Building a website is a terrific way to establish your brand, promote your business, or simply share ideas with the world. However, budgeting for one can be a stressful endeavour, especially when operating on a small scale. Cheap web hosting is the answer, and we’re here to help you in your search. PCMag has covered web hosting services for more than 10 years, so you can count on our expertise to steer you in the right direction. For example, Editors’ Choice winner AccuWeb Hosting has helpful customer service and feature-packed plans for budget-conscious site builders. It isn’t your only choice, though. Read on for the top cheap web hosts we’ve tested, followed by what to look for when selecting a low-cost service.
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Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
Best for a Wildcard SSL Certificate
Ionos
- Dependable uptime in testing
- Excellent cloud hosting packages
- Linux- or Windows-based servers
- Easy-to-use website creation tools
- Lacks reseller hosting plans
- Relatively sparse email options
Ionos offers an excellent selection of small and large-scale web hosting solutions. This is great for large businesses that need a robust feature set. However, it also offers respectable shared hosting and WordPress plans at highly affordable rates. In fact, it even has a few low-cost VPS plans that may fit your needs.
If you’re trying to set up an online business on the cheap, try Ionos. The shared and WordPress plans include an unlimited number of subdomains and a free wildcard SSL certificate.
- Great budget-friendly shared hosting options
- Excellent dedicated hosting plans
- Offers a choice of Linux or Windows servers
- Helpful customer service
- Limited email accounts with some plans
AccuWeb Hosting is a web hosting service that features powerful, Windows-based dedicated servers; reliable uptime; and dependable customer service. However, AccuWeb’s shared hosting plans are the packages that will appeal to frugal webmasters.
Thrifty host hunters who don’t want to skimp on website features. The entry-level option—Personal—lets you host unlimited domains, plus offers one-click installation, free daily backups, and free website builder templates.
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AccuWeb Hosting Review
- Strong security features
- Extensive domain-management tools
- Excellent cloud hosting offerings
- Unlimited data transfers per month
- Generous shared hosting money-back guarantee
- Useful WordPress staging feature
- Shared Starter plan lacks email
- No telephone support
- Lacks Windows-based servers
If you’re hunting for web hosting, DreamHost’s beefy, 97-day guarantee policy may sway you toward one of the company’s wallet-friendly shared plans. Besides low-cost hosting, DreamHost’s shared plans offer useful website-building software, generous storage and data transfer options, and valuable security features.
DreamHost’s shared hosting packages are the company’s least expensive options, yet they deliver unlimited monthly data transfers and unlimited storage. You should check them out if you’re looking for a dependable, budget web hosting plan. However, the entry-level Shared Starter package lacks email, so you should move up to a higher shared hosting tier if you need that form of electronic communication.
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DreamHost Web Hosting Review
- Robust WordPress hosting plans
- Unlimited data transfers with most plans
- Excellent, 24/7 customer support
- Good money-back guarantee
- Easy service cancellation
- No Windows server options
- Lacks cloud and dedicated server plans
Hosting.com (formerly A2 Hosting) has great customer support and impressive packages, especially regarding its WordPress plans. The highly affordable Starter plan is a good foundation thanks to its included domain name, SSL certificate, and unlimited monthly data transfers.
This host is ideal for creators who plan to grow their website over time. Unlimited monthly data transfers give your website a convenient bandwidth buffer should you get a surge of traffic or viral spike, and the service’s higher-tier plans offer even more room for growth, without breaking the bank. Note that Hosting.com lacks cloud, dedicated, and Windows servers.
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Hosting.com Review
- Terrific uptime in testing
- Excellent reseller and VPS hosting plans
- Good customer service
- Minecraft server hosting
- Not every plan has a Windows server option
- Short money-back guarantee window
For affordable servers at excellent rates, look no further than Hostwinds. This web host has great shared hosting plans, each of which comes with unlimited monthly data transfers, storage, and email. It’s Basic plan is an excellent and inexpensive starting point, but Hostwinds’ shared servers are quite scalable, as well.
In addition to an excellent feature set, Hostwinds has shared hosting plans that include the Weebly website builder. This is great solution if you want to knock out both hosting and website creation, as Weebly is a well-rounded tool for the task. If you’re a hands-on sort of person, Hostwinds’ selection is well worth considering.
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Hostwinds Review
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The Best Cheap Web Hosting Services for 2025
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Buying Guide: The Best Cheap Web Hosting Services for 2025
How We Pick the Best Cheap Web Hosts
We look at pricing here based on companies’ regular annual prices, with no discounts applied. Our cutoff for inclusion? A web host must charge no more than $99.99 per year. It means some of our top choices for best overall web hosts, such as A2, GoDaddy, and Hostwinds, don’t make the cut. We avoid web hosting services with initial cheap prices that go up after an introductory period. This is true low-cost web hosting!
Web hosts offering monthly and annual plans are judged in both areas. Naturally, if a web host only offers monthly or yearly plans, we adjust our expectations accordingly.
The Cheap Web Hosting Features You’ll Need
A web host is a company with servers you use to store and deliver the files that make up your website. Large businesses can spend hundreds of dollars each year on dedicated web hosting or virtual private server (VPS) hosting. Still, plenty of web hosts are designed specifically for very small businesses (and personal use, too).
Setting up a website with your domain is easy, and most importantly, it doesn’t have to be expensive. Do you need email, blogging software, basic email marketing (not marketing automation), e-commerce, and file sharing? Many of these features are included with cheap web hosting plans.
Also worth highlighting is the service’s customer support. While it’s nice to have FAQs and forums, when it’s 3 a.m. and your website is inexplicably down, you want someone available immediately. Look for 24/7 customer support.
Cheap web hosting excludes the powerful and relatively pricey dedicated and VPS hosting options. Instead, you’ll need to pick a shared hosting or WordPress hosting plan.
Shared hosting is a setup in which the hosting company runs multiple websites on a server along with your site. Don’t let the “shared” bit worry you, though, since you can’t peek into anyone else’s files and no one else can touch yours. The benefit? Sharing the server space translates to cheap prices for everyone. The downside? Neighboring sites that consume too many resources may cause your site to run at less than peak performance.
Optimized WordPress hosting services let you set up and run a WordPress blog with minimum fuss. If your business website’s primary function is blogging, do your wallet a favor and don’t bother with shared hosting plans or other types of web hosting.
One thing we learned while reviewing web hosting services is that reading the fine print matters, especially if you are concerned about keeping prices low. Many web hosts have several service tiers, with introductory features in starter packages and expanded offerings in higher-priced plans. Don’t get swayed by the big fonts touting the monthly fee: Make sure that a particular tier offers what you need.
Some hosts charge extra for the tools you might use to design your website. Other hosts require you to commit to a three-year hosting agreement to get that low per-month price. Or the price is an introductory one; after a month, you will revert to a higher price. Don’t commit to annual plans until you know what features you need and how quickly you plan to grow.
Uptime Is Important, Even With Cheap Web Hosting
The aforementioned features are valuable to the web hosting experience, but none match the importance of site uptime. If your site is down, clients or customers cannot find you or access your products or services. Every customer turned away is a potential sale lost and traffic not monetized. So, look for a web host’s uptime guarantee before signing up. Look for a service with a high uptime promise (like 99%) to keep your site online consistently.
The Cheap Hosting Alternative: Website Builders
If your primary goal is cheap service, there’s another option: website builders. If you simply want a good-looking website without any extras—a brochure-ware site, for example—you can skip traditional web hosting and check out website builder services, such as Gator and Wix.
Recommended by Our Editors
If you don’t care about owning a domain and don’t want to do a lot of behind-the-scenes tweaking, you should consider one of these online website builders. They let you create surprisingly attractive and functional sites hosted under their domains. Furthermore, these services can be incredibly cheap: Some offer free plans, which generally means you’ll have branding on your site for the website builder’s company. You can often pay for a domain, and that typically removes the branding, as well. Web hosting is the way to go if you need control over your domain and a little more functionality.
Dependable, Affordable Web Hosting
Not all cheap web hosting services are created equal. For example, some have data transfer allotment and storage caps worth investigating. Read the fine print for the unlimited offerings, too, as gotchas that might sneak up on you later. Other services limit the applications or plug-ins you can use.
The web host you select depends entirely on how you plan to use it—and your budget. If you are ready to choose a great web hosting service that’s also cheap, click the links in the charts to check out our in-depth reviews of the best names in the space.
If you’re just getting started in the web hosting game, check out our primers: 10 Easy But Powerful SEO Tips to Boost Traffic to Your Website, 5 Things You Need to Know Before Signing Up for Web Hosting, and Linux vs. Windows: How to Pick the Best Server OS for Your Website.
Jeffrey L. Wilson contributed to this article.
