Cheap hosting services are great for simple websites that don't need a lot of server resources. Our top pick for the best cheap web hosting is Hostinger.
| Web Host | Entry Plan | Renewal Price | Free Domain? | Free Site Migration? | Site Hosted | Money Back Trial | Order Now |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Hostinger | $1.39/mo | $2.99/mo | No | Yes | 1 | 30 Days | Get Hostinger |
 InterServer | $2.50/mo | $7.00/mo | No | Yes | Unlimited | 30 Days | Get InterServer |
 A2 Hosting | $2.99/mo | $10.99/mo | No | Yes | 1 | Anytime | Get A2 Hosting |
 GreenGeeks | $2.49/mo | $10.95/mo | Yes | Yes | 1 | 30 Days | Get GreenGeeks |
 ScalaHosting | $3.95/mo | $5.95/mo | Yes | Yes | 1 | 30 Days | Get ScalaHosting |
 TMD Hosting | $2.95/mo | $4.95/mo | Yes | Yes | 1 | 60 Days | Get TMD Hosting |
 InMotion Hosting | $2.49/mo | $7.49/mo | Yes | Yes | 1 | 90 Days | Get InMotion Hosting |
 HostPapa | $3.95/mo | $7.99/mo | Yes | Yes | 1 | 30 Days | Get HostPapa |
 BlueHost | $2.95/mo | $7.99/mo | Yes | Yes | 1 | 30 Days | Get BlueHost |
 FastComet | $3.95/mo | $9.95/mo | Yes | Yes | 1 | 45 Days | Get FastComet |
Thanks to various factors, web hosting providers can now offer more for less. This means more flexibility and choice for consumers like you and me.
Today most shared hosting plans are cheaper than $5/mo. For those who are new or hosting simple sites with low resource demands – inexpensive shared hosting is an ideal launch point.
Our team at WHSR has tested more than 60 hosting companies and studied the pricing of 1,000 budget / VPS hosting plans.
Here are the top 10 cheap hosting deals to consider.
Hostinger offers a wide variety of hosting services, ranging from the advanced with VPS cloud hosting plans to beginners who just want to get started with a cheap shared hosting.
Hostinger's cheapest plan – “Single” is priced at $1.39/mo. At the price of slightly more than a dollar, you get to host 1 website with 30 GB SSD disk space and 100 GB bandwidth – which is adequate for about 10,000 visits monthly.
For higher tier shared hosting – Premium ($2.59/mo) and Business Plan ($3.99/mo), you'll get more storage space, bigger site hosting capacity, innovative features like advance cron jobs, GIT access, free Google Adwords credits, unlimited databases, and free dedicated SSL – stuffs that you don't usually get from a budget hosting plan.
Learn more about Hostinger in our review.
As mentioned in my Hostinger review – I think Hostinger is a great choice for those who are looking one-stop cheap hosting solution – in particular newbies who are just starting out.
Hostinger does bring a lot to the table – from fantastic pricing to a wide range of server locations and excellent customer supports. These advantages do come at some sacrifice though – such as the lack of migration assistance and some minor SSL headaches. Of course, you’ll also have to content with plan renewal price hikes, but that’s quite typical with low cost hosting providers.
Self-deemed a easy-to-use cheap hosting provider, InterServer specializes in shared, VPS, dedicated, and co-location hosting solutions.
Interservers offer all-in-one shared hosting at very cheap price – $2.50 per month cheap to be exact. Included in this is unlimited site hosting, LiteSpeed-powered server, free weekly backups, cron jobs support, and excellent in-house technical support.
Two things I like the most about InterServer's cheap hosting plan:
These two factors made InterServer the easy choice when you plan to host multiple (low traffic) websites in one account.
I started using InterServer since 2013 and visited the company HQ at Secaucus, New Jersey in 2016. Their server performance was rock solid and technical supports are superb (all done by in-house staffs).
You can read my detail InterServer review here.
A2 Hosting is fast, reliable, and cheap. Their shared hosting comes in three flavors – Lite, Swift, and Turbo.
Lite, the cheapest plan of all, allows users to host 1 website, 5 databases, and 25 email accounts.
You wouldn't know Lite is a budget plan by looking at its features: Full SSD storage, SSH access, Rsync, FTP / FTPS, Git and CVS ready, Node.js and Cron support, and pre-configured for best WordPress performance (using in-house built WP plugin – A2 Optimized). All these for $2.99 a month.
See more about A2 Hosting performance and plans in my review.
* Notes: A2 Hosting prices adjusted in 2021, we have updated this article accordingly.
Founded in 2006 by Trey Gardner, GreenGeeks has benefited from his extensive experience in several large hosting companies. Today, Trey and his experienced core team of professionals have built GreenGeeks into a healthy, stable and competitive company.
The company’s roots lie in North America and has served over 35,000 customers with more than 300,000 websites. As an eco-friendly company, it has dedicated itself to leaving a positive energy footprint and replaces used energy with triple the energy credits that are used.
But that's not all – On top of being environmental friendly, GreenGeeks is also very budget friendly. Their all-in-one, 300% green shared hosting plan costs $2.49/mo during signup.
Here's a quick view on their pros and cons – you can also learn more about GreenGeeks in Timothy review.
* Notes: GreenGeeks prices adjusted in 2021, we have updated this article accordingly.
For first time customers, TMD shared plan starts at $2.95/mo – a 60% price cut from the standard renewal price. The company has been around for over 10 years and has four data centers spread across the United States and an overseas data center in Amsterdam.
We’ve recently were given a free account by TMDHosting so we decided to put the hosting provider to the test. Turn out – the budget host is not bad at all.
Learn more about TMD Hosting in this in-depth review.
Here's what I like and dislike about TMD Hosting.
* Note: Use promo code “WHSR” to enjoy additional 7% discount when you order TMD Hosting.
InMotion Hosting is old-school, reliable, features-rich, and affordable.
Their cheapest hosting plan – named “Lite”, starts at $2.49/mo. It allows users to host 1 website and comes with a free domain, SSH access, PHP 7 support, site backup and restore, full support in Cron and Ruby, as well as hack & malware protection. What's more – if you are a new users, folks at InMotion Hosting will help migrate your site for free.
Admittedly, InMotion Hosting does not offer the cheapest price in town, but they are the best hosting provider in overall based on my experience. I use InMotion Hosting personally and have collected years of record in InMotion Hosting uptime and speed test. To find out more, please check out my in-depth InMotion Hosting review here.
Starting at a highly reasonably price of $3.95, $5.95, and $9.95 per month, ScalaHosting has a lot to offer in their shared hosting plans. Although it keeps true to the low-cost-hosting concept of most hosting providers, elsewhere it is generous. If you’re a newbie to website hosting this is an excellent place to start.
Scala's cheapest plan – Mini, costs $3.95/mo when you signup for 3 years. At this price, ScalaHosting gives all new users unlimited email accounts & databases, free website migration, domain name, and SSL. This alone would make it an extremely strong value-for-money proposition. Also included is a software installer, 7-day cycle of automated backups, and more.
Most importantly, there is a lot of room to grow at ScalaHosting. From their range of shared hosting plans, you can move on to their excellent managed Cloud VPS hosting plans as your website grows. The key differentiator of Scala's VPS plans against others is that they offer users the benefits of using SPanel on Digital Ocean or Amazon AWS cloud infrastructure. This makes for much better cost-effectiveness if you take into consideration that you’re on a managed plan.
Some of what I like and dislike about ScalaHosting include:
HostPapa is founded in 2006 by by Jamie Opalchuk. Headquartered in Ontario, Canada – HostPapa is a popular names in some regions including Australia, Canada, and United States.
HostPapa cheapest hosting plan (named “Starter”) starts at $3.95 a month. For that price, you'll get a free domain, 100GB full SSD storage, and hosting capacity to host two websites and 100 email accounts. Higher-tier “Business” plan comes with better server power and more essential features and costs the same during signup ($3.95/mo); but it is pricier during renewal ($14.99 vs $9.99/mo).
We have been tracking the web host since mid 2017. You can learn more about my experience in this detail HostPapa review.
In brief here's what I like about HostPapa's shared hosting plan –
FastComet is a rare gem in the hosting world. With a long list of useful features and low price tags – the web host is suitable for both newbies and advanced users.
A test site was setup at FastComet in early 2018 and we tracked their server performance for over a year. You can check out the results we got in this detail FastComet review.
FastComet cheapest hosting plan is incredibly low price at signup – their cheapest plan, FastCloud, costs only $2.95/month at signup. The plan comes with 15 GB SSD disk space, malware scan and report, free network firewall, SSH access, and daily backup.
Here's what I like and dislike about FastComet in a nutshell.
* Note: FastComet have adjusted their pricings multiple times in the past. For best accuracy, please check prices at FastComet.com.
Bluehost entered the web hosting market in 2003 and has been going strong since then. The Provo, Utah based company is well-recognized today and hosts over two million websites.
Unlike many other companies in today's hosting space, Bluehost does not officially disclose where their servers are hosted. Aside from a likely presence in Utah, little is really known and there are no options to select a location on sign-up.
Support is available via live chat, phone, and a ticketing system. Should you need more specialized assistance, Bluehost also has marketing consultants who can work with you on your needs.
A cheap web host usually refers to shared hosting that cost less than $5 per month during signup and not more than $10 per month after first term.
Hosting prices have changed drastically over the last 10 – 15 years. In early 2000, a $8.95 per month package with basic features was considered cheap. Then the price dropped to $7.95, then $6.95, $5.95 per month, and then even lower in 2021.
When I first created this page – I was making a list of hosting deals below $10/month. But that is no longer relevant in today's hosting market. If you look at some of the lowest-priced offers I hand-picked above – you'll notice that today, some shared hosting services cost less than $2 per month.
If you look at our recent hosting market study – you'll see that most budget hosting deals are well below $3 per month during signup.
So how do you pick a cheap hosting service?
Cheap price tag matter but there are also a number of factors you need to consider when choosing a cheap web hosting service. Let's look at other crucial factors when choosing a low-cost hosting.
A good budget host should comes with sufficient server resources to keep your site “up” at all times.
A slow and often “down” hosting affects your website user experience and Google rankings badly. This is why we emphasize so much on server uptime and response rate in our hosting reviews. No one should host their sites on a slow and unstable web host.
Some budget hosting companies tend to overload their capacity and host way too many websites in one server and this often lead to slow server response rate and frequent hosting down time.
Avoid this type of budget web host at all times!
When searching for a cheap hosting plan – look for providers that guarantee at least 99.9% hosting uptime. Once you have signed up to a new web host make sure you:
If your host performs badly – make sure you ask for a refund and switch web host.
Cheap or not – your hosting plan should comes with all the essential features that are needed to run your websites. This includes (but not limited to) basic server maintenance features, email services, easy installer for popular scripts, latest version of PHP and MySQL, after sales technical support, 99.9% server uptime, and reasonable server network speed.
Some budget hosting companies also provide regular server backup, auto malware scanning, additional dedicated IP as well as one-click Let's Encrypt SSL activation. These features are nice to have but they are like “bonus”. I can totally understand if hosting companies are charging users extra for malware scanning or backup-and-restore feature.
There are different types of hosting servers available in market: Shared, VPS, dedicated, and cloud hosting. Hosting your websites with a provider that offer the full range solution will reduce the hassles to upgrade later.
To cut operation costs, some cheap hosting companies run on outsourced customer support team and often fail to support their customers swiftly. The slow response times are not always due to a lack of caring. In some cases, cheap hosts simply don’t have enough technical staff members to attend to customers' support requests.
Sadly, there is not much we can do with a hosting company that runs on poor after-sales support.
For newbies who need extra support, it is best to avoid hosting companies with bad service. Talk with the support department before you place your order, ask related technical questions (such as inodes limits, CPU cycles, Ruby on Rails, etc) and judge their quality based on the responses.
For your reference, I did an undercover experiment and talked to 28 hosting companies (which many of them charge less than $5 per month and can be categorized as “cheap web host”) support in 2017 – see what I found out in this study.
Some cheap hosting service providers have suspicious business practices and unclear terms and conditions.
To avoid cheap hosting companies with questionable pricing policy, you are recommended to read ToS and check out genuine hosting reviews before purchase.
One way to quickly learn about a company's ToS is by visiting the host’s ToS page, press Ctrl + F, search for keyword like ‘cancellation’ and ‘refund’ and find out if the company has clear cancellation and refund policy. Some web host may charge $20 – $30 for domain registration and SSL certificate fees during cancellation – which is acceptable; but anything more than that is a no-go.
The cheapest hosting deal might not be the best.
Also understand that “best” is always a relative term. There is never a fixed solution to one's web hosting needs.
And to achieve this goal you need to understand clearly what you need from your web host.
The answer is $0. Although relatively rare, there are free web hosting offers like 000Webhost that come with subdomains (ie. mydomain.000webhost.com) that you can use to create and run a website for zero cost. There are, however, various limitations and risks involved with free hosting – if you can afford to pay $3 – $10 per month, I strongly recommend to you to go with a budget web host instead.
Hostinger shared hosting starts at $0.90 per month – they are the cheapest among top hosting providers. To evaluate Hostinger performance, I host a test site on their platform and publish uptime / speed data I collect here. You can read about my experience in this detailed Hostinger review.
There are four main types of web hosting are shared, virtual private server (VPS), cloud, and dedicated server hosting. Each offer varying degrees of performance, reliability, and security.
Providers like Wix and 000Webhost offer free plans. However, many top web hosts also offer trial periods on reasonably-priced shared hosting and we recommend you try both to see the difference.
Wix does indeed offer a limited free plan. However, this free plan comes with many drawbacks including not being able to link your custom domain and enforced Wix ads on your site.
The WordPress CMS itself is free to use and you can also use it for free on WordPress.com (with limitations).
Free hosting is generally not suitable for long term use unless you're intending to run a very basic, low traffic volume website. Most websites will require more resources as they grow and it is not likely that free hosting will be able to accommodate that growth.
We have also published a number of actionable guide and helpful hosting reviews for those who are searching for a web host.
