Free Web Hosting

Free Web Hosting Is Available But...
It Can Be Incredibly Expensive! Buyer Beware!

The web hosting company does not get any income from their users so they put adverts on the users web pages, login page and outgoing emails to generate income. Customer support is usually very limited and the web site may not be accessible for periods of time. This may be fine for personal, hobby, clubs and any non critical web site but any web site that is aiming to portray a professional image should not use free web hosting. Why lumber yourself with problems just to save a few dollars a month?

There are a small number of more reliable companies that also offer free web hosting but with very limited facilities. This can be tempting, but users often find that as their needs grow, they have to start paying a monthly fee to get the facilities they now need. The longer term cost usually works out more expensive than using cheap web hosting from the start.

Be very careful where free web hosting includes a free domain name! If the free hosting provider registers and owns your domain, you may get 'locked in' to their services for life or possible have to pay a high fee to buy back your domain, if you want to change web hosting providers in the future.

Advantages:

It is free - You certainly get what you paid for!

New free web hosts regularly appear

Disadvantages:

Could cost you a lot of time (time = money)

May not enable you to have your own domain name
Eg. www.MyCompany.com therefore it can look unprofessional

Probably displays adverts on your web pages & outgoing emails
Note: the web page adverts are often based on the keywords of the page and may be advertising your competitors on your web pages!

These adverts can be very intrusive for your web site users and won't encourage your visitors to stay or return to your site

Search Engines like Google may rate your site lower if it is on a free web host

Low uptime - Ie. your site will not be accessible at times - this can result in search engines deciding your web site no longer exists and you get removed from their results - similar can happen if your site is part of a webring

Unreliable slow web site operation

Poor or zero customer service - can be very frustrating

Features offered sometimes are old versions of software or just don't work at all

You the webmaster are not the customer - The advertisers are!

Very limited storage size or features

Some hosts make some extra income by selling your email address to other companies so expect your spam to increase

New free web hosts regularly disappear leaving their customers in an awkward situation

As your needs grow, you may get 'locked in' to high cost web hosting

Discover The Real Cost Of Free Web Hosting
It seems incredible that even though the cost of web hosting has fallen to a very affordable level, some people still try to have their website hosted on a free web hosting service. With free web hosting you often get what you pay for, so the real cost of using a free service can be very expensive in the long run. Free web hosting services have the potential to restrict the numbers of people who find your website and then damage your reputation with those few visitors that do view your website. This article explores the potential problems of not using a reliable 'paid for' web hosting service. Search engines may regard websites that are hosted on free web hosting services as being less important than other websites, so your website would not be listed in the first few pages of the search results. This means you end up with far less traffic coming to your website from the search engines; wasting this valuable free source of website visitors. The lower number of visitors is just the start of your problems. Some free web hosting providers do not enable you to have your own domain name like YourCompany.com and the resulting long domain name, usually combining your company name and the free web host's name, looks very unprofessional and may frighten away potential customers. Why would anyone do business with an organisation that appears too poor to setup a professional website with a proper domain name? Free web hosting companies have to make money somehow and as the website owner is not paying anything, the hosting company often resorts to displaying adverts as the way to generate income. This means that the advertiser is the important party to please as far as the hosting company is concerned. You may find intrusive adverts on the 'Log In' page and much worse than that; some 'Pay Per Click' adverts may be displayed on your website. These keyword driven adverts may be from your competitors and you find your website traffic is distracted away from your site. Good hosting services spend large amounts of money to ensure they are using reliable equipment that will enable the hosted websites to be connected to the internet almost all of the time. Free web hosts are generally less focused on reliability and this can mean that your website visitors may find that your website is not working when they try and view it, or it works very slowly. If your website is not working when the search engines try and read your website, then you could find that you are removed from the search engine listings. Most web hosting companies have reduced the price of their hosting and increased the features of their services over recent years. Free web hosting providers often offer less features to their users and when you have problems, you really find out how expensive free web hosting can be, as your support can be negligible or take days to respond to your problem. Free web hosts regularly come and go, as it is tough to make good profits and provide good hosting from the free hosting business model. As you can probably tell by now even these are just some of the reasons that experienced website owners will happily pay for the huge benefits of professional web hosting from a reliable company. When you are setting up a website, it is essential to keep your visitors and the search engines happy and this needs to be planned from the start. Many website owners have regretted their decision when they have lost access to their websites when free web hosts have closed down suddenly. Choose your web hosting provider very carefully and be willing to pay a modest amount each month so your valuable website is reliably and professionally accessible on the internet.

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