Free trial
Combine filters →A trial is time-boxed or quota-boxed access to the real product, which makes it more informative than a free tier and less useful for anything that has to keep running. The questions worth asking are whether a card is required to start and what happens at the end — a trial that converts silently into a paid plan is a common and legal arrangement.
29 providers offer a free trial rather than a free tier, listed alphabetically. Mostly platform as a service, shared hosting and containers as a service, of 9 categories in all. 22 records do not record this field, and cannot appear here either way.
A
- Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba Cloud provides infrastructure, platform and serverless services spanning 32 regions with support for Linux, Windows, containers and multiple runtimes.
- ALL-INKL.COM
Owner-run German shared hosting and managed server provider operating from Friedersdorf in Saxony, with data centres in Dresden.
B
- Baseten
AI inference platform offering token-priced model APIs and dedicated GPU deployments of customers' own models, billed per minute and able to scale to zero.
C
- Civo
British Kubernetes-first cloud that charges for worker nodes only, with control planes included and data transfer unmetered.
- Clever Cloud
French platform-as-a-service that detects, builds and runs an application from a git push, with managed databases and storage sold as add-ons.
D
- Diploi
Finnish platform that puts a cloud development environment and the hosting for the same application in one place, billed by the hour it runs.
- Divio
Divio is a Swiss platform-as-a-service that runs Dockerised applications of any stack, deployed from git.
- Duda
Duda is a website builder focused on agencies that manage multiple client sites.
E
- EvenNode
Managed hosting platform that deploys Node.js and Python applications by git push or FTP.
F
- fortrabbitOne we like
Managed hosting platform for developers since 2012, runs on AWS capacity in Ireland and the US.
- Framer
A visual website builder that hosts and publishes what it designs, with a built-in content model.
H
- HostimOne we like
Hostim is a Docker-first platform-as-a-service from Germany, deploying container images, Git repositories and Compose files onto bare metal in the EU.
L
- Laravel Cloud
Laravel Cloud is the official platform by Laravel Holdings — managed, scale-to-zero hosting for Laravel and Symfony applications, billed by subscription plus usage.
- Lolipop!
Japanese rental server from GMO Pepabo, selling shared hosting for personal and small-business sites through its own control panel.
- lowcloud
A Bielefeld startup that runs an application as a managed container in Germany, or operates Kubernetes inside the customer's own cloud account.
M
- Mittwald
German managed hosting platform with per-project containers, a control plane called mStudio, an official CLI and a public REST API.
N
- NearlyFreeSpeech.NETOne we like
Shared hosting metered by what a site consumes rather than sold by the plan.
P
- Ploi CloudOne we like
Managed application platform from the team behind the Ploi server-management panel, running customer apps on rented UpCloud infrastructure.
S
- Scalingo
French platform-as-a-service with git-push deploys, buildpacks, managed databases and review apps, running only in French regions.
- Shopify
Shopify is a hosted ecommerce platform with a storefront builder and integrated checkout, sold as fixed monthly tiers plus a per-transaction card rate.
- Sliplane
German Docker hosting that bills for the server rather than the container, so unlimited services can share one machine, with managed Postgres and S3 storage.
- Squarespace
Squarespace is a design-focused website builder that combines templates, hosting, and content tools.
U
- UberspaceOne we like
Uberspace is a small German hosting service sitting between shared hosting and a VPS, running since 2011, with a shell account and a documented stack.
- Umbler
Brazilian host selling per-application PHP hosting billed by the hour from account credit, with git deploys and one-click CMS installs.
- Upsun
Upsun is the PaaS formerly known as Platform.sh. Projects are described in YAML and billed per resource, on top of a per-project and per-user fee.
W
X
- Xserver
Japanese rental server company selling managed shared hosting, with WordPress tooling, automatic backups and free SSL included across the range.
Z
- ZeropsOne we like
Czech container platform running applications and managed services on rented infrastructure in Prague, billed by resources consumed rather than by plan tier.
Which of these providers is best?
Hard to say without knowing the project. A free tier matters for a side project and barely at all for a shop that loses money every minute it is down. Read a few records side by side; the guide says where to start.