Connect My Business

Many new web site owners wonder why they need to pay a commercial web host when there are so many free web hosting companies to choose from.  Your choice between a free web host and a paid web host essentially depends upon your business and personal needs. Understanding the pros and cons of free web hosting can help you decide on the right web host for you.

Attractions of Free Web Hosting

Free web hosting seems attractive because you can:

• host your web site without any initial investment.
• host your web site by just signing up and getting your free web hosting account instantly.
• earn money for every click from your web site if you insert Google AdSense™ code.
• use your free web hosting account for any purpose so long as it doesn’t hamper with your web host’s company policy.
• access your files from any where using the Internet.

Who Benefits from Free Web Hosting

All the above benefits are only meant for people who fall under the following categories:

• A student wanting to learn the basics of web site design, development and hosting.
• A newbie or individual wanting to host a personal web page.
• A family wanting to share family news and photographs.
• A group of individuals wanting to share information of common interests.
• A nonprofit or voluntary organization running on tight budgets.

Limitations of Free Web Hosting

There are numerous pitfalls associated with free web hosting packages and you need to watch out for these before you decide to opt for free web hosting. Some of the limitations are listed below:

• Right to Advertise: By offering you free hosting, the web host has the right to place all kinds of adverts, pop-ups and banner ads on your web site.

• Customer Support: Some free web hosts offer little customer support. You are usually low on their priority list because their focus is more on paid users.

• Reliability: Free web hosting users are usually put on servers that are overcrowded. Overcrowded servers are more pron to breakdowns that can affect your accessibility and  up-time. These in turn can be very inconvenient for visitors to your web site.

• Features: With free web hosting you get limited features, software and email services. Your free web host might or might not provide you with PHP, Perl, MySQL, FTP and email services. You may also not be able to upload large files or there could be a restriction on the file types you upload.

• Storage Space: You only get limited web storage space. This will be a problem if you intend to have plenty of images, video clips or audio files in your web site.

• Bandwidth: Many free web hosts also limit the amount of traffic your site can use per day and per month. They in fact disable your web site or send you an additional bill if pages on your site are loaded by users beyond a certain number of times per day.

• Security: With so many people availing free web hosting, it becomes increasingly difficult for administrators to monitor web site content. This gives hackers an opportunity to abuse it which can result in downtime issues or make the server slow.

• Domain Name: By opting for free web hosting, your domain name will not be unique because it will always be prefixed with the name of your web host. For example, if your website name is mystudycorner, your domain name will be freewebhost.com/mystudycorner instead of mystudycorner.com.This can be a disadvantage if you want to establish your own online identity.

Some free web hosts may not force banner ads on you and could also offer more bandwidth as well as other features. However, free web hosting is still not desirable if you intend to create a competitive online identity.

With paid web hosting being quite affordable these days, it is a better option to free web hosting. With paid hosting you will have control over your web site, better security and customer support as well as a unique domain name to call your own.