Best Free SSL Hosting Providers

Looking for a free SSL hosting provider? An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate makes your website secure. It means that your website visitor’s data is kept private, such as their payment details, personal information, etc. If you’re planning on selling products on your website or storing sensitive data, an SSL is absolutely essential.

Not only does an SSL protect your visitors, it means your website will rank higher with search engines like Google.

SSL certificates range in price, however, you can also obtain them for free. Everyone likes things for free (I certainly do)!

Many web hosts include SSL certificates for free in their pricing plans. They understand how important they are, so it’s a great way for them to get customers, as well as you getting what you want – bonus all round.

We’ve spent a long time investigating the best FREE SSL hosting providers so you don’t have to. Let’s take a look at what we found…

Overview of the Best Free SSL Providers

So we know SSL certificates are an essential part of your website.

When someone visits your website, a secure link is created between your website visitor and the webserver. Any data that’s passed between them is encrypted, which means it’s protected and secure. Anyone that logs into your website, makes a transaction or submits any data that will be secured from hackers.

Before we look at each hosting provider that provides a free SSL certificate, let’s take a look at a quick overview of them below:

Hosting Provider	Free SSL Certificate	Cheapest Price
Hostinger	✔	£2.59/mo
BlueHost	✔	£2.23/mo
HostGator	✔	£3.25/mo
InMotion	✔	£4.95/mo
A2Hosting	✔	£3.03/mo
SiteGround	✔	£2.95/mo
GoDaddy	✔	£6.99/mo
iPage	✔	£1.50/mo
DreamHost	✔	£2.01/mo
WPEngine	✔	£19.38/mo

#1: Hostinger (Best Free Unlimited SSL Hosting Provider)

 

Pros	Cons
✔ Free unlimited SSL certificate with all pricing plans	✖ Renewal price is hiked up
✔ Affordable web hosting from £2.59 per month
✔ 24/7/365 chat support

Hostinger claims to be the best cheap web hosting provider. It’s hard to deny this when their plans start from £2.59 per month! They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee as well as 1-click installs for WordPress.

If you’re planning on hosting a WordPress site, you can be reassured that your website will see fast speeds as Hostinger have a custom-built WP optimization stack and LiteSpeed cache. All of their plans include a FREE unlimited SSL certificate to keep you and your website visitors secure.

Hostinger plans include a free domain name too, so for £2.59 per month, your website and web hosting journey can get going with a bang. Should you encounter any issues, their live chat service is on hand 24/7/365.

Visit Hostinger.co.uk (£2.59p/Month)

Get an additional 10% by using our code UKWEBHOST.

#2: BlueHost (Best for WordPress Hosting)

Pros	Cons
✔ Free SSL certificate with all pricing plans	✖ Add-ons and extras during checkout must be deselected if you don’t want them
✔ Free domain name included for the 1st year	✖ Initial term is 36-months
✔ Recommended by WordPress

BlueHost is rated as the number one recommended host by WordPress. If you’re hosting a WordPress website, you can’t go too far wrong with BlueHost, with prices starting from just £2.23 per month.

BlueHost powers more than 2 million websites across the globe and they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. In my own personal experience, BlueHost stands out for their customer support, uptime and performance. In fact, I experienced 100% uptime on my website hosted with BlueHost.

If you sign up for a plan with BlueHost, you’ll get a FREE SSL certificate with Let’s Encrypt. What’s more, if you’re not a web developer, there’s no need to panic. Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates should be automatically installed on your website with BlueHost.

Visit BlueHost.com (£2.23/Month)

#3: HostGator (Best for Powerful Web Hosting)

Pros	Cons
✔ Uptime guarantee of 99.99%	✖ More expensive compared to other web hosts
✔ Includes free site transfer for cPanel and WordPress	✖ Renewal prices are a lot more expensive
✔ Free SSL certificate and domain included

HostGator offers powerful web hosting with a 99.99% uptime guarantee. All of their pricing plans include a FREE SSL certificate to keep your website protected. If you sign up to their business plan, you’ll get a free upgrade to Positive SSL.

With HostGator, you can upgrade your SSL certificate if you want, however, their standard SSL should be more than sufficient. Their extra SSL certificates include (at a yearly cost):

• Positive SSL (£15.88)
• Multi-Domain SSL (£63.54)
• Extended Validation (EV) SSL (£214.46)

Whilst HostGator isn’t the cheapest web host around, they do offer some pretty decent features for the price. All plans include 24/7 live support, unmetered disk space and bandwidth, and instant backups.

Visit HostGator.com (£3.25/Month)

#4: InMotion Hosting (Best for VPS Hosting)

Pros	Cons
✔ Powerful shared and VPS hosting	✖ More expensive compared to other web hosts
✔ Offers a 9o-day money-back guarantee
✔ Free SSL certificate

InMotion is more expensive than other web hosts, but their features and performance pack a serious punch. All of their pricing plans include a FREE SSL certificate as well as unlimited disk space, bandwidth and email accounts.

When you pay a little more with InMotion, you get a lot more in return. InMotion offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, so they make a suitable shared hosting provider. If you’re looking to sell online, you may want to consider a host that guarantees 99.99% uptime.

InMotion is an outstanding web host if you’re looking for VPS hosting. Their managed VPS plans include a free SSL which is called AutoSSL. When you login to your cPanel, you’ll be able to scan all of your websites hosted with InMotion to ensure SSL certificates are applied and automatically renewed.

Visit InMotionHosting.com (£4.95/Month)

#5: A2 Hosting (Best Money-back Guarantee)

Pros	Cons
✔ Anytime money-back guarantee	✖ Doesn’t include a free domain name
✔ Multiple server locations worldwide
✔ Free SSL certificate

If you’re looking for hassle-free hosting, A2Hosting can offer just that. Its shared pricing plans include a FREE SSL certificate with Let’s Encrypt. You won’t have to install the SSL yourself as this is done automatically by the web host.

A2Hosting’s anytime money-back guarantee means you can host your website with reassurance. If anything does go wrong, their awesome customer service team are on hand to help. However, if you’re not enjoying your experience, you won’t lose out financially.

Like many other web hosts, A2Hosting offers additional SSL certificates at a yearly price, including the following:

• Single Site SSL (£39.66)
• Premium SSL (£79.37)
• Wildcard SSL (£119.07)
• Advanced SSL (£158)

Visit A2Hosting.co.uk (£3.03/Month)

#6: SiteGround (Best for Performance)

Pros	Cons
✔ Reliable and powerful web hosting (my personal favourite)	✖ Not the cheapest hosting available
✔ Recommended by WordPress
✔ Free SSL certificate

SiteGround is one of my favourite web hosts. They offer some of the most reliable web hosting I’ve come across, as well as being recommended by WordPress. In my SiteGround review, you’ll see that I’ve experienced 100% uptime with them, as well as fast response times.

All of SiteGround’s hosting plans include a FREE SSL certificate by Let’s Encrypt. Their plans aren’t the cheapest around, but starting at £2.95 per month, I promise you they offer some very good features compared to other hosts.

If you want to upgrade your SSL certificate, SiteGround offers the following on a yearly basis:

• Premium Wildcard (£70) (ideal for medium-sized websites)
• Premium SSL (£320) (ideal for large websites)

All of SiteGround’s SSLs are installed for free and include 256-bit Encryption, mobile compatibility, and browser compatibility.

Visit SiteGround.com (£2.95/Month)

#7: GoDaddy (Best for Scalability)

Pros	Cons
✔ Free domain name included on every annual plan	✖ Free SSL only available on Ultimate and Maximum plans
✔ Scalable hosting with 1-click upgrades
✔ 24/7 monitoring and DDoS protection

GoDaddy is well-known for being a domain name provider, but it also offers a range of web hosting products. It’s not as advanced as it’s competitors, but it does offer reliable web hosting from just £2.99 per month, including a free domain name.

My main issue with GoDaddy is that it only offers a FREE SSL certificate on its Ultimate and Maximum plans which cost £6.99 and £9.99 per month. When you consider other web hosts include this for free, some from just 80p per month, it does make you wonder why you’d choose GoDaddy over other hosts.

However, GoDaddy does include some powerful features across its pricing plans. For example, all plans include a free domain name, unlimited bandwidth and generous storage, and additional resources. If you feel your CPU or RAM requires an upgrade, you can scale up your plan at the click of a button.

Visit GoDaddy.com (£2.99/Month)

#8: iPage (Best for Personal websites)

Pros	Cons
✔ Very affordable pricing from just £1.50 per month	✖ Not the best uptime
✔ Free SSL certificate included	✖ Server speeds are slow compared to other hosts
✔ Free website builder

iPage offers affordable web hosting from just £1.50 per month. It’s a great web host if you’re starting your first website, or you’re hosting a personal website or blog. It doesn’t boast the best uptime or server speeds around, but it is very cheap for beginners.

iPage only offers one shared hosting plan to keep things simple. This plan includes a FREE SSL certificate and a 30-day money-back guarantee. iPage throws in quite a few free extras too, like a domain name, SiteLock for security scans, a website builder, and free WordPress building tools.

If you want to upgrade your SSL certificate with iPage, they also offer the following features at a cost:

• Protection & Help Google Rankings (£35.99 per year or £71.99 for 2 years)
• Protect Multiple Subdomains (£107.99 per year or £215.98 for 2 years)
• E-commerce Protection (£269.99 per year or £539.99 for 2 years)

All three of these SSL certificates include the Seal of Trust logo but only the Wildcard SSL will protect multiple subdomains.

Visit iPage.com (£1.50/Month)

#9: DreamHost (Best for Free Features)

Pros	Cons
✔ Recommended by WordPress	✖ Expensive shared hosting plans
✔ Free SSL certificate included	✖ Customer service isn’t as good as other web hosts
✔ Fast SSD storage

DreamHost offers shared hosting from just £2.01 per month, with a lot of free features included. It’s recommended by WordPress and includes a free domain name, FREE SSL certificate, SSD storage and is optimised for WordPress.

It’s one of the few web hosts that offer a 100% uptime guarantee. For a lot of people, this makes the extra cost worthwhile, and for me, I’d say it’s great for medium to large businesses who know what they’re doing.

If you’re not looking for great customer support but you do want powerful performance, DreamHost ticks those boxes. Its support isn’t poor as such, but it’s not the best, so I wouldn’t recommend them for beginners.

Visit DreamHost.com (£2.01/Month)

#10: WPEngine

Pros	Cons
✔ Advanced features and tools	✖ Very expensive plans
✔ Free automated SSL certificates on all plans
✔ Ideal for WordPress users

WPEngine is designed for WordPress users who mean serious business. If you pay annually, their cheapest plan works out at £19.38 per month, but it does include an automatically applied SSL certificate for FREE.

As I said, WPEngine is recommended for WordPress users and includes 35+ StudioPress Themes for free. You’ll also get a global CDN, 24/7 support, EverCache, and page performance. Whilst these tools and features might not make a lot of sense, they’re designed to give you the most optimal WordPress experience.

If you want to add additional SSL certificates to your WPEngine website, you can do so on the Growth, Scale and Custom plans. Their StartUp plan is most suited to those with no more than 25,000 visits per month (personal websites and blogs), whereas their Growth plan limits up to 100,000 website visitors.

Visit WPEngine.co.uk (£19.38/Month)