Writer: Toby Sembower
Editor: Lillian Castro
Reviewer: Cristian Lopez
Shared hosting is a lot like 19-year-old me as a college sophomore deciding that sharing an apartment made a lot of sense. It saved me a ton on rent and bills, and I still got access to all of the accommodations I needed. I figured I would get my own place once my lifestyle demanded it — and once it made more financial sense.
Shared hosting is no different and just means your website will share space on the same server as other sites. This tends to mean lower prices, as you’re essentially splitting the resources and associated costs you would be monopolizing on a dedicated server. Though great for beginners, a shared host can meet the needs of even very popular websites.
We took the top shared hosting providers for a spin — evaluating price, ease of setup, support, site builders, eCommerce features, and more. Below we cover the best of the best, by category.
1. Best Overall Shared Host
When shopping for a shared host, you should compare the cost against the number of amenities included (e.g., free domain, drag-and-drop site builder, unlimited email, and 24/7 support). A contender that truly deserves to top the list of shared hosts in any given category is one that is going to offer the most usable features for the lowest cost — yielding the greatest value.
InMotionHosting.com
Monthly Starting Price $2.29
- High-quality hosting, no matter the format
- FREE SSD storage packs 20x the performance
- FREE SSL certificate and 24/7 support
- 1-click installs for WordPress and popular CMSes
- Get started with FREE website transfer service
- Get started on InMotion Hosting now.
InMotion Hosting offers an excellent business-class shared hosting plan — with a price tag lower than several other budget hosts. For the IT crowd in the audience, you’ll appreciate SSH access, as well as support for PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, WP-CLI, and other popular languages. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 days | 100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD | FREE (1 year) | 5 minutes |
2. Cheapest Shared Host
Naturally, cost is probably a deciding factor in your web host shopping endeavors. They often say, “You get what you pay for,” but that doesn’t mean “cheap host” is synonymous with “crap host.” We’ve compared the most affordable shared hosts on the market to present to you the lowest-cost option that doesn’t cut corners on functionality, features, or support. That’s why our #1 recommendation is a host that is both affordable and reliable:
iPage.com
Monthly Starting Price $2.95
- Easy setup and superb reliability since 1998
- FREE domain and Google marketing included
- Unlimited bandwidth, storage, and emails
- FREE site builder and shopping cart
- Get more than 63% off today (was $7.99/month)
- Get started on iPage now.
Whether you're a first-time website owner or a web veteran, iPage’s excellent hosting services and a fantastic list of extras make the brand one of the best values in web hosting. Unlimited disk space, scalable bandwidth, and emails are just a part of what makes iPage’s shared hosting plan a great deal. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | 5 minutes |
3. Best Eco-Friendly Shared Host
Calling all environmentally conscious site owners: GreenGeeks is on a mission to make the hosting industry cleaner and more sustainable. When you purchase a web hosting plan, GreekGeeks will plant a tree on your behalf. It’s also an EPA Green Power Partner and holds a Renewable Energy Certificate. A shared hosting plan comes with an AI website builder, free domain name, and free SSL certificate:
GreenGeeks.com
Monthly Starting Price $2.95
- Fast, reliable shared hosting for business or blogs
- FREE website migration and website builder
- Easily install popular apps such as WordPress
- Unlimited domains and email accounts
- 99.9% uptime and 24/7 expert support
- Get started on GreenGeeks now.
Perfect for small business owners, bloggers, or web developers, GreenGeeks offers an impressive blend of features that appeal to all types of site owners. More experienced customers will appreciate the unlimited domain names, SSD RAID-10 storage, and unmetered data transfers, along with nightly backups and built-in caching programs. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 50 GB SSD – Unlimited SSD | FREE (1 year) | 4 minutes |
4. Best Shared Host for Email
Email hosting is a crucial business need for SMBs to enterprises, and a shared web host can be your cheapest bet to get that need met quickly and cost-consciously. Some key features we look for in an email hosting provider are spam filtering, virus protection, auto-forwarding options, and of course, free unlimited email accounts — and our #1 pick offers it all:
IONOS.com
Monthly Starting Price $1.00
- Business email with a personal consultant
- Choice of IONOS mail, Microsoft 365, or Google Workspace mailboxes
- FREE domain or transfer included
- Create up to 500 email accounts
- Premium tools for email marketing available
- Get started on IONOS now.
If the budget factor is on your mind when searching for a web host, rest easy. IONOS has a wide range of packages, including reduced rates for the first few months (or year) and starter plans for all of their web hosting and website building services. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 10 GB - Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | 4 minutes |
5. Best Shared Host for Blogging
Every blogger needs a platform for their voice to be heard, and they don’t want to wait forever in the wings for their words to take center stage. That’s why features like one-click Drupal install or pre-installed WordPress carry weight when we evaluate the best blog hosts. We compared blog offerings, cost, security, and support, and now give you the best shared host for blogging:
Bluehost.com
Monthly Starting Price $1.99
- Recommended by WordPress since 2005
- Automatic WordPress installation and updates
- FREE themes and plugins in Bluehost Marketplace
- Upgrade for managed WordPress or design help
- FREE domain and content delivery network
- Get started on Bluehost now.
Bluehost's WordPress hosting packages are aimed at first-time site owners and personal bloggers. These services come at a premium compared to the standard Bluehost web hosting (basic shared hosting) plans, but the WordPress optimization and platform-specific resources are arguably worth the cost. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 10 GB SSD - 100 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | 7 minutes |
6. Best Shared Host with Free Website Builder
Once you’re signed up for hosting, you’ll realize you actually have to build your site. Gulp. This is easy though, as many of the top shared hosts also offer a free drag-and-drop site builder among their offerings, so you can point and click to add text, images, and videos to your new site. Build your dream website from scratch, without touching code, with our favorite site builder host:
Wix.com
Monthly Starting Price $0.00
- No coding skills needed with drag-and-drop builder
- 100s of templates with niche-specific designs
- Add features via the App Market and Wix Events
- Easily create ecommerce functionality easily
- Great way to build small sites on a budget
- Get started on Wix now.
Website building is where Wix shines. The thousands of templates, the intuitive editor, the industry-leading designs that cater to a variety of specific fields and use cases — all these facets represent a platform that excels at facilitating easy web design for the non-tech-savvy user. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14-day FREE trial | 2 GB - Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | 4 minutes |
7. Best Shared Host for eCommerce Sites
As brick-and-mortars continue to move to the web and selling online as a second form of income continues trending, eCommerce hosting is on the rise. For those looking to launch an online store, we’ve compiled the hosts with the features that matter most to you: Single-click installations for Magento or PrestaShop, and free ad credits to get your brand noticed, as examples. Here’s our #1 choice:
Hostinger.com
Monthly Starting Price $3.59
- Officially endorsed by WordPress.org
- Accelerate your store with FREE SSDs and CDN
- Local and global shipping with USPS and WooCommerce Shipping
- FREE automatic site migration, Amazon affiliate plugin, and AI assistant
- Full security suite: DDoS protection, malware scanner, etc.
- Get started on Hostinger now.
As the shared hosting market becomes increasingly saturated, unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email accounts have become surprisingly average. Hostinger, however, extends the routine, expected metrics to greater lengths — the number of websites, databases, FTP users, subdomains, and parked domains are all unrestricted for most customers. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 200 GB SSD - 300 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | 3 minutes |
8. Best Linux Shared Hosting
Linux is a well-known operating system that’s widely supported by many of the best hosts out there, and rightfully so. It’s intuitive, it’s flexible, it’s a comfortable fit for mid- to senior-level users. After testing out the interfaces and comparing the hardware, security, uptime, support, and cost of the top Linux shared hosts, we present our recommendation below:
Hostinger.com
Monthly Starting Price $2.69
- Industry-leading CloudLinux for top reliability
- FREE domain, SSL certificate, and software installs
- High-speed performance with LiteSpeed caching
- Support for CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, and others
- GET 78% OFF when you sign up
- Get started on Hostinger now.
Hostinger is quickly making a name for itself behind hosting services that value both performance and price. The web host primarily operates on the speedy and reliable CloudLinux operating system, ensuring wide-ranging compatibility and efficient management. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 25 GB SSD - 100 GB NVMe | FREE (1 year) | 3 minutes |
9. Best cPanel Shared Hosting
A beloved web panel among shared hosting users, cPanel is one of the most popular and powerful interfaces used to manage your hosting and databases. A great many of the top hosts include cPanel in their packages (many in branded forms) due to its intuitiveness and wide array of readily available features. Find one-click installations of your favorite content management platforms, unlimited domains and emails, and 24/7 support with our #1 cPanel shared host:
Hostinger.com
Monthly Starting Price $2.59
- Intuitive cPanel hosting for personal sites
- FREE SSL and Cloudflare DDoS protection
- 1-click installer for popular apps like WordPress
- Automated, daily backups and integrated caching
- Launch a site in minutes, backed by 24/7 support
- Get started on Hostinger now.
Hostinger has always impressed us with the intuitiveness of its control panel and easy user experience. If you’re in the market for classic cPanel hosting, Hostinger offers it at a price that’s tough to beat. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 days | 30 GB SSD - 50 GB SSD | FREE (1 year) | 3 minutes |
10. Best SSD Shared Hosting
If the fastest shared hosting provider is what you’re looking for, SSD speed is what you need. Solid-state drives (SSDs) help your webpages load quickly, and a trustworthy shared host will make sure your site is online as often as possible (uptime!). We compared it all — uptime rates, performance, security, and speed — and now present our top-rated choice in SSD shared hosting:
InMotionHosting.com
Monthly Starting Price $2.29
- FREE SSD drives included with all hosting plans
- Zero-downtime website transfers and migrations
- FREE backups, SSL, and DDoS protection
- Choice of East Coast or West Coast datacenter
- Multi-language support for PHP, Ruby, and Perl
- Get started on InMotion now.
Offering a wider range of services than most — including shared, dedicated, VPS, and even WordPress-specific plans — InMotion Hosting features a great combination of industry-leading hardware, always-there support, and mass scalability for all hosting needs. InMotion Hosting has ultra-modern SSD drives on its shared plans, which give an added speed boost to your site. Go to full review »
| Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90 days | 100 GB SSD - Unlimited | FREE (1 year) | 4 minutes |
Good News: Shared Hosts Offer Fast Setup
Shared hosting is ideal for those whose websites are not quite ready to live in a space without a few roommates — and it can take as little as four minutes to get started. Even better, there are tons of hosts that promote instant account setup and activation, making sure you can get online as fast as possible.
The cost is hard to beat, the support is there for those who need it, and you tend to get as many free amenities as you need for as long as you need — but don’t be afraid to upgrade when you do start to outgrow that shared apartment. The best hosting providers will be there to help you grow, and your HostingAdvice family can’t wait to see you succeed!
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