Getting and maintaining a website online has some costs. Luckily, given the competition in the website hosting industry, there are several free hosting sites.

Who doesn’t love free stuff? Our team certainly does.

We’ve put together a list of free web hosting services to show you how to host a website for free.

Our list is divided into 4 sections:

Free website builders
Free website hosting
Free cloud hosting
“Mostly free” website hosting services

Is it really “free”?

Yes! The website hosting services that made our list are absolutely free, as in $0. However, keep in mind that although free is awesome, it does normally come with some limitations. That could mean slower website speed, third-party ads, no (or lack of) customer service, limited features, and harsh caps on server resources.

Remember, you get what you pay for. Technology is costly; you can imagine the cost cuts needed to provide free website hosting. You get the idea.

If you’re a business, you should definitely opt for a paid service. That’s why, below the best free website hosting sites, we’ve also included a few recommendations on “mostly free” website hosting sites.

These are reputable website hosting sites that provide affordable hosting for your website and come with freebies such as a free domain name, free SSL certificates, or free email addresses.

Generally, steer clear of free website hosting services unless absolutely necessary.

With that in mind, let’s get to the best free web hosting services in 2023.

Free website builders

Website builders are easy to use and provide a drag-and-drop interface to build your website. They are great for beginners and require no technical knowledge.

They allow individuals and businesses to get a website online quickly without the help of a website developer.

Wix

Wix is one of the most well-known website builders on the market. It’s simple to use and comes with over 500 professional website themes.

The Wix free plan is $0 per month, absolutely free.

On the free Wix website builder, you will get access to all Wix themes and tools for SEO, client management, and email marketing.

All websites built on the free Wix website builder are also fully responsive, which means your website will look good on cell phones and various devices.

There are certain limitations on the Wix free plan; here are a few:

No custom domain name; you get an assigned Wix-branded URL
Wix ads will be served on all of your website pages
Storage and bandwidth are capped at 500 MB
No Ecommerce tools
No support, only self-serve

Weebly

Weebly is another well-known free website builder. It comes with over 40 professional website themes and templates.

One great thing about Weebly is that the free website builder plan gives you Ecommerce tools. This means you can build an Ecommerce online store for free.

The free Ecommerce features are generous, including a shopping cart, unlimited products, inventory management, tax calculator, gift cards, and even coupons.

Weebly also provides a free SSL certificate and the ability to add third-party embedded code, in case you want to add just a few personal touches.

You also get free marketing tools, including SEO and social media integrations.

Surprisingly, Weebly provides chat and email support on their free website hosting plan; that’s nice of them!

Although feature-rich, there are still some limitations on the Weebly free website builder plan to keep in mind, including:

No custom domain name; you get an assigned Weebly-branded URL
No shipping calculator (for Ecommerce)
No cart popup notifications (for Ecommerce)
Non-prioritized support, you’ll be waiting for a while or forever

Free website hosting

Website hosting allows you to build and host your own website. Most individuals and businesses either build their website with a popular CMS (content management system) app like WordPress or upload their own HTML and PHP-coded website.

All of our list’s free website hosting sites allow you to build your website using WordPress.

Hostinger

Hostinger is a popular website hosting provider that provides various web hosting services, including WordPress hosting, Managed WordPress hosting, shared hosting, and even Minecraft hosting.

Hostinger also has a free web hosting plan that lets you build and host 1 website for free.

The Hostinger free web hosting plan provides 300 MB of storage, up to 300 visitors per month, room for 1 database, 1 FTP (file transfer protocol) account, and the ability to set up 1 cronjob (interesting throw-in).

A surprising yet helpful feature Hostinger provides on its free web hosting is Cloudflare protected nameservers. This means your website will benefit from a CDN (content delivery network), boosting its speed and security.

Like anything free, keep in mind that free web hosting at Hostinger has certain drawbacks, namely:

No email accounts
No SSL certificate
No daily backups
No DNS management
No support, only self-serve

InfinityFree

InfinityFree really stands out when it comes to a generous free web hosting service. On the InfinityFree free web hosting plan, you get 99.9% uptime, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, no third-party ads, and the ability to connect your own custom domain name.

You can also install 400+ apps using their app installer, including popular ones like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, and PrestaShop.

A few other notable free features are a free SSL certificate, free DNS management, a free CDN through Cloudflare, free subdomains, a free secure PHP manager, and full free .htaccess support.

They provide 10 free email accounts and 1 FTP account as well.

Although the InfinityFree website is a bit dated in and of itself, its free web hosting provides tremendous value.

The only drawbacks our team could find were the following:

No mention of support; self-serve only
Slow performance

GoogieHost

Not to be confused with “Google Cloud Hosting” (which we’ll cover further down), GoogieHost is another free web hosting site with a generous list of features, including a free website builder.

Since GoogieHost offers so many features on their free plan, we figured it’s best to create a quick list of the top features included on their free web hosting:

1 GB of storage
Unlimited bandwidth
Free SSL certificate
Free unlimited subdomains
2 free email accounts
Free website builder

GoogieHost also provides space for 2 free MySQL databases, a free App installer (if you want to build a WordPress website), free spam protection, free hotlink protection, and even free ticket-based support.

There are also no third-party ads served on your website.

GoogieHost offers a very well-rounded free web hosting service. There are no real show-stoppers except for maybe their website being pretty old-school and no real reviews on website performance, so it might be shaky at best.

Also, even though ticket-based support HelpDesk support is offered for free, there is no guarantee of how fast the turnaround is. If it’s free, it could take days or weeks to get a response.

Free Hosting No Ads

Free Hosting No Ads has perhaps the most straightforward name out there when it comes to a free website hosting site.

Their free website hosting includes hosting for 1 custom domain name, 1 GB of storage, 5 GB bandwidth, PHP, Perl, MySQL, and FTP access.

True to their name, there are, of course, no third-party ads served on your free website. You get free email and free technical support included as well.

Free Hosting No Ads also guarantees 99.9% uptime and fast servers on their free web hosting plan.

There are some potential drawbacks to their service; here’s what we noticed:

Their own website is pretty slow; expect slow performance on yours too
The Help Center Knowledgebase is pretty scant and covers basic questions only

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is the non-self-hosted version of WordPress hosting. Our team very much recommends self-hosted WordPress because of the cost and feature benefits.

However, WordPress.com does have a free plan available that is worth mentioning if not to simply test out the WordPress website waters for free.

The WordPress.com free plan comes with 3 GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth. You also get access to your own WordPress dashboard.

That said, the WordPress.com free plan comes with significant limitations when it comes to building a website, namely, no access to plugins and themes.

Anyone who has used WordPress knows how important themes and plugins are to build a properly functioning website. Not having them is a serious drawback.

WordPress.com also has a few other notable restrictions when it comes to its free website hosting plan, including:

No custom domain name; you get an assigned WordPress.com branded URL
You’ll have a “Powered by WordPress.com” on your website, usually in the footer
Third-party ads will be served on your website
No access to themes
No access to plugins

Here’s another thing to keep in mind:

If you build your WordPress website on the WordPress.com free plan and choose to migrate your website to a self-hosted WordPress hosting provider down the line, WordPress.com will make your life pretty difficult.

It’s common for people to be unable to export their content and website theme or structure, forcing them to start all over again.

Free cloud hosting

Cloud hosting is normally self-managed infrastructure-based hosting that provides a server environment to build, manage and deploy websites and web apps.

In the world of free cloud hosting, two big players really stand out: Google (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN).

Although cloud hosting tends to provide superior technology and performance, it is technology geared to system administrators, system experts, or those with teams in place to manage systems for them.

You will get a bare-bones server on these free cloud hosting providers, which means any software required to run your website or email will be paid.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Google Cloud hosting is offered through the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Being a tech giant, it’s expected that Google be at the forefront of quality free cloud hosting services.

The Google Cloud plans are based on a pay-per-use system, as is typical of Cloud providers. This means you only pay for what you use in terms of server resources like storage and bandwidth.

To get started, Google Cloud offers $300 in free credits automatically to new customers to use and fully explore free cloud computing resources on the Google Cloud Platform.

Google will not charge you for using their cloud platform unless you upgrade your services or use up all your free cloud computing credits.

When it comes to Cloud hosting at Google, there are major drawbacks:

You require system administration knowledge
It is completely self-managed
No support, self-serve only
No software is provided; you get a bare-bones server
Difficult interface to manage, and normally requires a GCP-certified expert

You also won’t get a domain, SSL, or email; these are all components you manage yourself. What GCP does offer is access to a fast-performing server; everything else is up to you.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon cloud hosting is offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), the technology division of Amazon. Like Google, cloud hosting on AWS provides access to high-performance cloud infrastructure; however, it is completely self-managed.

Support is also self-serve.

Amazon offers two types of free cloud hosting tiers, the “12 Months Free” and the “Always Free” tiers. Both are generous in the cloud hosting technologies Amazon provides access to; however, the Always Free one is the best by far.

Here is a bit of information on what is “Always Free”:

25 GB of storage on the Amazon Dynamo Database (Always Free)
62,000 outbound emails per month on Amazon SES (Always Free)
Unlimited use of business messaging on Amazon Chime (Always Free)

Access to over 20 cloud computing resources is listed on the Always Free tier, which is excellent for computer programming students or any technical person who wants to test out applications or learn how to manage them.

The drawback to Amazon Web Services is that its platform is designed for advanced technical users and proves tricky for individuals or organizations who need a simple website and email to run their businesses.

“Mostly free” website hosting services

For a website or online store on a reputable and fully managed website hosting platform, check out our list of “mostly free” website hosting providers.

Although not free web hosting, these providers offer a free trial, free domain, free SSL certificate, free email (or all of the above), and generous server resource allocations.

Skystra

Skystra always tops our list of best hosting providers because of their range of services, fast performance, and excellent support.

Although hosting with Skystra isn’t free, it comes at a fair price with free features bundled in. Additionally, they have a free 30-day trial, so you can test their service before buying a plan.

Starting at $4.95 per month, you can host a WordPress website and get a free SSL certificate, email accounts, and a free CDN. They also provide a free website migration (if you’re moving from a different web host) and free SEO tools.

Skystra is also generous on resources, providing 10GB of SSD storage and 1.5 CPU cores on their WordPress Start plan.

Their support is one of the best and quickest out there, and our independent testing found websites perform about 87% faster with them than their competitors.

Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the most well-known and established web hosting providers.

Bluehost web hosting plans start at $2.75 per month and bundle in many freebies, including a free custom domain name, free SSL certificate, free CDN, and unlimited free email accounts.

HostGator

Our last “mostly free” website hosting site is HostGator, another veteran in the web hosting industry. They have various plans, including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, and even a website builder.

Their shared hosting starter plan (Hatchling) is $2.75 per month and comes with a good set of free features, including a free custom domain name, SSL certificate, email, and unmetered bandwidth and storage.

We hope our guide provides a solid list of recommendations on hosting a website for free in 2023. As you can see, there are many options to get a website online for free or at least without breaking the bank.

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