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Best for Free WordPress Sites
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Best for Online Stores
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Best Free Trial to Try Before You Buy
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Wix is the best free web host, thanks to its user-friendly platform and free all-in-one hosting. WordPress.com is our runner-up and a better choice if you really want a good blog. Square Online is a smarter pick for ecommerce stores, while InfinityFree is best for professional projects and is the only "traditional host" on our list. Then there’s also Squarespace, which gives you a 14-day free trial to test its streamlined site-building experience.
There’s an old saying: "you get what you pay for," but when it comes to free web hosting for beginners, that’s not always true. Even though they cost nothing, many free web hosts give you a lot in return. But which free web hosting service is right for your particular needs? Well, we're here to help you figure that out.
Web hosting with 100% uptime and a 48ms average server response time in our testing
Passed stress testing with 250 simulated users and zero HTTP failures
PCI-compliant with DDoS protection, 2FA, and a Site History tool to roll back changes
Everything managed for you — automated updates, real-time backups, and security built in from day one
Unified wp-admin dashboard removes the dual learning curve of separate hosting and site-building tools
Enterprise-grade security stack — CDN, malware removal, DDoS protection, and a WAF — included on every plan, even free
Ecommerce web builder connected to Square POS, so online and in-person sales sync automatically
Tracks low stock alerts, product variations, and order fulfillment in one dashboard
Built-in loyalty program lets customers earn points and redeem them for discounts or free items
InfinityFree lets you connect a domain you already own without forcing you onto a paid plan
You’re not locked into one proprietary website builder, so you can install platforms like WordPress and manage your own site
Includes 5 GB of free storage, which is enough room for a small business site, portfolio, or growing blog
User-friendly web builder with drag-and-drop templates and AI tools to help generate your site, branding, and copy
Supports custom CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, so you can go beyond drag-and-drop when needed
Built-in loyalty program with points, tiers, and subscriptions, plus its own POS system for in-person sales
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| Details | Start for free | Start for free | Start for free | Start for free | Start for free |
| Best for | Best for Beginners | Best for Free WordPress Sites | Best for Online Stores | Best for Full Hosting Control | Best Free Trial to Try Before You Buy |
| Starting price | Paid plans start at $17.00/mo | Paid plans start at $2.75/mo | Paid plans start at $49.00/mo* | Paid plans start at $2.50/mo** | Paid plans start at $25.00/mo |
| Money-back guarantee | Yes — 14 days | Yes — 14 days | No — but paid plans get a free 30-day trial | N/A — there is only one plan and it’s free | Yes — 14 days |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.9% | 99.99% | N/A | 99.9% | 99.999% |
| Bandwidth | 1 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of websites | 999 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Storage | 500 MB on free plan | 1 GB on free plan | Unlimited | 5 GB | 30 minutes of video storage, otherwise unrestricted |
| Free SSL certificate | |||||
| Free domain for a year | Only on paid plans | Only on paid plans | Only on paid plans | ||
| Free subdomains | Yes (yoursite.wixsite.com) | Yes (yoursite.wordpress.com) | Yes (yoursite.square.site) | Yes (numerous options) | Yes (yoursite.squarespace.com, trial only) |
| Can connect custom domain | Only on paid plans | Only on paid plans | Only on paid plans | Only on paid plans | Only on paid plans |
| Ads on free plan | Not on website, only inside the dashboard | ||||
| Permanently free | No (14-day trial) | ||||
| Can upgrade to paid | Not directly, but via iFastNet (parent company) | ||||
| Learn more | Read Wix Review | Read WordPress.com Review | Read Square Online Review | Not yet reviewed | Read Squarespace Review |
Our team has conducted hands-on testing on 20+ web hosting services. We sign up for each service and deploy a real test website before formal testing begins, giving us a baseline to measure performance against.
Then, we evaluate each provider across seven categories:
We retest all web hosting services at least once a year. To learn more about how we test, read our full web hosting testing methodology here.
Web hosting with 100% uptime and a 48ms average server response time in our testing
Passed stress testing with 250 simulated users and zero HTTP failures
PCI-compliant with DDoS protection, 2FA, and a Site History tool to roll back changes
A powerful, easy site builder: Wix has one of the best drag-and-drop website design tools, plus tons of themes and templates to choose from. You can build almost any kind of site in just minutes, and the AI website builder can even do a lot of the initial work for you.
Plenty of free add-ons: Wix has almost every feature you could want in a free website builder, and the kitchen sink, too. For everything else, the add-on marketplace lets you add everything from integrations with third-party services to extra-fancy pricing tables. Many third-party apps extend Wix's functionality, and many are free.
SEO and blogging tools: A free Wix website comes with everything you need to help your site rank higher in search engines. It also includes blog functionality if you want to post regular updates.
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Ecommerce requires a paid plan: If you want to sell anything, or even send invoices, you do have to shell out to Wix for the privilege.
Of all the site builders we tested, Wix performed best, with respectable loading times for the test website, 100% uptime, and rock-solid server stability, as shown by a low, consistent average server response time. Wix also handled the stress test like a champ, with the lowest server response time under load that I've seen on almost any web host.
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| Tested uptime | 100% |
| Average page speed performance score | 80.3 / 100 |
| Average FCP | 0.63 s |
| Minimum server response time | 16 ms |
| Did Wix pass the stress test? | Yes |
| Learn more | Get Wix |
Wix earned a near-perfect star rating of 5.0 because it provided an easy-to-use platform with intuitive design elements, customizable pricing along with a free plan, and several support options.
Wix only received a lower score in the features category because lower-tier plans are locked out of unlimited storage space and larger numbers of contributors.
| Decision factor | Weight | Verdict |
| Our experience | 45% | 5.0 |
| Value | 5% | 5.0 |
| Features | 45% | 4.6 |
| Support | 5% | 5.0 |
Everything managed for you — automated updates, real-time backups, and security built in from day one
Unified wp-admin dashboard removes the dual learning curve of separate hosting and site-building tools
Enterprise-grade security stack — CDN, malware removal, DDoS protection, and a WAF — included on every plan, even free
All the power of WordPress, for free: The free plan doesn't lock you out of many features. This means that, while WordPress.com is best for blogs, you technically can use it to build almost any kind of website.
Customize (almost) everything: WordPress.com's free plan includes access to many high-quality website themes. And with the new-ish block editor WordPress has been working on, some themes even let you build your blog in a drag-and-drop fashion like Wix and Squarespace. However, this platform limits custom code.
Massive community: WordPress.com runs a significant portion of the world's websites, and the community is huge. This means that if you want to do something with WordPress, someone has likely already built a plugin, template, or guide to show you how.
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Limited support options: When you have a problem, WordPress.com offers few official support options, even on its paid plans. Community support is good, but official support would be great.
Performance, as with most site builders, is a mixed bag on WordPress.com. Sites start loading quickly, but depending on how well the template you've chosen is optimized, it may take a little while to fully load. Average server response times were low, and the test site maintained 100% uptime. The stress test results were stellar, too.
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| Tested uptime | 100% |
| Average page speed performance score | 82 / 100 |
| Average FCP | 0.3 s |
| Minimum server response time | 5 ms |
| Did WordPress.com pass the stress test? | Yes |
| Learn more | Get WordPress.com |
WordPress.com received a solid star rating of 4.5 due to its affordable pricing tiers and comprehensive free plan, along with its helpful customer support.
WordPress.com was docked points in the experience and features categories. Our experience testing WordPress was more time-consuming than other options, and features like site analytics, SEO tools, and AI tools are locked behind higher-tier plans.
| Decision factor | Weight | Verdict |
| Our experience | 45% | 4.5 |
| Value | 5% | 5.0 |
| Features | 45% | 4.0 |
| Support | 5% | 5.0 |
Ecommerce web builder connected to Square POS, so online and in-person sales sync automatically
Tracks low stock alerts, product variations, and order fulfillment in one dashboard
Built-in loyalty program lets customers earn points and redeem them for discounts or free items
Beginner-friendly, ecommerce-focused dashboard: Running a basic website is not the same as running an online store, and Square Online specializes in the latter. It is not a general-purpose host that has ecommerce functionality as an optional add-on. It’s an ecommerce-first platform where everything in the dashboard, from the navigation menu to the setup wizards, is designed with a single focus: building and managing an online store.
Beyond standard ecommerce features: Square Online covers the basics you expect from an ecommerce platform (e.g., multiple payment methods, inventory management), but it goes beyond that, offering features for every type of business you can think of. The list is too long to include it all, but some highlights are: automatically create items and SKUs, generate a QR code for contactless booking, set up time frames for cancellations, require customers to provide a credit card at booking, equally divide each credit card tip across all tip-eligible employees, build contracts from editable and reusable templates, and much more.
Built-in HR system: Square Online makes it easy to manage your entire ecommerce business, not only inventory and shipping. For stores with multiple employees, you can forecast total labor expenses for upcoming schedules, compare your hourly labor costs to net sales, check team sales leaders, track who issued refunds, see when employees clocked in, and more.
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Lack of transparency around traditional website specs: One drawback of Square Online being so hyperfocused on ecommerce is that the company hasn’t provided explicit information about standard hosting specs, like how many websites you can build and how much storage space is included. After searching far and wide and speaking to its AI chatbot, we concluded that, for several specs, the unofficial answer is "unlimited," but it wouldn’t hurt Square Online to explicitly put that in writing.
Square Online earned a high star rating of 4.7 due to its user-friendly design, wide range of pricing, and various ways to contact customer support.
Square Online received a lower score in the experience category because it has a limited number of templates for web building. It also received a lower score in the features category because it doesn't offer a professional email or a photo editor.
| Decision factor | Weight | Verdict |
| Our experience | 45% | 4.33 |
| Value | 5% | 5.0 |
| Features | 45% | 4.40 |
| Support | 5% | 5.0 |
InfinityFree lets you connect a domain you already own without forcing you onto a paid plan
You’re not locked into one proprietary website builder, so you can install platforms like WordPress and manage your own site
Includes 5 GB of free storage, which is enough room for a small business site, portfolio, or growing blog
5 GB of storage space: For a small business website or an early-stage blog, 5 GB of storage is plenty. It’s also more than many other free web hosts offer. For example, Wix only gives you 500 MB, while WordPress.com offers 1 GB.
Free SSL certificates: InfinityFree not only issues free SSL certificates, but also lets you choose from two providers — Let’s Encrypt and Google Trust.
Custom domain support: Many free web hosts (including the other four on this list) only let you publish a website using their company subdomain. InfinityFree is a notable exception and lets you connect your own domain name, giving your website a professional appearance without upgrading to a paid plan.
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True usage caps are buried in the knowledge base: InfinityFree prominently features its attractive specs on the homepage but leaves the less attractive usage caps in knowledge base articles. So while everyone sees "unlimited bandwidth," the service caps CPU, RAM, and other variables. A small business website probably won’t hit the limits, but if traffic picks up significantly, the site could be taken down without notice.
InfinityFree is ideal for anyone who needs ongoing free web hosting for a professional project and wants to choose their own website-building method (e.g., WordPress). Two main reasons: it lets you connect a custom domain to your site so you’re not stuck with a subdomain, and it doesn’t advertise on your site. Overall, it’s great for small business owners, community organizations or clubs, students, or anyone on a tight budget. The main caveat is website traffic. If your site gets too popular, you’ll need to upgrade or transfer elsewhere.
User-friendly web builder with drag-and-drop templates and AI tools to help generate your site, branding, and copy
Supports custom CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, so you can go beyond drag-and-drop when needed
Built-in loyalty program with points, tiers, and subscriptions, plus its own POS system for in-person sales
Professionally designed template system: Squarespace now uses a system where every website actually uses the same template. It's a fully customizable template that comes with presets for almost any site you want to build. And all the presets look good!
Carefully implemented feature set: Just like with Wix, you can use Squarespace to sell things, blog, create random landing pages, and anything else you might like. But it has a bit less functionality, focusing more carefully on a smaller set of features. This author actually prefers that approach to site builders.
A guided experience: Throughout the site creation process, Squarespace feels designed to get you up and running with minimal fuss. Every step comes with instructions for beginners who are completely unfamiliar with the process, making it simple and easy. But those who are familiar with building websites will find a tool that's fast and intuitive to use.
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Slightly more limited site customization: You can build almost any kind of site with Squarespace, and you can do a lot with the design of a Squarespace site. But it doesn't offer quite the same level of customization freedom as Wix.
The optimization of sites built with Squarespace could be better. Again, the initial loading starts quickly, but the test site took longer to finish loading than we'd like. This is partly due to heavy reliance on JavaScript, which is a feature of most site builders. On the other hand, the average server response time was low and steady, and Squarespace handled the stress test pretty well.
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| Tested uptime | 100% |
| Average page speed performance score | 67 / 100 |
| Average FCP | 0.73 s |
| Minimum server response time | 28 ms |
| Did Squarespace pass the stress test? | Yes |
| Learn more | Get Squarespace |
Squarespace earned a near-perfect star rating of 4.9 because it provided a simple-to-use experience with professionally designed templates, good value for ecommerce platforms, and multiple options for customer support.
Squarespace only received a lower score in the features category because it lacks tools like an advanced photo editor and a professional email across plans.
| Decision factor | Weight | Verdict |
| Our experience | 45% | 5.0 |
| Value | 5% | 5.0 |
| Features | 45% | 4.8 |
| Support | 5% | 5.0 |
Free web hosting sure is worth it when you don't have a ton of money to throw around! It's also a great option when you're just learning how websites work. We selected the five options above because they're well regarded, offer plenty of free functionality, and are generally safe to use. Also, we tried them and liked them.
However, keep in mind that free hosting always comes with caveats. Those can take various forms, from storage and bandwidth limits to whether or not you can connect a custom domain. For that reason, if you’re able, it’s usually better to invest in cheap hosting.
But if you cannot afford even a low-cost host, or you prefer free hosting, consider these factors before committing to a plan. Here's a checklist of what to look for:
For anyone who wants to set up a basic brochure site (or an events page for their local sports team, etc.), I would definitely recommend Wix as the best free web hosting for beginners on a nonexistent budget.
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Web hosting with 100% uptime and a 48ms average server response time in our testing
Passed stress testing with 250 simulated users and zero HTTP failures
PCI-compliant with DDoS protection, 2FA, and a Site History tool to roll back changes
But if you're a blogger? Go with WordPress.com. If you need an online store, Square Online is a no-brainer. And for a professional project or a small business website, InfinityFree is the best choice because it’s the only service that lets you connect a custom domain name to your site.
Finally, if you reach a point where you have money to invest in a paid host, check out our roundup of the best web hosting services.
None of these include a website builder, so you'll need to write or generate your own HTML, CSS, and JavaScript before uploading.
Up to a point, yes, Wix is free hosting. You can’t attach a full custom domain to your website on Wix’s free plan, and you can’t accept payments through your site. Those are the main limitations. But you do get access to all the drag-and-drop design tools and a best-in-class AI website builder.
A custom domain is not included with any of the free web hosts featured in this article. However, InfinityFree lets you connect a custom domain to your project. The other four don’t let you connect a custom domain unless you upgrade to a paid plan. Instead, they give you a free subdomain. Unfortunately, those subdomains include the platform's name in the address (e.g., yoursite.wixsite.com), which makes them less than ideal for business purposes.
Wix is our top pick for beginners. Its drag-and-drop editor, wide template library, and AI-assisted site builder make it easy to get a site up and running without any technical knowledge. It has a permanently free plan with no credit card required. WordPress.com is a strong second choice if you want to start a blog, and InfinityFree is the best option if you need to connect a custom domain for a more professional appearance.
Free hosts usually come with several limitations. These include how big a site you can build, how many files you can host, whether you can attach a custom domain name, and more. Some free hosts that specialize in deploying static websites (e.g., Vercel, Cloudflare) offer more flexibility than traditional free hosting, but they aren’t beginner-friendly.
Yes. Wix, WordPress.com, Square Online, and InfinityFree all let you sign up and start building a free site without entering any payment information. Squarespace also lets you start a free trial without a credit card. You'll only need to add payment details if you choose to upgrade to a paid plan.
WordPress.com is a managed hosting platform that handles everything for you, including the server, software updates, and security. The free plan gives you a site at yoursite.wordpress.com with access to themes and the block editor. Self-hosted WordPress uses the free open-source software from WordPress.org, but you install it on your own hosting account. That gives you full control (including access to any plugin or theme), but you're also responsible for managing hosting, updates, and backups yourself. For beginners, WordPress.com is the simpler place to start. If you outgrow it and want full control, migrating to a self-hosted setup is always an option later on.
Web hosting with 100% uptime and a 48ms average server response time in our testing
Passed stress testing with 250 simulated users and zero HTTP failures
PCI-compliant with DDoS protection, 2FA, and a Site History tool to roll back changes
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