Although there are many hosting services that tout themselves as free, not many of them are high-quality choices. We’ve searched through the options out there and narrowed them down to a list of the top five most worthy of your time and trust.
x10Hosting: Best Overall Free Website Hosting
- Standout features: Website builder with more than 150 free templates
- Who should use it: Startups and individuals who want a free website or online store with ready-made templates
x10Hosting is the free version of x10Premium and offers one of the few free web hosting services that give you ad-free websites with unlimited storage and bandwidth. x10’s free plan includes a user-friendly website builder with more than 150 free templates, including e-commerce store designs. x10Hosting also offers easy one-click installs for more than 300 web scripts, including popular website platforms, such as WordPress, Joomla, MyBB and add-on galleries, blogs, forums, gaming tools and more.
x10’s free web hosting supports a custom domain but doesn’t give you a free domain. You can use the free x10 subdomain or connect a domain that you own. You can add a free email address using your connected domain or free subdomain.
AwardSpace: Best for Free WordPress Hosting
- Standout features: Built-in virus, SPAM and firewall protection
- Who should use it: AwardSpace is a good choice for individuals and small businesses looking for free WordPress hosting with responsive customer support
AwardSpace is another free web hosting service that lets you build ad-free websites using its user-friendly Zacky website builder or use its one-click Zacky Installer to load WordPress, Joomla and Grav platforms. AwardSpace is a top pick for free and low-cost WordPress hosting in particular. It hosts millions of WordPress websites worldwide on both free and paid plans and provides extensive WordPress tutorials covering beginner through advanced topics.
You get a free email account on the free plan and can connect your own domain name and create three subdomains under that for blogging, forums and so on. Domain names aren’t free with the free hosting plan, but you do get a free domain for life with certain paid plans.
Byethost: Best for Website Developers
- Standout features: Developer-level free web hosting toolkit
- Who should use it: Experienced website developers who want free hosting with total control over their tech stack
Byethost offers a robust free web hosting service for the tech-oriented user. If you are a website developer or designer looking for free web hosting for your own projects or client websites, Byethost tops your list of limited options. It also supports reseller accounts under the free plan if you want to offer client-managed hosting under your own suite of services.
However, Byethost doesn’t provide one-click platform installation like the other providers in our free web hosting roundup. If you’re comfortable with server-level file management and file transfer protocol (FTP) interfaces, Byethost is one to consider. Beginners will have an easier time with other free web hosting services featured here.
000webhost: Best for Reliable Uptime
- Standout features: Cloudflare-protected name servers, 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Who should use it: Those looking for simple web hosting with free WordPress installation, decent speeds and firewall tools
A much larger web hosting company known as Hostinger offers a basic, free hosting plan through 000webhost. With over 10 years of recognition as one of the best free website hosting platforms, 000webhost’s free plan is excellent for those looking for simple but useful features including a control panel, access to WordPress for website building and advanced web hosting features, such as Cloudflare-protected name servers, PHP, MySQL and FTP.
000webhost offers up to 3GB of bandwidth delivered from its 24GB SSD servers and the company takes web security seriously, running Imunify360 to regularly monitor the sites it hosts for malware and other threats.
Firebase: Best for Google Cloud Users
- Standout features: Custom domain and secure sockets layer (SSL), multiple sites per project and 10GB of storage
- Who should use it: Great for those who want integration with Google Cloud’s other functions and are able to parse through Google’s confusing pricing structures
Google Cloud offers web hosting through Firebase, an app development platform for building apps, games and websites. Firebase offers free web hosting through its Spark plan, which includes up to 10GB of storage and excellent bandwidth (360MB per day). However, to integrate with Google Cloud’s products and features, users will have to upgrade to the Blaze plan. Blaze is free, but the use of integrated Google Cloud features includes a no-cost quota which, once surpassed, will be pay-as-you-go. The Blaze plan also offers pay-as-you-go storage and bandwidth upgrades once users surpass the Spark plan’s initial offerings. Keep in mind that Google Cloud offers a 90-day free trial and $300 in credits for feature use but is not free forever.
