Disclosure: WHSR is reader-supported. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission.
The Best Cheap Web Hosting Deals – Host Your Website for Less Than $5 in 2022
Updated: 2022-04-19 / Article by: Jerry Low
Thanks to various factors, web hosting providers can now offer more for less. This means more flexibility and choice for consumers like you and me.
Today most Shared Hosting plans are cheaper than $5 per month. For those who are new or hosting simple sites with low resource demands – Cheap Shared Hosting is an ideal launch point.
Our team at WHSR has tested more than 60 hosting companies and studied the pricing of 1,000 web hosting plans. Here's a quick breakdown on your best choices in low-cost web hosting.
We will look into each of these budget web hosts below.
1. Hostinger
Cheapest plan signup at: $1.99 per month
Hostinger Plans
Hostinger offers a wide variety of hosting solutions, ranging from the advanced with VPS cloud hosting plans to beginners who just want to get started with a cheap shared hosting.
Hostinger's cheapest plan – “Single” is priced at $1.99 per month. At the price of slightly more than a dollar, you get to host 1 website with 30 GB SSD disk space and 100 GB bandwidth – which is adequate for about 10,000 visits monthly.
For higher tier shared hosting – Premium ($2.99 per month ) and Business Plan ($4.99 per month ), you'll get more storage space, bigger site hosting capacity, innovative features like advance cron jobs, GIT access, free Google Adwords credits, unlimited databases, and free dedicated SSL – stuffs that you don't usually get from a budget hosting plan.
As mentioned in my Hostinger review – I think Hostinger is a great choice for those who are looking one-stop cheap hosting solution – in particular newbies who are just starting out.
Hostinger does bring a lot to the table – from fantastic pricing to a wide range of server locations and excellent customer supports. These advantages do come at some sacrifice though – such as the lack of migration assistance and some minor SSL headaches. Of course, you’ll also have to content with plan renewal price hikes, but that’s quite typical with low cost hosting providers.
Pros
Solid hosting uptime – Uptime > 99.98%
Reasonable speed performance, server responses in 200ms – 400ms range
Flexible hosting options – Host with different types of hosting and control panels
Heavy discount during signup, “Single” plan start at just $1.99 per month
Self-deemed a easy-to-use cheap hosting provider, InterServer specializes in shared, VPS, dedicated, and co-location hosting solutions.
Interservers offer all-in-one shared hosting at very cheap price – $2.50 per month cheap to be exact. Included in this is rock-solid server performance, unlimited site hosting, LiteSpeed-powered server, free weekly backups, cron jobs support, and excellent in-house technical support.
What I Think of Interserver
I started using InterServer since 2013 and visited the company HQ at Secaucus, New Jersey in 2016. Two things I like the most about InterServer's cheap hosting plan:
You don't have to subscribe for long term to enjoy Interserver's discounted price – InterServer shared hosting plans is priced at $5 per month for 12 months subscription and $2.50 for 1 months subscription, and
They allow users to host unlimited domains at their budget plan (most budget plans we discuss in this article allow only one domain per account)
These two factors made InterServer the easy choice when you plan to host multiple (low traffic) websites in one account.
A2 Hosting is fast, reliable, and cheap. Their shared hosting comes in three flavors – Lite, Swift, and Turbo.
Lite, the cheapest plan of all, allows users to host 1 website, 5 databases, and 25 email accounts.
You wouldn't know Lite is a budget plan by looking at its features: Full SSD storage, SSH access, Rsync, FTP / FTPS, Git and CVS ready, Node.js and Cron support, and pre-configured for best WordPress performance (using in-house built WP plugin – A2 Optimized). All these for $2.99 a month.
Founded in 2006 by Trey Gardner, GreenGeeks has benefited from his extensive experience in several large hosting companies. Today, Trey and his experienced core team of professionals have built GreenGeeks into a healthy, stable and competitive company.
The company’s roots lie in North America and has served over 35,000 customers with more than 300,000 websites. As an eco-friendly company, it has dedicated itself to leaving a positive energy footprint and replaces used energy with triple the energy credits that are used.
But that's not all – On top of being environmental friendly, GreenGeeks is also very budget friendly. Their all-in-one, 300% green shared hosting plan costs $2.49 per monthduring signup.
For first time customers, TMD shared plan starts at $2.95 per month – a 60% price cut from the standard renewal price. The company has been around for over 10 years and has four data centers spread across the United States and an overseas data center in Amsterdam.
We’ve recently were given a free account by TMDHosting so we decided to put the hosting provider to the test. Turn out – the budget host is not bad at all.
* Note: Use promo code “WHSR” to enjoy additional 7% discount when you order TMD Hosting.
6. InMotion Hosting
Cheapest plan signup at: $2.29 per month
InMotion Hosting Plans
InMotion Hosting is old-school, reliable, features-rich, and affordable.
Their cheapest shared server hosting plan – named “Core”, starts at $2.29 per month. It allows users to host two websites and comes with a free domain, SSH access, PHP 7 support, site backup and restore, full support in Cron and Ruby, 10email addresses. unlimited server bandwidth, as well as hack & malware protection. What's more – if you are a new users, folks at InMotion will help migrate your site for free.
Admittedly, InMotion Hosting does not offer the cheapest price in town, but they are the best hosting provider in overall based on my experience. I use InMotion Hosting personally and have collected years of record in InMotion Hosting uptime and speed test.
Starting at a highly reasonably price of $3.95, $5.95, and $9.95 per month, ScalaHosting has a lot to offer in their low-cost shared hosting plans. Although it keeps true to the low-cost-hosting concept of most hosting providers, elsewhere it is generous. If you’re a newbie to website hosting this is an excellent place to start.
Scala's cheapest plan – Mini, costs $3.95 per month when you signup for 3 years. At this price, ScalaHosting gives all new users unlimited email accounts & databases, free website migration, domain name, and SSL. This alone would make it an extremely strong value-for-money proposition. Also included is a software installer, 7-day cycle of automated backups, and more.
Most importantly, there is a lot of room to grow at ScalaHosting. From their range of shared hosting plans, you can move on to their excellent managed Cloud VPS hosting plans as your website grows. The key differentiator of Scala's VPS plans against others is that they offer users the benefits of using SPanel on Digital Ocean or Amazon AWS cloud infrastructure. This makes for much better cost-effectiveness if you take into consideration that you’re on a managed plan.
Bluehost entered the web hosting market in 2003 and has been going strong since then. The Provo, Utah based company is well-recognized today and hosts over two million websites.
Unlike many other companies in today's hosting space, Bluehost does not officially disclose where their servers are hosted. Aside from a likely presence in Utah, little is really known and there are no options to select a location on sign-up.
Support is available via live chat, phone, and a ticketing system. Should you need more specialized assistance, Bluehost also has marketing consultants who can work with you on your needs.
HostPapa is founded in 2006 by by Jamie Opalchuk. Headquartered in Ontario, Canada – HostPapa is a popular names in some regions including Australia, Canada, and United States.
HostPapa cheapest hosting plan (named “Starter”) starts at $3.95 a month. For that price, you'll get a free domain, 100GB full SSD storage, and hosting capacity to host two websites and 100 email accounts. Higher-tier “Business” plan comes with better server power and more essential features and costs the same during signup ($3.95 per month); but it is pricier during renewal ($14.99 vs $9.99 per month).
We have been tracking the web host since mid 2017. You can learn more about my experience in this detail HostPapa review.
Is HostPapa Low Cost Hosting Good?
In brief here's what I like about HostPapa's shared hosting plan –
Pros
Good server uptime performance, hosting uptime > 99.98%
Free domain name on signup – Save ~$15 (domain registration fee)
Reputable company with good business track record (BBB Accredited Business with A+ rating)
Helpful live chat support based on my experience
Eco-friendly hosting – Reduce your carbon footprint
Cons
Lack of options in server locations (host in Canada only)
Very expensive VPS hosting packages – Not recommended to upgrade
Expensive renewal fees – Starter Plan costs $9.99/mo after first term, Business Plan costs $14.99/mo after first term, both are 100% – 150% more expensive compare to others
FastComet is a rare gem in the hosting world. With a long list of useful features and low price tags – the web host is suitable for both newbies and advanced users.
A test site was setup at FastComet in early 2018 and we tracked their server performance for over a year. You can check out the results we got in this detail FastComet review.
FastComet cheapest hosting plan is incredibly low price at signup – their cheapest plan, FastCloud, costs only $2.95 per month at signup. The plan comes with 15 GB SSD disk space, malware scan and report, free network firewall, SSH access, and daily backup.
FastComet Pros & Cons
Here's what I like and dislike about FastComet in a nutshell.
Pros
Solid server uptime results based on our tracking
Choice of 10 server locations
Generous server resources offer – Lowest plan able to accommodate up to 25,000 visits per month
Secured hosting environment with auto malware scanning
Daily backup included in all shared plans
Excellent live chat support based on my study on hosting company live chat system
45 days money back guarantee
Cons
Broke its price lock guarantee back in 2017
Only 7 days trial for VPS Cloud users
Private DNS not available for FastCloud users
Lack of caching mechanism for cheaper shared hosting plans
* Note: FastComet have adjusted their pricings multiple times in the past. For best accuracy, please check prices at FastComet.com.
A cheap web host usually refers to shared hosting that cost less than $5 per month during signup and not more than $10 per month after first term.
Hosting prices have changed drastically over the last 10 – 15 years. In early 2000, a $8.95 per month package with basic features was considered cheap. Then the price dropped to $7.95, then $6.95, $5.95 per month, and then even lower in 2022.
When I first created this cheap hosting guide – I was making a list of hosting deals below $10/month. But that is no longer relevant in today's web hosting market. If you look at some of the lowest-priced offers I hand-picked above – you'll notice that today, some shared server hosting cost less than $3 per month.
How Much Should I Pay for a Cheap Web Host?
Based on our recent hosting market study, you should expect to pay not more than $7.50 per month for a Cheap Web Host.
Below is the pricing data for 500 different low-cost shared hosting plans we collected in our study. You'll see that most budget hosting deals are well below $3 per month during signup.
Free hosting is generally not suitable for long term use unless you're intending to run a very basic, low traffic volume website. Most websites will require more resources as they grow and it is not likely that free hosting will be able to accommodate that growth.
Methodology: How do We Choose & Rank A Low-Cost Web Host?
Cheap price tag matter but there are also a number of factors we consider when selecting a company into our Cheap Web Hosting list.
Here are the crucial factors (other than cheap pricing) we look into.
1. Server Performance
A web hosting – regardless of its pricing, should comes with sufficient server resources to keep your site “up” at all times.
A slow and often “down” hosting affects your website user experience and Google rankings badly. This is why we emphasize so much on server uptime and response rate in our hosting reviews. No one should host their sites on a slow and unstable web host.
Some budget hosting companies tend to overload their capacity and host way too many websites in one server and this often lead to slow server response rate and frequent hosting down time.
When searching for a cheap hosting plan – we look for providers that guarantee at least 99.9% hosting uptime and show reliable uptime in our server tests.
Example: Hostinger hosting uptime for June 2021. Although their shared hosting is cheap ($1.99/month), their performance remains stable > click here to order Hostinger.
Pro Tips:
When you have signed up to a new web host make sure you:
Test your server response rate (by looking at time-to-first-byte readings) using Webpage Test or Bitcatcha.
If your host performs badly – make sure you ask for a refund and switch web host.
2. Essential Hosting Features
Cheap or not – your hosting plan should comes with all the essential features that are needed to run your websites. This includes (but not limited to) basic server maintenance features, email hosting solution, easy installer for popular scripts, latest version of PHP and MySQL, after sales technical support, 99.9% server uptime, good customer support, and reasonable hosting speed.
Some companies – though their plans are cheap – also provide regular server backup, auto malware scanning, dedicated IP address and one-click Let's Encrypt SSL activation. These features are nice to have but they are like “bonus”. I can totally understand if budget hosting companies are charging users extra for malware scanning or backup-and-restore feature.
At $2.49/mo, Greengeeks offer easy manage free SSL – this allows you to install, update, and remove your free Let's Encrypt SSL certificates for all websites easily > click here to order GreenGeeks now.
3. Options to Upgrade
All companies selected in my Cheap Hosting List offers a wide range of different hosting solutions.
It's best to host a new website on a Shared Server Hosting – they are usually the cheapest and easy to maintain. However as your website grows, you might need higher grade server hosting (VPS, Dedicated, Cloud, etc) in future. Hosting your websites with a provider that offer the full range solution will reduce the hassles to upgrade later.
Hostinger span from cheap shared hosting to VPS and WordPress hosting, offering rooms for your website to grow > click here to order Hostinger.
4. Customer Support
To cut operation costs, some cheap hosting companies run on outsourced customer support team and often fail to support their customers swiftly. The slow response times are not always due to a lack of caring. In some cases, cheap hosts simply don’t have enough technical staff members to attend to customers' support requests.
Sadly, there is not much we can do with a hosting company that runs on poor after-sales support.
For newbies who need extra support, it is best to avoid hosting companies with bad support. Talk with the support department before you place your order, ask related technical questions (such as inodes limits, CPU cycles, Ruby on Rails, etc) and judge their quality based on the responses.
5. Hidden Fees & Charges
Some cheap web hosting providers have suspicious business practices and unclear terms and conditions.
To avoid cheap hosting companies with questionable pricing policy, you are recommended to read Terms of Services (ToS) and check out genuine hosting reviews before purchase.
One way to quickly learn about a company's ToS is by visiting the host’s ToS page, press Ctrl + F, search for keyword like ‘cancellation’ and ‘refund’ and find out if the company has clear cancellation and refund policy. Some web host may charge $20 – $30 for domain registration and SSL certificate fees during cancellation – which is acceptable; but anything more than that is a no-go.
What is the Difference Between Website Builder and Web Hosting?
A Website Builder offers one-stop solution to create and host your website without any coding experience. You can just buy a domain name, connect it to the Website Builder platform, pick a ready-made template, and your website is good to go.
However a Website Builder comes with a few disadvantages:
Expensive
Website Builders usually cost 100% – 250% more than traditional shared hosting services. For example, Wix Unlimited – equivalent to Hostinger's Premium Plan, cost $12.50 per month; similar plan at Weebly costs $12 per month.
Limited customization/flexibility
Using a website builder means you’re limited to what the provider has to offer. You might want a certain template for your website but if the website builder doesn’t support it, you’ll have to choose something else.
Dependence on one provider
If the provider closes down, then your site goes down it. Ideally, the website builder that you opt for will remain in the long run. Also some providers do not allow their users to move their websites away.
Data location
When you go for website builders, you won’t have control over the location of the data. It’s up to the providers where they choose to store information. A good web hosting provider, on the other, usually runs their operations from multiple data centers in different locations.
Final Thoughts: Look Beyond the Price Tags
The cheapest hosting deal might not be the best for you. Also, “best” is always a relative term. There is never a fixed solution to one's web hosting needs.
When searching for a cheap hosting, your ultimate goal should be finding the Cheap Web Host that is best for your websites. To achieve this goal, you need to understand clearly what you need from your web host.
What kind of website are you building?
Do you want something common ?
Do you need Windows applications?
Do you need a special version of software (ie. PHP)?
Does your website need special software?
How big (or small) can the web traffic volume go?
What is your 12 (or 24) months budget for the website?
How much of this money should go into hosting?
If you are totally new:
Pick a web host that you can afford for at least 2 years. Your site / blog may not make any money at all, particularly at first, so you want to be sure you don’t have to shut the blog down because of lack of funds.
You don't need expensive premium web hosting for now. An affordable shared web host should be good enough for now. Just remember to check about space limitations and server uptime.
Right now you should focus on building useful content and growing your community. You should spend more on marketing and content. Get a good newsletter service and start building your email list, start social media marketing ads, get in touch with local bloggers and hire them to promote your blog, etc.
Ask questions about customer support and if they will help you understand running a website because you are new to blogging.
For Seasoned Bloggers and Webmasters:
As part of your job now is to make sure your readers can navigate smoothly within your site/blog. You need a very reliable and fast web host.
You should track your site uptime and response speed with tools like Pingdom and Uptime Robot.
Monitor your blog memory usage and know your limit – once your blog hits 80% of the allocated memory (this the usual bottleneck you’ll first bump into with shared hosting), then it’s time to consider upgrading to VPS or cloud hosting.
Other Frequent Asked Questions
What is the cheapest way to host a website?
The answer is $0. Although relatively rare, there are free web hosting offers like 000Webhost that come with subdomains (ie. mydomain.000webhost.com) that you can use to create and run a website for zero cost. There are, however, various limitations and risks involved with free hosting – if you can afford to pay $3 – $10 per month, I strongly recommend to you to go with a budget web host instead.
Who is the cheapest paid-hosting provider you recommend?
Hostinger shared hosting starts at $0.90 per month – they are the cheapest among top hosting providers. To evaluate Hostinger performance, I host a test site on their platform and publish uptime / speed data I collect here. You can read about my experience in this detailed Hostinger review.
What are the different types of hosting?
There are four main types of web hosting are shared server, virtual private server (VPS), cloud server, and dedicated server hosting. Each offer varying degrees of performance, reliability, and security.
Where can I host a website for free?
Providers like Wix and 000Webhost offer free plans. However, many top web hosts also offer trial periods on reasonably-priced shared hosting and we recommend you try both to see the difference.
Is Wix really free?
Wix does indeed offer a limited free plan. However, this free plan comes with many drawbacks including not being able to link your custom domain and enforced Wix ads on your site.
Is WordPress hosting free?
The WordPress CMS itself is free to use and you can also use it for free on WordPress.com (with limitations).
About Jerry Low
Founder of WebHostingSecretRevealed.net (WHSR) - a hosting review trusted and used by 100,000's users. More than 15 years experience in web hosting, affiliate marketing, and SEO. Contributor to ProBlogger.net, Business.com, SocialMediaToday.com, and more.