Featured Partners
1
IONOS
$1 per month
Yes
Yes
2
Wix
$17 per month
Yes
Yes
3
Bluehost
$1.99 per month
Yes
Yes
4
Hostinger
$2.69 per month
10% off w/ code: FORBES10
free domain, free email, free website backups
Compare the Best Cheap Web Hosting of 2025
10 Best Cheap Web Hosts Of 2025
Methodology
Data underpins all of our best lists. Putting aside our personal favorites, we do deep dives into the data to narrow down our choices before we even log in and start testing out how products really perform. We never rely on marketing materials as the last word.
We started with a list of 17 candidates and gathered information on 33 factors in five categories covering the most popular features, budget concerns and scalability. We weighted those scores based on how they affect small businesses and compared them to our real-world testing to develop an overall outlook.
A few of the factors we considered include:
| Decision Factor | Scoring Weight | Description |
|---|---|---|
| General Features | 16% | With cheap web hosting, ensuring you get the core features you need to keep your website functioning is vital. Plus, you need extras such as business emails, website builders, automatic backups and discounted domain names to help stretch your budget. |
| Hosting Types | 4% | While shared hosting is usually the cheapest, no one hosting type fits all companies. We looked at the different hosting types providers offered for flexibility and scalability. |
| Service and Support | 10% | Eventually, something breaks. Whether there’s a billing issue or a service outage, you need to be able to reach customer support quickly and get reliable answers. |
| Value | 30% | We’d all love unlimited budgets, but reality means balancing pricing and features. |
| Consumer Sentiment | 40% | What do other users think of the service? We compile data on how satisfied actual customers of each company are in terms of value, features, pricing and quality of service. |
How To Choose the Best Cheap Web Hosting
If you’re looking for cheap web hosting, chances are budget is a primary concern for your business. However, besides a low bill, you need your website to function and stay live. With so much variation between plans and hosts, it can be hard to choose.
I always suggest starting out by making a list of must-haves and would-like-to-have features. For example, monthly billing might be a must-have because you don’t have the extra cash to pay a year or more upfront. Or, you might have a website builder on your must-have list because you can’t afford to pay a web designer right now.
Essential Cheap Web Hosting Features
When the budget is tight, you need a web host that includes the extras without charging an arm and a leg. Picking a host with basic features costing extra can easily eat into your bottom line.
Look for a host that includes the following features as part of your hosting plan:
- Unlimited Bandwidth. Limits on how much data you can transfer to and from your website could lead to extra costs during traffic spikes.
- Large Storage Limits. Storage for website files, customer data and media add up quickly.
- SSL Certificates. Especially for e-commerce, encrypted communication is nonnegotiable.
- Security Tools. Cybercrime continues to rise, so security features such as two-factor authentication, DDoS protections and zero-trust protocols are a must.
- Automatic Backups. Automatic backups help reduce human error and your time investment while protecting your website in case of natural disasters, ransomware or power failures.
- Support. Customer and tech support are your lifeline when things go wrong. You need a fast and reliable way to reach out when things break.
Overall, several hosts on our list serve as strong all-around generalists, such as TMDHosting, Hostinger and Namecheap.
Value
Budget matters, but so does getting a functional website. If your website is down frequently, loads slowly or managing your account is a nightmare, that ultra-low cost isn’t a bargain after all. Balancing cost, features and quality to find the biggest bang for your buck is necessary.
Each host on our list offers reasonable values, but you’ll often have to pay a year or more upfront to realize the biggest savings. When looking at overall value, DreamHost, Namecheap, and Hostinger stand out.
Portability
While many of the hosts on our list have relatively stable pricing, sometimes prices rise from market pressures or when hosts are sold. Being locked into a single host can result in unexpected extra costs. A portable website is one you can copy the files from and move them to a new host.
WordPress and other open-source CMS-built sites are usually considered the most portable, as are sites managed through cPanel. Website builder websites can be trickier. Most website builder plans don’t provide access to the files you’d need to migrate to another host.
Hosts with strong WordPress hosting where you can create portable websites include Hostinger, Namecheap and TMDHosting.
Website Creation
Most small businesses are watching every penny, and hiring outside web design help isn’t feasible for many. Finding a web host that includes an easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder that works from templates makes it possible to create your own website without incurring extra costs.
While website builders aren’t always as portable as other website systems, they’re great for getting online fast. Hosts with website builders include IONOS, GoDaddy and Hostinger.
Technical Help
Even if you’re an experienced techie, sometimes you have to choose between spending time coding and managing your website or managing your business. Picking a web host with strong tech support might cost a little more upfront but save you more down the road than cheaper options.
Hosts that stand out for technical help include Kinsta and GreenGeeks.
Which Cheap Website Hosting Is Best for Your Business?
The best cheap web host depends on your needs and may change over time as your company grows. Starting out with a host that offers scalability later on with more powerful hosting plans, such as VPS and dedicated hosting, helps smooth out growing pains later.
That said, sometimes you start with what meets your needs now, and plan for changes in the future when a larger budget might allow for a website refresh if the original isn’t portable.
Let’s look at some common situations SMBs face.
If you’ve never managed a website before, choose a managed web host such as TMDHosting.
If money is extra tight, look for a host with low prices for monthly billing such as Namecheap.
If you’re growing fast and need a fully featured host that offers quick scalability, consider a host such as IONOS.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the difference between shared hosting and WordPress hosting?
WordPress hosting is hosting that has been optimized to meet the needs of the WordPress CMS. Shared hosting is hosting where you share space with many other websites on the same server (computer). Cheap WordPress hosting can be shared or it can be VPS or dedicated.
Do I need a hosting plan for each website I make?
Whether you can host multiple sites on one plan depends on your web hosting plan. Some include multiple domains and websites, while others only allow extra subdomains. Shared hosting plans generally have more limits, while Cloud, VPS and Dedicated hosting generally offer more freedom.
Do landing pages count as a website?
Landing pages, one-page marketing websites used for marketing campaigns, are often stand-alone websites with their own custom domains. However, you can also assign a landing page to a subdomain, such as landingpage.example.com, to avoid the extra domain cost and additional hosting costs in many cases.
