The Best Free Web Hosting

Author: Quicksprout Editorial / Source: Quick Sprout

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Free web hosting only makes sense for a pretty narrow scope of customers: those who have small websites without much content and very little traffic, and those who have temporary websites, like for an upcoming event. If that’s you:

Try a free website builder that hosts custom domains:

Or, check out our recommendations for no-cost hosts:

For pretty much everything else — especially a small business or an online presence you’re looking to grow, we recommend paying for hosting to get increased functionality, more reliability, and better customer support. You won’t be spending all that much. Some of the best web hosting services start for as little as $4/month.

Editor’s note: Educators and nonprofits often qualify for free (or deeply discounted) hosting by some truly excellent providers. Jump here to read more.

Our recommendation: Use a free website builder with free hosting and custom domain names.

Hands-down the easiest way for most people to get a website up and running is a website builder, where you can drag-and-drop content blocks and tinker around with customizable templates. Most website builders are only free if you use a subdomain (for example, our URL on a Wix subdomain would look like: quicksprout.wix.com), which is a dealbreaker for anyone who wants to run a professional-looking site. We talk more about free hosting using a subdomain here.

However, there are two builders that host websites for free and connect to a custom domain. They are super simple and have limited functionality — but since super simple, limited websites are the only ones we recommend to hosting for free, it makes a lot of sense to start there.

There are exactly two options that fit this criteria: Ucraft or Google Sites.

Ucraft Review

Ucraft has a free plan for a single-page website that’s built with what it calls “elements.” An element is any individual piece of content: a title, a text block, a video, an image, an image gallery, a button. Ucraft’s free tier supports up to 50 basic elements, so that single-page website can hold a decent amount of content — just nothing too snazzy.

• Drag-and-drop builder, plus customizable templates (although you can’t update fonts)
• Single page
• Supports custom domain
• Ucraft ad floats in bottom-right corner
• Upgrade for unlimited pages, more customization, and no ads for $6/month
• Ecommerce functionality starts at $14/month

Six of Ucraft’s 21 free templates, including a blank page for a completely customized site.

A “Powered by UCRAFT” ad hovers in the bottom right corner of all free Ucraft websites.

Google Sites Review

Google Sites is your other option for a super simple free site. And when we say “super simple,” we mean it. There are only six versions of the same template to choose from, and a limited number of layouts to work in. It’s super basic. In fact, lots of Google Sites are used for basic things like internal wikis.

Google Sites offers one basic template in six simple themes.

That said, Google Sites hosts as many pages as you want at no cost. It connects to your custom domain. It integrates with every other Google service, like Docs, Forms, and Slides. And it’s absurdly simple to use, especially if you’re used to working in Google products. If you already have a Google account, or are paying for GSuite for email hosting (which we wholeheartedly recommend), it’s a no-brainer.

• Drag-and-drop builder, plus limited customizable themes
• Unlimited storage
• Supports custom domain
• Google Sites ad in footer
• Integrates with GMail
• There are no upgrade options — this is everything

Want more design freedom? You’ll need web hosting.

Design limitations are probably the biggest downside to using a free website builder. If the templates available on Ucraft and Google Sites aren’t what you’ve envisioned for your site, the next easiest free option is to find a free template you like and pair it with a free web host.

That said, there are plenty of downsides to free web hosting. To make our recommendations, we took the following six criteria into consideration.

1. Ads: Some free web hosts stay afloat by selling ad space. We wanted to avoid those providers — no one wants random ads appearing in the middle of their content — and opted for hosts that support their free tier from sales of their paid hosting plans.
2. Email hosting: Our recommendations offer at least one custom email address and free email hosting since that is one of the glaring things lacking from a free website builder. (Ucraft doesn’t offer email hosting at all and Google Sites only offers a custom email address if you pay $5/month for GSuite.) An email that’s attached to your website and domain name is great to have for one-off correspondences (plus looks pro on a business card), and a free web host provider’s email hosting is perfect for that.But be warned, your legit emails may be flagged as spam. Why? Free hosting is a hotbed for less-than-savory online activity, and your site might get lumped into a server of bad actors. In other words: spam filter activated. If you’re going to use your email a lot or for anything important — say for sending out a newsletter or for marketing promotions — we recommend upgrading to email hosting through a service like GSuite or even a domain registrar like Namecheap, which sells email hosting starting at $10/year.
3. Storage and bandwidth: Free web hosting has famously low limits for both disk space and bandwidth. If you go over your limit, your site may get suspended or you may be automatically upgraded to a paid service. Even when providers like Byethost offer unlimited bandwidth and storage, it’s not infinite. Just like with a paid service, unlimited storage and bandwidth only last until you start negatively impacting the other sites on your server — and all hosts are extremely vague about how much traffic or storage is too much traffic or storage. Have a negative impact and your site may still be suspended or auto-upgraded.
4. PHP and MySQL: PHP is one of the most popular programming languages. It’s what apps like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal run on, and therefore what a lot of websites use. MySQL are databases those apps store information on. Your web host needs to support up-to-date versions of both. The problem: Most hosts don’t disclose the exact version of the PHP or MySQL they run. And even if these apps do work, there is a high likelihood that with any free host they are going to load slowly — a PHP application requires a lot more lift from what is probably an extremely burdened server. If you’re worried at all about page load time (and you should be — Google takes it into account), we recommend limiting anything you build on a free host to a simple static HTML/CSS site.

   Another thing to keep in mind is database limitations. Every piece of software you want to use on your site requires a database to store its information. If you are running WordPress, it needs a database. If you’re running another app, it’s going to need its own database. Most free hosts impose a limit on the number of databases your site can access, and the amount of storage available in that database.

5. SSL certificate: Secure Sockets Layer encryption is what confirms a website is secure enough to receive sensitive data like credit card data and passwords. SSL certificates are the only way a site can do any sort of ecommerce at all, but Google also considers it a factor for where any site, ecomm or not, shows up in search rankings. Most free web hosts don’t offer a free SSL certificate; the ones that do tend to offer a “self-signed” SSL. Self-signed SSLs are issued by servers, not by a certificate authority (Comodo, Digicert, Let’s Encrypt, etc). They offer the same level of encryption, but it’s not the standard version, so web browsers will still flag your site and issue a security warning to visitors.

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