Freehostia Review

Freehostia hosting has been running since 2005 — three U.S. presidents ago, before YouTube existed, while MySpace was still a thing. It's still running. That's 21 years of a free-forever business model, which is either impressive or suspicious depending on your level of cynicism.

Its free Chocolate plan has run on roughly the same specs for most of that time. Back in 2005, 250 MB of disk space was a real offer. Today, competitors hand out 1 GB to 5 GB for free. That gap is wide enough to notice.

We signed up, ran WordPress through its paces, and tested the MySQL ceiling. The ceiling arrived faster than expected.

How we tested: Fresh WordPress install via Freehostia's built-in 1-click installer on a free subdomain. Lightweight portfolio theme plus three plugins — contact form, SEO, and caching. Custom domain connected, Let's Encrypt SSL verified through the Hepsia panel. MySQL database usage monitored at install and after each plugin activation — the database table count grew with each plugin, visibly pushing toward the cap before content was added. Contact form tested for email delivery; submissions were accepted but never arrived. Account monitored over ten days.

What Does Freehostia's Free Hosting Plan Actually Include?

In 2026, Freehostia's Chocolate plan includes 250 MB disk storage, 6 GB monthly bandwidth, one MySQL database (hard-capped at 10 MB of storage), three email accounts, five hosted domains, PHP 8 support, Let's Encrypt SSL, and a 1-click installer for 50+ applications including WordPress — all at zero cost, no credit card required, on servers in Chicago, Illinois (Freehostia, June 2026).

The email accounts and five-domain allowance are genuine differentiators. InfinityFree includes no email at all and blocks SMTP entirely. ProFreeHost offers email but imposes an undisclosed CPU cap that can suspend accounts without warning. Freehostia bundles both email and domain flexibility at no cost — features comparable services charge for or leave out.

Storage is the problem. InfinityFree and ProFreeHost give away 5 GB. AwardSpace gives away 1 GB. Freehostia gives away 250 MB — a 4–20× gap that places it at the bottom of every storage ranking in the free hosting category. For a static HTML portfolio or placeholder page, 250 MB is enough. For a WordPress site with media uploads, it's a hard constraint you'll hit within weeks.

As of June 2026, Freehostia's free Chocolate plan provides 250 MB disk space, 6 GB monthly bandwidth, one MySQL database (10 MB cap), three email accounts, five hosted domains, Let's Encrypt SSL, PHP 8 support, and a 1-click WordPress installer — at zero cost with no credit card required, hosted in Chicago, Illinois. By comparison, InfinityFree offers approximately 5 GB storage with 400 databases (50 MB each), ProFreeHost offers 5 GB with 10 databases, and AwardSpace offers 1 GB with one database (Freehostia; vendor feature pages verified June 2026).

Can You Actually Run WordPress on Freehostia?

The 1-click installer gets WordPress running in minutes. That part works fine.

Then the MySQL ceiling shows up.

Freehostia caps its one free database at 10 MB of storage — a limit so tight that a standard WordPress install alone creates roughly a dozen database tables, and adding three common plugins (SEO, contact form, caching) generates additional tables and option rows that collectively push a fresh site toward the ceiling before the first post is published. When you hit the cap, WordPress stops writing data: no new posts, no comments, no form submissions, no plugin logs. The site renders, but it's effectively frozen.

The 2 MB file upload limit compounds this in a different direction. Standard WordPress theme zip files run between 3 MB and 30 MB. They won't upload through the WordPress dashboard — the server rejects anything over the 2 MB ceiling, and the error message is generic enough that a beginner may not connect the upload failure to a server-side limit. FTP bypasses the restriction, but that's a tool most people getting their first site off the ground haven't used and shouldn't need.

Freehostia works for a WordPress site with two or three static pages and no real activity. The moment you treat it like a real publishing platform, the database cap and upload limit work against you.

Does Freehostia Include SSL?

Yes — and it's handled better than most free hosts manage.

Freehostia includes both Let's Encrypt SSL and shared SSL IPs on its free plan (Freehostia, 2026). Custom domains get real browser-trusted SSL without the Cloudflare workarounds or third-party certificate services that ProFreeHost requires. On ProFreeHost, custom-domain SSL means a 20-minute manual process through external tools and forum tutorials. On Freehostia, it works through the Hepsia control panel without extra steps.

For a free host, that's a genuine advantage. See our ProFreeHost review for the SSL comparison in full detail.

What the Free Plan Blocks

Two restrictions that Freehostia's feature page doesn't mention prominently, and both break functionality most WordPress users assume they have by default.

Freehostia disables SMTP on free accounts. The server blocks all outbound email — including PHP's standard mail() function. Any contact form that routes through your hosting account will silently accept a submission and never send it. Your visitor thinks they've contacted you. You receive nothing. There's no error message on either end; the form appears to work and doesn't.

Outbound server connections are also cut. Beyond email, your hosted code can't reach external APIs at all — a broader restriction than most free hosts impose. Payment gateways, shipping integrations, social APIs, webhook-based tools: any plugin that connects to a third-party service will fail silently. For a static blog with no dynamic features, this doesn't matter. For anything transactional, it rules out entire plugin categories from the start.

What Do Independent Reviews Say?

Across multiple independent review platforms, the pattern is the same. whtop.com gives Freehostia a 4.7/10 from 25 reviewers — 11 recommend it, 14 don't. HostAdvice aggregates 36 reviews with a similarly mixed signal. HostDean records 19 verified reviews at 3.2/5. The single most repeated complaint across all three: account suspensions without explanation or advance warning.

In December 2024, Freehostia completed a full data center migration that caused up to 24 hours of total downtime for all services. Migrations are routine. Twenty-four hours is a long window for users with live sites.

Longer-term customers on paid plans are noticeably more positive, citing 7–10 years of reliable performance for small personal sites. Free-plan reviews skew rougher. Worth noting: no meaningful Freehostia community exists on Reddit — no r/webhosting threads advocating for it, no r/wordpress discussions. Services people like tend to generate conversation.

How Does Freehostia Compare to MySQL Database Allowance?

Alternatives Worth Considering

InfinityFree

Best if you need: More storage, more databases, and automatic SSL without extra steps.
Price: Free. Upgrade via iFastNet from $4.99/mo.
Key difference: 5 GB storage (vs 250 MB), 400 MySQL databases (vs 1), automatic Let's Encrypt SSL, PHP 8.3. No email accounts — SMTP is blocked entirely. The 50,000 daily hits cap is its own catch, but at least it's published.

Read our full InfinityFree review →

ProFreeHost

Best if you need: 5 GB storage plus email accounts, without paying anything.
Price: Free. Upgrade via iFastNet from $4.99/mo.
Key difference: 5 GB storage, email included, cron jobs — but an invisible CPU suspension policy and a 10 MB file upload ceiling are real friction for WordPress. Still a step up from Freehostia on storage and databases.

Read our full ProFreeHost review →

AwardSpace

Best if you need: A simpler experience from a host with 23 years of continuous operation.
Price: Free. Paid plans from $2.99/mo.
Key difference: 1 GB storage (4× Freehostia's allowance), one email account, better-documented limits. A reasonable choice if the five-domain allowance isn't a priority.

Read our full AwardSpace review →

Our Verdict on Freehostia

Freehostia scores 4.5 out of 10. It's the longest-running free host on this list — 21 years of continuous operation is not nothing. Free SSL, three email accounts, and a five-domain allowance are genuine advantages that newer competitors don't match. There are no injected ads.

But 250 MB of storage is too small for a real WordPress site in 2026. The 10 MB MySQL cap means the "1-click WordPress install" produces a demo, not a deployment. Disabled SMTP means contact forms don't work without a third-party relay. Independent reviewers are more negative than positive, and the December 2024 data center migration produced a 24-hour outage that affected all accounts.

It's solid enough for a parking page, a static portfolio with no forms, or a first experiment with hosting. For anything involving actual WordPress content — posts, plugins, media, user interactions — the database cap will stop you before the site gets started.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Freehostia actually free?

Yes. Freehostia's Chocolate plan has no time limit and requires no credit card. The plan includes 250 MB storage, bandwidth, email accounts, and SSL at zero cost. It's been running since 2005. Paid plans start at $3.25/month (Watercircle) and are entirely optional — nothing in the free plan forces an upgrade or introduces ads.

Can you use WordPress on Freehostia's free plan?

You can install WordPress via Freehostia's 1-click installer. The hard limit is the 10 MB MySQL database cap. A functioning WordPress site — posts, plugin data, theme settings, user records — fills that cap quickly. When you hit it, WordPress stops writing new content. Freehostia works for a two-page WordPress site, not a live blog or portfolio with real updates.

Does Freehostia include a free domain?

No. Freehostia's free plan does not include domain registration. You can connect up to five of your own domains at no extra charge. If you don't have a domain, you can host on a free Freehostia subdomain (yoursite.freehostia.com) at no cost. Registering a new domain is a paid service through Freehostia or any third-party registrar.

Does Freehostia have SSL?

Yes. Freehostia includes Let's Encrypt SSL and shared SSL IPs on its free plan. SSL works on both the free subdomain and custom-connected domains without Cloudflare workarounds or manual certificate installation. This is a genuine advantage over ProFreeHost, which defaults to a self-signed certificate on custom domains — the kind that triggers browser security warnings.

How does Freehostia compare to InfinityFree?

InfinityFree offers approximately 5 GB of storage versus Freehostia's 250 MB, 400 databases (at 50 MB each) versus Freehostia's one (at 10 MB), and PHP 8.3 versus Freehostia's PHP 8. Freehostia includes three email accounts; InfinityFree has no email and blocks SMTP. Freehostia has operated since 2005; InfinityFree since 2018. For WordPress, InfinityFree's larger database allowance makes it the more practical choice. See our InfinityFree review for the full breakdown.

Sources: Freehostia Free Cloud Hosting