When you’re looking for a free web host, you need to be careful. Some fill your website with ads, which makes your website look free. Others restrict storage, slow speeds, or have poor performance in general. The last thing you want is a website that’s often unavailable due to downtime.
Some free hosts even try to minimize their expenses by compromising your security with low-grade servers or outdated software. You need to know which ones you can really trust.
So you don’t have to do the research, our experts have rigorously tested dozens of free web hosting solutions, to bring you our list of the ones you can really trust.
In a Hurry? These Are the Best Free Web Hosts:
- Wix – Beginner-friendly way to get your website online. Technically, Wix is a website builder, not a web host, but your website is hosted as part of the free plan, and security, apps, and templates come free of charge.
- InterServer (Almost Free)– Unlimited SSD storage and free website migration.
Click here for 3 more free hosts | Comparison table | FAQ
We recently removed 000webhost, as the company is focusing on its low-cost brand Hostinger, which is a great option. You’re better off just signing up directlyto the $0.99/month plan!
What We Look For in the Best Free Web Hosting Solutions
When we put free web hosting solutions to the test, this is what we look for:
- 100% ad-free hosting. Even if you don’t have the budget for premium hosting, you need a website that doesn’t look like it’s free, with ads everywhere.
- Enough storage and bandwidth for a simple website. You need to know that you have enough storage space, and that your website isn’t going to suffer downtime due to insufficient bandwidth.
- Installation of WordPress and other CMS. Basic website builders are nice for some purposes, but your site may need more. Your free web host needs to offer easy installation of more advanced applications, WordPress in particular.
- Easy-to-manage control panels. You want a hosting solution that makes it easy to manage your files and other aspects of your web hosting space, using a control panel such as cPanel.
1. Wix – The Best Website Builder With Free Hosting Included
Wix is our top choice if you want the easiest way of hosting your website without having to worry about whether an SSL certificate is included or how to install WordPress. It’s incredibly beginner-friendly and has hundreds of different templates you can choose from.
Using Wix’s fully customizable drag-and-drop editor, you can build your website in less than an hour– or even faster if you choose to use Wix’s artificial intelligence option, Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence). It’s the most flexible of all the website builders we’ve tested, giving you the creative freedom to make your website unique, even when you’re using a popular template. You can easily see why it took the number one spot in our list of top website builders.
You can find out more about why Wix is our favorite website builder in our full Wix review.
What You Get With the Free Version
The free plan that Wix offers isn’t the most generous in terms of storage and bandwidth (500 MB of each), but it’s definitely enough to get you started – and it’s really easy to upgrade, too. The two biggest drawbacks with the free plan are the ads that Wix will put on your web pages and not being able to use a custom domain name.
Compared to some website builders, however, Wix has a decent amount of features included in the free plan, including:
- 500+ mobile-friendly templates – With so many different templates to choose from, you’re almost guaranteed to find one that suits your needs. You can view all of Wix’s templates before you sign up and they’re neatly arranged into categories such as business, stores, portfolio, music, design, and events.
- Free apps – Wix has hundreds of apps available in its app market, and over 50 of these are free to use. Many more apps offer free trials or free plans as well as paid subscriptions. Free apps include social media integrations (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest), Google Maps, booking apps, PayPal, event calendars, forms, and much more.
- Basic marketing tools – Although some marketing features are only on paid plans, Wix does have some tools to help you market your website, such as SEO (search engine optimization) tools and integration with mailing list platforms
- Built-in security – All Wix plans, including the free plan, include essential security such as firewalls and SSL certificates. Wix also has a Site History feature that’s similar to web hosting backup features, allowing you to restore a previous version of your website and duplicate your website to keep as a backup.
What Do You Get if You Pay?
There are some definite benefits to upgrading to one of Wix’s paid plans (and there are several to choose between). One of the most important benefits is the ability to use a custom domain name (yourwebsite.com instead of yourusername.wixsite.com/yourwebsite) and removing ads from your website.
Other benefits of paid plans include:
- E-commerce features for selling online (on business and e-commerce plans)
- Larger amounts of storage
- Free domain name on annual plans
- Customer support (priority support on some plans)
- More storage and bandwidth (up to 50GB storage and unlimited bandwidth)
- Video minutes (for hosting videos without affecting your storage limits)
- Free ad credits
- Free exclusive apps for boosting your website and analyzing your traffic
When Should You Upgrade?
The biggest reason for upgrading to a paid Wix plan has got to be for the sake of professionalism. If you’re using your website for business or as an online portfolio/résumé, then you really need a custom domain name and for your website to be ad-free. If yours is a personal website, then you’ll only need to upgrade if you need more storage or bandwidth.
2. InterServer – Hosting That Won’t Increase In Price
If you need the freedom of unlimited SSD storage space, InterServer is a great choice. It also offers some of the best security features around to keep your website protected from malicious traffic and hacking attempts 24/7.
What’s more, if you have an existing website that’s been infected with malware, Interserver will clean up the website files before migrating it to its servers. Most hosts will charge extra for cleaning up compromised websites – but Interserver includes Inter-Insurance for free. You can see why users like it so much.
Not Free, but Different from Most Hosts
InterServer isn’t free to use – however, it has a unique advantage. Most hosts will lure you in with a low monthly price for your hosting and then hit you with massive price rises when it’s time to renew. InterServer has a price lock guarantee – meaning the prices stay the same when you renew your current plan, so you always know how much you’re going to be paying.
There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee, which means you can sign up with InterServer completely risk-free. You can choose to pay monthly, every six months, annually, every two years, or every three years.
InterServer Web Hosting
What Do You Get with InterServer’s Hosting?
Lots! For a budget shared hosting provider, InterServer includes an impressive set of features. These include:
- Unlimited, fast, SSD storage
- 450+ 1-click apps
- Free SitePage website builder
- Unlimited email accounts
- InterShield security – including virus scanner, machine-learning firewall, and an in-house malware database
- Inter-Proxy caching and Cloudflare – to improve speed and security
- Inter-Insurance – to remove malware and restore your website
- Price lock guarantee
- Free migration service
- Weekly backups
- Automatic WordPress updates
- Free SSL certificates
| cPanel? | Yes |
| CMS installer? | Yes, over 450 1-click apps, including WordPress |
| SSL certificate | Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates are included |
FreeHosting stands out because of the sheer amount of features included for free. With hundreds of apps like WordPress and Joomla available for one-click install and more technical features like Apache/PHP7 management, FreeHosting gives you premium features at zero cost.
Unlike many free web hosting providers, FreeHosting doesn’t give you a subdomain (e.g. yourusername.freehosting.com). This has advantages and disadvantages. Your website will look more professional with your own domain name, but then again, domain names do cost money.
You can see the results of our performance tests in our full FreeHosting review.
What You Get with the Free Version
FreeHosting is one of the most feature-packed free hosting options in our showcase. Included with your free plan is:
- Unmetered bandwidth. Although FreeHosting asks you to comply with its Fair Use Policy, this is pretty standard procedure with web hosts offering ‘unlimited’ bandwidth, and there are actually very few restrictions.
- 10GB of storage. This is a really generous amount of disk space compared to other free hosts.
- Softaculous Auto Installer. You get access to more than 480 web applications that can be installed on your website in an instant.
- One email account. You get a single [email protected] email address included – with the option to purchase more email addresses as an add-on. Spam control and guaranteed delivery are included with the free email address, too.
FreeHosting’s biggest limitation is that you can’t try it out without purchasing a domain name. Unless you already have a domain name hosted elsewhere, that means you have no choice but to pay something to get started. However, domain names are not expensive, and the extra features you get with FreeHosting can make it worth it.
What Do You Get If You Pay?
With FreeHosting, you have two different options if you want to upgrade your web hosting. You can either upgrade to a paid plan – which includes some extra features – or you can add extra features to your free plan as paid add-ons.
Paid plan exclusives:
- Web logs
- Web stats
- Backups
- Extended resources
Add-ons:
- Additional email mailboxes
- Additional MySQL database
- Extra technical support
- SSL certificate
- MultiPHP – choose which version of PHP your hosting space uses
FREEHOSTING Web Hosting
When Should You Upgrade?
There’s so much included with the free plan that you might wonder whether there’s any need to upgrade at all. However, if you want to build trust with your website visitors, an SSL certificate is essential, so this is one upgrade that you should seriously consider.
| cPanel? | Yes |
| CMS installer? | Softaculous Installer with 480+ apps including WordPress |
| SSL certificate | You can purchase an SSL certificate as an add-on to your free plan |
4. GoogieHost – 100% Cloud-Based for Better Performance
If you’re looking for a free web hosting solution that can deliver fast speeds, GoogieHost offers Cloud Linux hosting for better speed and stability. To improve your performance even more, when you sign up you can add the CDN (content delivery network) Cloudflare to your website for free.
Like other free hosts, GoogieHost uses subdomains for free web hosting – but you can buy your own domain to create a more professional look. If you decide to go with the subdomain, you can choose from two different domains: examplesubdomain.cu.ma or examplesubdomain.thats.im.
What You Get with the Free Version
GoogieHost packs a lot of features into its free plan. You get:
- Customer support. While most free hosts don’t offer customer support to free users, GoogieHost’s support team will be happy to help you to resolve any issues you have.
- 1GB SSD storage. Faster and more stable than traditional HDD storage, SSD storage can boost your website’s speed and performance even further.
- Unlimited bandwidth. There’s no limit to the amount of traffic you can receive – and GoogieHost also includes a 100MBPS uplink, so your website can easily handle lots of visitors at once.
- Free business emails. Create a professional email address for your business to give your customers the right impression.
- Softaculous Auto Installer. Quickly and easily add applications such as WordPress to your website. You get access to over 300 different applications with this installer.
- Free SSL. Your website is automatically protected by GoogieHost’s SSL certificate.
There are some limitations to GoogieHost’s free plan, however. Because you can only host a single free website, GoogieHost performs checks to ensure that you’re not trying to cheat the system (even if you’re not), so there’s often a delay before your free account is approved. If it thinks you have multiple accounts, you’ll be banned from the platform – and lose your website.
Read our full GoogieHost review to discover more pros and cons.What Do You Get If You Pay?
There’s no option to add extra features to your free plan with GoogieHost, so you have to choose a paid plan. When you upgrade to a paid plan, you get:
- Lite Speed – make your website load even faster.
- Backups
- Live chat support
- Choose from different server locations
- 1GBPS uplink
- 99.99% uptime guarantee
GoogieHost Web Hosting
When Should You Upgrade?
If you want to expand your business or blog in another direction and need a separate website, then you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan due to GoogieHost’s very strict rules about multiple websites.
| cPanel? | Yes |
| CMS installer? | Softaculous Installer with 300+ apps including WordPress |
| SSL certificate | Free – covered by GoogieHost’s SSL |
5. AwardSpace – Add Extra Websites to Your Hosting Space
If you want to host more than one website, AwardSpace gives you the option to host a total of four free websites – three of which will be subdomains. This gives you the option to host websites for your friends, family, or clients.
With an AwardSpace free plan, you benefit from automatic firewall protection that keeps your website secure from malicious attacks. AwardSpace takes security seriously – but for an SSL certificate, you have to upgrade to a paid plan.
Check out our expert AwardSpace review for more information.What You Get with the Free Version
- 1GB disk space. With 1GB, you can store around 600 images, but isn’t so great for large video files.
- 5GB monthly traffic. This is the lowest amount of bandwidth on offer on our list, but it should be enough for simple websites and blogs.
- One email account. Your free email account comes with SpamAssassin and ClamAV virus protection.
- CMS installation. Although AwardSpace uses the Zacky App Installer, with the free plan you’re only able to install one of three CMS options – WordPress, Joomla, or Grav.
- Subdomains. You can add up to three subdomains to your hosting space.
With AwardSpace, you’re restricted to just three CMS options, which is a huge limitation. Considering the other free web hosting solutions in our showcase, we feel they could do better.
Your access to customer and technical support is limited – but of course, you have 24/7 access to sales support!
What Do You Get If You Pay?
AwardSpace’s shared hosting upgrades include these features:
- Better speeds
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited traffic
- Better security
- More email accounts
- Free SSL certificates
- More than one website
- Free domain name for life (on the Web Pro Plus plan and above)
- Full access to Zacky App Installer
AwardSpace Web Hosting
When Should You Upgrade?
If you want to install web applications for advanced functions such as forums (e.g. MyBB or BBPress), e-commerce (e.g. Magento or OpenCart), or online education (e.g. Moodle), you’ll need to upgrade. You’re also likely to find that as your website gains more popularity, the 5GB bandwidth limit may become too restrictive.
| cPanel? | Rather than the standard cPanel, AwardSpace has its own control panel “Advanced Control Panel” |
| CMS installer? | You can install WordPress, Joomla, or Grav on the free plan |
| SSL certificate | Only available on paid plans (no shared SSL with free hosting) |
Paid Hosts That Are Super Affordable – Our Top 4 Picks
While free hosting can fit the needs of small and temporary websites, bigger projects require paid hosting solutions. A custom domain name, more disk space, and 24/7 support are just some of the benefits paid hosting provides.
The best part is, “paid” doesn’t have to be synonymous with “expensive.” Quite the contrary. I’ve included some high-quality web hosts that cost less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. For a more professional looking website, they’re the way to go.
Hostinger
With close to 30 million users, Hostinger is definitely doing something right. The company’s hosting solutions are easy to use – even for beginners – and simply dirt cheap. How cheap? During sales, I’ve seen prices go for less than a dollar a month.
- Lots of disk space and bandwidth, even on the most basic plan
- Easy one-click WordPress installations
- Professional and responsive support, available 24/7 through live chat
| cPanel? | Customized cPanel that’s been optimized for speed and ease of use |
| CMS Installer? | Softaculous one-click installations include WordPress and dozens of other CMS |
| SSL Certificate | Available for purchase, though I recommend being real nice and asking support for one… you never know |
Hostinger Web Hosting
Hostwinds
Hostwinds continues to provide excellent service, while still keeps prices fair and affordable. The company offers major discounts for new signups, and its shared hosting plans are some of the most feature-rich you’ll be able to find.
- Free SSL certificate protects your visitors’ privacy and boosts SEO ranking
- Hosting on Solid State Drives for a speedy experience
- Unlimited disk space and bandwidth
| cPanel? | cPanel is included with all plans |
| CMS Installer? | Softaculous one-click auto installers included |
| SSL Certificate | Included with all plans |
Hostwinds Web Hosting
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is perfect if you need fast and reliable web hosting that doesn’t limit your storage space and bandwidth. Its Turbo plans can offer speeds up to 20x faster than standard shared hosting (but they do cost a bit more). If you already have a website, A2 will migrate it to its servers for free.
It also offers HackScan to proactively prevent security risks to your website.
A2 Hosting isn’t just good for your website, it’s good for the environment, too. The company offers green hosting and does its part to fight climate change.
- Automatic backups
- Anytime money-back guarantee
- 24/7 Guru Crew Support
| cPanel? | Yes |
| CMS Installer? | Yes, 100s of apps available using Softaculous, including WordPress |
| SSL Certificate | Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates are included |
A2 Hosting Web Hosting
FastComet
FastComet provides low-cost cloud-based hosting that’s faster than traditional shared hosting. If you really want the best possible speeds, upgrade to the FastCloudExtra to take advantage of RocketBooster, with specially configured servers.
You used to get a free domain name for life with FastComet, but sadly, that’s no longer the case. However, if you transfer an existing domain name to FastComet, it will be renewed for an extra year for free.
- Up to 35GB SSD space
- Daily backups
- BitNinja server security
| cPanel? | Yes |
| CMS Installer? | Yes, over 450 1-click apps, including WordPress |
| SSL Certificate | Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates are included |
FastComet Web Hosting
Surprisingly Good, REALLY Free Web Hosting Options
In the past, free web hosting was restricted to free website builders that splashed ads all over your site, making it easily identifiable as free. Now, free hosting is packed with many of the features normally associated with premium hosting plans – albeit with some limitations.
You can host a WordPress website on your own custom domain for less than $15 if you shop around for a good domain name deal – or, in most cases, just opt for using a free subdomain to get started and add a domain name later.
So, which free host should you choose?
If you’re looking for a beginner-friendly way to get a free website, Wix is by far the easiest option, as it uses a drag-and-drop editor to get your website online quickly. Plus, security and all those behind-the-scenes things are taken care of so you just have to build your website.
If you’re looking for the best level of performance, GoogieHost’s cloud-based web hosting is more stable and offers better speeds – plus, you’re protected with a free SSL certificate.
If you need the most space and traffic, FreeHosting gives you unlimited bandwidth and more storage space than any other host on our list.
If you’re planning on hosting multiple websites, AwardSpace will let you have up to four different websites on your hosting account.
| Standout Feature | Bandwidth | Storage | SSL | ||
| Wix | 500+ templates for the drag-and-drop editor | 500MB | 500MB | Included on all plans | |
| InterServer | Price-Lock Guarantee | Unlimited | Unlimited | Free | |
| FreeHosting | Over 480 web applications | Unlimited | 10 GB | Available as an add-on | |
| GoogieHost | Cloud Linux | Unlimited | 1 GB SSD | Free | |
| AwardSpace | Host up to 4 websites | 5 GB | 1 GB | Only available on paid plans |
FAQ
The answer depends on your needs. For a really simple option that makes it incredibly easy to get started, Wix is a great choice. If you use Wix ADI, you can literally have a website created in minutes!
Free web hosting plans always come with some limitations, so it’s really a matter of which ones you can live with. If you’re just looking to build a small personal site, GoogieHost can be a good option. You only get 1 GB of storage and the performance isn’t the best, but you do get unlimited bandwidth.
If you just need a testing ground with more storage space, FreeHosting will give you 20 GB. If you need to host more than one website, AwardSpace will let you host up to four on your account.
That said, if you’re serious about your website, free hosting probably won’t do – the last thing you want is a site that’s down all the time or takes forever to load. These days, Hostinger’s plans are starting at $1.39 per month, so there’s really no need to compromise on low-quality hosting.
Some free hosts offer very basic security features, but in most cases, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan just to get an SSL certificate. If you’re planning on having any sensitive data on your site, free hosting isn’t your best bet.
You should check out InterServer’s cheap plans – this host offers some of the best security around (at no extra cost). There’s a price-lock guarantee, which means you never have to worry about unpleasant surprises in the form of high renewal fees.
While you can get basic web hosting for free, free hosts really can’t compare to what you’d get from a paid hosting service. A paid hosting plan will give you much better performance and reliability, and you won’t have to deal with constant downtime or pesky ads on your site. You can also connect your own domain name instead of settling for an awkward subdomain (most web hosts will even throw in a free domain name for your first year).
To get started, check out our list of the best web hosting services right now.
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