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What kind of site can run on the cheapest hosting plans
The cheapest shared hosting plans — around a dollar a month — are entry-level tiers that hosts offer as a way in: one site, a small disk, one database and a minimal share of CPU. People buy them for a first website, a landing page for an ad campaign, a freelancer's business card site or a test copy of a project. To make sure such a plan doesn't turn into wasted time, it's important to know in advance where its ceiling is.
What sites they're enough for
- A static site. HTML pages built with a generator like Hugo or exported from a site builder put almost no load on the server. Even a few hundred megabytes of disk and the minimum CPU limit can handle thousands of visits a day.
- A business card site or landing page on WordPress. It works if you enable page caching, compress images and don't install dozens of plugins. Every plugin adds database queries, and on an entry-level plan those are the first to hit the limit.
- A personal blog or portfolio with a few hundred visitors a day.
- A staging environment for testing CMS updates or a new theme before rolling them out to the main site.
Don't put an online store with a cart and filters, a forum, a site with user accounts, or anything that receives paid ad traffic on such a plan: going down at peak hour will cost more than you save.
Limits you won't see in the plan name
Disk space and the number of sites are shown in the table, but on ultra-cheap plans other limits are what really matter. Look for them in the full plan description or ask support before paying:
- Number of files (inodes). A limit of a few tens of thousands of files runs out before the disk does: WordPress with plugins, cache and image thumbnails easily reaches that number.
- PHP processes and memory. A small number of concurrent processes means five to ten visitors in the same second already create a queue, and then a 508 error.
- Database size. Sometimes it's capped separately from the disk, for example at a few hundred megabytes.
- Email. Some plans have no mailboxes at all or allow only a few dozen emails an hour. That's enough for a contact form, but not for store notifications.
- SSH, cron and PHP version selection. These are often disabled on entry-level plans, and without cron your CMS's scheduled tasks won't run.
- Backups. Copies may be kept for only a few days or restored only for a fee — make your own backups and store them off the hosting.
First-term price vs renewal price
Many plans only reach their lowest price when you pay for a year or several years up front, and renewal is charged at the full rate, sometimes two to three times higher. Compare not the monthly price but the total for two years including renewal. Add the domain to that: a free domain is usually free only for the first year. A free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate should be included; paying for one on such plans makes no sense.
Where the server is and how to pay
The cheapest offers often come from small regional hosts that serve their own market: the server may be far from your audience, support may answer only in the local language, and payment may be limited to local methods. Before ordering, check that the host accepts an international card or PayPal, that the server is reasonably close to your visitors, and — if your site collects data from EU residents — that a GDPR data processing agreement is available. Inexpensive plans with servers near European or American audiences are collected in the hosting in Europe and hosting in the USA selections. If the lowest price tier is too restrictive, the cheap hosting page offers a wider choice with noticeably softer limits.
Before paying for a year in advance, try the host during a trial period: deploy a copy of your site, check how fast the panel is and how quickly support replies. Plans with a free trial are in the hosting with a free trial selection.
Ultra-cheap hosting or a VPS for the same money
For a similar amount you can also find the smallest virtual servers. But a VPS is a bare system with no panel, email or automatic backups: you'll have to set up and maintain the web server, PHP, database, SSL and security updates yourself. For a site owner without sysadmin experience, cheap shared hosting is almost always more reliable. Moving to a server makes sense when your site has outgrown shared hosting limits or needs software that can't run there — then look at cheap VPS. Upgrading within the same host is usually easiest: your account gets new limits without moving any files.