Best Free Web Hosting Sites

Cloudways is a fantastic managed hosting service for non-technical users. They essentially allow you to have a professional and reliable 100% uptime website without the need of a full tech team to manage it. Cloudways becomes your tech team and you can scale the services you require as your website grows. They make it easy to start from scratch or migrate a previous website, guaranteeing that it won’t break upon migration.

Great Advanced Features

Cloudways provides auto-healing managed cloud servers that are PHP 7.3 ready, with SSD-based hosting, giving you fantastic performance and 3x faster speeds. Pre-configured PHP-FPM improves loading times of your PHP environment, HTTP/2 enabled servers improves page load-time for users, and activating the Cloudflare Enterprise add-on gives you HTTP/3 support and one-click image and mobile optimization.

Security, Monitoring, and Collaboration Tools

Their security features are very strong and include OS-level firewalls, free built-in SSL encryption, Bot Protection, IP Whitelisting, and two-factor authentication. They also perform regular security patching on your server to minimize the chance of future vulnerabilities.

Cloudways also provides 24/7 real-time monitoring, allowing you to see 16 key metrics from the console, has New Relic integration for insights on app performance, and includes an AI-based smart assistant called the CloudwaysBot that can send real-time performance insights via Slack or email.

Finally, the suite of collaboration tools offered make it a breeze for you to grow your team as needed. There’s Git integration, SSH and SFTP access, team members can be part of multiple teams and multiple projects, and staging areas allow you test changes with a single click without impacting the live version.

As a comprehensive managed hosting provider, Cloudways has so much to offer and we’ve reviewed it in-depth to help you decide if it’s for you.

Every time we check in on Hostinger the average uptimes and load times are improved. Hostinger is a great option for low cost hosting – especially when just starting out. It’s hard to pass up a $0.99 per month price and upgrading to their unlimited premium option will only set you back $2.15 per month.

Website Builder Included 🔧

As an added bonus of cheap web hosting, Hostinger has a built-in website builder called Hostinger Website Builder (formerly Zyro). It consists of the basic and not so basic features. The most innovative is definitely Hostinger Website Builder’s Logo Maker. If you are looking to reinvent your brand’s logo you can do it in no time.

Hostinger has become a pretty popular option in the hosting world. Despite this we were still skeptical of their reported performance and decided to take a look.

A year+ live tracking of their results revealed some impressive performance numbers.

Amazing Bonus Features 🤩

But even with their low prices, Hostinger comes with a plethora of bonuses to make them worth your while. For instance, you get free SSL certification, a free domain, and a free email account just for signing up with any of their plans. This allows you to bootstrap your way to a small online business or serious blog right off the cuff.

But that’s not all. Hostinger also benefits from average uptime of 99.91%. For those not in the know, this is exceptionally good and it means that your visitors shouldn’t have to deal with your site going down very often, if at all. Add to that an average load time of 389 ms and you have a rapid-fire, user-friendly hosting service that’s pretty great for the low price.

If you’d like to see our Hostinger uptime and downtime tests check out our full Hostinger Review. 

Thanks to an extensive list of extras and rock solid server technology, SiteGround should be on your short list of cheap, reliable hosts. We especially like the free website builder and domain that lets you get online fast at a minimum cost.

Setting up an Online Shop? 🛒

But the site builder is just the start. There’s also a host of e-commerce functionality and additions that make this a particularly good choice for those looking to start an online shop.

For instance, alongside the site builder is a free shopping cart function, so customers can start buying things from your site ASAP. The 24/7 customer support can help you get things up and running with a minimum of technical hassle.

Incredible Performance ⚡

It even has slightly better uptime compared to Hostinger at 99.92% for its cheapest hosting service. This is, again, pretty darn low, and you’ll also be pleased to see that the service’s page loading times average below 500 ms on average, even over the course of several years.

Suffice it to say that SiteGround is a great second option for folks looking for fast but affordable hosting services.

To find out why we crowned them number one, check out our SiteGround review for an in depth look at the company, their pricing tiers, and different service offerings.

Bluehost has been at or near the top of the shared hosting world for a long time, with a well-deserved reputation for quality infrastructure and customer support that is actually inclined to help (when they’re online).

Free Website Builder Included 🏗️

Bluehost is particularly well known for WordPress users, and indeed the company advertises this hosting company pretty frequently. One of the big bonuses of this arrangement is the host (pun intended) of excellent templates.

This means you’ll be able to make your WordPress unique and engaging right from the get-go, especially since Bluehost comes with a site builder called Weebly: one of the best in the industry, especially for a low-cost.

Save on Server Resources 💾

But that’s not all. Bluehost also comes with Cloudflare CDN: a content delivery network that can improve your site’s page load speeds, plus reduce bandwidth and CPU usage for the server. It effectively makes your cheap server’s resources stretch even farther. There’s a lot to like here, as you can see.

In our hosting tests, Bluehost ranked near the top with in speed and performance – everything you would expect from an industry leader.

IT nerds and online entrepreneurs love the InMotion business-class hosting plans (we certainly do). You’ll pay a teensy bit more here than with the rock bottom folks, but gain a whole lot of value for not much extra cost.

What is that value? For starters, their servers use solid-state drives to ensure that all of their customers benefit from extremely fast load times. Considering that most visitors will click away if your site lags even a little bit, the value of this can’t be understated.

Advanced Features 🌟

But InMotion offers even more value in the form of unlimited bandwidth and email accounts, even for their basic server packages. Add to that free SSL certification and hack protection, plus free migration of your website from your current host, and it’s clear that InMotion Hosting is in business to steal you away from your current hosting service… And maybe you should let them.

With multiple datacenter choices and higher-end hardware, your InMotion experience should be a good one.

Not just a reseller of prepackaged hosting plans, A2 Hosting decided decided to custom-build their hardware and software configurations for enhanced performance, speed, and security – presuming customers wouldn’t mind paying a few extra pennies per month for the kind of quality not always found in shared hosts.

Top Notch Security 🔒

Indeed, A2 Hosting offers a lot to like, including the aforementioned Cloudflare CDN plus SSD load times. That adds tremendous value to shared hosting, which is already traditionally associated with relatively slow loading speeds and servers that are constantly strapped for resources.

Simple to Use 🐤

Even better, A2 Hosting comes with extremely easy WordPress installation with one click, plus free website builder access and tons of templates so you can customize your site to your heart’s content.

A plethora of advanced security features (including a feature called HackScan, one of the best) rounds out this host’s offerings and solidifies it as one of the best almost-free web hosting services available.

This leading website builder is so simple that you can create an account and be building your website in a matter of minutes – very few minutes. Using the builder itself is a quick learning curve.

In no time at all you’ll be manipulating menus, text, images, sliders, and more. It’s no wonder why we chose Wix as the #1 website builder on the market today.

Volusion specializes in entrepreneurs looking to build and host and online store. While not the cheapest option if you’re just looking to throw up an informational site or personal blog, those who are ready to jump into eCommerce will love this company’s focus on the business side of things.

For the extremely cost-conscious consumer who can get by with a no-frills basic website or needs email hosting more than anything, One’s starter package includes a domain, unlimited email accounts, and website builder at the rate of $1.99 a year. Packages tier up from there with a WordPress enabled plan costing about $5.99/month.

Shopify is known for eCommerce, so if that’s the direction you’re headed, this web hosting company is geared for helping you get an online store up and going with a minimum of fuss. The Shopify subdomain option is perfect for sellers with a tiny budget who need to make a few bucks before they consider upgraded hosting.

Having provided no-cost hosting to almost 14 million customers since 2007, 000Webhost might not be first on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but it has proven itself to be a more than capable web host.

If you’re looking for website hosting free of charge that is best suited for small to medium-sized accounts, this provider was one of the first to offer free SSL certificates, a practice that has become industry standard.

Weebly has good name recognition in the DIY drag-and-drop world of website building. Their quality, especially when it comes to templates, has improved in recent years. The basic free package doesn’t offer much in the way of features but, like Wix, allows you to get a professional-looking web presence online in a short amount of time.

The AwardSpace business model is similar to better known names like Wix and Weebly in that that it uses free hosting to allow potential customers to try the service, hoping they will decide to add pay services as their needs become more sophisticated. Not much bandwidth or storage for free, and some will miss having a drag-and-drop editor.

Boasting a load-balanced server cluster approach, Freehostia claims to have up to 15x faster page-loading than comparable free hosts. Even the free plan has no advertising, which is nice and allows your website to look professional right out of the gate. Impressive 24/7 support.