Searching for the best cheap web hosting to host your website on a budget?
Whether you want to host WordPress or another content management system, you can find some quality cheap web hosting providers that cost under $5 bucks per month.
Will these cheap hosts be able to handle a high-traffic website with top-notch performance? Let’s be honest – no. Just like any product or service, you always get what you pay for to some extent.
However, if you choose wisely, you can find hosts that offer pretty great value and performance for low-to-medium traffic websites. And that’s what this post is about – finding web hosts that still offer pretty good performance and features at a very low price.
In total, we’ve collected nine different cheap web hosting providers, with options starting at just $1.44 per month.
Let’s dig in!
If you’re in a rush, here’s a quick summary of our recommendations. For each host, we’ve rated their quality as a budget host. Basically, exclusively looking at cheap web hosts, how good is the service for the money that you’re paying?
| Host | Quality (for the budget space) | Starting Price/month* |
| GreenGeeks | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $2.49 |
| A2 Hosting | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $2.99 |
| Namecheap | ⭐⭐⭐ | $1.44 |
| Bluehost | ⭐⭐⭐ | $2.95 |
| HostGator | ⭐⭐⭐ | $2.75 |
| Cloudways | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $10 |
| Hostinger | ⭐⭐⭐ | $1.99 |
| InterServer | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $2.50 |
| DreamHost | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $2.59 |
*For most of these hosts, these starting prices are promotional prices – more on full pricing details later. The one exception is Cloudways.
Before I get to the hosts, I need to explain one very important principle that applies to budget web hosting companies:
Promotional prices vs regular prices.
Almost all of the hosts on this list offer special promotional prices for your first billing cycle, which can be anywhere from three months to four years depending on the host.
However, once you go to renew, you’ll need to pay full price, which can be anywhere from ~50% to ~300% higher than the promotional prices.
This means you should do two things:
With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get to the hosts…
Here are the best cheap hosting providers, in no particular order.
GreenGeeks is a popular budget web host that, true to the name, puts a focus on green energy and reducing the environmental impact of the Internet thanks to their 3X green energy match.
Overall, Greengeeks isn’t the cheapest web hosting on this list when you factor in regular prices, but it’s still quite affordable and offers very good promo prices that you can lock in for up to three years.
If you’re willing to spend a little extra, you’ll get value for your money in the form of improved performance and support quality.
With promo pricing (available for up to three years), GreenGeeks starts at just $2.49/month for a single site or $4.95/month for unlimited sites.
A2 Hosting is another affordable web host that shares some similarities with GreenGeeks, such as the use of LiteSpeed Web Server (though only on the slightly more expensive Turbo tier).
As with GreenGeeks, A2 Hosting is a little more expensive than the really budget options on this list. But if you’re willing to pay a few extra dollars per month, the payoff is that you’ll get better performance than a lot of the other hosts, especially if you opt for the Turbo servers.
With promotional pricing, A2 Hosting’s plans start at just $2.99/month for a single site. However, if you want the best performance, I’d recommend considering the LiteSpeed-powered Turbo plans, which start at $9.99 for unlimited websites.
👉 Read full A2 Hosting review here
While Namecheap is better-known for its domain registration services, Namecheap also offers web hosting services at rock-bottom prices.
For the price, it’s one of the better ultra-budget options that you’ll find. It’s not going to blow you away when it comes to performance. But for hosting that costs just $2.88 with month-to-month regular prices (or $1.44 with a longer-term plan), it does better than you’d think.
So – if you need an ultra-budget option that only costs a few bucks per month even at regular prices, Namecheap is definitely one of your best options.
Namecheap is the cheapest web hosting per year on this list:
That plan supports up to three websites and 20 GB of storage.
The unlimited website plan starts at just $2.44 per month for two years.
Bluehost is a popular budget hosting provider that offers a range of different services, including cheap shared hosting.
In terms of quality, Bluehost is a bit of a mixed bag. For performance, you can do better. But one of the things Bluehost does really well is creating a very beginner-friendly web hosting experience, especially if you’re looking to create a WordPress website.
So if you’re a beginner, you might be willing to sacrifice some performance in exchange for a more user-friendly experience – you’ll need to decide if that’s worth it for you.
With promotional pricing, Bluehost’s shared hosting plans start at just $2.95/month for a single site or $5.95/month for unlimited sites. After the promo prices end, the jump to regular prices isn’t quite as steep as some other hosts, though you will pay around double.
HostGator is another popular budget web host from the same parent company as Bluehost.
HostGator is even cheaper than Bluehost, though it lacks Bluehost’s beginner-friendly custom hosting dashboard.
Still, if you need affordable web hosting, this is one of the cheaper options that you’ll find, with promo prices starting at $2.75.
With promotional pricing, HostGator’s plans start at $2.75/month for a single site or $3.50/month for unlimited websites.
Cloudways is a unique option on this list that can be a great way for more advanced users to get excellent performance/load times without breaking the bank.
Instead of offering its own hosting infrastructure, Cloudways helps you use cloud hosting from your choice of five cloud infrastructure providers – DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, or Google Cloud.
Once you choose your provider, Cloudways handles configuring and managing it for you so that everything works basically just like any other host. Still, while you certainly don’t need to be a developer to use Cloudways, I wouldn’t recommend it for non-technical beginners who are just getting started with hosting a website.
And again, the upside of adding a little complexity is that you can get very good performance for a low price.
What you’ll pay for Cloudways depends on the resources of your server and which provider you choose.
The cheapest option is the entry-level DigitalOcean plan, which costs $10 per month. While that sounds more expensive than other hosts on this list, keep in mind that that’s the regular price.
Cloudways also doesn’t put any arbitrary limits when it comes to how many websites you can host – as long as your server can handle the load, you can host unlimited sites.
If you can afford a few extra dollars per month, I recommend choosing the $13 Vultr High Frequency server instead as it offers even better performance.
Hostinger is a budget web host that’s growing quickly, thanks in part to its jaw-droppingly low prices – like a single-site plan that costs just $1.39 per month (though you need to pay for four years upfront to lock in that price).
Is it the best quality web hosting on this list? Not really. But if you want something really, really cheap, it’s tough to argue with Hostinger’s prices, especially if you can afford to pay the upfront cost and lock in the promo prices for the full four years.
One unique thing about Hostinger is that it lets you lock in the promo prices for four years, instead of the three years that most hosts allow. If you can afford the upfront cost, this is a great way to lock in really cheap hosting for four full years.
With promotional pricing, the single-site plan starts at just $1.39/month. Or, you can get a plan that supports 100 websites starting at $2.59/month.
InterServer doesn’t have a flashy website, but they do offer a quality budget hosting product for a very low price.
If you want ok performance on a low budget, this is one of the better cheap options that you’ll find, as long as you can handle the dated account management dashboards. You do get cPanel to manage your hosting, though, so you’ll have the same server management experience that most other hosts offer.
InterServer’s standard web hosting plan supports unlimited websites and costs just $2.50 per month with promotional pricing, which you can lock in for up to a year.
Once that expires, you’ll pay $7 per month, which is still one of the cheaper deals that you’ll find for unlimited website hosting.
You can also pay month-to-month at that $7 rate.
DreamHost is a well-established host that offers a solid affordable hosting product.
For the money, DreamHost offers pretty good performance, support, and reliability. They also allow month-to-month billing at a very low price, which is nice if you can’t afford to pay for multiple years upfront.
One downside is that DreamHost built their own custom dashboard that, while handling the basics, isn’t as nice as some of these other hosts and doesn’t offer as many tools as cPanel.
It will be fine for most people, but more advanced users might prefer a dashboard with more tools.
One nice thing about DreamHost is that they offer cheap month-to-month billing on both of their plans. Additionally, they have very simple billing because there are only two options:
The prices above are promo prices, but the jump isn’t too large to regular pricing.
Now for the important question – which is the best cheap host for your needs?
Well, I think that depends whether you want the best value or you’re just looking to spend the least amount of money and are willing to make some sacrifices when it comes to performance.
If you’re willing to pay more in the $10 per month range, I think the best value when it comes to performance, support, and features, would be to go with one of these two options:
On the other hand, if you just want the absolute cheapest option, that will change things.
By the numbers, Namecheap is the cheapest web hosting per year, clocking in at just $1.59/month for a full year or $2.44/month with month-to-month – plus a 30-day free trial to boot.
Or, if you can pay for four years upfront, Hostinger is also very cheap at $1.39 per month.
If you’re specifically looking to host a WordPress website, you can also check out our collection of the best WordPress hosting providers.
Still have any questions about the top cheap web hosting options? Let us know in the comments!
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