Free Hosting Comparison

After looking at the "Big List of Free Web Hosting Services" I realized that the information provided was incomplete. The amount of disk space and bandwith is far from the only thing you should look for in a hosting provider. I've compiled a list below based on some providers listed in that list as well as a few I've used (or attempted to use) before.

I feel it is important to note that I did not ask for a testing account of any sort. I signed up much the same as any of you would. So I was not put on any "good server" to make the site's numbers look better.

If you have a site you'd like to see added, please leave a reply.

To monitor their uptime and response time, I'm using a service called "Uptime Robot".
Inactivity Limit: The amount of time that you either need to log into the cPanel or get a certain amount of visitors before your site is deleted.
Average Response Time: Measured in miliseconds, so anything over 1000 means that the site took more than one second to respond. This is obviously an average. Some days were better, some days were worse. (Where applicable, this response time is measured when the site is connected to a database)
Uptime: The percentage of time the monitor was able to reach the site. (It's checked every 5 minutes). Please note that hosts calculate overall uptime over a 30 day period, so any that are under 30 days, I will leave a note saying how many days the uptime was calculated over. The plan is to update this after 30 days to give a "more accurate" uptime.
Unstable: If noted as "unstable" it means that during the "uptime" period it had more than 10 downtime events.

Reviewed Sites:

• 000webhost.com
• 0nline.biz
• 1apps.net
• 1freehosting.com
• 5gbfree.com
• awardspace.net
• byet.host
• freehostinghero.com
• freehostingnoads.net
• host-ed.me
• neocities.org
• serversfree.com
• sites.google.com
• weebly.com
• wix.com
• x10hosting.com

Sites I was unable to review:

• freehostia.com (Requires phone number and I never got the activation email)
• 100webspace.com (Does not seem to offer subdomain and free domains are blacklisted; Requires phone number)
• zymic.com (website creation offline for maintenance)
• heliohost.org (Daily signup limit)
• 0xhost.com (Did not get confirmation email) (closed)
• 50webs.com (Did not get confirmation email)
• 0-host.net (Did not get confirmation email) (closed)

Sites that Share a parent company
LiquidNet US LLC

• freehostia.com
• 100webspace.com
• 50webs.com
• 100webspace.com

0xpro.com

• 000free.us
• 0-host.net

Hosting Media LLC

• freehostingnoads.net
• 0nline.biz
• youhosting.com
• 000webhost.com
• freehostinghero.com

 

000webhost
Website: 000webhost.com
Disk Space: 1500 MB
Bandwith: 100 GB
Databases: 2
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: 30 days [at least 10 visitors]
FTP Accounts: 1
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: MX? (Only with own domain)
Emails Available: 5
Uptime: 98.6%
Average Response Time: 352
Downtime Events: 25
Average Downtime: 23 Minutes
PHP Version: 5.2
Other Notes:

• Have to change FTP password before it'll work File limit of 10000 (which means some scripts, like Mediawiki, won't work)
• Does not offer any autoinstallers, despite advertising that it does.
• Database takes some time to set up.
• Did not work within the first five minutes, but letting it sit for a few hours caused it to become active.

0nline
Website: 0nline.biz
Disk Space: 8 GB
Bandwith: 80 GB
Databases: 5
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: 30 days [by visitors]
FTP Accounts: 6
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: MX
Emails Available: 5
Uptime: 83.14%
Average Response Time: 1109
Downtime Events: 38
Average Downtime: 3 Hours 11 Minutes
PHP Version: 5.3
Other Notes:

• Unstable
• Took several tries to get the CAPTCHA right, and it has to be done twice: once to set up the account and another to set up the host.
• Note that /most/ of the downtimes were 1 minute. However, one downtime that was 120 minutes skews the average quite a bit.

1Apps
Website: 1apps.com
Disk Space: 1000 MB
Bandwith: 333 MB daily
Databases: MS Access database
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: Unsure if it has one
FTP Accounts: 0 (has an browser file manager)
Can have own domains: No
DNS Management: No
Emails Available: 0
Uptime: 99.95%
Average Response Time: 725
Downtime Events: 9
Average Downtime: 2 Minutes
PHP Version: Does not allow PHP
Other Notes:

• Did not ask for email confirmation
• Though it advertises apps like Wordpress and Joomla, I am unsure of how it achieves this without allowing php to be uploaded. And they don't have an app installer to do it for you.

1freehosting
Website: 1freehosting.com
Disk Space: 10 GB
Bandwith: 100 GB
Databases: 5
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: 30 Days [By Visitors]
FTP Accounts: 5
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: Yes
Emails Available: 5
Uptime: 99.42%
Average Response Time: 1326
Downtime Events: 221
Average Downtime: 1 Minute
PHP Version: 5.3
Other Notes:

• Unstable
• Has the same system many Hosting Media LLC sites has.

5GBFree
Website: 5gbfree.com
Disk Space: 5 GB
Bandwith: 20 GB
Databases: 1
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: Unsure if it has one
FTP Accounts: 1
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: A/CNAME
Emails Available: 20
Uptime: CANNOT AVERAGE [See Below]
Average Response Time: 3302
Downtime Events: 20
Average Downtime: 17 Minutes
PHP Version: 5.5
Other Notes:

• Do NOT recommend. Brought the account up on Jan 11th, on Jan 14th, the service went down for no reason, and has been down ever since. I could not log into my account, as their account login is through your subdomain, and that was down. Their support forums (if you can even call them that) are littered with people who who have similar issues with their service and got no answer, other than an advert from a user to move to their free hosting.
• Unstable
• Despite my account not working, I cannot create another one with the name, indicating that it has not been deleted.
• Installing mediawiki was extremely slow
• Default Mediawiki setup (through install script) has issues with images (tries to view them as a mediawiki page) and the result is they are not displayed.
• Username (and thus subdomain) is limited to between 4-8 characters

 

Award Space
Website: awardspace.com
Disk Space: 1 GB*
Bandwith: 5 GB
Databases: 1
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: 12 months [Based on Visitors]
FTP Accounts: 1
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: Only if you upgrade
Emails Available: 1
Uptime: 99.26%
Average Response Time: 900
Downtime Events: 21
Average Downtime: 14 Minutes
PHP Version: 5.4
Other Notes:

• *15 MB Filesize limit
• Autoinstallers only for wordpress and Joomla Returns
• 404 errors with mediawiki when you try visiting a File: page

Byet Internet Services
Website: byet.host
Disk Space: Advertises 1000 MB, but the panel says "Unlimited"*
Bandwith: Unlimited
Databases: 5
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: 30 days / "extended period of time"
FTP Accounts: 1
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: Yes
Emails Available: 5
Uptime: 100%
Average Response Time: 264
Downtime Events: 0
Average Downtime: n/a
PHP Version: 5.4
Other Notes:

• *10 MB maximum file size

Free Hosting Hero
Website: freehostinghero.com
Disk Space: 15 GB
Bandwith: 150 GB
Databases: 10
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: 30 Days [By Visitors]
FTP Accounts: 11
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: Yes
Emails Available: 10
Uptime: 99.43%
Average Response Time: 822
Downtime Events: 221
Average Downtime: 1 Minute
PHP Version: 5.3
Other Notes:

• Unstable
• Took several tries to get the CAPTCHA right, and it has to be done twice: once to set up the account and another to set up the host.
• Does not seem to offer free subdomains, but does support free domains

Free Web Hosting No Ads
Website: freehostingnoads.net
Disk Space: 20000 MB (about 20 GB)
Bandwith: 200000 MB (about 200 GB)
Databases: 3
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: 30 days [by visitors]
FTP Accounts: 3
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: Yes
Emails Available: 3
Uptime: 99.47%
Average Response Time: 877
Downtime Events: 294
Average Downtime: 1 Minute
PHP Version: 5.3
Other Notes:

• Unstable
• Took several tries to get the CAPTCHA right, and it has to be done twice: once to set up the account and another to set up the host.
• Says it offers free subdomains, but does not make it clear now to get one.
• Supports free domains

Host-ed
Website: host-ed.net
Disk Space: 1 GB
Bandwith: 10 GB
Databases: 2
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: Unsure if it has one
FTP Accounts: 3
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: No
Emails Available: 1
Uptime: 99.97%
Average Response Time: 1359
Downtime Events: 1
Average Downtime: 14 Minutes
PHP Version: 5.4
Other Notes:

• Does not set up immediately. Didn't get the setup confirmation until the next day.

 

Neocities
Website: neocities.org
Disk Space: 100 MB
Bandwith: 50 GB
Databases: 0
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: Unsure if it has one
FTP Accounts: 0
Can have own domains: No
DNS Management: No
Emails Available: 0
Uptime: 100%
Average Response Time: 128
Downtime Events: 0
Average Downtime: n/a
PHP Version: n/a
Other Notes:

• Only HTML sites
• Does not offer WYSIWYG

Servers Free
Website: serversfree.com
Disk Space: 10 GB
Bandwith: 100 GB
Databases: 5
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: 30 days
FTP Accounts: 5
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: Yes
Emails Available: 5
Uptime: 99.52%
Average Response Time: 768
Downtime Events: 211
Average Downtime: 1 Minute
PHP Version: 5.3
Other Notes:

• Unstable

Google Sites
Website: sites.google.com
Disk Space: 100 MB
Bandwith: Unknown - speculated 1GB/daily and 56 MB/minute
Databases: 0
Ads: Yes (Powered By Google Sites in footer)
Inactivity Limit: None
FTP Accounts: 0
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: No
Emails Available: 1 (Gmail address that is attached to account)
Uptime: 100%
Average Response Time: 213
Downtime Events: 0
Average Downtime: n/a
PHP Version: n/a
Other Notes:

• WYSIWYG, with some ability to edit HTML

Weebly
Website: weebly.com
Disk Space: Unlimited*
Bandwith: Unlimited
Databases: 0
Ads: Yes (Powered by Weebly)
Inactivity Limit: Unsure if it has one
FTP Accounts: 0
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: No
Emails Available: 0
Uptime: 99.92%
Average Response Time: 270
Downtime Events: 4
Average Downtime: 8 Minutes
PHP Version: n/a
Other Notes:

• *Individual files must be under 10 MB
• WYSIWYG

Wix
Website: wix.com
Disk Space: 500 MB
Bandwith: 500 MB
Databases: 0
Ads: Yes (Hosted by Wix)
Inactivity Limit: None
FTP Accounts: 0
Can have own domains: Premium Only
DNS Management: No
Emails Available: Premium Only
Uptime: 100%
Average Response Time: 125
Downtime Events: 0
Average Downtime: n/a
PHP Version: n/a
Other Notes:

• Subdomains seem to be created at random and can be edited later
• WYSIWYG

 

x10Hosting
Website: x10hosting.com
Disk Space: 1 GB*
Bandwith: 500 MB**
Databases: 2
Ads: No
Inactivity Limit: 30 days
FTP Accounts: 3
Can have own domains: Yes
DNS Management: Yes
Emails Available: 3
Uptime: 99.65%
Average Response Time: 2730
PHP Version: 5.4
Downtime Events: 20
Average Downtime: 7 Minutes
Other Notes:

• Unstable
• *Newly created Free Hosting Accounts will be limited to 1 GB of disk space. Users may request to raise this limit once they have an account over 7 days old that follows the Terms of Service and uses over 500 MB of disk space.
• **Newly created Free Hosting Accounts from users in countries marked as "High Risk" will be limited to 500 MB of disk space and 10 GB of bandwidth. Users may request to raise these limits once they have an account over 7 days old that follows the Terms of Service.