Free web hosting: best options in 2023

Why pay when you can get it for free? Free web hosting definitely sounds like a windfall. In this post, I look into this topic in great detail. Is it really low-hanging fruit, and what are the best providers that won't charge you a dime?

To be honest, free website hosting is just too good to be true. You cannot expect generous resources, good performance, or reasonable terms of service when the services are free.

If you value any of these factors, free web hosting just won’t cut it. For a reliable, fast, and resource-rich hosting you should go for paid options. There is an abundance of great cheap web hosting providers to choose from.

At the same time, free web hosting can be a useful thing, sometimes:

• It’s a great educational resource – web development or design, you can try these areas out without spending a dime.
• Temporary small websites can also go fairly okay with free hosting – as long as it can support the traffic.
• If your budget is non-existent, but a website is needed – some website is better than none, right?

And, to be fair, some free website hosting providers are better than others. But with hundreds of scammy offers, it can be hard to find a good option.

You need someone familiar with the scene to help you navigate the shark-infested waters.

See, what I did was I set up accounts with dozens of free providers and put them through the paces. Most of them failed horribly and were swiftly eliminated. But, a few of them were actually left standing.

So, in this article, I’ll share these providers with you as well as peel back their pros and cons. Let’s dive right in.

Best free web hosting: ranked

1. 000webhost – best free web hosting overall
2. Hostinger – almost free high-quality web hosting
3. Freehosting.com – beginner-friendly web hosting that costs nothing
4. Freehostia – easy to use free website hosting
5. AwardSpace – free web hosting with no ads
6. InfinityFree – free web hosting with cPanel

A quick disclosure: we do not recommend using free web hosting for professional websites. There are amazing cheap alternatives listed at the bottom that will offer you much better packages.

1. 000webhost

Features	Modern control panel, no ads, connect domain
Uptime	99.99%
Speed	1.86s
Best for	Learning web development

Visit 000webhost

000webhost is a free hosting platform that kicks its competitors to the curb and tops the list. Some of its main attractions include easy to use and modern interface, automatic WordPress installation, and free domain hosting. This is as good as free website hosting gets, and it’s perfect for learning the ins and outs of it.

So, what exactly is that you get with 000webhost?

• Hosting for 1 website, 300MB disk space, 3GB of bandwidth, and 1 MySQL database.
• Possibility to connect your own domain.
• No ads on your site – just a footer line saying that website is powered by 000webhost.
• Modern control panel.

Disk space is very much limited, but this should be sufficient if you’re just using your 000webhost site to experiment and learn about hosting. At the same time, a couple of important things are missing:

• There’s no free SSL certificate.
• No 24/7 support.

While features have some wins and losses, 000webhost is one of the top free web hosting sites because of its smooth experience.

For starters, you can easily opt for automatic WordPress installation or Hostinger Website Builder when creating your site. Both options are easy, and you’ll be guided all the way. Alternatively, you can use file manager to manually upload files for other CMSs.

More to add, 000webhost’s custom modern interface is intuitive and easy to use. All the essential features like file manager, databases, and domain settings are there. Everything runs as it should, and there are no issues or weird errors. You’ll have no problem learning the rope to web hosting.

All things considered, if you’re looking for the best free website hosting, 000webhost is it. While its resources are limited, its smooth hosting experience makes it a solid provider. You can find out more about this host in our 000webhost review.

000webhost performance

One thing that separates 000webhost from the rest of the free providers is reliability. While others fail to live up to the lowest standards, this one here can compete with paid hosts. Or so it seems.

Over a week, 000webhost managed to stay up 99.99% of the time. Considering that its uptime guarantee is 99% (0.9% worse than industry standard), that's an exceptional result. I might have to keep the account for longer to see how it goes.

As for response time, it's slow. No paid provider comes even close to 1.8 seconds on average – that's just too big of a delay.

So performance considered, 000webhost reliability is great – you shouldn't have issues when you want to work on your site, and it's constantly unavailable. At the same time, speed will be sacrificed.

Altogether, 000webhost is definitely the best free web hosting option out of many competitors. That's because it manages to offer reliable performance and an interface that's functioning smoothly. Resources are scarce, but you get enough for learning or even hosting a very small hobby site.

2. Hostinger

Features	Free SSL, weekly backups, SSD storage, LiteSpeed web server
Uptime	100%
Speed	511ms
Best for	Free web hosting alternative

Visit Hostinger

Hostinger isn’t exactly a free hosting provider, but at just $2.99/month for its cheapest plan, it’s pretty darn close to free web hosting. And, in return, you get amazing performance, ease of use, essential security measures, and helpful 24/7 support. A steal for those who need a small/personal website.

Plus, Hostinger’s resources and features, even for its cheapest plan, are extremely competitive. This is what you can expect:

• It can host one website with 30GB SSD storage, 100GB bandwidth, an email account, and 2 databases. That's hundreds of times more (talking about storage and bandwidth) than what you get with free providers.
• Free SSL is included.
• There are no ads on your site.
• You get to use a professional control panel.
• 24/7 customer support is available via live chat and email.

I know I pulled a fast one since Hostinger isn’t technically free. But, can you really blame me when you get all these resources at just $2.99/month? Come on, you’d be more furious had I not, at the very least, bring this deal to your attention.

Ultimately, Hostinger is the perfect example of why cheap is always better than free. At a very low price, Hostinger offers essentially everything you need from a good provider.

Hostinger performance

It doesn't feel fair to even compare Hostinger's performance to free providers. It's both reliable and speedy. Plus, you get to use technology that even some expensive hosts don't implement.

2 months and counting, Hostinger is up 100% of the time. That's around 0 of outages and downtime, in other words.

Response time is speedy 511ms. That's not the top result of all the providers I tested, but it's well above the average.

Additionally, Hostinger has 7 data center locations, so you can bring your website close to your target audience. That guarantees better page load time. Moreover, all plans are powered by the LiteSpeed web server and pre-configured caching. That's the fastest web server technology available at the moment.

For such a price, Hostinger is a steal. If your budget allows you to spend even a little bit, look at no other option. Ease of use, reliability, performance, and customer support that's always available, makes Hostinger a no-brainer.

3. Freehosting.com

Features	10GB storage, email, customer support
Uptime	99.81%
Speed	314ms
Best for	Learning web design and development

Visit Freehosting.com

Freehosting.com is a free hosting veteran that has a few tricks up its sleeves to charm users. This includes free hosting no ads, unmetered bandwidth, some freebies, and an easy user experience. Those looking to dip their toes into learning about websites might find it worth a look.

For a free web hosting provider, Freehosting.com is pretty reasonable with its resources. In its free hosting package, you’ll find:

• One hosted website, 10GB storage, unmetered bandwidth, an email account, and a MySQL database.
• You can add your own domain name.
• No ads will be put on your website.
• DirectAdmin control panel is easy to use.
• 24/7 technical support is there.

There aren't many things that you'll need to sacrifice:

• No SSL certificate included.
• You won't be able to host subdomains such as blog.yourwebsite.com.

Evidently, Freehosting.com has pretty decent resources. And, overall, I find the provider to have quite a smooth experience. In fact, its client area even reminds me of A2 Hosting, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s clean, organized, and intuitive.

So, why isn’t it number one? Well, let me break it down. First, I noticed that there were some errors that randomly appear and disappear. My guess is that this is an upselling attempt to scare me into upgrading to a paid plan.

Plus, Freehosting.com boasts that it offers cPanel. Well, that’s not the case, and, in reality, you get DirectAdmin. That’s pretty cheeky but, fortunately, it’s still quite easy to use.

Finally, there are also no performance guarantees. The provider's terms of service state that it doesn’t guarantee that its service will be uninterrupted or error-free. While this is common with free hosting, it’s still disappointing and not all good if you’re serious about your website.

All of this considered, Freehosting.com is quite attractive for offered resources, yet it has quite a few cons. Plus, we haven't talked about performance yet.

Freehosting.com performance

Freehosting.com was one of the very few free providers with which I didn't have any major issues when setting up. Yet, the reliability left much to be desired.

In just one week, Freehosting.com was down 11 times for 19 minutes in total. That's a 99.81% total uptime result. If this trend would continue, your site would be down for almost 17 hours every year. That's not acceptable for a professional site.

Response times, on the other hand, were quite good. It averaged at 314ms, which is very much speedy. But what will you do with the speed if your site is not available?

So performance considered, it's a huge hit and miss. Speed is good, but uptime is just not worth the effort.

Altogether, Freehosting.com is not the worst choice if you'd like to use classic web hosting for free. Random errors and poor uptime should be anticipated, but the resources are quite good.

4. Freehostia

Features	5 websites, SSL, no ads
Uptime	99.88%
Speed	974ms
Best for	Free HTML hosting

Visit Freehostia

Freehostia.com is a pretty quirky free web hosting provider. The host sets itself apart with interesting plan names like Chocolate, Lovebeat, and Wildhoney. Beyond that, Freehostia is also known for its ad-free policy, relatively easy-to-use control panel, and competitive features.

Creative names or not, we’re on a serious quest here. So, naturally, we’d want to know what its free Chocolate plan entails. Here’s an insight into the plan:

• 5 websites, 250MB disk space, 6GB bandwidth, 3 email accounts, and a MySQL database.
• You can add your own domain.
• Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate is included in the plan.
• No ads on your website.
• Integrated control panel.
• 24/7 customer support by ticket and email.

It seems, from the first look, that there are virtually no sacrifices to be made. But the resources are more than skimpy – 250MB of storage is barely enough for 1 small WordPress website. Maybe Freehostia is the best HTML host with such scarce resources.

However, the provider deserves a spot on this list because of its many initiatives to make hosting easier and better. This includes features like 1-click Web Applications Installer, website builder, and multilingual control panel.

Typically, this would nudge the provider higher up the list. However, unfortunately, quite a few of these features missed the mark. While the control panel is integrated with the main dashboard, it's just messy. Flashy ads make it difficult to navigate.

Plus, Freehostia brags about its easy setup. However, I find that things could be a whole lot easier. First, its registration requires a lot of personal info, which also isn’t great for privacy. Plus, it was difficult to get the website running. I ran into a number of issues with pointing the domain.

That said, Freehostia.com is still a solid choice as far as free web hosting goes. It's a great learning opportunity if you like challenges – you'll surely learn a lot about web hosting issues here.

Freehostia performance

When it comes to performance, like many free options, Freehostia fails to deliver both on speed and reliability.

In one week, the provider was down for 12 minutes in total, on 5 different occasions. That's a poor 99.88% uptime result.

The response time averaged at 980ms, which is not the worst result I've seen. At the same time, this delay will make your sites quite slow.

So in the performance department, Freehostia is not the worst – for learning purposes, uptime will be okay, and speed is not as important. For professional use, avoid this host altogether.

The bottom line is that Freehostia is yet another free option that's barely working. You get little to no server space, resources are skimpy, yet somehow it's still running.

5. AwardSpace

Features	4 websites, no ads, customer support
Uptime	N/A
Speed	N/A
Best for	Seeing web hosting from the backend

Visit AwardSpace

AwardSpace is another free hosting provider that knows what to offer to attract users. Some of the provider’s main appeals include a 100% ad-free policy, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and freebies like a website builder. This is a great free platform to explore the different aspects of hosting without monetary commitment.

If you type in “free web hosting no ads” on search engines, you’ll see AwardSpace right at the top. But, ad-free free web hosting means jack if its resources are severely lacking. So, let’s see what AwardSpace free plan users can expect:

• You can host up to 4 websites with 1000MB disk space, 5GB bandwidth, an email account, and one database. S
• You can add one domain and up to 3 subdomains.
• 100% ad-free.
• 24//7 customer support.

Some sacrifices will have to be made:

• Your site won't have an SSL certificate
• The custom control panel is difficult to navigate

As you can see, there are some hits and misses here. And, that’s the best way to describe AwardSpace overall, really: highs and lows.

For instance, its interface is integrated with its control panel, which makes things a lot easier. But, the interface itself is messy and full of ads. So, while it’s not difficult to use, it requires patience to find what you need.

But there's a major catch.

AwardSpace was one of the providers to simply block my account for "breaching terms of service." Well, if installing WordPress and putting it on monitoring software is a breach, I really don't know what you can use this free server hosting for.

So while resources look good on paper, a small WordPress website might just be too much for AwardSpace to handle. This brings me to the performance section.

AwardSpace performance

I'm now quite salty about AwardSpace – it kicked me out without the possibility to explain myself. So talking about performance, I'd have to say it's non-existent. But I'll try to go through all that's happened.

It all started pretty well. AwardSpace had a couple of outages, 14 minutes in total. But then they kicked me out, so the website disappeared from the internet. That's 100% of downtime, you guys.

Response time also started at a pretty tolerable 800ms, then peaked to over 2 seconds and stayed there. It's one of the worst results I've seen, really.

So while AwardSpace hosts your website, it can be okay. Sure, lots of downtime is expected, and speed – I don't really have a conclusive answer about it. At the same time – you can be kicked out with your website thrown into the trash at any moment.

All in all, AwardSpace looked like it's a decent free web hosting option, but it's just too unreliable. If you don't want to lose your work – don't come near it.

6. InfinityFree

Features	Free SSL, connect domain, no ads, cPanel
Uptime	99.81%
Speed	2.68s
Best for	Free hosting with cPanel

Visit InfinityFree

InfinityFree is a free hosting platform that's very vocal about its strong point: free web hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth. The provider is also not shy about sharing its offerings of freebies, such as a free SSL certificate.

And, I must admit, InfinityFree’s brags work wonders because I can’t help but be curious as to whether it’s all hot air. So, here’s a look at its resources:

• One website with unlimited disk space and bandwidth as well as 400 MySQL databases.
• You can add a domain.
• Free SSL certificate included.
• No ads are forced upon your website.
• cPanel (or a very close knock-off) included.

All sounds very good, but a couple of things are not there:

• No email accounts.
• No support beyond a forum and knowledge base.

Now, despite InfinityFree’s minor drawbacks, the resources look okay. At the same time, unlimited can get tricky – how much can I upload until the host says 'stop, it's too much?'

But, before you think you’ve found a (free) unicorn, I do have some words of caution. First, InfinityFree allows you to add a domain. But, for me, that failed, and I had to resort to a temporary one. I waited the recommended 72 hours, yet this one didn't work either.

I only succeeded with a temporary domain the second time, as the first one simply disappeared from my account. But still, that's a free subdomain and not a fit for a professional site.

Besides that, the plan comes with cPanel, which is always thumbs up from me. But, alas, InfinityFree’s cPanel is sometimes out of the office and isn’t available. You’ll run into errors trying to reach it. And when it's working, it just keeps logging you out. Annoying!

But, the biggest red flag that I must mention is InfinityFree’s policies. To put it briefly, you basically grant it a royalty-free license to your content. Worse, the provider warns that it might give your data to ‘trusted’ third parties.

All things considered, if you can accept and love InfinityFree at its worst like a life partner, you’ll get plenty of resources at your disposal.

InfinityFree performance

While I only had a couple of days to monitor InfinityFree performance, I was not impressed. It was both awfully slow and unreliable.

In 3 full days, Infinity free was down for 9 minutes. That's a 99.81% uptime result. Sure, doesn't seem like much in such a short time, but over a year that would be almost 17 hours of downtime.

The response time was averaging at 2.68 seconds. Some providers load fully built sites 3 times faster. And that's just server delay.

So is InfinityFree a host you could use for a professional site? Not really – it's too slow and unreliable for good user experience.

Altogether, InfinityFree reaches this list only because I was able to get a site running. Other than that, it has sketchy terms of service, many errors, and poor performance.

Free web hosting: what to expect?

To be honest, the providers on this list are actually pretty good. But to find them among the bad ones, I had to sacrifice an email account for spammy emails. And that's the least of the sacrifices. Setting up the accounts, I had run into so many issues it's not even possible to count. But here are a few main ones:

• Some free providers promised me the stars, but I was left with nothing – my account was simply never activated.
• If I managed to get an account up and running, issues with domain names, databases, and even file manager popped up. I wasn't able to keep a simple WordPress website live for longer than 5 minutes until something went wrong.
• Some providers simply blocked my account before I even had a chance to say hello.

If I didn't need to write this whole article sharing my experience, I would simply suggest you to stay away from free web hosting. While some providers do work, overall, it's a time bomb.

But those are the issues of the worst providers whose names I will not reveal. If you pick one of the contenders from this list, it will be fairly easy to get a site running. Still, you should anticipate some problems regarding performance, resources, ads, and terms of service.

So if you are determined to get that free website hosting, below are some things that you should know.

Performance

The 2 main things that you want to see when looking at performance are – minimum downtime and maximum speed. Unfortunately, with free web hosting, more often than not, it’s a fail on both fronts.

Uptime

Uptime is the percentage of time that your provider’s server is up and running (and so is your website). Just like your math test, you want it to be as close to 100% as possible. This is to ensure that your site is always available and accessible to visitors.

Here's how a good uptime result looks like – a nice round 100%:

It’s worth noting that no downtime is not possible in the long run. After all, you have to account for things like scheduled maintenance or the unexpected. Fair enough.

Most paid providers out there have a 99.9% uptime guarantee. So, in the event that your site sees constant downtime, you can go and rightfully demand compensation.

But, what about free web hosting? Well, most free hosting has far lower uptime than their paid counterparts. And, the majority of them don’t offer an uptime guarantee. So, you’re left — if you’ll forgive my language — screwed with no avenues if the provider’s server is down for a long period.

From our testing results, 4 out of 5 free providers failed:

Think about it this way: if paid hosting is your responsible salaried 9-5 worker who shows up every single day, free hosting is the unsalaried intern who disappears for a large chunk of the workday — or week — with no notice.

Obviously, this is far from ideal for any website — especially business websites. And, if you’re hoping to make money from your site, every second your site is down is potentially money out of your pocket.

Server response time

As for speed, the easiest way to see how a provider performs is to look at its average server response time. As the name suggests, it's the time that it takes the server to react to any request that is sent its way. For example, when a visitor wants to visit your site and clicks on it on Google, for some time, the page is not loading because the server is yet to react. The faster the server, the shorter this delay.

This is an excellent long term monitoring result of a paid web hosting provider, with response time averaging at 217ms:

Free hosting is notorious for its slow performance. Less than responsive servers and tortoise-like loading time are the norms rather than the exceptions. That's because they are overcrowded with websites that want to be hosted for free. Plus, nobody's investing in good up-to-date hardware.

So the tolerable server response times are up to 1 second, although that's a generous number too. 4 out of 5 free providers failed it or were very close to failing.

Since speed has a big say in your website’s success, this is, of course, a bane for your site’s user experience, conversion, and search engine ranking. First page on a search result page is a far-fetched dream with these fellas.

Resource limits

Most free website hosting plans come with a very low resource limits. Sometimes, it's not even enough to install WordPress and a theme. Not to mention that you'd also want to have some visitors on your site.

How bad could it be? Well, bad.

These are the statistics of resource usage with a couple of free providers after installing WordPress:

For starters, most free plans are unforgiving when it comes to storage. Many small websites can survive on 1GB of storage. But some free providers are not even offering half of it. For instance, 000webhost has a 300MB quota, while Freehostia.com offers only 250MB of storage for its free plan.

All you have to do is install WordPress and a theme, and here you go — >50% of the storage is spoken for. So, you might as well bid goodbye to vibrant graphics, photos, and videos now.

Then, there’s the matter of bandwidth. To put it simply, you can see this as the number of visitors allowed on your website each month.

Like a cruel tyrant, free hosting services tend to keep bandwidth on a short leash with a very low limit. You get 2 visitors and, all of a sudden, the CPU dramatically goes into overload.

And, if you exceed the limit given, it’s off with your head. Okay, maybe it’s not that dire, but your hosting could be halted by the provider. Perhaps, that's what happened with AwardSpace, which kicked me out for breaching the terms of service.

So overall, the resources allow only minimal usage – you can only have a couple of visitors per day and beautiful images are best to be forgotten.

Ads on your website

If you opt for free hosting, be prepared for the never-ending stream of upselling whenever you log in. Ads are mostly targeting you, to purchase domains and other premium services.

That's the classic freemium model – you get a service for free, but to make it functional, extra stuff has to be purchased.

Also, don't be surprised if your site itself is plastered with ads. This could take various forms — including logo, banners, and footer tags on your site. Worse, it could be in the form of pop-ups that annoy the living hell out of most of us.

Fortunately, the majority of the providers on this list won't do that. At the same time, terms of service can change anytime.

And, to spare you any embarrassment that might be caused by a misunderstanding, you won’t be the one making the money from these ads. Instead, any moolah from your visitors’ clicks goes directly into — who else? — the hosting provider’s pocket.

But, admittedly, while the ads are extremely annoying and an eyesore, I can’t exactly deny that it isn’t a somewhat fair trade.

After all, the company is spending money to provide you with hosting, and you’re not paying it a single dime. It’s fair for it to make the money back by promoting its brand via your website. And, frankly, there are far worse ways the providers can make money from your site.

Terms of service

In case it isn’t clear yet, free web hosting has plenty of drawbacks. But, its terms of service might be its biggest one yet.

• To start, there’s always the threatening question of whether your content really belongs to you when it comes to free web hosting. This is because many providers include a clause in their ToS that you grant them a royalty-free license to your content. So, you might be the one that painted the masterpiece stroke by stroke. But, you’ll still have no recourse if the provider sells the piece since it has a license to do so.
• Then, there’s the sinister possibility that your site can just literally disappear into thin air one day. After all, this wouldn’t be the first time a hosting company just went poof! The host company could run out of money to sustain the business.
• Besides that, free hosting providers are known for hiding behind long legal clauses to justify selling your data to third parties. And, they’ve been successfully doing so for years! Things like email addresses and personal information fetch a pretty penny. In return, there’s not much that you can do... besides getting your mailbox ready for spam.

Some of these things can, of course, be balanced off. As you don't need to pay for the service, you can stay anonymous by using fake credentials and temporary email. At the same time, nothing will save you from the provider's disappearance or your content being used by the provider.

Free web hosting alternatives

Even the best free website hosting provider has its share of drawbacks, which underscores that cheap is better than free. So, if you’re looking for affordable web hosting alternatives, here are 3 options:

1. Hostinger – excellent hosting at bargain-basement prices
2. Wix – an easy-to-use platform for a beautiful website
3. DreamHost – affordable quality hosting

Hostinger

If the web hosting world has a Beyoncé, Hostinger is it. Favored by many and in most users’ good books, the popular provider is very attainable as its entry plan is extremely affordable. At just $2.99/month, the plan comes with generous resources and features. This includes 30GB SSD storage, 100GB bandwidth, free SSL certificate, managed auto-updates, backups, and more.

Beyond that, Hostinger is also a hit with many thanks to its performance. Fast enough to rival — and outpace — many premium providers’ speed, Hostinger is also known for its reliability. Plus, Hostinger’s ease of use is no joke, either. With plenty of tools and features to simplify and boost the hosting experience, its setup and management processes are a piece of cake. Have I mentioned that customer support is available 24/7? And, all that at what price? A superstar, indeed.

Visit Hostinger

Wix

Wix is a website builder rather than a hosting provider. But, the builder is a huge name in both the hosting and website building worlds. The best thing? Wix has a free plan that you can use without paying a dime for as long as you like. Sure, it’s limited but, hey, you don’t need to pay while you’re building a site and learning the ropes on how to use it. That’s already a boon. And, while Wix’s resources are lean, they aren’t terribly so. For instance, you get 500MB of storage and bandwidth, which isn’t too bad.

That said, Wix's biggest strength lies in its ease of use. Featuring 2 easy setup options and 800+ stunning templates, even a total beginner can get a beautiful and professional website up in no time. Not to forget, the builder also has many handy tools and features in its arsenal. This includes automation, email marketing tools, live stream of videos, and customer management tools.

Visit Wix

DreamHost

Another top dog in the game, DreamHost, is a popular provider that focuses heavily on WordPress. So, for those of you looking for exactly that, rejoice because DreamHost’s cheapest plan costs just $2.59/month with a 3-year plan. And, with it, you get 50GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, and freebies, including domain, SSL certificate, and domain privacy. Not a bad deal at all.

And, while DreamHost comes across as a premium provider, the host is surprisingly inexpensive. Even if you opt for a month-to-month billing arrangement. For instance, its cheapest plan, Shared, costs just $4.95/mo if you go for a monthly payment. That's just 1 coffee a month. But, if you have a tight budget, its yearly billing is, of course, much kinder on your wallet at the dirt-cheap $2.95/mo.

Visit DreamHost

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