High-end web hosting services can be notoriously expensive and costs can quickly mount as the requirements of your online business increase. But, if you do your homework, you can find some great deals, and the number of cheap providers offering a reliable service, good performance, and excellent value for money is steadily growing.
Historically, cheap web hosting providers have been useful to start-ups and small businesses but not so beneficial for larger organizations. All that’s changed, and today, many providers offer plans that suit larger businesses on a budget.
One thing you need to be aware of is renewal costs. A number of cheap providers hike the price of hosting up after a relatively short period—often just a year. That said, in many cases, this initial term may be long enough for you to evaluate your needs, and you can always switch to another provider if your budget commands it.
To make it easy for you to find the best provider for your business, we’ve selected the best cheap web hosting deals of 2020, giving you all the information you need to decide which is the right fit for you.
Great long-term option
Price: $31.68 per year on a three-year contract. Total price is $95.04.
HostGator is a well-known web hosting provider backed by hosting giant EIG and its Hatchling plan is the perfect package for first-timers. Most of the plans in our list are basic and only allow you to host one site, and HostGator’s Hatchling plan is no different.
But there are some very good features, including unlimited bandwidth and disk space (for website-related files only), and $200 worth of credits to spend on advertising with Google and Bing Ads.
There is also a 24/7 support service, subdomains, an unlimited backup facility, MySQL databases, FTP accounts, and email inboxes.
HostGator even gives its users access to the ever-popular cPanel control panel and its own website builder too.
Each plan, including the Hatchling package, comes with a 45-day money-back guarantee and guaranteed 99.9% uptime. You can also transfer your existing site for free within 30 days of signing up to the provider, or on an upgrade.
Read our Hostgator review.
Good for first-time users
Price: (US) $3.99 per month on a four-year contract. (UK) £3.99 per month on a four-year contract.
Aside from its Business plan, Hostinger’s cheapest plan is just $0.99 per month, but as well as only supporting one website, it doesn’t include many features. Still, if you don’t require much from your package it could be an option for you.
Hostinger’s Business plan is far more feature-rich and includes unlimited websites, bandwidth, databases, email accounts, and FTP, plus 30GB disk space. Although Hostinger’s rivals do offer more storage, 30GB should be more than adequate for most people—especially new business owners.
Bonus features include daily backups, free SSL, SSH access, and Cloudflare protection. It’s a great deal, but if you do change your mind after signing up, you can take advantage of a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Visit the Hostinger website.
Incredibly good value for money
(US) $23.88 per year on a three-year contract. Total price is $71.64. (UK) £18 for year one. £8.35 per month on renewal.
iPage, like many other providers, is part of EIG, one of the largest hosting providers in existence. This link, and consequential influence, enables iPage to keep its prices low. For very little cost, you get unlimited bandwidth, MySQL databases, email accounts, websites, and disk space. And, as you do with the other members of the EIG family, you also receive 24/7 support as well as Google and Bing ad credits to spend on marketing.
There is an industry-standard 30-day money-back guarantee, but you don’t get website security, domain privacy, or backup in an off-the-shelf package.
iPage does, however, throw in a free domain name for a year, plus SiteLock security tools—but you’ll need to do a little more research to find out what these tools actually are, as there is very little information on the iPage website.
Visit the iPage website.
Well-equipped for scaling up and comes with a Microsoft Office email
Price: (US) $1 (as of June 2020, usual price $4.49) per month for year one. $8.99 per month on renewal.
(UK) £1 (as of June 2020, usual price £3.99) per month for year one. £5.99 per month plus VAT on renewal.
GoDaddy is one of the key players in the hosting industry—on the same level as EIG and 1&1 Ionos. The provider’s Economy package is one of the best you can get and really is incredible value for money.
It includes, as you might expect, a free domain name as well as 100GB of storage. There’s also unlimited bandwidth and free Microsoft Office 365 Business Email (valid for a year). This bonus email feature is worth $73 (£55) on its own.
You also get a 24/7 support service via a toll-free telephone number, and GoDaddy promises 99.9% uptime.
You’ll also find one-click install for over 125 applications, as well as DDoS protection and 1GB of MySQL database storage. The only real limitation that we came across was the fact that it’s only possible to host one website—a relatively common theme we found during our research for this feature.
Read our full GoDaddy review.
Good service with lots of storage and extra features
Price: (US) $1 for month one. $8 per month after that. (UK) £12 for year one. £5 per month plus VAT on renewal.
German company 1&1 Ionos, like other leading hosting providers, offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. One of the top hosting companies in the world, 1&1 Ionos also includes geo-redundancy, DDoS protection, and the HTTP/2 protocol with all its packages.
There is plenty of room to scale up a website with unlimited bandwidth, storage, and up to 2.5GB of system memory. On top of this, you receive unlimited databases with 1GB SSD storage allocated for each one.
What’s more, you’ll get a personal consultant, a free domain for a year—not .com or .net if you’re in the UK, 50 email accounts, daily backups, 24/7 customer service, and an SSL certificate.
Visit the 1&1 Ionos website.
Incredibly cheap but lacking key features
Price: $2.49 (£1.99) per month, $29.88 for the year. $4.99 (£3.99) per month on renewal.
The drawbacks of choosing Denmark-based One.com include the fact that you’ll be charged a setup fee and only receive a minimal 15-day money-back guarantee. But, unlike most of its rivals, One.com doesn’t add VAT onto the price advertised, so what you see is what you get.
On the flipside, the provider’s fees are extremely low, and you get a lot for your money. That’s probably why the company can boast 1.5 million active users. You will also receive 50GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, a website builder for one website, a single database, an SSL certificate, plus 100 email accounts.
There are also optional SSH, backup, and restore features.
Vist the One.com website.
Very cheap yet capable hosting
$14.55 (£11.88) for year one. $59.8 (£47.88) a year on renewal.
Owned and operated by GoDaddy, Tsohost only operates in the UK. The provider’s Economy plan includes a free domain name for a year and three websites with a 100,000 page view allowance, unlimited bandwidth, 100GB storage, a free SSL certificate, one hundred 200MB mailboxes, and a migration package for your existing website.
You also get free daily site backups, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Tsohost has its data centers based in the UK and runs on Dell hardware. We found the provider to be very capable with well-priced, fair, and feature rich plans. It’s a good option for beginners and users that require UK hosting.
Vist the Tsohost website.
Good value to begin with but be aware of price rises on renewal
Price: $9.65 (£7.79) per month for year one. $16.40 (£12.99) per month after renewal.
123 Reg is a very popular provider in the UK and is another provider under the umbrella company GoDaddy. 123 Reg’s Unlimited plan is great for users keen to scale up their online businesses quickly.
For a minimal $9.65 per month in year one, you are given a 10 website allowance. We were surprised to discover this as most cheap web hosting plans tend to only offer a single hosted site.
On top of this you get three domain names free for a year, unlimited databases up to 1GB each, bandwidth, and web space, a free SSL certificate, unlimited FTP accounts, scheduled tasks, backup and restore functions, IP address blocking, website directory indexing, plus a JavaScript creator and WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Media Wiki and eCommerce Linux apps.
Unfortunately, you are only entitled to one 5GB mailbox, which is far lower than most of the provider’s rivals. Plus, on renewal, the cost of the plan rises considerably, a fact you must be aware of before committing.
Visit the 123 Reg website.
Solid, stable hosting provider
Price: $32 (£25) per year—every year.
Clook has servers in the UK and USA but is a British company. Although not a large brand name, Clook is highly regarded by those in the know and it has carved out a reputation as a trustworthy web host.
Clook is particularly well-known for its commitment to customer support—something many other cheap web hosting providers often fail at.
Most of the provider’s plans are set at market rate with no discount offered but it does offer a particularly cheap shared web-hosting plan, the Clook shared-0 plan, which costs just $32 (£25) per year.
With this plan you get 200MB of disk space and a monthly allocation of 5GB bandwidth. This may seem a little low, and you’d be right to think so.
Clook doesn’t offer a lot compared to other companies in regards to resources, but there is a valid reason for this. By not overselling, Clook can ensure it won’t overload its servers—a common issue if too many people are vying for the same resources all at once.
On top of this, the resources included in the shared-0 plan are in fact perfect for small start-up websites or existing small businesses.
Some users might worry that low allocation of resources would be detrimental if they have an unexpected boost in traffic and sales. But, Clook, like the majority of reputable web-hosting providers, will automatically upgrade your account to handle the extra demand.
When the demand isn’t there, Clook’s shared-0 plan provides more than enough resources for fledgling sites, and you still get all the standard features that most other services offer.
Although Clook claims its platform hasn’t been designed to host dynamic PHP scripts, you shouldn’t struggle to host a WordPress website or something similar.
Visit the Clook website.
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