How to Host and Test your Website for Free

Is any of this your scenario?

1. You need to make your first website and you are in search of budget-friendly hosting options.
2. You want cheap hosting exclusively for website testing purposes.
3. You have no desire to set up a domain name with your name and address.
4. You want to make a small business website and eventually upgrade it according to requirements

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, keep reading.

We are going to show you how you can host and test your website for free and compare several free web hosting services.

Is it possible to host a website for free?

Website hosting and a domain name are two main requirements when building a website. First is a safe online space for your website making it accessible to people who wants to visit it. Second is the name of your web page.

Usually, both of them cost some money.

But, is it possible to get it for free?

We will not raise your hopes up. It is possible to find hosting providers that offer host packages for free (and we’re gonna list them below) but you still must pay for a domain name, website theme, or something else.

There is no completely free website. You’re paying for it, either with money or time and often both.

We recommend you be extra careful when choosing free hosting. There are free for a reason.

Usually, it’s a smaller bandwidth which causes slow page-load speed for your website. Uptime can also be atrocious. They will flood your web page with ads that make it look unattractive and leery.

So, if you want a small new website and you have a tight budget, we recommend that you better find a low-cost provider. Like that, you’ll get better performance and avoid the chance your web host disappears any day. The last thing you want is your web page unavailable because of some delay.

For all others, and by that we especially mean people who just want to play with and test website options, free hosting is not an awful idea. People use them just for ‘rehearsal’ and almost never professionally.  When there is more traffic, we suggest you pay for a hosting service for better performance.

What to look for in free hosting providers

Even if your website is just for testing, you always want to make sure the service you’re picking is good.

There are some unwritten rules when it comes to hosting providers, minimum standards that have to be satisfied.

First, you want user-friendly software, easy to manage. You don’t want a too complicated solution that will make you give in the middle of the process.

The second criterium is the power to build. Look for tools that can build a good website and offer easy installation of more advanced applications, WordPress in particular. Connected with that, there are storage and bandwidth.

Make sure you have enough storage space and that your website will not suffer downtime due to insufficient capacity. Read carefully all the specifications and check references and proven track record of the choice you’re going to make.

And last, ads. They can frustrate and make your website look cheap. If possible, search for the hosting providers who are ad-free.

We could add more details, for example, 24/7 technical support if you are insecure in your technical knowledge and you know you’ll need help.

Based on these criteria we are going to suggest the five best free hosting providers.

Best free hosting providers in 2020

To save you some time and suggest the best options on the market we listed the 5 best free hosting providers in 2020. They are tested and proved and differ in tiny details.

Let’s check them all.

1. 000webhost

Definitely the most popular free web hosting existing for more than 11 years.

Significant features:

• standard cPanel with PHP & MySQL
• one-click WordPress Installation
• 10GB Bandwidth
• no ads

They promise 99.9% uptime but it’s weaker than that. Expert at least an hour of downtime every other week on your website. That is its biggest flaw.

2. Award Space

Another old-timer in the industry. The best thing about it is a free short domain name that comes with the hosting package but there are some space and bandwidth limitations and no uptime guarantee.

Features:

• Free 1GB disk space
• 5GB free bandwidth
• cPanel DEMO
• easy WordPress Installer
• 1 Domain hosting
• Email sending
• ad-free

3. Freehostia

This one is great for making a fine WordPress site. The biggest problem with it is the restrictions on storage and bandwidth.

Features:

• 1 click applications Installer for Joomla, WordPress and others
• 250MB Disk Space
• 6GB Bandwidth.
• 24/7 Customer Support.
• no setup charges
• ad-free
• free website templates
• uptime guarantee 99.9%

4. 5GBfree

We can say 5GB free offers standard features as other free hosting providers. Regretfully, they don’t mention any uptime guarantee but there are options to back up your files.

Features:

• Storage 5GB
• 20GB bandwidth
• cPanel and PHP, MySQL database support
• ad-free

5. x10 Hosting

This hosting provider surely grabs attention with the word unlimited. Disk space and bandwidth are unmetered and you also get a free domain name on top of the free hosting package.

Other features:

• Free cPanel and website builder
• fast SSD drives
• one-click installer
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited disk space

All of these providers have the ability to upgrade your plan from free to premium once it starts getting a lot of traffic. That’s when you may have a problem with bandwidth, CPU, or memory so our suggestion, once again, is to consider a paid option.

How to host and test your website for free

Now that we figured out why should or shouldn’t use free website hosting and where to find a reliable one, it’s time to see how you can do it.

We picked 000webhosting as our example and we’re going to show you the step-by-step process.

So, let us begin.

Step1: Go to the hosting provider’s page

As you can see, when you go to the 000webhosting page, a free option is listed among others.

Step2:  Click on the ‘free sign up’ button.

Step3: Sign up with your email and password (you’ll have to verify your email address)

Step 4: Pick your web name

Step5: Choose the way you’re going to build your website.

Note: if you pick their website builder, the new tab with open with the software called Zyro. Through it, you can build your website. The best option for you and the most common one is to install WordPress. We suggest you do that.

Step6: Wait for some magic.

When you select the ‘Install WordPress’ button, all you have to do is sit back and relax. The hosting provider will install WordPress and everything you need.

Step7: Arrange your website

Voila, you’re done.

You can start with building, testing, and playing with your website.

If you’re not sure how to do that, check one of our previous articles. We described how you can build a website with WordPress.