Are you on a low budget or want to try the free service before you upgrade to a paid plan of website hosting? To understand the different expenses required to run a successful website, it’s tempting to try and cut costs wherever possible to stay within your budget. We have done the hard work for you and compiled the list of available free web hosting companies.
Although free web hosting is much attractive, we suggest opting for shared hosting instead, which is available at a relatively low cost.
Before proceeding for any free web hosting service, we recommend reviewing their pros and cons. Because free web hosting is not always what the web hosting providers claim to be. There may be some restrictions and/or limitations on bandwidth, storage capacity, server speed, uptimes, availability of databases, e-commerce, and some required software.
In this review, we have listed 13 free web hosting options to help you find the best fit for your site.
Free Web Hosting Alternatives
Following are the 13 best options available for free website hosting:
- 000WebHost.com
- 5GBFree.com
- AwardSpace.com
- Bravenet.com
- Freehostia.com
- FreeHosting.com
- FreeWebHostingArea.com
- InfinityFree.net
- Sites.Google.com
- Weebly.com
- Wix.com
- WordPress.com
- x10Hosting.com
1. 000WebHost.com
000WebHost offers free web hosting with good speed without Ads allows a much cleaner and friendlier user experience. However, there is a downtime of at least one hour every week which makes this lucrative offer a bit doubtful where you may lose traffic and sales. Moreover, there is no live chat customer support to assist you if encountered a problem with their service. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: 3GB
- Disk Space: 300MB
- Email Accounts: 0
- Websites: 1
- Sub-domain included: Yes
- Support: Forum/Knowledge Base
- Official website: www.000WebHost.com
2. 5GBFree.com
5GBFree.com offers free web hosting with good speed without Ads which allows a much cleaner and friendlier user experience. Moreover, 5GB storage and 20GB bandwidth is another good thing that positions it higher among other free hosting providers. However, support is only available through forums. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: 20GB
- Domain: 1 add-on and 1 parked domain
- eCommerce: yes
- Email: No
- Storage: 5GB
- Website Builder/Design: 1-click WordPress installs; other apps available via cPanel
- Official website:www.5GBfree.com
3. Awardspace .com
AwardSpace.com offers free web hosting with 1GB storage and 5GB bandwidth with good speed without Ads which allows a much cleaner and friendlier user experience. Moreover, Live Chat 24/7 support is an excellent facility that helps during the time needed. However, there are some issues, i.e. the downtime is around one hour per week, and they sell off your data to third-party vendors. Summary of the features is given below:
- 100% ad-free hosting to the MySQL database
- Bandwidth: 5GB
- Disk Space: 1GB
- Email Accounts: 1
- Websites: 4
- One-click CMS (WordPress/Joomla) installation
- Sub-domain included: Yes
- Support: Live Chat 24/7
- Official website: www.AwardSpace.com
4. Bravenet.com
Bravenet is a good option for the starters because it offers great services free of cost including a drag-and-drop site builder which includes an email marketing platform, community-building features such as message boards, mailing lists, blogs, contact forms, polls, and other tools, in addition to e-commerce package. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: 1 GB
- Domain: Free Bravenet subdomain
- eCommerce: yes
- Email: Unlocked with paid upgrades
- Storage: 500mb
- Website Builder/Design: Free drag-and-drop website builder
- Official website:www.bravenet.com
5. Freehostia.com
Freehostia.com offers free web hosting with good bandwidth, e-commerce enabled hosting with email accounts, subdomains. However, the biggest drawback is the low disk space, bad speed, and uptime issues. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: 6GB
- Disk Space: 250MB
- Domain: 5 hosted domains
- eCommerce: 1-click cart installations
- Email: 3 email accounts
- Support: FAQ/Tickets
- Website Builder/Design: Free website templates, plus 1-click installs
- Official website: www.freehostia.com
6. FreeHosting.com
FreeHosting.com offers a better free web hosting service including unmetered bandwidth, 10GB disk space, email account, MySQL database. However, their major drawbacks include a number of technical issues, slow loading times, and uptime. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: Unmetered
- Disk Space: 10GB
- Email Accounts: 1
- Multilingual cPanel
- MySQL database
- Sub-domain included: No
- Support: Tickets
- Websites: 1
- Official website: www.FreeHosting.com
7. FreeWebHostingArea.com
FreeWebHostingArea.com offers free web hosting with a good range of services including a community forum, site builder, and support for SSL certificates. It also the option of auto-installer for popular software, in addition to modern versions of PHP, MariaDB, and Apache. Summary of the features is given below:
- Storage: 1.5GB
- Domain: Free subdomain
- eCommerce: No
- Bandwidth: Unlimited
- Email: No
- Official website:www.freewebhostingarea.com
8. InfinityFree.net
InfinityFree offers a good bundle of features that include unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, a number of websites, subdomain, databases, and SSL certificate with good uptime. However, they have certain restrictions on content types and the file types for upload. In case of non-compliance with their policies, they may suspend the site or even delete the site including data. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: Unlimited
- Disk Space: Unlimited
- Email Accounts: None
- Free SSL certificate: Yes
- Free Cloudflare CDN: Yes
- FTP account:1
- Websites: 400
- Front-end ads: No
- Sub-domain included: Yes
- Support: Forum/Knowledge Base
- Official website: InfinityFree.net
9. Sites.Google.com
Google offers a great service for Personal and Small Business Websites including responsive templates, drag and drop editing, and integrations with most of their other services (maps, calendar, drive, etc.) with a free subdomain with an SSL certificate. However, there is no way to add custom CSS. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: Unknown
- Disk Space: Unknown
- Websites: Unlimited
- Sub-domain included: Yes
- Support: Forum/Knowledge Base
- Official website: Sites.Google.com
10. Weebly.com
The main features of the free hosting offered by Weebly.com include drag-and-drop builder, to easily build a blog, personal site, or online store, and 100s of FREE templates for websites. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: Unlimited
- Domain: Weebly.com subdomain
- eCommerce: No
- Email: No
- Storage: 500MB
- Website Builder/Design: Free templates
- Official website:www.weebly.com
11. Wix.com
Wix.com offers free website hosting with a strong, browser-based website builder with a simple, drag-and-drop interface for building basic sites. However, it does not offer the option to customize the site through coding. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: 500MB
- Domain: Wix.com subdomain
- eCommerce: No
- Email: Yes
- Storage: 500MB
- Website Builder/Design: Drag-and-drop editor with lots of templates and apps
- Official website:www.wix.com
12. WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a well-known brand, that offers free web hosting with a good hosting plan, a subdomain, email, good disk space and bandwidth, e-commerce, website builder, etc. However, it is not as simple as some of the drag-and-drop site builders. But it offers hundreds of themes and customization options to choose from and gives users an extraordinarily high ceiling with which to create and grow the online presence. Summary of the features is given below:
- Bandwidth: 3 GB
- Domain: WordPress.com subdomain
- eCommerce: No7
- Email: Yes
- Storage: 3GB
- Website Builder/Design: Plenty of mobile-friendly themes and customizations
- Official website:www.wordpress.com
13. x10Hosting.com
The x10Hosting offers free web hosting with a stable and high-performance environment having the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, and cPanel. Where unlimited bandwidth, website builder, and more than 150 templates and customized installations through cPanel are also a big advantage over other free hosting plans of the competitors. Summary of the features is given below:
- Storage: 1 GB
- Domain: 2 add-on domains, 1 parked domain, and 2 subdomains
- eCommerce: 1-click installs for eCommerce platforms such as Magento
- Bandwidth: Unlimited
- Email: 3 free accounts
- Website Builder/Design: Website builder with more than 150 templates; other programs available via cPanel installations
- Official website:www.x10hosting.com
Conclusion
Whether you are testing out a web hosting service or looking for a low cost and easy startup of your own website, free hosting is a great opportunity. However, do expect restrictions on bandwidth, storage, and basic features like email accounts and website installations. Ultimately, you will be looking for paid hosting to get the required features, where comes the shared hosting which is available at a relatively low cost.
Your comments/feedback will help us improve this article and help others like you, who are looking to start their online presence on the web.
Your style is so unique compared to other folks I’ve read stuff from.
Many thanks for posting when you’ve got the opportunity, Guess I’ll just bookmark this site.