Cheapest Web Hosting at a Glance
| Annual Price | Domains | Locations | 2019 Uptime | Avg. Load Time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPShared | $3 | unlimited | US (NY) | 99.92% | 625 ms |
| BuyShared | $8 | five | US & EU | 99.86% | 636 ms |
| LaunchVPS | $21.29 | unlimited | US (PA) | 99.90% | 335 ms |
| HostMantis | $17.95 | unlimited | 8 Global | 99.97% | 234 ms |
Why Cheapest Web Hosting?
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There are many reasons why ultra-cheap web hosting may be a good option. One obvious situation is when you are not yet ready for premium web hosting but do not wish to settle for a free website. Other reasons include:
- You are planning to make your first website and just want to experiment
- You are just learning how to use such applications as WordPress
- You have an idea for a website that you do not really expect to grow much
- You do not have either skills or time to manage a cheap cloud server
- You wish to start out on a tight budget and later migrate the site elsewhere
Whatever your situation, $1 web hosting may be a good place to start. There are basically two ways to get one dollar web hosting.
1. One way is to prepay for two-four years and get a huge discount on the first term. While the plan renews at a higher price, you get excellent tech support from day one. A popular example is Hostinger.
2. Another way to get one dollar web hosting is more straightforward: you will pay $1 on a recurring basis, year after year, unconditionally. We will focus here on this kind of $1 web hosting.
In terms of pricing, $1 USD refers to a monthly price. To have more flexibility, we do include web hosting options of up to $1.99/month. Because the cheapest web hosting is typically available on an annual billing cycle, you will normally pay less than $24 a year.
There are, as a matter of fact, plenty of companies that offer one dollar web hosting. Many of them, however, use cheap hardware or outdated software and provide no technical support whatsoever.
We will therefore focus here only on the truly best one dollar web hosting providers. Only those that make sure that ‘cheap’ does not mean poor quality.
We have tested all the providers and selected only those that meet all of the following requirements:
- App auto-installer
- SSD storage
- Free backups
- Free SSL
- Free email
- LiteSpeed Web Server
- Account isolation
- Room to grow
- No steep plan upgrades
- Same price on renewals
- Money-back guarantee
- 4+ years in business
- 24/7 tech support
VPShared is a web hosting brand of VirMach, a company founded in 2014. Like VirMach, VPShared specializes in low-resource hosting at ultra-low prices. Its cheapest web hosting plan costs just $3 a year. Although this cheapest package will work for most new websites with active caching, it may be worth going directly for one of the plans with higher resources. One of the perks of choosing a higher plan is a free dedicated IP address.
- Locations: Buffalo, New York
- Control panel: cPanel
- 2019 uptime: 99.92%
- Load time: 625 ms
- CloudLinux: yes
- CPU: 0.2 Core
- RAM: 128 MB
- SSD: 1 GB
- Bandwidth: 100 GB
- Websites: unlimited
- Always in stock: no
- Instant setup: yes
- Money back: 7 days
- Annual price: $3
BuyShared is a Frantech Solutions brand, the company better known for its line of inexpensive KVM VPS. In business since 2010, the company has consistently specialized in web hosting solutions on an ultra-low budget. BuyShared is probably the most popular low-cost hosting provider, the other being VPShared. Comparing BuyShared vs VPShared, one will notice many similarities. Like VPShared, BuyShared includes a free dedicated IP address and unlimited Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. BuyShared is that popular that most of its plans are often out of stock, both in the US and the EU.
- Locations: Las Vegas, Nevada & Roost, Luxembourg
- Control panel: cPanel
- 2019 uptime: 99.86%
- Load time: 636 ms
- CloudLinux: yes
- CPU: 1 Core
- RAM: 1 GB
- SSD: 1 GB
- Bandwidth: 100 GB
- Websites: five
- Always in stock: no
- Instant setup: no
- Money back: 3 days
- Annual price: $8
Founded in 2014, LaunchVPS is another low-cost VPS provider that also offers cheap cPanel web hosting. Even the cheapest web hosting plan ($21.29/year = $1.77/month) includes 5 GB of disk space, no inode limits and 500 GB of bandwidth. Each plan has a different amount of resources (up to 2 CPU cores and 2 GB RAM). LaunchVPS provides free cPanel SSL certificates. Tech support is friendly but may be slow. LaunchVPS stands out with a 45-day money-back guarantee.
- Locations: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Control panel: cPanel
- 2019 uptime: 99.90%
- Load time: 335 ms
- CloudLinux: yes
- CPU: 1 Core
- RAM: 512 MB
- SSD: 5 GB
- Bandwidth: 500 GB
- Websites: unlimited
- Always in stock: yes
- Instant setup: yes
- Money back: 45 days
- Annual price: $21.29
** 2021 Update: HostMantis now offers both cPanel (from $35.95/y) and DirectAdmin (from $17.95/y) plans
In business since 2010, HostMantis focuses on shared web hosting while also offering cheap Reseller hosting. Its plans allocate a generous amount of resources, from 3 GB RAM up to 8 GB RAM. HostMantis uses OVH datacenters for most of its global locations, except for Germany where it uses Hetzner. HostMantis offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and complimentary DDoS protection. Because of its competitive pricing and excellent performance, HostMantis is one of the best web hosting providers today.
- Locations: USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Brazil, Singapore & Australia
- Control panel: DA
- 2019 uptime: 99.97%
- Load time: 234 ms
- CloudLinux: yes
- CPU: 1 Core
- RAM: 3 GB
- SSD: 25 GB
- Bandwidth: unlimited
- Websites: unlimited
- Always in stock: yes
- Instant setup: yes
- Money back: 30 days
- Annual price: $17.95
$1 vs $5 Web Hosting
If you can get great features even with one dollar web hosting, is it worth even considering more expensive options? While the answer is generally ‘yes’, it also really depends.
Just because a company puts a higher price tag does not mean their services are better. But if a hosting company has been in business for years, continues to innovate and remains customer-centered, there is no question that it is worth paying more than one dollar a month.
You can get better support, higher resource limits and generally more reliable web hosting for about $5/month. Other differences between one dollar vs five dollar web hosting? You can see the key advantages of five dollar web hosting compared to one dollar web hosting below.
One Dollar vs Five Dollar Web Hosting
| $1 Web Hosting | $5 Web Hosting | |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring price | ~$15/year | ~$55/year |
| Monthly billing | unavailable | <$5/month |
| Discounts | unavailable | available |
| Always in stock | no | yes |
| Resource limits | low | standard |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.9% | 99.9+% |
| Actual uptime | ~/<99.9% | >99.9% |
| Money back guarantee | 3+ days | 30+ days |
| Managed support | minimum | standard |
| Migration support | mostly no | mostly yes |
| Own hardware | mostly no | mostly yes |
| Established brand | mostly no | yes |
| 15+ years in business | no | yes |
| Company transparency | no | yes |
Some of the good five dollar web hosting providers? There are not that many established brands that offer quality web hosting at just $5/month on a recurring basis. The ones below are all independently owned companies with great 24/7 support.
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