If you want to set up a web page, be it a blog, an online store or for any other use that you want to give it, it is essential to have a domain and also a hosting. If we want a domain .es, .com or any other, we will need to buy the domain and carry out an annual renewal, although we can buy the domain for 2 years and even more. We will also need a hosting to host our website, both the website itself and the database. In the event that you want to have a website for domestic use where you can advertise, and that is not too important (that you do not depend financially on the website), you can resort to free hosting or host the website yourself on a server that we have. at home. If you want to host your website on a free site, then we show you how you can do it.
What is hosting and what is it for?
A hosting is an online hosting service for web pages, it will allow us to host both websites, databases, applications that we have, email through the servers of the hosting itself and much more. If you are going to set up a web page, it is essential to have a hosting that is responsible for “hosting” our website and showing it to the different users who enter our domain in the address bar or search for it in Google. It is highly recommended that a hosting has minimum characteristics, below, you can see the characteristics that we consider essential:
- Good technical support. In the event that we have a technical problem, our website does not load, the database has been corrupted or any other failure, they will help us to solve it as soon as possible.
- Available space. Depending on the use that we are going to give it, it is important to have a lot of storage space to store the photos, videos, the database, etc.
- Available bandwidth. Generally, the bandwidth of the hosting is around 500Mbps approximately, so if we do not have hundreds of thousands of daily visits, we will not have any problem.
- Monthly data transfer. This aspect is very important, it means how much traffic we can exchange with users without limiting the speed of the account, and even charging us additional money for going over this available bandwidth.
- Mail accounts. There are hosting that have free email accounts, on other occasions you have to pay more money for this service.
- Security. It is very important that the hosting incorporates security, protection against DoS and DDoS attacks through a firewall. Today security is essential, and any hosting, or if you host it yourself, should have a minimum of security to avoid problems. It is also very important that the hosting make backup copies of our website, just in case there is a problem with any changes we make.
Once we know the main features that any paid hosting should have, it would be quite interesting if the free ones also incorporate most of these features.
List of hosting with free plans
There are many hostings that have completely free but very limited plans, the objective of these hostings is for customers to try the free version of the service, and if everything works well for them, later purchase the paid version with the hardware that we want, to that perfectly meets our needs. Next, we are going to show you all the free hostings that exist, most of them also have a paid version with better features.
260MB
This is one of the best free hosting that we can buy due to its technical specifications, it is a fairly professional free hosting, so it is highly recommended. Although we have not personally tried it, seeing its characteristics, it is the best of all the ones we have tried so far, so you have nothing to lose by trying it. Here are all the features:
- Monthly Bandwidth: Unlimited
- Disk Storage Space: Unlimited
- Add Domains: Unlimited
- Parked Domains: Unlimited
- Sub Domains: Unlimited
- PHP Sendmail: Limited, only for activation emails
- MySQL Databases: Unlimited
- FTP accounts: one account
- Free domain yourdomain.260mb.net
This service has a MySQL database, we also have PHP and PHPMyAdmin for management. Of course, we have email with email accounts, https with self-signed certificates, although we can use our own SSL certificate. It also has firewall protection and much more. Although in many cases we have no limitations, the service reserves the right to terminate accounts if excessive loads are placed on the server.
You can access the 260mb.net website from here to access all the information.
Hostinger
Hostinger is one of the cheapest and most competent hosting that we can hire, this hosting has a completely free version but it has quite a few limitations, in fact, as time goes by they have been limiting their features more in favor of the paid versions of the service . If you want something simple for your personal website, it could be a very interesting option, in addition, you can later purchase the paid version and enjoy better conditions.
The characteristics of this free hosting are the following:
- 1 website.
- 300MB of storage on SSD.
- Data transfer limited to 3GB.
- It allows up to 300 monthly visits approximately.
- 1 database
- Name server protection
- 99% uptime guarantee.
- 1 FTP account
- 1 Chronojobs
As you can see, this free hosting has important limitations, and it will almost always be worth purchasing a paid version, even if it is very cheap.
AwardSpace
AwardSpace is one of the most popular hosting for users who want to have a completely free hosting that works really well. This free hosting has better features than the previous one from Hostinger, so it is a really good alternative and highly recommended. Of course, we also have paid versions that are very cheap and have good features. However, if you are only looking for free hosting, here are the main features:
- Up to 4 websites with subdomains.
- 1GB of web storage.
- 5GB of monthly traffic.
- 1 database with MySQL
- Incorporates PHP MyAdmin
- 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- Management of files via web with the browser.
- 24/7 technical support.
Although this server offers excellent performance, when it comes to working with FTP it is quite slow and unstable and the connection is lost quite often. In another article we explain how to migrate a web page.
Byet Internet Service
This Byethost hosting service is also widely known in the world of completely free hosting. It has quite similar characteristics to the previous one, so it is a very good alternative if you are interested. If you want to know all the details of this service, below, we explain the main characteristics:
- Up to 5 websites with your domains, also allows 5 subdomains.
- 1GB of web storage.
- 5GB of monthly traffic.
- Up to 5 databases with MySQL.
- Incorporates PHP MyAdmin
- 99.9% uptime guarantee.
- File management via FTP, allows up to 10MB maximum size.
- It allows cron jobs, redirects and many other features.
This service also allows us to create completely free domains, ideal for testing or setting up a website with a domain that is not personalized.
000webhost
An also very interesting alternative is 000webhost , a service that has been offering completely free hosting for many years, although with quite a few limitations compared to the previous services that we have mentioned. This service has also been reducing its features, and right now they are very similar to Hostinger, so it offers significantly less than byethost or AwardSpaces. If you want to know all the details of this service, below, we explain the main characteristics:
- 1 website.
- 300MB of storage.
- Data transfer limited to 3GB.
- 1 MySQL database.
- 1 FTP account
- 1 chronjob
- It does not allow an email account or technical support.
- It does have Cloudflare protection.
- 99% uptime guarantee.
If you need more features for your hosting, it is clear that this service is not the one you should use, because it is quite limited.
Alternatives to free hosting
If you want to host your website, another option that you should consider is to use a home server, where you can host your website and make it accessible through the Internet. If you already have a NAS server at home or in the office, you can use it to host your own website, however, if you do not have a NAS, then it is not worth the initial investment, and it is better that you use free hosting directly or buy a “premium” one.
NAS server in your home or office
A NAS server has a huge number of uses that you can give it, and one of them is to use it as a web server with Apache or Nginx, in addition, it also supports installing a database with MySQL, MariaDB and even PostgreSQL, whichever you prefer. set up. For example, in QNAP models we have a web server available by default, with which we can make advanced configurations, either through the graphical user interface or through commands via SSH.
If we want to install the MariaDB database, we can do it natively, as we have in the App Center:
However, you will always be able to set up a complete virtual machine with Debian or Ubuntu where you can install everything manually, in addition, you also have the possibility of setting up a website in a Docker with the dockers that you want, in fact, there are ready-made dockers where only you have to modify certain things to build your website. Without a doubt, if you have a NAS it is the ideal alternative, because you will have more than enough power and storage for your personal projects.
Use cloud storage services
There are some cloud storage platforms that allow us to share HTML as a hosting. Logically we are not going to have advanced features such as the database, but we will be able to upload an HTML file with its internally linked photos, and display a very simple web page for home and personal use.
If you are interested in this possibility, you should know that pCloud is one of the most recommended Cloud storage services, because we can buy the 500GB or 2TB storage plan with a single payment, it is not a monthly or annual subscription, but it’s for life. In this way, we can store not only our website, but also our backup copies, programs, files, music, videos and everything you want. For example, the 2TB storage version has 2TB of monthly traffic, more than enough for a personal website.
There are other cloud storage services that also allow us this same functionality, such as Dropbox, Google Drive and many others. It can be an option for very basic things where we don’t need a database, and we just need the .html file with the corresponding images and the CSS for the styles.
Conclusions
Nowadays we have enough options to have a completely free hosting, depending on our needs we will have to choose between one alternative or another, however, you must bear in mind that all the free ones have their corresponding limitations both in space, monthly traffic transfer and also options as basic as the mail service.
If you are going to start in the world of the Internet and you do not want to spend a lot of money, it is a very good option to start with, although possibly in a very short space of time it will be really short for you, so also check if the paid versions of the free alternatives are competitive, because that way you will not have to migrate to another hosting.
In the event that you need more resources and have a NAS, it is a very good option to host your personal website in your own home, although in this case you will need a good Internet connection, a UPS in case the power goes out, and a server with decent hardware to serve the web. Otherwise, your website may not always be available, or it may work quite slowly.
Finally, the possibility of using cloud storage services as hosting is also there, although in a very limited way because we can only upload HTML files with their corresponding linked photos, and you must be in the public folder for everything to work correctly.
