Are you looking for free web hosting platforms to host your websites?
Recently, the need to have a portfolio website for IT personnel sprouted due to companies adopting remote work for their day-to-day activities. As a freelancer, having a portfolio where you can refer clients can serve as social proof for your career.
Most developers tend to get discouraged after working on a project, and hosting becomes a problem for them. Hosting your website or web application online serves as social proof for your skill.
To Host your website online, you also require a domain name, which costs some money. However, in this post, we will also be sharing a website where you can get a free domain name for your website.
In a future post, we will show you how to connect your domain name with your free hosting platform. Excited? Let’s get started with the top 5 best free web hosting platforms.
How To Host Your Website Online For Free
There are a lot of free web hosting platforms offering free hosting, some are also not legit and can be used for illegal activities like having people’s accounts, but we have conducted our research and have come up with the best 5 free hosting platforms.
How to Get a Free Domain Name for your Website
To get your free domain name, simply head over to freenom.com and signup for a free account. The free account qualifies you to get access to unlimited domain names for free.
A small catch, you cannot get top-level domains free using this website.
Top 5 Best Free Web Hosting Platforms
1. Google Drive
By virtue of having a Google account, Google provides its users with about 32GB of cloud storage. Google drive is a product owned by Google and can be used to upload files on the cloud. What people do not know is that you can host your website on Google drive for free.
Pros of Google Drive Free web Hosting
- It’s very fast and secure
- Your website will never go down (as long as Google’s servers are active)
- Unlimited cloud hosting space
- WordPress hosting available
Cons of Google Drive Free Hosting
- You cannot host web applications
- Their URL structure cannot be changed except you add a custom domain.
2. 000webhost
This web hosting platform provides shared hosting similar to the normal hosting on paid platforms like Namecheap, HostGator, GoDaddy, etc, but at no cost. They also have a premium plan if you wish to upgrade. To Host your website, simply visit their website and sign up for a new account.
Pros of 000WebHost
- Free shared hosting
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Easy to set up
Cons of 000WebHost
- The website may be down sometimes
3. Infinityfree
Infinity free web hosting provides its users with a free hosting plan with unlimited bandwidth. They also offer a free subdomain name that you can use to host dynamic or static websites. To get started, head over to their website, and sign up for a free account.
Pros of Infinityfree Hosting
- Free shared hosting
- Free subdomain name
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited domains
Cons of Infinityfree Hosting
- They serve ads on their platform, which can be annoying to some users
- Little site downtime bound to occur
- Congestion in traffic
4. GitHub Pages for Free Web Hosting
This is essentially a platform for collaborations between developers working remotely on the same project. You can also use Github for version control when working on complex projects.
In addition, GitHub can be used to host static Website files such as HTML, CSS, images, and Javascript. To start, sign up for a new account or log in to your GitHub account.
After that, create a new repository, and upload the website files to that repo.
Once done, click on settings on the GitHub repo, then scroll and click on public pages.
Pros of GitHub Pages
- Free to host
- Unlimited hosting
- No FTP required
- No downtime
Cons of GitHub Pages
- Cannot host dynamic web applications
- Cannot add the custom domain (except using URL redirect)
5. Heroku
If you are a web developer and have not heard of Heroku hosting, then I’m happy to inform you that you can host your web applications for free online on this platform. You can host web apps built in python, PHP, JavaScript, or any high-level programming language for free.
And the best part about it is that you get a free subdomain for your app. The process is quite tricky so I won’t be covering it in this post but will create a new post in the future for Heroku hosting.
Pros of Heroku hosting
- Free hosting space
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Free subdomain
Cons of Heroku hosting
- Quite tedious to set up
- Requires technical skills to complete
- Limits you to 5 websites for the free plan
Conclusion – Free Web Hosting
These are the best platforms offering free web hosting. In a future post, I’ll go in-depth on how to host a website on each of these platforms. Therefore, ensure you always check back to us for similar posts. Do you have any Issues using these platforms? Let us know through the comment section below.