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Free is just about everyone’s favorite word. So, we compared the best free web hosting options available for you. 75 hours of research and hundreds of reviews later, we unearthed what really matters to folks looking for free web hosting. In the end, Wix is the best free hosting for most people. Getting started is effortless and it comes with a flexible site builder and a massive amount of reliable features you’d have to pay to get from others.
The Best Free Web Hosting for Most
Wix
Best for Most
With a free SSL certificate, dozens of templates, and an intuitive website builder included, Wix provides the most features and customization options of any free web hosting platform.
It’s almost unbelievable how amazing Wix’s free web hosting solution is. But then you see how many people use it and know they can’t all be wrong. With Wix’s no-cost website builder, you get free hosting included, alongside over 970 designer-created templates.
But they don’t stop there. Wix gives you so much that you’ll think, “C’mon, when is the bill coming?” But it never does. You get automatic backups, SSL protection, and some of the fastest load speeds in the free hosting category, among many other great features.
The Best Free Web Hosting Options to Consider
- Wix – Best for most
- Google Sites – Best for hosting an extremely simple site
- Notion – Best for personal portfolio or resume sites
- Weebly – Best for free hosting with no ads
- Strikingly – Best for a free one-product ecommerce site
When It Makes Sense to Invest In Free Web Hosting
How did you feel the last time you got something of value for free? It’s rare, but not impossible. If you’re creating a website or online store and need to keep costs low, free web hosting is a great option.
And you can find incredible value if you know where to look. Crazy Egg to the rescue.
Most people consider free hosting when they have an idea for a site and maybe did a little research on shared hosting. Now, they want to see if there’s any free way to get the same results.
Most look for plans that fit their needs then figure out how to build their site on that host.
But for simpler needs, you can employ a different approach一find a good website builder that throws in web hosting for free. This is the basis of free web hosting.
However, there is one exception in our reviews, as you will soon see below.
Now, we all know the truth of “you get what you pay for.” With free web hosting, it’s no different.
The fact is, if you’re planning on creating a growing site that’s expecting a lot of traffic, you’re better off going with a paid hosting plan from the likes of affordable providers like Hostinger, DreamHost, or GreenGeeks.
We have plenty of articles on this topic, covering everything from shared hosting, to VPS hosting and dedicated server options.
For small projects, landing pages, small local businesses, or other simple website needs, then the free route can work for you. In brief, free web hosting only makes sense for a small group of websites.
And, if it’s your first time creating a website and you’d like to experiment with free hosting options first, then just about anything we recommend on this list can do the job.
#1 – Wix — The Best for Most
Wix
Best for Most
With a free SSL certificate, dozens of templates, and an intuitive website builder included, Wix provides the most features and customization options of any free web hosting platform.
Overall Score: 3.8/5
Wix gives you the fastest way to build a reliable and functional website free of charge.
Aside from a web store (which you have to pay for a Wix plan to build), you can create just about any type of website. From an online portfolio or event page to gather RSVPs to a simple business site or blog, Wix makes it easy to build and kicks in free web hosting to boot.
Plus, you get full design freedom with one of the most flexible drag-and-drop editors we’ve seen. That, combined with Wix’s 976 site templates, make it hard to end up with the same look and feel as other sites in your industry.
Let’s look at how well they did on all our tests.
- Functionality: 3.5/5
- Ease of use: 4/5
- Templates: 4/5
- Design flexibility: 4/5
- Limitations: 3/5
Functionality: 3.5/5 – Wix gives you way more than you’d ever expect in a free plan. It comes with a wide range of built-in business tools, including 29 in-house apps, 18 of which are completely free.
When looking at functionality, Wix ticked off three and a half of our five boxes. The free platform supports payment processing for invoices, marketing tools, event management (minus selling tickets), and basic menu features for restaurants.
The thing with Wix’s payment processing, though, is you can’t accept online payment for ecommerce products, but you can create up to five recurring payments via invoice for any services you offer.
So we gave Wix half a point for this.
To create an invoice, all you have to do is click on Finances in the left-hand sidebar of your dashboard, then click Invoices. From there, you can manage your existing invoices and create new ones.
You can choose from a single payment—with an issue and due date—or a recurring invoice.
Wix also gives you built-in marketing tools like its robust blogging platform, free email and social media tools, a chat box for customer support, and basic video creation.
Wix is very clever in making sure you don’t have to look elsewhere to market your website effectively. And all the tools are ready for use from day one.
The blogging platform is flexible, easy to use, and customizable. You can decide how your blog posts look, add new posts, edit and manage them, and customize your blogroll. They also have some layout features that let you categorize your posts.
Moving on to email marketing, you can send up to three campaigns and up to 5,000 total emails per month. Since you’re on the free plan, all of your emails at the bottom will have “Created with Ascend by Wix.” It’s a little tacky, but not too distracting.
The free plan comes with a drag-and-drop email builder, so you can easily create beautiful emails in a few minutes with the pre-built templates they give you.
When it’s time to build your reputation on social media, Wix’s social media features include a drag-and-drop post builder (similar to Canva) where you can create social media posts for different platforms.
You can even publish them straight to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter right from Wix. You get up to three per month on the free plan.
The last few stand-out features are the video creator, event management, and restaurant menu builder. They all are more than enough if you want to create something basic.
The free plan lets you create up to four videos for free, download them and use them wherever you want. Put it on YouTube or Facebook or add it right to your website. The choice is yours.
Wix also helps you with event management. If you host parties, weddings, or other RSVP events that are free to attend, Wix’s event management features are more than enough.
Just add the Wix Events app to your site. When you do, you get a new option in the site editor to add an upcoming events section.
And if you’re in the restaurant industry, you can quickly set up a menu for your visitors to feast their eyes on.
Wix’s free plan includes a menu builder. But, to be clear, your visitors can’t order online or pay you online. Unfortunately you can’t make reservations either.
To set it up, add the Wix Menu app to your site inside the editor. Once you’ve added it, you can start customizing your menu. You’ll start with a demo menu that you can either delete or update to match your own.
In the end Wix gives you so much functionality for free, you’ll wonder how they make any money at all.
Ease of use: 4/5 – Wix is incredibly easy to use. The only reason they didn’t score a perfect 5/5 is because it’s not immediately clear what features you can and can’t use for free. It’s really easy to add a paid app by accident. We actually give you details about this in our customer support experience below.
As we went through the process of setting up our test Wix site, we focused on every little thing to pass our findings on to you.
When you first log into your dashboard, Wix has a getting started guide you can follow step by step. That makes your life so much easier when you set up your site..
What’s great about this dashboard is you can add special applications right within it that add new functionality. Include a podcast player, website search, or menus for your visitors to use when they arrive on your site.
And when you do, they are also added to the getting started checklist. So, you get instant guidance when you apply the new apps一you’re not left in the dark on how to implement and use them.
When using the editor itself, there are a few quirky things we found. One is sizing your sections一it’s not automatic and you have to drag the edges of the section up or down to size them. But, it’s nothing you won’t get used to in a few minutes.
Here’s what the editor looks like:
You can move elements anywhere you’d like by clicking and dragging them.
To change an element’s design, all you have to do is click on them. After doing that, you’ll see a small menu appear that lets you open up an additional customization box.
Depending on the element you’re editing, the customization box will have different options.
You can easily edit anything on the page individually or use the global color and font options to change your entire site in a few clicks.
To add something new, just click the plus sign in the top left corner. From there, you can choose from hundreds of design elements and add them to your site in one click.
There are numerous prebuilt sections that look great out of the box, such as homepages, contact sections, and color schemes that are ready to use with zero tweaks needed.
Managing your site media is simple, too.
You can access the Wix media file manager from the site editor or when you want to add an image to your site. It stores all of the files you’ve uploaded in the past so you can easily access them again and add them elsewhere.
Wix is fully integrated with several stock image sites. Without leaving your editor, you can search through Wix and Unsplash for free images. You can also use Shutterstock for more professional image options. Just keep in mind you will have to pay for them.
When you need help because something isn’t working, Wix gives you a massive library of tutorials, guides, and videos to show you everything you need to know about the editor. You can even access these tutorials right from the editor itself.
The knowledge base is extensive, covering a wide range of topics and frequent issues or questions.
See for yourself:
If you need further help or can’t find what you need there, you can contact Wix support and request assistance via your preferred communication method.
When testing the menu capability, we accidentally added the paid ordering feature and it wasn’t apparent how to remove it afterward. So, since we needed to test on only free elements (and didn’t want to get charged ourselves), we reached out to Wix support for help.
Wix’s support was helpful, answered our questions within eight minutes, and they didn’t try to get us to upgrade to a paid plan
Despite the service being free, we were surprised at how fast a rep connected and how friendly and helpful they were.
Templates: 4/5 – With a ton of high-quality templates to start from, Wix only lost one point for this section because switching templates is not simple and easy.
Once you start with one, the only option is starting over if you want to use a different template. If you want to explore different templates, you can’t easily preview or switch from one to another.
The good news is that you can create a new site without deleting your current site. So, you can choose a new template and then copy and paste the content from your existing site to the other if you want to test a different look out.
And you won’t run out of options to try. Wix gives you 976 templates to use, all free to use.
If you think you’ll get confused or overwhelmed by choices, don’t sweat that either. There are tons of filters and drop-down menus to help you sort through them and find the best options for the type of website you want to build.
We have yet to find a template we thought looked bad. You are not sifting through designs from the early 2000s. These are crafted with today’s best practices that ooze style.
Here are a few examples of templates for cafe and bakery sites:
And six more from focused on coaching and consulting:
They’re all very distinct, no templates appear to be fundamentally the same as another with just a new picture and color scheme. These are really tailored to different needs and industries.
What is even better than having all these template options? Being able to make them your own with customization.
All you need to do is hit the edit button and you can drag and drop and add and subtract from them to meet your standards.
One thing that makes Wix stand out from the other page builders on our list is that you get full control over how templates look on mobile. And while they look great out of the box, you can make small tweaks to really squeeze the beauty of these templates out even further on mobile device displays.
To switch to mobile editing, all you have to do is click the mobile icon at the top left of the editor.
When you first open the mobile editor, you’ll have the option to change your mobile header. There are four options to choose from. You can also position your quick action buttons, place chat and Facebook Messenger, and enable or disable a back to top button.
After that, you can start editing your mobile site with just as much ease as your desktop version without worrying about changes affecting your desktop site.
It’s marvelous how simple this is. Your site on mobile will be a user experience dream, even if you have no experience with mobile website development.
Design flexibility: 4/5 – The design flexibility of Wix is exquisite and can be seen from the moment you start using the editor. They only lost a point because there’s no option to edit a theme’s code.
But that’s no big deal for most users, who don’t even want to bother with coding elements anyway.
Manipulate the size, color, and location of elements easily. Wix even lets you make site-wide adjustments to design with the click of a button.
Wix is the only page builder on our list that doesn’t have predefined columns or snap-to locations. You can create your own overlaps or other custom design elements. You have full control over where things go.
You can even create your own reusable layouts and sections that you can add to other pages of your site.
Wix is also one of the few options that lets you upload and use premium fonts or custom-designed fonts for free. There are not many providers that allow you to do this for free.
To upload them, go to the theme manager section of the editor (the “A” symbol that’s two icons below the plus sign). Click on Text. Then, click on whichever type of heading or text style you’d like to change.
You can upload a custom font for any of them. After the customize box opens, click the blue drop-down arrow next to the current font name. From there, you’ll see the option at the bottom to upload your own font.
Now, you don’t have to accept plain and boring looking fonts for your site or have to pick a template based on the fonts it uses. It gives you an easy way for your site to look like no one else’s, even if they’re using the same theme or template. Plus, you can truly match fonts to your brand identity if your site is for a business or organization
Limitations: 3/5 – Among all the great things Wix gives you, it is a free plan. So it inherently comes with some limitations.
The biggest downside to Wix is not being able to connect a custom domain name to your free plan. This is more common than not with free hosting and site building platforms.
You also can’t upload and use your own favicon, that little icon visitors see on their browser tab..
Wix puts one ad at the top of your website, which does give away that you’re using a free plan..
Another key limitation is that there is no option for ecommerce on the free plan.That’s disappointing, but you can’t get everything for free. It’s also pretty common in this category. You either get no ecommerce support or very limited site-building features.
You also only get 500 MB of storage space. That’s not a lot.
So, even though you have no limit on the amount of pages you can build, keep in mind your storage is very limited. You can’t go wild with videos on your site, for example, with only 500 MB of storage.
Also you might have to clean your media library from time to time to free up space. Both are nuisances but not total deal breakers unless you’re, say, a visual artist who wants to post tons of images and videos.
On the plus side, Wix doesn’t interfere with your dashboard with any ads.
Often, speed is a limitation with free web hosting that comes with site builders. Wix has a stellar built-in caching program that makes your site faster.
Ours loaded in less than one second on average—840 milliseconds, to be exact. That’sreally fast for free hosting.
Here’s a screen grab of our first speed test:
The site hadn’t been cached yet since this bot was the first visitor, so this instance was well over one second. The next two speed tests returned load times of 630 and 440 milliseconds.
So, after the site was cached, it loaded much faster.
Since the average time was under two seconds, Wix scored a point for this.
One thing Wix does suffer from is the clarity on what you can and can’t do on the free plan. You have to dig and play around with different features to figure it out.
So it would be nicer to have a list clearly showing you what is free.
In conclusion, if your site stays small, you don’t expect thousands of visitors per day, and you don’t want to sell anything online, you can use Wix’s highly flexible free plan forever and get a great site out of it.
#2 – Google Sites — The Best for Hosting An Extremely Simple Site
Google Sites
Best for hosting an extremely simple site
If Google is known for one thing besides search engines, it’s making things simple. Google Sites is no exception. Set up your easy, collaborative, free site in minutes.
Often, simplicity goes a long way. And Google knows that. With Google Sites, you can create a website through your existing Google account and get it up and running in record time. And yes, all for free.
You can design your header, embed images, add buttons and dividers, text, and more with its easy-to-use dashboard. One of the best perks? It allows you to collaborate with others when building the site—much like you’d collaborate on a Google document. Once created, you can publish the site to everyone or only choose to share it with a select group of people.
In short, your Google site is essentially a group of cohesive interlinked files people can access with a link. As far as custom URLs go, you can easily buy your own custom domain name and attach it to your Google site.
The value you get for free with Google Sites is a lot more than I can say for a lot of free hosting solutions out there. And a big plus is how ridiculously easy it is to get started.
Ready to get started with Google Sites? Create a free website with Google here.
#3 – Notion — The Best for Personal Portfolio Or Resume Sites
Notion
Best for personal portfolio or resume sites
Put the power of Notion behind your site by turning your resume or portfolio into a professional page, no web hosting, themes, or ads necessary. All for free.
You might know Notion as the viral note-taking and task list application that everyone seems to be using. But surprise! You can also use it as a free hosting option to design and publish a personal portfolio or resume—what essentially becomes a personal website.
Once you create your personal portfolio with Notion’s various easy-to-use design tools, you can hit the publish button, grab the link, and share the page (or set of pages) with anyone. There are plenty of examples and templates of people that do this all the time— no paying for hosting, a theme, or any of that other stuff necessary.
With the free plan, you can create, interlink, and publish as many pages as you want. However, if you level up to its $4 a month plan, your published resume or portfolio will be able to be indexed by Google to be found in SERPs.
It’s a pretty great way to get a quick resume or portfolio up and accessible for prospective employers that you can easily update. And it’s hosted by Notion for free. Amazing.
#4 – Weebly — The Best for Free Hosting With No Ads
Weebly
Best for free hosting with no ads
Weebly looks almost as good as Wix and does ecommerce almost as well as Strikingly. What makes it better? No ads
A lot of free hosting providers come with a small caveat for hosting your site for free: they automatically install ads on your site once it’s live. Weebly helps you get around that—as it lets you create a free website ad-free.
Weebly is one of those free hosting providers that come with an easy website builder, so you can be off to an easy start. Its templates stand out as modern and sleek, so if you decide to go the Weebly route, you know you’re in for a great-looking finished product. It also comes with free SSL security, so one less thing to spend money on.
Though I qualified Weebly as a great free hosting solution to build a site for free without ads, Weebly is also a stellar free choice for ecommerce sites selling several physical products. Though if you want to sell digital products, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan.
#5 – Strikingly — The Best for A Free One Product Ecommerce Site
Strikingly
Best for a free one-product ecommerce site
Strikingly includes shipping, coupons, memberships, analytics, and 24/7 customer support, all for free. For a free ecommerce site, it’s your best bet.
Sometimes, you need to build a website that sells something. The solution? Strikingly. With it, you can say goodbye to needing coding or design skills, and gain a place where you can create a beautiful ecommerce site in minutes.
Once you host your site with Strikingly, you’ll have access to built-in shipping tools, coupons, and even membership logins. It even comes with newsletter tools, to ensure you keep your site’s audience engaged.
HTTPS is automatically included with your site as well as analytics to measure your site’s progress as it grows. To top it all off, it even offers around-the-clock support. It comes with 5GB of monthly bandwidth, 500 MB of storage, and you can build as many sites as you want with its many templates. The downside? You’re only able to list one product per site.
In short, if you’re looking to set up an extremely simple ecommerce site that sells one thing without having to pay for hosting, Strikingly is a pretty great option. All you have to do is connect your PayPal to start collecting payments.
To get started, you can head here and create a free account.
Methodology for Choosing the Best Free Web Hosting
The best way to choose the best free web hosting option out there? Don’t, and instead go with the cheap paid route. That’s what we advise anyone who asks—simply because a paid plan automatically upgrades you to the hosting resources and features need to create and publish a professional site successfully.
All sarcasm aside, what should you really look for if you’ve made up your mind about going the paid route? For starters, you want to make things as easy as possible on yourself. Any extra perks, like a website builder, that a free web host provides is a bonus and one less thing you have to integrate a third-party tool to do.
However, here are a few key factors you’ll want to think through before jumping to any final conclusions.
Bandwidth
If you’re hosting a website for free, the more bandwidth you have access to, the better. This way you’re minimizing your site’s downtime and your website can load faster than people visit it. A generous amount of bandwidth can mark the difference between an accessible site and a site that takes too long to load or that comes across as low quality.
When you’re checking out free web hosting solutions, take note of bandwidth. It’s a key usability factor that will affect your site for the duration of its free plan.
Website Builder
Does your free web hosting plan come with a website builder? A built-in site builder makes it easy to build a website off a template or from scratch without having to know advanced web design or worse, having to invest in a paid theme.
It can help you get through the learning curve that comes with putting together a functional and presentable website that gets the job done. The easier and more intuitive your free web host can be the easier time you’ll have bringing your site to life.
Ads
Depending on how you slice it, ads can be a minor con when you’re looking for a reliable free hosting solution. Some free hosts depend on the automatic ad insertion on your site to make a profit. For the most part, they can play in the background without being too intrusive.
Other providers are generous enough to not force ads onto your site’s pages. If you decide ads are going to take away from the overall experience of your site, you’ll have to carefully consider your options as you opt for a hosting provider that omits them. Though keep in mind, no ads might mean you’ll have to compromise elsewhere. With free plans, it’s almost always a case of compromising and weighing your overall options. Again, it’s why we recommend you start with the lowest possible paid plan instead.
Wix
Best for Most
With a free SSL certificate, dozens of templates, and an intuitive website builder included, Wix provides the most features and customization options of any free web hosting platform.
Summary
There are lots of free hosting solutions out there, but not all of them are built equally. You’ll want to consider your choices carefully before deciding.
Here’s a quick recap to help with that:
Wix takes first place as the most well-rounded and easy-to-use free hosting option for anyone out there trying to start a website without paying for any hosting costs. Strikingly is great for building a one-product ecommerce site while Weebly is a great option if you want free web hosting that won’t automatically insert ads on your pages.
Google Sites is a great option if you want to publish a super simple website. And last but not least, Notion can be a great free option for anyone wanting to build a resume or portfolio website to showcase their work to potential employers.
