Best Cheap Web Hosting in India
Daren Low
Editor in Chief
“Tight budget.”
It’s a common term in almost every e-business-starter’s dictionary — a term that more often than not leads one to look for free alternatives.
But… as we discussed in our “How to host your website for free & why it’s not recommended?” article, “free hosting” is, simply put, BAD!
Therefore, the most suitable substitute in such a case is to look for the best cheap option. In this arena, i.e., the best cheap web hosting in India, there are quite a few quality web hosts. These are the web hosting services that are reliable, perform well, offer decent features, and have quality customer support while not breaking the bank.
We have chosen four web hosting providers for this compilation. Coincidentally, all four also feature in our “5 Best Web Hosting Companies for Websites in India” list for the sheer value for money they offer. Curious to know which ones and why? Let’s dive in!
Top 4 cheap web hosting providers in India
Provider | Forrst rating | $ per month | Top features | Header |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Best Overall in India  | from ₹59/mo, with 30 day money-back guarantee | |||
Ideal for WordPress | from $3.95/month | |||
| from ₹219.69/mo | |||
| from $2.75/month plan) |
A quick dive into best cheap web hosts’ offerings
To compile this list, we just had to have yeses to these two questions:
- “Is this web hosting affordable for anyone & everyone?”
- “Are we getting value for every rupee we pay?”
In the process of doing so, we obviously had to justify the “Yes”. Here’s the justification/why these four are on the list:
1. Hostinger
Recommended for: Personal, small business or affiliate websites of any kind, including WordPress.
Overall Uptime
99.99%
Average server response time:
~180 ms
Average server response time(in India):
~212 ms
Price
starts at ₹59/mo
What we love:
Hostinger is the best cheap web hosting provider in our book. Its Single Web Hosting plan that costs a mere 59 rupees per month. And it's the plan we recommend to all beginners/small website owners - unless the site has a high chance to attract considerably high traffic, in which case Hostinger’s Business & Cloud plans are recommendable.
For the cost, the service is exceptional. Your site can handle nearly 100,000 monthly visitors! Plus, you won't find a provider with better performance, uptime, features, and customer service than Hostinger at such low cost.
2. Bluehost
Recommended for: WordPress mostly.
Overall Uptime
99.98%
Average server speed
210 ms
Average server speed(in India)
220 ms
Price
starts at $2.75/month
What we love:
Not as cheap as our #1 recommendation but still a bargain, Bluehost costing around 200 rupees per month is an excellent yet affordable web host. It's recommended by WordPress.org, and is our top recommendation for its value for money, especially for WordPress site owners.
That little a cost gets you everything in plenty -- plenty disk space, plenty bandwidth, and plenty of freebies like a domain name and SSL certificate. To keep it short, if your goal is to get a cheap web hosting without compromising on performance or features, you won't regret purchasing a Bluehost plan.
3. A2 Hosting
Overall Uptime
99.93%
Average server speed
~180 ms
Average server speed(in India)
~205 ms
Price
starts at ~ Rs. 220/month
What we love:
Costing around the same as Bluehost, A2 Hosting is another great budget-friendly option. A2's USP is top performance, and it lived up to our expectation. A combination of high-performance SSD storage, CDN, caching, and other server resources makes it among the best performing and traffic handling hosts in the cheap hosting arena.
However, the absence of things like a free domain name and a slightly inferior uptime forces us to keep it below Bluehost. This is not to say A2 doesn't offer enough features, though -- you get quite awesome features for the cost!
4. Hostgator
Overall Uptime
99.98%
Average server speed
~210ms
Average server speed(in India)
~212 ms
Price
starts at $2.75/mo
What we love:
Hostgator is the sister company of Bluehost. Therefore, it’s more or less similar to Bluehost. The base plan costs $2.75/month or nearly 200 INR monthly, making it a contestant and eventually a winner on this "Best cheap web host in India" list.
The cost of both is the same and most other features are also the same, but Bluehost's performance is better than HosGator's, keeping Bluehost above in this list. It compensates for the slightly inferior performance, though. You get its proprietary drag-and-drop website builder, Gator, which is perfect for you if you want to build your website without any coding knowledge.
How to Choose a Good Cheap Web Host?
Having a priority list before purchasing any product/service is always beneficial. Consider the following as the checklist to match with your priority list when opting for web hosting:
1. Cost
You are reading this article because your hosting budget is low. This fact alone shows how important a factor cost of the hosting is.
Have a price range in mind to filter out the options you don’t have money for. However, we would definitely recommend going a bit over budget for better quality, if possible.
Though not entirely relevant to this point, keeping the needs in mind is also essential. Sometimes you end up paying more than needed. E.g., If you want to build a small website that will not be viewed by many, choosing Hostinger over other more expensive options, despite having a budget for it, is wise.
Also, look at introductory pricing, the time you will need to pre-pay for, and renewal pricing. For instance, the introductory price of hostinger is 59 rupees/month; however, you will have to pre-pay for 48 months to get the price — that’s a lump sum payment of 48*59 ~ 2800 INR. Moreover, the same plan’s renewal price is 99/month. This was just an example; almost all hosting providers follow the same pricing pattern.
2. Performance
Server response time, page loading speed, and uptime are the primary performance factors that depend on the web host. Know the numbers of these factors beforehand. Let us explain all three elements with examples.
Server response time: It’s the amount of time it takes for the browser to get a response from the server. Google recommends it to be under 200 ms, but practically even 300 ms works. More than that and the visitor may experience a lag and bounce. E.g., HostGator gives a server response time of under 10 ms in India, which is extraordinary! This factor mainly depends on the location server; the nearer the server to the visitor, the faster the response.
Page loading speed: It’s the total time taken to load a webpage fully. And part of it depends on the hosting provider. E.g., our general speed test performed on Bluehost resulted in nearly 450 ms loading speed, which is 2x faster than recommended.
Also, speed = revenue; if your webpage doesn’t load fast, it affects the bottom line. Let’s take an example. For Mobify, every 100ms decrease in homepage load speed worked out to a 1.11% increase in session-based conversion, yielding an average annual revenue increase of nearly $380,000.
Uptime: It’s the total time your site is available. Ideally, your site should be up 100% of the time, but practically, in the long run, it’s close to impossible. Therefore, anything above 99.95% is acceptable. E.g., Our Hostinger test resulted in 99.99% uptime.
In short, knowing the performance of the web host will help you weed out many terrible options. How can you tell such numbers beforehand? Simple. Read test-based reviews like ours.
3. Customer support
The performance can be excellent & the pricing can be well under your budget, but mishaps happen. And in such times, the provider’s customer support is your last resort. May it be asking for a backup/restore or site migration or anything else like increasing the upload size limit [link to the previous blog], good technical support will always be at your rescue.
Our definition of quality customer support includes only three terms: Fast, knowledgeable, and friendly. Your preferred host’s support agents aren’t all three? Skip.
4. Other features
Additional features that enhance your site & are included with the hosting package should also be considered. E.g., a free domain name can be an excellent plus for a beginner who doesn’t own a domain, a caching solution can drastically improve loading speed, or an SSL certificate can increase your chances of ranking higher.
Wrap up - Best cheap web hosting in India
Cheap is a relative term, so we went with the web hosts that are affordable for the general public. Our filtering & sorting system for this particular list was in the following order:
Pricing > Performance > Features > Customer support.
And it led us to these four superb web hosts:
You can’t go wrong with any four, but given the emphasis on “cheap,” Hostinger might be the clear winner. Thoughts?
From
₹59*
monthly
• Best uptime (99.99%)
• Fast, 0.4ms load time as average
• Good & quick customer support