AwardSpace Review
AwardSpace has run honest, ad-free free hosting since 2003, and its free tier is one of the few that includes a working email account. The 1 GB / 5 GB limits make it strictly a starter, and its paid plans, while cheap, compete against stronger budget hosts.
Review last updated 2026-08-20 · How we rate hosts
Scorecard
Pros
- Free tier with PHP, a MySQL database and 1 email account, no ads injected
- One of the oldest free hosts, operating since 2003
- German datacenter with decent European latency
- Zacky installer and site builder ease first-time setup
- 24/7 support even for free users, unusual in free hosting
Cons
- 1 GB storage and 5 GB monthly traffic make the free tier a demo, not a home
- Aging platform and control panel; paid tiers face stronger rivals at the same price
- PHP versions on the free plan lag behind current releases
- No backups on free hosting and upsell prompts throughout the panel
AwardSpace plans & pricing
Promotional monthly rates as of August 20, 2026; most require the listed prepaid term and renew at the higher rate shown. Confirm on AwardSpace's site before buying.
| Plan | Intro price | Renews at | Storage | Sites | Bandwidth | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free HostingShared Hosting | $0/mo | $0/mo | 1 GB | 4 | 5 GB/mo | 1 domain + 3 subdomains, 1 MySQL database, 1 email account; no ads on your site; 5 GB monthly traffic is the first limit you will hit |
| BasicShared Hosting | $0.25/mo12 mo prepay | $0.30/mo | Unmetered | 2 | unmetered | About $2.99 for the first year; entry paid tier with 2 domains and unmetered disk/traffic |
| Max Pack PlusShared Hosting | $9.83/mo12 mo prepay | $11.80/mo | Unmetered | Unlimited | unmetered | Top shared tier with unlimited domains and 2 free lifetime domains |
Our AwardSpace review
AwardSpace has been handing out free hosting since 2003, which in this corner of the industry counts as geological time; most free hosts of its generation are long dead. Operated from Sofia with servers in Kiel, Germany, it survives on the classic freemium model: a genuinely usable free tier that funnels growing sites into cheap paid plans.
The free plan's shape is a single domain plus three subdomains, 1 GB of disk, 5 GB of monthly traffic, one MySQL database and, unusually for free hosting, one real email account at your domain. There is no forced advertising on your pages, a one-click installer handles WordPress, Joomla and Grav, and the Zacky site builder covers the no-code case. Support, remarkably, is available 24/7 even at the free level, which almost no competitor matches.
What free costs here is capacity. Five gigabytes of monthly traffic is roughly a few hundred visits a day to a lightweight site, and less for an image-heavy one; hit it and the site goes dark until the counter resets. One gigabyte of storage rules out media libraries, the free tier's PHP versions trail current releases, and there are no backups, so the platform is best treated as a live demo environment. Performance is adequate for that job and no more.
The paid ladder is aggressive at the bottom: the Basic plan runs about $2.99 for the first year (roughly $0.25 a month, renewing near $0.30) with unmetered disk and traffic on two domains, while the Max Pack Plus tier at around $9.83 (renewing at $11.80) adds unlimited domains, unlimited mailboxes and two free lifetime domain names. Those first-year prices are genuinely cheap, but at renewal the money buys less polish and speed than Hostinger or other modern budget hosts covered on this site, so compare before you commit for years.
Where AwardSpace fits, then, is at the very start of a site's life. A student project, a first WordPress experiment or a club page that needs a real domain, a database and a working email address can live on the free tier at zero cost and zero risk, and graduate either to AwardSpace's own paid plans or to a stronger budget host once traffic and credibility start to matter. Two decades of continuous operation say the free tier will still be there next year, which is more than most free hosts can promise.
Notable facts
- Free hosting provider since 2003, one of the longest-running in the industry
- Free tier includes 1 MySQL database and 1 email account, rare among free hosts
- Servers hosted in a Kiel, Germany datacenter
At a glance
| Founded | 2003 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Sofia, Bulgaria |
| Data centers | Kiel, Germany |
| Hosting types | Shared Hosting |
| Starting price | $0/mo |
| Money-back guarantee | 30 days |
| Uptime SLA | 99.9% |
| Support | chat, tickets, email, knowledge-base (24/7) |
Frequently asked questions
Does AwardSpace put ads on free websites?
No. AwardSpace advertises 100% ad-free free hosting and does not inject banners into your pages. The trade-offs are capacity instead: 1 GB of storage, 5 GB of monthly traffic, one database and one email account.
What happens when I exceed the 5 GB traffic limit?
The site is suspended until the monthly counter resets, so a traffic spike takes you offline at the worst time. If a site is growing steadily, that is the signal to move to a paid plan, either at AwardSpace or a stronger budget host.
Bottom line
AwardSpace has run honest, ad-free free hosting since 2003, and its free tier is one of the few that includes a working email account. The 1 GB / 5 GB limits make it strictly a starter, and its paid plans, while cheap, compete against stronger budget hosts.
Check current AwardSpace pricing →
