Hosting for free WordPress development – .com

We are going to see how Pilvia works, a hosting that allows us to have as many WordPress development installations as we want for free.

Hostings to develop WordPress

There are several ways to have access to a hosting service to develop a website without paying anything until you launch it. This is the third option that we analyse.

You may also be interested in seeing the tutorial in which we see how to do it with the CDMon test platform, the tutorial , in which we see how to do it with Poopy, or you can even take a look at , in which we see how to do it on your own computer, without the need for hosting or Internet connection.

You already know that all these analyzes are neutral, and I don’t have any single affiliate link, I simply analyze them here because I think they can be useful to you. So if there is any service or tool that you think is interesting and you want me to review or make a video of it, let me know 🙂

In all cases the objective is the same: Create, install and configure a WordPress that we have in development, without depending on or paying for hosting while we are setting it up.

We are going to see it step by step in real time so that you get an idea of ​​how easy and fast it is to build a WordPress installation, share it, and even clone it.

Easy right? It is true that there are alternatives to this type of hosting, but in this case it is so easy, simple and direct, that I consider it to be one of the best options. Let’s analyze it point by point.

Development in WordPress with Pilvia

So we are going to analyze this third option called , which allows us to have an account with all the facilities we want, without limits, without payments, without expirations, in a subdomain.

And once we have everything ready, we can use your hosting (which is mounted on Google Cloud)or export it with a Duplicator-style plugin and import it to the hosting we want.

The first thing we have to do is create an account. As we will see, everything is mounted on Google, including the registration and identification process. This is very comfortable, because we do not even need to think of a password, just indicate your email in Google:

Then Google will ask us if we want to give permission to Pilvia, and with a simple click we will access the simple (but powerful) control Panel.

Initially it is empty, since we don’t have any website under test, but if we go to “new site” or simply by clicking the “+ New” button, a modal window will appear in which we can choose the subdomain we want to use.

Interestingly, we see a checkbox that allows us to don’t install wordpress on that website if we want it, although it is selected by default. In this case, it is not very useful, but perhaps on some occasions you prefer it that way to install what you want with its stack of PHP7, Nginx, and MariaDB.

Setting up a WordPress in Pilvia

Then we leave the hosting theme and go to the WordPress configuration itself. They ask us for the web title, email, administrator user and password.

And that’s it! With this, our website will appear in the control panel, in which we can see the following options:

Basically we have everything we could want to develop WordPress on a test server:

• Domain management: To (optionally) hire hosting and associate it with a domain.
• SFTP: Access data to the secure FTP server.
• MySQL: Access data to the database. (Here the course of , in case you want to know more).
• phpMyAdmin: Access to the database. (Here the in case you want to know more).
• Manage plugins: To activate or deactivate installation plugins.
• Replace urls: To replace development URLs with production ones.
• clone site: To make a copy of the web in another subdomain.
• WP Admin: Direct access to the WordPRess control panel.
• Live: To open the web to the public in the domain that we have associated with it.

The “Live” option It’s not necesary to have the web visible. We can work and share without any problem. We will use it only in the case that we want to have our own domain and hire Pilvia hosting.

These installations are unlimited, do not expire and are free. I’ve been reviewing everything, and they are fully functional, with no limits in terms of plugin installation, code, etc. The only thing to keep in mind is that they use Nginx instead of Apache, so we won’t be able to use the .htaccess file.

User Management

Another option that they offer is user management, very comfortable in the case of being a team or company:

We simply go to “Users” and there we click on “+ New user”, and that’s it. We indicate the email and we will receive an invitation to access the account.

It is important to note that in order to access it you should have a Gmail account or one associated with Google, since as we have seen, the registration and authentication process is through Google Accounts.

Once that person has accepted and identified himself, he will appear in the list of users, and if at any time we want, we can delete him with the “Remove” option that appears on the right:

In the event that the user we added already has an account in Pilvia, a new option will appear in his control panel, so that he can choose the account he wants to use at all times. In this way, teams and projects are not mixed.

Here, for example, I have given access to a Gmail user who already had his own account, and we see how we can toggle both:

It is important to note that “guest” users have the same privileges as the team owner, except for the “Users” and “Billing” options, to which only the main administrator has access.

Summary and conclusion

Pilvia is a specialized WordPress hosting that allows us to use its technology for free as a testing platform to create and develop our projects, share them or clone them.

Through a simple account we can create as many WordPress as we want and manage them from a single access. It also allows us both to give access to other users, and to be part of various teams.

In short, a very interesting and complete alternative to develop or test WordPress, export it to another hosting, or stay with them.

And here is the tutorial! You already know that if you want to learn more about WordPress, I recommend the courses, in which you have at your disposal 🙂