While these companies provide the best free web hosting with SSL, I don’t recommend losing out on performance.
If you signup for a free website hosting you will later understand it’s a bad experience. Then at that time, you might have to purchase expensive add-ons or migrate to paid plans. It’s not worth the extra work.
While these free hosting sites may not be the right for developing your website. But you can learn a lot from these free tools if you are a developer like me.
Ultimately, I recommend avoiding these free providers and starting with high-quality cheap web hosting that offers up to a 90% discount.
What is the Best Free Web Hosting?
Here is the Overview of the free domain hosting sites with the most popular platforms reviewed and compared.
- 000webhost
- x10Hosting.com
- InfinityFree
- AwardSpace
- Freehostia
- FreeHosting.com
- Google Cloud Web Hosting
1. 000webhost
000webhost is a free version of Hostinger and they have been seen in 2007. They do not force any ads on their users like many other MySQL free hosting providers and offer paid plans too.
They provide 1,000 MB of free webspace, an impressive 3GB of bandwidth, a free control pane, and up to 2 websites. In their dashboard, you can control things like phpMyAdmin, redirects, a free website builder, password-protected directories, and a web-based file manager.
The only major downside of 000webhost free PHP hosting is that they require at least one hour of downtime per day. This means that your site is up around 95.8% per day if everything else runs smoothly. This is the most preferred free hosting for students looking to host their projects or eCommerce platforms to learn.
Pros of 000webhost
- You can use your own custom domain name or their free subdomain
- You can host two websites for free.
- Get full access to the underlying database and server
- Easy to perform key actions using a custom hosting dashboard
Cons of 000webhost
- Your website gets suspended if you exceed the free plan limits
- No support for email hosting.
- Dashboard prompts to upgrade to Hostinger, their paid service
2. x10Hosting.com
x10Hosting is one of the top free hosting service providers for more than a decade. They offer “unlimited” bandwidth and disk space. However, they also have a High Resource Usage Policy for free hosting servers, that allows them to suspend or throttle sites taking too much of the resources.
They have strong speed metrics and provide amazing average server response times which are under 350 ms. If you are looking for free premium hosting then x10Hosting is one to go for.
Pros of x10Hosting
- choose from five free subdomains or use your own custom domain name
- You get full cPanel access.
- Unlimited bandwidth works great for high-traffic sites.
- x10Hosting gives a storage limit of 512 MB to start, but you can get more for certain services.
Cons of x10Hosting
- Limited signup locations.
3. InfinityFree
InfinityFree is one of the most popular free cloud hosting with CPanel which provides a ton of excellent features. They have been in this industry for more than 6 years. They have over 200,000 users, with an impressive 50,000 daily hits, and have their own script installer.
You gain access to 10 email accounts and have as many domains as you want. Surprisingly, their free online web hosting includes an SSL, a free DNS service, and Cloudflare CDN too. However, their promise of “unlimited bandwidth” comes with some rules and regulations on what files you can upload.
You can go for their $5.90/month plan If these features are not enough for you. This will reduce page load time a small complaint from its users.
Pros of InfinityFree
- You can have up to 10 custom email accounts.
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage to support 50,000 daily hits per day
- You can use 400 MySQL databases means that you will be able to host multiple sites.
Cons of InfinityFree
- You get unlimited storage but individual files cannot exceed 10 MB.
- VistaPanel hosting dashboard looks outdated
4. AwardSpace
Awardspace.com has over 2.5 million users and offers free business website hosting. With their open plan, you get one-click CMS, 24/7 tech support, and 100% ad-free hosting. However, the free plans only give you 5GB of bandwidth, and 1 GB of disk space. Thus, they force you to sign up for one of their premium plans.
Finally, the biggest drawback of AwardSpace is the load time which is over 1.5 seconds.
Pros of AwardSpace
- Host up to 4 websites
- Have your own email account (e.g. you@yoursite.com).
- You get full access to database and server files
Cons of AwardSpace
- Low bandwidth (5 GB) in comparison to other hosts
- Of the 4 websites available only one is a top-level domain and the rest must be subdomains.
5. Freehostia
Freehostia offers users free fast web hosting plans that include 6GB of monthly bandwidth, 250MB of disk space, three email accounts, app installers, and PHP and MySQL compatibility. They guarantee a 99.9% uptime and provide 24/7 support for their users. This makes them really good as a free service.
Freehostia features a load-balanced cluster platform, which basically offers stronger server speeds than other hosting options. If you are looking for a more robust solution, they have semi-dedicated servers from $29.95/month, virtual private servers from $14/month, and dedicated servers from $65/month.
Though their free website servers are very restrictive, offering a paltry 250MB of storage space. It’s enough for most developers to just test the basic functionalities they want to.
Pros of Freehostia
- 3 personal email accounts.
- You get full server access, including free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates.
Cons of Freehostia
- The storage limit is only 250 MB
- While you can host up to 5 websites, you only have 1 MySQL database, which means the rest of the sites must be static websites.
6. FreeHosting.com
FreeHosting.com is one of the best free hosts that provide unmetered bandwidth, one free email account, 10GB of server space, one domain, and one MySQL database. They also provide free subdomains.
They provide over 170 pre-designed templates in their simple drag-and-drop site builder. Plus, allows you to add on over 350 applications using their powerful app installer.
You can opt for their paid plan at $7.99/month if the free plan doesn’t cover everything you need. With paid plans, you can get multiple emails, add multi-site, and have unlimited disk space.
The major downside of FreeHosting is speed. The average load time is more than 2 seconds.
Pros of FreeHosting
- More than 170 design templates for website builders.
- Access to more than 350 add-ons
Cons of FreeHosting
- Not good at solving technical problems
- The pages load incredibly slow compared to other hosts
- You might not gain access to your domain name for days. Plus, you can’t transfer it even once you get it.
7. Google Cloud Web Hosting
Google offers the best free hosting for small businesses with a pay-per-use model. That means you start paying only when your site is active. Their Google Cloud Platform is available in over 200 countries. Free HTML hosting google offers you so that you can learn how the website works before you go full-fledged with your business.
The performance is impressive and one worth looking into, although it’s not really free.
Should I Avoid Free Website Hosting?
I believe you shouldn’t use free options as they create a lot of headaches later. Go with a reputable paid host like Hostinger as their services are only $0.80 per month.
Plus, free web hosts typically restrict your settings and push you to move to a paid plan. While 000webhost is the best host on this list, don’t skimp on your hosting by choosing a cheap or free plan.
Make sure your hosting choice will affect your uptime, security, site speed, and features. If you are serious about making revenue from your website, invest in the best website hosting.
If you are in a high-growth business it’s recommended you start with the best VPS hosting. So don’t go cheap make a small investment and secure your website’s future success.
If you have any questions do let me know in the comment section below.
More from Smashitbuck: Checkout out our other articles on Inspiration quotes, leadership qualities, and digital nomad this year.
