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Do you want to skip the read and get right to my top picks? The best cheap web hosting service for most people is Hostinger or DreamHost. Cheap web hosting is an excellent option for brand new websites. You don’t need to spend a fortune on top-tier hosting when you’re just getting started. Cheap hosting will get the job done. But you can’t just look at the price alone. The key is finding a great deal from a reputable hosting provider, so your site’s quality, speed, and performance don’t suffer. This in-depth guide covers my top picks of the best cheap web hosting plans. I’ll also show you how to narrow down the best option for your website.#1 – Hostinger Review — The Best Web Hosting Plan Under $2
Hostinger has the absolute cheapest price for hosting at $1.99 per month for the Single Shared Hosting plan. So what’s the catch? You have to sign up for a 48-month contract, which sounds a little heavy. But, bear with me. Four years of Single Shared is going to cost less than a single year of hosting through most other providers. Seriously, other low-budget hosting plans are still twice to four times as expensive. Plus, the introductory rates you get with competitors might skyrocket when you have to renew. Once the honeymoon period is over, you might be looking at $10 or more each month. With Hostinger on the other hand, your rate for shared hosting goes from $1.99 to just $3.99/month upon renewal. That’s still a great price. In other words, the Hostinger full rate is still less than introductory rates from other good cheap hosting options. Okay, great. But I know you’re thinking the low rate must mean that there are annoying domain limits and few free tools to build your business. Untrue. Hostinger is loaded to the brim with features and function. Hostinger’s Single Shared Hosting plan supports one site, and includes:- 100 GB bandwidth
- 30 GB storage
- 1 email account
- Free SSL certificate
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- 24/7/365 customer support
- Optimized for WordPress with one-click installation
- User-friendly control panel
- Cloudflare protected nameservers
#2 – DreamHost Review — The Lowest Spend on Day One
Not everyone wants to sign a long contract for hosting, but you usually have to in order to get the lowest price. That usually also means dropping $75, $100, or more at checkout. DreamHost offers good deals for one- or three-year terms, but their month-to-month pricing cannot be beat. It’s seriously the lowest monthly rate you’ll see. DreamHost Shared Starter is only $1.99/month for one site. No contract necessary. There’s really no way to get a lower price without a commitment. When you look at the month-to-month pricing for other plans on this list, there is no competition. A2 Hosting is $10.99/month, HostGator is $10.95/month, and Hostinger is $9.99 with a $4.99 setup fee. Bluehost and iPage don’t even offer plans without at least a year-long commitment. With DreamHost, you can still get cheap hosting, but you don’t have any of the long-term risk that comes with a multi-year contract. This can be really important if you’re running a cash-strapped startup betting on growth. Instead of a big upfront spend, you can budget a predictable monthly hosting cost into the equation. Not only that, but you also get a solid range of features and free tools to build your site:- Unlimited traffic
- 50 GB storage
- Free SSL certificate
- Free WordPress website builder
- Free automated WordPress migrations
- Automated WordPress updates
- 24/7 live chat and ticket support
#3 – Bluehost Review — The Best for New Sites (Especially WordPress)
There’s probably no easier way to get your new website off the ground than with Bluehost. And it won’t cost you much at all, as the company offers incredibly feature-rich shared hosting starting at $2.95/month. For most people with a new site—especially if it is their first site—Bluehost is what they want. If you are building a WordPress site, I really recommend checking out your options at Bluehost. The company is one of only three hosting providers that is officially recommended by WordPress. The integration is amazing and installation is automatic. We’ll talk more about why it’s so good for WordPress in a second, but I want to talk about why it’s good for just about anyone with a new site. First off, Bluehost has some of the cheapest hosting rates around. And even the most basic plans are loaded with features and value. You get a free domain name for the first year. Not only do you get to skip that expense, but the convenience of registering your domain through Bluehost cuts down on the time it takes to go live. If this is your first site ever, you will be grateful at how simple the process is. If you’ve built sites before, you will really appreciate everything that’s done for you. For example, you get a free SSL certificate for your site,and enabling it takes one click on the dashboard. This is critical for keeping all of the information on your site secure and lets visitors know that the site is safe to visit. You can get free SSL certificates from other places, but they will not be this easy to install, trust me. And you will have to renew them every couple months. With Bluehost, it’s completely hands-off and you are always protected. You also get a free content delivery network (CDN) through Bluehost’s partnership with Cloudflare. This is going to improve site speed and performance with near-zero work on your part. Okay, so on top of the free domain name, SSL certificate, and CDN, Bluehost gives you:- 50 GB storage
- Unmetered bandwidth
- 24/7 customer support via phone and live chat
- $100 Google Ads credits
- Automatic WordPress installations and updates
- Custom WordPress themes
- 30-day full refund if you aren’t satisfied
#4 – A2 Hosting Review — The Best Web Hosting Under $3 for Online Stores
If you grow your ecommerce site past a certain point, the cheapest web hosting options won’t work. But, if you are just getting your online store up and running, there is no better budget-friendly option than A2 Hosting. In fact, you can get everything you need to launch for $2.99/month with the A2 Startup plan. You’ll have to sign a contract to get the lowest rate, but you’ll be ready to go within minutes. Along with PayPal integration, the cheapest A2 hosting plan comes with one-click installs for five of the top ecommerce platforms, including WooCommerce, OpenCart, and Magneto. There’s hardly any backend IT work to start selling. A2 Hosting offers some of the best site speed and security for the price, which are really important for online stores. Shoppers won’t stay if your content is slow to load. A2 takes care of all the technical legwork that goes into maintaining high performance servers. It’s compatible with Cloudflare’s free content delivery network, which can boost your speed as well. Most shoppers won’t even come if Google says your site’s not safe. That’s going to happen if you don’t have an SSL certificate. A2 includes one for free, and it’s always enabled. This is a huge perk, because you can get free SSL certificates elsewhere, but it’s on you to configure and renew them, which can be frustrating. Most of the other security benefits are similarly hands off. The virus scanner, firewall, and brute force defense are on autopilot—you’ll receive notification if there’s something you need to do, but A2 handles a lot on its own. And if you have an issue you can’t solve, A2 will help. Go read reviews. The company has some of the happiest web hosting customers on the planet. If you need to move your old site to A2’s servers, they have a team that will do it for free. Some of the other excellent benefits of A2 Startup include:- 100 GB storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited email addresses
- 24/7/365 customer support via phone, live chat, email, and ticketing
- 99.9% uptime commitment
- Optimized WordPress hosting
- DNS management tools
- Website staging
#5 – HostGator Review — The Best Way to Host Your Existing Site for Cheaper
When your current host jacks up the rates or takes a customer service nose-dive, you need to switch. Whatever the cause, there is no reason to pay for substandard hosting. HostGator will help you migrate your old site for free. This includes the cPanel, email accounts, files, databases, scripts, etc. They also include one free domain registration transfer, which saves a few bucks, too. All you have to do is fill out a transfer form within 30 days of signing up. HostGator will do the rest. You get the free migration with any of HostGator’s shared hosting plans, including Hatchling, which starts at $2.75/month with a three-year contract. With HostGator, you can lock in a really low rate and get great uptime for less than you paid before. After the zero-stress migration, you get high quality customer support available any time of day by phone and live chat. Better still, they offer some of the best renewal rates in all of web hosting. If you lock in that Hatchling plan for three years when you first sign up, you can renew for another three years at just $6.95 per month. That’s a good two to three bucks cheaper than other providers. It’s cheaper web hosting, better service, and very few limits on what you can do. And if they can handle the job of hosting your website for the long haul, you can save a boatload of money over the duration. Some of the highlights include:- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free SSL certificate
- Free email
- Free domain (or registration transfer)
- One-click WordPress install
- Free website builder
- Free Google Ads and Bing Ads credits
#6 – iPage Go Review — The Best If You Have Multiple Sites
iPage Go lets you create unlimited websites for under $2/month. Every other plan on my list requires you to purchase an upgraded plan to support more than one site. I really like iPage Go because there is one plan. Without tiered pricing, you don’t have to worry about upgrading your plan until you need something more substantial than shared hosting. In other words, you can build as many websites as you want without having to stress about paying more to do more. With iPage Go it’s unlimited sites, domains, and storage. Like similar “unlimited” offerings, your service has no hard and fast limits, but there are restrictions on how much your site can demand from the shared server. So, when iPage says they offer scalable bandwidth, it means they aren’t metering the traffic to your site. You could still hit restrictions, but there is no set cap for the number site visitors. Most people looking for cheap hosting for their websites won’t have to worry too much about these limits. iPage is able to support 99.5% of customers without any issues at all. In fact, the company will work with you to make sure you’ve optimized your site if you start to approach restricted usage limits. In addition to providing the cheapest multi-site hosting option, iPage gives customers access to a ton of free tools to build and nurture their site. You get a free domain name for the first year, along with a free SSL certificate. On top of that, you get free email with autoresponders. You can use the email provided, or manage your website accounts with Microsoft Outlook and other third-party apps. iPage hosting includes a free website builder, which can help you customize the look and feel of all your sites. WordPress is a one click installation as are other popular content management systems like Joomla and Drupal. For less than $2 per month, all of this is yours. Other benefits include:- 24/7 customer service
- Unlimited databases
- One-click installs for OpenCart, Magneto, and PrestaShop
- PayPal integration
- Integration with popular email marketing software services
- Site traffic reporting
- 30-day money-back guarantee
#7 – GreenGeeks Review — The Best Price for Managed WooCommerce Hosting
Transforming a basic WordPress website to an online store can feel like a daunting task for many people. Deploying the free WooCommerce plugin is a simple solution, but you still need adequate web hosting to accommodate your newly enhanced ecommerce store. GreenGeeks handles all of this for you. They offer fully managed WooCommerce hosting with one-click installations. You’ll also benefit from managed perks like automatic updates and daily backups—even with entry-level plans. Starting at $2.95 per month, GreenGeeks offers an exceptional value for managed WooCommerce web hosting. Just be aware that you need to lock in a three-year contract to get the lowest possible rate. This could cause some slight hesitation for some users who don’t want that type of commitment. Fortunately, GreenGeeks’ prices don’t jump as drastically for short-term contracts—which can’t be said for other web hosting providers. For example, the Lite plan increases by just $1 per month if you go with a two-year contract instead of three. And it’s still offered at the low rate of $4.95 per month for annual plans. Remember, this is for fully-managed WooCommerce hosting. So it’s still a great value. You’re also getting unmetered data, 50 GB of space, a free Wildcard SSL, and a free domain for one year. GreenGeeks is also built to scale. So if your website grows over time, you can easily upgrade to a Pro or Premium plan for more resources and enhanced benefits. Best of all, GreenGeeks is known for offering some of the best-in-class customer support in the world of web hosting. You can reach them by phone, email, or live chat. The call center is available seven days per week, and the average email response time is just 20 minutes. Get started with GreenGeeks today to get a great deal on WooCommerce web hosting.What I Looked at to Find the Best Cheap Web Hosting
You’re looking for the cheapest plan out there, but you still need a dependable host. There’s no shortage of budget-friendly web hosting options available. Each one promises great uptime, site performance, and customer support. It seems like anyone can get their site up for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. What’s the catch? If you understand your options and pick the right one, there is no catch. I’m going to guide you through saving every dollar possible without getting scammed or locked into a plan that you’ll regret later. Use these four criteria to cut through the advertising gimmicks, rule out plans that are “too good to be true,” and hone in on the best deal for lowest price.Price
When looking for web hosting in general, price is pretty important. But in looking at cheap web hosting, I’ve made pricing the most important criteria by far. In other words, I asked myself: How can I get dependable hosting at the absolute lowest price? Since you have to pay for hosting each month, even a few dollars’ difference between plans will add up over time. I focused on web hosts with a rock solid reputation because their cheap hosting options don’t cut corners. These plans are no-frills hosting, for sure, but I made sure they cover all the essentials. With some of the less reputable hosts out there, you can get a rock-bottom price and a rock-bottom experience. The providers I chose have super-affordable plans that won’t cause trouble now, trap you into upgrading, or wind up costing a fortune down the road.Contract Terms
Lots of web hosts might seem cheap at first glance, but you need to review the contract terms to truly get a sense of the actual cost. To lock in the lowest possible rate, you’ll likely have to commit to a two, three, or even a four-year plan. Importantly, these contracts are typically paid up-front and in-full. That means that web hosting advertised at $3 per month could actually cost you upwards of $100 today. Along with the length of the contract, you need to check the renewal rates. It’s common practice in the web hosting industry for hosting plans to skyrocket upon renewal. Promotional pricing might cost $3 per month, but then automatically renew at something like $10 per month. That would more than triple your rate upon renewal. Suddenly it’s not so cheap anymore.Domain Limits
How many sites do you want? If you add a site or two, you could accidentally get forced to upgrade and pay a lot more. iPage, for example, lets people create as many websites as they want with their cheapest hosting plan. With Hostinger, on the other hand, you’ll have to upgrade to host more than one site. That said, Hostinger’s next plan up is still less than $3 per month and you can build up to 100 websites. Another important limit to consider is bandwidth. This is the maximum amount of data your site can transfer to users during a set amount of time. Now there’s no such thing as unlimited bandwidth, but you are definitely going to see that advertised with a lot of the cheapest web hosting plans out there. Why can they say this? Because these are shared hosting plans where your site is on a server with a bunch of other sites. On a typical day, these sites are not going to use all of the server’s resources, so they say it’s unlimited. The truth is that you will definitely still have limits on how much of the server’s central processing unit (CPU) your site can use. Getting too many visitors to your site may exceed your CPU limits, and the provider may ask you to upgrade. Shared hosting plans with unlimited bandwidth are perfect for cheap web hosting, just don’t equate it with unlimited visitors.Free Tools to Build and Grow Your Site
You’d be surprised, but even some of the least expensive web hosting plans are packed with free tools and capabilities. Getting these freebies as part of a bundle can help you save in other areas. Some of the features to look out for include:- Ad credits: free Google or Bing advertising credits to target your audience
- Domain name: your site’s online address at www.your-domain-name.com
- Email account: an address @your-domain-name.com
- SSL Certificates: protects online privacy and lets visitors know your site is secure
- Visual website builder: an application that lets even total newbies design beautiful pages
Conclusion
You don’t have to spend very much to get your site online, but if you aren’t careful, web hosting can wind up costing a lot more than you think. Choosing a reputable provider is the first step, but you don’t have to worry about that if you stick to my list of best cheap web hosts. These are all really well-known companies with a long history of dependable service.- Hostinger — Best web hosting plan under $2
- DreamHost — Lowest spend on day one
- Bluehost — Best for new sites (especially WordPress)
- A2 Hosting —Best web hosting under $3 for online stores
- HostGator — Best way to host your existing site for cheaper
- iPage Go — Best if you have multiple sites
- GreenGeeks — Best price for managed WooCommerce hosting
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