Top 5 Free Website Hosting Companies

If you are just beginning to set-up your web site online you may want to consider a free web hosting solution in order to "test the waters" before eventually expanding into a paid solution. Although most free hosts either have banners or advertisements on them in order to cover their costs, some have plenty of space and bandwidth and offer good customer support.

Unless you own a domain, the name for your website will most likely include the name of the free host (i.e. www.freehost.com/mysite). Some offer the option to allow your domain onto their site, which you will have to own. You can also use a redirection service to make your name shorter and more memorable to users.

Ideal for personal or business web sites, this free host has received a lot of positive reviews. The disk space they offer varies, it is more if you decide to display adverts into your page. They are free of banners, allow custom adverts, plenty of bandwidth and many features such as CGI, PHP or SSI.

Disk Space – 100 MB - 2500 MB.

Advertisments – No ads (bannerless).

Upload options – FTP, Browser, SiteCopy.

Supported Scripting – CGI, PHP, SSI, FrontPage Extensions, Perl, Python

Other Features – Bandwidth limit 3,000 - 45,000 MB/month. Cpanel, Fantastico

MySQL POP3, SMTP, Forwarding, Web-based Email, PHP mail, Sendmail. Free websites must be English, Spanish, or French site.14-days Inactivity limit

http://www.x10hosting.com/

This host has a very good concept behind the free hosting options. They will give you the opportunity to plan, expand and improve your site as you see fit. You can expand your site up to 12 GB and 125Gb of bandwidth a month. The downside is that it has advertisements on your page, but it might not be a problem for the features it offers.

Disk Space – 100 MB - 12500 MB

Advertisments – Buttons (client-placed iframe code).

Upload options – FTP, Browser.

Supported Scripting – CGI, PHP, SSI, FrontPage Extensions, Perl, Ruby.

Other Features – Bandwidth limit 1,000 - 125,000 MB/month.cPanel, Fantastico. MySQL, PostGresSQL, PhpPgAdmin, PHPMyAdmin. Ruby on Rails. POP3 email. Addon domains.Webalizer, Awstats Statistics. Custom error pages. SendMail, Cron by request.

http://www.ismywebsite.com/

The company offers various free packages, including a package with no advertisements (less features), one with advertisement (more features) and a post-for-host package. This requires you to make 15 informative posts a month in their forum, which gains you a nice hosting package monthly, with no ads, 2GB disk space and 30GB of data transfer. The admin support on the site is also good.

Disk Space – 200 MB - 2,000 MB

Advertisments – Depends on package.

Upload options – FTP, Browser.

Supported Scripting – CGI, PHP, SSI, FrontPage Extensions, Perl, Python, Ruby.

Other Features – Cpanel control panel. Bandwidth limit 100,000 MB/month. PostgreSQL, MySQL. PhpMyAdmin, phpPgAdmin. Web-based Email. Webalizer, Analog, AWStats statistics. Password-protected files. Ruby on Rails. .htaccess. Addon domains.

http://www.profusehost.net/

A very popular choice and well known amongst free hosting companies. The space and bandwidth they offer are ideal for any personal site or starting business. There is plenty of activity on the forums should you need help and your page will be banner-less. There are some downsides, such as a very low file size limit and having to pay for MySQL use, should you need it.

Disk Space –5,000 MB

Advertisments – No Ads (banner free)

Upload options – FTP, Browser.

Supported Scripting –PHP, SSI only.

Other Features – Bandwidth limit 300,000 MB/month. Instant activation. PHP scripts auto-installer like Fantastico. file size limit 8 MB. Addon domain name. Powered by 110MBPanel (modified LayeredPanel). 150-days Inactivity limit.

http://www.110mb.com/

This company allows you to get a domain plus free hosting if you sign up with any of the other offers displayed. The offers are paid ones, but it seems that they are cheap, which will guarantee you lifetime free hosting and a domain name.

Disk Space –5,000 MB

Adverts – No Ads (banner free)

Upload options – FTP, Browser.

Supported Scripting – CGI, PHP, FrontPage Extensions, Perl

Other Features – Bandwidth limit 250,000 MB/month. cPanelX, Fantastico. MySQL databases. Webmail, email forwarding. Modify MX entry. Free domain name. Addon domains. .htaccess. Custom error pages. Analog, AWStats statistics. Cronjobs.

http://free-name.org/