Anyone who’s ever wanted to start a website will definitely want to get free web hosting.
After all, nobody likes to pay for things, even more so when you don’t even know if your website is going to be profitable or not, so free’s the way to go, right?
Well, right and… not so right.
Free Web Hosting
Verdict
There’s nothing wrong with getting free web hosting for your website, and it definitely has its perks, but it certainly comes with limitations as well.
It’s a really great way to establish an online presence without coming up with any cash upfront, but getting free web hosting might also result in unpleasant results for your website.
Whenever you type down www.whatever.com into your little internet browser or your phone, you’re actually sending information via a complicated network of cables to a physical computer, aptly called a server, which resides in a physical location.
That server then sends the data required back to your computer or mobile device, so it’s able to display the website you’re looking for.
Buying a server costs quite a fair bit of money. Maintaining it isn’t cheap, not to mention having to rent the physical space to store that server in, pay internet provider bills, electricity, and whatnot.
Long story short, server maintenance fees are not cheap, and that’s why quality web hosting companies charge a premium price for their services.
So how on earth do some companies manage to provide these services for free?
Now we’re asking the right questions.
Web hosting companies need to find a way to pay off their bills and keep the lights on at home. While there are many strategies and methods a company can use to keep its services free, some of it is acceptable, some unethical, and some downright deplorable.
Here are a few things most free web hosting companies do to cover their costs.
Anyway, even with all these drawbacks, free web hosting services do have their advantages. They’re fantastic for people that are just starting out, hobbyists, and it’s a great way to get your site up and running in no time.
I’ve rambled on enough, so let’s dive into the point of this entire article.
500MB
Yes
Free
Wix is one of those web hosting companies that are really popular, even among those that aren’t in the know. This isn’t too surprisingly though, seeing as they’re good enough to be number 1 on this list.
Honestly, Wix doesn’t offer much in terms of free features, but what they lack in that department, they more than make up for in terms of their usability.
When one of my friends first started experimenting with building websites, he went straight to Wix just to see what he could produce in a limited amount of time with no coding knowledge whatsoever.
What he managed to produce was very impressive, professional-looking and slick. All he needed to do was to pick a base from Wix’s remarkable list of templates, and customize accordingly to what he had in mind using their drag and drop interface.
If you’re looking for a free web hosting to host a small website, with a site builder that can easily produce polished websites, look no further. You really can’t go wrong with Wix. Read our full review on Wix here.
30GB
Yes
$0.99 /mo
Number 2 our list would be the priced-so-low-it’s-practically-free, Hostinger.
Yes, we know this list is supposed to be applied to free web hosting services, but Hostinger’s prices are only $0.99 a month, which is practically free guys! Seriously, what else can you buy for $0.99 a month these days?
Hostinger’s services are top-notch, fast, and reliable, rivalling some of the web hosting giants in the industry. As a matter of fact, we ran some tests and Hostinger actually outperforms some of them in terms of speed!
They’ve built 10 datacenters all across the globe to ensure that their speeds stay consistent no matter where your customers might be. We’ve actually set up 3 test sites with Hostinger (Singapore, Netherlands, and USA) to see how they fare globally, and all of them consistently return average speeds that are below 180 ms!
That’s shockingly fast for something that costs a paltry $0.99 a month, don’t you think?
Aside from speed, what made Hostinger our favourite (almost) free web hosting is their 99% uptime guarantee. This assures us that whatever sites we decide to host with them will practically never go down, or Hostinger will return 5% of our monthly fees to us.
With a chock full of features and an easy to use HPanel (their very own version of cPanel) Hostinger easily beats out the rest of the competition, while giving premium web hosting companies a good run for their money. Read our full review on Hostinger here.
500MB
Yes
Free
Zyro is actually the brainchild of Hostinger, created as a rapid website development platform for users with the coding skills of a potato. Its user-friendly interface makes it one of the best platforms for anyone to create their first website for free, as long as they’re familiar with graphic user interfaces.
They boast pretty decent features, throwing in 500MB of storage space & bandwidth, free SSL and SEO tools, as well as beautiful, designer-crafted templates to make your website look uniquely yours.
However, the real meat and potatoes of the service doesn’t lie in what they offer, but what they can do for you – Zyro has the tools to get the perfect website up and running in no time at all:
We honestly feel that Zyro is one of the best free web hosting services available, and if you feel that you need more resources or services, all that and more is available at just a click of the upgrade button for a low price! We also hosted a test site with them and found that they’re pretty damn fast. Read our full coverage on Zyro to learn more!
1GB
Yes
Free
Powered by Hostinger, 000Webhost.com is next on this list of best free web hosting services.
They’ve been around for well over a decade, and they’ve established themselves as one of the top free web hosting companies around for people that want to learn how to build their very own sites.
000Webhost.com is 100% free forever, so you won’t have to worry about your site getting pulled after a certain amount of time.
For a free web hosting service, 000Webhost.com comes packed with a surprising number of features.
You’re given 1GB of storage space, 10GB of bandwidth, a free website builder, an automatic WordPress installer that’ll help you get started within minutes, and best of all, 2 active websites, each with their own dedicated resources!
The free website builder is simple to use, easy to learn, and comes with plenty of templates to make a sick looking professional website. You won’t even need to learn a single line of code.
The only downside to 000Webhost.com is that some people report terrible downtimes, but hey, it’s free. You can’t expect to have your cake and eat it too, right?
Personally, since 000Webhost.com is already powered by Hostinger, I would naturally prefer to get web hosting from them since the entry price is so low. But if you really don’t want to fork out any cash whatsoever, 000Webhosting.com is an excellent choice.
Unlimited
Yes
Free
x10hosting is one of the good ones out there.
It’s a free web hosting platform that is flexible, well developed, and stable, with modern hardware that could rival some of the premium web hosting brands out there.
Utilizing high-performance SSD storage for their cloud services, x10hosting ensures quick loading speeds for all websites hosted on their platform, regardless of how resource-heavy those sites are.
The free account comes with a pretty decent website builder, all the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, and CSS, to name a few. With 1-click installs and the ability to use 3rd party packages, X10hosting is arguably the most well rounded free web-hosting service in our humble opinion.
Unlimited
No
Free
Despite being quite new compared to the rest of the players on this list, InfinityFree has managed to make quite an impact in the industry by offering a substantial amount of unlimited features
The Softculous script installer makes installing WordPress a breeze, with thousands of themes at your disposal to create a stunning looking site.
Appearances aside, what impressed us enough about InfinityFree is the amount of features available without forcing us to display ads on our sites.
With them, you’ll get to enjoy unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, 10 free email accounts, with 99.9% uptime (I noticed they never said anything about a guarantee). Did i mention that all these are FREE without having to display ads?
There’s also the fact that they offer free SSL security, over 400 MySQL databases, free subdomains and PHP7.3 for that sweet loading performance, makes InifinityFree an excellent free web hosting choice.
1GB
No
Free
The one thing that makes this list so difficult to compile is the amount of quality free web hosting services out there. The quality out there is really quite staggering!
We are happy to include Awardspace into this list, and rightly so. This small little web hosting company’s free account gives the user plenty of perks to get their feet wet into the business of building websites.
Awardspace offers you the same kind of benefits most respectable free web hosts can afford to offer, but they manage to one-up the competition by offering 1 free domain and 3 free subdomains, effectively allowing their users up to 4 free websites per account!
With their 1-click installer, you’re able to get WordPress or Joomla running easily, getting your website up and ready for the world to see in a matter of minutes.
Aside from that, Awardspace also provides 24/7 customer support, even with the free account. The platform is also ad-free, so you won’t have to worry about intrusive ads showing up on your websites!
250MB
No
Free
If you’re just looking to get a simple website started and you don’t care much about features, you can’t really go wrong with a free web hosting service like Freehostia.
It’s stable with a 99.9% uptime rate, easy to use with their 1-click installer (to get WordPress, Joomla or your favourite CMS up and running in no time at all), quick to set up with a free website builder that comes with gorgeous templates (so you can build gorgeous looking websites) and gives you 3 free email accounts.
Additionally, Freehostia allows you to host up to 5 domains with 1 free account, so that’s pretty damn awesome! It’s a bit of a bummer that you’ll have to purchase your own domain name because Freehostia doesn’t provide you with any.
You’ll get to rock and roll with 6GB of bandwidth, 250MB of storage space and 24/7 customer support, so that’s not too shabby!
The only thing I find to be an issue is that the resources given to you is per account, so that means the 5 domains you can host will be sharing that 6GB bandwidth and 250MB storage… which kind of defeats the purpose of being able to host 5 domains to begin with.
Nevertheless, Freehostia is still pretty damn good for a free service. Just keep the limitations in mind if you decide to host with them!
10GB
Yes
Free
Freehosting is our least favourite free web hosting service on this list, but their services are deserving enough for them to be on this list.
They’re quite straightforward about what their free web hosting accounts can and can’t do, and they’re not shy about it all. They’ll provide users of their free accounts no-frills web hosting, with unmetered bandwidth for as long as the user wants, provided the user sticks with Freehosting’s TOS.
As a user of their free account, you’ll get to enjoy 10GB of storage for your website, unmetered bandwidth (as discussed earlier), an automatic script installer to save time on CMS installations, a free website builder and 1 free email account.
Keep in mind though that when you host with Freehosting, it’s best not to break their TOS as they’re notorious for deleting sites without warning. The project you’ve been working so hard on might just disappear overnight if you accidentally venture beyond their terms.
Another thing we don’t quite like about Freehosting is that their server speeds are inconsistent, at least with the free account. A few friends that use their services have complained that their site loading speed is one of the worst they’ve ever encountered.
Freehosting has its perks, but it also has its drawbacks. As long as you’re aware of what those drawbacks are, you should be able to continue enjoying those perks without any major setbacks.
To recap, here is recap of our top 3 best free web hosting for 2021:
Free web hosting services does have its merits, not gonna lie. It’s especially good for people who are just starting out and experimenting with website building for their business because let’s face it – nobody likes paying for stuff.
However, nothing good is free and nothing free is good, although in this case, some of the free web hosting services here are actually pretty decent. Anyway, my point is that free web hosting services has limitations, and those limitations might come in the form of forced ads, throttled features, slow server speeds, forced domain names, just to name a few.
They’re great for testing purposes, but if you want to get serious about your website, then free services just aren’t going to cut it.
If I had no choice but to go for a free web hosting service, there’s none I’d rather use other than Wix. They’re uber user-friendly, reliable and you’ll have no problems making your website look professionally polished.
Once you feel that you’ve got the hang of site building and start getting serious about your site, you can either upgrade to Wix’s paid version where the limitations and ads will be removed, or pick a professional paid service that has all the perks of premium web hosting at a very low price like Hostinger.
We’ve got a few test sites hosted with Hostinger, and so far we’ve got nothing but praises for their them. Server speeds are ridiculously fast globally, uptime results never dip past 99% and their excellent support team is just a pleasure to deal with.
However, if you absolutely must use a free web hosting service, then Wix is the way to go!
We hope you found this article useful! If you have any questions regarding any of the services listed here, don’t be afraid to drop us a message!
