The popularity of free web hosting has exploded in recent years.

And it’s easy to see why – with all the different expenses required to run a successful website, it’s tempting to try and cut costs wherever possible to stay within your budget.

And what’s more budget-friendly than free web hosting, right?

Well, not exactly…

Free web hosts aren’t always what they market themselves to be. Tight restrictions they place on bandwidth, storage capacity, server speed, and uptimes can make your new site all but unusable.

In general, we don’t recommend free hosting providers. It’s much a better to get a good shared host at low cost, such as Bluehost.com (which is also ranked well in our “best web hosting” page).

But don’t worry, if you really have no budget – we’ve done the heavy lifting for you. In this review, we compare 7 free hosting options to help you find the best fit for your site.

Let’s dive in:

1. Hostinger.com
The Best “Almost-Free” Hosting ($0.99/mo)

After nearly 16 years in business and a client base of more than 29,000,000 people spread across 178 countries, Hostinger has become one of the free web hosting industry’s most dominant players.

Ok, so they aren’t technically “free”…

… But at only $0.99/month for their limited shared hosting plan they’re still one of the most budget-friendly web hosts on the market.

With average load times of only 355ms (the second-best we’ve ever recorded), they’re also one of the fastest.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Even their most basic plan comes armed to the teeth with a whole bag of goodies including:

1 MySQL database
1 FTP user
Access to their website builder
One-click install of WordPress or other CMS
24/7 customer support (seriously, it’s one of the best)
100GB of Bandwidth and 10GB of Disk Space
One free email account
And, if the needs of your site outgrow the limits of their basic hosting plan, you can always upgrade to their premium shared hosting plan.

Which include:

Unlimited websites
Unlimited email accounts
Unlimited bandwidth
Weekly memory backups
Free domain