Web hosts

000Webhost

I'm including this strictly to tell you not to use 000Webhost. Websites hosted with them are notoriously unreliable, the control panel is buggy, they include watermarks on websites now... it's bad. Don't use it.

AwardSpace

AwardSpace offers free hosting in addition to paid plans. The free plan is decent, although a glaring problem for me is the lack of SSI support. It does support PHP, so if you want to use PHP, the lack of SSI might not be a problem. The paid plans are fairly affordable - I included the most basic one here, and it'll be more than sufficient for some people. The next plans up charge $6.65 and $9.99 per month. The paid plans do have SSI support.

Byethost

Byethost is a venerable player in the free hosting space. I knew people who used it when I had my first website, and I haven't heard any major complaints about it (take that with a grain of salt because it's been... a long time). But it's free, so you don't have anything to lose by trying it out. They also offer paid hosting, which I don't know anything about. I can tell you the pricing isn't too bad. In addition to the plans listed here, there's an unlimited plan that charges $7.99 a month ($6.99 if you bill annually).

Dreamhost

Dreamhost is very commonly used by both hobbyist and professional websites. The pricing is great for what you get. I haven't heard anything bad about it.

FC2

FC2 is a Japanese free web hosting service that is marketed towards beginners. As a result, it's not particularly feature-dense and only supports static HTML. It's a good starter option, but mid-level hobbyists will feel extremely limited by it.

GoDaddy

I've used GoDaddy before, albeit a very long time ago. It's fine, but it's really expensive compared to similar plans from other services, so I don't recommend it. I'm including it here because they run a lot of ads, and you may have seen them at some point. (Their domains are also on the expensive side, so I don't recommend using them as a domain registrar either.)

Leprd

Leprd is a hobbyist web hosting service owned by another web hobbyist. This is enforced, but their list of allowed websites includes every brand of hobby website you could think of, so that's not an issue. Pricing isn't being displayed on the website at the moment, so I have no idea how much the paid plans cost. There's a lower-tier paid plan with about half of the space as the top-tier plan.

Leprd is currently not taking new websites, but it's here for reference (and I'll update this listing if anything changes).

Namecheap

Namecheap offers hosting in addition to domains. They're my domain registrar and it's been fine, so maybe the hosting is also fine. It's very affordable, even if you decide to pay monthly, which is rare (but I would recommend switching to a yearly plan ASAP for the bulk discount if you like it).

Nearly Free Speech

Nearly Free Speech can be an affordable option for small websites because of its unique pricing structure - you pay only for what you use. This is accomplished by depositing money into your account, which the service takes from as you use resources. You need to monitor your account to keep your website online, but the upside is that you can stop paying without wasting much (if any) money if you decide you're done with it. If you don't want to buy a domain, you can still use their service and access your website under a subdomain (.nfshost.com). Something to keep in mind is that the prices listed are per website (even subdomains), so NFS isn't for you if you like to have a bazillion websites. They also only offer email forwarding, so you can't use it to send emails from your domain.

I wouldn't recommend using NFS if you're a beginner, unless you're willing to learn a whole lot of new and potentially complicated stuff very quickly. At minimum, you need to be comfortable using SFTP to transfer your files. (You really should be using SFTP anyway, but...)

Neocities

Neocities is a free web host (with a paid option) marketed towards beginners. It only supports static HTML. It's a good starter option, but it's incredibly limiting for even mid-level hobbyists. If you're looking into upgrading to the paid plan, my advice to you is this: don't. It's far too expensive for the little that you get. Do not be fooled by the big numbers. The only good thing is that it's billed monthly. I wrote more extensively about my thoughts on Neocities as a whole in a blog post.

A unique (and polarizing) feature is the social networking interface, which allows you to follow and comment on other websites. You can turn this feature off if you don't want to use it. Some people (including me) use their Neocities page solely to redirect to their real website, which is an option if you'd like to participate in the community or get more exposure without actually using the hosting service.

Teacake

Teacake is my current host. It's owned by one person, who bought a reseller plan with the intent of selling affordable plans to hobbyist website owners. The numbers aren't as sexy as some of the other options here, but it's more than enough for me, which is why I went with it over a more expensive plan from somewhere else. There's also a $2/month plan whose specs are more or less in the midpoint of the free and $3 plans.

Teacake isn't taking new websites at the moment, but it's here for reference (and I'll update this listing if anything changes).