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The number of websites on the internet increased by four folds between 2011 and 2017. More and more small businesses are getting online and the rate is expected to rise further in the coming years.
If one has a small business, spending hundreds of dollars per year just on web hosting might not make sense. For those of you to whom it’s still unclear what web hosting is, web hosts are the servers (computers) connected to the internet that serve your web page to those who need to access. Web hosting is a vital component for online businesses, and it’s always recommended to choose a decent hosting provider to ensure proper user experience.
Web hosts serve your web-pages to your clients. A proper web host ensures quick delivery of web-page, ensuring fast loading of your websites. There are several other metrics to judge a web host, such as available space, Inodes (limit on the number of files), bandwidth, the number of domains per hosting account, etc. One also has to see the user experience provided by the hosting company, and the underlying technology implemented and provided.
Although free hosting comes with its limitations, it does make sense for small and starter businesses and hobbyists. Most of such services will have some limitations, not disclosed initially, with the service provider trying to get you into buying the paid service. Thus it becomes vital to know the fine details of what each provider is offering.
Top 5 free Web Hosting providers
Here are our top 5 web hosting providers listed in no particular order.
1. 000Webhost
- Bandwidth Limit: 100GB per month
- Disk Space: 1500 MB
- Interface: Cpanel
- MySQL Databases: 2
- Multiple Websites: No
- E-mail accounts: 5
- Domain hosting: yes
- FTP Support: Yes
000Webhost.com is an old name and it has been providing its free hosting services for a long. time They pack a bundle of features into the free plan, and there are no concealed costs or “upgrade to unlock” scams. Additionally, they have more than 10 years of experience. Although there may have been some negative press about them in the past, their services are top-notch.
The service runs through donations, which they receive in quite some amount. Their free hosting is quite popular and one can be trusted of for consistency. Due to the large number of hosted sites, a level of reliability is provided. Many of the free hosted sites belong to large institutions and organizations.
000Webhost free hosting plan provides enough of everything, with 1.5GB of space, 100GB of transfer speed for every month and few email accounts. The platforms works on LAMP module and clients are ensured 99% provable uptime and additionally week by week reinforcements.
2. ByetHost
- Disk Space: 1000 MB
- Bandwidth Limit: 50 GB per month
- Domains: 5 addon domains, 5 parked domains
- Email Accounts: 5
- FTP support: Yes
- Scripting Support: PHP
- Database Support: MySQL
- Databases: 5
- Interface: VistaPanel
Byet host claims to power the biggest free hosting network on the internet. Byet Host hails from the USA and powers a huge amount of free websites. It also offers its paid hosting services at a staple cost.
Byethost provides a gigabyte of storage space with Inodes limit. One of the few areas where it has more to offer is databases and add-on domains. It supports up-to 5 MySQL databases in its free hosting and implements VistaPanel as the working interface.
3. AwardSpace
- Bandwidth Limit: 5 GB per month
- Disk Space: 1000 MB
- Domains: 3 Subdomains
- Email Accounts: 1
- FTP Support: Yes
- Scripting Support: PHP
- Databases: 1
- Interface: Custom Built
Awardspace is one its kind web hosting provider that runs totally on wind energy, providing CO2 neutral service. It host more than a million websites on its servers located at Kiel, Germany. This face might be bothersome to few, factoring in the propagation delay between US and Germany that adds a fractional amount to the website loading speed.
Awardspace offers 24/7 live support, even to its free hosting users. The live chat feature can also be availed for any possible pre-sales queries. It also offers an online tool to test the transfer speed and latency between your system and their servers.
4. Freehostia
- Bandwidth Limit: 6GB per month
- Disk Space: 250MB
- Databases: 1
- Domains: 1
- E-mail accounts: 3
- FTP Support: No
- Interface: Elefante
Freehostia puts on the table its humble list of resources provided in the free “Chocolate” plan. The disk space is capped at a mere 250 MB, and 1 domain that can be used with a single database.
Along with these, the extras offered make up for the average quantity in resources. Server uptime is 99.9% and 24/7 support is provided should any problems arise. They also claim to have a surprising response time of within 1 hour for any tickets created. Most of the popular content management systems can also be installed using the Elefante panel. These include WordPress, Joomla, phpBB and many more.
5. 5GBfree
- Bandwidth Limit: 20GB per month
- Disk Space: 5000 MB
- Databases: 3
- Domains: 1
- E-mail accounts: 0
- FTP support: Yes
- Interface: Cpanel
Needless to say, 5GBfree provides 5 GB of space in their free hosting plan. Surprisingly, no email support is included in their service. The company still boasts of providing a service that’s scalable, robust and secure than its competitors. They offer their hosting running on the revolutionary CloudLinux operating system. However, support is only provided via forums.
Honorable Mentions
- Hostinger
- Instafree
- U Host Full
- Free Hosting EU
- Zymic
- Hoophost
- Batcave
- Freeho.st
The article details the specifications of these various providers at the time of writing. One is free to check the details by themselves and try any of them because cause well, they’re all free.