The task of choosing the appropriate WordPress host is difficult enough in and of itself – much alone finding one that is both reliable and reasonably priced.
However, it is essential to note that, when it comes to web hosting, you don’t always get what you bargain for – many of the web providers on our list have received high reviews from their customers. This informs us that finding a balance between affordable costs and high performance is certainly feasible.
In general, more costly hosting plans provide access to much more computing capacity or features. That being said, for several websites, low-cost website hosting plans can perform just as well as more expensive alternatives.
Choosing a web host with a good reputation and the appropriate plan for your requirements can result in fantastic performance for a small site. There are many instances where paying less than $5 every month for hosting is more than enough.
Generally speaking, the term “cheap” is associated with a negative meaning. But when it comes to web hosting, you may get a lot of value for your money, with some great starting plans costing less than 5 bucks month on some of the most popular platforms.
You should be aware that at this pricing range, you won’t often find many extras. A shared plan with a reasonable amount of bandwidth and storage space is what most people think of when they hear the phrase “cheap website hosting.” Budget plans are often limited to just one website, and they do not always offer automatic backups as a standard feature.
The majority of customers will not need anything more advanced than simple shared hosting, therefore web providers charge a reasonable fee for those kinds of services.
So, here are the best of the best cheap shared hosting providers:
1. Bluehost
WordPress.org has officially endorsed Bluehost as one of the few web hosting providers to choose. As a result, it is one of the most convenient options available on the market.
When it comes to managing your hosting configuration, Bluehost has you covered with a beautiful bespoke control panel that includes all of the tools you’ll need to create and launch your site.
A free domain name is included with your plan, as is access to free website builders along with 1-click WordPress installation.
The company offers three plans:
- Basic: Each account allows you to host one website with 50GB of storage space and one free domain name. This is not typical among plans at this pricing range, and it should be noted. This plan will cost you $2.75 a month.
- Plus: You will have the right to host infinite number of websites, and get unmetered website space, an unlimited number of email accounts, and an unlimited amount of email storage. This plan costs $5.45 a month.
- Choice Plus: This package includes everything in the Plus plan, as well as additional features such as domain privacy and automatic site backups. Currently, this is the same price as Plus, making it a more attractive alternative.
You must pre-pay for at three years of hosting with Bluehost in order to receive the best rates. They also offer one- and two-year contracts, but there are no month-to-month alternatives available with this provider. This means that your initial investment will be quite high.
2. Namecheap
Namecheap does not offer monthly rates under $1 any longer, but they are still a very inexpensive provider that provides cheap pay monthly hosting packages.
They provide you the option of selecting a data center in the United States, the United Kingdom or EU. You can have up to 20GB of SSD storage space, as well as limitless bandwidth, and you can have up to three sites running simultaneously even on their cheapest offering.
What is interesting is that they even throw in a free CDN even though it is in the beta stage.
Here are the pricing plans:
- Stellar: Get 20GB of SSD-accelerated storage space, with the ability to host up to three websites on one account. It will cost $1.44 a month.
- Stellar Plus: Unmetered SSD-accelerated storage, websites, and bandwidth are all available. It will cost $4.88 a month.
- Stellar Business: Besides unmetered bandwidth and limitless websites, you’ll also get 50 GB of pure SSD storage space. It will cost $8.88 a month.
What is interesting is that Namecheap will allow you to pay per month even for the cheapest plan they are offering. What perhaps others will not tell you is that starting Stellar Plus plan, you can create staging sites, well. That is something you will not get with other cheap shared hosting providers.
3. Hostinger
Since its inception, Hostinger has been praised for its low rates, which have remained consistent throughout the years. However! With this deal, they’re doing something that’s above and beyond reasonable. To put it bluntly, let me say…
This company’s most affordable web hosting package is just $1.39 per month.
However, you should keep in mind that this is just free the first contract and that after that you will be required to pay $7.99 / month, but it is an excellent method to obtain yourself a host for a basic website project.
Only one website can be hosted on that lowest of package, and you will also get one email address to go with it. Aside from that, there is 100GB of bandwidth, and that should be plenty for a new site.
However, you will not get a free domain name with the cheapest plan, which is a disappointment, and there will be no daily backups available.
Here are the pricing plans:
- Single: This is particularly useful if you are building your first website. This plan costs $1.39 a month.
- Premium: The option is particularly advantageous if you intend to create a few of websites but do not anticipate each of them to get a significant amount of traffic. Additionally, you will get a free domain name for the first year. It will cost you $2.59 a month.
- Business: This is an excellent choice for most website projects. Provides you with a free SSL certificate plus daily backups, as well as a free web address for the first year. This plan will cost you $4.99 a month.
4. A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting has the most variety of plans and levels of any of the web providers we’ve listed so far. The Startup shared hosting package is the most affordable option and costs $2.99 per month. You need to commit for three-years.
A2 Hosting, in contrast to the majority of the other choices on our list, does not charge much more or less based on the duration of the contract. Consider the following example: the Startup plan with a 2-year contract will cost only two dollars less per month than what you would have to pay for an additional year of service. Still, you do get some discount for committing for a longer term.
Month-to-month hosting payment choices are available with A2 Hosting. Unfortunately, it is much less appealing due to its greater cost.
Some of A2 Hosting’s plans feature what they refer to as a Turbo option. Those particular designs have been tuned to provide much higher performance than the baseline. For shared hosting, at least, the lowest plan that includes the Turbo feature costs $9.99 each month, which is quite costly.
Here are the pricing plans:
- Startup: At $2.99 a month it will allow you to host only 1 site with unlimited bandwidth, but a disappointingly low 700 MB of RAM. However, for a new site that RAM amount should be enough.
- Drive: At $4.99 a month and 1 GB RAM at disposal, you will get to host unlimited sites with unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth.
- Turbo Boost: This plan will cost you $9.99 a month and give you NVMe storage instead of SSD storage. RAM ramps up to 2 GB with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage.
- Turbo Max: It will cost you $14.99 a month but against a 3-year commitment. You get unlimited NVMe storage with 4 GB RAM and unlimited bandwidth.
5. SiteGround
Any list cannot be complete without including SiteGround. With SiteGround, it’s easy to understand why they’re regularly rated as one of the finest WordPress hosting providers available. Free site transfers are included with their WordPress accounts, and higher-level plans include support for Git as well as their SG Optimizer tool for faster site loading times, among other features.
They throw in free SSL, daily backups, free emails, free CDN, unmetered traffic, and even a 30-day moneyback guarantee. What more? With higher plans you get staging and collaboration features, too!
SiteGround provides a fantastic combination of sophisticated WordPress features, cheap pricing, and respectable loading times. As a result, it is an excellent all-around option for every kind of WordPress user, and particularly for those who place a high importance on their websites operating without interruption when using a low-cost WordPress hosting service.
Here are the pricing plans of SiteGround:
- Startup: It will allow you to host only one site, but it will give you unmetered traffic 10 GB webspace. You won’t get staging and Git integration. It will cost you $4.99 a month.
- GrowBig: It will give you the option of hosting unlimited sites. At $7.99 a month you will get features like on-demand backups, staging, ultrafast PHP, and the ability to add collaborators.
- GoGeek: At $14.99 you will get everything that GrowBig offers but you also get Git integration, white-label clients, highest tier of resources, and priority support.
Don’t forget that these low prices come with a minimum commitment of 12 months. You can always go for a monthly payment where prices will shoot up exponentially!
Those that you read just now are my top five preferences in the given order. But there are more!
Let us learn about them quickly!
6. DreamHost
DreamHost, in contrast to several other web providers, does not believe in confusing customers with a plethora of hosting levels. For each kind of hosting plan that they provide, you have the opportunity to select between two choices that are vastly different from one another.
It should come as no surprise that DreamHost’s most affordable plans are shared hosting plans. With a three-year commitment, the Shared Starter tier costs $2.59 per month. DreamHost, on the other hand, provides reasonably cost one-year and monthly hosting plans. If you want to pay on a month-to-month basis, the price increases just by $4.95.
Here are the pricing plans of DreamHost:
- Shared Starter – It costs $2.59 a month and allows hosting 1 site with a free domain, unlimited traffic, SSD storage, free SSL. If you want email, you have to buy that separately.
- Shared Unlimited – It costs $3.95 a month and allows hosting unlimited sites with a free domain, free email, SSD storage, free SSL, etc.
Did I mention that DreamHost will install WordPress when you purchase a plan? So go there only if you wish to build WordPress sites.
7. InMotion Hosting
WP-CLI support, as well as free website transfers, are all included with InMotion‘s affordable WordPress hosting options. InMotion’s loading speeds aren’t up to par, but they do offer a great support staff and lots of sophisticated WordPress capabilities. This is a great option for those who care more about handholding than performance. But you can always optimize your site by yourself.
Unlike DreamHost that offers only two plans, InMotion offers 4 plans to choose from, which include:
- Lite: It costs $2.49 a month, allowing you to host only one site. It is good if you are looking for a modest setup with a personal or a family site and you do not care about speed and making money out of your site.
- Launch: Starting at $4.99, this plan will allow you to host 2 sites on SSD storage. You will get unlimited bandwidth.
- Power: It will cost $4.99 a month and allow you to host 50 sites with 100 GB storage, unlimited bandwidth, and advanced caching.
- Pro: This is for power users and those who want to build eCommerce sites. You get to host 100 sites on 200 GB SSD storage.
8. HostGator
HostGator guarantees that your site is online and operating 99.99% of the time. HostGator provides free backups, unmetered bandwidth, and free domains on all of its packages. Free migrations are also including for all plans along with simplified control panel and advanced security.
Though HostGator offers 99.99% uptime guarantee, they lack on the speed front. So, you need to keep a highly optimized site to keep up with Google’s requirement for speed and the optimization has to be from your end.
The company offers 3 pricing plans that include:
- Starter Plan: It will cost $5.95 a month and allows hosting only one site and 1 GB backup.
- Standard Plan: It will cost $7.95 a month and allows hosting two sites with 2 GB backup.
- Business Plan: It will cost $9.95 a month and allows hosting three sites with 3 GB of backup.
Of course, HostGator is quite expensive for the price it charges. Moreover, the free domain comes only when you commit for a minimum of 12 months, and you get the lowest price (prices mentioned above) only when you commit for 36 months or three years.
Conclusion
Cheap hosting doesn’t always mean bad. It all depends on your website needs. I will always say that if you are launching your site and want to take it slow, shared hosting is one of the best options. However, if you have an established site or if you intend to grow your site with aggressive link building within a short span of time, you should consider getting managed WordPress hosting like Liquid Web, or you should go for cloud hosting.
If you are settling for shared hosting, my bets are always on the first five on the list. I generally ask people to avoid the remaining three.
But do keep in mind that those mentioned in the list aren’t the only shared hosting providers. There are many more such as IONOS, InterServer, ChemiCloud, GoDaddy, GreenGeeks, ScalaHosting, FastComet, Hostwinds and more.
