12 Best Free Website Hosting Compared (2024)

Finding reliable free website hosting is super important for people starting with a limited budget.

Although we generally don’t recommend using completely free hosting services, they do offer a way to get your site online without initial costs. However, keep in mind that not all free services are equal.

This article compares the best free (or almost free) website hosting providers. We will discuss their features, performance, and limitations, helping you decide on your website’s needs.

The “Truth” About Free Website Hosting Service

Building a website has become the most important way to get your message out in the world. However, when you are first starting, you may not want to spend money on making a website.

At WPBeginner, we have been helping beginners start their websites for more than 16 years. In our experience, most beginners simply want something quick, easy, and free.

There are tons of free website hosting companies on the market. But as a smart consumer, you should know there is no such thing as a free lunch.

There is always a catch.

Running a website hosting service costs a lot of money.

The companies offering free website hosting need to make money somehow, or they will go out of business.

They do that by displaying ads on your website, limiting your website traffic, causing downtime, locking you in their platform, and/or upselling their other services. Some of the ads displayed may not represent your brand well, and it can even be your competitor’s advertisement.

Except for a test website, it’s almost always a bad idea to use free website hosting. We have 36 reasons why free websites are a bad idea, especially for businesses that want to build an online presence.

In our experience, free web hosting users always pay higher prices and may lose their data or entire websites.

But what if you’re on a small budget?

Maybe you’re a non-profit who is looking for free WordPress hosting, or maybe you want free website hosting for students. Don’t worry. We have a solution for you in this article.

As the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners, it is our job to highlight the fine prints, so you’re making the RIGHT decision.

Every free website hosting company on our list guarantees that you can keep your website for free for as long as you want. However, we recommend anyone who is serious about their website to strongly consider using a low-cost full-featured website hosting provider.

The majority of these shared hosting companies will give you a free domain, free emails, free SSL, eCommerce functionality, and a lot more for $1.99 – $5 per month.

That’s basically “almost free,” considering you will make a lot more money from your website.

Paying this small amount gives you access to expert support and overall better service. Most importantly, it gives you complete control and ownership of your website. This means you can show no ads on your website and keep it 100% ad-free to offer the best user experience.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best almost-free website hosting companies first. After that, we will look at the best free web hosting sites.

Best Value “Almost-Free” Website Hosting

These providers are highly reputed and are a great place for small businesses to start their websites.

Some of them are even officially recommended by WordPress, WPBeginner, and other large organizations because they have demonstrated a high level of quality and service.

If you are serious about your website, then we recommend you start your website with one of these 5 premium hosting providers.

1. Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world. They are an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

They have agreed to offer WPBeginner users a free domain name, a free SSL certificate, and a generous discount on web hosting. Basically, you can get started for $1.99 per month.

Their web hosting plans include free branded email addresses, unlimited disk space, free SSL certificate, 1-click installation for WordPress, and more.

From their user-friendly control panel, you can enable additional add-ons like site builder, Cloudflare CDN, SEO tools, and other powerful website features.

Bluehost is perfect for building personal websites, small business websites, and blogs.

To learn more about Bluehost, see our complete Bluehost review, where we evaluated their hosting performance, features, and services.

Related: See this tutorial on how to create a WordPress website with Bluehost.

2. Hostinger

Hostinger is one of the best cheap web hosting alternatives to free web hosting providers. They offer shared hosting plans that are perfect for creating a starter website.

Their premium hosting package, which costs $2.69, also comes with a free domain name, free business email addresses, the ability to create up to 100 websites, a 30-day money-back guarantee, and more.

If you upgrade your hosting plan, you can get more storage space, daily backups, an object cache for faster load times, unlimited bandwidth, and more.

Hostinger also comes with a 1-click installer for CMS (content management system) software like WordPress. It’s the most popular website-building platform on the market, powering over 43% of all sites on the web.

WordPress gives you full control, allowing you to create any type of site, including a blog, business site, online store, community forum, membership site, and more.

To learn more, look at our complete Hostinger review with pros and cons.

WPBeginner readers get 81% off Hostinger when using our Hostinger coupon code.

3. SiteGround

SiteGround is another great alternative to free website hosting. They are known for their awesome support and blazingly fast performance. SiteGround is also an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

They are offering WPBeginner users up to 80% discount on hosting. Basically, you’ll be able to get started for $2.99 per month.

SiteGround’s hosting plans come with a website builder, 1-click installer for WordPress and Joomla, SSD storage, unlimited email accounts, superior customer support, and more.

They have also built advanced website performance features such as Ultra-fast PHP and MySQL databases, site optimization, and security plugins.

SiteGround has data centers all across the world (4 continents), and they offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee.

SiteGround is perfect for creating your own website for your small business or store. As your website grows, you can switch to their VPS hosting plan to get faster speed and scalability.

Plus, they offer superior customer support and a detailed knowledge base to help you solve any website issues.

For more details, see our thorough SiteGround review, where we ran actual tests to measure their performance and uptime.

WPBeginner readers get an exclusive 80% off with our SiteGround coupon code.

4. DreamHost

DreamHost is one of the oldest web hosting companies, started in 1997. They currently host more than 1.5 million websites.

Their starter plan costs $2.59 per month. It includes a free domain name, free domain privacy, free SSL, unlimited emails, 1-click installers for popular website builders, and more.

To learn more, see our complete DreamHost review where we evaluated their services, support, and performance.

WPBeginner readers get an exclusive 72% off with our DreamHost coupon code.

5. HostGator

HostGator is one of the top hosting service providers in the market. They have been around since 2002 and gradually grew to become one of the largest hosting companies in the world.

Their incredible growth can be credited to their low-price, reliable web hosting, and quality customer service.

Their hatchling plan starts from $2.52 / month. Each plan includes your own domain, unlimited free subdomains, unlimited email addresses, free HTTPS / SSL, unlimited FTP accounts, unlimited storage (disk space), and unmetered bandwidth.

All hosting accounts come with a cPanel that has an auto installer for WordPress and other popular website-building software.

For more details, see our HostGator review with pros and cons, and detailed performance tests.

Best Free Hosting Sites

While free is tempting, it’s always limited when it comes to website hosting. With that in mind, we have hand-picked the best free website hosting sites that you can use to get started.

These hosting sites are 100% free for you to use.

If you’re serious about your website, we strongly recommend you read our comprehensive guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting before making your final decision.

With that said, here are the best free hosting companies in the world.

6. WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a popular free hosting platform that offers a unique flavor of WordPress. It is not to be confused with WordPress.org, which is home to the well-known self-hosted website builder WordPress.

WordPress.com offers a free website hosting plan that gives you a WordPress.com subdomain (i.e. yourwebsite.wordpress.com ), 3 GB storage, and access to free templates for your website.

This free plan displays ads on your website. You can upgrade to their paid plans to get rid of ads, use a custom domain name, and access additional features. At this point, any of the “almost free hosting” services we mentioned above are the better option.

To learn more, see our comparison of WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org with the pros and cons of both platforms.

Expert Tip: Upgrading to a paid WordPress.com plan will get you access to plugins and themes, managed updates, advanced security measures, and more. Plus, when you use our coupon code WPB50, you’ll get 50% off the first year of hosting + a free domain name.

7. Wix

Wix is another fully-hosted website builder that offers free website hosting.

Like most free hosting services, it is supported by displaying ads and Wix.com branding on your free website. You can get rid of it by upgrading to their paid plans.

The free plan will give you a Wix.com subdomain, access to website templates, 500 MB of storage, and 500 MB of bandwidth.

For more details, see our comparison of Wix vs. WordPress, where we break down the pros and cons of both platforms.

8. Weebly

Weebly is another popular free website builder that you can use. It comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop builder and ready-made templates to create a website.

Their free hosting plan includes a Weebly subdomain, 500 MB of storage, and displays Weebly ads. You can upgrade to their paid plans to get rid of ads, get more storage, and unlock features.

You may want to see our detailed comparison of Weebly vs. WordPress, which shows the advantages and disadvantages of both website platforms.

9. GoDaddy Website Builder

GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain name registrar and a popular hosting company.

They offer GoDaddy website builder, which is a drag-and-drop website builder with ready-made templates. It is available as a 30-day free trial, after which you can upgrade to one of their premium plans starting from $5.99 per month.

It is cheap and very easy to use. However, once your website grows, you may find GoDaddy Website Builder to be quite limited in features. It is also difficult to move GoDaddy Website Builder to WordPress or any other website platform.

Also, see our list of the best GoDaddy website builder alternatives.

10. Squarespace

Squarespace is a popular website builder platform that requires no technical skills. It offers beautiful professional templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

They offer a restricted 14-day free website hosting trial. This gives you access to their website builder so you can try its features. Your website will not be public unless you subscribe to a paid plan.

Paid plans start at $16 per month. Each plan comes with a free custom domain, unlimited bandwidth, storage, and ready-made website templates.

To learn more, see our article on Squarespace vs. WordPress with pros and cons and feature comparisons.

11. Google Cloud Hosting

Google Cloud offers a wide variety of free website hosting solutions for small businesses and students. It comes with all the powerful features that you can expect from a top-class company like Google.

Since their plans are based on pay-per-use, it’s an easy place for students to get started. Google offers $300 free credit for new customers, which is sufficient to last you for a whole year if you’re just looking for free website hosting for test sites.

You can use Google Cloud to host any type of website, and they even offer WordPress on Google Compute Engine.

12. Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services, also known as AWS, powers some of the most popular websites in the world. While it’s not easy to use for small businesses, it’s a great platform for students and web developers who’re just getting started.

Amazon offers 12 months of free and always free products on their AWS Free Tier, which is by far one of the best free website hosting for testing sites.

Students can use Amazon’s powerful platform to learn and master development skills.

Note: We looked at many other free hosting providers, including InfinityFree, AwardSpace, 000WebHost, ByetHost, and others. But we decided to only include the best affordable hosting options in this list to help you avoid choice paralysis.

We hope this article helped you find the best free website hosting service for your next project. You may also want to check out our guide on how to choose the best blogging platform and our comparison of the best virtual business phone number apps (with free options).

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