Getting your wehhosting free sounds like a bargain but you need to look further than that! No business would offer something for free if it is not to their advantage in some way. You will also find that you will most probably get the worst part of the deal. Before you decide to use a “free” hosting service for your website, rather than a good pay for web hosting service like HostGator, you should carefully consider the pros and cons of this services. You really need to read the small print….
To make this easier I made a list of some of the positive and negative aspects generally associated with free hosting services.
Positive aspect:
- It is free, in other words you do not need to pay for it.
A few negative aspects you will find with many free hosting services:
- It is slower than paid professional services.
- You won’t be allowed your own domain and will have to use a sub-domain of your host.
- This also means you won’t be able to have email@yourdomain.com.
- You are required the display ads on your site without having any control over it or without earning any revenue from these ads.
- You can place your own ads on your site to earn some money as this would be competition for your host’s ads.
- FTP access is limited or not available.
- Support is poor or nonexistent.
- History shows that the lifespan of free hosts are usually only a year or two. If your host folds you will most likely have to redo your entire site!
- Some free hosting providers attract you with the free hosting but fails to inform you that you are actually signing up for a trial and will be required to pay after a set period of time. The alternative would be to have no access to your site!
- Some will give you a period without the ads but as soon as you are starting to get some traffic you will be required to show their ads on your site.
- If you change to another host you will lose all your hard earned incoming links.
It is obvious that there are many negative aspects related to getting your webhosting for free. Is saving a few bucks a month on web hosting the trouble worth? In my opinion certainly not.
You can get good professional hosting with outstanding customer support from respectable web host companies at low monthly rates. I made a short list of outstanding web hosts where you can select the best web site host for your website.
I recommend HostGator as the best web host and as a very close second selection I also recommend HostMonster.
Yes, free hosts can be a waste of time for the reasons you mention. However, there are also a lot of substandard paid hosts as well. And they can waste even more time – not to mention money!
I got stuck with a mediocre, hugely overpriced host a couple of years ago simply because I didn’t know any better. It was only after I’d learned a bit about the industry that I discovered my mistake. That’s why it’s important to do lots of Googling to find a paid site that you can be sure is really good quality.
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