Best Free Web Hosting (2023)

Can Free Hosting Offer Enough To Host A Successful Website?

last updated

February 22, 2023

written by

David Morelo

I’ve signed up for over 20 free hosting providers and reviewed their speed, pricing, and features – I’ve narrowed them down to the 5 best free hosting providers, along with my in-depth reviews of each below.

Although shared web hosting is among the cheapest of hosting types, it can still be a lot to fork out. Most web hosts advertise their cheapest shared hosting prices on their websites, but these prices are actually only applicable if you sign up for a 1-year, 2-year, or even 3-year period.

When you take that into account, costs can mount up quickly, causing you to fork out near on $100 for your first term of web hosting.

So, what if you could get web hosting for free? Most people probably wouldn’t believe you can get web hosting for free, and if you could, the service would probably be terrible.

Well, that’s what I’m here for! I signed up to the best free web hosting providers and took into account the following questions:

  • Are they really free?
  • What limitations are there?
  • What is their performance like?
Now, I’m not going to lie to you and say that free web hosting is the best way forward, as many providers have restrictions and limitations (after all, the service is free). However, for some people, free web hosting may be recommended.
 
Let’s take a look at what I found after I signed up for the following providers.

recommended

Best overall free web hosting

Best free web host for features

also great

Best free web host for scalability

Best for server response speed

Best free host for add-ons and extras

If you’re interested to learn more about my recommended free web hosting providers, read on for my in-depth reviews of the 5 best free web hosts. 

Let’s dive in!

1. InfinityFree

Speed & Performance

4.5/5

Pricing

3.5/5

Features

4/5

InfinityFree Pros:

InfinityFree Cons:

Read our full review

InfinityFree is fairly new to the free web hosting market. They established themselves back in 2015 and say they have more than 300,000 customers. That sounds pretty impressive for a free web hosting provider. Whilst many free web hosts restrict your usage, InfinityFree offers unlimited storage space and bandwidth, entirely free for life.

Speed & Performance

I honestly didn’t expect much in terms of performance because I wasn’t paying anything for my services. Surprisingly, InfinityFree offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which is very impressive.

Most big-name shared web hosts offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee, so it felt like InfinityFree were competing with the big boys. I signed up for InfinityFree’s free web hosting and started monitoring my uptime and response time with UptimeRobot.

I am genuinely shocked by the results of this test. In the last 30 days, my InfinityFree website has 100% uptime! That’s better than a lot of shared web hosts I’ve reviewed, so I’m really pleased.

I was also taken aback by InfinityFree’s server response time. Again, these results are better than a lot of other ones I’ve analysed, averaging out at 110.93 ms in the last 24 hours. That’s just over 0.1 of a second, which means by website visitors will enjoy a great user experience.

Because my results were so good, I wondered if something was wrong with UptimeRobot’s monitoring, so I headed over to Bitcatcha to double-check. Amazingly, Bitcatcha recorded my website’s performance as A+ with an incredible 8ms server response time in the U.S. (E) and 71ms in U.S. (W). 

Pricing

InfinityFree is an entirely free web hosting plan. However, the company do have premium plans under their iFastNet premium hosting brand. I’d recommend signing up for InfinityFree’s free plan and seeing whether you like them before upgrading to a premium plan.

InfinityFree doesn’t exactly have any pricing plans because it’s a free web hosting provider, so I thought I’d take you on a little tour of what their free plan offers in terms of resources:

  • Storage: Unlimited
  • Bandwidth: Unlimited
  • MySQL Databases: 400
  • Subdomains: Free
  • SSL Certificate: Free with your own domain

Features

For a free web host, InfinityFree has honestly taken me aback, which is why they deserve the number one spot on my best free web hosting list. 

On top of their awesome performance and generous resources, they also boast some great features that you’d probably find with most shared web hosting providers:

  • 1-Click Installs: If you want to create a WordPress website or use other CMS platforms and software, InfinityFree boast 1-click installations with Softaculous.
  • Ad-free: Unlike a lot of free web hosts, InfinityFree won’t put any adverts on your website.
  • Host domains: Although InfinityFree doesn’t provide any kind of domain registration, you can use their subdomains or register your own domain.

InfinityFree Pros:

InfinityFree Cons:

2. AwardSpace

Speed & Performance

4/5

Pricing

4/5

Features

3.5/5

AwardSpace Pros:

AwardSpace Cons:

Read our full review

AwardSpace has been around since 2003, providing free and premium web hosting to thousands of people. They boast a 99.9% uptime guarantee as well as 24/7 support, and they are 100% ad-free. Like many of the free web hosting providers I signed up for, I was initially suspicious of AwardSpace’s guarantees and promises. However, I did trust them a little more than others due to their professional looking website (it’s the little things).

Speed & Performance

Like InfinityFree, AwardSpace also offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. With many free web hosts, these guarantees are a little meaningless because there’s no money to give back if things go wrong, it’s just a promise that you hope they’ll keep.

I signed up for AwardSpace’s free hosting plan and begun to monitor my website with UptimeRobot. UptimeRobot is a great tool which will allow you to monitor a website’s uptime and server response time.

I’m starting to think that theses free web hosting providers are better than a lot of shared web hosts! In the last 30 days, my uptime was a solid 100%, with my last moment of downtime totalling 1 minute back in January.

My website’s server response time wasn’t anywhere near as good as InfinityFree, but it wasn’t exactly bad either considering I wasn’t paying for this service.

Bitcatcha’s server response time results were very good. In the U.S. (W) the response time was 181ms, and U.S. (E) was 121ms. Strangely, one of the best server response times was in London with an incredible 44ms, and Germany was only 38ms. Although these aren’t the locations where my website visitors would be coming from, the response times were incredible. This is from a free web host!

Pricing

AwardSpace, as I mentioned earlier, does have premium plans, when you’re ready to grow your website. However, their free plan is a great stepping stone for beginners or even experienced hosting users who want to try before they buy (their free plan is free for life).

Some of AwardSpace’s free plan resources include:

  • Websites: Up to 4 hosted websites
  • Bandwidth: 5GB
  • Storage: 1GB
  • Account activation: Instant

Features

I’ve really been surprised by some of the features that a lot of free web hosts offer. Whilst they’re not going to be as great as premium hosting, they are still very good.

Here are some of my favourite features that AwardSpace offers:

  • 24/7 support: If you need any help, AwardSpace’s support is available 24/7
  • 1-click CMS: CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal can be installed with just a click of a button
  • Website builder: AwardSpace have their own website builder where you can create a website in less than 30 minutes
  • Bandwidth usage: You can track your own bandwidth usage by using AwardSpace’s monitoring tool

AwardSpace Pros:

AwardSpace Cons:

3. 000WebHost

Speed & Performance

2.5/5

Pricing

4.5/5

Features

3/5

000WebHost Pros:

000WebHost Cons:

Read our full review

000WebHost is powered by Hostinger who is an awesome shared web hosting provider. 000WebHost is Hostinger’s free counterpart, offering free web hosting to the masses. You’ll be able to get a taste of Hostinger’s services through 000WebHost, so it’s kind of a try before you buy service, but you can host your website free for life if you want to.

Speed & Performance

000WebHost’s uptime guarantee is a bit lower than other free web hosts, boasting just 99%. However, their service is free, so the fact they offer any time of uptime guarantee is a good thing in my books.

I signed up for 000WebHost and monitored my free hosted website with UptimeRobot. I wasn’t expecting too much given their uptime guarantee was less than the hosts I’d already reviewed.

In the last 30 days, my website’s uptime averaged out at 99.915%. That’s actually more than their uptime guarantee but less than the other hosts I’ve reviewed. I was a little disappointed as the previous results I’d got were so incredible, but I have to keep reminding myself that this is a FREE web host.

The average response time for my website in the last 24 hours was 630.61ms. That’s better than AwardSpace but not as fast as InfinityFree. Still, it’s a very acceptable server response time for a free web host.

My Bitcatcha results weren’t a match for the first couple of free hosting providers on this list, netting a performance grade of B+. U.S. (W) server response time was 229ms, but U.S. (E) was 21ms, which was a lot better. In the grand scheme of things, the results were still good (unless your website visitors are coming from Japan, in which case, not great).

Pricing

000WebHost is a free web hosting provider, so their free plan is… well, it’s free. However, because 000WebHost is owned by Hostinger, it does in a sense have premium plans you can upgrade to, which are powered by Hostinger.

Their paid plans start from just $0.79 per month, which is a real steal considering the resources you get. But, that’s not what we’re focusing on here.

000WebHost boasts the following resources:

  • Websites: 1
  • Storage: 300MB
  • Bandwidth: 3GB
  • Email accounts: 0
  • 24/7/365 support: No

Features

In comparison to the other free hosting providers I’ve reviewed so far, I think that 000WebHost’s resources and features aren’t the best. However, it’s important to remind ourselves that all of these hosts are entirely free. 

These are some of the features that 000WebHost boasts that took my fancy:

  • Website builder: Zyro website builder allows you to create a professional website in less than an hour
  • Control Panel: 000WebHost use a custom control panel, which for some may be a bit off-putting, however, I’ve personally used it and found it very easy to use.
  • PHP & SQL: 000WebHost uses the latest and most up-to-date technologies. Their servers are tested regularly too.
  • 1-Click Installs: WordPress is a popular CMS, and with 000WebHost, you can host your website for free and install WordPress with a single click of a button

 

000WebHost Pros:

000WebHost Cons:

4. x10Hosting

Speed & Performance

2.5/5

Pricing

3/5

Features

3/5

x10Hosting Pros:

x10Hosting Cons:

Read our full review

x10Hosting was established in 2004 and is in fact one of the few free hosting providers who offer cloud SSD servers. x10Hosting has proven to be very popular, with over 1 million customers in the bag. In comparison to the other free web hosts I’ve reviewed, unfortunately, x10Hosting doesn’t offer the best support or the best uptime, but they are completely free.

Speed & Performance

x10Hosting didn’t seem to mention anything on their website about an uptime guarantee (not that I could find anyway). This instantly made me feel a bit uncomfortable as web hosting is all about stability and reliability.

Although x10Hosting is a free web host, it’s still nice to have some kind of reassurance that they’re going to provide a decent enough service. I signed up for their free plan and started monitoring my website using UptimeRobot to analyse my website’s uptime.

In the last 24 hours my website has had 100% uptime, but in the last 7 days that dropped to 99.723% and in the last 30 days averaged out at 99.825%. Definitely not the best uptime I’ve seen so far, and unfortunately they don’t offer any SLAs.

The actual downtime on my website hit a maximum of 25 minutes which may not seem like an awful lot, but that’s 25 minutes people couldn’t get to my website. The response time, on the other hand, was pretty exceptional. It’s just a shame people wouldn’t get to experience that if my website was down.

My website’s server response time with x10Hosting continued to be great when I monitored it with Bitcatcha. U.S. (W) servers had a 48ms response time and U.S. (E) had 24ms. The highest server response time was over in Singapore and even then it was 224ms which is just over 0.2 seconds.

Pricing

Like many of the free web hosting providers I’ve reviewed, x10Hosting does offer premium hosting (I guess it’s how they make their money). Their x10Premium plan starts from $6.95 per month and gets cheaper the longer you sign up for.

Their free plan, however, is free for life and offers unlimited storage and disk space. Their SSD based cloud servers use cPanel, which will give you access to a wealth of features which I’ll show you next.

Features

x10Hosting doesn’t offer as many features as other free web hosts, but still enough to get you going on your web hosting journey. It’s important to keep reminding ourselves that these are free providers, so anything other than free web hosting that they throw on top is an added bonus.

x10Hosting includes the following features:

  • cPanel: cPanel dashboard is a popular control panel which is easy to use and has plenty of support.
  • Resources: Unlimited bandwidth and storage for all customers
  • Website Builder: Free website builder 
  • Softaculous: 1-Click installations for WordPress and other popular software

x10Hosting Pros:

x10Hosting Cons:

5. FreeHosting.com

Speed & Performance

3.5/5

Pricing

2.5/5

Features

2.5/5

FreeHosting Pros:

FreeHosting Cons:

Read our full review

FreeHosting.com spawned from the Czech Republic and offers free web hosting and premium web hosting to a wealth of customers. Unfortunately, they don’t allow you to register subdomains, so if you don’t already have a domain name you’ll need to register a new one. Their web hosting is free for life and offers 10GB storage and unlimited bandwidth.

Speed & Performance

Much like x10Hosting, I couldn’t find any information on FreeHosting.com’s website about their uptime guarantee (if they had one). As I did with the other free web hosts on this list, I signed up for FreeHosting.com’s free plan and monitored my website with UptimeRobot.

I can certainly say I was wrong to worry about FreeHosting.com – Wow, those results are great for a free web host. My website had 100% uptime in the last 30 days which is incredible. That’s without any kind of uptime guarantee too.

However, my server response time wasn’t exactly great. In the last 24 hours, my website’s average response time was 1467.60ms which is way above the average response time a website should have. There was an obvious spike in my results so I input my website’s details into Bitcatcha.

The results with Bitcatcha were much better for my server’s response time. However, European servers like London and Germany appeared to perform much better than U.S. servers, which is where my website is based. U.S. (W) recorded 154ms and U.S. (E) 89ms, which are great results.

Pricing

FreeHosting.com has two pricing plans; a free plan and a paid plan. The paid plan is an option you might consider once you’ve experienced their free plan. If you like what you see, then maybe it’s time to upgrade, but for the moment, I’d recommend signing up to their free plan first.

Their free plan offers the following resources:

  • Storage: 10GB
  • Bandwidth: Unlimited
  • Email accounts: 1
  • Websites: 1
  • Subdomains: 0
  • MySQL databases: 1

Features

I was a little disappointed with FreeHosting.com’s resources if I’m being honest with you. Whilst their uptime was awesome and their response time was pretty good, their resources seemed a little lack-lustre in comparison to what I’ve reviewed.

However, they do offer something a lot of free web hosts don’t, and that’s one-off payment add-ons. Let’s take a look at some of their features:

  • cPanel: FreeHosting.com uses cPanel for its control panel which makes it easy to setup email accounts, FTP accounts, and install Softaculous scripts
  • Website builder: FreeHosting’s site builder allows you to create a free website in a short amount of time, following by free hosting
  • Files: You’ll get unlimited FTP accounts with FreeHosting.com as well as web disk support and a file manager
  • Paid apps: You can pay for extra apps such as an additional mailbox for $14.95, SSL for $29.95, and subdomain for $14.95

FreeHosting Pros:

FreeHosting Cons:

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About the Author...

David Morelo

David Morelo

David has a thirst for technology and has spent over a decade testing and reviewing web hosting companies worldwide to provide his readers with honest and accurate accounts of the companies he’s had direct experiences with. Above all, he is enthusiastic about providing in-depth and helpful guides at all levels, from beginners to experts.