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In this article, I will show you how to host a WordPress website for free. Free Domain and Free Hosting, saving you hundreds of dollars on web hosting per year. I signed up and tested the most popular free hosting services and pick the top 2 for you.
Criteria for best web hosting review
A custom domain name is an essential step when creating a website. It helps to build trust with your audience and strengthens your brand name. Automatic add placement is a trade-off when using most free hosting plans. Web hosting companies have huge ongoing expenses to keep the lights on. The easiest way for them to cover the overheads is by displaying advertisements to your users.
Server response time, Bandwidth, and Storage are common limitations for free web hosting plans.
With a slow server response time, 15s webmaster tasks can take up to 5 mins or more. Installing plugins or themes becomes a long and complex task not suited for beginners. Furthermore, slow server speed is a critical factor for poor website performance.
The amount of bandwidth directly affects the website load time. Websites that rely on media elements like video, audio, and images require more bandwidth.
Limited file storage will eventually force you to upgrade to their paid plan. Storage restriction is not entirely a bad thing because the system allows you to try before buying.
Is Free web hosting any good?
Yes, but not for everyone. We can agree that something for nothing is a great deal! But don’t expect much from a free web hosting service. Free web hosting is perfect for hobby bloggers or for creating a learning environment. If you are planning to create a profitable website, free hosting is a great way to get started. But your needs will quickly outgrow the server resource limitations.
Free web hosting does not have a visible money price. Instead, web owners pay with compromising user experience. The companies offering free web hosting need to make money somehow or they will go out of business. They generate revenue by either displaying ads to your users or limiting server recourses and forcing you to upgrade to a paid plan. Most ads served are irrelevant, providing a bad user experience. And you make zero from the ad revenue.
Is free hosting trustworthy?
Yes, but not all. Paid service providers have customers to keep happy, whereas free providers have no incentive to provide customer support. If you don’t pay for a service, you lose the right to complain about service delivery. Furthermore, some shady free providers sell sensitive user data like emails to marketers to cover overheads.
How does free hosting stack up with paid?
Reliability and consistency are the most notable differences between paid and free web hosting. Free web hosting has less server uptime.
Search engine ranking might be affected when using free hosting services.
Some free service providers display irrelevant ads or unprofessional branded links to users.
Technical support is critical to a successful online business. Free web hosting is known for its lack of support because of funding.
Often you need technical server support to configure or uncover issues. Without technical support, you are stuck solving complex server issues instead of focusing on business growth.
Bandwidth and storage space is other critical limitation with free hosting.
Vital server resources need technical know-how and infrastructure.
Only paid service providers have the means to provide substantial server resources.
Which Paid web hosting is the best value for money?
The most important factors to consider when choosing paid Web hosting is performance and technical support.
Here are my two favorite paid hosting companies.
1. Blue Host
Main Features Pros
+ Uptime (99.96%)
+ Fast speed
+ One-Click-Install for WordPress
+ Easy to use
+ Free domain
+ 24/7 support
Bluehost is the most beginner-friendly WordPress hosting in terms of price and performance. They are well-known across the world and are officially recommended by WordPress. They offer Snufel users a 60% discount on hosting packages. You can start a website for $2.75 per month.
Who would use Bluehost?
Bluehost is perfect for entry-level small business websites and blogs. If you have a tight budget and are not expecting high traffic volumes, Bluehost is the best choice.
2. SiteGround
Main Features Pros
+ Lightning-fast Speed
+ Great uptime (99.99%)
+ Steller technical support
+ 20+ email accounts
- I’ve been using Siteground for the past two years for my clients and personal projects.
- They are known for their quality support and lightning-fast performance.
- They are offering Snufel users a 60% discount on hosting.
- You can start a website for $6.99 per month.
- They offer beginner-friendly one-click WordPress install with daily backups.
- Their unique control panel is easy to use with a short learning curve.
Who would use Siteground?
Siteground is perfect for blogs or eCommerce stores with medium to high traffic.
1.000webhost
If you are looking for standalone WordPress web hosting, 000webhost is the best free option on the market. 000webhost is owned by the well-known company Hostinger. They are not my first choice in paid hosting but are still a pretty decent service.
Free Plan Features
- One website
- User-Friendly control panel
- 300 MB of storage and 3 GB of bandwidth
- One-click WordPress installer
- 99% uptime
- Softaculous With 400 Scripts
- No Ads to website users
Creating an Account (Experience)
Creating a free account with 000webhost is simple and easy. The client dashboard has NO ads. And everything is laid out as expected. The client dashboard is extremely user-friendly and only offers the needed tools and options (simplicity). Connecting a domain name to your account is even easier.
You have the option to use your custom domain name or a free domain provided by 000webhost.
The free domain name format looks like this:
ridgiest-pat.000webhostapp.com
For this case study, I used the free domain provided by 000webhost.
Installing WordPress (Experience)
Once you have connected the domain to the hosting, you are ready to install WordPress. From the client dashboard home page, you have three only options for call to action available. The first option automatically logs the user into the custom cPanel (control panel).
In the cPanel, you get an option to install WordPress with one click. Their simplified custom cPanel is intuitive and easy to use. Within 5min I exactly know what to do and how to do it. The WordPress installation took less than 5mins.
Installing different WordPress themes. (Experience)
I tested the theme installation process with Wp Ocean and Porto themes.
For those who don’t know these themes, here is a quick overview.
Wp Ocean Theme is free and available to download from the WordPress depository from the WP admin dashboard. Wp Ocean is a basic lightweight theme with a 5MB file size.
Porto Theme is my recommended theme for WordPress beginners.
I have used it on multiple of my personal and client websites.
It is well-coded and has great customization flexibility.
The total web app file size is 130MB.
Installing WP Ocean Theme
I had no problem installing the Wp Ocean within a reasonable time frame.
Installing Porto Theme
Server resource restrictions made it impossible to install the proto theme via WordPress dashboards. Even after I increase the server upload limit. (Porto file size 130MB)
I proceeded to install the theme manually via the file manager. The zip file uploaded pretty quickly.
But the file manager gave unexpected errors when I tried to unzip the file.
After countless tries to unzip the small zip file (130MB), I had to admit defeat.
Summary of Theme Installation Process
Installing a lightweight free theme like WP Ocean is easy with a decent server upload and installation speed. Installing a heavier theme like Porto is more complex and not suited for beginners.
Creating a website with Elementor Web builder (Experience)
The plugin installation is a breeze and takes less than the 30s to install. Once you work on the front end with Elementor, everything responds as expected. I created a basic page layout within a couple of minutes, giving a great user experience.
000webhost Conclusion
I recommend 000webhost as the best free web host for WordPress. In the WordPress dashboard were massive advertising banners. But it is a small price to pay for overall decent free web hosting. The server responds fairly quickly, allowing you to get work done instead of waiting for the server to respond. The free plan has tight limitations, but you won’t find this hosting quality with any other free standalone hosting provider. 000webhost is a great platform to host a small WordPress website or hobby blog.
2.InfinityFree
InfinityFree is a well-known service that offers zero-cost standalone web hosting for your WordPress. After reviewing the features and benefits on their home page, it looks almost too good to be true. So, I opened an account and installed WordPress to put their claims to the test. Here is my finding.
Free Plan Features
- Unlimited Bandwidth and Disk Space
- Unlimited Subdomains
- Free SSL On All Domains
- 10 Email Accounts
- Softaculous With 400 Scripts
- No Ads to website users
Creating an Account (Experience)
Creating an account is pretty simple. The account email confirmation arrived within a respected time frame. Keeping in mind Infinityfree is a free service, a certain degree of client dashboard advertisement is acceptable. But having to cope with 50% to 60% advertisement density will test anyone’s patients. On the plus side, the user dashboard is minimalistic, which gives a good user experience.
Infinityfree allows custom domain names or the option to get a free domain name. The free domain is not great for brand trust reasons, but it does provide a quick way to set up a WordPress environment.
The free domain name is formatted as:
yoursite.epizy.com
In this case study, I used a domain name provided by Infinityfree.
Installing WordPress (Experience)
Once you have connected the domain to the hosting, you are ready to install WordPress. Infinityfree offers cPanel with all the necessary tools to manage the hosting. The control panel offers Softaculous. It is an auto script installer to simplify the installation of web apps like WordPress and Joomla.
The WordPress installation process took multiple tries because the server times out. After the third try, I finally got WordPress to install. The WordPress installation process took about 30min in total. The time frame is an indication of a slow server response. The same WordPress installation process with quality paid web hosting like Siteground will take no more than 5 min.
Installing WP Ocean Theme
I had no problem installing the theme in a reasonable time frame from the WordPress dashboard (wp-admin depository).
Installing Porto Theme
I first tried installing it via the WordPress dashboard but gave up on the idea after 45min. Theme installation problems are symptoms of insufficient server resources. Next, I moved on to install the Porto theme manually via the cPanel file manager. I soon give up on that dream because of file upload limitations and errors.
Not accepting defeat easily. I uploaded the 130MB zip file to the server via FTP. But to no surprise, the server kept timing out and made the file upload impossible.
Summary of Theme Installation Process
Installing a lightweight free theme like WP Ocean is easy with no complications. The installation process took longer than expected because of server response time. Installing a heavy theme like Porto is close to impossible. The installation process practices a high level of server knowledge. I don’t advise anyone to waste their time installing heavy-coded themes like Porto.
Creating a website with Elementor Web builder (Experience)
Installing Elementor from the WordPress depository took about 15min. Compared to 10s -15s on any decent web host like Siteground. The installation process failed multiple times because of limited server resources. (server times out). After installing Elementor I started to create a basic web page.
To no surprise, the server was unresponsive, which made it impossible to create a simple web page within 25min.
Infinityfree Conclusion
With the number of ads severed in the Infinityfree web host dashboard, you would expect a somewhat decent product. This is not the case. I know this is a free product but it feels like a false promise. In no way is the free version suited for a beginner. Tasks that take seconds on to average web host like Bluehost take hours on Infinityfree.
Who will use Infinityfree?
If you are tight with money and are willing to pay with your sanity, Infinityfree is perfect. For less than 3$ a month, you can get an entry-level hosting plan with Bluehost.