How you can find the cheapest web hosting provider today

How you can finding one the cheapest web hosting provider to suite your website need is not an easy task. There are so many competitive hosting companies out there. Many well-known web hosting companies use industry-standard pricing strategies, which usually attract new customers with their low introductory prices.

However, according to our research, renewal costs are usually 2x to 3x higher. Before you sign up with a cheap host, it’s essential to check their renewal prices as well as features.

Sometimes they are limited to minimal storage space, not enough bandwidth or no SSL.

Although most web hosts throw in a domain name and SSL for free (at least for one year), some don’t.

Below you can find Seven of the cheapest web hosting providers in the market today (last checked September 2019):

1. Hostinger $0.99/mo (48 months) | Renews $2.15

Uptime: 99.97% (see detailed uptime)
Load time: 369 ms (see detailed load time)
Features: SSL, free domain for 1 year, unlimited storage
Money back: 30-days guarantee

Hostinger is the cheapest web hosting company we’ve reviewed to date.

Usually, very affordable hosting providers are either slow, unreliable, or with virtually no customer support.

Fortunately, Hostinger is quite the opposite. Over the last 16-months, their uptime has been 99.97% with less than 10 hours of downtime. What’s more, they are among the fastest web hosts with an average load time of 369 ms (only beaten by A2 Hosting, which is slightly more expensive).

They also offer prompt 24/7 customer support via live chat which is an excellent feature to have.

Low prices, great load times, and reliable uptime – is what makes them a great cheap web hosting option.

If you sign up for their cheapest plan, it will only cost you $0.99/mo. This makes a total of only $47.52 for “almost” lifetime hosting – not bad. Hostinger’s cheapest plan renews at $2.15/mo after the initial sign up period.

This “Single Shared Hosting” plan includes 1 website, 1 email account, 100GB of bandwidth (which can handle a lot of visitors) and unlimited storage.

2. Bluehost $2.75/mo (36 months) | Renews $7.99

Uptime: 99.99% (see detailed uptime)
Load time: 405 ms (see detailed load time)
Features: free email accounts, SSL included
Money back: 30-days guarantee

Bluehost currently hosts over 2 million websites. They are by far one of the most popular, inexpensive, shared hosting options available – for a reason. They are well used (and recommended) by a variety of popular webmasters and bloggers.

Out of the 32 hosts that we’ve reviewed, Bluehost’s last 16-month uptime has been the best we’ve seen – 99.99% (with only 10 outages). In addition to their reliable performance, their average speed is on the faster side, too – 405 ms (which is fast compared to other similarly priced web hosts, such as SiteGround (713 ms) or DreamHost (719 ms).

Bluehost is also our top 1 ranked web host in our overall web hosting reviews. Mostly because of their excellent and reliable performance and 24/7/365 live chat to all of their customers.

All plans include a free domain name for 1 year, one-click installs for different website builders and WordPress.

The biggest disadvantage in their offer is that the cheapest plan ($2.75/mo) comes with a 36-month commitment. If you decide to use their services for less than 12 months, you’d need to pay $4.95/mo. SSL is included for free. Cheapest “basic” plan comes with 50GB of storage space, 5 email accounts, and unmetered bandwidth. Bluehost renews at $7.99/mo after the initial sign up period.

3. A2 Hosting $2.96/mo (12 months) | Renews $7.99

Uptime: 99.92% (see detailed uptime)
Load time: 336 ms (see detailed load time)
Features: free email accounts, SSL included
Money back: 30-days guarantee

A2 Hosting is the fastest shared hosting provider we’ve tested to date.

With an average load time of 336 ms, A2 Hosting is a lot faster than the majority of the web hosts we’ve reviewed — and it has been this way for years. They are the only web host that gets a perfect score for speed among web hosts we’ve reviewed.

In a world where being slow can hurt both traffic and conversions, web hosts that pride themselves on speed charge a premium for it – or at least a lot more than the $2.96/mo that A2 Hosting charges for their cheapest plan.

A2 Hosting’s uptime isn’t very impressive, though. They’ve maintained a 99.92% uptime over the past 16-months, which is quite weak and the lowest on this list.

You’re also restricted to 1 website on their cheapest plan; this makes it difficult to enjoy some of the amazing features they offer fully. If you want more sites, you need to upgrade to their “Turbo server.” While this promises up to 20X faster speed, it costs a lot more at $7/mo for a 24/36-month commitment.

At $2.96/mo, A2 Hosting’s cheapest plan comes with unlimited SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, free SSL, 25 email accounts, a site builder, and 1-click WordPress install. You also get a free domain name for 1 year. A2 Hosting renews at $7.99/mo after the initial sign up period.

4. HostGator $2.75/mo (36-months) | Renews $6.95

Uptime: 99.98% (see detailed uptime)
Load time: 1007 ms (see detailed load time)
Features: free email accounts, SSL included
Money back: 30-days guarantee

Hostgator is, without doubt, one of the biggest and most popular web hosting brands today. They host an impressive 10 million+ domain names and have been in the industry for 19 years now. That’s hard to beat!

We have mixed feelings about Hostgator’s shared hosting performance, however.

They perform quite poorly when it comes to speed: a load time of 1,007 ms makes them the slowest of the cheap web hosts we reviewed (Hostinger and Bluehost are at least twice as fast, and A2 Hosting is three times faster). A lack of SSD storage doesn’t help this. Hostgator’s 16-month uptime is quite impressive at 99.98%, though. They have the second-best uptime on this list after Bluehost. This gives a level of assurance about the reliability of their service.

Hostgator’s cheapest plan costs $2.75/mo but requires a 36-month commitment. For this, you get unlimited bandwidth and storage, a free domain name for 1 year, instant backups, free SSL, and $100 ad credit for Google and Bing. Hostgator renews at $6.95/mo after the initial 36-month period is over.

5. DreamHost $2.59/mo (36 months) | Renews: $4.95

Uptime: 99.96% (see detailed uptime)
Load time: 719 ms (see detailed load time)
Features: free email accounts, SSL included
Money back: 97-days guarantee

DreamHost instantly stands out among web hosts due to their impressive money-back guarantee: they feel so confident about their service that they allow you up to 97 days to request your money back (the industry standard is 30 days).

DreamHost’s last 16-month uptime is 99.96% – which isn’t bad. They have a load time of 719 ms. While that isn’t too slow, you get better load time with our top three picks.

DreamHost does not offer free email accounts, however. Whereas Bluehost offers 5 email accounts and A2 Hosting offers 25, you have to pay $1.67 per email account per month with DreamHost.

Besides having an impressive money-back guarantee (97 days), DreamHost offers pretty remarkable features: a free domain name for 1 year (renews at $15.99), unmetered bandwidth, 50GB SSD storage, WP website builder, free SSL, and support for 1 website – all for $2.59/mo on its cheapest plan which renews at $4.95/mo.

6. GreenGeeks $2.95/mo (36 months) | Renews: $7.99

Uptime: 99.95% (see detailed uptime)
Load time: 493 ms (see detailed load time)
Features: free email accounts, SSL included
Money back: 30-days guarantee

GreenGeeks’s focus on being eco-friendly might endear them to some users, but how do they stack up when compared to other cheap web hosts?

GreenGeeks isn’t as fast as Hostinger (369 ms), Bluehost (405 ms), or A2 Hosting (336 ms), but their load time of 493 ms is impressive and a 99.95% uptime isn’t bad, too. It’s also worth noting that you benefit from 24/7 customer support through live chat (that we’ve found to be quite reliable) should your site ever go down.

While GreenGeeks is quite generous when it comes to some of the features on their cheapest plan (such as unlimited storage and emails), we want to note that you can only use this plan with 1 website.

Their cheapest plan costs $2.95/mo, that comes with a 36-month commitment. For this, you get unlimited SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited emails, a free website builder, and a free domain name for 1 year (renews at $13.95). You also get free SSL. Once the initial 36-month sign up period is over, GreenGeeks renews at $7.99/mo.

7. iPage $1.99/mo (36 months) | Renews: $7.99

Uptime: 99.97% (see detailed uptime)
Load time: 787 ms (see detailed load time)
Features: free email accounts, SSL included
Money back: 30-days guarantee

At $1.99/month, iPage’s offering would seem to be one of the best as far as cheap web hosting goes – particularly because they appear to be the cheapest after our top pick (Hostinger).

Don’t be deceived, however.

You only get iPage’s super cheap pricing when you make a 36-month commitment. More importantly, once the initial 36-month sign up period is over, iPage’s cheap shared hosting price instantly balloons to $7.99/mo.

That said, it’s worth noting that iPage has an impressive 99.97% uptime over 16 months, and they offer reliable 24/7 customer support through several means including live chat.

iPage doesn’t offer SSD storage, however. With a load time of 787 ms, they are also the second slowest of the cheapest web hosts we reviewed.

A free domain name for 1 year (renews at $14.99), free SSL, unlimited storage, and practically unlimited bandwidth are some of the features you get with iPage’s cheap hosting. While most cheap hosts have a 1 website limit, iPage allows you to host unlimited websites.

To Wrap Up:

Just because you don’t have a big budget doesn’t mean you should settle for a low-quality web host.

There are dozens of options on the market that strike the perfect balance between affordability and quality. With a little bit of research, you can easily find a provider that matches your needs and your budget.

Hostinger: $0.99/month [cheapest quality web host]
Bluehost: $2.75/month [easy to use, reliable]
A2 Hosting: $2.96/month [fastest cheap web host]
HostGator: $2.75/month
DreamHost: $2.59/month
GreenGeeks: $2.95/month
iPage: $1.99/month

P.S. Make sure you are OK with the higher renewal prices. Nobody on this list has the same renewal price as the signup price.

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