The Best Free Web Hosting Sites of 2024

Should you get a free web hosting plan?

Getting freebies always feels nice, but there are some cases where buying free hosting plans isn’t worth it.

For one, free hosting sites could be riddled with ads. These ads not only put off visitors, but they can slow down your website and ruin your visitor experience.

Secondly, free hosting sites are susceptible to data leaks due to weaker security. Leaving your company data vulnerable and exposed to attacks is 100x pricier than availing of a paid plan.

And, for the shadier sites, they could cease operations without a word—making all your effort building a site for nothing.

The good news: Many providers offer a great price for reliable hosting.

You may be tempted to go for a free option just because it’s available and requires no cost upfront, but the downsides are never worth it.

If you’re just planning on making a project site, sure, free web hosting can work.

But for more long-term projects at scale, paid plans are always worth the monthly fee.

Best Value “Almost-Free” Web Hosting

1. Hostinger

Since Hostinger’s first launch in 2004, this hosting provider has grown to become one of the world’s most popular hosting providers, with over 29 million users across 39 countries. They offer everything from beginner hosting to modern VPS cloud infrastructure, all with a localized team that spans across the world.

They have an extensive list of services catered towards website builders, the most notable of which include Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, and even a website builder. While it isn’t the cheapest plan around, it offers premium integrated caching and round-the-clock support across all of its plans.

Features:

• Get a professional website with the easy to use website builder
• No need for technical expertise, let an auto-installer take care of it!
• Full-feature hosting at close-to-free cost
• Own email hosting accounts
• Professional help is available 24/7 with the live chat support
• Git Access
• 2 Databases
• Free SSL

Specifications:

• Disk Space: 30 GB SSD
• Control Panel: hPanel
• Database: 1 MySQL Databases
• Bandwidth: 100 GB

Hostinger — The best affordable website hosting ($1.39/mo)

If you’re a beginner who’s looking to dabble in hosting websites for the first time, Hostinger is a great almost-free web hosting service.

We hosted a website with Hostinger back in July 2019 and the results were impressive. It’s performance showed a consistent “A” in site speed tests and a 99.95% uptime score. For the price, there’s no question Hostinger offers a lot of value on the table.

Can I upgrade my plan?

Yes, there are upgrade options with Hostinger. The current lineup of hosting plans Hostinger has includes:

• $1.39/month is the Single Shared Hosting plan.
• $2.59/month Premium Shared Hosting plan.
• $3.99/month Business Shared Hosting plan.

For the Premium Shared Hosting plan, you’ll get a free domain and an allowance of 25,000 monthly visits. There’s also a jump from 30 GB SSD Storage to 100 GB if you switch to this plan from the Single Shared Hosting plan.

For the Business Shared Hosting plan, on top of the features of the other plans, you also get Daily Backups and Free CDN. You also have a visitor allowance of up to 100,000 people monthly at an SSD Storage of 200 GB.

Is there a catch to the Hostinger Single Shared Plan?

The free plan comes with a significantly smaller allowance of monthly visitors. It also doesn’t come with free CDN and daily backups. Moreover, the $1.39/month deal locks you into a 48-month subscription, which is more than the normal subscription period of other hosting plans.

2. DreamHost

Another remarkable almost free web hosting provider is DreamHost. DreamHost was founded in 1996 in Los Angeles, and has since grown over 1.5 million websites with a customer base of about 400,000 users.

As a testament to their reputation, even WordPress endorses DreamHost as one of the best free web hosting providers (or almost-free) that you can find on the Internet. Quite a remarkable feat!

Some of your guarantees from choosing this almost free web hosting plan are 24-hour chat and email support, unlimited bandwidth, 6 databases, and SSL certification. This is all on top of the almost-free web hosting plan that it offers.

Features:

• SSL Certificate
• 14 days website backup
• NEW Free Automated WordPress Migrations
• WordPress comes pre-installed
• Modern-looking backend dashboard
• Free Domain Privacy
• WP Website Builder

Specifications:

• Disk Space: 50 GB SSD
• Database: 6 hosted in SSDs
• Unlimited bandwidth — unlimited traffic!

Upgrade from Free Hosting to Paid Web Hosting Plan

Yes, there are two other web hosting plans aside from this almost free web hosting plan.

The Shared Unlimited, going for $3.95/month, allows you to handle an unlimited number of websites with unlimited email hosting opportunities.

Another plan is DreamPress, which starts at $16.95/mo. This web hosting service plan is built for sites that gain 100,000 monthly visitors, 1-Click Staging, and pre-installed Jetpack for your WordPress plugins. It also has a WP Website Builder where you can create a website with the plan itself by using a drag-and-drop editor.

What’s the catch?

The servers don’t have many locations; most of which are clustered in the US. For the free hosting plan, you don’t get access to a free email too as they’re paid separately. The simple plan also doesn’t support staging, built-in caching, or advanced backup solutions.

3. Hostgator

To add to the list of high-value “almost-free” web hosting sites, Hostgator is well-acclaimed as one of the biggest and most popular web hosting companies out there. And while it isn’t a free web hosting service provider, it comes fairly close at just under $2.75 a month.

You may be asking: What makes this not-quite free website stand out against some of the best free website hosting providers?

Aside from the reputation it’s built up, HostGator also provides web hosting for businesses of all sizes. It’s filled with premium benefits too. Every web-hosted site has a drag-and-drop editor called a Gator Website Builder for easy website building.

There’s also a QuickInstall tool, among others, where you or your developer can install WP sites, forums, galleries, and eCommerce scripts straight to your site.

Features:

• 99% Uptime
• Website and store migration
• 24/7 ticket live support system
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited email hosted accounts

Specifications:

• Control Panel: Cpanel
• Website: 1 site
• 2 Cores and 2 GB memory

Any upgraded plans?

The Hatching plan, or HostGator’s closest-to-free web hosting plan, guarantees free SSL certification, transfers, and domains at a modest $2.75/mo. There are two upgraded versions a step above this one: Baby Plan and Business Plan.

The Baby Plan has unlimited websites (a step above just 1 from the Hatchling Plan). The Business Plan has 2.5x faster page load times with Cloudflare CDN. On top of that, there’s also a free dedicated IP, SEO tools, and a costless upgrade to Positive SSL.

What’s the catch?

Their backsell is littered with constant upsells in the backend dashboard, which other almost-free web hosting providers like Hostinger don’t have. They also lack a built-in server-side caching system and staging areas like DreamHost does. You also have to pay a fixed price of $25 every time you have to restore a backup.

Best Website Builders with Free Hosting

1. Wix

Wix is a website builder and web design platform that’s rich in templates and SEO tools. It’s known for being a website builder with free hosting, laden with enterprise-level reliability yet something any beginner can use. Known as one of the earliest and best free web hosting tools out there, Wix has a ton of great features and paid plan options that your business can benefit from!

Features:

• Best free web hosting providers out there
• Free templates
• Built-in apps
• Online store

Specifications:

• Database: Proprietary
• Control Panel: Proprietary
• Bandwidth: 500 MB
• Disk Space: 500 MB

Any upgraded plans?

There are a total of four pricing plans for professional websites or portfolios: Connect Domain, Combo, Unlimited, and VIP plans. They range from $4.50 to $24.50 a month.

There are three pricing plans for business and eCommerce plans with built-in payment portals, but they’re more expensive. They’re the business basic ($17/mo), Business unlimited, Business VIP ($35/mo)

What’s the catch?

For the most basic plan, Wix ads appear in the websites built and can’t be removed. All plans have limited bandwidth as well-meaning there’ll be a limit in the number of websites built, no matter what plan you choose.

The Wix apps are a bit underwhelming too, at least compared to other website builders like WordPress.

2. Weebly

Weebly is a professional website builder. It offers an easy-to-use builder that can create beautiful websites fast. Aside from its website-building functionalities, Weebly generously provides a free custom domain for a year and powerful business tools that make running your eCommerce site easy.

These are the features for the Personal plan ($6/month)

Features:

• Free SSL Security
• Selling Digital Goods is allowed
• Ad-free hosting
• Mobile web builder
• SEO and Pop Notifications

Specifications:

• Disk Space: 500MB
• Database: Proprietary
• Control Panel: Proprietary

Upgrade options

If you want to move on from this free hosting plan, you have three web hosting plans to choose from Personal ($6/mo), Professional ($12/mo), and Performance plan ($26/mo).

The Personal plan allows you to connect to your own custom domain; Professional plan gives you more customizability options and password protection; while the Performance plan allows you to accept payments through PayPal and gather more eCommerce insights.

Any drawbacks?

Weebly is fixed on its own system and database — meaning you can’t play around with server-side scripting. It’s powerful, sure, but you won’t get a lot of flexibility if you opt in on the platform for good.

3. Wordpress.com

Wordpress.com is the internet’s most popular website builder platform. Over 42% of the internet runs on this free web host website. In particular, this blog hosting service is a free website hosting provider that any newbie site owner can enjoy. Some of the features it has includes a theme marketplace, site content preview tab, plugins, and a range of metrics to track visitor traffic.

The ease and excellence of Wordpress.com makes it one of the best free website builder platforms you can use to kickstart your website.

Here’s the Personal plan feature kit.

Features:

• A top-notch content management system — trusted as the #1 spot for blogging by many bloggers, store owners, and personal-use websites.
• Dozens of free themes to improve functionality. No code needed.
• Allows integration with software like Shopify, Woocommerce, and Paypal.
• Ticket support via email
• Subscriber-only content is enabled

Specifications:

• 6 GB Storage Space
• WordPress.com ads are removed
• Jetpack features

Upgrade options

Aside from the Free Plan, there are four WordPress plans: Personal, Premium, Business, and eCommerce.

The personal plan is a good simple option for basic website launches with its own custom domain.

The premium plan has more advanced designing tools, Google Analytics support, and 13 GB of space for more audio and video.

The business plan introduces plugins and new themes, a whopping 200 GB of storage space, and the ability to remove WordPress branding.

Finally, the eCommerce plan empowers your website to sell services or products to create an all-in-one store experience.

What’s the catch?

If you want to run the WordPress free web hosting site, you’re stuck with the extension ‘Wordpress.com’ domain.

A step up, the personal and almost-free web hosting plan, is where you’re severely limiting your options in terms of added functionality.

Google Analytics, payment portal integration, site monetization SEO tools, plugins, apps, themes, and SEO tools are locked away in better plans.

Best Free Web Hosting Sites

1. 20i

20i is a free website hosting service that uses autoscaling tech across all their pricing plans. They’re a security-first company—dedicated to keeping your hosting safe through state-of-the-art SSD hardware that’s been proven to protect files. The founders, Jonatham and Tim Brealey, have worked around the free web hosting services space for over 20 years.

Features:

• Multi-server resources
• 24/7 Uptime
• 100% SSD storage
• WP-installed platform with StackCache module
• Migration

Specifications:

• Disk Space: 10GB
• Control Panel: My20i
• Bandwidth: 250MB
• Database: 1 × 1 GB MySQL

Upgrade options:

Aside from the free plan, 20i has a host of other pricing options as well. The ‘Premium’ plan I’d say is the most valuable option since it’s unmetered and there are more resource types available.

What’s the catch?

The biggest drawback about the 20i free plan is the lack of storage for free users. Members can only get about 250 MB of storage each month, making it incredibly hard to scale if you opted for a longer-term plan.

2. Awardspace

Born in 2003, Awardspace is a truly free hosting service that grants customers the freedom to create a website online. Aside from free services, they also have a range of paid plans with user control panel interfaces such as Web Hosting, SSL, and Server Control Panels.

Features:

• 99.9% Uptime guarantee
• Around the clock monitoring
• 100% free hosting services
• SPAM Protection
• Ad-free hosting

Specifications:

• Disk Space: 1GB
• Database: 1 MySQL Database
• Control Panel: Advanced Control Panel
• Bandwidth: 5GB

Upgrade options:

Awardspace has three pricing options on top of the free plan. Prices range from $2.99/mo for a ‘Basic’ plan to $5.83/mo for a ‘Max Pack Plus’ plan.

Better plans allow you to create more websites, gain free domains, and achieve better response times.

What’s the catch?

You have to go for the more expensive plans if you want to get your own free domain. But aside from that, there are no glaring negatives with Awardspace — making it a great tool for small or medium-sized business owners.

3. 000Webhost

000Webhost has been offering free web hosting services to customers since 2007. They allow you to host a website with disk space and bandwidth caps, and more as your pricing plan increases. Paid hosting services have more functionality and an overall more professional and flexible service, but free allows you to toy around with your investments.

Features:

• Free website builder
• Ad-free and free domain hosting
• Auto Installer supported
• PHP & MySQL database support
• 5 Email Forwarders

Specifications:

• 300 MB Disk Space
• 3 GB Bandwidth
• 1 MySQL Database
• Control Panel: Cpanel

Upgrade options:

000Webhost charges its pricing plan in collaboration with Hostinger. They also follow a similar payment scheme. There are two paid plan options: Silver plan, where you can create an unlimited number of websites with 100 SSD storage space; and Gold Disk Space, where you can get a free domain name, daily backups, and live support.

What’s the catch?

000Webhost’s free plan has a one-hour sleep time every day. This rounds out to about 95.83% uptime — significantly less than other web hosting platforms. During this downtime, the site owner also can’t access the dashboard and the website.

4. InfinityFree

InfinityFree is a free web hosting platform that offers free and unlimited website hosting for five years. They offer no hidden fees, no time limits, and no credit cards upon signing up. They’re also claiming that they’re the fastest free hosting provider in the world. While their free SSL certification is lacking, they have a Softaculous auto-installer, POP3 email support, and intuitive control panel management that any business owner would love.

Features:

• 99.9% uptime
• Regarded as the fastest free web hosting area
• No ads run on the website
• Softaculous Installer with over 400 scripts
• Premium paid hosting services are available

Specifications:

• Unlimited disk space
• Unlimited bandwidth
• 400 MySQL Databases
• Free domain name
• Also free subdomain
• Free DNS service

Upgrade options:

InfinityFree has two premium paid hosting options for people who want better server power and live support. The Super Premium paid plan has 100 email accounts, 100 FTP accounts, and 20 hosted domains available for use at $3.99 per month.

The Unlimited Premium, priced at $6.90 per month, has all of the aforementioned but with no cap.

What’s the catch?

There’s no backup in case the server experiences crashes. Slow loading speed and abysmal customer support (no phone and email) also hold back this hosting provider a little.

5. ByetHost

Take a look at the “fastest free web host in the world” — Byethost. The reason it calls itself that is that they take into account their server processing time as the sole indicator of their site speed (not including Time to First Byte and Core Web Vitals).

This is a sister company of iFastNet, but priced at a cheaper price to draw in a more budget-constrained crowd.

Features:

• 24/7 free tech support
• Auto Installer
• Free parked domain and subdomains
• Ad-free hosting
• Free domain

Specifications:

• 24 core CPU Xeon web servers
• 1 GB Disk space
• PHP, MySQL, FTP, and Vistapanel database support

Upgrade options:

With a variety of free options, getting a paid one is hard to justify! But if you’re sorely in need of cPanel, better SSD performance, or more free domains, Byet Host has Premium and Business plans ranging from $4.99 a month to $39.99 a month for peak performance.

What’s the catch?

The website copy is riddled with tiny errors and typos that can make prospecting customers a bit skeptical of the validity of the claims presented. The ultra business cost is quite expensive too compared to other web hosting sites if you plan to switch/migrate to paid versions.

6. Freehostia

Freehostia’s load-balanced cluster platform is what makes it stand out from the crowd of one-server hosting platform solutions. Their plans are hosted and optimized by popular web applications: WordPress, Joomla—you name it. They also have 50 other (free!) applications offered in-house in the form of 1-Click Web Applications Installer. For a free provider, this site is adorned with great features.

Here’s their Chocolate hosting plan.

Features:

• Comes with 5 hosted domains
• Optional free site builder
• 1-click Applications Installer
• SSD Data Caching
• 99.9% Server Uptime
• FREE Website templates

Specifications:

• 6 GB Monthly Traffic
• 250 MB Disk Space
• 3 Email Accounts
• 1 MySQL v5 Database
• 10MB MySQL Storage

Upgrade options:

Aside from their free offering, you can choose from one of four premium plans: Watercircle ($2.95/mo), Lovebeat ($4.95/mo), Wildhoney ($7.95/mo), and Supernatural ($9.95/mo). Watercircle and Lovebeat have 10 and 20 hosted domains respectively, while the latter two have an unlimited amount.

Supernatural has over 100 MySQL v.5 Databases and unlimited MySQL Storage as well.

What’s the catch?

The tiny storage space at just 250 MB leaves a lot to be desired, even if it’s just a free plan. It’s also not the most beginner-friendly if you’re just starting.

7. Google Cloud Hosting

If you consider yourself tech-savvy with a vast array of tech stacks, including virtual reality and machine learning, then Google Cloud Hosting is one web hosting platform to consider. The good thing about GCH is that you can find a domain directly from Google Domains, where right after you need to set up a virtual machine, a software cloud, etc.

Or you can work with WordPress. That’s fine too.

It has a free option. Alongside that, it also has a pay-as-you-use structure if you want to try out certain features without being locked into a subscription.

Features:

• Connect directly with Google Domains
• Google’s globally trusted infrastructure
• Email address is included
• DNS support
• SSL certificates
• LAMP tech stack viable

Specifications:

• 128 GB of memory
• 32 vCPUs

Upgrade options:

Unlike the other free web hosting providers in this list, Google doesn’t have a solid pricing structure. But, users can claim $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads. They can also use up to 20+ products for free up to monthly usage limits.

What’s the catch?

Tech support is hard to reach and is limited behind a paywall. On top of that, cloud hosting is still more expensive than traditional hosting, so if you want a more simple solution, look at the other recommendations in this list.

What to Look for in a Best Free Hosting?

There are four main features you must watch out for when choosing a web hosting plan:

Uptime

Uptime is a measure of how reliable a hosting service is by calculating its “downtime” or server downtime. In layman’s terms, it represents the total amount of time that your website will be up and running. By uptime standards, industry-standard uptimes for web hosts are from 99.95% to 99.99%. The closer the uptime percentage is to 100%, the better it is for you.

Storage space

Available storage, or simply disk space, measures how much storage space your website will get on the server. It is measured in gigabytes (GB) and terabytes (TB). As a rule of thumb, you should never use a hosting service that offers less than 250 MB, even in a free plan, as this can severely hinder what you can include in your website.

Customer support

Customer support is crucial when you run into problems with your website or just have a simple question to ask. You can gauge a web host by its customer support through phone, email, and support chat.

The reason why this is important is that it can affect the overall experience across the board. During downtime, if you don’t know how to address an emergency concern, the speed the support returns to you could lead to losses in sales or a worse-off customer experience.

Upgrade options

Upgrades are available through different plans for different web hosts. This is not a necessity but if you can upgrade to a paid plan without any hassle, it will certainly provide you with more features that will help your website scale as your business scales.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

So there you have it! An expansive list of the Internet’s best web hosting providers.

But are you looking for the best one there is?

Tough ask. They’re all really good!

But I’ll try to sum it up for you:

If you don’t mind spending some chump change every month for a fantastic service, I implore you to give Hostinger a try.

If you want a web hosting service provider with its own built-in drag-and-drop template ecosystem, choose Wix.

If you want a 100% free web hosting provider, 20i is the free web hosting platform for you.

We hope this guide has helped you pick the right plan.

Good luck with your web hosting journey!