In the early days of the internet, free web hosting services were everywhere, from the likes GeoCities to even Internet Service providers giving a token amount of space. But as time has gone, it seems even iconic free hosts like 000webhost are shutting down. The reality is that while the web hosting scene is changing, there is still free and affordable alternatives.
1. Why Free Web Hosting is on the Decline
The decline of free and dirt cheap hosting services can be attributed to several factors, including:
- Increasing Costs of Server Maintenance & Licensing : Running a hosting service comes with hardware, bandwidth, and security costs. Changes in the industry such as popular web hosting software provider cPanel moving from ‘per server’ licencing to ‘per user’ massively increased the operating costs and viability from many providers to offer low cost hosting. This reality was further made worse with the increasing cost of wages for customer service staff and server administrators which further added to the rising costs.
- Ad Revenue Model Limitations: Many free web hosts previously relied on injecting ads and ad revenue to cover costs. However, users increasingly expecting an ad-free experiences and the uptake of adblockers, made it challenging for free hosts to maintain profitability.
- Increasing Customer Expectations: As websites became more sophisticated and relied upon, free hosts struggled to keep up with expectations such as poor website performance and support tickets taking weeks and months to be responded to, if at all. This lead to many ‘free’ providers pivoting to a paid model so they could expand and improve their offerings.
2. Free and nearly free Hosting Options: Do They Still Exist?
While traditional free web hosting is less common, several services still offer free and very cheap hosting options, though with limitations:
- GitHub Pages: GitHub commonly known for software development offers free hosting for personal projects and static websites. It works with custom domains and includes a SSL. IdeaSpot has a great video on this
- Cloudflare Pages: Better performing but a little more complex to setup, Cloudflare offers unlimited bandwidth for static websites and global CDN
- Netlify & Vercel: Both are popular among developers for static site hosting with commercial backing and scalability. It is worth noting Vercel does not allow you to monetise sites on their free plan.
- A2 Hosting: A2 offers affordable traditional shared hosting plans that supports WordPress and offer servers throughout the world
- Light Weight Hosting: Provides very affordable static website hosting, one of the key difference is they partially support dynamic content like PHP making them suitable for semi-dynamic sites
- Oracle Cloud Free Tier: If you are prepared to run your own Linux VPS, Oracle Free Tier is an attractive option to run your own web-server. CloudPanel is an excellent easy to use free panel for small web-servers
3. The Benefits of a Paid Hosting Plan
Free hosting can be attractive for those wanting to save money, however paid hosting does offer several advantages. Some of these include:
- Customer Support: Many free services do not offer customer support and require you to either figure out the problem on your own or use a community support forum. Paid hosting typically includes a way (email, ticket, livechat, phone) to get in touch with someone for help.
- Increased Performance: Paid hosts often offer faster speeds, even at entry-level plans. This is ‘free hosting providers’ are often overloaded/oversubscribed to reduce operating costs.
- Security: Many free hosts skimp on important features to cut costs or sell as an optional upgrade, good hosts almost always provide you with a free SSL certificate, have a team monitoring the health of its servers and have backups.
Final Thoughts: Is Free Web Space Dead?
While the heyday of entirely free, reliable web hosting may be gone, options still exist if you are prepared to be creative by making their site static, or migrating providers to take advantage of better offers.