I've gone around clicking every single link for free web hosting I can find. Then I created websites on all of them and I even read the terms of service. Yes, I know shocking, but I wanted to find if there are any hidden catches to these free web hosting plans. I found four truly free web hosting options that are worth using each having different downsides, starting with freehosting.com.
Anyone is able to sign up here. You don't need to add a credit card or a payment method altogether and your account gets verified quite fast. I'Ve actually tried two different accounts and it took about 10 minutes for them to get approved, and I could start working on my website right away. You get a control panel with basic functionality, 10 gigabytes of storage and unlimited bandwidth. This is enough for like 99.
percent of websites, and I was able to install WordPress on my site quite easily. I even connected a custom domain free of charge. Now the downside of freehosting.com is that you must own a domain name to use their services, can't add a subdomain and you can't add a free domain as well. It must be a legitimate one, otherwise the hosting service won't work if you're really looking to save.
I recommend grabbing one of the 99 cent domains from hostinger like dot, XYZ or Dot online. They work here with no problems and they only cost you one dollar for a full year. Once my domain was added, I managed to upload a backup website. That'S quite heavy. Around 400 megabytes of content with lots of pictures and animations the performance is nothing special kind of what you would expect from free hosting full load time of 4.
seconds, meaning it's around four times slower than your average paid option, even the cheapest one. You could find and I wasn't able to set up Lightspeed to work properly, so this is an unoptimized website. Theoretically, it could be faster with some more time put into it, but this is Freehold hosting and I don't think it would be that much better. On the bright side, there are no ads, no banners on the freehosting Com website the control panel or even your site, the way they seem to be making money is from selling these add-ons like mailboxes and subdomains, for a quite ridiculous pricing I might add, and they even have a paid plan for 7.99, which again is quite High, never Buy these paid options because, for the price of one add-on, you can actually get premium web hosting from interserver for 12 months straight, so these add-ons, obviously quite a bad deal.
What really helps freehosting.com, though, is the fact that there are no sketchy Clauses in their terms of service, apart from the fact that they do collect information about you to provide their service, which is quite standard stuff. Most businesses do this. Most businesses have this.
In their terms of service now, what's completely not standard is the terms of service of infinity free, while they also offer free hosting with more free perks like SSL certificates and cpanel, they pretty much reserve the right to sell your data and your website's visitors data like Payment information, emails, IP addresses names, pretty much everything for various marketing purposes, like surveys, demographic studies, Etc.
This is pretty much how Infinity 3 makes money, and for that you get free hosting. That requires no credit card or verification. There are no limits on storage or bandwidth or even simple functions like add-on domains and subdomains everything's, unlimited, but again, you'll see ads everywhere in the control panel on the main page and in the menus just like with the previous provider, I've created a website quite easily Using the automated WordPress tools provided and manage to upload the same website, backup to test the performance, 8.7 seconds, full load time, two times the slowest freehosting.com and eight times as slow as a standard paid provider.
A funny thing is that when you're activating your account, they show you this warning that if you do not accept email offers from them, they might deactivate your account quite a cheap scare tactic. Please don't ever accept this.
They have no legal right to do anything about it, but moving on Infinity 3 will give you a better more authentic experience of how web hosting works, because they're using industry standard control panels and tools, and they don't have any limits. So if you're looking to learn, this is probably a better option than freehosting Com anyways, up to this point, I was able to load my test websites into these three providers via back functions. Absolutely no problem, however, not with zero zero zero web host zero zero zero web host is a free provider.
That'S part of hostinger a larger web hosting company. However, they only give you 300 megabytes of space, and my website takes some more actually after installing WordPress, using their automated tools, I'm already up to 150 megabytes. So I don't have enough space to upload my website, which is more than 300 megabytes.
As a last-ditch effort, I had to create a lighter website just to test the performance, so this isn't an Apples to Apples comparison, but this is the best I could do. The performance is okay, fully loading, a much lighter site that I tested with other providers in 3.
seconds now. The interesting part about zero zero zero web hosting is that they do allow you to host adult content While most even paid providers. Don'T, however, the 300 megabytes? Storage limitation really really really really really hurts you here. You can't do much more than the light side, but again no credit card or payments are required and you can get started within minutes because the verification is automatic.
However, I did have my zero zero zero web host website deleted in the past, without absolutely any warnings by accidentally going over the storage limits. Just by a tad bit. There are no warnings that you're about to go over and they just wipe everything off your server. At least in my experience for Simple Sites, I'd say this works quite well. You can even add a free domain here from freedom, but for a complex site.
There'S a better way, and I want to talk about that better way, because it's what I consider to be the best free hosting option available. In most cases, it's even better than some of the paid plans I've encountered, but it does take a little bit of technical knowledge to get started. I'M talking about three virtual private server on oracle.com. I'Ve actually set up my testing website here and look at this 1.
seconds load time, and the website has every premium feature like a custom domain, SSL certificates, file, managers, Auto installers and even email. The way this actually works is you apply for a free server. You'Ll have to have a valid credit card for that work and you will get charged like one dollar for verification, but you'll get that back. Then you use that server to host your website and your control panel. It'S a bit technical, but I do have a tutorial.
How to do everything step by step that you can find right here, but before you go ahead, and do that remember that any one of these providers can and probably will delete your website at some point, even oracle.com, which is like a 230 billion dollar company. For example, here one of my viewers on another article said that oracle Com just deleted his server with everything on it without a way to recover any of the files, and that is the biggest problem with free web hosting the site is never actually yours. It'S your content, it's your design and it's your time invested, but ultimately it's the provider's website because you're not paying anything for the hosting, they can add advertisements, they can delete the site at any point and they can even Farm your visitors and you for data. So, in my opinion, it's actually never worth going with free hosting, unless you just don't care about your site at all.
You only need it for a couple of days or a couple of weeks for a project, and then you move on. So I highly recommend this for students that just need to host a project or if you want to have like a fancier presentation, maybe learn how everything works. But in all other cases cheap is better than free. Because when you pay even a small amount like two dollars a month, you can hold your providers accountable. You get support, you get backups and can't just poof your sight out of existence.
Oops! Sorry, we didn't mean to do that whenever they want to free up space. On their servers for other free users, because you're a paying customer, they can't do that. It'S illegal personally for cheap providers. I highly recommend, inter server or hostinger, with inter server, you can get one month of Hosting for just two and a half dollars.
So if you just need a website for one month, spend that two and a half dollars it's gon na, be better than free or you can get six months for like 12.50. If you use the link in the description together with the code emit 2023. This is pretty much as cheap as it gets, and their performance is light years ahead of the free providers, and at least you know that during your presentation, your website won't go down if you're using it for a school project.
Now, if you want something a bit more permanent, you can actually get four years of Premium hosting from hostinger for just 86 dollars with the code emit reviews yeah, it's just a one-time payment and you're good to go for four years in advance.
I'Ve even made it easier for you if you want to test and compare these providers yourself check out uptime.mitreviews.com where I've actually compiled every single web hosting provider. I have and every different plan so you'll be able to see how often they experience, outages and compare their websites yourself, because here you can see which of the domains they're hosted on so just open up, GT, metrics and run some tests or just open up the Websites yourself, remember, though, once you've got your free or cheap hosting providers. Ready you'll also have to secure your website.
This is extremely important if you're, using free hosting so watch this article next to learn how to do that for free
