InfinityFree is a US-based web hosting provider launched in 2016, and, as its name suggests, it offers one of the best free web hosting services for an indeterminate period of time. We all know that not everything presented as free hosting is truly free, but Infinity Free manages to live up to its name and does that without overloading your site with ads.
- Want to try Infinity Free? Check out the website here
Despite providing fully free services, InfinityFree is sustainable thanks to its business deal with iFastNet, whose services are marketed on Infinity Free’s official site. Therefore, if you ever feel the need to upgrade your free plan to one of the premium ones, expect to be forwarded to iFastNet’s site.
Although we can’t be fully confident, InfinityFree’s data center appears to be located in Chicago (Illinois, the USA).
InfinityFree’s official site is pretty plain and overrun with ads, but it is easy-to-use (partly due to its simplicity). Unfortunately, like with most free hosts, it doesn’t feature an official blog nor is it particularly active on social media sites.
Plans and pricing
There's one plan, and it's free. However, the site advertises paid-for hosting plans. If you click on premium hosting, you're directed to iFastNet. For this review, I'm leaving out iFastNet, as this is just a review of InfinityFree's free hosting.
The free hosting plan is surprisingly robust, offering 5GB of SSD storage and unlimited bandwidth (with some terms and conditions). It supports PHP versions up to 8.2/8.3, 400 MySQL databases, and full .htaccess support.
A standout feature is the integrated SSL tool, which allows users to provision and renew Let's Encrypt certificates directly from the dashboard without needing external technical workarounds.
Ease of use
To start your free hosting trip, tap the “Register Now” button, insert your email address, think up a password, go through terms of service and deny being a robot (sorry, robots). After verifying your email, it is time to create your hosting account through three simple steps.
The first step includes choosing a domain name and there you can use a free subdomain (seven of them are available as we write) or a domain you already own and point it to Infinity Free nameservers. If you decide on a second option but are not sure how it all works, there is an in-depth guide describing every step of the way (with screenshots and everything).
After this, your account username will be generated at random, and the same goes for your account password if you (for whatever reason) decided to leave the space empty. In any case, your account will be created within seconds making this one of the simplest and most straightforward experiences of this kind. That being said, you might need to wait for up to 72 hours for your hosting account to “start working everywhere” and your newly created site to become accessible.
Managing your hosting account is done through VistaPanel, a specialized control panel for free hosting environments. This control panel is surprisingly similar to cPanel, right down to design and color scheme. In any case, if you're used to web hosting control panels, this should be a breeze to handle.
Infinity Free's version of VistaPanel covers all the essentials, including an online FTP manager, MySQL database control, phpMyAdmin, domain name management, mail management, and more.
The biggest plus is that Softaculous is included, letting you access one-click setups for over 400 applications, including WordPress and Joomla. The combination of freebies at Infinity Free is impressive, to say the least.
Speed and reliability
Given that we are testing a free service, we didn’t expect to be blown away by either speed or uptime. Using our pre-built standard test site, we tested Infinity Free with a WordPress benchmarking tool and then hit it with Siege, our load tester.
CPU & Memory | Operations with large text data | 9.58 |
Random binary data operations | 7.28 | |
Recursive mathematical calculations | 3.54 | |
Iterative mathematical calculations | 7.3 | |
Floating point operations | 6.61 | |
Filesystem | Filesystem write ability | 0 |
Local file copy and access speed | 0 | |
Small file IO test | 2.89 | |
Database | Importing large amount of data to database | 6.07 |
Simple queries on single table | 7.73 | |
Complex database queries on multiple tables | 3.82 | |
Object cache | Persistent object cache enabled | 0 |
Shortcode processing | 4.98 | |
Wordpress Hooks | 7.3 | |
Wordpress option manipulation | 7.78 | |
REGEX string processing | 6.43 | |
Taxonomy benchmark | 6.42 | |
Object capability benchmark | 7.39 | |
Content filtering | 2.43 | |
JSON manipulations | 4.93 | |
Network | Network download speed test | 7.28 |
Overall | Your server score | 5.7 |
Core WordPress speeds at Infinity Free were a real eye-opener. With an overall score of 5.7, this free hosting provider outperformed several paid hosting providers. The downsides, notably, were in file system performance, which we suspect is due to limitations in the plan provided.
Concurrent users | 5 | 9 | 15 |
Transactions | 7376 | 7088 | 6683 |
Availability | 100 | 100 | 100 |
Elapsed time | 299.26 | 299.13 | 298.97 |
Data transferred | 51.19 | 49.18 | 46.41 |
Response time | 1.01 | 1.05 | 1.12 |
Transaction rate | 24.65 | 23.70 | 22.35 |
Throughput | 0.17 | 0.16 | 0.16 |
Concurrency | 24.96 | 23.70 | 24.95 |
Successful transactions | 7376 | 7088 | 6683 |
Failed transactions | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Longest transaction | 6.39 | 6.26 | 6.72 |
Shortest transaction | 0.69 | 0.69 | 0.69 |
Load testing results at Infinity Free were even more surprising, and in a highly positive manner. This is perhaps the only free host that's managed to survive a load test from Siege. With up to 15 concurrent users over a 5-minute period, Infinity Free successfully processed all transactions.
Not only did it pass, but Infinity Free produced such consistent results that we ended up re-running the tests several more times. In the end, we concluded that, aside from limitations, Infinity Free servers are quite well configured for load balancing, even without the benefit of a CDN.
Support
As you might have guessed, customer support provided by a free host is almost always nothing to write home about. Such is the case with Infinity Free, so don’t expect to get one-on-one consultation via telephone, live chat, or email. Although there are a few email addresses available for contact, it is stated that they are not meant for support and that all of your questions are going to be left unanswered.
The one alternative you are left with is to seek help on their community forum, which is actually an amazing option to have since most of the questions there (if not all) are answered by fellow users.
The other one is to consult InfinityFree’s comprehensive knowledgebase that contains, among others, a novice-friendly category called “Getting Started”. There are ten categories in total and over 80 in-depth guides that cover everything from managing your domain and DNS to making your SSL certificate work with WordPress.
The competition
A nice alternative to InfinityFree and one of the better free hosting providers out there is India-based GoogieHost (not to be confused with Googlehost). It comes with a bit more in terms of features, since their free plan includes Cloudflare, VistaPanel web hosting control panel, a user-friendly website builder, and up to 2 business emails (Infinity Free currently provides none). However, in terms of security and stability, Infinity Free wins the day.
FreeHostingNoAds is another noteworthy alternative to Infinity Free, and it delivers exactly what its name implies - free hosting without ads. What is more, it also includes a drag-and-drop website builder, while Infinity Free doesn’t. However, unlike InfinityFree, which puts no limits on disk space and bandwidth, FreeHostingNoAds is severely limited.
If you are not looking exclusively for free web hosting, there are quite a few budget-friendly hosts able to cover all the basics and more while providing round-the-clock customer support. Some of the fan-favorites are HostGator, Bluehost, and DreamHost, and all of them offer a wide variety of services and hosting packages, ranging from simple shared and flexible cloud setups to VPS and dedicated server hosting. They may not be completely free-of-charge, but as with most things in life (web hosting included) you get what you pay for.
Final verdict
Are you trying to find a free host for a blog, small portfolio, or any other personal project on a similar scale? If the answer is yes, then InfinityFree is worth a look. With user-friendly VistaPanel, Softaculous, and easy-to-follow how-tos you’ll be able to build a captivating website without too much trouble.
However, if you have bigger dreams for your website and don’t mind spending a few bucks each month to make these dreams come true, check out hosts such as HostGator and Bluehost.
