Most people think "cheap hosting" means "WordPress only." Not true. Your 97cents.net plan includes a full control panel, Softaculous (450+ one-click apps), PHP, MySQL, and email. That's a surprisingly capable toolkit for 97 cents a month. Here are 10 things you can host right now.
1. A Static Business Website
Not every site needs a CMS. If your business just needs a home page, about, services, and contact, a few hand-coded HTML files (or a free HTML template) use less than 5MB and load blazingly fast. No database, no updates, no security patches — just pure speed.
2. A WordPress Blog
The obvious one. WordPress installs in one click via Softaculous, uses about 23MB, and powers everything from personal blogs to full business websites. With thousands of free themes and plugins, you can build almost anything.
3. A Professional Email Address
You get 10 email addresses on your domain. That's you@yourdomain.com, info@, sales@, support@, billing@ — enough for a small team. Connect to Outlook, Apple Mail, or your phone. See our email setup guide for step-by-step instructions.
4. A Portfolio or CV Site
A clean, one-page portfolio showing your work, skills, and contact info is perfect for freelancers, creatives, and job seekers. Use a free HTML template, a WordPress portfolio theme, or even a GitHub Pages-style static site. Total size: 2–10MB.
5. A phpBB or MyBB Forum
Running a community or support forum? Both phpBB and MyBB are available via Softaculous and run fine on 197MB. A small community forum with a few hundred members uses less than 50MB of disk space.
6. A Link-in-Bio Page
Instead of paying for Linktree or similar services, host your own link page on your domain. A single HTML file with your links, styled to match your brand. Free, ad-free, and you own it.
7. A Landing Page with a Contact Form
Launching a product or building an email list? A single landing page with a contact form (PHP mail or a free form service) uses almost no space and is perfect for testing business ideas before committing to a full site.
8. A Ghost or Joomla CMS
WordPress isn't the only CMS. Softaculous offers Joomla, Drupal, Ghost, Grav, and more. Ghost is a great lightweight blogging platform. Joomla is excellent for more complex sites. All install in one click and run within your 197MB.
9. A Development or Staging Site
Building a new website? Use your 97cents.net account as a staging environment — install WordPress, build your site, test everything, then push it live elsewhere (or keep it here if it fits). At $0.97/month, it's cheaper than any staging SaaS.
10. A phpMyAdmin Database Frontend
Your plan includes MySQL databases and phpMyAdmin. If you're learning web development, you can build simple PHP applications, connect them to a MySQL database, and manage everything through phpMyAdmin — a full dev environment for under a dollar.
Bonus: Host Multiple of These at Once
You don't have to pick just one. You could have a WordPress business site (~40MB) plus 10 email addresses (~30MB) plus a static landing page for a side project (~2MB) — all well within your 197MB. The beauty of a full hosting account is flexibility.
What Can't You Host on 97cents?
Being honest: large e-commerce stores with thousands of products, media-heavy sites with gigabytes of video/audio, high-traffic sites pulling 10GB+ bandwidth per month, or apps that need root server access. For those, our sister brand Watt Hosting has bigger plans. We'll always tell you if you need to upgrade.
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