26 Feb
There are a certain number of free web hosting sites that offer best free web hosting for students, IT professionals, geeks and bloggers. Either you are a beginner or a university student and can’t afford the hosting charges, you can launch your site using these best free web hosting sites without even paying a single penny.
As my website is all about launching a successful blog to make money. It requires some initial investment like buying a hosting plan and a domain. Not everyone can afford that budget of around $100 to $150 bucks. So we all have a craze to know that either hosting is available for free too? Gladly the answer is yes! However, if you are planning to launch a professional site or blog, I would not recommend to go with free web hosting sites due to limitations of disk space and features. But if you want to learn about hosting and blogging, free hosting websites are the best platforms to start with.
So here I’ve compiled the list of those top performers in the hosting industry that are free for life. Furthermore, I have highlighted the features provided by the free web hosting platforms.
Let’s get started!
1. What is Free Web Hosting?
Web hosting is a service that makes your site live over the internet. I’ve mentioned some major checklists before you choose the right host for your professional website but these check points are for paid hosting providers. However, in free web hosting sites, there are no quality promises or guarantees. You’ve to bear with the outages or downtime while you are hosting your site for free.
Free web hosting is free forever, you don’t have to pay a dime.
Frankly, it’s still worth a shot to get a free web hosting account to launch your project or website. Additionally, you’ll get a free subdomain that will bring your site over the internet.
2. What are Free Web Hosting Sites for Students?
If you are a student, an educator or a teacher and have an email address like [email protected], you’ll get a free web hosting account. Fortunately, the finest web hosting companies including SiteGround and InterServer also offer free web hosting for students. So, once again, it’s mandatory to have an @education email address for some of the hosting companies that I’ve mentioned down below.
You’ll need @education email address to sign up for a free hosting account. But don’t worry, if you don’t have any, you’ve many other choices to enjoy free web hosting.
Let’s dive right in!
i). SiteGround
You must be surprised, wow!
Does SiteGround really offer free web hosting?
Luckily, it’s a yes and it’s only available for students and university professors.
Just remember that it’s not a direct student sign up. Your professor or instructor just needs to simply sign up for Educators Program. Personal information as well as the university name, number of students and course duration will be required. Submit the information and SiteGround will arrange a free web hosting account for you.
Pros:
- Get hosting from one of the finest and most reputed web hosting company
- 1-year free hosting accounts
- Minimum 10 students or more than a 1000
- Enjoy a special landing page
- 10GB disk space and unlimited traffic
- A free subdomain
- cPanel control panel
- Discounts on higher end hosting plans
SiteGround also offers Student hosting plans that are not free but highly affordable available at $1.99/month.
Cons:
Send an email at [email protected] with a short description on what your project is about and SiteGround team will assist you.
ii). AwardSpace
The award winning hosting company is considered as one of the best free web hosting sites in the world. It’s at the top and I’ll let you know why? It’s No.1 free hosting brand that provides quality hosting totally free of cost. The European based host started providing free hosting services back in 2003. Their free hosting features are amazing, let’s take a look.
Pros:
- No ads on your sites
- Get a free .dx.am extension domain & 3 free subdomains
- Best hosting platform for students and newbie bloggers
- Install WordPress with 1 click installer
- No credit card, no billing info required
- Best industry standard data center
- Account is activated instantly
- 5 Gigs of Bandwidth & 1GB disk space
- PHP MyAdmin & MySQL DB support
- Live Chat Support
AwardSpace is a big name in web hosting industry. More than 2.5 Million people host on AwardSpace. The sign up process is simple and you can use Facebook, Google or email to get started.
Related:
How to Install a WordPress Plugin?
Cons:
However since it’s free that does not mean you’ll get everything perfect and up to the mark. Here are a couple of points that disappoint a bit about the free host.
- Very limited storage capacity
- Do not get confused with uptime guarantee, it’s for premium plans
- You may need a forced upgrade due to resource over-usage
Their premium plans are also highly affordable. Their basic monthly plan is just 0.17 Euro with unlimited features and a free SSL certificate. Finally it’s the best free hosting if we look at other features and I personally recommend them for everyone.
iii). InfinityFree
It is the best free web hosting provider in town. Its a simple sign up without any credit card requirements and you can start using free resources right away. Personally the features that I like about InfinityFree is unlimited disk and bandwidth.
InfinityFree is ad free hosting
Pros:
Let’s talk about the hosting pros.
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Unlimited disk space & bandwidth
- Supports MySQL and PHP with latest versions
- You can have 400 databases
- Free SSL certificate
- Softaculous Script Installer
- Free DNS service
- 10 Email accounts
- Community support forum
- 1 FTP account
- Handles up to 50K monthly hits
Cons:
However, there are a couple of drawbacks and since its free, you can’t complain.
- Limited server resources
- You’ll experience downtimes
- Site suspension in case of excessive usage
- You can only upload site’s relevant data
- No option to register the domain
You can read their terms in detail.
Still InfinityFree is the best among free hosting providers. It also offers premium hosting and the plan starts from $3.99/month.
iv). 000webhost
000 means $0.00, hosting at Zero cost. 000webhost is powered by Hostinger, a worlds best popular hosting brand. The software stack is equipped with the latest tools and software programs. That means you’ll have the updated versions of PHP and MySQL.
Pros:
Let’s check out more features of 000webhost, the world’s most popular & ultimately the best free web hosting for students & newbie bloggers.
- A free website builder
- 99% uptime
- One click WordPress Installer
- A custom control panel
- Instant account creation
- Sites with no ads
- 3GB bandwidth & 300 MB disk space
- Litespeed cache
- 1 email account
- Helping community forum
There are more than 22 Million users on 000webhost and still counting…
To start with 000webhost is a simple 4-step process. You can sign up for free, install WordPress as your website builder. Start building your site and make it live. However, you’ll need to buy a domain or you can use the 000webhost subdomain.
Cons:
Hold your breath, there are a couple of bad news for you about that free host. I’ve listed all of them here.
- Expect a downtime of 1 hour daily, it’s bad for your site
- Your site may be deleted without any reason or notification
- Very limited disk space of 1GB only
- Limited features
If you want to host for learning purposes and don’t care about downtime or speed, you can try this host.
v). FreeHosting.com
Though FreeHosting offer a lot of features but one thing that I really don’t like is domain registration. You either need to register a domain or transfer a domain to FreeHosting. That concludes you must have a domain name to use FreeHosting.com. There are no subdomains like abc.freehosting.com to host your site free of cost. Anyways, if you have a domain and want to launch a free site, FreeHosting.com is a good choice. Let’s check the pros of this web hosting company.
Pros:
- Servers with LAMP stack with PHP 7
- No bandwidth limits
- 10 GB storage
- You can host only 1 website, DB & Email account
- Great platform to learn cPanel
- Install more than 400 apps
- Unlimited FTP accounts
Cons:
- Like I said, no subdomains
- All additional features like zone editor, shell access are not freely available
- Site loading times are poor
- Want more resources? Upgrade please!
- No free hosting for users from certain countries
I’ll recommend FreeHosting.com only & only if you’ve a spare domain & want to test or run any apps. Not at all suitable for a professional site.
vi). FreeHostia
Because of the cluster based servers and modern technology, Freehostia is perfect for students with small sites. Their free hosting plan is known as Chocolate Plan, yeah that’s right, it’s a free cloud hosting plan.
Pros:
So here is the list of the features and specs that you can enjoy as your free chocolate.
- Host up to 5 domains
- 6GB bandwidth & 250 MB disk space
- 1 Database with 10MB storage
- 3 Email accounts
Related:
SiteGround Reviews, Best Web Hosting for WordPress
The plan specs are too low that you can host a small site with a couple of pages.
Cons:
There are certain facts that I don’t like about FreeHostia.
- Needs a domain to use free hosting
- The disk space is very low, 250 MB is nothing
- Site loading speeds are not that good
There is no big difference between freehosting.com and freehostia, if you have a domain, you can check & try their free service.
vii). InterServer
Though free hosting is available for only ONE year but I must say it’s the best free web hosting for students. InterServer offers standard hosting plan for $4 per month and you’ll get an account on the same plan.
Just like SiteGround, you must have an .EDU email address to sign up and avail that amazing offer.
Let’s have a look at the pros.
Pros:
- Unlimited storage, websites, emails and transfer
- Cloud apps
- 1-click install applications
- Healthy and robust servers
- Free migration
Cons:
Unfortunately, the offer is valid for one year, after that you’ll have to buy their shared hosting plan.
viii). Accu Web Hosting
With excellent and abundant features, AccuWeb, a well know web hosting company also gives away free web hosting for students. Their eligibility criteria is also the same and you must be a student at a well known university.
To apply for a free hosting account on AccuWeb is a bit different and you can read the application procedure here. Let’s discuss what you’ll enjoy for free once you’ve a free running hosting account.
Pros:
- 2GB SSD storage
- Multiple Layer DDOS Protection
- cPanel and WHM
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- CloudLinux and apache web server
- Latest versions of PHP installed
- Cloudflare and Varnish
- Free WordPress installation
Cons:
Honestly, I couldn’t find any cons. There is no hosting company that guarantees 99.9% uptime free for students. So, just go for it.
ix). Free Web Hosting Area
Free Web Hosting Area or freewha.com also offers free web hosting, that is a free hosting forever service. These guys are old in the business and have been offering free web hosting since 2005. After going through the features, I must say it’s a great choice and ultimately the best free web hosting for students. Let’s have a look at the pros:
Pros:
- 99.8% yearly guaranteed uptime
- Latest and updated software stack
- Super fast dedicated servers with SSD storage
- Control panel access
- Daily and weekly backups
- 1500 MB disk space and unmetered traffic
Cons:
If you want to remove the ads, you need to pay a small fee of $1 USD per month.
x). hosting.india.to
With very limited accounts available, this company provides free web hosting services in India.
In the free hosting plan, you’ll get 1 GB disk space and bandwidth on a monthly basis. At the moment, it’s free hosting is suspended and honestly, I am not sure when they’ll start offering free web hosting accounts.
3. Almost Free Web Hosting Sites with Quality Hosting
If you can afford at least $1 USD/month, then I’ve got the best option for you to enjoy standard and quality hosting with guaranteed uptime and excellent support.
It’s Hostinger!
Yes, it starts at $0.99/mo and you’ll get the best and high quality web hosting in the world. If you’re afraid of frequent downtime in free hosting, Hostinger got your back.
Additionally, it is fully refundable for 30 days and you’ll get a free lifetime SSL certificate.
4. Free Web Hosting Sites for Students [Infographic]
5. Should you use Free Web Hosting Sites?
Due to lack of performance, poor speeds and servers instability, free web hosting sites are not recommended for professional and business sites. After reading other people reviews, their sites often deleted without any prior alerts. Additionally, there are downtime of hours in the free hosting plans that can badly effect the site’s reputation. There are no guarantees of service uptime in such plans.
But if we see from another perspective, free web hosting sites can help us a lot in certain tasks. I highly recommend free web hosting for students and for freelancers to test their projects and apps live on these sites. The university students can upload their assignments and presentations and make them live making a good impression.
Every host offers free WordPress 1 click installation. If you want to learn about WP, create a site and play with it. It will give a lot of exposure before you begin with a professional site.
6. Final Verdict
Being straight forward, I must say all the free hosting sites provide web hosting for free to get customers that should upgrade later. If customers are happy, they’ll definitely upgrade. AwardSpace is my favorite among these free hosts. These guys have a wonderful reputation in the hosting industry with millions of customers worldwide.
Finally and above all, these are my recommended top 10 free hosting sites where you don’t have to pay as long as you use the services. These platforms can help you learn many things. Not only that, you can build small blogs with a couple of small posts on each. There are probably chances that you can earn through these sites.
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Hi, I am Faisal Rehman.
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4 Comments
Andrionika
Definitely useful material here!
Ashley
Great ideas! The small expenses of blogging start to add up in a hurry. It’s nice to see some free options to hosting.
Pradyut Dutta
I appreciate your article, great image, and great information for us.
Bidyut Jana
Thank you for this wonderful helpful post.