5 of the Best Free Web Hosting Platforms for your website

What if I tell you there are a few free web hosting platforms that can help you publish your website. As a website designer or a content creator, you are always in a seek mode to understand options for you to host your site online. More hosting providers have brought into free plans to help onboard more people to help them in free hosting.

There’s never a free lunch, similarly serving you with free hosting is always a cost-hogging affair. Most of the service providers cover these costs either running ads, affiliate marketing, limiting your web traffic, or up-selling their own services.

At this moment, I would like to point out that free website hosting is not always ok. They could be ideal for test projects or side hustles tests, however, this can go on the long term.

In this post, I will be sharing the top 5 options that you can use for free hosting.

Netlify: Hosting developer sites made simple

You will love this platform if you are a hardcore programmer. Netlify allows you to deploy by dropping your site folder or by simply linking your repository. Auto-build and publish are all planned by Netlify based on the plans you have subscribed to.

Under the free account, you are offered 100 GB bandwidth and 300 build minutes. These are good enough for your testing sites or base websites for content. If your website demands more, you can opt-in for several options from the premium subscriptions under Pro, business, and Enterprise models.

But if you are convinced that the free tier would serve your needs, sign up for your free account now.

InfinityFree: Free with no ads. Super free web hosting platform

How many times have you seen hosting providers spamming you with ads / click-baits? InfinityFree is way different and my personal favorite. You can either choose a subdomain to the existing domain extensions that InfinityFree provides or have a custom domain. This service provider also supports Let’sEncrypt free SSL too.

Not only does it have one of the fastest free hosting capabilities, but also allows you to Control the panel where managing content and publishing is a no-brainer. Take a look at the Control Panel below which would give you an idea of how you can manage your content and the options it loads you with.

Using an online file manager or simply using the FTP credentials, you can have your own files uploaded. Free Unlimited Hosting, Unmetered Bandwidth, Full .htaccess support, and 400 MySQL Databases, are all you need under a free-wishlist. One other feature that I really liked was the Cloudflare configuration for CDN. Simple and swift.

Like every provider, there is a catch while all of these services are offered. InfinityFree enforces a limit of 50K hits in a single day and it resets every day, not necessarily at midnight. If 50K hits ( & it does calculate multiple page visits as well) are crossed in a day, ​your site ​would be down for 24 hours. Rest assured, after 24 hours, your account will be reactivated automatically. If you suspect traffic to go beyond 50K, you could easily opt-in for premium plans or platforms.

But if you think that’s not the case then you can create your free account here.

000webhost: A platform for basic intent

If you have a few pages to publish while not much keen on understanding the bandwidth and storage, this is a good platform to kick off your hosting journey. You can host 1 website and it supports no email accounts. The account is limited to 300MB disk space and 3GB bandwidth.​ It does support a single MySQL database for your website. If that’s all you are looking at, here is a link to register.

Awardspace : Website builder is super-aid

AwardSpace enables users to create a free website supporting 1GB disk space, 5GB bandwidth. However, there is a limitation of 2 subdomains. What I personally liked about this platform is the web builder and 24/7 live support.

AwardSpace offers a variety of hosting services and one of its best is Zacky Website builder which allows customizing your website with ease.

Editing the content is absolutely easy and requires no coding skills. Just edit the content and you are just a click away from the Publish once done.

This platform also supports 1-click installers of applications that allow easy customization and deployment. Here are the options available for you:

The two-step guides allow you to customize the setup and within no time, you would have your favorite content ​management service live on the domain/subdomain you deployed to.

To register free on AwardSpace, here is the link.

Freehostia: Free cloud hosting with 1-click installs

A plan by FreeHostia called “Chocolate” allows you free hosting for 12 months. One of the features I loved was the Scripts – which allows you to deploy 1-click 50+ PHP scripts installers and management services which are grouped into 13 categories ( e.g Blogs, wikis, E-commerce, and more).

The registration process is rather lengthy but once you get through this, the ride is smooth. You are allowed 250 MB disk space, 6GB monthly bandwidth, and 5-websites that you can host. The free plan also helps you with  3 email accounts, 1 MySQL database, 10MB MySQL Storage.

If you are ready to get started with Freehostia, here is a link to register for free.

Conclusion

Don’t look for a perfect solution while hunting for Free hosting. The purpose of free hosting is limited to quick deployment of testing sites or if you have content to showcase, but less traction expected. It can’t be a long-term solution if you wish to publish regularly.

In this article, we shared how you could opt into the best free hosting providers available. Our best two picks are InfinityFree and Awardspace. You could try out the links to the providers shared and let us know about your experience in the comments below.