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GoogieHost Review 2024 – Free, but What’s the True Cost?

Gwen Rodgers Gwen Rodgers Web Hosting Expert

GoogieHost promises free shared hosting that includes features like spam protection, CMS installers, and business emails. And while it does offer all that, and even more as part of its free service, there’s a catch. A big one.

We hosted the same WordPress website on the most popular web hosting platforms and measured their performance
Click here to see our results >>

Overview

🏆Performance GradeA
⏱️Uptime GuaranteeYes
🔒Free SSLYes
🔧Hosting TypesShared
💡Basic Plan Features
  • Storage: Unlimited
  • Bandwidth: Unlimited
  • Websites: Unlimited
💲Starting Price$0.01
Shared Reseller Dedicated Cloud WordPress

Free Hosting – So What’s the Catch?

Free hosting services often try to reel you in with big promises, only to lead you to disappointment. This may come in the form of hidden fees, ads that annoy your site’s visitors, or even low availability, so that visitors can’t even find your website half the time.

If you’re hoping that I’m about to tell you how GoogieHost has come to save the day – spoiler alert – I’m not. You can expect no sugar-coating here. This review is based on my experiences from testing GoogieHost for three months, with a basic website.

There are some benefits to using GoogieHost’s free shared web hosting service, and there are some drawbacks, as well. But if you want to get a web hosting service that you can really count on, I’d check out Hostinger. It isn’t free, but the cost is extremely low and its quality service is definitely worth it. You can find some other excellent options on our list of the top web hosting services.

4.5

Features

Free Features Galore

GoogieHost’s free plans include lots of features that you don’t usually get for free—like a website builder, design templates, and spam protection, as well as an SSL certificate. Plus, with unlimited bandwidth, you have peace of mind that if your traffic increases, your expenses won’t.

GoogieHost-features1

Unlimited Subdomains and FTP Accounts

GoogieHost is a free host, so you won’t get a free domain name, but you do get unlimited free subdomains. This means you can build multiple websites on various subdomains, for no additional monthly fee.

Free Email Accounts

GoogieHost offers free professional email addresses. That’s a great feature, perfect for those starting out and not ready to pay for a professional email with Google (or a similar provider)—especially when you want to keep your expenses down.

No Ads on Your Website

When you opt for a free hosting provider, you’re often forced to place advertising on your website. Refreshingly, GoogieHost doesn’t expect or even try to put up ads on your site, which means that your website will only ever display the content you put on it.

Unlimited Hosting of Website Files

GoogieHost claims you can host unlimited website files, but you’re really capped at 1000 MB of SSD storage. Yes, it’s a little misleading, but 1000 MB is more than enough for most websites, and SSD means it should perform up to ten times faster than traditional HDD.

4.5

Ease of use

Beginner-Friendly Features

As GoogieHost’s target market is new website owners, as you’d expect, most features are simple to use. This is largely due to the proven combo of cPanel and Softaculous, rather than anything groundbreaking provided by GoogieHost.

cPanel

cPanel, if you’re not familiar with it, is an online control panel for managing your website. The panel is designed to assist and support your user experience and it’s widely trusted in the hosting industry. It’s where you’ll create new email accounts and sub-domains, install scripts, and so on. Basically, it will make your life easier, once you understand the interface.

Free Website Builder

GoogieHost has a great website building feature that allows you to build your website professionally—no need to hire a developer or learn to code. You’ll also have access to around 100 web templates, making it possible to create a website in minutes.

Create an Account

In order to test the account creation process, I tried to sign up for a free account with GoogieHost. Unfortunately, every time I went through the process I got an error message stating that only one free account is allowed per customer.

GoogieHost-ease-of-use1

I didn’t have an existing account with GoogieHost, so it was very strange. I tried with multiple email addresses, using a VPN, and in incognito mode—and received the same error message every time.

Whatever I did, I was unable to sign up for the free account. Of course, this was disappointing and meant I wasn’t able to set up a test WordPress website, test the speed, or do any of the usual tests I would normally do.

3.5

Performance

Few Complaints from Users

If I were cynical, I might think the 99.9% uptime guarantee was more of a marketing ploy than a bona fide service-level agreement (SLA). I mean, if your plan’s free, you’re not going to get any compensation in the event of excessive downtime, are you?

However, given that it’s a host that doesn’t charge anything, it’s impressive to see a 99.9% uptime assurance, and excluding planned downtime, GoogieHosts’ dependability is solid, and this appears to be the agreed view of most users.

4.5

Support

Helpful Support with Fluctuating Response Times

The type of support available to you from GoogieHost depends on what service you have opted for. If you have the free service, you have limited options. You can head to GoogieHost’s forum to find assistance or you fill out the online contact form.

GoogieHost-support1

The community forum was a bit of a flop in my experience—I submitted a question, but despite waiting 48 hours for the moderator to approve and publish it, as far as I’m aware, it never was.

If you’re ready to make a purchase, such as upgrading SSL certificates or purchasing domain names, GoogieHost only accepts PayPal unless you’re based in India.

Cancellations & Refunds

As I wasn’t able to sign up for GoogieHost, I can’t comment on the cancellation process. However, canceling your account with GoogieHost can be done entirely from your control panel.

Comparison

How does GoogieHost match up to the competition?

KamateraCompareOur Score4.8Compare
Liquid WebCompareOur Score4.8Compare
GoogieHostCompareOur Score4.3Compare
Tailor Made ServersCompareOur Score2.9Compare

GoogieHost REVIEW: BOTTOM LINE

GoogieHost seems to work hard to provide you with great service for free, or at a very low cost if you use the premium service. It’s a shame I wasn’t able to create a free account because, on paper, it looks like a high-quality service. But to be honest, this free host probably isn’t worth your time, especially when you can get high-quality hosting from Hostinger at a price so cheap, it’s almost free.

FAQ

How much does GoogieHost cost per month?

GoogieHost’s entry-level plan is free. It allows for one website, and comes with 1GB of SSD storage, 100GB of bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

For a nominal monthly fee you can host up to 10 websites on 50GB of SSD storage, with 250GB of bandwidth. But you’ll find the latest and best deals for 2024 on our coupons page. 

Does GoogieHost have cPanel?

It does indeed. Its free plan gives you DirectAdmin, or cPanel with Softaculous. Softaculous allows you to install various apps, including WordPress, although you’ll only have a bare minimum of 1GB of storage space – enough to run a small WordPress site, but not a whole lot more.

How much does GoogieHost charge for a domain name? 

GoogieHost will give you a subdomain with its free hosting plan, but when it comes to standard domain names, like ones ending in .com, you’ll have to pay for them. 

Which is a better value, GoogieHost or Hostinger?

GoogieHost might offer a free plan and a low-priced paid option, but it doesn’t come close to Hostinger in terms of overall value. My colleagues and I have tested the world’s top web hosts and Hostinger is number one on our list of the 10 best web hosting services for 2024.
Gwen Rodgers Gwen Rodgers
Gwen is a web developer and software engineer who loves to get lost in JavaScript (and a good book). She spends her free time teaching girls how to be coders, and doing yoga on her balcony in the sunshine.
4.6
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Don’t Do It. Nothing but problems and NO SUPPORT!

As of Jan 2023 they S6ck I have not been able to login to my hosting account and work on my website for the past 3 days. Support is almost non existent, ticket support is all that is offered and it is basic, does not answer half the problems I had/have with them.

avatar
Rather Not Say, USA
January 24, 2023
1
Terrible

I had to do a simple school project for website using PHP and mySql. The website was working fine for the first couple days then it just won't connect and gives server error. I'm in trouble now the project is already due and it looks like I have to start all over again

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Jason, Canada
June 01, 2022
1
Fast servers byt misleading advertising.

I was looking for a free host for a community website. The website is fairly simple - mostly written in html but also has one essential page in php. I spent several hours trying to diagnose the problems with this page since it was not working as expected. I addition, every time I tried looking at this page in a browser the whole site would redirect to their home page (GogieHost). Finally, after numerous complaints to support, most of which went unanswered, the told me that php is disabled on the server "for security reasons". Apparently it's not just disabled by the server is misconfigured and redirects to their home page if php is used.

avatar
Nachman Kataczinsky, USA
March 17, 2022
1
For great to a disaster!

Mid-2021, I need to find a free and simple hosting service. After trying a few that didn't meet my needs, I was recommended GOOGIEHOST and at first signing up was easy, and the setup was easy. I managed to get my site up and running, which I used for K-12 education that hosted interactive materials. I use dreamweaver and setup it up as a 3rd party FTP because it makes uploading files easier and faster. Today I tried connecting to the FTP domain, and it kept saying either the username / password was incorrect. I logged into the cPanel and find no trace of my domain. I tried making a new FTP login, and it says it was created, but nothing is shown in the FTP panel. Terrible service!

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Danny, Japan
March 10, 2022
1
Want a website for your work? Search nowhere, just go for GOOGIEHOST, else nowhere!

Hi reader, I'm Ranjan Kumar, one of the current client of Googiehost. During the lockdown in my country India, I felt myself in a stuck kind of situation. Myself with few of my friends started a local business last year. Decision of lockdown was a need of the time and situation but for most of the businesses and startups it was like --- i think i don't need to tell more. You understood, right! So, we decided to build a website for the same as we have enough time but spending our money wisely. we surfed the internet, went through a lot of other website hosting platforms. Finally we have hooked with Googiehost as it has free options available. Personally, I feel working with this patform is easy compared many other. It served our business as we wanted. Thanks Googiehost!

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RANJAN KUMAR, India
August 19, 2020
5
A perfect Hosting web site 10/10

Hi, I am a client of GoogieHost and I am very much happy with the services they provide. I was first wandering around many service providers in hosting and domain registration. Finally, I settled with GoogieHost as I found them the best of all the service providers and I do recommend them over any others in a similar trade. The server run time and uploading speed were amazing and support was impeccable. I recommend GoogieHost as the best every hosting company rating them 5 stars in every parameter

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CipherDz, Algeria
August 13, 2020
5
Go with GOOGIEHOST- Its Superb

First time I ever saw that type of forever free hosting site and it's really amazing and unbelievable that actually exists in this world and I feel proud because I am part of a registered member. It is fast, it is very easy to use and 100% free. I am just trying this services. Its very easy to setup with googiehost. a very good supported site. here you will get some subdomains and many more apps to build your own website like a professional web builder. So stay with googiehost and get unlimited free hosting forever.

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Buddhadeb Kairi, India
August 05, 2020
5
Just perfect

what can i say. it is fast, it is easy to use and free. \I Signup for googiehost and this is amazing services. I am just trying this services. Its very easy to setup with googiehost. a very good free site. here you will get some subdomains and many more So stay with googiehost and get unlimited free hosting forever.

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AKi, USA
July 30, 2020
5
Family sharingMulti User SharingExpert SupportBackupSmart syncPersonal SolutionBusiness SolutionTeams optionsOffline foldersFile history and recovery Read more reviews
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