Free Web Hosting & Domains

If you know the difference between top level domains, domains and subdomains and have used hosting before, then jump straight into the following pages, otherwise at least skim through the information below.

We sometimes assist people, who want to build a website at minimal cost, so have investigated the availability of free web hosting over the years. If you Google the subject of free web hosting, most of the reviews appear to be only lists of the offerings of various hosting companies with little analysis and not much about domain issues, or actual trials of using the hosting to build websites. We would like to share some of our experience here.

There is an old saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch … well maybe there is, but there are always some catches. Perhaps the lunch is at the other side of town and the journey would take more time than the lunch is worth, or the menu has nothing to your taste. We like to compare looking for hosting to looking for a place to stay, live or do business. A free place may be small, but adequate and, if it is easy to use and to get to, then it may fit the bill. A free place that has a showy exterior and is much bigger than you need, but has a terrible address and does not really fit what you need is not really worth considering. If you find something that works for you, then you will probably go on to bigger projects.

A domain is an address, which identifies your website on the Internet. To be easy to find, the simpler the name the better. Think of it as like being a street name with a number. The problem is that most free hosting will not offer you a free domain. There are many offers of free hosting, where you may only need to pay for the registration of a new domain; and others, where the domain registration is free, if you order paid hosting for a fixed period. Note that a TLD (top-level domain) with its associated name must be renewed every year. Whatever the initial cost, even if initially provided free, there will be a listed cost for renewal. This varies depending on the domain name extension, originally .com for commercial, .org for organisations, .edu for education and now there are many other choices of TLDs. These include those tied to specific countries and use country codes like .au, .ca, .cn, .de, .jp and so on, and are known as ccTLDs. If you plan to extend the use of a domain for more than a year, check its renewal cost before you buy. If you are ordering a new domain from the hosting company, make sure they are an accredited ICANN¹ registrar. Also try to check that the actual registrar and server you want to use is in a country, which is stable, has good security and fast Internet connectivity.

One exception to the rule for paid domains was that there were five ccTLD extensions: .cf, .ga, .gq, .ml and .tk, which could be licensed for use without payment. They could not be owned, only licensed and renewed indefinitely year by year. To get one of these free TLDs, there were regulations, which prohibited the use of 1-, 2- and 3-character domains, as well as common dictionary keywords. In business, people will prefer to use .com, or extensions denoting their own country. Many free hosting companies did not accept these free domains. Near the end of 2022 the registrar of the free domains had issues, using the free ccTLDs became problematic in 2023 and the registrar ceased operating in February 2024.

Coming back to the hosting, free hosting will be shared hosting, but even with paid hosting, the less expensive hosting will be shared. This can be likened to living in an shared block of houses, but having your individual front door number and key. Some free hosting will provide such an arrangement, but many will limit the number of domains that can be added to 1 or 2 and provide limited facilities. Some only  allow subdomains and having only a subdomain is like living in an apartment where, although you have a key to your door, the main front door key is held by the apartment block owner.

At first glance some free hosting appears to be too good to be true. They advertise unlimited disk storage space and bandwidth, which is the traffic in and out. However, some may not allow you to host a top level domain, but only allow you to create a subdomain such as mysubdomain.freehostingxyz.com, or sometimes offer a list of other domains onto which you can prepend your sub-domain name. If you can live with this, some have the latest control panels, with facilities and support comparable to paid hosting.

Some in the middle range range may give you reasonable space and good facilities, but support may be lacking and they continually pester you to upgrade to paid hosting, where they tell you that the facilities are better and support is good. Some hosting really requires a good knowledge of website building to overcome technical issues, because support is so poor. Others have good support, but limit the facilities. For a CMS (Content Management System) using WordPress, you will need to be able to run the mod_rewrite module in .htaccess or have a similar facility on the server, have a database and perhaps 100 MB to 300 MB of disk storage space. However, if just starting, you can build a simple HTML website with less than 100 MB of disk storage space.

We have avoided hosting with advertising and recommend not to use hosting where the PHP version used is no longer supported. PHP 7.4 reached its end of life on 28 Nov 2019, and no further security updates will be applied. PHP 8.0 was released on 26 November 2020 and active support ended on 26 November, 2022, but security support will continue until 26 November, 2023. PHP 8.1 was released on 25 November 2021 and 8.2 on 8 December 2022 and both are actively supported. Note that the previous versions security issues start to accumulate on all versions after they breach EOL. Look for hosting that provides PHP 8.0, 8.1, or 8.2. If using WordPress, we found there are still some PHP compatibility issues with PHP 8.1. If PHP 8.0 is not available, use the latest version of PHP 7 that you can find. For a more in depth discussion about hosting and security we invite you to visit our Transapex Webcom website.

A final word of caution: if you do register a paid TLD for long-term use, do not let it expire. Domains become eligible for purchase again after expiry. There are sometimes sharks lurking in wait to buy up an expired domain and they may ask an exorbitant price to sell it back to you, perhaps hundreds of times more than you originally paid.

1.  Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Last updated: 2025-10-04 @ 12:35:28