Writer: Christina Lewis
Editor: Lillian Castro
Reviewer: Alexandra Anderson
Key Takeaways
-
Always-free cloud hosting is usually a marketing gimmick.
-
You can use providers like Kamatera, Cloudways, AWS, IBM, or GCP for free from three days to 12 months — but be mindful of your usage, as you may have to pay for overages.
-
Many paid plans are worth the investment for quality and affordable cloud hosting.
Here’s the deal: 100% free cloud hosting doesn’t really exist. It’s just too expensive for web hosts to provide, so they’re not going to give it away at no cost. In my experience, the closest thing you’re going to get is a free trial.
Public cloud providers like AWS and GCP have a ton of options on their free tiers, which give you a limited amount of computing resources at no charge for a set period of time (like six months or a year).
Alternatively, you have dozens of cheap cloud hosting providers at your disposal. While these options aren’t free, they’re a good jumping-off point and won’t break the bank.
I’ve put together a list of your best options if you’re looking for cloud hosting and don’t have the budget for it. Keep reading to learn more.
Best Free Cloud Hosting Trials: 3 Days to 12 Months
Okay, hear me out. I know you were looking for an always-free cloud host, but as I mentioned, those plans are usually just marketing gimmicks. Web hosts use always-free plans to entice new customers to sign up. And if you go over your very limited resources, expect to get charged.
The next best thing is a free trial. These cloud hosts give you anywhere from three days to 12 months to test their platforms at no cost.
Hosts like Kamatera and Cloudways are extremely affordable and make it easy to get started. AWS, GCP, and IBM are tailored toward folks with a little more experience, but they also give you tons of customization options. Let’s dive in.
1. Kamatera.com
Monthly Starting Price $0.00
- 30-day free trial on all cloud products
- User-friendly custom management portal
- Instant scalability and server adjustments
- Choose from roughly 60 operating systems
- All-SSD cloud VPS infrastructure
- Get started on Kamatera now.
Billing itself as ‘probably the fastest cloud on the planet,’ Kamatera created an impressively performant, scalable, and flexible cloud service that can be custom-tailored to customers’ exact specifications. The hosting provider’s comprehensive cloud services run the gamut from web hosting servers and block storage, to a private cloud network, load balancer, firewall, and managed services. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30-day FREE trial | 20 GB SSD – 4 TB SSD | New or Transfer | 3 minutes |
30-Day Free Trial | Credit Card Required | Plans Starting $4.00/Month
Kamatera prides itself on leading technology and personal service — one of the reasons this cloud host ranks so highly for its managed cloud services and always-there customer support. It has advanced cloud infrastructure and support from experts specializing in cloud computing.
Kamatera’s differentiator is a free 30-day VPS hosting trial customized to your specifications — best suited for developers and organizations. If your customizations cost less than $100 per month, you can leverage the free 30-day trial, followed by affordable hourly or monthly billing rates.
You can enjoy the user-friendly custom management portal and your choice of nearly 60 operating systems. Kamatera also offers add-ons such as SSL certificates and database and email configurations for additional fees.
2. Cloudways.com
Monthly Starting Price $0.00
- Choose your cloud provider, application, and server location
- Easily scale server size, bandwidth, and storage
- Launch WordPress or Magento with a single click
- FREE CDN, managed backups, and staging areas
- Get 25% OFF first 3 months with promo code HOSTINGADVICE
- Get started on Cloudways now.
We appreciate providers that serve cost-competitive, customizable packages to simplify the too-many-choices nature of cloud hosting. Cloudways puts the power of choice in the customer’s hands. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3-day FREE trial | 25 GB SSD – 4 TB SSD | New or Transfer | 8 minutes |
3-Day Free Trial | No Credit Card Required | Plans Starting $6.60/Month
It’s no wonder that Cloudways ranks highly for cloud hosting. This provider takes cloud computing to a new level, specifically for midsized to enterprise-level corporations. It operates on a pay-as-you-go pricing model built on a sliding scale. You’ll have the choice of several top cloud providers: DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, or Google Cloud Platform.
Cloudways also offers a robust custom control panel for collaboration and managing multiple projects simultaneously. You can further personalize your plan by choosing how much RAM, bandwidth, and database storage is needed with just the click of a mouse.
All plans have top features such as real-time monitoring, constant customer support, dedicated firewalls, and regular security patching. While the cost of Cloudways cloud hosting plans runs mid-tier, the value it brings to professional developers and organizations is undeniable. Plus, new customers get access to a three-day free trial.
3. Amazon Web Services
12-Month Free Trial | Credit Card Required | Plans Starting $3.50/Month
Amazon Web Services has the world’s most comprehensive and widely adopted cloud platform. AWS free tier gives you a hands-on experience with the hosting service so you can test out Amazon products, platforms, and services.
The company’s solutions are available on a spectrum of free tier plans, including short-term free trials (usually 30-60 days), long-term free trials (12 months), and a few always-free solutions with strict usage limits.
AWS offers many plans that suit a wide range of needs, from developers to large organizations. For example, AWS Lightsail is ideal for small sites and starts at just $3.50 a month after the one-year free trial ends. Of course, your resources will be very limited for that price — you’ll need to upgrade for more RAM, disk space, and bandwidth.
You can also select unmanaged or managed cloud hosting. When your free tier usage expires, or if you use more data than the monthly allowance, AWS offers a simple pay-as-you-go pricing model.
A fair warning, though: AWS isn’t for beginners, so you should have some server management experience if you plan to go this route.
4. IBM Cloud
12-Month Free Trial | Credit Card Required | Plans Starting $14.50/Month
IBM Cloud is well-known for its exceptional performance and security. Students and small website owners can use IBM’s many free cloud hosting options, including temporary free trials and always-free (but limited) products. You can select from more than 50 free cloud hosting trials and 40 free tier options.
The IBM free tier has some strict limitations on server resources, so as long as you don’t require too much free storage, you can take advantage of this plan indefinitely. However, it’s not very practical if you expect to have a decent amount of traffic.
If you’re happy with your free trial and want to upgrade to a paid plan, IBM offers a simple pay-as-you-go pricing model. Its smallest virtual server instance starts at about $14.50 a month and comes with 1 vCPU and 2 GB of RAM.
5. Google Cloud Platform
3-Month Free Trial | Credit Card Required | Plans Starting $6.50/Month
Google Cloud has a free tier with more than 20 products to use at no cost. However, as you’d expect from a free service, you won’t get enterprise-level performance from these services — they’re pretty limited.
Here’s a rundown of Google’s free products: Google Cloud promises free use for customers who stay below the set monthly usage limits. It also says these limits are subject to change, so you should know these stipulations before signing up.
If you want more stability than the free tier but aren’t ready to pay for cloud services just yet, you can sign up under a free trial instead. GCP gives you free service for 90 days (a $300 value). Customers with a maps-related cloud billing account can take advantage of $200 in monthly credits from Google.
I recommend signing up for the 90-day free trial if you’re running a professional project, or sticking with the free tier if you’re a student and don’t expect much site traffic.
Best Cheap Cloud Hosts: Starting at $3.99
If you can’t find a free cloud-based web hosting service that meets your needs, you can always opt for an inexpensive hosting plan. I’ve reviewed the best cloud hosting providers for their usability, hardware, uptime, support, and pricing.
Some recurring features I can’t live without include unlimited bandwidth, storage, and databases, free WordPress hosting and site builders, free backups, 24/7 live chat, and nearly 100% uptime.
You may pay a bit more for the best features, but the value they bring is well worth the investment.
6. IONOS.com
Monthly Starting Price $7.00
- Start with $100 in credit for your first month
- Auto scaling with premium Intel processors
- Customized operating systems (Linux or Windows)
- Deploy Linux instances in less than 1 minute
- Transparent costs and by-the-minute billing
- Get started on IONOS now.
Boasting 99. 998% platform availability, the popular cloud hosting services from IONOS deploy more than 2,500 virtual machines each week. Go to full review »
| Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 minutes | 10 GB NVMe – 640 GB NVMe | 1 – 24 cores | 512 MB.- 48 GB |
7. Hostinger.com
Monthly Starting Price $7.19
- User-friendly hosting powered by Google Cloud
- Isolated resources and integrated CloudFlare
- Built on CloudLinux with LVE containers
- Automated, daily backups and integrated caching
- Instant setup with intuitive custom control panel
- Get started on Hostinger now.
Hostinger offers something for everyone. From two cloud hosting plans that leverage the company’s global datacenter presence to a premium service powered by Google Cloud Platform, you’re sure to find what you need. Go to full review »
| Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 minutes | 50 GB NVMe – 400 GB NVMe | 2 – 6 cores | 3 – 12 GB |
8. A2Hosting.com
Monthly Starting Price $3.99
- Ultra-fast SwiftServer platform with FREE SSDs
- Quick Start Cloud configures servers in minutes
- Root access and on-demand server controls
- Optional Cloudflare web application firewall for added speed and security
- Softaculous and cPanel upgrades available
- Get started on A2 Hosting now.
Champions of blazing-fast web performance, A2 Hosting pairs its high-powered infrastructure with cloud-based redundancy and scalability. Although computing resources are a bit less than competitors, each component is fine-tuned and optimized to the nth degree. Go to full review »
| Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 minutes | 20 GB SSD – 450 GB SSD | 1 – 10 cores | 1 GB – 32 GB |
9. LiquidWeb.com
Monthly Starting Price $5.00
- HostingAdvice fans get 75% OFF
- Cloudflare CDN, DDoS protection, and backups
- Performance-boosting SSDs and cloud flexibility
- Rock-solid reliability with 100% uptime guarantees
- 24/7 Heroic Support® via phone, chat, and email
- Get started on Liquid Web now.
Liquid Web balances managed services and hardware power with cloud flexibility — a brilliant solution in cloud hosting. The company’s packages include instant provisioning, CloudFlare CDN, built-in backups, and, of course, the reliability of the Heroic Support team. Go to full review »
| Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 minutes | 30 GB SSD – 440 GB SSD | 1 – 6 cores | 1 GB – 16 GB |
What Is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting is when you have a network of servers that pool resources to host a website. These servers are virtually connected and form an ultra-redundant and reliable infrastructure.
The benefit of this redundancy is that when one cloud server goes down, the others seamlessly step in to handle site traffic.
This infrastructure provides far greater reliability than traditional hosting because physical servers don’t have a network of backup servers to rely on if something goes wrong.
Which Cloud Services Are Free for Students?
Student discounts on web hosting are one of the many perks of higher education. Whether you’re building a professional portfolio to land your first job or freelancing to pay for school — you can choose a cloud hosting provider that offers a limited-time discount while enrolled in a full-time degree-seeking program.
Requirements and discounts will vary for each cloud server provider, but plenty of valuable plans exist. For example, Google Cloud for Students offers no-cost access to Qwiklabs, Google Workspace certification discounts, and other tools while enrolled in school.
Which Free Cloud Service Is Best for Developers?
If you’re looking for a cloud hosting solution, you already know its benefits over shared hosting or dedicated hosting. Individual web developers often don’t need the space of a physical machine, and a shared server usually doesn’t offer enough control or resources.
That’s exactly why these cloud-based options are ideal:
| Host | Price |
|---|---|
| Kamatera | Free for 30 days, then $4.00/month |
| Cloudways | Free for 3 days, then $6.60/month |
| AWS Free Tier | Free for 12 months, then $3.50/month |
The exact plan you need will depend on how much RAM, bandwidth, and disk space you require. For small sites, these are the best options. However, as your site grows, you should expect to pay more than the prices I’ve listed above.
Which Web Hosts Provide a Money-Back Guarantee?
Not every web host will offer a free trial. I know — bummer! If none of these free cloud providers suit your needs, you can sign up for a host that offers a money-back guarantee. Money-back guarantees are a great way to test your cloud host in a no-risk setting.
Money-back guarantees are rare in cloud web hosting, so these hosting providers are true gems for offering a full refund if you’re unsatisfied after 30 days.
| Host | Money-Back Guarantee |
|---|---|
| IONOS | 30 days |
| Hostinger | 30 days |
| A2 Hosting | 30 days |
| Liquid Web | 30 days |
Which Free Cloud Hosting Service Is Best for You?
The hosting provider and plan you choose will depend on the scope and goals of your website.
Students and beginner web developers can enjoy a low-cost, high-value plan with plenty of add-ons such as one-click site builder installations and ample storage from any of the cheap cloud hosts I mentioned above. Because your site won’t draw as much traffic, you can forgo some of the pricier hosting plans.
For larger projects, novice and advanced web developers may need to spend more time selecting a plan that supports future growth and scalability, like Kamatera, AWS, or Cloudways. Rest assured, you’re in good hands if you choose a hosting provider on this list.
HostingAdvice.com is a free online resource that offers valuable content and comparison services to users. To keep this resource 100% free, we receive compensation from many of the offers listed on the site. Along with key review factors, this compensation may impact how and where products appear across the site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). HostingAdvice.com does not include the entire universe of available offers. Editorial opinions expressed on the site are strictly our own and are not provided, endorsed, or approved by advertisers.
Our site is committed to publishing independent, accurate content guided by strict editorial guidelines. Before articles and reviews are published on our site, they undergo a thorough review process performed by a team of independent editors and subject-matter experts to ensure the content’s accuracy, timeliness, and impartiality. Our editorial team is separate and independent of our site’s advertisers, and the opinions they express on our site are their own. To read more about our team members and their editorial backgrounds, please visit our site’s About page.
