Our Top Free Web Hosting Reviews

Free web hosting? Where do I sign up? While the thought of not paying for a hosting service is undoubtedly appealing, the truth is that free hosting isn't necessarily the right choice for every website. There's a reason other providers charge money for their services, yet continue to sustain a customer base: their services can accommodate needs that free web hosting sometimes cannot. It's therefore probably wise to keep in mind that free web hosting can be a great solution for the personal or small business website, but maybe won't meet the expectations of a larger enterprise. For those that would benefit from free hosting, whether for a simple WordPress site or personal portfolio, it's still important to take the time to find a quality free hosting provider. To help make that process easier, we've reviewed some of the top free web hosting providers currently on the market, featured below.              

5QuidHost

What's there to know about 5QuidHost? To start, this hosting company is based in the UK and features a free hosting plan that can be easily upgraded at any point of service, as the company also offers a number of other shared hosting packages for purchase. 5QuidHost's free hosting plan currently offers a modest 50MB of disc space, 100MB of bandwidth and 1 MySQL database to support a website. These are the only resources that are technically limited in this plan, as users will receive unlimited email accounts, unlimited subdomains and unlimited FTP accounts, which all in all offer users a competitive amount of resources. 5QuidHost also places emphasis on its customer service, which is probably one of the more important factors for those using free hosting. 5QuidHost aims to offer support within an hour of a request, which, while not an industry-leading time, does underscore their commitment to accountability.

KVC Hosting

One of the key things to know about KVC Hosting is that while this company imposes no monthly fee for its basic shared hosting service, there is a one-time only service fee. Its three packages, the "K," "V," and "C," feature service fees that increase in price, respectively. Currently the company doesn't ask for more than a $20.00 fee (for its C plan), but customers will have to decide for themselves whether or not the initial fee is worth it. However, a quick glance at the resources provided in each of the packages does give a good indication of why the company feels its service fee is necessary. Unlike other completely free hosting sites, KVC's free plans include heftier storage allotments (up to 600MB), use of site builders, web statistics, PHP hosting, Server Sides Include, and Front Page extensions. The provider guarantees that it won't place banner advertisements on users' sites, either. Users should note though that for all of its plans, KVC only guarantees an uptime of 90%, a relatively low figure compared to the uptimes of some other companies.

Award Space

The free web hosting package from Award Space offers users 250MB of disc space, 5GB of traffic, 1 MySQL database, 3 subdomains and a 1 POP3 or IMAP email/webmail account. For those interested in Joomla and WordPress installations, Award Space can certainly accommodate, as it offers both of these installations as free additions to its plan. This plan will also support the scripts PHP5 and Perl/CGI-Bin. Additionally, Award Space has been the recipient of some free web hosting industry awards from both critics and users, meaning reliability likely won't be an issue when working with this provider.

Host-ED.NET

Host-ED.NET free web hosting offers a lot of information about the features and resources included and excluded from its free package, which can be of benefit to the user seeking specific hosting information. Its free plan includes a substantial 1GB of disc space, 10GB of data transfer, 100MB of RAM, access to CloudFlare, and use of a CloudLinux operating system. Users will also receive 1 email account, 1 MySQL database and some helpful one-click installations for things like shopping carts and image galleries. That being said, the company does it make clear that things like free domain names, site builders and email spam protection won't be available. It also doesn't make any claims that websites will be free of advertising, and it could be helpful to know that this provider's servers are based in Germany.

7Host

As with many of the other top free hosting providers, 7Host specializes in more than just free hosting; it also offers plans for dedicate and VPS cloud hosting. This is usually good indication that you'll receive quality customer service, competitive uptimes, and adequate resources. Users will find 50MB of storage space, a free domain name, 1 MySQL database and an FTP account from this company's free hosting plan, all of which are competitive with allocations from other providers. 7Host also commits to excluding ads from a user's website and promises instant site activation. Somewhat unique among other free hosting providers, however, is its OS-based sign up; users have their choice of a Windows ASP + Access OS, a Windows ASP.NET + Access OS, or a Linux OS with PHP and MySQL.

AUHost4U

AUHost4U is an Australian web hosting company that offers users of its plan up to 100MB of storage, 500MB of bandwidth and 1 email account. The plan also includes virus and spam protection for a user's email account, AWstats and scripting support for PHP. If you're looking for additional resources from this provider, unfortunately you'll need to upgrade to one of their paid (albeit inexpensive) shared hosting plans. These plans will afford users resources the free plan does not, including MySQL databases and free domain names.