Searching for the best cheap WordPress hosting so that you can host a site on a budget?
If you’re just getting started with your site and/or you have a low-traffic site, budget hosting is a great option to keep your costs down. Of course, you get what you pay for to a certain extent, but many sites don’t need the premium performance that comes with premium price tags.
Plus, if you choose wisely, you can still get surprisingly good performance from a host that costs $10 per month or less. And that’s our cut-off in this post – $10 or less.
With that being said, most hosts come in well under that limit with their promotional prices, with the cheapest option costing an insane $1.99 per month for a long-term deal! We’ll also include hosts that offer month-to-month billing for under $5 per month.
Let’s dig in so that you can start hosting (and saving money!).
If you’re in a rush, here are our top picks for the best cheap WordPress hosting:
Host | Quality (for the budget space)* | Starting Price** |
GreenGeeks | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $2.49/month |
A2 Hosting | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $2.99/month |
Cloudways | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $10/month |
HostGator | ⭐⭐⭐ | $5.95/month |
Bluehost | ⭐⭐⭐ | $2.95/month |
DreamHost | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $2.59/month |
EasyWP | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | $1.91/month |
Hostinger | ⭐⭐⭐ | $1.99/month |
*This is the relative quality for a budget host – obviously in overall quality these hosts lag behind premium managed WordPress hosts like Kinsta and WP Engine that cost $30+ per month.
**read the next section to learn more about important pricing details.
Before I dig into the hosts, I want to start with a quick explainer for something that you’ll see at pretty much all cheap WordPress hosts (though there are some exceptions on this list).
That something? Promotional pricing.
Promotional pricing is a strategy that budget hosts use to look even cheaper. It’s not a bad thing, but it can lead to some nasty surprises if you don’t understand what’s happening.
Here’s how it works:
When you first sign up, you’ll be charged a special promotional price. Then, when you go to renew, you’ll be charged the “regular” price, which can be anywhere from 2-3X the promo price at some hosts.
Typically, the promotional price applies to your entire first billing cycle, with the best prices reserved for a ~three-year commitment. So if you pay for three years upfront, you would get the promo price for the full three years. After that, you’d pay full price.
On the other hand, if you only pay for one year upfront, you would get the promo price for that full year but then you’d need to pay full price when you renew after that year. Additionally, your promo price rate wouldn’t be quite as good as if you’d paid for three years.
So – if you can afford the upfront cost, the best deal is always to lock in as many years as possible at the lowest promo price. Most hosts still offer 30-90 day money-back guarantees, so if you’re unhappy with the quality you can always get a refund – you won’t be locked into three years of hosting you don’t like.
And no matter what you do, make sure you consider both the promo prices and regular prices when making your decision.
GreenGeeks is a budget web host that offers surprisingly good performance for the price, with a nice bonus of putting an emphasis on using green energy.
They aren’t the absolute cheapest host on this list. But in terms of the value that you get for your money when it comes to performance and support, I definitely think they’re one of the top deals that you can find in the budget WordPress hosting space.
If you’re a beginner looking for a host that won’t break the bank and will still give you good performance and support, I definitely recommend considering GreenGeeks.
With promotional pricing, GreenGeeks’ plans start at just $2.49 per month for one site or $4.95 per month for unlimited sites.
All plans offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
A2 Hosting is another affordable host that offers solid performance and reliability for the money. Like GreenGeeks, they aren’t the cheapest host on this list. But if you’re willing to pay a little more than the really budget options, A2 Hosting offers good value for the money, especially with the Turbo servers.
With promotional pricing, A2 Hosting starts at $2.99 per month for a single site. However, if you can afford the price, I recommend the Turbo servers, which start at $9.99 per month, support unlimited websites, and use the faster LiteSpeed Web Server.
💲 Use our Cloudways Coupon to get 30% OFF
👉 Our full A2 Hosting review
Cloudways is a great budget WordPress hosting option for more advanced users. I do not recommend them for beginners because their setup is a bit more complicated than other hosts. But for more advanced users, they offer great value when it comes to performance.
So – why is Cloudways more complicated? Well, it’s because Cloudways doesn’t provide its own hosting. Instead, it lets you choose your preferred hosting from five different cloud hosting providers including DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
From there, Cloudways handles setting up and managing the server for you. You certainly do not need to be a developer to use it, but this approach does add some complexity, which is why I don’t recommend it for beginners.
So – what’s the advantage of that extra complexity? Well, for the money, Cloudways offers the best performance of any host on this list.
Cloudways’ pricing depends on which cloud hosting provider you choose and your chosen server resources. The cheapest option is a $10 per month server from DigitalOcean, which offers pretty good performance by itself.
However, if you want the absolute best budget performance, I recommend choosing the $13 per month entry-level Vultr High Frequency server.
All of these prices are for monthly billing and Cloudways does not do promotional pricing, so there won’t be any renewal surprises. You can save some money with our Cloudways coupon code, though.
You can host unlimited sites on all plans (though you’ll need to make sure your server has enough resources to support them).
💲 Use our Cloudways Coupon to get 30% OFF
👉 Our full Cloudways hosting review
HostGator is a popular provider that offers cloud WordPress hosting at an affordable price. Beyond the cloud WordPress hosting plans, they also have even cheaper generic shared hosting, though we’ll focus more on the cloud hosting as it’s what makes HostGator unique.
They aren’t the fastest host on this list, but they give you cPanel access, offer solid-if-not-amazing performance, and are quite affordable. For low-traffic sites, the performance can actually be adequate. When we tested it, the load times only broke down in high-traffic situations.
So – for simple portfolio sites and low-traffic blogs, HostGator is fine. For higher-traffic sites, maybe choose another host like GreenGeeks or Cloudways.
With promotional prices, HostGator’s cloud WordPress hosting plans start at $5.95 per month for a single site and up to 100,000 visits per month.
If you want an even cheaper option, HostGator also has generic shared plans starting at just $2.75 per month for a single site or $3.50 per month for unlimited sites (with promotional prices).
No matter which option you choose, make sure to use our HostGator coupon code to save some money.
👉 Our full HostGator hosting review
Bluehost is a popular affordable WordPress hosting provider with promotional prices starting around the $3 per month range.
In terms of performance, Bluehost isn’t one of the top options on this list. But one thing that Bluehost does have going for it is a very beginner-friendly interface and experience. Bluehost even offers its own WordPress-based website builder that lets you design a custom WordPress site using drag-and-drop.
So – if performance is top priority to you, I recommend sticking with a host like GreenGeeks. But if you’re a beginner with no idea where to get started, Bluehost can be a good option.
With promotional pricing, Bluehost’s plans start at $2.95 per month for a single website or $5.45 per month for unlimited sites.
To save some money, make sure to use our Bluehost coupon code.
👉 Our full Bluehost hosting review
DreamHost is a well-established hosting provider that offers an all-around solid product at a great price, including cheap month-to-month billing which means you don’t need to lock yourself into long commitments just to get low prices.
DreamHost isn’t the fastest host on this list, but they do have good enough performance for most sites and they offer great value if you need a host that supports month-to-month billing.
Basically, for the money and billing flexibility, DreamHost performs quite well.
DreamHost offers two WordPress hosting plans – one for a single site and one that supports unlimited sites. For both plans, you can pay monthly, yearly, or every three years.
With month-to-month billing, you’ll pay $4.95/$7.99 (promo/regular) for a single site or $8.95/$13.99 for unlimited sites.
With a three-year commitment, the promotional prices are $2.59 or $3.95, respectively, which is still quite affordable.
EasyWP is a dedicated WordPress hosting service from Namecheap that offers incredibly cheap prices on month-to-month billing, along with a 30-day free trial to let you try out the service at no cost.
For the price, EasyWP offers solid performance and features. It’s not quite as good as a host like GreenGeeks or Cloudways, but the cheap month-to-month billing options are tough to argue with from a value/budget perspective.
EasyWP’s plans are all for a single site. You can either pay monthly or yearly for a discount. The monthly prices already reflect the regular prices, while you can get a 23-50% promo discount if you pay annually.
Monthly prices:
Annual prices:
If you want even cheaper hosting, you can use Namecheap’s generic shared plans, which start at just $1.44 per month with a two-year commitment. Or, you can pay just $2.88 with month-to-month billing.
If you want the absolute cheapest website hosting, Hostinger could be the right host for you. If you’re willing to commit to four years upfront, you can pay an incredible $1.99 per month. That equals just ~$95 for an entire four years of hosting, which is tough to beat.
Obviously, you’re going to make some sacrifices in the performance department to achieve those prices, so you shouldn’t expect Hostinger to match GreenGeeks or Cloudways in terms of quality. But Hostinger does use LiteSpeed Web Server, so it is a bit better than you’d expect for the price.
Hostinger does have a history of some shady marketing practices (e.g. fake reviews). But overall, if rock-bottom prices are what’s most important to you, it’s tough to argue with Hostinger.
With promotional pricing, Hostinger’s regular shared hosting plans start at $1.99 per month for a single site. Or, you can get support for up to 100 sites for as little as $2.99 per month, which is also an incredibly low price.
Now for the important question – which of these hosts should you use?
Well, I think that depends on your needs and knowledge level. For example, do you want the best value or do you just want the absolute cheapest hosting? Are you a beginner or do you have some tech chops?
Let’s run through some scenarios…
If you want the overall best value host for all types of WordPress users, I would recommend starting with GreenGeeks.
GreenGeeks is not the absolute cheapest host on this list, but in terms of the performance and value that they offer, I think GreenGeeks is one of the best deals.
Or, if you’re a more advanced user, I’d recommend Cloudways. Even with just the entry-level servers, you can get some pretty amazing performance.
Most of these providers ask you to pay for at least a year upfront. If that’s not an option for you, I think EasyWP or DreamHost are the best budget month-to-month options. The performance isn’t as good as GreenGeeks, but it’s “ok” and it’s tough to argue with these month-to-month prices:
Finally, if you’re just looking for the absolute cheapest WordPress hosting and you aren’t too worried about anything else, then it’s tough to beat Hostinger.
For just ~$95, you can get four years of hosting, which comes out to just $1.99 per month.
Is it the best hosting on this list in terms of quality? Not really. But the price is tough to argue with if you’re on a budget.
Or, you can also use Namecheap’s generic shared hosting, which costs just $1.44 per month with a two-year commitment.
If you want to see even more options at all price points, along with our own performance tests, be sure to check out our full collection of the best WordPress hosting.
Do you still have any questions about choosing the best cheap WordPress hosting for your needs? Let us know in the comments.
Trying to figure out how to start an online course so that you can share…
Considering using LearnDash to create online course content with WordPress? LearnDash is a popular WordPress…
WordPress XML files see a lot of use for me as a content creator, and…
If you’re looking for a way to deliver an online course, complete with all the…
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial for any website that wants to maximize its traffic…
Kinsta is a notable brand in the WordPress hosting space. The standout aspect of the…