InstaFree Review: The Best Free Web Hosting Service, Ever.

Review

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[Update: May, 2018] I have moved all of my websites to SiteGround’s GrowBig plan and life has been great ever since. If you’re obsessed with SPEED (without paying high cost) – like I am – then you should use the GrowBig or GoGeek plan at SiteGround! (60% Off Discount Link).
You may check out my in-depth SiteGround review to know more.


This is my detailed InstaFree review where I will provide an inside look into InstaFree web hosting service. All the opinions below are my own and unbiased.

I have been lurking in the world of web making for almost 2 years now. As a student with no budget, my journey started with a cheap domain purchase (using coupons), and on 000webhost – a popular ‘free webhost’. Unfortunately, 000webhost has this tendency to crash your website hundred times every day whenever you are trying to edit, update, tweak your WordPress posts.  PLUS, 000webhost shows you their Ads all across the cPanel, and as if that wasn’t enough — when your site crashes, it redirects to their homepage for 24 hours! I also came across 2freehosting. Co-incidence: 2FH was just taking off at that time and perhaps had low load on its servers. The performance was good. I was happy, for about 3 months (check my 2freehosting review), until ‘high CPU usage’ errors came to haunt again.

Then I found InstaFree on Webhostingtalk and decided to give it a shot.

Number of high CPU usage errors I have had on InstaFree: 0
Number of ’24-hours-redirect-to-webhost’s-homepage’: 0
Number of Ads: 0
My time on InstaFree: 6+ months and counting

Just to give you a hint what you can achieve with InstaFree, one of my websites had 146,000+ hits in June-July 2014. Similarly, another one had 91,000 hits in December 2014. And the servers weren’t even tested to their limit.
I have never had server issues…AT ALL 🙂

InstaFree Review | Reasons I love It:

  • Their support is top-class. No kidding. I have had some problems during installation and Bryan (administrator) always replied within an hour with solutions.
  • No Ads! I personally love this point. Literally there are no Ads, not sure how they profit from their business. But I like them for their great service.
  • You get to work with real propriety cPanel, unlike the “cpanel clones” provided by 2HF and 000webhost (just to name a few).
  • Their raid servers are kick-ass fast, they provide us ample bandwidth, space, inodes, etc.
  • You’ll have no issues running vBulletin, WordPress, or any scripts at all. The servers are that good!
  • If you want to upgrade, it is only $1/Mo!

Things to consider before signing up:

  • Make sure you aren’t from countries that are notorious for spamming. InstaFree is serious about spam-control, up to the point that they don’t usually accept users from blacklisted countries (like India, China, and some others.) BUT, you can always personally message him and ask for an exception. I know it has worked for a couple of users. And they are so happy about it!
  • You can only operate 1 domain per user account. I guess this is to stop resource abuse. And I think this is legit!
  • If you feel the need to upgrade, shoot a message to Admin. He actually increased my server space and domain limit for free! It only took 1 honest email. If my website gets enough traffic in future, I am upgrading for sure.

This is what you get under free shared hosting plans:

Free webhosting Instafree review

And these under the paid hosting plans:

Paid webhosting

Inside glimpse of my own InstaFree cPanel:

IF1IF2

Verdict:

I hope this InstaFree review was helpful. I feel that InstaFree is the most generous, and the best free webhost on the internet. Even for $0, it lets you host 1 website and provides you all the decent resources.

Score: 10/10

I wasn’t requested or compensated to publish this InstaFree review. All opinions are unbiased and my own. I feel lucky to have discovered InstaFree and hope others will too.

UPDATE

In March 2016, I moved this website from InstaFree to SiteGround. I tried 3 different paid web hosts before finally settling with Siteground. Siteground has had the fastest loading speed time of < 700 ms, compared to InstaFree (~4 s), Accuwebhosting (~3 s). Many years have passed I am still on Siteground; I like them!

Conclusion:

InstaFree provides free shared hosting but it doesn’t give you domains. BlueHost (60% Off Discount Link) has a free domain and unlimited hosting offer that costs $5/mo. You get free domain names, along with unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email addresses and more. It is an awesome service while still being affordable. If your website needs more resources, I’d highly recommend Media Temple hosting (33% Off Discount Link).

This website itself is hosted on Siteground’s GrowBig plan. If you’re obsessed with SPEED – like I am – (without high price tag) then you should definitely use the GrowBig or GoGeek plan at SiteGround! (60% Off Discount Link)

Feel free to let me know in comments if you have any questions regarding web hosting. I’ll be happy to help.

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