Is Free Web Hosting a Valid Option?
We all like to get something for nothing and free web hosting may be tempting. But as in many situations free doesn’t mean that it is good. In fact in some instances free can mean bad.
Free stuff that lacks quality can often be detrimental to what you are trying to achieve. So when considering whether free web hosting is worth it then there are several things you need to consider.
No Free Lunches!
All web hosting companies that offer a free hosting service obviously will not make any money from you because there isn’t any income from you. So why do they bother to provide the free hosting and how will they make any money from what they do and why should you care.
In reality there is always a price to pay for something that is free. There are no free lunches on the Internet!
Why is Free Web Hosting available?
Often free web hosting is offered by a company that is doing a promotion to attract new business. They offer the free hosting so that they can demonstrate how good they are at what they do. In time they may start to charge the customers they get in these promotions to make up for the free loss leader initially offered. So in the end you will pay anyway and it may be more than taking out cheap web hosting in the first place.
A lot of free website hosting is offered by companies that are not real web hosts that offer web server accounts for web sites or blogs. Big companies like Yahoo, Google’s Blogger, Wordpress and many others provide an adequate amount of disk space and your own site or blog on their servers for free.
The Problems with Free Web Hosts
On these free sites you are free to do what you want with it but be aware that if you promote products too obviously or they find that the load you put on their servers becomes too much you can run the risk of being be banned or shut down.
This is a great example of the more obvious downsides of free web hosting and that is that resources can be limited and restrictive.
Disk Space Restrictions
In most cases free hosting sites will provide a relatively small amount of disk space for you to use. It is usually enough to host a few dozen pages or so, but if you have a very active site you will find that you can quickly run out of room and this will give you a problem.
Bandwidth Limitations
A much more serious restriction and limit is the load you are allowed to apply to your free hosting account.
All free web hosting accounts will place strict limitations on the amount of bandwidth you are allowed to use and will monitor closely what you do.
If your site becomes popular and develops into a well visited site then a high volume of users visiting your server you may be asked to close your account or more often you will simply be blocked for the rest of the current month until you allocation for the next month begins again.
This is not good for your website or blog which will basically be closed down for the rest of the month and is just about the worst scenario you can have as a website owner. You really don’t want to go there!
Or, you may be permitted a certain quantity of total bandwidth use per month. Once it’s reached, no one else can reach your site until the beginning of a new month.
Shared Resources
Also you will be sharing the web server and related equipment with hundreds or thousands of other web sites or blogs. Unfortunately the load they put on the server you are using can affect the performance of your web site.
If this bad performance persists you will want to move your site to a different web host and transferring an established web site or blog brings with it many complicated issues that you really will want to avoid. Just do not get in to this sort of situation in the first place.
Technical Support
Another issue you may find with free web hosting is the lack of good support, whether form a technical or customer service point of view.
When you pay for hosting you normally get a level of support that is at least adequate to solve any problems you might have. Many things can happen such as requiring a backup for a disaster recovery, whether due to hacker or web server failure or help and technical assistance during connection problems. If you have free site hosting then you usually will not get this type of support.
You might not have this problem if you have a very small site as you can make your own copies of everything on your own computer and simply recover everything yourself but this can be a pain and requires some basic technical skills.
Email Addresses
Free hosting may come with a couple of email addresses for administration and other simple tasks but if you need more than that then you will need to seek a different hosting option. Also the email service you get may not be protected against spam attacks or give you virus scanning and these days this can become a big issue with any web site.
Mandatory Advertising
However you may find that the free hosting you are considering has a more serious limitation which has nothing to do with technical issues. Many free web hosting services will require that your site has to show some form of advertising from the free host company.
Whether you want to go this route is your choice to make and you may be alright with this but it makes your site look cheap and the content of the ads may not be what you want to see on your site. However if you are just starting out and want to use a free hosting account as a playpen for experimentation and learning before committing to a paid service then it might be what you are looking for.
Conclusion
If you plan to grow your website or blog at any time in the future then you should consider paid web hosting in the first place because you will always get what you pay for and in order to get what you want you will probably be better served in the long run by paying for it.
So if you are even a little serious about what you get from your web host then consider cheap web hosting as the best way to go. Today you can get great deals and amazing value for money that even includes more than adequate resources with expert technical support and professional customer service.
If you choose a web host company like Hostgator then you will find that your will get excellent support, the capacities you need and all at an affordable price too.
So stay away from free hosting as it could end up giving you just too many problems and to be honest it just isn’t worth the hassle!
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