9 Free Domain Name Trials With Hosting (April 2024)

If you want the domain name Cars.com, that’ll cost you a whopping $892 million. But fortunately, most other domain names are incredibly affordable. In fact, you can even get a free domain name trial with hosting when you sign up for a one-year plan.

The web hosts I’ve reviewed include a free top-level domain when you purchase select hosting plans. Note that these web hosts don’t explicitly offer free trials for domain names, but the hosting packages come with free domain names when you sign a one-year contract at minimum. Let’s dive in.

Hosting packages at IONOS are incredibly cheap. This is one of those hosts that leave you wondering if there’s a catch. The truth is, there isn’t.

The free domain is the cherry on top. But, the real dessert here is the PCI-compliant hosting, daily backups, a free SSL certificate, and nine gigabytes of memory for the base shared hosting plan.

$17.00/Year Domain Renewal

PCI stands for Payment Card Industry, a security standard mandated by credit card companies to ensure safe credit card transactions. Being PCI-compliant makes IONOS the perfect fit for an online business.

The last thing you want is an expensive lawsuit or a bad reputation, even before you begin making the big bucks. And with more than 2,200 cyberattacks taking place daily, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

The free domain isn’t the only offer you’ll appreciate at Hostinger. This host is incredibly generous with its other hosting add-ons.

Who would turn down at least 100 gigabytes of SSD storage, unlimited free SSL certificates, and up to 100 free email accounts? Not me, that’s for sure.

$13.99/Year Domain Renewal

The powerful features aside, there’s something about this host that makes it stand out. Maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for neat designs and minimalism in general.

That’s what I got at Hostinger: a clean user interface, a powerful site builder, a proprietary control panel (or hPanel, as it’s called), a generous email hosting deal, and lots of AI-powered tools for SEO and user behavior tracking.

The free domain aside, HostArmada has many other free features that add value to your website. It’s not just a bunch of junk your website is better off without.

I’m talking about free site optimization, SSL certificates, and consultation with a web hosting professional. Even better, HostArmada is a cloud hosting provider, which means you can scale your website or application with the click of a button.

$12.47/Year Domain Renewal

If you didn’t know, cloud hosting is the future of web hosting based on recent market share reports. While it’s not really a new concept in this industry, this type of hosting has become more accessible to individuals and small businesses in recent years.

Decades ago, Fortune 500 companies like Amazon and Google were the primary cloud hosting providers. Today, with smaller companies like HostArmada coming into the picture, any website owner can dream of a trip to the cloud.

The free domain offer at HostGator applies to three plans only: Cloud, WordPress, and HostGator Shared. To activate your free domain, you must sign a long-term contract, usually between 12 to 36 months.

You’ll also get a free SSL certificate for the first year. That’s a decent offer by any standard, given that some hosts will charge you extra for this certificate.

$19.99/Year Domain Renewal

The only catch is I wouldn’t recommend HostGator if you want to host multiple websites under one hosting account. The shared hosting plan, for example, will only take in a maximum of three websites. And remember that each SSL certificate comes at a small fee when the hosting plan renews a year later.

To avoid the extra charges for additional SSL certificates, Hostinger is the best alternative. This host will renew all of your SSL certificates for free.

At some point, you’ll want to scale your website vertically. You shouldn’t have to migrate to a new host to do that. The mere thought of the domain transfer process, let alone migrating a whole website, gives me chills. Transferring an existing domain or website is not fun. A simple mistake can jeopardize the process, especially if you do not have proper customer support.

Scalability is one of the many unique traits ScalaHosting brings to the table. Rest assured, when it’s time to expand (or even contract) your business, this hosting service will do it for you internally with zero downtime.

$16.95/Year Domain Renewal

Like HostArmada, ScalaHosting offers cloud hosting services. When traffic increases unexpectedly, the host will expand its hardware to accommodate the growth. The reverse happens when traffic drops.

Cloud hosting also offers a stable hosting environment thanks to load-balancing technology. In simpler terms, load balancing is when a separate server takes excess load off the primary server to improve performance.

Bluehost commands respect in the web hosting sphere. That’s partly because of its rich history and, of course, its reliable, affordable, and stable web hosting services.

Some of its top clients include the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Maryland, GNC Consulting, and The Hill Group. Mind you, these are not ordinary businesses — they are respected institutions, agencies, and organizations.

$19.99/Year Domain Renewal

I bought my first domain at Bluehost seven years ago while still learning how to build websites with WordPress. Today, Bluehost is a WordPress-approved host, an accolade only a handful of web hosting companies have earned.

If you choose this managed WordPress hosting provider for your next web project, remember that the one-year domain only applies to its shared hosting plans. For VPS hosting or dedicated server hosting, you’ll need to purchase a domain.

There’s no way the world’s largest domain registrar would miss a spot on this list. It’s an unwritten rule; one does not simply talk about domain name registration without mentioning GoDaddy.

Similarly, this host doesn’t need any introduction. Rumor has it that if you’re keen enough, you’ll likely bump into a GoDaddy commercial at least once daily.

$22.17/Year Domain Renewal

This domain registrar has pumped millions of dollars into its marketing campaigns in recent years. These include major sporting events such as the Super Bowl, National Hockey League, US Open Golf, and even NASCAR.

The results are in the public domain. Today, GoDaddy boasts the title of the world’s largest domain registrar, with more than 84 million domains under its belt. Of those, the Arizona-based company hosts about 20 million websites.

As with other hosts, the free domain at InMotion falls under shared hosting plans only. To activate your free domain name, look for the Launch, Power, or Pro plans. The Core plan won’t give you a free domain, but it still has lots of other perks you don’t easily come across in a base shared hosting plan.

Even if you need a paid domain, at the very least, you’ll get 10 free email addresses, free SSL certificates, and up to 100 gigabytes of SSD storage. That’s on top of the 99.99% uptime guarantee, 24/7 support from humans, a content-rich knowledge base, a free website builder for WordPress, and a suite of security and marketing tools.

$19.99/Year Domain Renewal

What’s really special about InMotion is that it offers so much for so little money. Take the Launch plan as an example. It can host up to 25 websites and comes with unlimited NVMe SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email addresses, and up to six times UltraStack speed and performance.

With such powerful resources at your disposal, InMotion works best for users with resource-demanding websites. The same applies if you’re an agency or web developer working on multiple websites. You can host everything under one roof here at InMotion, one of the best reseller hosting providers I know.

DreamHost has a vast catalog of domain extensions that go beyond .com. Whatever domain you register with this host, you’ll also get unlimited subdomains, all for free, and a single-page domain management platform to edit DNS records, set up domain forwarding, and more.

This WordPress-approved host also runs free domain promotions every once in a while. In January 2023, for example, it announced a free .online domain offer valid for a limited time. In July of the same year, it also announced a similar promotion for .site domains.

$19.99/Year Domain Renewal

Regarding its WordPress endorsement, trust DreamHost to provide a stable, reliable, and affordable hosting platform for your WordPress website. And because you already have an excellent host in DreamHost, the next thing you need is the perfect domain name to complete the equation.

Of note is that the free domain registration offer only applies to Shared Starter, Shared Unlimited, VPS, and DreamPress hosting plans. Also, to qualify, you must sign up for a one-year contract or longer.

A domain name is what browsers use to access your website. It’s like your website’s street address.

The name usually has two or more sections, separated by dots. The first section represents the chosen domain name. It can also include the hosting company’s name or a subdomain.

The last section is the domain extension. As mentioned, .com, net., and .org are some of the most popular domain extensions.

Yes, that’s possible, but only if you use free hosting providers like InfinityFree, Netlify, and 000webhost. However, I wouldn’t recommend this option because web hosting infrastructure costs a lot of money to acquire and maintain.

Don’t expect a free host to invest in state-of-the-art hosting infrastructure. Likewise, you shouldn’t expect them to provide secure, stable, and reliable hosting environments.

In addition, the free domain name you get will be a subdomain instead of a top-level domain. Subdomains are fine for students and test websites but aren’t suitable for professional use.

Cheap Domain Registration Hosts >>

The best option is to sign up for a web hosting plan with a provider that offers a free domain. Hostinger, IONOS, HostArmada, and Bluehost are good examples of such hosts.

Note that the free offer usually lasts a year, after which the host will charge you a small fee to renew the domain. A free host is also an option, but that could mean sacrificing your website’s stability and reliability. It’s never worth it at the end of the day.

GoogieHost offers free domains forever if you choose one of its premium hosting plans. But you’ll have to deal with spammy ads, limited hardware (about one gigabyte of SSD storage), and slow servers.

FreeDomains.cc runs a similar offer; you’ll get a free domain, which you can renew countless times, year after year, for free. Its hosting plan, on the other hand, auto-renews every month at a fee, and yet the resources aren’t half as good as what some cheap hosting providers with free domains, such as Hostinger, Bluehost, and IONOS, offer.

Sites like GetFreeDomain.Name and Freenom claim to offer free domains, but they’re never reliable. Freenom, for example, halted domain registrations after being sued by Meta for allegedly creating a haven for spammers and phishers.

The safest and most reliable way to get a free domain is by signing up for a cheap premium domain host like Hostinger or IONOS. You’ll get a free custom domain for the first year. With the free domain registration, you can create different subdomains and use them to test your website or applications for a whole year.

Opting for a free temporary domain name is not a great idea. It may seem tempting but remember to think twice when the deal is too good to be true. If you don’t believe me, this Reddit thread should convince you.

Getting a free domain at a premium host is another story. The best part? The domain is yours to keep for 12 months — or even longer if you decide to renew it.