The concept of a free website hosting company is hard to grasp. However, 000webhost is among the best such companies. Of course, it’s difficult to compare a free hosting service with a paying one, and that’s not the purpose of an honest review. 000webhost does offer a variety of features that inexperienced users may treasure. So is 000webhost worth the trouble? Is 000webhost good? This 000webhost review offers a realistic view of their features as well as educated recommendations.
000webhost Overview
000webhost’s goal is to provide the best free web hosting experience available. Free web hosting is a rarity, and it usually comes with limitations, such as using a sub-domain on their domain name instead of your own domain name. 000webhost does not do this. Nor do they place ads on your website. As we discovered during this 000webhost review, they allow you to host your own domain name with them for free.
Their Premium plan offers a free domain name, with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and an average page load speeds less than 3 seconds. The free plan is a bit slower, and though they state that their servers have a 99.99% uptime, they only offer a 99% uptime guarantee.
Pricing Information
As you can see below in this 000webhost review, 000WebHosting only offers 3 packages: a free one and 2 paid ones. For a small fee of $3.49/mo, you get a lot of neat features such as a free domain, cPanel Pro 11, advance website builders, unlimited FTP accounts, private SSL for great security, unlimited email accounts on the webmail platform. The free plan only allows for 2 websites and 1000MB of disk space. The 10 000MB bandwidth is decent for a free plan. They also offer free domain hosting, free PHP hosting, free hosting with MySQL, free Cpanel hosting, and free website templates. Their paid plans start at $3.49 via a promotional price. The first paid plan only offers unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth, which is not bad at all.
Apart from the basic features of a web hosting plan, the Premium hosting plan of 000 WebHost also gives users an advanced site builder, phone support, live chat, assistance in building the website, weekly backups of data, CGI script compatibility, PHP, Ruby on Rails, SSH, Perl, Python, FrontPage compatibility, newsletter options, and enhanced security.
000WebHost also offers a money back guarantee, but only for the Premium and Single plans. While the first, free package obviously would not require one, the first paid one, would greatly benefit from a money-back policy.
Package Name | Dedicated to | Price | Disk Space | Bandwidth | Websites | Hosting Type |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Free Plan | Startup Sites | Free | 1 000 MB | 10 000 MB = 10 GB | 2 | cPanel |
Single | Several Medium/Growing Sites | $5.99/mo ($0.80/mo on offer) | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | cPanel |
Premium | Multiple Sites | $11.95/mo ($3.49/mo on offer) | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | cPanel |
Security & Risk
No 000webhost review would be complete without discussing the security aspect. As one would expect from a free web host, the security offered is pretty standard. They offer free backups, spam filters, and an IP deny manager. These are all basic security features of cPanel. The Premium and Single packages offer a free SSL certificate, CloudFlare DDoS protection, and a Clam AV Antivirus scanner. The free plan does not offer SSL support, so running an e-commerce website without secure access would be risky.
Usability & User Friendliness
000webhost offers a free website builder with all of their plans and they use the cPanel control panel, which is one of the most user-friendly administration panels in the industry. They also provide one-click applications for several content management systems (CMS) and other scripts.
The Single plan has a 3X speed boost for WordPress websites while the Premium plan has a 5X speed boost. Because of this, it benefits you to use WordPress as your CMS. The paid service comes with a subscription to cPanel as well as a free domain associated with the website. Cpanel Pro 11 includes just about every option that one may want to control their pack.
Customer Support & Additional Info
000webhost has 24/7/365 live chat customer support and a ticket system that is always open. Most of the 000webhosting support reviews on the internet are good, though there are a few customers who explain that the services did not work for them. Only a few 000webhost review writers complained about customer support.
- 000webhost email: [email protected]
- 000webhost forum page
- Social Media channels: Facebook, Google+, Twitter
The 000webhost services are backed by a 30-day money back guarantee. Though, if you want to test them out for longer, we suggest trying their free service first. Keep in mind that their free servers run a bit slower than their paid servers.
000webhost Overall Service Rating:
What we like:
- Free Plan – It’s hard to find a decent free hosting company. 000webhost allows you to use your own domain and does not add advertisements to your site.
- Cheap Paid Plans – Even the 000webhost paid hosting plans are reasonably priced for the benefits you receive.
- WordPress Optimization – While this is only for the Premium and Single plans, this is a great reason to choose 000webhost.
What we don’t like:
- Security – For a free service, it doesn’t do too well in terms of security and stability. The free package should, at least, have shared SSL, for security purposes.
- Speed Difference Between Plans – While it’s a necessary evil, the difference in speed, especially between the free and paid plans is incredibly noticeable.
Rating:
Web Hosting Plans & Prices: 5/5
Security and Risk: 4/5
Usability & User Friendliness: 5/5
Customer Support: 5/5
000WebHost Top Alternatives
At the moment, the only alternative on the free web hosting market is Weebly. However, the latter service seems to not have the upper hand on 000webhost, although it’s far prettier. As we have tried both, we should note that Weebly is a tool for kids who want to play around with their own website, whereas 000WebHost free plan seems to be for those that want more advanced control over their website.
Paid alternatives to 000 WebHost include most great web hosting companies:
- TMDHosting – Fast, affordable, reliable are the three words used to describe TMDHosting. They offer more than just shared hosting too. If you’re looking to grow with your hosting company, then TMDHosting is a great place to be.
- Bluehost – A great name in the web hosting industry, Bluehost is a solid choice for hosting services. They offer shared hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, and reseller accounts.
- A Small Orange – If you’re still looking for a cheap web hosting company, A Small Orange is about as cheap as you can get. They have an excellent uptime record and are super fast.
- GoDaddy – Another easy solution is GoDaddy. Their uptime and page load speeds are about average, but they have DDoS protection, 24/7 security monitoring, and setup is instantaneous. GoDaddy is also one of the leading providers for domain name registration.
- InMotion Hosting – InMotion Hosting offers many different types of hosting, including WordPress optimized hosting. They have unlimited SSD storage and bandwidth, free advertising credits, and a full 90-day money back guarantee, which is nearly unheard of in the web hosting industry.
Our Verdict
The biggest advantage 000 WebHost have is that they offer some pretty decent services for almost no cost at all! We recommend 000webhost for those on a budget. If you are learning to code websites, needing a personal webpage, blog, or portfolio, then 000webhost’s free hosting plan is perfect. The paid plans also give you a lot of room to grow.
The biggest chance this company has for expansion is to target customers of paid services that offer less than their free version of web hosting. Companies like Ix Web, 1and1 Hosting, or Arvixe may have something to look out for. Thank you for reading our 000webhost review! What do you think of 000 WebHost? Would you apply for their free subscription or would you go to Weebly? Let us know what you choose and how it goes for you!
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