Yes, you got it right, we are going to talk about the best 10 free website hosting service providers that you can go for in 2023!
Free things are irresistible. We, humans, have the tendency to like stuff that comes at no cost.
After spending so much on setting up and maintaining a website, getting to pick the free web hosting service provider is like an icing on the cake. However, remember not all free things are made equal.
10 Free Website Hosting Services
If you are a beginner or planning to start a business of your own, you may want something quick and free. This will save you time and investment as well. While there are plenty of paid plans that hosting service providers offer, what if we tell you that you can make your website live and functional at zero cost?
There is a catch though. The website hosting service providers need to make money one way or the other, if not, they will be, obviously, out of the business league soon.
They earn money by displaying ads on your website, reducing website traffic, and upselling other services. At times, the ads displayed might not be yours, but that of your competitors.
But, if you are on a small budget or want to experiment, getting a free website hosting service might be the right solution for you.
However, if you are serious about taking your business to new heights, we recommend using a low-cost website hosting service provider. Paying this petty amount gives your extra support and complete ownership of your website. For something more powerful, there are plenty of options already available.
Having said that, let’s have a look at the 10 best free website hosting service providers:
1. WordPress
WordPress is among the free and most popular hosting platforms. It offers a free web hosting plan which gives you a domain name like yourwebsite.wordpress.com with 3GB storage and a library of free templates.
While it is a similar platform as WordPress.org, the big difference is less hassle and less control over your website. However, to get started as a beginner, .COM is the best bet.
Key Features:
- Includes paid plans too.
- Thousands of themes to choose from.
- Fast and friendly customer support.
- SEO-friendly.
- Mobile and desktop apps are available.
- Social sharing buttons.
- Auto backups and updates.
- No need to download any software.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- Email form
- Live chat
- WordPress’s official support forum
- WordPress Knowledge Base
- WordPress Social Media
Uptime and Speed:
Many WordPress hosting companies promise 99.9% server uptime.
Data Centers Located at:
- Different parts of the US and around the world.
2. Bluehost
Bluehost is a privately owned website hosting company. They specialize in virtual private servers (VPS), shared hosting, and dedicated servers.
Also, Bluehost is an officially recommended WordPress hosting service provider. Its hosting plan includes free branded email addresses, no limit on disk space, a free SSL certificate and one-click WordPress install, and much more. You can easily get started with Bluehost for $2.75/month.
Key Features:
- FTP account and file manager.
- Control panel.
- Free technical support.
- Clustered servers.
- HTTPS SSL on all free hosting domains.
- Free community access.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- Live Chat
- Phone
- Knowledge Base
Uptime and Speed:
Most of Bluehost’s shared hosting plans come with a standard CPU performance which is suitable for websites that receive low to moderate traffic. Their Pro plan comes with an optimized CPU power that helps to achieve faster page loading times and better processing power.
Data Centers Located at:
- India (Mumbai)
- The US (Utah)
- Europe (London)
- China (Shanghai, Hong Kong)
3. Wix
Wix is a superb fully-hosted website builder that offers free web hosting. It’s the best choice for beginners as it is simple to use. It is also supported by displaying ads and Wix.com branding shown on your website.
If you don’t want such ads, you can upgrade to paid plans on Wix. Because its plans are designed to level up the functionality of websites, Wix with its premium plans can get super costly.
Key Features:
- Excellent website builder.
- Drag and drop designing is super convenient.
- Free subdomain.
- 24/7 technical support available.
- Fully optimized for mobile phones.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- 24/7 Live Chat
- Call Center assistance
- Raising a ticket
- Wix Forum
- Wix Social Media
- Wix Knowledge Base
Uptime and Speed:
According to UptimeRobot, Wix sites were up 99.99% of the time during the test period. As far as speed is concerned, the fully loaded time is slow despite the fast initial response. Due to this, Wix sites usually perform miserably in GPSI tests. Also, lots of warnings and errors like “failed Javascript execution” were faced. Lots of HTML tags were produced for a simple page element by the Wix editor.
Data Centers Located at:
The majority of Wix’s servers are located in the United States. Europe is the second majority place where most Wix servers are located.
4. Weebly
Weebly is among the new generation of website-builder/web hosts that is doing very well. It comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop builder and ready-made templates to build a website.
The free plan includes a Weebly subdomain, 500MB of storage, and displays Weebly ads. To unlock features and get rid of the advertisements, you can upgrade to premium plans.
Whether you are building your first website or exploring options for your online business, Weebly is an excellent place to build your website.
Key Features:
- Easy to set up a blog or online store.
- Thousands of free templates.
- Free website builder.
- Free SSL Security.
- Mobile app builder.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- Social Media support
- Email support
- Weebly Knowledge Base
- Weebly Forum
- Weebly Social Media
Uptime and Speed:
Weebly’s score of 99.97% is a very good result compared to its competitors. More security also means a slightly slower website. Weebly’s servers are based in the US, which means that loading times are the fastest there.
Data Centers Located at:
Currently, in the United States only
5. SiteGround
SiteGround is yet another cool option for free website hosting. It is best known for its great technical support and flawless performance.
SiteGround is an officially recommended WordPress hosting service provider. The hosting plan provides a website builder, a one-click installer for WordPress and Joomla, unlimited email addresses, and much more.
Key Features:
- Exceptional response time.
- 99.99% uptime.
- Free SSL certificate.
- Free website hosting migration.
- Free website backup.
- Unlimited data transfer.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- 24/7 Live Chat assistance
- Helpdesk ticket raising
- Phone support
- Instant self-help through an extensive knowledge base
Uptime and Speed:
The uptime results (99.97%) obtained with SiteGround are impressive and even better than most of their direct competitors. Only Kinsta and Cloudways beat them for uptime. Clocking 1.54, the loading time of SiteGround is impressive.
Data Centers Located at:
- Iowa, USA
- London, UK
- Madrid, ES
- Eemshaven, Netherlands
- Frankfurt, DE
- Sydney, AU
- Singapore, Singapore
6. HostGator
HostGator came into existence in 2002, and gradually became one of the best hosting service providers in the world. Cost-effectiveness, top-notch customer service, and reliable web hosting service are some of the major highlights of HostGator.
The premium plan at HostGator starts from $2.64/month. Each plan provides unlimited email addresses, free HTTPS/SSL, and lots of disk space and bandwidth.
Key Features:
- One-click WordPress install and free Blog tools.
- Free one-year domain registration on selected plans.
- Access to all the resources.
- Supports plenty of server-side coding languages.
- File management via FTP protocol.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- 24/7 Live Chat support
- Email Support
- Helpdesk ticket raising
- Phone support
- Instant self-help through an extensive knowledge base
Uptime and Speed:
The test site loaded in 1.03 seconds which is great. An average response time of 203 milliseconds was recorded with various sites. The server response time during testing remained less than a second. In the United States, it was merely 26 ms. Overall, the test results indicate that a site will load quickly around the world.
Data Centers Located at:
Most HostGator servers are located in Provo, Utah, and Atlanta, Georgia cities of the US, with some residing in other locations. On activating Cloudflare, the content can be routed through an additional 23 data centers worldwide.
7. AwardSpace
AwardSpace has been around since 2004 and actively relies on free hosting to grow its customer base. The web hosting service provider’s free plan comes without ads and allows beginners to test the hosting platform and see if they want to invest in it for more features in the long term.
AwardSpace also offers 24/7 customer support with a free account. The platform is ad-free so you don’t have to worry about intrusive ads displayed on your websites.
Key Features:
- Free SSL certificate.
- Ad-free hosting.
- Free website builder.
- One-click installer for WordPress and Joomla.
- Spam protection.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- Email support
- Phone support
- Ticket system
- Social Media
Uptime and Speed:
The level of performance depends on the plan you choose, which is why many opt for a paid plan (however inexpensive), even if there is a free option available. Furthermore, all paid plans come with a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Data Centers Located at:
- Sofia, Bulgaria, Europe
8. Google Cloud Hosting
Google offers a huge variety of free website hosting services for businesses of all sizes and students. Google provides all the awesome features that you can expect from this world-class company.
Google Cloud Hosting is a great place for students to get started as their plans are based on pay-per-use. So if you are looking for a free website hosting service, Google provides $300 free credit for new customers, which is enough for an entire year.
Key Features:
- Highly reliable and excellent performance.
- Powerful data and analytics.
- Highly secure and constantly upgrading.
- User-friendly and cost-effective.
- Private Docker image storage functionality.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- Google Knowledge Base
- Google Social Media
Uptime and Speed:
Google Cloud hosting solutions commits to offering uptime upwards of 99.99%. This is reflected in their Compute Engine Service Level Agreement (SLA), where any dip below a monthly uptime of 99.99% will result in financial credit.
Once hosting is up, your website will load at lightning speed and almost always remain available thanks to one of the world’s leading cloud networks. You can even choose network service options, giving you the power to enhance performance at a cost.
Data Centers Located at:
- 44 regions and 133 availability zones throughout the United States, Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, as well as in the Middle East and Africa.
9. GoDaddy
GoDaddy is the world’s biggest domain name registrar and hosting company. GoDaddy offers a drag-and-drop website builder with ready-made templates. It is available as a 30-day free trial after which you can upgrade to the premium plan starting from $5.99/month.
GoDaddy’s website builder is simple to use and cost-effective too. However, once your website grows, you will find GoDaddy quite limited in features.
Key Features:
- Unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage.
- Award-winning 24/7 customer support.
- Leading page load times for your website.
- Choose between cPanel and Plesk control panels.
- Free domain name.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- Live chat support
- Call center support
- GoDaddy Forum
- GoDaddy Knowledge Base
Uptime and Speed:
The speed and performance of the website depending on the location of the data centers. If someone from Asia opens a GoDaddy website, the website will load faster if the data centers are in Asia. On the other hand, if the data centers are in the USA, it will take more time to load the website.
Data Centers Located at:
- Phoenix, Arizona (USA) – Godaddy Own data center
- Scottsdale (USA)
- Mesa (USA)
- Los Angeles(USA)
- Chicago (USA)
- Ashburn (USA)
- Virginia (USA)
- Amsterdam (Europe)
- Singapore (Asia)
10. DreamHost
Starting in 1997, DreamHost is among the oldest and most reputed web hosting services. At present, it hosts more than 1.5 million websites.
DreamHost in collaboration with WordPress offers several plug-ins with quick one-click installation. The hosting provider gives users access to all types of hosting, may it be shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, or cloud hosting.
Key Features:
- Free SSL certificate.
- WP website builder.
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage.
- Guaranteed 100% uptime.
- Easy to use custom control panel.
- One-click WordPress installation.
Customer Support Provided Through:
- Email support
- Live chat support
- Social Media Support
- Call center support
- DreamHost Forum
- DreamHost Knowledge Base
Uptime and Speed:
The company promises 100% uptime and manages to deliver, for the most part. DreamHost has a very reliable infrastructure in place and is ready to compensate users for every hour of interruption. The terms of service state as much in an unambiguous way. DreamHost’s 1730 ms average loading time over the past 6 months hasn’t been good. It puts them in the lower half of the hosts tested by experts.
Data Centers Located at:
- Ashburn Virginia and Hillsboro Oregon, United States of America.
Conclusion
Whether you are testing the waters or looking to build a powerful web presence, free hosting is a good opportunity to leverage.
We wish you all the best for launching your website and building a business so that you reach the pinnacle of success. There is no better way than to begin this journey of success without paying a dime.
Once you understand the hosting service provider’s products and features, you’ll likely consider making small spending to unlock the outstanding features they offer.
But, for now, the above-mentioned is the ideal list to get your feet wet in 2023.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can you host a website for free?
Yes, you can host your HTML websites on GitHub at no cost. It even allows you to use your own domain names.
2. How can I get a free website and host for free?
To make a free website and host it for free, follow these steps:
- Sign up for a website builder plan and choose a design template.
- Drag and drop design features to fit your professional needs.
- Add your own images, logos, text, and fonts to build your brand.
- Grow your business by adding a blog, eCommerce features, and third-party integrations.
3. Is Google web hosting free?
Technically, Google Cloud Hosting isn’t free. However, it does offer a one-year free trial that includes: One website and unlimited storage.
4. Is Wix hosting free?
Wix gives you everything you need to create an amazing website, including free web hosting. For more benefits and features, upgrade to one of the Premium plans.
5. How can I publish my website on Google for free?
To publish your website on Google for free, open the website in new Google Sites. At the top, click on Publish. Enter the web address for your website. Accept the terms and conditions, and then click on Publish. Visit your website’s web address to ensure it’s published correctly.
6. Is GoDaddy free?
Yes. With a free website plan, you’ll be able to set up your online store and start taking payments in minutes with GoDaddy Payments. For a full-featured online store with advanced payment options, various shipping methods, and increased functionality, you’ll need to upgrade to the eCommerce plan.
7. Is Bluehost free?
No, Bluehost’s dedicated plans start at $79.99 per month when you choose a 36-month subscription, and renew at $119.99 per month. However, it offers a 30-day free trial.
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