Are you looking for the best cheap hosting company that comes under your budget?
When you’re starting out with a new website, it’s often advised to choose a cheap hosting (also known as shared hosting) plan.
From 1-click installers to website builders, often shared hosting plans come with all the essential features you’ll need to get your website up and running. Since there’re dozens of cheap hosting providers out there, choosing the best cheap hosting company can be a daunting task.
Let’s take a look at the top cheap hosting providers. We’ll also help you choose which one is the best fit for your own website.
About Our Cheap Hosting Review Process
We know that finding the right shared hosting service for your site can be intimidating.
Indeed, it’s not practical for you to test every hosting solution to find the best cheap hosting company available. To save you time, we’ve signed up with all the most popular hosting solutions on the market and conducted a few tests on them.
Here’s what we did to help you easily choose the best shared hosting service:
- Signed up with top cheap hosting companies on the market
- Created a test WordPress website
- Mirrored an actual live site environment on those test accounts by installing a WordPress theme and adding dummy content, including images
- Conducted a few different tests using the speed test tool to see how the WordPress site would perform and recorded the test data.
Let’s get straight to the top cheap hosting companies starting with #1 on our list.
1. Bluehost
1. Bluehost- Load time: 689 ms
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: Bluehost.com
Bluehost is one of the best cheap hosting providers on the market. WordPress.org officially recommends Bluehost. Powering over 2 million websites worldwide, their shared hosting plans come with all the features you could ever ask for.
Every website hosted at Bluehost is given a free domain name, free SSL, and 1-click WordPress install. They also let you try their hosting service risk-free for 30 days. There are also plenty of addons for SEO tools and other apps to help optimize, market, and promote your site.
Bluehost also has one of the best managed WordPress hosting plans. You can even choose a WooCommerce hosting plan which comes with the WooCommerce plugin and Storefront theme preinstalled to help you start an online store with ease.
Who is it for? – If you’re starting out with a new WordPress blog or website, then Bluehost is the best choice for you. Unlike other cheap hosting services, Bluehost provides a great onboarding experience.
Pricing: Regular price starts at $3.99 per month
Special offer: Our users pay $1.99 per month. (50% off + free domain name and SSL certificate) with a 30 day money-back guarantee
2. Hostinger
2. Hostinger- Load time: 1.42s
- Uptime: 99.99%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: Hostinger.com
Without a doubt, Hostinger is one of the best cheap hosting providers on the market that offers low-budget hosting plans. More than 30 million people around the globe have been using Hostinger services.
Best of all, Hostinger has deployed servers in 7 different regions around the globe: UK, US, Brazil, Netherlands, Singapore, Indonesia, and Lithuania (coming soon).
You can rely on their customer success team whenever you need assistance, which is available 24/7 via live chat.
Who Is It For? – Hostinger is perfect for bloggers and site owners who need a cheap yet reliable web hosting service.
Pricing: Regular pricing starts at $11.99 per month
Special offer: Our users pay $2.24 per month (81% OFF)
3. SiteGround
3. SiteGround- Load time: 649 ms
- Uptime: 99.98%
- Support: 10/10
- Website: SiteGround.com
If you’re looking for a reliable shared hosting service that doesn’t compromise on speed, look no further than SiteGround. SiteGround’s shared hosting plans are suitable for websites with 100,000 monthly visitors or fewer.
With a shared hosting plan, you’ll get all the essential features you need to get your website up and running, including a free drag and drop website builder, free SSL / HTTPs, free Cloudflare CDN, and free daily backup.
You also get unlimited databases so you’ll have plenty of storage space.
You’d like to check out these hosting comparisons between,
- SiteGround vs GreenGeeks
- SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting
- SiteGround vs HostGator
- SiteGround vs A2 Hosting
- SiteGround vs DreamHost
- SiteGround vs WP Engine
- SiteGround vs iPage
- SiteGround vs Liquid Web
Who is it for? – If you’re after a fast shared hosting service that offers proactive security and 99.99% uptime, then SiteGround is the right choice for you. SiteGround is also the #1 host for reseller plans.
Pricing: Entry-level plans start at $17.99 per month
Special offer: Our users pay $3.99 per month
4. HostGator
4. HostGator- Load time: 691 ms
- Uptime: 99.96%
- Support: 10/10
- Website: HostGator.com
Want an easy and affordable hosting service that comes under your budget? Whether you want to build a personal blog or build a small business website, HostGator is a perfect choice.
Some of the great features of HostGator’s shared web hosting plans are:
- Website builder with no limits: Unlike other shared hosting providers, HostGator offers you a full-featured website builder with every shared hosting plan.
- Excellent documentation: Getting started with HostGator is super easy thanks to their extensive documentation which includes over 500 video tutorials.
- 24/7/365 support: HostGator offers support via telephone, live chat, and email around the clock.
HostGator also offers one of the best Cloud hosting plans.
Who is it for? – If you want a vast array of hosting tools to get your site up and running, then HostGator is your best choice.
Pricing: The basic Hatchling plan starts at $4.78 per month
Special offer: Our users pay $2.52 per month (60% off + free SSL)
5. Dreamhost
- Load time: 445 ms
- Uptime: 99.90%
- Support: 7/10
- Website: Dreamhost.com
DreamHost is one of the most popular cheap WordPress hosting companies on the market. They’re an officially recommended hosting provider by WordPress.org.
No matter what your web hosting needs are, DreamHost has the right plan for you. They also offer an unmatched 97-day money-back guarantee, so you can give DreamHost a try, risk-free.
Who is it for? – If you need an affordable hosting provider that gives you fast SSD storage and risk-free hosting, then DreamHost could be your best choice.
Pricing: Starts at $6.99 for the per month
Special offer: Our users pay only $2.59 per month (Free website SSL + 63% off)
6. iPage
6. iPage- Load time: 2.60 s
- Uptime: 99.98%
- Support: 8/10
- Website: iPage.com
iPage is the most affordable hosting service provider in the shared hosting vertical. Originally started in 1998, iPage now serves over 1 million websites between 2 data centers in the U.S.
iPage is also an EPA green power partner, meaning the data centers and web servers are powered by wind energy, reducing their carbon footprint. Their documentation is pretty straightforward and helps walk you through every aspect of web hosting.
Who is it for? – If you’re looking for a low price hosting service on the market, then look no further than iPage Hosting.
Pricing: The monthly price for the starter plan is $10.99
Special offer: Our users pay $2.95 per month (73% off + free SSL and free domain name for the first year)
7. GreenGeeks
7. GreenGeeks- Load time: 697 ms
- Uptime: 99.92%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: GreenGeeks.com
GreenGeeks is the world’s #1 green energy web hosting provider. GreenGeeks puts back 3 times the power they consume into the grid in the form of renewable energy.
They offer some of the best speed technologies such as PowerCacher and free Cloudflare CDN integration to speed up your site. Some of the advantages of hosting with GreenGeeks are SSD storage, unlimited website hosting, and email accounts.
Who is it for? – If you’re looking for a cheap web hosting service provider that’s committed to the environment, then GreenGeeks is your best choice.
Pricing: Regular price starts at $11.95 per month
Special offer: Our users pay $2.95 per month (Free domain name + 75% off)
8. InMotion Hosting
8. InMotion Hosting- Load time: 982 ms
- Uptime: 99.91%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: InMotionHosting.com
Get started with InMotion Hosting »
InMotion Hosting is one of the most reliable shared hosting companies that offer many desirable hosting features.
They provide the latest technology for a smooth and fast web experience, like SSD storage, PHP 7, and custom server caching. They also give you a choice of data centers, free automated backups, and 24/7 US-based in-house support.
Who is it for? If you want to manually choose the data center for your website, then InMotion Hosting is your best bet. They also offer an industry-leading 90-day money-back guarantee and free data backup.
Pricing: Regular price starts at $12.99 per month
Special offer: Our users pay only $2.99 per month (77% off + free domain name)
Read our InMotion Hosting review >>
9. A2 Hosting
9. A2 Hosting- Load time: 1.28 s
- Uptime: 99.90%
- Support: 9/10
- Website: A2hosting.com
A2 Hosting is one of the best developer-friendly hosting services on the market. Unlike most cheap hosting services, A2 Hosting comes with 2 great operating system options: Linux and Windows. It lets you install your preferred website script with 1 click, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
What makes A2 Hosting special is that they offer an anytime money-back guarantee. If you’re not fully satisfied with their hosting, you can cancel your account within 30 days for a full refund. After the first 30 days, you’ll be eligible for a prorated refund for any unused services.
Who is it for? – If you want the flexibility of choosing between 2 operating systems, then go for A2 Hosting. Plus, they also come with a prorated refund for unused services.
Pricing: The basic plan starts at $23.99 per month
Special offer: Our users pay only $9.99 per month (58% off)
Choosing the Best Cheap Hosting – Understanding Different Hosting Options
Before you choose a web hosting plan, it’s worth taking a moment to examine the different types of hosting options available and how they differ from cheap hosting.
What is Cheap Hosting (Shared Hosting)?
Shared hosting is a web hosting setup that allows you to share your server resources with other websites hosted on the same server. In a shared hosting setup, hundreds of websites are hosted on the same server, sharing resources like RAM, CPU, and disk storage.
This is how hosting companies can still profit while selling you hosting space at a minimal price. These plans are usually set up for beginners who are creating a website for the first time so you’ll likely get a user-friendly dashboard as well to manage your hosting plan.
Let’s take a look at when shared plans is the best choice for your site:
- You’re getting started with a new website and expect a low traffic volume.
- You’re a startup that wants to start on a low budget and upgrade later.
- You don’t mind sharing server resources with other sites as long as you can operate your own site smoothly and safely.
- You want the most affordable hosting plans for your site.
With cheap shared hosting, you’ll can choose between annual or month-to-month plans. As your website grows, you may need more control and flexibility over your hosting server and its functionality. In that case, you can easily upgrade your shared hosting to VPS or Dedicated Server hosting.
Let’s take a quick look at these 2 hosting services and how they differ from shared hosting.
Shared Hosting vs. VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting
VPS is basically an independent partition of a physical server. Hosting providers create multiple virtual partitions of one physical server, giving you more control over your server at a lower cost than dedicated server hosting.
In case you’re wondering, here’re the main differences between shared and VPS hosting:
With a shared hosting plan, hosting providers have a script to limit the resources of each client so that no one is using up all the resources. With VPS hosting, while you’ll still be sharing resources with other clients, you’ll get a much more stable server hosting environment with little to no fluctuation in the resources available.
VPS hosting is scalable, meaning your hosting provider can adjust the amount of server space allocated for your site as your traffic grows.
Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Server Hosting
With dedicated hosting, you get a complete server for your sole use. Unlike shared hosting servers, as you’re not sharing any resources with other websites, you’ll get more control over its configuration and overall operating environment.
Not every website requires all the bells and whistles and turbo speed offered by dedicated server hosting. Below are a few instances when you need to start using dedicated hosting for your site:
- Your website is rapidly gaining traction among your audience and you believe you’ll soon outgrow your existing hosting environment.
- You want enhanced security features that are available only with a dedicated hosting plan.
- You need an IP address that you don’t want to share across other websites.
Some dedicated web hosting plans come with unlimited storage and bandwidth, making it worth the investment.
Also, check out our detailed comparison of Shared vs. Dedicated vs. VPS hosting.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Shared Hosting Provider
The web hosting market is a competitive space. To stay ahead of the curve, hosting companies offer tons of perks to customers and promise a reliable uptime, even with shared hosting. If you’re wondering what factors you should consider when choosing a cheap hosting provider, then take a look at the list below:
- Uptime guarantee
- Load time
- Features
- Technical Support
1. Uptime Guarantee
When choosing a cheap hosting service provider, you’ll need to choose the one that offers maximum uptime. Before you jump in, be sure to pay attention to the guaranteed uptime percentage. You can’t expect your host to provide a 100% uptime guarantee, but anything below 99.9% is unreliable.
Some hosting providers offer a refund if they fail to meet their uptime guarantee. However, that doesn’t cut it because even if your site goes down only for a second, it’s going to cost you money.
Downtime can happen due to:
- Security threats
- Hardware failures
- Natural disaster
- Human error
- Backup disk corruption
- Power outage
Your hosting providers don’t have control over many factors that can cause downtime. However, be sure to choose a provider that guarantees at least 99.9% uptime.
2. Load Time
Load time or speed is one of the most critical elements you’ll need to consider when choosing your cheap hosting service. Google continues to emphasize page speed in their algorithm, and if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, your visitors will likely abandon your site.
While you can find many tips and tricks to boost your website’s speed, they’re not going to work out if you’re hosted on a server that compromises speed.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should choose an expensive hosting plan for your site. A lot of hosting companies offer cheap hosting with blazing fast page speed.
To test the speed of different popular hosting services, we’ve created a test site on these hosts with a default WordPress theme installed and conducted speed tests with 2 tools: Pingdom and Load Impact.
3. Features
Hosting may not be your area of expertise, but it’s important to have a clear idea about what hosting features you should expect as standard from the outset as a website user.
Let’s start drilling into detail and look at the different features you can get from a cheap hosting provider.
1-click script install: One-click script install is a standard feature you can expect from any qualified cheap hosting provider. For instance, there’s one-click WordPress install that lets you set up WordPress without any technical knowledge.
Website builder: Website builder is another standard feature you can expect from your cheap hosting provider. Keep in mind that not all the website builders offered by different providers are created equal. Some web hosting companies have a white-labeled partnership with site builders like Weebly, while others offer you a custom-built site builder.
If you want to build a website with a site builder, it’s worth taking a moment to examine the features these builders offer you. For example, some let you create a basic website with ease using a drag and drop builder, whereas others even let you launch an eCommerce store and help you start selling your products.
The key is to analyze if your hosting provider gives you the right set of features you’ll need from their site builder.
Control panel: A control panel is a web-based interface offered by your hosting provider to manage your hosting account, including website files, email hosting, domain name, and a lot more. Before choosing cheap web hosting for small businesses, you’ll need to understand how your web host lets you manage your hosting account. The most popular control panel is cPanel, and cheap web hosting with cPanel is easy to find. Still, some web hosting companies also offer a custom-built control panel to make it even easier for WordPress beginners.
Domain limits: Cheap web hosting services are often priced based on the number of domains you can use on them. With a higher or pro plan, you can use unlimited domain names.
Email hosting: Just like domain names, some hosting providers set a limit for the number of email addresses you can set up with your domain name. A handful of hosts allow unlimited email accounts and that’s usually with their top-tier plans.
Disk space and bandwidth: Shared hosting plans often come with unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Even though the plans are often advertised as unlimited or unmetered disk space and unmetered bandwidth, they’re not actually unlimited. It simply means unlimited usage based on the Terms of Services of your hosting provider.
Keep in mind that when you create a shared hosting account, you’ll need to fully comply with the Terms of Services of your host, and you’re allowed to use only the resources that are required to operate a small website.
Free marketing offers: Some cheap web hosting companies like HostGator give you AdWords and Bing credits worth $100 that you can use to promote your online business.
Free domain: Many web hosting companies allow you to claim a domain name for free when purchasing a hosting account. Aside from allowing you to save the domain registration fee, claiming a free domain name also makes it easy to manage your domain and hosting under a single panel. In most cases, the domain registration is free only for the first year so make sure you check the renewal rate.
4. Technical support
You never know when you’re going to need technical support for your web hosting server. As your visitors expect your site to be up around the clock, you’ll need to ensure that your hosting provider offers access to a 24/7 support team with your hosting plan.
A few things you’ll need to consider are:
- Support modes: Ensure whether your hosting provider offers free phone support and chat support through the day. It’s also good to have the option to email them if you’re unable to use other support channels.
- Response time: Understand the average response time and the average time it takes to get your support request resolved.
- Documentation: Having an extensive documentation is compulsory. With a great knowledge base, you don’t have to waste your time on live chat because, in most cases, you can get issues sorted out on your own.
Lastly, it’s important to know that you can always migrate to a new host if your selected hosting provider isn’t worthy.
Recap: Best Cheap Hosting Companies
After our cheap hosting review, we’ve found that Bluehost offers the best cheap hosting plans on the market. They offer different pricing plans that perfectly fit your needs, regardless of the size of your business. Whether you want to build a hobby website or a new home for your online business, you’ll find their hosting plans reasonable.
Bluehost makes it super easy to get your website up and running by offering a free domain name. Aside from cost savings, it enables you to manage both the domain and hosting under the same account.
If you’re looking for a host that offers robust performance, uptime, and a complete set of features at a fair price, then Bluehost is for you!
| WordPress Hosting | Cost | Money Back | Load Time | Uptime | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Bluehost | $1.99/mo. | 30 days | 689 ms | 99.99% | 10/10 |
| 2. Hostinger | $2.24/mo. | 30 days | - | 99.90% | 7/10 |
| 3. SiteGround | $3.99/mo. | 30 days | 649 ms | 99.98% | 10/10 |
| 4. HostGator | $2.52/mo. | 45 days | 691 ms | 99.96% | 10/10 |
| 5. Dreamhost | $2.59/mo. | 97 days | 445 ms | 99.90% | 7/10 |
| 6. iPage | $2.95/mo. | 30 days | 2600 ms | 99.98% | 8/10 |
| 7. GreenGeeks | $2.95/mo. | 30 days | 697 ms | 99.92% | 9/10 |
| 8. InMotion Hosting | $2.99/mo. | 90 days | 982 ms | 99.91% | 9/10 |
| 9. A2 Hosting | $9.99/mo. | 30 days | 1280 ms | 99.90% | 9/10 |
FAQs
Having helped thousands of users to set up their websites, we’ve found that people ask the same questions again and again. This is why we’ve compiled a list of frequently asked questions, so you can find the best cheap hosting company for your site.
What’s shared hosting / cheap hosting?
Shared hosting is the cheapest hosting option available and comes with all the essential features you’ll need to get your website up and running.
Is shared hosting safe?
Shared hosting gives you a secure environment to build and grow a small website at an affordable price. Some shared hosting plans also give you a dedicated IP address and free SSL certificate, which grants access to your site whenever you need it and provides a secure connection.
How can a web hosting company offer cheap hosting without compromising on quality?
With low-cost shared hosting, server resources like RAM, CPU, and disk storage are shared with other sites hosted on the same server. This is how hosting companies keep the costs low without compromising on quality.
Typically, how much does it cost to purchase a shared hosting plan?
Hosting companies often advertise a huge discount for the initial term. But, normally, a shared hosting plan will cost around $100 per year. As your site grows, you can upgrade your hosting to higher hosting options like VPS or dedicated servers for handling more traffic.
Do I need to have a domain and hosting from the same provider?
Not necessarily. You can get a domain and hosting package from different providers. Some hosting providers allow you to register a domain name for free when purchasing a hosting account, making it easy to set up a blog from the ground up.
Alternatively, you can buy a domain name from a domain registrar. In the long run, buying a domain name from a domain registrar will be profitable for you because the domain renewal cost will be less.
Do I need to get a hosting addon?
No. Hosting companies often try to upsell hosting addons when you subscribe to a hosting plan. But if you want affordable web hosting, you can uncheck those addons before making the payment for your shared hosting to save money. When you’re just starting out with a new site, you won’t need those addons. However, you can always purchase those addons later if you find them useful.
Does shared hosting really offer unlimited resources?
Hosting companies often advertise to offer unmetered/unlimited bandwidth and disk space.
When they claim to offer unlimited/unmetered resources, they mean “unlimited” based on their terms of service. Their terms of service require you to use the resources for running a website under normal site operation conditions. That means there’re still usage restrictions.
However, in most cases, you won’t find any issues with their bandwidth and disk space.
What happens when my site outgrows the initial plan?
If you exceed usage, you’ll likely receive an email from your hosting provider to reduce it. If you find frequent outages, it’s best to upgrade to a higher plan so you can create a stable hosting environment for your site.
Are there other best cheap web hosting services?
Yes, there are more web hosting services that offer shared hosting plans like Namecheap and GoDaddy. However, we’ve picked the top 9 web hosts that offer you the best plans with upfront pricing, one-click installers, speed optimization, and affordable renewal prices.
Why does hosting customer support matter?
You never know when you’re going to get into trouble in terms of hosting.
In fact, just because a web hosting provider has a satisfactory uptime score doesn’t necessarily mean your site will be 100% secure and up around the clock. For example, if you’re on a shared hosting server, your site may impact how other websites hosted on the server consume the resources.
When you find any issues with your hosting server, you’ll want to contact your hosting provider instantly and get it resolved in no time. It can only be done if your hosting provider has a good track record of resolving support requests with no trouble.
That’s all for now. We hope this guide has helped you find the best cheap web hosting company with awesome hosting offers and deals.
You may also want to check out our following guides:
- Best and Cheap Premium WordPress Themes
- Ultimate List of Tools and Software for Small Businesses
- How to Start a WordPress Blog [The Complete Guide]
This will further help you set up your site with the right theme and tools so that your website grows fast and effectively.
