The Good and Bad of Free Web Hosting Plans
Written on November 28, 2009 – 2:21 pm | by Bob Martindale
What is the difference between shared (paid) web hosting and free web hosting? This is an important question for those who are interested in setting up web sites. Whether just for blogging or promoting a cause, or trying to make money with a business, the type of hosting you choose can make a big difference in your site and the reaction of your visitors. Just setting up shop on a free social site like Facebook isn’t always a great idea.
When you post anything on social sites like Facebook, you are in essence creating a web page that is all about you, but subject to the rules and regulations of the site. If they decide one day they don’t like what you have posted, or make a major change to the site guidelines, your work can go right down the drain. Owning and posting to your own site avoids this.
With the price of paid hosting down to reasonable levels, it makes sense now to consider it. You can register a domain for under $10 a year, and set up paid hosting for about the same amount per month. These paid packages have plenty of disk space and bandwidth allowance for most average webmasters, usually with room for multiple sites if you’re inclined to create them.
Even with pay by the month hosting being so cheap, some folks still like the idea of free web hosting. If your site is small, strictly for fun, and you wouldn’t mind if it went away suddenly then free hosting might be okay for you. If your intention is to promote any business or sell anything, free hosting isn’t a good idea.
Looking at the bright side, free web hosting doesn’t cost a dime and there is no commitment. It isn’t all wonderful, though, because somebody somewhere has to pay for it.
Free hosts typically run advertisements on your site, and you have no control over this. While your page will still be there, the advertising all around can make it look bad. It just isn’t attractive.
It isn’t unusual for pop ups to be a problem on free sites. Pop up blockers don’t get them all, and they can be a nuisance to your site visitors.
You will have pretty serious limits on how much bandwidth you can use, so don’t plan on putting up a lot of videos or other heavy multimedia content.
You can’t use your own domain with free hosting. Typically, your web address will be something along the lines of: bobjones.freehostingprovidername.com. This might be okay, but lacks a personal flair if that’s what you want.
Bear in mind that companies can offer free hosting based on getting revenue in return from advertising. Unfortunately, many people set up free web hosting services on the fly hoping to rake in some decent money from ads and promotions to you and your visitors. If this doesn’t go well, they are likely to shut down without warning and leave you stranded.
My advice is to avoid all free web hosting services, unless you simply don’t have the money or don’t want to commit to a few dollars a month for a regular host. The bottom line is, never put anything up on a free host that you really don’t want to lose. It is definitely a risk.
Publishing your own web site is a great thing to do!. When trying to decide on a web host, you have many different choices. Learn the truth about whether free web hosting is a worthwhile option for you to consider. Don’t reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.
Tags: Blog, Domain Hosting, free web hosting, Internet, Internet Marketing, Web, Web Hosting, Web Hosts, website
