Archive for the ‘free web hosting’ Category
When setting up a new web site or blog it is tempting to look for free web service hosting. Is this a good way forward or is it better to pay for hosting? If your site or blog is personal and the performance of the host is not important then free hosting may be a viable way forward. However if your site is for business purposes you should take a paid service.
Free web service hosting is available for a number of reasons. The service might be financed by advertising (which means that ads will be placed on your site), it might be provided free with some other service, it might be a very basic service offered by a hosting company (who assume that you will soon upgrade to a paid service) and it some cases it actually is free (but don’t expect a great service).
However reputable the supplier you cannot expect a free service to provide the level of service you would get from a paid supplier.
Limitations – There may be low restrictions on the amount of diskspace, bandwidth, domains, databases, email accounts and FTP accounts.
Speed – Your pages may load slowly if there is too much competition for the available resources. People have been known to misuse free services for operations such as sending spam which, as well has hogging resources, could lead to your site being associated with such activities (as you share the IP address).
Reliability – Paid hosts will guarantee 99.9% uptime so that you site can almost always be found (nobody can offer 100% uptime). The priorities of a free service may be different or they may simply not have technical support outside office hours.
Support – This is a significant cost so you may find that support is only provided by email with limited, or no, response outside office hours. With a paid host you would expect proper technical support by telephone 24/7.
If you decide to go for free web service hosting the safest option is to go with one of the hosting companies that provide a free basic package (as the last three items above should not apply to them). You can then easily upgrade to paid hosting when necessary, although you should check that their paid hosting plans are competitively priced.
As an alternative to hosting you could also consider using a free service such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com (where you can use your own domain name) or you could have your own “site” on sites like Squidoo or Wetpaint. These are reputable sites where the limitations of the service are clear.
Despite all the free options that are available I would still say that if you are serious about establishing a presence on the web you will be best served by getting a paid service at the outset.
Free web hosting abound on the web, with literally hundreds of services vying for our attention. The question is: Should you partake as a small business owner? Well, there are several things to consider if you are considering a free web hosting site. The following list is just some of them: Most services make money by placing banners or other ads on YOUR site, which can draw potential customers from you.
Many sites, limit their features (such as bandwidth) in hopes of selling you their upgrade web hosting packages. If you anticipate your site growing, a deal does not seem to make sense because you will have eventually outgrow its limited features and have to move anyway, which could be a real hassle. Better to just start with an affordable shared web hosting package. Some providers provide only sub-domains instead of your own domain. For example: freesite.yourdomain.com instead of just yourdomain.com. You can imagine the negative impact this would have on your business.
Overall, these are just some of the reasons why you may wish to consider paying for an inexpensive but reliable one that will not limit or detract from your online business. One last word regarding free web hosting. There are definitely some instances where a person may benefit from free web hosting. One such circumstance may be when a person is new to the idea of web site building and design, and wants to simply get their feet wet. In this sense, a site may be just the thing to help them with the learning curve of putting a web site on the web.