Let’s be honest for a second, running a business can be expensive. I know this all too well. I started a business back in 2008, and it was quite the learning experience. But, when we hear the words “free” our ears perk up.
Here is a quick guide to what will be covered:
So is free web hosting the way to go?
Many times people sign up for a free web hosting plans and find out it’s plagued with ads. It was so long ago, probably 12 to 15 years ago since I learned to create a website. I remember using a free hosting service, and there were ads all over the place. When you went to the site it had ads all over and looked bad. Luckily there are many free web hosting options today that do not force ads on user’s websites.
Free hosting plans should really only be used temporarily or for testing purposes. If you care about your website a regular paid web host is the only reliable way to go.
Free Hosting Unlimited Bandwidth
I should point out that many hosts do state you get an unlimited amount of bandwidth with their plans. Take it from someone that has been in the hosting industry for almost 10 years now. It’s unrealistic to think you can have unlimited anything on a shared hosting server. I have made this very clear at tbwhs.com over the years.
There is always a physical limit to a server. These hosting companies need to protect their users. Therefore, if one site is hogging all the resources, they will suspend your account. Usually, they have a resource limit. Also, you might want to contact them to see what their inode limit is.
Remember you get what you pay for and with free hosting you aren’t paying a dime. So with this in mind, now let’s look at 15 sites and the free web hosting plans they offer.
Top Free Web Hosting Sites With No Ads
AwardSpace.com
AwardSpace has been around for over 10 years. AwardSpace does get good reviews on tbwhs.com. These features come with their free web hosting plans:
- Storage: 1 GB.
- Monthly Traffic: 5 GB.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: Yes.
I do like how AwardSpace lets users try them out with their free hosting. AwardSpace does have lots of other paid plans, too. They offer shared, VPS and reseller plans. Their prices are on the cheaper end, too.
UltraWebHosting.com
UltraWebHosting has been in business for over 15 years. UltraWebHosting does get good reviews on tbwhs.com. Below are the features that come with their free web hosting plans:
- Storage: unknown.
- Monthly Traffic: 10 GB.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: Yes.
Also, UltraWebHosting.com has paid plans. They have any type of hosting you need including Shared, WordPress, Reseller, VPS, and dedicated.
000webhost.com
000WebHost.com has been in business since 2007. 000webhost.com has over 14 million users. Their client base is worldwide. They are the most well known free host. Please check out these 000WebHost.com reviews. These are the features that come with their free hosting plan:
- Storage: 2 GB.
- Monthly Traffic: 100 GB.
- Domain Support: Unlimited.
- Email Account: Yes.
000WebHost.com is a shared hosting provider, too. If your website grows and you need a shared plan, they do have a $3.99/month and $6.99/month plan.
x10Hosting.com
x10Hosting.com is powered by SingleHop. They are experienced in the hosting industry. Their free plans come with SSD hard drives. These are the features that come with x10Hosting.com free plan:
- Storage: Unlimited.
- Monthly Traffic: unlimited.
- Domain Support: 2.
- Email Account: Yes.
x10Hosting.com does use the unlimited bandwidth for free hosting. But, I do like how they use SSD hosting with all their shared and VPS plans. Read what webmasters have to say about X10Hosting on the x10Hosting review page.
Freehostia.com
Freehostia.com offers free cloud hosting. Cloud hosting is much faster than shared hosting. People have stated that it can be 15X faster than shared hosting. Here is my FreeHostia review. Below are the features that come with this free plan:
- Storage: 250 MB.
- Monthly Traffic: 6 GB.
- Domain Support: 5.
- Email Account: Yes.
Freehostia.com does only offer 250 MB of storage. This is pretty small, but it is free. They do offer paid cloud hosting, VPS, semi-dedicated, and dedicated hosting.
FreeWebHostingArea.com
FreeWebHostingArea.com isn’t a host for the nontechnical webmaster. However, they do give webmasters the option to host a site for 100% free. Here are the features that come with their free plan:
- Storage: 1,500 MB.
- Monthly Traffic: unlimited.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: No.
This is a free service. It does not expire as long as you log in to your dashboard each month. Also, there is an option to guarantee that you don’t have ads on your site. For this feature, you only pay $1/month.
Bravenet.com
Bravenet.com is a company that is based out of Canada. They were started in 1997. Bravenet.com does offer a free mailing list service. Comes with lots of templates, is mobile-friendly, drag and drop email builder, and campaign tracking. Here are the features that come with Bravenet.com’s free hosting plan:
- Storage: Unlimited GB.
- Monthly Traffic: Unlimited GB.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: No.
Also, you can register domain names with them. Domains will cost as low as $12.95/year. Bravenet.com does have a paid hosting plan, too. It cost $8.25/month.
WebFreeHosting.net
WebFreeHosting.net is a “green” web hosting company. They believe you should never have to pay for hosting if you don’t want too. Their data centers are powered by the wind. Here are the features their free plan comes with:
- Storage: 1 GB.
- Monthly Traffic: 5 GB.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: Yes.
Free plans come with 1 click installers for WordPress and Joomla. WebFreeHosting.net does have paid plans. They offer 3 shared plans and 3 VPS plans.
FreeHosting.com
FreeHosting.com has a fairly large active community. They offer a lot of storage per account. Instead of using the words “unlimited” they allow 10 GB. They actively encourage their users to backup their sites. Here are the features of their free plan:
- Storage: 10 GB.
- Monthly Traffic: 250 GB.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: Yes.
FreeHosting.com also offers lots of monthly bandwidth. 250 GB is more than some shared host offer. Also, FreeHosting.com does have two paid plans. These plans cost $5.99/month to $14.99/month.
Byet.host
Byethost is a US-based hosting company. They have over 1 million websites that are hosted with them. They have a fairly large community base and knowledge base. Here are the features that come with Byethost:
- Storage: 1 GB.
- Monthly Traffic: 50 GB.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: Yes.
Byethost offers it paid hosting options, too. They have Shared, Reseller, VPS, and dedicated plans. Also, all of their premium plans are using SSD hard drives now.
FreehostingEU.com
FreehostingEU.com is a project created by FreeDomain.co.nr and AttractSolf GmbH. This is a German based host. You can try out their hosting plan without having to put in your credit card. Here are the features that come with their free hosting plan:
- Storage: 200 MB.
- Monthly Traffic: 40 GB.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: Yes.
Users can easily setup WordPress or Joomla sites. They have a one-click installer. Also, FreehostingEU supports PHP, MySQL, CGI, Perl, Flash. They do have paid plans which range from $4.95 to $7.95 a month.
FreeHostingNoAds.net
FreeHostingNoAds.net is a partner company of iPage. You can sign up with them to use their free hosting plan. They come with a control panel, website builder, and script installer. It comes with these following features:
- Storage: 20 MB.
- Monthly Traffic: 200 GB.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: Yes.
FreeHostingNoAds.net does make it clear that they will send you an email once every 6 months to help promote their affiliate program. They have 2 paid options. Their paid options are $1 or $1.99/month.
uhostfull.com
uhostfull.com is a free host that comes with support for WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, Mambo, osCommerce and Zen Cart. Here are the features of their free hosting plan:
- Storage: 1000 GB.
- Monthly Traffic: 1000 GB.
- Domain Support: 1.
- Email Account: Yes.
uhostfull.com does have an option for paid hosting. However, when I clicked on their paid hosting option, there was a blank page there. Therefore, I can’t give you any of their prices.
Free Hosting Worth It?
One could argue that it is worth it if your on a very tight budget. But, keep in mind you’re probably not going to be high on the host’s priorities if problems do occur. If you truly care about your website or if you have a business a paid web hosting plan is the way to go.
So, there you have it there are a lot of free web hosting with no ads. I think offering a free hosting plan is an interesting business move. It gets people to try out your service. They don’t have to spend a dime. If they are happy, they might migrate to a paid plan.
Do you have any experience with any of the free hosts? Is there a free host that is not on the list that you’ve tried? Please leave your questions and comments down below.
Wow, I didn’t realize there were so many out there that offer this type of free hosting. I do agree with you though that you wouldn’t be considered a ‘value customer’ with a free plan. But hey, it’s probably worth checking out for a small site. Maybe not for a larger e-commerce platform?
Quite impressed by the size of the bandwidth they all offer at no cost. Do you think you get a guarantee of 99% uptime with these?
Dan
Yeah, there are actually a lot more free hosts. These are just the ones I feel were “list worthy.” I would agree that you probably don’t want to install a large eCommerce site on these servers. Your account would just get suspended, and you would have to upgrade to a shared or VPS plan.
As far as uptime is concerned, I have heard horror stories about uptime not really being 99.9%. I look at it from a business standpoint. As I have stated, you’re probably not high on their priorities if you’re not actually a paying customer.
However, free hosting does have it’s place in the industry. For learning, and for tiny sites that are not going to get very much traffic a day.
This is a really good list of free web hosting, and especially good for anyone who is a beginner and would like to explore free services. How much technical knowledge does someone need, to fully take advantage of these free services?
Thank you
Some free host will require that you have more technical knowledge. But, as I stated above most of the host come with a one click WordPress installer. This makes installing WordPress on your website easier.
Thanks for the great write up. As a beginner I have been overwhelmed with trying to figure out where to start, and I was hoping to use a free host but never knew the difference between them. I didn’t even know some of the free host post ads on your site. I don’t mind paying a reasonable fee, but while I’m just trying to play around a figure stuff out a free host is where I’d like to start. Thanks!
Yeah, about 5 years ago free host used to come plagued with ads on sites you had on their servers. This was integrated with Google Adsense to help generate money for the company. However, over the years a lot of webmasters got very annoyed at the free ads being all over their websites.
If you don’t have much traffic and it is static website then you can start with free web hosting services. If you are looking for premium web hosting company with good support then I would highly recommend you to get hosting from InterServer.
Hi Garen. Very informative article. I remember a while ago I tried to sign up for an account with x10 hosting and had a lot of trouble getting my account started. I guess they must have lifted their game by now. I’ve also used 000webhost and found them to be quite reliable. Thanks for the info and I will definitely check out your other suggestions when I need hosting.
Peter
Awesome list! I had no idea about most of these hosting services, and I love how they are all free. Ads are always a pain. I’m going to have to check out AwardSpace.
I really like how you broke down each one and listed the features you had. For anyone needing information and guidance on selecting a hosting company, this is the website to check out. Thank you, Garen.
Steph
Seems like free hosting is getting to be really easy to get nowadays. But of course, you always have to look at the perks of each service to see which best fits your needs. This post does a great job of doing that. I always was one who used the free space that came with my ISP and its email addresses with Earthlink. Of course, the URL would be ugly, but nowadays that is not even an issue with URL shorteners!!
Great article!! Thank you for sharing this.
True, you can get free space with Earthlink, but you have a branded subdomain with it. These do not look very professional, though. Domain names are actually pretty cheap with NameCheap.
000WebHost.com is a horrible service. They are using an outdated PHP version. Asked them many times to install a PHP switcher. They won’t do it. This is useless to me. Can’t even run a simple WordPress site. Wish I never would have signed up with them.
Sorry, for your troubles. Thanks for letting me know. However, 000WebHost.com does support all versions of PHP. I just checked with them to make sure they did support it.
I have used FreeHosting.com. But, my site quickly outgrew their server. I do host my sites with NameCheap which is much better than these free web hosting companies. Their prices are low and you actually get good support.
Thanks for letting me know. NameCheap is one of my recommended hosting companies. Also, domains are cheap with them, too. Might want to check out this article on NameCheap vs. GoDaddy:
Long time back, I tried 000webhost for one of the customer’s website. I used free hosting up until 3 months and eventually moved to a paid service. It was a bad experience but obvious we can’t expect great performance from a free service. Recently I come across free WordPress of accuwebhosting.com.I would recommend them to anyone. It’s as good as Premium WordPress hosting. Worth a try.
000Webhosting is just a huge hassle. I would recommend staying as far away from this company as you can. Their support is useless. Can’t take care of anything. They just send you canned responses.
This list include byet.host and it’s reseller free hosting. Byet.host is not a good host and they are using vista panel (old version of cpanel)
I’ve been with Freewebhosting dot net for near 14 years and never had problems. I eventually switched to their paid services and still don’t have any problems. I’ve learned my non-techy skills with their sub-domain over the years but most important to me was the ‘NO ADS’ offer they gave. Their prices are reasonable and they do have down times but usually at wee hours of the morning (for N America) and not for long.
Why such terrible (weird/dumb/dorky) site names? Just because it’s free, do the names have to be so clunky and goofy? And so long! Too tiring to type long urls! 🙁