You’ve likely heard the advice to stay away from hosting offers that look too perfect. Then again, going for one that looks bad makes even less sense.

Sifting through and comparing hosting plans all day is enough to give anyone a headache.

So, if you’re looking for quality hosting and you’re on a budget, we did the legwork for you. Keep reading to see our list of best cheap hosting providers.

How We Picked the Best Cheap Hosts

All of the hosting companies went through a lengthy review process:

• Starting Price
  Sponsored
  – First, we wanted our cheap providers to be, well, cheap. We limited the starting price to $3/month. We also considered providers that were a few cents more expensive, but only if they had impressive features to justify the price tag. This is a very budget-friendly approach, focused solely on the cheap end of shared hosting. All the same, it leaves plenty of quality providers to choose from.
• Renewal Fees – The renewal costs are just as important. It’s industry standard to draw in customers with outrageous discounts. However, unscrupulous providers often try to conceal the actual costs until they lock you in. The hosts featured here don’t ask for a renewal fee higher than $10/mo.
• Features – Even cheap hosting is a serious waste if it doesn’t do its job. It’s key to hit the sweet spot between affordable web hosting packages and robust features.
• Performance – We conducted an in-depth case study of each provider. We tested the servers’ uptime and speed and made sure websites remain responsive even under heavy traffic.
• Transparency – We inspected the plans and terms of service of each company. Whenever we found a fine print or misleading language, we got to the bottom of it.
• Reputation – Finally, no one knows a provider better than its long-term customers. Luckily, the internet is abundant with hosting reviews, and many users were more than happy to be interviewed.

We put all of it together to make the most objective cheap web hosting reviews possible. Read on to find out which providers make the grade.

1. Hostinger

Best overall

In November 2004, a company called Hosting Media was born. Its mission was to offer unlimited free hosting with no advertising.

The name has since changed to Hostinger, the company expanded to paid hosting and gained some 29 million users. Nevertheless, its vision of quality affordable web hosting remains.

Performance

Performance is a primary factor when choosing hosting, regardless of its price. Many providers didn’t make the cut because of problems with speed or uptime. Hostinger impresses on both fronts.

Hostinger’s uptime is nearly flawless, but a brief outage brought it down to 99.91%. Even so, it’s fully within the industry standard.

Hostinger reimburses 5% of your monthly fee if uptime falls below 99.9%. It’s a good incentive for the company to keep the servers in tip-top shape.

Hostinger’s speed is even better. The server’s response time averages at 190ms, and it takes 0.68s to fully load a basic WordPress installation. It’s the fastest shared hosting provider out there even when pitted against significantly more expensive hosts.

Admittedly, getting 300+ simultaneous requests affects the load times, but not by much. You could accommodate thousands of users without noticeable issues.

Overall, Hostinger makes your site available quickly and at all times.

Support

With low-cost web hosting, you can often judge the quality of the service by the support team because quality support is expensive.

Hostinger manages to provide strong support for 27 million users, though it’s no menial task.

Each agent is trained to answer all types of queries. This ensures you don’t get bounced around from one support agent to another all the time.

Overall, the agents are helpful. They do their best to help users resolve issues themselves. If that’s not possible, the support takes over. In other words, they create a nurturing learning environment for beginners.

Though support is available 24/7, you can only reach them by chat or email. The lack of phone support is the only complaint I can make.

Pricing

Many providers don’t have a plan that meets our $3/month requirement. Hostinger has two.

Hostinger’s Single Shared Hosting costs $0.99/month, and Premium Shared Hosting costs $2.59/month. Hostinger is all about giving you a good deal.

One caveat is you have to make a four-year commitment. Still, $47.52 for four years is quite a sweet web hosting deal.

Renewal costs $9.59/month for the Basic plan and $14.49/month for the Premium one. This is a standard price across the board, not particularly cheap but not that expensive either.

The single plan lets you create one website with one email account and gives you 10GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth. The Premium one removes the limit on all of the above.

“Unlimited” isn’t really unlimited. Hostinger reserves the right to restrict you if you take too much server resources. As long as you don’t purposefully go overboard, though, you should be fine.

Bottom line—if you’re looking for a bargain, this is it. Hostinger offers the cheapest web hosting without sacrificing quality.

Features

Hostinger offers features like SSD storage across the board, a custom-built caching solution, 100+ one-click installations, and more.

Currently, Hostinger provides a free SSL certificate as a limited offer. It throws it in as a sign-up bonus.

Daily backups are $0.95/month extra. This is a bit of a letdown. Weekly backups are more of an industry minimum than industry standard.

The Single plan gets you one simultaneous cronjob, but the Premium one lifts the limit on that too. It’s pretty sweet, especially if you want to schedule additional backups.

Hostinger also has a custom control panel. It’s way more user-friendly than cPanel, but it does sacrifice certain functionality and advanced features. Beginners enjoy it more, even though a cPanel would be a tad more useful in the long run.

Hostinger also offers a drag-and-drop website builder. It’s easy to use and creates responsive sites, even though there are better alternatives out there. Which is why Hostinger has a new website builder in the making.

Finally, Hostinger offers Git with all plans. Git helps programmers collaborate on projects.

You probably won’t use it much with a shared plan. However, if you hire a web development company, they’ll love it.

Hostinger covers the basics splendidly and offers decent extra features. Cheap shared hosting or not—the offer is outstanding.

Around the Web

Once you have millions of users, you’re bound to get a maelstrom of reviews. Having read as many as a regular person can handle, I’ve confirmed most users enjoy Hostinger’s services.

Unsurprisingly, most users come for the cheap plans. They stay for the quality of the hosting, the ease of use, and the helpful support team.

The complaints are few and far between. They either dislike that not all services are refundable or that the unlimited plans are, in fact, limited.

This info is available on the site. That said, Hostinger doesn’t make it as obvious as the next host in these reviews.

Hostinger remains one of the best cheap hosting providers, though it could be a bit more transparent. 

Pros:

• Strong features
• Lightning speed
• Cheapest starting prices
• Helpful support team
• Beginner-friendly

Cons:

• No phone support
• No free daily backups

Verdict: Hostinger is one of the best hosting providers around – excellent speed and strong backend deliver quick sites with strong uptime. Its price is unmatched too.

2. DreamHost 

Best for economic WordPress hosting

An independent provider, DreamHost is an ardent supporter of open-source projects and green energy programs. Being one of the oldest companies in the business, its positive reputation is even more impressive.

Let’s see how well it fares against the top value offerings of today. 

Performance

DreamHost has a 100% uptime guarantee.

Now, the guarantee works a bit differently. For each hour of total downtime, you get one free day of hosting when you renew your plan.

It might not be the most generous offer, but it’s how DreamHost holds itself accountable. The perfect uptime over the past months attests to that.

DreamHost’s load times consistently put it in the top three fastest shared hosting providers. Furthermore, when you load the server with requests, the load time barely budges.

If you don’t feel like you’re reading cheap web hosting reviews, I’m right there with you. Both DreamHost and Hostinger give leave many considerably more expensive hosts in the dust.

Support

DreamHost is dedicated to helping beginners.

Which is why it offers one of the most comprehensive knowledge bases out there. Plus, you can search the articles directly from the control panel. It’s fantastic for getting the hang of everything.

The support team is available through phone, chat, and email.

It does an excellent job of answering all questions and resolving any issues that might come up. The agents are proper experts and are in the same league with SiteGround’s support.

DreamHost is also an official WordPress host. Which is why the support team is fantastic at solving WordPress-related issues. Moreover, the knowledge base is packed with WordPress tutorials.

If you’re looking to start a WordPress site, DreamHost is the ideal cheap host for you.

Still, to get the most out of a WP site with DreamHost, you might want to reconsider your budget restrictions. While the shared plans are very good for starting out, DreamPress, the managed WordPress hosting platform of the company is the next logical step.

Pricing

If you commit for three years, DreamHost’s starter plan costs $2.59/month. Monthly, it comes at $4.95.

The renewal price? It’s the same, provided you renew for another three years. If you want web hosting prices that stay low, DreamHost is your best bet.

You can create one site with unlimited bandwidth and storage. Unlike other providers, though, DreamHost is transparent about what “unlimited” means.

In fact, DreamHost does everything out in the open. It’s refreshing to find a provider that doesn’t rely on the standard industry gimmicks.

DreamHost also offers a 97-day full refund—perfect if you aren’t sure website ownership is for you. It’s three times longer than most other hosts—a generous offer.

There’s just one complaint here. Getting a personalized email address is $1.67/month, while most providers offer it for free.

Even so, this is among the cheapest WordPress hosting providers around.

Features

DreamHost starter plan comes with free SSL, SSD storage, daily backups, domain privacy, one-click installs, a custom website builder, and a free domain name registration with an annual plan.

Not bad, eh?

DreamHost lets you manage your site from a custom control panel. As with Hostinger, the control panel is fantastic for beginners, but it lacks some of cPanel’s functionality.

The shared plans are WordPress-optimized and come with a custom caching solution. It leads to some lightning-fast loading speeds. If you’re a WordPress user, DreamHost makes your site work better than ever.

Plus, if your site outgrows what shared hosting can offer, you can affordably scale into managed WordPress hosting. These solutions can take you up to 1 million monthly visitors. Pretty good, huh?

One issue is website migration. DreamHost only offers WordPress transfers, and for a price. As for non-WordPress sites, you have to migrate them yourself.

DreamHost does have a guide on how to do it. Still, migration is a major pain, especially to a custom control panel. That’s why DreamHost is better for new website owners.

Still, this is one fantastic offer. DreamHost is the best cheap WordPress hosting provider.

Around the Web

DreamHost mostly gets positive reviews, especially from WordPress users.

Customers praise helpful support and cheap plans. DreamHost had apparently gone the extra mile in helping quite a few resolve various issues.

The few negative reviews complain that support is not always available, contrary to what DreamHost claims.

Everything seems in order with the support at the time of writing. Our experience with them, however, is a sample of one – so feel free to take those few negative reviews into account. Keep in mind nobody can know if they’re legitimate.

Pros:

• Top-notch performance
• Fair and transparent pricing
• 97-day refund policy
• Great features
• Fantastic for WordPress

Cons:

• Migrations only for WordPress sites
• No free email

Verdict: DreamHost is ideally suited for newly-fledges WordPress sites thanks to an impeccable backend, plethora of features, top-notch support, and very affordable fees that don’t change upon renewal.

3. GreenGeeks

Best ecommerce cheap hosting

GreenGeeks is the leading green hosting company. Its mission is implementing technologies that reduce its carbon footprint as much as possible.

Of course, GreenGeeks offers more than just green hosting, and it is well-respected in the hosting world. Let’s see if it lives up to its reputation.

Performance

Like with most web hosting deals, you get a 99.9% uptime guarantee. There are no refunds if uptime falls below 99.9%, though.

Still, GreenGeeks’ uptime averages at 99.95%, so downtime is not an issue.

GreenGeeks’ load times average at 0.29 seconds response time and 0.86 seconds till fully loaded. The load times are consistently good, though they fluctuate a bit month-to-month.

All in all, GreenGeeks is in the top five fastest providers.

Support

Most providers only have guides on how to resolve common issues on their platform. Meanwhile, GreenGeeks offers in-depth tutorials on pretty much everything, starting with “How to Start a Site.” The knowledge base is perfect if you’re a first-time website owner.

The support team is available 24/7 through phone, live chat, and email ticket.

It’s is one of the quickest support teams in the industry. Not only that, but it has some of the most professional staff in hosting. They resolve issues quickly and are fantastic communicators. If you’re not an experienced user, you’ll likely pick up a thing or two from the support team.

GreenGeeks provides a positive experience, especially for beginners.

Pricing

The Lite shared hosting plan costs $2.95/month if you commit for three years.

You get unlimited storage and bandwidth for one site, though GreenGeeks can force you to upgrade if you overuse server resources. The terms of service don’t state when you have to upgrade.

The renewal price is $9.95/month. As far as cheap web hosting services go, this is a bit pricey but for a renewal fee is just about average.

You do get a few freebies like a domain name registration. This acts as a sort of counterbalance to the renewal cost.

You can get a refund in the first 30 days, like with most providers. There is one caveat. The domain name registration and a hidden setup fee are not refundable.

So, if you paid $116, you’d actually get $87 back.

In short, the freebies put GreenGeeks into cheap web hosting range, though many providers have lower prices.

Features

GreenGeeks includes features like cPanel, SSD storage, emails, a website builder, a CDN, security features, one-click installs, extra speed optimization, and developer tools.

You also get a free website migration and nightly backups.

One extremely useful feature is Wildcard SSL. Unlike with regular Let’s Encrypt, you can apply these SSL certificates to unlimited subdomains. This is perfect for ecommerce websites.

Unlike many providers, GreenGeeks offers all features out of the box—no extra charges.

All in all, GreenGeeks is an amazing hosting solution for beginners. It’s also the cheapest website host optimized for ecommerce.

Around the Web

GreenGeeks gets overwhelmingly positive reviews.

The users praise the features, uptime, and helpful support.

Most users who complain either didn’t know about the hidden costs or about paying for domain name renewal. To be fair, this information isn’t obvious on the website. It’s not really a con, but it is something to keep in mind.

Pros:

• Awesome performance
• Strong support and knowledge base
• Fantastic features
• Amazing for beginners and ecommerce

Cons:

• Relatively pricey renewal
• Hidden setup fee

Verdict: Green and powerful, this is a hosting solution with rich features and strong support that is particularly well-suited to handle ecommerce endeavors online.

4. A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is an independent provider and a relatively small company. Still, smaller providers can often outperform the giants of hosting.

And if A2 Hosting’s reputation is to be trusted, it can compete with the best of them.

Performance

A2 Hosting offers 5% of your monthly fee if it goes below 99.9% uptime. Our tet site is available 99.99% of the time. This is the best you can get with low-cost website hosting. Or any hosting, for that matter.

With 0.54 seconds to respond and 1.15 seconds to load a page, A2 Hosting’s speed is reasonable. However, it can’t outperform the top providers out of the box.

Still, this is how it fares with all optimization software turned off. A2 Hosting actually offers powerful tools to improve these load times.

All in all, it’s fairly impressive performance.

Support

A2 Hosting has one of the most complete knowledgebases around. You get access to various in-depth articles, tutorials, and blog posts.

If you do need extra help, its support is one of the fastest around. It’s available 24/7 via phone, chat, and ticket.

As A2 is a smaller host, it can focus on providing quality support, instead of servicing as many clients as possible. That’s why the support is helpful, efficient, and highly knowledgeable.

This is one of the best support teams in shared hosting.

Pricing

The Lite plan costs $3.92/month if you make a three-year commitment. Renewal is $7.99/month, which is already below average.

While $3.92 is fine as far as shared hosting goes, A2 has higher starting rates than other providers here. These are cheap web hosting reviews, after all.

Still, A2 Hosting offers a few things that balance things out.

For one, A2 Hosting has an anytime money-back guarantee. You can cancel the service for any reason and get the money for the remainder of the subscription. You’re not locked in in any way.

The plan comes with unlimited bandwidth and storage, and terms of service state clearly what qualifies as fair use. A2 Hosting is more transparent than most low-cost hosting providers.

Features

A2 Hosting offers SSD storage, a site builder, amazing security features, one-click installations, cPanel, and more.

You also get plenty of freebies that offset the higher starting price. These include an SSL certificate, backups, a site migration, Cloudflare CDN, and some excellent WordPress speed and security features.

If you purchase $25 of Yahoo/Bing Ad credits, you get an extra $100 worth—fantastic for getting that initial influx of traffic.

Once you need to scale up, you also get powerful features that help with larger websites. A noteworthy one is Turbo Boost that makes everything up to 20 times faster.

All in all, A2 Hosting offers fantastic features. It is a lucrative cheap website hosting opportunity, despite the slightly higher cost.

Around the Web

A2 Hosting is loved by its user base.

Users commend the strong support, reliability, and the feature-rich offer.

Most of the negative reviews are regarding Windows-based hosting, which experienced significant issues last April. As for Linux hosting, a few users complain about site restore not working properly or taking too long.

These are somewhat subjective assessments, but the claims are consistent with one another. You can take it into account when choosing a provider.

Pros:

• Great uptime
• Stellar support
• Fantastic features
• Lots of freebies

Cons:

• Out-of-the-box speed could be better
• Pricier than other cheap hosting companies

Verdict: A2 Hosting is a versatile hosting provider with great uptime, superb support, and feature-rich plans. Even though it is a little costlier at first, there are many freebies that offset the hosting fee.

5. HostGator

With 10 million hosted domains, HostGator is one of the big boys. It has a vast client base and invests serious money into its services.

Coincidentally, cheap domain hosting is one of its main selling points.

Performance

HostGator did suffer a major outage in 2013. However, it has made some serious changes since.

The improvement is obvious. HostGator now has near-impeccable uptime each month.

It offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. If HostGator breaches the guarantee, you get a refund, equal to one month of hosting.

This is a fair offer, and it instills confidence in HostGator’s service.

HostGator’s servers take 0.7 seconds to respond. It takes 1.28 seconds to fully load a basic WordPress page. The response time is decent, but it does suffer when you get over 30 users at a time.

HostGator is fast but needs a bit more to be on the same level as the best cheap hosting companies. It’s more than enough to make a starter website run properly, though.

All things considered, HostGator offers reliable service.

Support

A part of HostGator’s mission is helping beginners.

Besides offering inexpensive web hosting services, it caters to users with its simple interface and an extensive knowledge base. You can find tutorials on both basic and more complex tasks.

The actual technical support is available 24/7 through phone, email, and live chat.

The support agents are polite and do their best to be helpful, though the support could be a tad faster. Tougher queries often get forwarded to email support, which adds waiting time.

The support is average. It resolves your issues, but you do have to wait longer than you might like.

Pricing

HostGator’s Hatchling plan starts at $2.75/month with a three-year commitment. The renewal is $6.95/month.

It’s among the better discount web hosting deals, but the price increase isn’t evident on the landing page. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only lack of transparency.

The plan covers one domain with unmetered storage, bandwidth, and subdomains. The resources aren’t actually unlimited, but breaching the terms of service with one site is difficult.

HostGator offers a 45-day refund—15 days longer than standard. It’s a nice gesture. Plus, you have more time to see if HostGator works for you.

Features

HostGator offers features like SSD storage, automated weekly backups, a free SSL certificate, one-click installs, and more.

Purchasing $25 of Google AdWords credits or Bing Ad credits gets you an extra $100. It’s invaluable for getting attention of those first few visitors.

Other than that, HostGator offers a few features that set it apart from other providers.

Unfortunately, HostGator also makes misleading claims like “SiteLock Security is available.” This means it’s available for purchase.

When you open the checkout page, a set of recommended paid features is already selected. Be careful and avoid purchasing something you don’t want.

Around the Web

All things considered, HostGator offers cheap reliable hosting and decent features. Which is why the overwhelmingly negative reviews are surprising.

The auto-renew checkbox seems to be responsible. This option is activated by default in their case. Unless you untick the checkbox in your profile, HostGator will keep renewing your subscription.

What’s even worse, some customers seem to have been charged even after canceling auto-renewal. HostGator apparently refunded them, but it took several complaints to get its attention.

The positive reviews tend to focus on quality servers and the user-friendly interface.

HostGator does provide a quality service if your target market is in the U.S. Still, the negative experiences of some customers indicate a few problems.

Pros:

• Good server infrastructure
• Highly reliable
• Caters to beginners

Cons

• Few unique features
• Not the most transparent provider

Verdict: HostGator is a massive hosting provider with a strong technical pedigree and impressive uptime. It can help beginners learn the basics but beware of the upsells.

6. Namecheap

Namecheap is a domain registrar turn hosting provider. Unlike GoDaddy, though, its hosting plans get little attention.

Still, it has an array of inexpensive web hosting options. I checked out how it measures up against the competition.

Performance

Namecheap offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

According to our monitoring tools, though, its uptime averages at 99.83%. Namecheap disputed the results but offered no logs as proof—not the best start.

The average response time is 0.37 seconds, and the average load time is exactly 1 second. Namecheap is relatively fast, but not as fast as Hostinger or DreamHost. The servers handle receiving a lot of requests pretty averagely too.

On a side note, Namecheap’s central server is in the U.S. Therefore, your target audience should be in North America for the best results.

You can host data on U.K. servers for $1/month extra, but this defeats the purpose of getting cheap web hosting.

In a few words, the performance is unimpressive. Other cheap providers showcase better results. 

Support

Namecheap’s knowledge base is decent. You can use it to solve most issues.

The support is available via live chat and email tickets. There is no phone support, which can annoy at times.

As for support quality, it’s okay, but not exceptional. The agents often try linking to the knowledge base before reading the query carefully. Repeating your question every time can get frustrating.

It’s far from the worst support team I’ve seen, but Namecheap has some work to do nevertheless.

Pricing

Namecheap’s Stellar plan starts at $15.44/year. This is $1.44/month.

It costs $2.88/month to renew the plan. The renewal price makes this the cheapest web hosting per year. The only better long-term deal is DreamHost’s three-year contract.

The plan comes with unlimited bandwidth and 20Gb of storage. Mind that Namecheap calls this “SSD storage,” but it is actually HDD drives, enhanced with SSD caching.  Speed-wise, it’s somewhere between a pure HDD and pure SSD.

While most starter plans offer one domain, Namecheap gives you three. This makes Namecheap the most affordable option if you want to host two or three websites.

Even if you have just one site to host, though, Namecheap is among the cheapest hosting sites out there.

Features

Namecheap offers cPanel, a bunch of email features, free privacy protection, and much more.

Its SSL encryption costs $3.88/year. It’s affordable but still leaves a bad taste, considering most providers have it for free.

Namecheap also offers a free .website domain name. If you want a .com domain name instead, you can get it at a low price.

You get biweekly backups. It’s enough for most website owners, though daily backups would provide more peace of mind.

One useful service is website migration. If you need one, you just need to submit a ticket.

The features are robust, though they are not the best in the game.

Namecheap is among the best cheap web hosting companies for US and UK users who want to avoid expensive migrations. In other cases, you can find a better deal.

Around the Web

Namecheap’s reviews are somewhat mixed.

Users like that everything works well. Most satisfied customers seem to use both hosting and domain services.

As for the negatives, many users are disappointed Namecheap breaches the uptime guarantee. Plus, a few claim Namecheap covers up issues instead of resolving them.

The last complaint is pretty non-specific, making it hard to confirm. A reasonable explanation is these customers have picked up on Namecheap’s occasional transparency problems.

It’s a quality hosting provider, but its offer can’t match, for instance, that of DreamHost.

Pros:

• Prices in the low end of cheap hosting
• Three domains with the cheapest plan
• Free website migrations

Cons:

• Only suitable for targeting a US or UK audience
• Below-average performance
• Not the most transparent

Verdict: Namecheap is one of the cheapest hosting providers that deliver a decent performance and a reasonable amount of features.

7. iPage 

iPage has been around since 1998 and has been a hosting provider since 2009. It offers an array of hosting options, with shared hosting being the most popular.

Let’s see what all the fuss is about.

Performance

iPage has a 99.9% uptime guarantee like most providers.

Uptime itself is fairly consistent month-to-month and averages out at 99.99%.

iPage does well with speed too. With 0.17 seconds to respond and 0.93 seconds to load, it has one of the fastest load times among shared hosting providers.

Where it really outperforms the rest, however, is speed under load. 250+ simulated connections barely slow down loading.

With such performance, it’s safe to say iPage offers cheap reliable hosting.

Support

One notorious practice of EIG-owned providers is taking their support overseas. Such moves save EIG money, but invariably reflect on quality.

iPage is no exception. The agents rarely have strong communication skills, and resolving even simple problems can drag out.

It’s nicer support staff is available through phone and live chat, but even then the agents need more training.

On the bright side, the knowledge base is rather comprehensive. You can find solutions to most issues there.

Pricing

iPage offers just one plan. Having a one-size-fits-all solution in hosting is unusual, even if a provider specializes in low-cost hosting. Strangely enough, though, it works.

There’s only one plan, so you get the full features, including unlimited bandwidth and storage.

If you make a one, two, or three-year commitment, the plan costs $2.99/month. Renewal is $8.35/month. This is about average, as far as affordable hosts go.

One potential problem is outgrowing shared hosting. Since there are no other shared plans, you would have to upgrade directly to VPS hosting. Of course, the issue here is – it is three times as expensive.

Features

iPage offers SSD storage, a free SSL certificate, a bunch of one-click installations, email features, a user-friendly website builder, and more.

You get a free domain name as well. It saves you up to $15 in the first year.

You also get fantastic ecommerce features and a bunch of shopping cart integrations. It’s affordable to start an online store with iPage.

iPage uses a custom control panel called vDeck. It’s a similar situation as with DreamHost and Hostinger – the control panel is more user-friendly, but it lacks cPanel’s functionality.

Unfortunately, iPage charges extra for features like website security, domain privacy, and WordPress optimization. Some of the cheapest hosting services offer these for free, so iPage could do better.

Site backups cost $1/month too.  This is not ideal, as backups are essential. What’s even worse, though, is that restoring your site has a surprise fee of $100.

This is nothing short of outrageous. iPage is charging you to use the backup you’ve already paid for.

It’s similar with site migrations. They cost $150. Since migrating a site from cPanel to vDeck is beyond difficult, it doesn’t pay off to migrate to iPage.

It’s a shame about the restoration fee. With its features and free SSL, iPage would have one of the best cheap website hosting offers for ecommerce. The extra costs on security and backups are too much, though.

Around the Web

iPage gets mixed reviews, to say the least.

Positive ones focus on fair pricing, quality service, and cool freebies.

One concerning issue that negative reviews point out is iPage can shut off your service without prior notice.

Indeed, the terms of service state iPage can make you upgrade to VPS this way. There’s no mention of fair use. In essence, iPage can shut off your hosting whenever it thinks you’re spending too many resources.

The lack of transparency doesn’t help the already questionable offer.

Pros:

• Top-notch performance
• Great ecommerce features
• Free domain name registration

Cons:

• Questionable support
• High charges for essential features
• Lacks transparency in certain areas

Verdict: iPage is the quintessential cheap hosting service – amazing performance and decent features but the support is questionable and the hidden fees not so few.

8. How to Choose the Best Cheap Hosting

That concludes the list of the best cheap hosting providers. But you’ll likely want to look at some plans yourself before you buy. Here’s what to look out for.

1. Consider Your Needs

Get clear on what kind of website you want to run. Now, you don’t have to make a complete checklist of features. Having a general idea is enough to begin with.

This helps you plan where you can or can’t compromise.

For instance, how often will you update your website? If you update your content several times a day, daily backups are essential. Otherwise, you could get away with weekly backups.

You can also take a different angle and think about the audience.

If you are targeting a global audience, a CDN is worth the few extra bucks. If your entire audience is in a 100-mile radius from the origin server, however, you can easily do without one.

These are just a few examples. If a feature catches your eye, think about whether it would add value to your site.

2. Go for the Best Value, not the Best Price

Value is more important than price.

Don’t rush things because even the cheapest hosting solution can cost a lot in terms of time, effort, and stress.

Your best bet is to find a provider that offers everything you need at the lowest price. In other words, this is about finding the best value web hosting.

You should never compromise with things like uptime, speed, support, and security. Each of those can affect your bottom line way more than the few dollars you save from using a cheaper hosting.

Quality hosts now all offer at least 99.9% uptime, 0.8-second response times, 24/7 tech support, and strong security. If a host skimps on these, they probably skimp on a whole lot more.

Then there are the features that your specific website needs. Many new website owners make the mistake of ignoring these.

Consequently, you see dozens of ecommerce website owners complaining they had to pay for an SSL certificate. Meanwhile, the provider they had chosen for one reason or another never offered a free certificate in the first place.

Avoiding this is just a matter of giving a closer look at the hosting plan’s description.

3. Think about the Future

Another common mistake is buying a starter plan without checking out the rest of the host’s offers. 

Yes, if you need a site for a short-term project, you don’t need to know what’s in the more expensive plans.

If it’s anything long-term, though, you might eventually need to scale up to a more expensive plan. That will go a lot easier if the host already has the infrastructure for that – and the hosting plans in question are good value.

For starters, the more expensive plans should entail a resource upgrade. You’ll need it to serve your growing user base. If you also get extra speed optimization – that’s definitely a plus.

Also, there’s a chance you might outgrow shared hosting altogether. In that case, you should know about your provider’s VPS plans. VPS packages should be feature-rich and affordably priced. It should also be easy to transfer from shared hosting to VPS.

In summary, looking for the best cheap hosting is not just about finding a fantastic starter plan. It’s also about leaving yourself room to grow.

4. Consult With Support

It’s good practice to contact support if you need clarification. A provider’s website may have unclear language by accident or as a marketing gimmick. Either way, you can always ask for a straight answer.

Plus, it’s always beneficial to test the support team. If it isn’t really available 24/7 or, even worse, isn’t competent enough, it’s better to know in advance.  

5. Read Customer Reviews

There’s nothing like first-hand experience. User reviews often reveal issues you wouldn’t otherwise notice in time.

Luckily, many website owners take the time to review their hosting provider. The only problem is that users are too eager to leave one or five-star reviews without much substance. You’ll need to get through plenty of those to find legitimate ones.

If you find something you’d like to know more about, feel free to discuss it with the support team. Perhaps it has already resolved the issue. Even if it hasn’t, again – it’s better that you know before you buy.

9. Conclusion

Those were the cheap web hosting reviews. You now know who is the:

• Most affordable hosting provider
• Best affordable provider for WordPress
• Best affordable provider for ecommerce
• Affordable hosting provider with the best features

You also know what to look for in an affordable hosting. All providers in the reviews have a money-back policy, so feel free to check out their services yourself.

FAQ

Q: What is the best cheap web hosting?

A: Answering that is tricky. Different providers are better suited to different situations.

If you’re looking for the cheapest way to host a website, Hostinger is your go-to option. At $0.99/month, Hostinger costs you less than a cup of coffee per month of hosting. The catch is you must purchase four years of hosting.

If you’re on a really tight budget, an option is to buy a domain name and pay month-to-month for DreamHost hosting. DreamHost doesn’t increase the price when you renew, so you will be paying $4.95 each month. It’s more expensive in the long run, but the initial investment is low.

Finally, GreenGeeks offers the best functionality under $3/month, though it isn’t the cheapest provider. The features and the quality of support can easily give you a running start.

Q: Which is the cheapest WordPress hosting?

A: WordPress is so popular that all providers claim to be WordPress-optimized. Essentially, you could run a WordPress installation with any provider I’ve reviewed, and it would work fine.

If you want the best WordPress experience, though, DreamHost is the best cheap hosting provider. It is an official WordPress host, and the technical staff are WordPress hosting experts. Plus, it comes with custom WordPress solutions that work wonders for your load times. 

All in all, DreamHost offers both robust and cheap web hosting for WordPress.

Q: What is the best website hosting for small business?

A: Selling products through a website requires features many cheap providers don’t offer.

However, GreenGeeks offers all the key features here while staying affordable.

For one, you get rock-solid security. The Let’s Encrypt Wildcard SSL gives you SSL certificates for all subdomains, which is also essential. Finally, the daily backups are another must-have.

GreenGeeks gives you a solid foundation for your ecommerce site. Plus, its affordable web host deal makes it perfect for new business owners.

Q: How can I host my website for free?

A: There are plenty of free hosting solutions available. These usually work reasonably well, despite the bad rap they used to get.

If you’re interested, check out our list of the best free hosting options. Just keep in mind these are free solutions. They are always more limited than their paid alternatives.

Hostinger, for instance, offers free hosting under the name of 000webhost. Yet, it admits free hosting is better for running tests and learning than running a legitimate site.

If you’re on a tight budget, though, there are plenty of affordable hosts that would provide you more functionality.

Q: Can I host my own website?

A: It’s entirely possible to host a website on your own computer. After all, that’s what hosting providers do.

Still, it takes system administration knowledge to make everything work. Plus, you’d likely need to invest some money for everything to run smoothly anyway.

All in all, hosting a website on your own is more expensive and time-consuming. Also, it’s nearly impossible to get the same quality as with shared hosting.

If you want to do it for the sake of fun, though, I heartily recommend it. For more serious endeavors, you’re better off starting with one of the best cheap hosting providers on this list.