Free web hosting services are becoming more popular as people look for ways to start new businesses online without incurring significant costs. Such services have a place in the market as they offer a way for anyone to start building a web presence for free, trialing new ideas before moving on – should they be successful – to something more solid.
I compiled the ultimate list of free website hosting services so you, our readers, can trial as many of them as you wish; there’s 40 in all globally with 12 (about a third, catering for a very specific niche – developers). You’d expect free web hosting to be short on features but it turns out that some of them are pretty solid with a few offering “unlimited” bandwidth and at least one offering “unlimited” storage.
cPanel is the most popular control panel around, allowing you to install dozens if not hundreds of scripts including WordPress, the world’s most popular website builder/CMS.
How did I compile my list?
I started by searching for free web hosting providers on google and on other best free hosting pages (including ours). I came up with a list of almost 60 free website hosting services with about a third having either stopped offering free web hosting or being mothballed altogether. I then put the remaining 40 in a neatly formatted table.
What’s the difference between free website builders and free web hosting?
You will see that many providers and publishers willingly mix both terms to capture a bigger audience. Website builder is a subset of web hosting; the latter provides you with far more flexibility in what you can do whereas website builders tend to focus on one thing.
All web hosting plans come with at least one website builder, usually WordPress, and usually a few goodies (database, DNS, SSL certificates). Free website builders on the other hand tend to be more restrictive in what you can do which makes them infinitely more attractive to absolute beginners as it reduces the risk of messing things up.
What’s the takeaway?
Not all free web hosting companies are created the same, some will be more reliable than others but there’s no hard and fast rule. I haven’t tested any of them (i.e. create an account and publish a website) so there may be other hidden features that I have not listed. What I’d recommend is that you recommend as many as possible.
Just remember that free web hosting should always be considered as a transition platform, reason being free web hosting usually doesn’t come with the same after sales support that paid web hosting usually offers. More specifically, don’t expect to have rock solid support once you become a member because support costs money and if you’re a non-paying user, then it’s not worth it for the service providers.
Got any feedback?
If I’ve missed any free web hosting service or if one of the ones listed below no longer qualify as a free website hosting provider, ping me an email on desire.athow@futurenet.com. Ditto for any new features you found out when testing them. Free web hosting providers, do get in touch with me if there’s a mistake about your service, I’d be happy to amend.
Below is the list of the 40 web hosting providers that won’t charge you anything, from lowest to highest capacity.