Free web hosting for students
Free student hosting is real and worth using — right up to the point where it is tied to an account you are about to lose. Here is what to use for what, and what to own yourself. Traxio itself is free for 30 days with no card, then 99p a month.
- No card to start
- No setup fee
- Then £0.99/month
Use the free options — then read on
Students have more free hosting options than anyone else, and most advice aimed at them ignores this entirely in order to sell something. So: use the free options. GitHub's student pack is excellent, university web space is fine for coursework, and a static site on GitHub Pages will outperform any shared host.
The argument for paying anything at all is narrower and more specific than “free hosting is bad”. It is about what happens when you stop being a student, and about the two things student options generally cannot do: run server-side code with a database, and give you an address that is yours.
What each one is actually for
| Option | Good for | Where it runs out |
|---|---|---|
| University web space | Coursework, assignments, anything marked | Tied to your student account. Usually disappears within months of graduating, along with every link to it. Rarely supports databases. |
| GitHub Pages / student pack | Static portfolios, project documentation, anything version-controlled | Static only — no PHP, no database, no server-side form handling. The free custom-domain support is good; the student benefits end when the student status does. |
| Free PHP hosting | Trying out a database-backed project with no budget | Adverts on some, subdomains you do not own on most, and CPU or inode limits that a real project hits quickly. |
| A cheap paid account | A portfolio and projects that keep working after graduation | It costs money, and the entry plan has real ceilings — here, 3GB and 100GB a month. |
Free for coursework, paid for permanence
The practical split most students end up at: university space for coursework, GitHub Pages for anything static, and one cheap account plus a domain for the portfolio. That last piece is the one worth paying for, because it is the one that has to survive.
A domain costs roughly £8 to £12 a year and is the actual asset — the hosting behind it can change any number of times without breaking a single link. Registering yourname.co.uk in your first year and pointing it at whatever you are hosting on today is the cheapest long-term decision available to you.
Four realistic uses
A dissertation or final-year project
If it uses PHP and MySQL, a cheap account is a genuinely good environment: phpMyAdmin for the database, real error logs when something breaks, and a live URL your supervisor can open. Take a backup from the panel before every major change — a lost final-year project is a category of disaster all of its own.
Creating a MySQL databaseA portfolio that outlives your login
Your own domain, a simple site, and a URL you can put on a CV without wondering whether it still resolves. Static HTML is enough; WordPress is fine too. The point is that nobody can switch it off because your enrolment ended.
Hosting for portfoliosLearning how deployment works
Building something locally and deploying it are different skills, and only one of them shows up in most courses. Getting files onto a server, pointing DNS, issuing a certificate and reading a log are the parts employers notice you can do.
Hosting for learningGroup projects and society sites
One account, several subdomains, separate FTP logins per person. A student society site with its own domain and email addresses looks considerably more credible than a social media page.
Creating an FTP accountOne thing to check first
Check what your course requires before you pay for anything. PHP, MySQL, Node.js and Python are available; Ruby and root access are not. If the module needs either, that is worth confirming against your assignment brief rather than discovering in week nine. The specification lists everything that is and is not supported.
What it costs, from day one
Nothing to pay for the first 30 days, and no card needed to start. After that, £0.99 a month if you decide to stay.
-
Today
£0
Create your account and get a complete hosting account. No card details are asked for.
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Days 1 to 30
£0
Build your site and use every feature. Nothing is charged during the free period.
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Day 31 onwards
£0.99/month
Only if you choose to continue. Pay the first monthly invoice and your hosting carries on unchanged.
No setup fee, no hidden charges and no price rise after the first year. A domain isn’t included: bring one you already own (how to connect it). How the 30 free days work
Simple web hosting for £0.99 a month
One plan with everything included. Your first 30 days are free with no card required, then it’s £0.99 a month if you choose to continue — with no setup fee and no price rise at renewal.
The hosting is self-managed through DirectAdmin, with a large knowledge base and an AI help desk that escalates to a person when needed. That’s how the price stays this low.
Traxio web hosting
- 3GB NVMe disk spaceIncluded
- 100GB bandwidth a monthIncluded
- DirectAdmin control panelIncluded
- Free SSL, issued and renewed automaticallyIncluded
- An email account on your own domainIncluded
- One-click WordPress and 400+ appsIncluded
- FTP, SFTP and a browser file managerIncluded
- A MySQL database with phpMyAdminIncluded
- PHP 7.4 to 8.3, switchable per domainIncluded
- Cron jobs and daily offsite backupsIncluded
First 30 days£0.00
Then, per month£0.99
No setup fee. No VAT or card fees added.
Student hosting questions
Keep reading
Hosting for Learning
What to practise on a real server, and why localhost is not enough.
Hosting for Portfolios
Permanence, image weight, and owning the URL on your CV.
PHP Hosting
The environment in detail: versions, databases, cron and logs.
Hosting vs Domain Name
Why the domain is the part that actually needs to be yours.
Try Traxio free for 30 days
Then £0.99 a month if you decide to stay. No card required to start.
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