Free Web Hosting, Sans Ads

The thing about free web hosting is that somewhere along the line, it’s getting paid for.  There are some hosting companies that offer free web hosting without displaying advertisements on your pages.  The majority are still going to display ads though: to you.  Your control panel will likely have advertisements and you may be required to log into their forums (which will show advertising) on a regular basis to keep your account active.  

My personal preference is to pay for hosting so I don’t have any real experience with the companies below, but this question comes up so often that it’s worth addressing.  I have walked through the registration process to create hosting accounts, but I have not used the services so I can’t offer any information on ease-of-use or the quality of the support.

All the sites listed meet the following criteria:

• They have good user reviews on a third-party site
• They don’t display ads on your pages
• They allow the use of your own domain name
• The hosting packages appear to be the equivalent of the lower-end offerings of paid hosting services

Because free web hosts do have a tendency to go out of business periodically, it is super important that you register your own domain name and that you keep a current backup of your site files in case you need to move to a different service quickly.  In the event of outages and downtime, technical support may also be less responsive than paid hosting.

• Free Hostia – 250 MB of storage, 5 GB of monthly transfer, FTP access, MySQL, PHP, and Perl.  This company offers less storage and transfer since their free service is really intended to be an unlimited trial for their paid hosting packages.  The benefit to the user is that the registration process is extremely easy and professional and you aren’t bombarded with advertisements yourself.
  
  It delivered me to the control panel with a minimum of fuss.  Based on my initial impressions, this is the one I would use.  (And if you outgrow their free package, you’re at the point where you have a fairly significant web presence and need to be working with a reliable company anyway.)
• Zymic – 2 GB of storage, 35 GB of transfer monthly, FTP access, MySQL and PHP.  I went through their registration process and found it easy.  They require registration on their support forums.  This can be done after the registration process.
• X10Hosting – 300 MB of storage, 10 GB of monthly transfer, FTP access, MySQL and PHP.  The registration process is slow, with many ad-filled screens to click through.  Also, at the completion of the process it will loop back to the beginning again.  Once it starts to show the Terms of Service again, it’s okay to close the window and wait for your email account confirmation.
  
  They offer free hosting both with and without advertising.  Choose the Ad Free plan.  They require registration on their support forums to create a hosting account.  This can be done during the registration process.  I include this one because it meets all the requirements, but it was definitely my least favorite.

Other services like Google Pages provide a minimal amount of ad-free space, but they are extremely limited. You cannot use PHP or host a database-driven site, which is why I haven’t included them on this list.

You should definitely read Christopher Heng’s article on All Those Disappearing Free Web Hosts if you are considering using free hosting.