As we know, the web hosting services can be either free or paid, and of course the free one is more attractive as you do not need to spend even one penny on it. However, does it meet all your demands? The answer is definitely NOT.
To help you get a clear understanding of free web hosting services, in this article, our editors have selected the top 5 free web hosting providers, and unveiled some secrets of their hosting services.
Top 5 Free Web Hosts
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Fortune City
Fortune City is the leading free web hosts in the market, providing a cost-free and advertising-supported web hosting service with full FTP, 100MB disk storage, free blog and site builders, and online file management. To be honest, this web host is an ideal option for the first-time webmasters, as it offers a simple, template-based builder which is easy to use and fully customizable. However, as the URL is one of the demanding factors for a popular website, Fortune City customers always receive an embarrassingly lengthy name which includes the name of the company, as well as some slashes, colons, and letters. This type of URL is less professional and more difficult to remember than a standard URL. That is why the majority of websites hosted with this company normally don’t get a high ranking on the search engines. -
HelioHost
Heliohost is a rich-featured free web hosting company, which offers almost all the typical features, such as cPanel, Apache, PHP, ruby on rails, Java/JSP, SSL, remote MySQL, advanced DNS manager, and more. But how can they afford to offer such a large number of features at no cost? By putting advertisements, of course. Therefore, once sign up with this web host, customers will surely have to come across tremendous banners and pop-ups flashing on their website. This is quite annoying, and will irritate the site visitors, so customers may lose their valuable website traffic. -
FreeHostingEU
This web host offers professional and absolutely free hosting services with 200 MB of disk space and 4000 MB of data transfer each month. Some of the main features included in the hosting packages are PHP, MySQL, CGI, Perl, Flash support, Pop3/Imap, SMTP access, Webmail, FTP Account, Web-based file manager, Online File manager, Front page, etc. Moreover, it provides 5 short domain names like www.yourdomain.eu.pn, which is more SEO friendly than the domain offered by many other free web hosts. However, the support system offered by this web host is not helpful at all, so customers cannot be sure of getting the necessary help in cases they have some problems or questions to ask. We have sent them an e-mail asking about domain transfer, and get the reply after 1 day with a very complicated and unprofessional answer. Besides, FreeHostingEU does not provide phone call support which is available at most web hosts in the market. -
Biz.ht
Biz.ht provides eco-friendly free web hosting services with some advanced technologies like PHP5, MySQL5, CGI databases, Ruby on rail, and more. It offers a number of free domain names included with each free hosting package, which is a huge benefit for customers. However, the major drawback of this web host is that customers with Biz.ht have less security than with a paid web host. Generally, some security tools must be provided by the hosting companies to ensure complete protection to customers’ websites and applications, but this sort of security feature is limited when it comes to Biz.ht as compared to paid alternatives. Besides, as there are too many advertisements being placed in customers’ websites, the chances of being spammed and hacked are always high. -
ServersFree
Serversfree provides professional free hosting servers with many attractive features like 100GB of bandwidth, 10GB of disk space, PHP, MySQL, Custom Cron jobs, .htaccess support, FTP, cPanel, etc. Besides, it offers easy to use website builder, with which customers can create their websites on the free servers in minutes, without any coding or design knowledge. Even an elementary student can build websites like a PRO. However, websites hosted with this company can hardly have a good online performance. ServersFree does not have any limit on the number of customers sharing the server, so this will make the server be crowded with many websites, and once there is a problem in one of the websites on the server, it will create a negative impact on all other websites. That’s the main reason why many ServersFree customers encounter frequent website downtime and slowness.
The Better Choices
To be honest, free web hosts may be ideal for you if you’re practicing your webmaster skills, but if you are looking to have a worthy web presence, it’s a good idea to pay for reliable and cheap web hosting services, such as BlueHost, WebHostingHub, and Arvixe.
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BlueHost
BlueHost is undoubtedly one of the leading web hosts worldwide. Founded in 1996, it has a long track record in offering fast and reliable hosting services. The company sets the price starting at $3.95/mo for visitors going through this exclusive link. Moreover, with the anytime money back guarantee, customers are totally risk-free and worry-free to sign up a long term billing circle. With the 3-year plan, customers can save as high as $108.In terms of hosting performance, BlueHost guarantees a 99.9% uptime and fast page loading speed by leveraging the power of the self-built datacenter, 100% Dell servers, and the latest advanced technologies like CPU Segregation Technology and Resource Protection.
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WebHostingHub
WebHostingHub is a large web hosting company with with 2 data centers powering customers’ websites. It has 3 web hosting plans named as Spark, Nitro, and Dynamo, which has been priced from $1.95/mo for visitors subscribing through this promotional link.All of the 3 plans include almost all the latest cutting-edge technologies on Linux platform, such as unlimited disk space and bandwidth, powerful cPanel control panel, CGI, fast CGI, PHP 5, and more. Besides, in order to ensure maximum uptime and swift hosting speed, WebHostingHub only uses quality servers from Dell.
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Arvixe
Arvixe has been recommended as the best cheap web host for over 10 years. By paying just $2.8 each month, customers can get a free domain name for life, powerful cPanel, Cloudflare CDN, Softaculous Script Installer, as well as a large volume of server resources and unlimited databases.Besides, Arvixe customers never need to worry about their website online performance, as the uptime is guaranteed to 99.9%, and server response time is as fast as 399ms averagely. In addition, Arvixe also pays attention to the customer service. It hires 200+ professional and experienced support representatives who are accessible 24/7 to resolve customers’ problems. Customers can contact them via phone call, live chat and email.