Try everything for 14 days, without handing over a card.
A real 14-day trial, not a refund window. No card, nothing to cancel, and a free address so you can have something running before you have bought a domain.
14 days free. No credit card. No commitment.
No card
Nothing to cancel
Same price
On renewal, every year
99.99%
Uptime, last 12 mo
Daily
Backups kept up to 30 days
210+
Tasks Ellie handles
No card
A trial, not a refund window
The difference between a trial and a refund window is which of us is holding the risk for the first two weeks.
Most "free trials" in hosting are money-back guarantees
You pay up front, and if you change your mind you ask for it back and wait for the refund. That is a return policy with a friendlier name, and it puts the risk on you.
This one takes no payment method at all. There is no card on file, so there is nothing to cancel, nothing to forget to cancel, and no way to be charged by mistake. After 14 days the account stops unless you choose to continue it.
What you get
The real platform, at a smaller size
The resource limits are smaller than a paid plan. The software is not - the same security stack, backups, deployment and server access run on every trial account.
A working site address immediately
Claim a free hostney.cloud address from the panel and it is live in seconds, with SSL already on it. No domain purchase, no DNS to point, nothing to wait for.
WordPress in one click
Install WordPress, or Drupal, and get staging, WP-CLI and automatic updates with it. If you already have a WordPress site elsewhere, the migration is free and runs during the trial.
Deploy from Git
Push a React, Vue or Angular build straight from your repository, or run one server-rendered app - Next.js, Nuxt, Django, Rails - in its own container.
The security stack, not a trimmed one
Real-time malware protection, the web application firewall and behavioural bot protection all run on trial accounts exactly as they do on paid ones.
Daily backups you can restore
Backups run every day and you can restore, download or browse the last 7 days of them. You can also send a copy to your own S3-compatible bucket.
Real server access
SSH and a browser terminal, a file manager, cron jobs, the PHP version selector, DNS with DNSSEC, and live access and error logs.
The limits
What you are working with, and what is switched off
Two things are genuinely off during the trial. We would rather list them here than let you find out halfway through building something.
Your allowance on the trial
- 1 website
- 1 GB storage
- 2 MySQL databases
- Around 5,000 visits a month
- 100,000 inodes (files and folders)
- 1 FTP user
Not included on the trial
- Email hosting. The trial has no mailboxes, so webmail, IMAP, SMTP and encrypted messages are all off. Email starts on the Startup plan.
- Object caching. Memcached and Redis are both off on trial. Nginx page caching is on, which is what most sites feel.
How it works
From signing up to being live
Five steps, and not one of them asks you to buy a domain first.
Sign up
Pick the Trial plan. No card, no billing details, and nothing to cancel later - the trial simply ends on its own after 14 days.
Claim your free starter address
On the Add domain page, choose "Get my free starter site". You get a name like happy-otter.hostney.cloud, already served over HTTPS. It is yours permanently and it does not use up your website allowance.
Build something
Install WordPress, deploy from Git, or have us migrate an existing site across. Everything runs on the starter address while you work, so nothing on your live site is touched.
Connect your own domain when you are ready
Add your domain in the panel and verify it. Your files stay exactly where they are - see the section below for the one step that connects the two.
Upgrade, or do nothing
We email you on day 7 and again the day before the end. Upgrade and the same account carries straight on with nothing to move. Do nothing and the account is suspended at day 14 - you are never charged, because we never took a card.
Starter address
You do not need a domain to start
Every account can claim a free address that is live the moment you claim it, so you can build something before you have bought anything.
The usual way a hosting trial dies is the DNS wall. You sign up, you are asked for a domain you have not bought yet, or you are asked to point nameservers at a server with nothing on it, and you close the tab.
So every account can claim a free address on hostney.cloud - a name like happy-otter.hostney.cloud - from the Add domain page in the panel. It is live within seconds of claiming it, served over HTTPS with a certificate already in place, and there is no DNS for you to configure because we host the whole zone.
It is permanent and per account, not a temporary preview URL that expires with the trial. It does not count against your website allowance, and it keeps working after you connect a real domain, which makes it a useful place to keep testing things.
- Claimed from the panel in one click, not requested through support
- HTTPS working from the moment it exists
- No DNS records to create, point or wait for
- Yours permanently, and it does not use a website slot
Going live
Moving onto your own domain
Add your domain, verify it, and point it at the site you have already built.
When you are ready to use your own domain, add it in the panel and verify it the usual way. Then point it at the site you have already built, and it serves the same files straight away.
Nothing is copied and nothing is rebuilt. The account, the database and whatever you installed all stay exactly as they are, which is why there is no downtime and no second setup to do. Your starter address keeps working alongside your real domain, so it stays useful as somewhere to test things.
- The same files serve both addresses - nothing is moved
- No downtime, because nothing is being rebuilt
- Your database and installed apps are untouched
- The starter address keeps working after you go live
Afterwards
What it costs if you stay
Upgrade at any point during the trial and the same account carries on - nothing to move, no downtime, and no second setup.
Startup
Great for growing businesses
$94.99 billed annually
- 1 website
- 10 GB storage
- ~10,000 visits/month
- 5 MySQL databases
- 250,000 inodes
- 5 FTP users
What's included:
SSL & Domain
- Free SSL certificate
- Free starter domain
- 2 mailboxes
- 3 GB per mailbox
- Webmail, IMAP and SMTP
Advanced
For professional websites
$179.99 billed annually
- 5 websites
- 20 GB storage
- ~110,000 visits/month
- 10 MySQL databases
- 500,000 inodes
- 10 FTP users
Everything in Startup, plus:
- 5 mailboxes
- 5 GB per mailbox
Backups
- 14 days of backup history
Performance
- Memcached object cache
- Redis object cache
Pro
Maximum performance and features
$274.99 billed annually
- 10 websites
- 40 GB storage
- ~200,000 visits/month
- 20 MySQL databases
- 750,000 inodes
- 20 FTP users
Everything in Advanced, plus:
- 10 mailboxes
- 10 GB per mailbox
Deployment
- 2 SSR applications
Backups
- 30 days of backup history
Monitoring
- 1 minute between checks
Get started
Have something running in the next ten minutes
A free address, WordPress in one click, and the same security stack everyone else here runs.
14 days, no credit card, nothing to cancel.
Questions