Best Cheap Web Hosting Services Reviewed & Compared
Web hosting is needed for any website or web application.
Unfortunately, hosting companies can sometimes be expensive.
On the other hand, very cheap hosting rarely delivers in terms of quality, site speed, and support.
To help you choose a cheap but reliable hosting service, we have crafted this in-depth guide with 10 web hosting offers under $10 a month.
How to Choose Cheap Web Hosting?
Some hosting companies make the choice of attracting new customers with prices much lower than the market average. While this sounds good at first, the biggest problem is that renewal fees are always higher than the initial price.
We checked over 10 budget web hosting offers, and only one of them offered renewals priced the same as the initial subscription fee.
Also, when choosing web hosting, it is crucial that you carefully evaluate your needs. While cheap hosting almost always looks appealing because of its prices, you don’t want to be forced to switch to another host 3 months after your initial subscription because you discovered that your plan doesn’t fit your needs.
Is Budget Hosting a Good Solution For You?
I’ll never stress it enough, most web hosting companies are actually offering good deals, but not every deal is the best fit for you.
Cheap web hosting relies on shared servers where, as the name suggests, a server is shared between multiple users. Shared web hosting has many advantages: It’s cheap, and it’s often very easy to use, making it a great choice for beginners.
On the other hand, shared web hosting won’t provide the same speed as more advanced servers, and is also much more limited. Most shared plans won’t let you install PHP extensions or access your server via SSH, for example.
Cheap web hosting is a good solution for the following cases:
- You are a beginner looking to create your first website
- Your site won’t receive much traffic (Online CV, Small business/Agency website, Niche blog, etc.)
- You only need a basic shared server
Best Cheap Web Hosting: Our Picks
Bluehost
Bluehost is an American hosting service company that hosts over 2 million sites and has been around for over two decades. They are one of the most popular cheap web hosting providers and are trusted by many website owners, myself included.
Bluehost’s basic plan starts at $3.95/month. For this price, you’ll get a shared hosting plan for a single website, 50GB of SSD Storage/Disk space, a free domain for the first year, an SSL certificate, 24/7 support, as well as a 30-day free trial of Microsoft Email. A 30-day money-back guarantee is available in case you won’t be happy with your purchase.
In all honestly, when in need of bargain hosting for a small project, Bluehost is almost always a great choice. It’s not the cheapest you can find, but it is definitely the best value for money as their hosting services are fully up to date and reliable.
Bluehost’s cheap hosting offer comes with a 36-month commitment, which is the biggest negative aspect of their offer in my opinion. If you need hosting for less than 36 months, the monthly price will raise to $4.95/mo.
- Bluehost offers very good value for money
- Plans are complete, with everything you need for hosting a small business website
- Unlimited bandwidth and good uptime
- Support can be a bit slow
- Very good service for medium-sized sites
Hostinger
Based in Kaunas, Lithuania, Hostinger is an employee-owned European company focusing on budget hosting. Starting at $0.99 per month, Hostinger web hosting services are the cheapest you can currently find.
The hosting options are basic: 1 Website, 1 Email address, bandwidth limited to 100 GB per month and 1 MySQL database.
Despite the very low prices, this host provides great performance with a 99.9% uptime, 30 day money back guarantee, and 24/7 customer support.
The biggest con of their cheap hosting plans is the limited bandwidth, but the 100 GB/month will be more than enough for a small site such as a portfolio, small business site, or personal project. Hostinger’s offer comes with an initial 48 months commitment and renews at $2.15/mo after the initial sign-up period.
- Very cheap price while providing a good service
- Great for entry-level users
- Limited bandwidth
- No free SSL except for business plan ($4.49/month)
- Cheapest hosting you can find
WebHostingPad
WebHostingPad.com was formed in 2005 with a team of very successful and proven industry veterans intent on delivering the best value in web hosting.
The company offers various hosting services, from budget hosting to VPS hosting.
WebHostingPad’s services starts at $1.99/mo. For this sum, you’ll get 1-Click WordPress Install, 99% uptime guarantee, 24/7/365 technical support, unlimited sites/bandwidth/disk space, a free SSL Certificate, and a 30-Day money back guarantee in case you aren’t happy with your purchase.
Once the initial commitment period is over, the renewal price will be $4.99/mo, which is below average.
- Very cheap price while providing a good service
- Host unlimited sites
- Lower uptime than average
- Excellent solution for hosting small sites
HostGator
For the last 25 years, this American company has been keeping millions of websites on their servers. They are without a doubt one of the biggest and most popular web hosting companies.
Starting at $2.75/month, HostGator cheap web hosting offers hosting for a single domain, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, an SSL certificate one-click WordPress installer and a free WordPress/cPanel website transfer.
While its price is definitely appealing, HostGator has a few flaws that need to be noted. The biggest con of their hosting services is the general slow loading speed: At the time of writing, the company doesn’t use SSD storage and therefore, both Bluehost and Hostinger are generally faster. Despite this problem, HostGator offers a great uptime and quality customer service.
Hostgator’s shared hosting plan is available for $2.75 per month and requires a 36-month commitment. Hostgator renewal price is $6.95/mo after the initial 36-month period.
- Decent hosting and good uptime
- Great for entry-level users
- Slower than most competitors
- Great solution for medium-sized sites
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is a company based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In business since 2001, they offer a wide range of hosting services: Bargain web hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated server, etc. Their shared hosting offer is one of the most interesting plans to host small, low-traffic websites.
A2 Hosting’s cheapest plan starts at $3.92/month and will provide you with hosting for 1 website, unlimited storage/disk space, 25 email accounts, free site migration, cPanel control panel and a free SSL certificate. On top of that, they offer an incredible “Anytime Money Back Guarantee”, meaning that you can choose to cancel your hosting at any time and get a refund. A2 is the only provider on this list to do so.
A2 provides very fast SSD servers and their customer service has a good reputation. The $3.92 plan will renew at $8.99/month after the initial period has expired.
- All the modern tools for a great website: cPanel control panel, SSL certificates, unlimited storage for files
- Great price: Possibility to host unlimited websites for less than $5 per month
- Money back guarantee
- No free site migration
- A2 Hosting offers high quality at minimal cost
Dreamhost
Dreamhost is often noted as a favorite when it comes to affordable web hosting services and ease of use. The reputed website hosting company offers small businesses an affordable yearly plan, starting at $2.59 a month. With their cheapest plan, you’ll get a standard SSD storage for your website to load fast, unlimited visits and a free domain. However, email addresses aren’t included.
Among Dreamhost’s features, it’s good to note that WordPress comes pre-installed on their hosting plans: That’s very good news for bloggers and small businesses that don’t want to invest an extended period of time in installing softwares they need. Dreamhost also offers a live chat option for quick customer service and technical support.
Dreamhost is also one of the few cheap web hosting providers to offer a 3-month (97 days) money-back guarantee, in case you’re not happy with your purchase.
- 3-year, 1-year & monthly plans
- Unlimited disk space
- 97 days money back guarantee
- No email addresses included
- Good and affordable hosting
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is a U.S. company that takes pride in being ecological, with all their data centers running on green energy. Their cheapest plan starts at $2.95/month and will provide you with hosting for 1 website, 1-click installers for WordPress and other apps, unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth, 1 free domain name for the first year, and a free SSL certificate.
This web hosting company offers a good uptime and a good loading speed, as well as 24/7 customer support through live chat.
Greengeeks’ web hosting service comes with a 36-month commitment. Once that period is over, the plan will renew at $9.95/mo.
- 1-click installers for WordPress and other apps
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Plan will renew at $9.95/mo after the initial 36-month period
- Quality and ecological hosting
iPage
iPage is in business since 1998 and is based in Massachusetts. The company offers various services such as WordPress hosting, and registration of domain names. The company is also one of those truly cheap web hosts, as their entry plan starts at $1.99 per month.
iPage plan offers free domain names registration and domain transfer, free and unlimited email address, 24/7 customer support, drag-and-drop site builder, free SSL Certificate, as well as a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Free domain name
- Unlimited email addresses
- Plan will renew at $7.99/mo after the initial 36-month period
- One of the cheapest hosts
Hostwinds
Founded in 2010, Hostwinds is a web hosting service headquartered in Seattle. Despite the lower-than-average price, the company prides itself on excellent service, as shown by their 99.9999% uptime.
Hostwinds offers many types of hosting: Cloud hosting, dedicated hosting, reseller plans… They also have cheap shared hosting starting at $3.29 a month. For this relatively low price, you’ll get hosting for 1 domain, unlimited bandwidth and disk space, SSD storage, Softaculous, free website transfers, cPanel, unlimited subdomains, unlimited email accounts, unlimited databases, free SSL certificate, free domain name, and Weebly site builder.
While Hostwinds isn’t the cheapest of the cheap, its shared web hosting is among one of the best and most complete you could get for the price.
- Great speed and uptime
- Unlimited email addresses
- Unlimited bandwidth and disk space
- Basic plan hosts only 1 domain
- Excellent value for the money
InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting is another big name in the industry. They have been around since 2001 and offer a wide range of web hosting services, from shared servers to dedicated hosting.
InMotion Hosting’s cheapest plan starts at $6.39/mo, and its hosting features will provide you with a free domain, hosting for 2 websites, unlimited disk space, and unlimited bandwidth, as well as unlimited email addresses.
$6.39/mo is definitely not the most affordable web hosting you can find. But as their plan renews at $7.99 after the initial 2 year commitment period, InMotion can definitely be a money saver in the long run.
- Unlimited bandwidth and disk space
- Unlimited email addresses
- Not so cheap
- Good and reputed host
Cloudways
With prices starting at $10 a month, Cloudways can’t really be called a cheap web host as their prices are much more expensive than those offered by cheap web hosts such as A2 or Bluehost.
So why are they in the list? Simply because they offer managed WordPress Hosting for a much cheaper price than their competitors, while maintaining outstanding quality, super-fast servers, and top-notch customer service and technical support.
Cloudways offers PHP 7, MySQL, PhpMyAdmin, a dedicated public IP, very fast servers, easy setup and SSL certificate. They are also one of the few web hosting companies that offer a free trial, which lets you try the service for 72 hours before you decide if it’s the best web hosting solution for you. All you need for the trial is a valid email address, no need to enter your credit card details.
- Amazing performance and speed
- Free managed backups
- 24/7 customer support
- Not so cheap
- Limited storage and bandwidth
- Cheapest managed WordPress hosting
Conclusion
So which of these companies offer the best cheap web hosting? As you probably saw while reading our guide, cheap hosting providers all offer different packages. Some do offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space, while others provide free email addresses.
As always when it comes to web hosting, there’s no “best plan”, it all depends on your needs and budget. In order to make things easier for you, here is a recapitulative table showing the pros and cons of all the providers listed in this guide, allowing you to pick the best cheap web hosting according to your personal needs.
| Provider | Price (month) | Renews at | Commitment period | Pros | Cons |
| Bluehost | $3.95 | $7.99 | 36 months | Great value for money | Support can be slow |
| Hostinger | $0.99 | $2.15 | 36 months | Cheapest | Limited bandwidth |
| WebHostingPad | $1.99 | $4.99 | 48 to 60 months | Unlimited sites | Lower uptime than average |
| HostGator | $2.75 | $6.95 | 36 months | Fair price | Slower than competitors |
| A2 Hosting | $3.92 | $8.99 | 36 months | Great value for money | High renewal price |
| Dreamhost | $2.59 | $2.59 | 12 months | Renews at same price | No email included |
| GreenGeeks | $2.95 | $9.95 | 36 months | Eco-friendly hosting | High renewal price |
| iPage | $1.99 | $7.99 | 36 months | Cheap entry price | High renewal price |
| Hostwinds | $3.29 | $8.99 | 12 months | Very complete | High renewal price |
| InMotion | $6.39 | $8.99 | 24 months | Good performance | Not so cheap |
| Cloudways | $10 | $10 | None | Amazing performance | Expensive |
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is the Cheapest Website Host?
How Much Should I Pay For web hosting?
It all depends of your needs. If you’re building a huge community portal, you’ll need a dedicated hosting server with plenty of power, which are rather expensive. If you are a blogger or small business, any of the plans presented in our guide will fit your needs.
What is the Commitment Period?
As you might have seen from our guide, most cheap hosting services offer a very cheap entry price for new customers. For example, Bluehost offers $3.95/month for 36 months, before the price will rise to $7.99 once the initial period is over.
As a customer, you’ll get a huge discount, but you’ll also have to pay for the 36 months of hosting upfront.