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When you start looking for the right host for your website you might find yourself wondering why pay for hosting when you can get it for free? This is a valid question and the answer depends mainly on the nature of your site. For some sites paid web hosting will be necessary while others can survive on the facilities offered by free web hosting.

 

Anyone that has created their own website considers moving to paid hosting after a while. Most experienced programmers and designers know all about the frustrations you have to put up with when it comes to free hosting.

 

Advertising Overload
The first thing most people associate with free web hosting is all the advertisements. Free web hosts rely solely on advertisers to turn a profit so most, if not all of them are subject to forced advertising. Whether banners or pop-ups, these ads can seriously detract from the professionalism and style of your website.

 

More Downtime

Free web hosting often has a problem with downtime. The web host doesn’t feel obligated to be terribly dependable when the clients they are hosting are not actually paying. So, when things do go wrong, they get to repairing the problem later rather than sooner.

Poor Customer Support

Free web hosting has little to no support – mostly because they do not have the funds to hire a support team. At most clients will have a FAQ to help solve their problems.

 

Limited Space

Free web hosting is limited and only provide about 5 to 10 MB worth of space. For large, intricate websites this can be a bit of a problem and it also means that you will not be able to expand your website when the time comes.

Restricted Ad Revenues

Some free web hosts don’t allow the selling of advertising on your site. For a business website this can make a serious dent in any revenues the site could have been generating.

No Secure Server Access

For an online store a secure server is the only option. Very few, if any free web hosts have secure servers. If you want to keep your clients safe then a paid web hosting service is the only option.

File Type Restrictions

Free web hosts limit their users to certain files, most notably HTML files. For websites that want to offer enhanced services, interesting applications or just innovative design, this can be a severely limiting factor.

Long Domain Names
As anyone who has used a free web host knows, the free web host offers a sub domain of the host’s name. This can lead to long-winded and confusing domain names that can make it hard for people and search engines to find your website directly and will obviously have a detrimental effect on your traffic.

 

It is clear from the above that free web hosts are not all they are cracked up to be. For personal pages made for fun or that aren’t geared towards generating revenue, free web hosting is fine. For businesses, however, paid web hosting is the only real option.

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