Quality web hosting can be an expensive affair – but it doesn’t have to be. And while you can always fall back on free website hosting providers, there’s also a growing number of cheap web hosting providers that deliver honest, reliable performance and great value for money without breaking the bank.
All bar one of the web hosting companies listed below will accommodate more than one website. So while cheap web hosting providers are great for starting your business, they might not be powerful and scalable enough to take it to the next level; which is where VPS and dedicated servers come into play.
Note that some of the headline eye-catching prices (from free to just a few dollars/pounds per month) are often only for a limited period (usually the first year), and after that they can swiftly balloon, especially when you factor in the cost of the domain names bundled.
If you plan to have a successful online business, it is important to think long-term and how the total cost of ownership (the cost of running your website over years) might impact your bottom line.
So, without further ado, below is our hand-picked list of the best cheap hosting deals.
- Check out our list of the best web hosting providers and cheap VPS hosting deals
Below are the best cheap web hosting providers of 2018
HostGator Hatchling
$31.68 for the first year when purchased for three years. Total cost of purchase is $95.04
HostGator is backed by EIG, one of the biggest web hosting companies, and its Hatchling plan is great for getting started. As with most of the offerings highlighted here, you can only run one website on this plan, but you don’t get a free domain name or free SSL.
What you do get is unlimited disk space and bandwidth (but note that you won’t be able to use this space for storing files as this is against the terms and conditions), along with a $150 marketing budget (Google and Bing Ads credits). You also get 24/7 support, unlimited backups, subdomains, MySQL databases, email inboxes and FTP accounts. And finally, HostGator provides access to the popular cPanel control panel as well as its very own website builder (check our best website builder list).
Every web hosting plan includes an industry-leading 45-day money-back guarantee alongside a 99.9% uptime guarantee. HostGator also provides free transfers for new accounts within 30 days of signup, and to newly upgraded accounts.
GoDaddy Economy
(US) $2.49 (there is a sale at the time of writing, usual price is $4.49) per month for the first year, renews at $7.99 per month
(UK) £1 (there is a sale at the time of writing, usual price is £3.99) per month for the first year, renews at £5.99 per month plus VAT
GoDaddy is the second of the triumvirate of ‘uber web hosting’ companies (the two others being EIG and 1&1) that we’ve listed in this buying guide. Its Economy package has to be one of the best on the market with GoDaddy flexing its (virtual) muscles to deliver exceptional value for money.
As expected, you get a free domain name and oodles of storage (100GB) along with unlimited bandwidth, plus free Microsoft Office 365 Business Email for a year (a freebie worth $73 (£55)).
Support is delivered 24/7 via a toll-free line and GoDaddy even guarantees 99.9% uptime for this service. Add in 1-click install functionality for more than 125 applications, DDoS protection, plus 1GB of MySQL database storage and you’ve bagged yourself a pretty solid offering. The only true limitation is the fact that you won’t be able to host more than one website, but that’s a common theme across the budget board.
- Check out the cheap web hosting packages from GoDaddy
- Those looking for GoDaddy hosting outside of the UK should check here
1&1 Ionos Business
(US) $12 for the first year, renews at $8 per month
(UK) £12 for the first year, renews at £5 per month plus VAT
Like many other premium web hosting companies, 1&1 IONOS offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. As part of one of the world’s largest web hosting firms, you’re in good company as this German-based host includes DDoS protection, geo-redundancy and the all-new HTTP/2 protocol as standard.
Your website will have room to grow with a staggering 100GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, up to 2.5GB of system memory and up to 25 databases with 1GB SSD storage each.
On top of that you also get a personal consultant, one free domain for a year (no .com or .net in the UK, though), daily backup, 25 email accounts, an SSL certificate and 24/7 customer service.
- Check out the cheap web hosting packages from 1&1
- Those looking for 1&1 hosting outside of the UK should check here
One.com
$2.45 (£1.86) per month ($29.4 for a year), renews at the same price
Let’s start with the downsides here: One.com is the only web hosting outfit here that charges a setup fee and has a short 15-day money-back guarantee. However, the price you see includes VAT (unlike most of its rivals).
The fee is also very reasonable and you do get a lot for your money. We’re talking unlimited bandwidth, 25GB storage, a single database, a website builder (single website), SSL certificate and unlimited email accounts. SSH, backup and restore features are optional. This web hosting company is based in Denmark and has more than 1.5 million active users.
iPage
(US) $23.88 for the first year when purchased for three years. Total cost of purchase is $71.64
(UK) £18 for the first year. Renews at £8.99 per month
Like dozens of other web hosting providers, iPage is part of the big EIG family and uses the bargaining power of the organization to bring prices down. iPage has it all for such a small price: you get unlimited websites, disk space, bandwidth, MySQL databases and email accounts. As with other EIG members, you get Google and Bing advertising credits and 24/7 support.
The money-back guarantee is an industry average 30-days and you don’t get domain privacy, website security or backup as standard. As a sweetener, iPage includes a domain name (for a year) plus free SiteLock security tools (although iPage doesn’t provide much detail as to what that actually includes).
Tsohost Personal Cloud Web Hosting
$45.60 (£35.04) a year when purchased for two years, renews at the same price
Tsohost is owned by GoDaddy and operates solely in the UK. You get one domain name (free for the first year) and three websites with up to 100,000 page views, 15GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, hundred 200MB mailboxes, an SSL certificate and one basic migration package. You also get free daily site backups, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Tsohost uses Dell hardware and UK-based data centers. Our review found this outfit to be a “capable web host with some feature-packed, versatile and honestly priced plans”. We concluded that it was worth a look for beginners and experts alike, particularly if you need a UK provider.
123 Reg Unlimited
£8.99 ($11.40) for first year, renews at £12.99 ($16.4) per month
Another GoDaddy-owned web host, 123 Reg is a well-known provider in the UK. Its Unlimited package delivers an attractive hosting solution if you have ambitions to grow your website business fast. For £9 for the first year, you can host 10 websites, which is particularly impressive seeing as many of these cheap deals limit you to just one site, as we’ve seen.
You also get three domain names (which are free for a year) plus you get unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited databases (up to 1GB each), a free SSL certificate, unlimited FTP accounts, website backup and restore, scheduled tasks, IP address blocking and website directory indexing plus a JavaScript generator and Linux apps (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Media Wiki and eCommerce).
Sadly you only get one 5GB mailbox, which is poor compared to the competition, and the monthly cost of renewing the service after a year is more expensive as the full cost of the first year itself!
You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:
- WordPress
- Cloud hosting
- E-commerce
- Dedicated server
- Small business
- Windows
- Managed
- Green
- Business
- Colocation
- Email hosting
- Resellers
- VPS
- Shared
- Cheap
- Website builders
- Best website hosting
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