75-$5 per month, including but not limited to: a free domain, free emails, eCommerce functionality, and SSL.
Paying a small amount for expert support and a better service is worth it when you consider how much more money you could make from your website. This way, you also have complete control and ownership of your website, which means you can choose to show no ads if you want to offer the best user experience possible.
We will first look at some of the best almost-free website hosting companies, and then we will check the best free website hosting providers.
5 almost-free web hosting providers
Getting quality website hosting without breaking the bank.
One of the best ways to get quality hosting for your website is to consider almost-free web hosting providers.
These providers offer a variety of features, such as unlimited bandwidth and storage, multiple email accounts, and easy setup and integration with other platforms. Some of the top providers in this category include:
1. SiteGround Hosting –
This web hosting provider offers fast and reliable hosting at an affordable price. With 24/7 customer support and cPanel integration, users can easily get their site up and running in no time.
If you choose the 12-month hosting plan, they will give you a 76% discount, so you would only be paying 2.99 € per month.
SiteGround’s hosting platforms are loaded with features like a site builder, 1-click installer for WordPress and Joomla, SSD storage, unlimited email accounts, outstanding customer support, and much more.
In addition to website performance features, they also have Ultra-fast PHP and MySQL databases, site optimization, and security plugins.
SiteGround has data centers on 4 continents and offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
SiteGround is the best bang for your buck when you want to create a website for your small business or store. Not only is it cheap and easy to use, but as your website grows, you can seamlessly switch to their VPS web hosting plan without any inconvenience.
2. Bluehost Hosting –
Another great option for those looking for budget-friendly hosting, Bluehost offers both shared hosting plans and virtual private servers that are perfect for large or busy websites.
Despite its affordable prices, Bluehost’s hosting plans come with a features that are typically only seen in more expensive hosting options.
These include SSD storage, Free CDN, free domain registration for the first year, and malware protection.
Bluehost also has 24/7 customer support via phone, live chat, and email.
Thier prices start at only €3.01 per month, for 12 months, so you can easily get started with a quality hosting plan for your small business or blog.
Bluehost also offer a free migration tool, which might come handy if you’re moving from a different hosting platform to theirs.
So whether you’re just starting out or looking for an affordable upgrade, Bluehost is definitely worth considering.
3. InMotion Hosting –
In addition to quality hosting, InMotion also offers excellent customer support and easy-to-use tools that make getting your site up and running a breeze.
Whether you’re new to website building or an experienced developer, InMotion is a great choice for almost-free hosting.
InMotion Hosting is a great option for almost-free hosting. Their shared hosting plans include unlimited bandwidth, 100gb SSD storage, max 2 websites, and malware protection.
Their prices start at only €2.99 per month, for 24 months, or one year at € 3.49 per month. You can easily get started with a any of this hosting plan for your small business or blog.
InMotion also offers phone customer support, live chat, and email 24/7.
Their VPS hosting service, starting at €19.99, includes 2vCPU, 4GB RAM, 90GB SDD storage and 2 dedicated IPs.
4. Hostinger Hosting –
With affordable pricing, multiple hosting plans to choose from, and excellent customer support, Hostinger is a great choice for users looking for nearly-free web hosting.
Hostinger offers a variety of hosting plans to choose from, each with different levels of storage space and bandwidth.
Hostinger most popular WordPress hosting plan starts at € 2.49 per month. You will also find a wide range of extras, such as domain name registration, Unlimited SSL and site builder tools, Git Access, SSH access, daily backups.
Let’s put it this way: of all the website hosting providers mentioned so far, Hostinger offers more features. But there’s a catch: although the service is relatively cheap, it offers poor performance compared to other providers.
Still, if you are looking for a budget-friendly hosting provider with lots of features, Hostinger is certainly a good option to consider.
About support, the company provides 24/7 live chat support, as well as a ticket submission system and a comprehensive knowledge base.
In addition to web hosting, Hostinger also offers VPS hosting, shared hosting, WordPress hosting and Cloud hosting, CyberPanel hosting, among others.
5. HostGator Hosting –
HostGator is an experienced hosting service provider that has been around since 2002. They are now one of the largest hosting companies in the world.
The company’s impressive growth is largely due to their affordable web hosting and excellent customer service.
Starting at only €2.64 / month, their Hatchling Plan is a good deal that includes features like free domain, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited email addresses, free HTTPS / SSL, $500 Google Ads spend match credit, FREE Dedicated IP, and more!
With every hosting account, you will receive a cPanel that has an auto installer for WordPress and other popular website software.
Wrapping up the almost-free website hosting providers section
Overall, there are many great options for almost free web hosting that make it easy for you to get your website up and running without breaking the bank. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced developer, entrepreneur, solopreneur or student, these providers have everything you need to get started with your website today!
The 7 Best Website Hosts Free
While it may be tempting to choose a free website hosting site, remember that you usually get what you pay for. Below, we have gathered a list of the best free websites for you.
These hosting sites cost you nothing to use.
If you’re dedicated to your website, then reading our comprehensive guide on Shared Hosting Vs VPS Hosting: Pros and Cons, is essential before making your final decision.
So, without further ado, here are the seven best free hosting companies in the world.
6. Cloudflare Pages Free Hosting –
Cloudflare Pages makes it extremely easy to deploy static websites and to collaborate within your team. Features such as shareable preview links with every commit and pull request, along with the Git integration, flow perfectly with our dev workflow.
Though Cloudflare is not for WordPress users, it is one of the best options when it comes to host your website in a strong hosting platform for free.
You can do a lot of things with Cloudflare pages, including creating a static website using HTML, CSS, and JS files. You can also create collaboration tools to work with your team.
Some other features of Cloudflare pages include source control integration, automatic image optimization and CDN support
7. WordPress.com –
Here we have one of the most, if not the most known brand in the website´s industry, WordPress.
WordPress.com is a free hosting platform offering a unique take on WordPress. It should not be confused with WordPress.org, which is the home of the well-known self-hosted CMS website builder.
WordPress.com offers a free website hosting plan that gives you a WordPress.com subdomain (i.e., yourwebsite.wordpress.com), 3 GB of storage, and access to free templates for your site layout design.
With this free plan, your website will have ads. If you want to get rid of the ads and access additional features, you can upgrade to one of their paid plans. At that point, any “almost free” hosting service would be a better deal.
If you are having any issue with a WordPress site, check our article Top 10 WordPress errors solved – Fix Your Site Today!
8. FreeHostia –
With FreeHostia, you get an industry-best Control Panel as well as 1-click installation of 50+ free apps with instant setup–and no forced ads!
Resources are limited, as you might already know, but for a testing or learning period FreeHostia will be a great asset.
FreeHostia offers 250MB Storage space, 6 GB monthly traffic, 3 email accounts, 1 MySQL database, etc.
All of it at no cost and ads-free.
9. Weebly –
Weebly is a free, user-friendly website builder complete with drag and drop features and premade templates too.
The free plan from Weebly includes a subdomain, 500 MB of storage, and displaying Weebly ads.
Surely you can upgrade later for different plans to get rid of ads, get more space for storing data, and access to additional features.
10. Amazon Web Services (AWS) –
Amazon’s Web Services, known as AWS, is a platform that some of the most popular platform in the world use. Though it may be challenging for smaller businesses to use, those just starting their development careers or students will find AWS much simpler.
By signing up for Amazon’s AWS Free Tier, you can host your website free of charge for 12 months- easy and risk-free. This is great news if you’re wanting to test a site before making any final decisions.
Amazon’s platform can teach students development skills and help them progress their careers.
11. Google Cloud web hosting –
If you’re a small business owner or student, Google Cloud Web hosting offers free website hosting with all the features you need.
Google’s pay-per-use plans are a great place for students to get started. They offer new customers $300 in free credit, which can last up to a year if you’re only using it for test sites or simple websites.
Depending on your needs, you can host any type of website on Google Cloud. If you’re using WordPress, they even offer it on Google Compute Engine.
As you might already know, when it comes to internet services Googled is highly recommend Google for its reliability, user-friendliness, and great features. Check out their platform if you’re looking for a quality free hosting option.
12. Netlifly –
One of the major benefits of using Netlify to host your website is that it’s free. I think this is an amazing perk and today you have this easy and high performance option to get started.
Netlify integrates seamlessly with Gatsby. Netlify CMS is an open-source content management system designed for use with a Git workflow.
If you want to know how to use Netlifly to deploy your website, CodeBurst prepared one of the best online guide you will find to deploy your Gatsby site: Get FREE Web Hosting by Deploying Your Website to Netlify.
Wrapping the Whole Thing Up!
So there you have it, 12 of the top FREE and almost free website hosting platforms on the market today.
Whether you’re a student, small business owner or web developer, we hope you found this guide helpful and are ready to start building your website today!
We wrote this article to help you find website hosts free services to choose from for your next project.
Looking for additional resources? Check out our other guides on web hosting, email marketing, social media marketing, and more!
