We all love freebies and it should come as no surprise that even in web hosting there are tons of freebies if you know where to look. Not all things free are equal though, and this time I’m going to look at what some of these free (and “almost-free”) web hosts have to offer.
| Free Hosting | Ad-free | Disk Space | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger * | 30GB | 100GB | |
| Weebly | 500MB | Unknown | |
| Wix | 500MB | 500MB | |
| 20i | 10GB | 250MB | |
| 000Webhost | 1GB | 10GB | |
| 5GBfree | 5GB | 20GB | |
| Awardspace | 1GB | 5GB | |
| Byethost | 5GB | Unlimited | |
| Dreamnix | 1GB | 1GB | |
| Freehostia | 250MB | 6GB | |
| FreeHosting.com | 10GB | Unlimited | |
| FreeHostingEU | 200MB | 4GB | |
| Freehostingnoads.net | 1GB | 5GB | |
| Freevirtualservers | 100MB | 200MB | |
| Freewebhostingarea | 1.5GB | Unlimited | |
| InstaFree | 10GB | 100GB |
Notes & Caveats:
Hostinger was launched back in 2004 and was originally located at Kaunas, Lithuania. The company today has offices all over the world and offers a wide range of hosting plans which include Shared Server Hosting, VPS Hosting, and even a (Zyro) website builder.
With a strong localized team, Hostinger has been around for over 10 years and have steadily built an international user base that’s spread out across 39 countries. From beginner risk-free hosting to advanced VPS cloud infrastructure, Hostinger aims to cater to as wide audience as possible. As a result, Hostinger is now home to over 29 million global users.
Features
Specifications
Jerry's review of Hostinger narrows them down as a solid choice for users who want an ultra-cheap website hosting. Especially if they are a beginner or have a tight budget to work with.
We setup a test site at Hostinger and starter tracking its performance since May 2018. Our test site hosted at Hostinger has been scoring above 99.95% uptime constantly and rated as “A” in most speed tests.
Hostinger Single Hosting is not really free but they are selling incredibly cheap price ($1.99/mo). Users who want better features (such as auto daily backup, host more domains, and run unlimited cron job) can upgrade to their Premium plan, which costs $2.99/mo.
Hostinger's ultra cheap price tag comes with a price (pun intended). The single shared hosting plan does not come with a free SSL nor daily backup. Also, the $1.99/mo deal is only available if you signup for four years, which is longer than the standard recommended subscription period (24-months period).
Learn more about Hostinger in this review.
When I first looked at Weebly, I was evaluating it as a site building tool and when I hit this article I realized it was in essence, an up-sold web host. Weebly is one of the new generation of site-builder-slash-web-hosts that is doing fantastically well, in fact holding an Alexa rank of 393 now.
However, I had to re-look at it this time round since there are different plus points for web hosts and site builders.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
Weebly is well supported through a vibrant community and you can also reach out to them via email or live chat.
Upgrade options
Weebly tried hard to sell its online store builder, and as such tends to focus on transactional key points. Upgrade plans increase basic features, but the highlight is on how many products you’re allowed to sell at a time. Of course, if you’re just looking for hosting plans, it works that way as well. Prices range from $12 per month up to $25 per month.
What’s the catch with Weebly free hosting?
Weebly is big on… well, Weebly, and doesn’t really play nice with anything else. For example, it doesn’t support server-side scripting (such as PHP), nor database integration. And your free website domain will be in form of Weebly.com subdomain. True, it’s extremely powerful on its own, but this also means in terms of flexibility, you’re likely stuck with Weebly for good once you start using it.
Learn more about Weebly in my review.
Wix is also a brand that has made its name in the website-building business and was one of the earlier new-generation of web tools. It’s great for newbies and is easy to use, plus offers enough for the starter-offs to get interested before they hop on to any paid plans.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
You get what you pay for, and aside from an extensive knowledge base, for free accounts, you can email them and take your chances. Only premium accounts get ‘faster responses to any question or issue they may have.
Upgrade options
Because its plans are designed to scale up functionality to websites, Wix at the higher levels can get expensive. However, those prices include functions such as form builders, email campaigns and even site reviews by professionals. At the lowest it clocks in at $4.50 per month, going up to $24.50 per month.
What’s the catch with Wix free domain hosting?
Again, Wix is another proprietary engine which means it’ll try to hold on to you almost any way it can. The good news is that it plays better with other tools compared to Weebly, so is compatible with some tools such as Caspio, a free database platform. Oh yes, and Wix is not ad-free. If you’re not on a paying plan, it will plaster Wix ads on your site with alacrity.
Learn more about Wix in my review.
20i is a UK-based web hosting provider that’s been around for only a few years. The founders behind it, however, have a long and distinguished track record. The company currently maintains a decent product range which surprisingly enough, includes a free CDN of their own.
Impressive features for a free plan
This hosting provider ticks a lot of the right boxes on their free offering when compared to similar plans. Among their notable features is that not only do they offer you an ad-free experience, but you’re free to run ads on your site to earn money.
Upgrade options
The next logical step up from 20i’s free plan would be one of their standard shared hosting options. However, I suggest looking past the lowest tier and skipping straight on to the ‘Premium’ plan. You get tons more of every resource type – in many cases it’s unmetered.
What’s the catch with the 20i free plan?
While 20i is generous in its main areas, they’ve decided to limit bandwidth a bit tightly. All free users only get 250MB each month, an amount that will disappear faster than you can say ‘boo’.
Learn more about 20i in Timothy's review.
Since 2007, 000Webhost has been offering free web hosting that are unencumbered by advertising requirements. Since they also offer paid hosting options, their business model revolves around offering free hosting services that are funded by the paid end of the business. This works out in everyone’s favour, since users of the free hosting also have the option to scale up their sites by becoming paid customers at any time they wish.
There is a 99% uptime guarantee for free accounts, but in the case of 000Webhost, you’ll have to consider that there’s an enforced one-hour sleep period per day. That means your actual server uptime starts at 95.83% – less any actual technical difficulties.
Upgrade options
000Webhost provides paid hosting plans through Hostinger which charges for paid hosting based on the length of time you sign up for. The longer term your contract, the cheaper the monthly fee will be. Prices start at $7.19 per month for one month contract.
What’s the catch with 000Webhost free plan?
Free 000Webhost platform users will have to put up with an enforced one hour of “sleep” time every day. This means that it will be unavailable to anyone – including yourself.
Learn more in my 000webhost review.
As far as web hosting sites go, 5GBfree is relatively new, but that might be a good thing since they claim to offer the latest in technology including CloudLinux and equipment hosted a US-based, PCI and SAS 70 Type II certified data centre.
Again, this is another company that allows free accounts the option to scale up as they grow. Free accounts are supported in the form of a knowledge base (which was down at the time this article was created) and through a community forum.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
Regretfully, no mention of any uptime guarantees were found on 5GBfree, nor was there any information available regarding reliability. Small mercies abound however, since at least there are options to backup your files and databases in the back end. This appears to be the same for the Pro account plan as well.
Upgrade options
For $2.95 a month, the Pro account which the host offer is dirt cheap and seemingly offers what many highly reputable web hosts have.
What’s the catch with 5GBfree free website hosting?
Although the basic specifications of free accounts seem alright, 5GB free doesn’t host emails for those. If you’d like to have an email account with your domain, you’ll have to upgrade to the Pro account. Even more alarming is the complete lack of dedication to any form of Service Level Agreement. Sign up at your own risk!
March 2021 Update: 5GBFree no longer seems to be active. While there has been no official announcement, public comments indicate that users can no longer access the site.
Offering web hosting since 2004, Awardspace has been around the block a few times and is still standing. Over time they have been tweaking their free hosting offering and keeping up with the competition (and the times). Just last year they launched a completely redesigned site and streamlined their services.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
The free version of Awardspace comes with a no uptime guarantee. For that you’ll have to sign up with one of their paid plans. At least for those there is a Service Level Agreement at 99.9%, plus a no-questions-asked refund within the first 30 days if you’re unhappy with the company.
Upgrade options
Awardspace comes in three flavours (aside from free), with prices starting at $5.20 per month up to $10.30 per month. For new signups, Awardspace offers a whopping discount of up to 98% off, which means you could be paying as little as 9 cents a month.
What’s the catch with Awardspace?
There’s really no glaring catch at Awardspace and it offers what could be called a fair to middling free account to newbies. I’m guessing part of the plan is to price their starter paying plans cheaply to slowly hook customers and reel them in. The benefits between paid plans are very incremental at the lowest tier.
Byet Host (Yes, it’s spelled correctly) is a bold one, laying claim to being the “fastest free webhost In the World!”. Part of the reason it might say that is because it’s depending purely on server processing time and doesn’t factor in anything else such as Time to First Byte. It’s the free arm of hosting provider iFastNet, which might also be an eye-raiser since their cheapest plans apparently come with six free domains! This free host offers a ton of goodies and might be worth a look at.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
It’s interesting to note that Byet Host offers 24/7 support even to free accounts. Even if they take some time to support tickets, it’s not often you see a free host that offers real support. Most of the time either knowledge bases are used, or at best, a user forum where you help one another.
Upgrade options
Since they offer so much to free accounts, what do you get from paying for hosting with Byet Host? Upgrades to SSD-driven performance, free domains and unusually enough – a different control panel (cPanel). Prices start from $4.99 per month all the way to $7.99 per month.
What’s the catch?
Although Byet Host sounds almost too good to be true, it might be good if you take some time to check what they offer in detail. I’ve found that the way many terms and services are worded to be a little shady and open to interpretation in various ways.
More details on Byet Host terms and conditions.
Rather than a free server hosting, I’d consider Dreamnix to be “almost-free”, since they offer top-of-the-line features with sharp limitations in their free product. This is in line with their concept of “try before you buy”.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
It’s a pretty good bet that this is legit, since all-round Dreamnix stresses on its money-back guarantee. In fact, it doesn’t even take your credit card information until you pay for any service. As I said – try before you buy!
Upgrade options
Once you’re outgrown your free hosting plan, upgrades differ mainly in terms of add-on features such as access to Cron jobs, mailing lists and so on. The basics such as bandwidth and sick space go up to unlimited with even the lowest plan. Starts from $1.95 per month up to $4.95 per month based on annual subscription rates.
What’s the catch?
As far as we can see, nothing much, except that Dreamnix is limited to data centers in only three locations. These are nicely spread out around the world though, so there shouldn’t be any real issues here.
Learn more about Dreamix limitation in their ToS.
Freehostia proudly announces more than ten years of serving hosts in the industry and shouts out about ‘Load Balanced Cluster Technology’ versus standalone servers. It’s a large scale web host, meaning that aside from offering slices of hosting, it also offers high end solution such as dedicated servers. On the downside, Data Centre location is limited to only Chicago.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
Uptime for free hosts is mentioned to be 99.9%, which is usually an indicator that paid plans increase in reliability. Unfortunately, Freehostia doesn’t show uptime for paid plans, so it’s a bit of a hit and miss.
Upgrade options
Freehostia offers multiple plans of incremental capacities. The key thing here seems that there is much focus on amount of storage given; strange, since storage is pretty much dirt cheap nowadays and most web hosts are practically giving it away. Prices start at $14 per month up to $65 per month for their upgraded plans.
What’s the catch?
Storage space, storage space and storage space, Freehostia seems intent to cripple users through this alone. 250MB for a web host (even a free one) today seems unconscionable. Also, there are so many plans available just browsing through them is enough to confuse you.
The first thing you’ll notice when you visit this site is that it’s plastered all over with the word “Free”. Great, since that’s what you’re after right? Not so much when you realise that long list of features offered is cunningly interspaced with non-free items just so that it looks longer.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
I’ve been round and again over this site but there doesn’t seem to be any mention at all an uptime guarantee, which is a little frightening. The only time money-back is mentioned is within its 30-day grace period of paid accounts.
Upgrade options
Freehosting.com only offers two plans – you pay, or you don’t. Paid accounts benefit from unlimited storage space and bandwidth at $7.99 per month.
What’s the catch with FreeHosting.com?
For the free service, not much that we can find. BUT, there is a caveat in their terms of service; There is an ‘out’ clause there that basically states that they can shut you down if you’re taking up too much (unspecified) resources.
FreeHostingEU is not affiliated with Freehosting.com, but reminds us a little of Freehostia, in the sense that it offers a paltry amount of storage space in the hopes that you’ll get frustrated and upgrade. I’m not sure where the mentality of annoying your customer in the hopes he’ll pay you came from, but it seems successful for web hosts. It’s worth nothing though that this host offers .eu5.net domains even for free accounts.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
All plans on Freehosting EU come with 24/7 Server Monitoring and a 99.8% uptime guarantee. As far as web hosts go, that’s on the low side. I guess for peace of mind though, they offer the same guarantee to free accounts.
Upgrade options
FreehostingEU comes in three flavours, free, BEST and PRO. The two paid plans cost $6.95 and $11.95 per month respectively and come with a 30-day money back guarantee. They do offer a discount for first time sign-ups though.
What’s the catch with Free Hosting EU?
Once again, it’s all in the small print and in the case of FreeHostingEU you’ll go ‘WOW!’ – if you don’t rip your hair out first. Compliance is expected in many areas that are a little unusual because, well, who thinks of some of these things? For example, you must agree to limit your space to consist of only 10% image files, 10% archives, etc. So, in reality, you’re getting a web host that you can dump… 20MB of images on.
Learn more in Free Hosting EU Terms of Service.
FreehostingNoAds has been around for 18 years, I kid you not. This site is very generous in terms of what it offers, in fact, more than what some paid accounts go for. I guess part of it is subsidy through advertising though, since they plaster google ads all over their own website. They promise not to force you to carry their ads though.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
FreehostingNoAds appears to be another hosting site which doesn’t believe in uptime guarantees. However, users who join are offered technical support, even on the free plans. It doesn’t, however, clarify what nature that support takes – it could be a simply a reference to a knowledge base or FAQ.
Upgrade options
Upgrade options are available, and they are dirt cheap here. The most expensive plan you could go for only costs $1.99 per month, and that offers you almost everything you could wish for. In fact, for the $1.99 plan, they even throw in $125 worth of ad credits for you!
What’s the catch?
Aside from non-existent uptime guarantees and cloudy reference to technical support, nothing else. This seems to be aimed mainly at people who are seeking a free or cheap hosting solution and that’s all. Given that they have an entire page dedicated to HTML5 site building that ends up directing to Wix, they might be a subsidiary of affiliate.
Read FreehostingNoAds ToS here.
FreeVirtualServers is one of the brands owned by Easy Internet, which provides web hosting and SEO services. They are another serious provider which offers everything from free hosting up to dedicated server hosting plans. Something good to note here is that they integrate a popular website builder in their hosting plan; Weebly.
Reliability and uptime guarantees
FreeVirtualServers offer the standard 99.9% uptime guarantee, and all free accounts are supported by a knowledge base and FAQ. There are also some tutorial flash videos if more help is needed. 24/7 online support is reserved for paid accounts only.
Upgrade options
There are multiple upgrade options here ranging from standard shared hosting all the way to dedicated servers. Prices range from $6.45 per month to $155.20 per month (which is for a dedicated server). It’s worth noting that this is a UK-based company with servers located there. Prices are also charged in British Pounds (converted to US$ here for your convenience).
What’s the catch?
This host seems fully above board as far as we can see, with no big surprises even in the Terms and Conditions.
See Free Virtual Servers TOS here.
Another longstanding company in the web hosting arena, Freewebhostingarea is generous in its basic terms for free accounts. It also offers a curious option between two different control panels, one of which seems extremely feature-light.
Reliability and Uptime guarantees
There is no mention at all about either an uptime guarantee or technical support. In fact, although a forum is listed, it doesn’t really exist. A cursory search returns many comments that this is not an entirely reliable host.
Upgrade options
Upgrade options here are the first we’ve seen that prices mainly according to different control panels. FreeWHA seems to be a proprietary modification of an open source control panel script. Prices range from $1 per month up to $6.99 per month.
What’s the catch?
The list of catch clauses is a mile long and personally I would dread hosting even a free site here. There are no real limitations stated in black and white, yet at the same time they claim the right to terminate accounts for almost any deemed infractions, even over-usage of resources. Definitely not the way to win friends. Even their ad-free claim is conditional, since they say they will impose ads on sites that they wish to.
See FreeWebHostingArea.com terms of service here.
![Review and compare free web host](/wp-content/uploads/instafree-free-hosting.jpg")
InstaFree offers potential website owners a pretty good deal, going by their word. Even free accounts are hosted on SSD-based storage and they are generous in both their terms of service as well as feature offerings. In fact, not only is there free shared hosting, but there is even free reseller hosting and free VPS!
Reliability and uptime guarantees
There is the standard 99.9% uptime guarantee along with a relatively active user community in the forums. Technical support is included, but is restricted to immediate issues relating to the hosting service.
Upgrade options
All free accounts have their corresponding paid account, which is basically a step up from what the free account offers. Prices range from $1 per month to $5 per month. InstaFree also offers website transfer support, even for free accounts, provided you’re using Cpanel.
What’s the catch?
There are a couple of quirks here, such as the fact that InstaFree has a list of countries that it has banned users from. This includes among them countries such as China, Russia and Poland, but also (surprisingly) Singapore.
Read Instafree Terms and conditions here.
Anything that come with the word “free” can be very tempting. Understandably, most beginners who are starting a website for the first time would like to keep their cost low and save money.
But keep in mind that nothing is truly free in this world.
While using a free web hosting platform means that you won’t have to a pay single dime for creating and hosting your website, there are numerous risks and problems that you should be aware of if you intend to use them. We will talk about the three major risks here.
Some free deals are never worth the downsides they come with. If your website matters, you should learn about these risks and consider opting for a reliable, full-featured hosting provider. Most good shared hosting providers include a free domain name, shared SSL support, e-mail hosting, unlimited data transfer and disk space, and more website functionalities for the price of $2 – $5 per month.
The most glaring issue that comes with using a free web hosting model is the terrible server performances. You see, in order help save server costs, a lot of providers will lump together hundreds, or even thousands, of websites in a single shared server.
When you have that many website sharing the same server resources, it’s inevitable that your website will suffer plenty of server issues such as slow loading websites or lots of downtime.
Some providers even put restrictions or limitation on their users when using their platform. 000WebHost forces their users to endure a one-hour period of “sleep time” every day, which helps maintain their server capacity, but ensures that your website can’t go beyond a 95.8% uptime.
With free hosting providers, you’ll have to deal with a lot of strict and tight resource limitations which your website will quickly outgrow from. When that happens, you’ll have to move to a paid hosting account which can mean more work and costs down the line.
As I’ve said earlier, with free web hosting platforms, you won’t have to pay a single dime for their servers. Because of that, most providers won’t take your website seriously. This leads to a huge risk that comes with free hosting, in that your website can be taken down at any moment.
There have been many incidents where people who used free hosting platforms ended up having their accounts deleted or barred with no prior notice or warning. Since you’re not paying for their services, a lot of free hosting providers don’t feel obligated to keep your website online indefinitely.
This is why many free hosting providers will include certain terms in their T&C that allows them to shut down your website at any moment if it goes against their interests.
An example of this is from Free Hosting EU. in which they limit their user’s account storage for up to 10%. Should the user go pass the 10% limit, they can then shut down the website with no warning or penalty (read their free hosting ToS here).
Data is an important asset for a business, especially if you’re an eCommerce business. But with free web host models, you’re more likely to get your data leaked or stolen as most providers don’t follow and enforce the standard and fundamental security practices needed to protect its users.
Again, since a lot of these providers are offering their services and infrastructure for free, they usually don’t feel the need to provide proper security to protect its users and their data. This lead to cases where a user’s sensitive details, such as usernames and passwords, ended up stolen by hackers.
One such case of a massive security leak was with 000Webhost, in which they repeatedly ignored security warnings by a Forbes journalist and a security researcher back in October 2015. This lead to them getting hacked and caused 13.5 million users to have their passwords, email address, usernames stolen.
As mentioned above, there are various risks and catches involve when using free web hosting services. However, all free web hosting providers allow you to upgrade to their paid plan- which will move your websites out of the free server box and eliminate most risks.
The two main differences are cost and server resources. Free web hosting costs $0 and usually comes with a very limited server capacity (small storage, low CPU power, etc). Paid hosting typically come with better website security, advanced functionalities and more server resources.
“Best” is relative – What's best for me might not be right for you. That said, however, Weebly, Wix, 000Webhost, 5GBfree, and Award Space are some of the best free hosting websites in market. You are recommended to check out all 16 free hosting providers in this comparison table.
Yes, there are quite a number of free hosting platforms that do not force ad placement on their users' websites. Weebly, 000Webhost, 5GBfree are the top 3 that we recommend.
Yes, most free hosting platforms allow users to upload files via FTP connections. Alternatively, platforms like 000WebHost provide a easy-to-use file manager so users can navigate, upload, and delete web files using browser.
Weebly, Wix, 000Webhost, ByetHost, Free Hosting EU and etc. are some providers who offer free web hosting with a domain name. If that's your choice, your website will appear as the subdomain to the hosting providers (ie. yourwebname.wix.come).
Alternatively – with less than $12 per year, Hostinger offers you everything you need for free web hosting and domain name with no strings attached.
There are two main ways you can get a free domain name – that is through either Freenom (the registry operator in charge of .tk ccTLDs) or a web hosting provider which offers a free domain name with the purchase of specific web hosting packages which they sell. To learn more, check out this article.
It's important to point out that most free hosting options are unable to meet even the most basic standards required to run a successful business website. If you are serious about your website, for example – running an online business or plan to make money from your blog; it is better to host your website on a cheap shared hosting providers – which usually offer quality service at reasonable price.
Popular web hosting providers like A2 Hosting, Bluehost, GreenGeeks, Hostinger, InMotion Hosting, Interserver, and TMD Hosting allow you to get a 2-year shared hosting for less than $100.
Also – Jerry has compiled a useful list of cheap and reliable hosting, which you can opt for.
Other useful resources for consumers –
 | Save 80% Grab Deal > |
 | Save 75% Grab Deal > |
 | Save 72% Grab Deal > |
