Best FREE Web Hosting that Actually WORKS!
– Can you really get free web
hosting that actually works? Web hosting is almost always
a paid product if you want to start a WordPress site
or develop with HTML. And if you aren't paying for it it's usually some free
version of a website builder where your site is plastered with ads or stuck on some cheesy Subdomain. So, I wanted to test the
top actually free web hosts to see if any of them were worth using. I started my quest for
free hosting at 000webhost. They were started in 2007 and I actually used them back in the day when I needed some free hosting. They're owned by Hostinger and their product serves as a gateway to eventually get you to
upgrade to a premium plan. This strategy is very clear. With the unrealistically
low limits at 000webhost, you're limited to 300 megabytes of storage and three gigabytes of bandwidth.
I will give it to Hostinger. Their panel and setup process
are extremely easy to use. 000webhost is optimized for WordPress, but you can use it for anything. If you do decide to use WordPress, they have a setup wizard
that pre-installs WordPress with a few recommended plugins. You'll also get limited
access to Hostinger's hPanel, which is way easier to use than cPanel.
CPanel is common among
cheap shared hosting, and it's what you'll find at
almost every free web host except 000webhost. My test WordPress site
was impressively speedy, considering this is free hosting, You can even connect a custom domain, but you are gonna have this
ad in the bottom right corner that says, "Powered by 000webhost." Also, the limits on your
account are pretty crippling. After a clean install of
WordPress, I was already using 133 megabytes of the
300 megabytes of storage. That storage is gonna fill up fast. You're also limited to 10,000 inodes. That's the total number of files and folders that can be
on your hosting account. This sounds like a massive number, but actually after a clean
install of WordPress, I was already using 63% of
allocated inodes on my account. And the three gigabytes of bandwidth can be quite limiting too.
For context, my craylor.media website used 4.3 gigabytes of bandwidth
in the last 30 days, and that's a fairly simple website. 000webhost is basically a
free trial for Hostinger. You're gonna hit the
account limits quickly, and then your options will be
to either upgrade to Hostinger or transfer to another free web host. This is a shame, because
the management panel is a great experience
compared to other options, like TinkerHost.
TinkerHost was started
as a passion project by some developers who wanted a better way to test their code without having to pay for a monthly hosting
account just to do so. The free plan has some impressive specs, five gigabytes of storage, 30,000 inodes, and a hundred gigabytes of bandwidth. These specs are actually very usable for a low traffic personal site like a blog, and they're also more than enough for testing larger projects. TinkerHost does not place any ads or banners on your website, but they may show ads
in your client portal to help offset costs.
They also make money if
you decide to upgrade to their recommended premium hosting, which is powered by their
partner company iFastNet. The TinkerHost panel is pretty clunky. There's a lot going on with with the UI, and it really makes me
appreciate the panel at 000webhost that much more. There's no easy setup
process for WordPress. Instead, you have to go to cPanel and use Softaculous to install WordPress. This is fine if you have
a background in cPanel and understand how it works, but since a lot of people
who need free web hosting are going to be beginners, I wish there was a simple setup wizard like you'll find at 000webhost or other premium web hosts.
TinkerHost does offer
a free website builder though I didn't evaluate
it because this video is specifically to evaluate free web host. There's a ton of free website
builder platforms out there, like Google Sites, Carrd and Wix that can give you a wonderful experience. But for personal WordPress
sites or static sites, TinkerHost is surprisingly usable. I wish the panel was more intuitive, but you'll be fine as long as you're comfortable navigating cPanel.
TinkerHost does offer a premium version called TinkerHost Plus, and this unlocks access
to customer support and removes ads from the client area. This does not improve the
quality of your hosting. It still has the same
limitations and speeds, but you can still transfer
to premium hosting with their partner iFastNet and they'll transfer your
account files free of charge.
Another feature you can access for free is the subscribe button. Hit subscribe and click the bell. That way you won't miss any new videos. Next, I looked at another popular option called FreeHosting. This one offered the
most impressive limits I've seen on any free web hosting. 10 gigabytes of storage, 125,000 inodes, and unlimited bandwidth. I was really excited about FreeHosting, so I signed up for an account, and started playing around with it.
FreeHosting uses direct
admin for their panel. It's similar to cPanel, but I actually think it's a bit cleaner and easier to use. It's not as simple as Hostinger's hPanel, but it's definitely a step up from cPanel. It still uses Softaculous to install apps so you'll get that same
clunky WordPress install experience that you get at TinkerHost. Up to this point, I was
really enjoying FreeHost, but unfortunately after
installing WordPress I ran into a major limitation. They charge a $30 one-time
fee just to enable SSL. This is absolutely ridiculous, because I was already
using CloudFlare DNS, which provides a free SSL certificate. And you can even see here
the SSL certificate provided by CloudFlare is valid and functioning.
Otherwise, it wouldn't have
that lock icon in the browser. FreeHost is literally
putting an artificial lock on SSL just to get more
money out of people. I don't think anyone
should ever have to pay for an SSL certificate. There's so many ways to get them for free, such as through CloudFlare. And this is the first time
I've ever seen a web host put an artificial lock on
the ability to use HTTPS. I've not even seen this craziness out of hosts like GoDaddy or Bluehost, which are known for doing shady stuff to sell you things you don't need.
FreeHost also has some other
frustrating limitations, like no free Subdomains, so you have to connect a top level domain to get started with your website. They also charge these
ridiculous $20 to $30 one-time fees to unlock access to features like PHP version selector,
PHP mail, Cron jobs, and SSH access. Due to these unnecessary limitations. I can't recommend FreeHosting, even though it has impressively
high account limits. If you're looking for
truly free web hosting I think you'd be better off at TinkerHost, where you don't have to pay
just to access simple features. Now, there's a ton of free
hosting options out there. If you Google it and look
around you'll probably be surprised at just how many there are, but I wanted to look at the most popular and credible options in my testing.
Another popular option is InfinityFree, and as I started testing it, I noticed that it's also
powered by iFastNet, the same host that powers TinkerHost. This got me thinking, is
there some sort of pattern? Are these owned by the same company? One of my biggest questions
about free web hosting is why? Why would a company offer it? What's the catch? When I started looking into
iFastNet, it all made sense. I went to their website
and I noticed this link in the footer to MyOwnFreeHost.net. The site advertises a
full service solution to launch your own free web host, and earn money through
ads in the client portal, as well as affiliate commissions
when someone upgrades to premium hosting at iFastNet.
If this sounds familiar, this is exactly what I believe TinkerHost and InfinityFree are using. iFastNet is providing free hosting accounts to all of their customers and TinkerHost and InfinityFree both make money off of the
ads in the client portal, plus they're sending
paid business to iFastNet for anyone who upgrades
to a premium account. So it looks like iFastNet
has an aggressive affiliate strategy of letting anyone start their own free hosting company. While iFastNet provides the
hosting in hopes that enough of those customers will
convert to premium customers at iFastNet and then
it makes sense for them and it's a profitable business model. This is the exact same model 000webhost is using with Hostinger.
Except 000webhost is owned
by Hostinger directly, so they've effectively
cut out the middleman. So, all free web hosts exist to ultimately sell you premium hosting. And that's the answer to the
question why these companies are offering a free trial
in hopes that you eventually convert to a paid customer at
their recommended provider. And that strategy remains true
for Oracle Cloud's free tier. This is an enthusiast free hosting option that I wanted to give
an honorable mention.
Oracle Cloud offers a free
VPS with 24 gigabytes of RAM. This can be used to host a website, but it's definitely for enthusiasts with the background in
server administration. You're gonna have to
pick an operating system and handle all the system
administration by yourself. This is not going to be
a fit for most people, but if you're good with servers, it's a great option for
free powerful web hosting. And if you're just looking
to tinker with WordPress you may not need web hosting at all. Solutions like Local WP allow
you to run WordPress locally on your computer without
the need for a server.
This solution is actually extremely fast, because you don't have
the lag time of waiting for files to download from a server. Every time you click to a different page. You can even upload cloud
backups to Google Drive and Dropbox. Local is owned by WP Engine
so you can deploy your site with one click to WP
Engine or Flywheel hosting. For other hosts, you are
gonna have to manually upload your files via SFTP, but this is not that difficult
as there's an export button that puts all your website files and my SQL database in
a compressed zip file.
Ultimately, you may
outgrow the limitations of free hosting accounts. If you are at a point where it makes sense to upgrade to paid hosting. I've got an entire comparison video of my top web hosts here..
