Best free web hosting: Quick Menu
These hosts offer the best free web hosting today. Unlike other buying guides online, these hosts are genuinely free and not deals that expire ending up costing you money if you want to keep your site.
Free web hosting is great for anyone who needs a personal blog or website and is okay with limitations. Free hosting is ideal for tinkering around but unfit for anything professional. If you want anything practical, as well as premium-level features, at a bargain, you will be much better off with the best cheap web hosting that asks for very little and delivers loads.
If all you want to do is tinker around, our exclusive money-back Hostinger deal is likely the best option but if you just want genuine free hosting, these are the top pics for you. Just be aware, free hosting can be a minefield of cunning ways to take your money or getting you to release your personal details. That being said, there are some genuinely impressive free hosting options, and we’ve found the best ones that are trustworthy and genuine. Once you’ve got your hosting sorted and you’re ready to make a site, you may want to check out the best free website builders.
Exclusive free Hostinger web hosting deal
Wouldn’t it be great if you could try the features of the best web hosting providers – but for free? Free domain name, 24×7 live chat support, regular backup, unmetered bandwidth, fast storage, guaranteed hardware resources, and free migration.
What if you had 12 months to run with your ideas and find your audience online? What if you’re not ready to commit to a paid plan and are just interested in learning the ropes and experiencing what it feels like to create and manage a website? We’ve got the perfect solution for you: Hostinger has partnered with TechRadar to offer readers an exclusive deal: a proper shared hosting service (Premium Shared) for free via a cashback arrangement.
The best free web hosting in 2024
Why you can trust TechRadar
We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Below you’ll find full write-ups for each of the best web hosting in our list. We’ve tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.
The best free web hosting provider
Use if
✅ You’re looking for ad-free hosting: InfinityFree lets you build your site without ads telling your users you’re using free hosting
✅ You want an easy-to-use control panel: The Linux-based control panel is one of the best aspects of Infinity Free as it makes managing your site easy
✅ You want a decent blog domain: InfinityFree offer the .lovestoblog.com domain for free which is really useful if you want a more professional looking blog
Don’t use if
❌ You want immediate support: Meaningful customer support is lacking, with no telephone number to ring up or live chat. There are a handful of email addresses you can contact – but none are dedicated to support
❌ You’re looking for performance: The service can be a bit slow to respond sometimes
❌ You want a free email account: InfinityFree doesn’t provide any email accounts
The bottom line
🌐 Infinity Free is perfect if you’d like a free host for a blog, small portfolio, or any other personal project on a similar scale. With a user-friendly control panel, Softaculous, and easy-to-follow how-tos you’ll be able to build a captivating website without too much trouble. ★★★★
InfinityFree started offering free hosting all the way back in 2011, and in its own words, it was only a fun hobby at first. However, as more and more people trusted it to host their websites, it was able to carry on with it and grow into what’s the best free web hosting service on the market right now.
We’d like to give you a little background on how InfinityFree is able to provide truly free hosting. This is crucial since “free” in this industry is rare and often just clickbait, spammy, or even malicious, with free providers selling user data to turn a profit. However, you’d be glad to know that InfinityFree’s free service is a promotion for iFastNet and its paid-for hosting services. iFastNet has its in-house free hosting brand but allows others to offer the service under their own brand name—because, after experiencing a reliable free hosting experience with InfinityFree, users who want to upgrade to a premium plan for more benefits, are pointed toward iFastNet.
InfinityFree is the only high-quality web hosting service that’s free through and through. It doesn’t offer a limited-time free service like Hostinger or Accuweb and is, therefore, hands down the best option for those who want to dabble in personal blogging without the bells and whistles of a premium provider.
Without even having to enter your credit card details, you get 5GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, as well as the ability to create three separate accounts with an unlimited number of subdomains under each of them—what’s not to like? You can choose between ten free domain extensions, including “.lovestoblog.com” and “.infinityfreeapp.com” which I found very neat.
It took me less than a couple of minutes to go from registering with InfinityFree to getting my site live. Although there’s an option to use FileZilla—a free file manager for your InfinityFree website, I found InfinityFree’s online file manager up to the mark and less confusing for beginners.
Another plus point is that in case you do run into an issue where you can’t get your website to show the content you’ve uploaded or you have trouble understanding the ABCs of the control panel, just head over to InfinityFree’s in-depth knowledge base that has both detailed guides as well as videos to help you through everything, including installation, set up, and uploads.
Although InfinityFree (iFastNet) offers super affordable premium plans, you will find better value with Hostinger, DreamHost, or IONOS (all on our list of the best cheap web hosting), as they come with free domain, pre-installed WordPress, daily backups, and excellent customer support, among other best-in-class features.
GoogieHost
Use if
✅ You need responsive customer support: GoogieHost’s 24×7 customer support is at hand to address any queries you may have, or concerns during use, with plenty of expert guidance on offer
✅ You want a service that’s easy to use: Both beginners and seasoned veterans will find plenty of joy in using GoogieHost
✅ You want plenty of features: There’s WordPress auto-installation and powerful site management features
Don’t use if
❌ You want an ad-free experience: The prevalence of ads in the platform might hamper the user experience, and contribute to a cluttered and less streamlined user interface (UI) at times
❌ You want a streamlined service: The website is basic, with plenty of typos and odd errors, as well as various inconsistencies around the plans it offers. You may also find you’re missing key communications during the set-up process
❌ You’re highly privacy-conscious: The privacy policy doesn’t appeal a great deal, and GoogieHost asks for your name, physical and email address – as well as a phone number – when signing up. This information is, sadly, “shared with other companies who may want to contact our visitors”
The bottom line
🌐 GoogieHost offers a range of options, catering to both cost-conscious users and those seeking enhanced capabilities. The platform’s free hosting plan offers an entry point for establishing a digital presence, complete with features such as free SSL certificates and the convenience of a WordPress Manager. ★★★½
GoogieHost was launched in 2012 by an Indian blogger who wanted to offer free and cheap web hosting with top-of-the-line features. It comes with 1,000MB NVMe SSD storage, 2 FTP and email accounts, and 100GB bandwidth, as well as a website builder—that’s a serious catalog of features to get for free.
Some of these offerings, such as email accounts and NVMe SSD, are better than what you get with InfinityFree. In my hands-on testing, I also tried out GoogieHost’s homemade control panel that’s based on cPanel mechanics, and it worked as advertised. Everything is clearly laid out, and although design is a subjective matter, I happened to really like the black background that made every option pop up and look just that little bit neater.
However, the service is not without its downsides. A major disadvantage to using GoogieHost is that it takes around 24 hours for your site to go live after you have registered an account, whereas it’s instantaneous with InfinityFree. Plus, you get just 1000MB of storage and two domain extensions, “.c1.is” and “.whf.bz”, both of which are make-do at best. So, it’s easy to see why InfinityFree is far ahead when it comes to free web hosting.
The entire experience was also slightly ruined by the sheer number of ads I ran into time and time again, which you have to be careful about because they are always in places where you might click them – right above the login button, for example. But, if you can bear with the aforementioned inconveniences, you will be greeted with a fairly easy-to-use and no-nonsense free hosting service.
Although GoogieHost’s main paid-for service provider is InterServer.net, it offers an interesting premium tier—lifetime web hosting plans—under its own brand name. These are single-payment plans that give you the ability to host more websites as well as come with increased storage options. There are three plans in total, ranging from $25 to $100.
While the prospect of paying once and enjoying web hosting forever is certainly tempting, there’s little value to be found in these plans for anyone who’s serious enough to spend on web hosting in the first place. That’s because cheap hosting providers like NameCheap come with automatic backups and strong security features such as PositiveSSL and anti-DDoS, and others like BlueHost offer advanced eCommerce features including free WooCommerce integration.
So, a budget-friendly high-quality web hosting service, which you can pick depending on your intended use case (eCommerce hosting, blogs, security, customization, cloud hosting, etc.), will be a better fit.
Best for support
Use if
✅ You’re looking for free email: Freehostia offer three free email accounts
✅ You want quick support: The free plan doesn’t include live chat, but you can raise support tickets through the VistaPanel dashboard. The responses are helpful, too, and will usually be delivered in under an hour
Don’t use if
❌ You don’t have a domain: Without a domain there is little free hosting has you offer as you can get a free domain when you sign up at other hosts. If you’re going to pay, there is better value elsewhere
The bottom line
🌐 Freehostia is OK as a free host and gets a place on this guide because it is a genuinely free host but there are better options. ★★★
Freehostia was founded in 2005 and it has, through multiple upgrades, managed to become one of the best free web hosting providers on the market right now. It offers an ad-free experience, 24/7 customer support, and a one-click applications installer for free under its Chocolate hosting plan.
It’s worth noting that while the company claims that its free web hosting plan is cloud, it’s actually not. This is because it doesn’t come with benefits like auto-scaling or geo-redundancy that make cloud, cloud. If you’re after a truly cloud hosting service, check out TechRadar’s best cloud hosting page.
Speaking of Freehostia’s free web hosting, one of its standout offerings is that it comes with WordPress pre-installed. As soon as you sign up, your account is immediately active (unlike GoogieHost) and you get an email with your WP Admin URL, login, and password. This is an excellent offering and makes Freehostia perfect for those who’d like to play around with WordPress as a way of managing their website.
It’s worth noting that InfnityFree, too, has an option to install WordPress, but that’s something you will have to do manually by going to its control panel. Although I wouldn’t call that an inconvenience, Freehostia’s way of doing things is just better.
Next, the entire experience is absolutely flawless, with a clean dashboard design and interface and zero ads—Freehostia isn’t spammy at all! I also like that it offers email aliases (so, you get 3 emails and 12 email aliases), and while that doesn’t offset the absence of any sort of SSL certificates, it’s still a nifty security feature to have. If you want a free domain and a free SSL certificate while spending as little money as possible, I would recommend you opt for affordable hosting services like Hostinger and DreamHost.
Although it will say on your Freehostia dashboard that your account will expire 12 months from when you registered it, I’d like you to know that it’s actually free forever—you can keep renewing your plan and adding a year’s worth of validity for as long as you want. This may come across as confusing and even unnecessary, but it’s a really smart way for Freehostia to close down inactive free accounts.
Now, while Freehostia may look like a solid package, and it is, for the most part, what may serve as a deal breaker for a lot of users is that it doesn’t offer a free domain or subdomain unlike InfinityFree and GoogieHost—so, you will have to purchase a domain name before getting started.
This means that it’s not out-and-out free and somewhat even pointless because if you have no budget for hosting, you’re probably thin on cash for a domain, too. However, let’s say you’re an absolute beginner who didn’t know any better and ended up spending all of their limited budget on a domain name, then you can find excellent value in this free web hosting service.
Best for storage
Use if
✅ Your page has loads of high quality images: 10GB free storage is pretty generous and will be really helpful of you want to host high-quality images
Don’t use if
❌ You don’t have a domain: It’s cheaper to buy one year’s hosting with another provider and get a free domain for one year than to purchase a domain and use a free host
The bottom line
🌐 FreeHosting: Great if you require storage and already have a domain, less so if not. ★★½
FreeHosting.com, a company based out of France and Germany, has been providing free web hosting services (as well as a good paid tier) since 2010. Like Freehostia, FreeHosting, too, does not offer a free domain/subdomain—so, you essentially need to have a domain name beforehand to benefit from its free web hosting. While you can purchase one directly from FreeHosting itself, I recommend opting for one of the best domain registrars, as they’re not only more trustworthy but also cheaper.
FreeHosting is hands down the best free web hosting provider for large websites with lots of material i.e. high-quality images, videos, animations, web applications, etc. This is because it comes with a whopping 10GB of disk space, which is 2x of InfinityFree and around 40x of Freehostia.
Next, one of the most likable offerings from FreeHosting is that the entire experience is ad-free—from the signup page to when you are in the control panel playing around with the myriad of options that you get with FreeHosting, you won’t see a single ad on your screen, let alone a pesky popup.
As for the downsides, you can only host one website with FreeHosting—no free subdomains, either. This is quite disappointing, especially when providers like InfinityFree are out there offering unlimited subdomains. All in all, InfinityFree rounds up as a better option overall (the 5GB disk space is almost always going to suffice), but if your use case doesn’t involve tinkering around with multiple subdomains—meaning you want to focus on a single website with heavy resources—then you should consider FreeHosting.
If/when your needs expand, there’s a paid hosting plan by FreeHosting you can take a look at. It comes with unlimited everything, including storage, hosted websites, email accounts, subdomains, and databases. However, it’s not cheap, to say the least, being priced at a staggering $7.99/month. I’d also like to point out that you would rarely ever have to jump from free web hosting all the way up to paying around $100 a year.
The lack of an entry-level plan with FreeHosting means that users who want to ultimately transition from free hosting to a paid service for features that are essential to professional hosting like SSL, fast and reliable servers, prompt customer support, etc., will be better off with one of the best web hosting services of 2024. Around one-third of the providers in there start at less than $3 per month and for downright cheap yet high-quality hosting, check out our best cheap hosting page.
Free host to avoid
000WebHost is strictly speaking not a free host. 000WebHost provides one year of hosting for free before prompting you to migrate your site to Hostinger. This means that after the year your options are abandon your site or pay Hostinger.
It wouldn’t be such an issue but Hostinger advertise this as free without telling you on their site that after one year you need to pay (Hostinger’s free plan directs to 000WebHost which turns into a 12 month free hosting deal). When we tried to use it, we frequently struggled to sign up due to connection timeouts and security features not loading.
If you actually want a free host, there are better options. Hostinger is actually a great host and frequently appear as one of our top recommendations but their free hosting plan and 000WebHost subsidiary are, in the opinion of this reviewer, disingenuous. A free host should be a free host and many are. This one is not, rather a year’s free hosting of a paid-for service.
Another reason to avoid is that you can get all the perks of a better paid-for service with 100% of your money back when you sign up with our exclusive deal for Hostinger’s premium plan that out-performs 000WebHost by miles. This is only for one year but if you just want to tinker it’s perfect. If you want a genuine free host, go with InfinityFree.
Hostinger
Buy it if
✅ You’re looking for excellent uptime: Hostinger’s most basic shared hosting plan manages an excellent 100% uptime record over 10 weeks
✅ You crave fast load times: Hostinger scored a speedy LCP of 0.607 seconds – the second fastest result in our last 15 tests, just behind HostGator
✅ You want plenty of features: The plans may be cheap, but they’re packed with features – many of which are chargeable extras elsewhere
Don’t buy it if
❌ You run a highly demanding site: There’s no dedicated hosting option, where you can rent an entire server. It won’t be suitable for the most in-demand websites
❌ You want telephone support: Unusually, Hostinger doesn’t have telephone support, so urgent or business-critical issues may go unresolved in the short term
❌ You want feature-rich cheap plans: Although Hostinger offers low prices, there’s no free domain with the cheapest option, and you get only one email account
The bottom line
🌐 Hostinger is a features-rich and top-quality web hosting provider for home users as well as small and medium-sized businesses. The lack of dedicated hosting means it’s unsuitable for high traffic sites, but it’s high-end VPS plan may be able to handle hundreds of thousands of visitors a month. ★★★★
What you need to know
Hostinger is not necessarily a free web hosting provider but with a year’s free subscription it still deserves to be in our list. If you’re sure you’re not going to make the most of Hostinger’s premium features after the first year then read on to our best free web hosting picks but if you want to try a premium web host for free, then this is for you.
Plans and pricing:
TechRadar Pro has partnered with Hostinger to offer a full refund on its Premium shared hosting package. Just pay for your hosting, send us the email you used to buy the hosting package and the invoice number and we will send you an Amazon voucher to cover your costs in USD or GBP only (worth £31.08/$31.08). Other terms and conditions apply.
Speed and performance:
Our test site was hosted on Hostinger’s most basic shared hosting plan, but still managed a solid 100% uptime record over 10 weeks of monitoring. Uptime.com recorded a response time range of 171ms to 1.73s, with an average of 382ms, over the last seven days of testing. Starter shared hosting plans typically manage 200-400ms with an average peak of 700-800ms.
But it scored an LCP of 0.607 seconds, the second fastest result in our last 15 tests, just behind HostGator. Most providers have an LCP in the 0.60 to 0.80 area – but it suggests Hostinger isn’t cutting corners to hit its low shared hosting prices.
Ease of use:
Hostinger doesn’t offer cPanel to its shared hosting users, opting to use its custom hPanel platform, instead. Custom control panels make us wary, probably because most of them are underpowered in the extreme, but hPanel is a rare exception.
Support:
Unusually for a top hosting provider, Hostinger doesn’t have telephone support. There’s 24/7 live chat, though, and email or ticket support if you prefer.
We opened a ticket asking how we could install WordPress on a subdomain. That’s not a complicated technical issue, but it’s more involved than a simple product question, and gave us a better chance of getting an interesting response.
The reply arrived only 17 minutes later, just about as speedy as we could expect for ticket support. (Who needs live chat, anyway?)
Read our full Hostinger review
Best free for devs
If you’re tech savvy there are a few more options for free web hosting. For example, you can use AWS Lambda to create a serverless web application that has 1 million free requests a month. It’s the not best way to host a site because cold starts and the lack of persistent storage make for slow load times but as a back up for small sites, it’s still an option if you can handle more complex operations.
There’s also Vercel and netlify which are an easier alternative to Lambda but still require technical knowledge and a GitHub repository.
How to choose the best free web hosting for you
Why services offer free hosting
Free website hosting should be seen as a marketing tool which means that terms and conditions may be changed frequently, and since there is no financial transaction, downtimes may be more frequent as SLA (service level agreements) are non-existent.
Free website hosting comes with a number of limitations of course. Server space, site speed, traffic, uptime guarantees, and backup provision are all features that are often curtailed, but that’s not to say that good cheap hosting isn’t available.
Bear in mind that free website hosting exists because it allows companies to upsell more expensive web hosting to those who may need it.
How to choose a free provider
We’ve extensively mentioned the limitations that come with choosing a free web hosting service but should you still wish to proceed, you’ll need to choose a free service that is easy to use, ad-free and packed with quality features.
If you are creating a simple site, your options to choose from is wider because most free hosting comes with limited disk space and bandwidth. That being said, you’ll lose nothing trying these hosting services out because there’s no money leaving your bank account.
Choosing Hostinger’s free shared hosting exclusive to TechRadar readers would be your best option because you are getting all the qualities of a regular web hosting service, but for free.
Once you identify your website’s unique needs, you’ll need to look for a free web host that can cater to such. If you’re a beginner, you’ll benefit from choosing a free web hosting service that’s easy to use, offers great 24/7 customer support, and has a website builder tool too.
You should also pay close attention to the disk space and bandwidth on offer, if domain names and email addresses are included, uptime and speed, security, as well as updates and backup services each free web hosting provider is offering.
Is free hosting safe?
Free website hosting is as safe as any other hosting provider, with the caveat that less focus is provided on stability and support. This means you cannot presume that any backups will be made or will be reliable, so you must take extra steps to save and download your own data as required. That doesn’t mean to say that free website hosting companies are bad or unreliable, just that with paid services you are paying for that stability, support, and reliability.
However, the bottom line is that while free website hosting can be great for small hobby websites, any serious website – even if it’s just a contact page – needs to have it’s own paid web hosting service. Not only does this imply extra protections for your website, but it also looks more professional if you don’t have unnecessary website credits or even ads on your website.
How we tested these free web hosting services
Generally, our web host reviews aim to consider all the key elements which make up a good, or even the best web hosting provider. This includes us taking a meticulous look at elements that make a top-quality web host, such as features, ease of use, speed, uptime, price, trustworthiness, and more.
What we look out for
Our reviewers test each service by signing up and purchasing a plan to check out what each web hosting provider offers new users, as well as how easy it is to navigate around each brand’s dashboard. We pay a great deal of attention to the support that is offered to you.
We weigh up the details of what you get, (as well as what you don’t) and rank each web hosting provider based on the quality of its features that many customers will use, and how clear the web hosting company is on what the customer is getting in every product.
Pros and cons of a free hosting provider
There are way more cons than pros for free website hosting. The main (and only) pro is that it’s free, you really don’t pay a dime for it. This might be an okay choice for just trying out yourself in creating a website but you are almost always better off just paying for a good hosting provider, and there are some cheap ones too.
As you can imagine, there are quite a few cons to free website hosting. Performance is vastly inferior to paid hosting, security is questionable, don’t expect too much from customer support (if there’s any), and more often than not, you’re on your own if there’s some trouble with the website. All in all, if you can, stay away from free website hosting and pick a good cheap hosting provider.
Read more about how we test web hosting providers
Terms and conditions for free web hosting offer
Our preferred partner is Hostinger
1. Purchase the single shared hosting package ($2.59/£2.59 per month for 12 months) from our preferred partner and apply to receive a free Amazon voucher worth £31.08 or a voucher from one our partners worth $31.08 (list here). You may purchase a longer subscription but you will receive the same voucher value as stated above. You MUST use this affiliated link and remain a subscriber for 60 days before you will become eligible to apply for the free voucher.
2. Submit your transaction ID to TechRadar by emailing udita.choudhary@futurenet.com by September 30, 2024. Your proof of purchase will include the invoice or order number and the email address that you used to purchase the package. We will verify your purchase with our preferred partner. We reserve the right to withhold the voucher if we are unable to verify your purchase. Our decision is final as to whether or not your purchase is eligible.
3. Please note that it may take up to 15 working days for your purchase to be verified and the voucher to be issued (and in any case will be issued no earlier than 60 days from the date you subscribe). For eligible purchases, the voucher will be an e-voucher sent to the email address you provided us with your submission.
4. The voucher will be issued either in US dollars or Pound Sterling depending on your location. Your voucher can only be redeemed at Amazon.com or through our partners. It is non transferable and cannot be returned or exchanged for cash or other consideration. Your details will only be used to verify the validity of your purchase and not for any other purpose.
5. TechRadar is owned by Future Publishing Ltd (“Future”) of Quay House, the Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA. Future will deliver the voucher for eligible purchases in accordance with these terms.
6. Future Publishing Ltd reserves the right to change the conditions of the offer at any time including offering a voucher of a comparable value and reducing the value of the voucher offered, should our preferred partner reduce the value of its hosting package.