Free Web Hosting - Why Might It Be A Bad Idea
When talking about free anything the legitimate question
that first pops into your mind is why pay when you can get
it free?
And as for free web hosting there are plenty of places
to get it from.
As spread as they are, if you are not a stranger to the
whole Internet experience, you might even have a web site
hosted for free. Are you satisfied with your provider? Is
it everything you wanted? Probably not. Anyway it is true
that is comes with no cost and no other aggravations? or
are there any?
Free web hosting cost no money but what can you expect
from one?
Your web site will be turned into an advertising machine
that works for the free web host. Expect, banners, pop up
windows, frames. They will all mess the look of your web
site in terms of design and accessibility for your visitors
that might be literally flooded with popups almost after
every click-through.
You can't make advertising revenue of your web site, as
most free web hosts don't allow it. This is not such a big
issue when you are maintaining a personal web site, but
the cutting-off advertising revenues can mean significant
losses for a business. For this last case, only a paid web
hosting solution might be the right answer
Very little space for your web pages. With free web hosting
provider offering 5 to 15 MB of disk space, your site's
expansion will severely restricted. Growing your web site
above the offered quota would result in transferring to
a paid plan offered by the same hosting provider or finding
a different paid web-hosting provider. In both cases you
end paying for your hosting and you might loose traffic
to your web site due to changing hosts.
No online store can go without secure server to enable
secure online credit card processing. The great majority
of free hosts don't support secure web servers. Customers
fearing fraud and concerned about their personal information
will make it impossible, at least very hard for an online
store to survive on a free host. And anyway, have you ever
heard of a successful online store hosted by a free web
host? None will hear from yours either.
The uptime of your web site will be like the weather forecast.
Hope for good, but prepare for the worse. Downtime through
free web hosts is unfortunately very common. As web hosts
generate their revenues from advertising, they don't feel
very much compelled to care for the web site of a subscriber
who doesn't pay them anyway.
To whom will you turn when experiencing the abovementioned
downtime or other technical problem with your web site?
Free web hosts usually have a limited budget and don't afford
to hire large customer support teams, if any. You will find
yourself alone, staring at the FAQ page.
Your domain name will be measured in feet and will tell
nothing or very little of your business. This obviously
results in low traffic scores, as your visitors won't be
able to remember your URL. Can you rely only on search engines,
linked sites and people bookmarking your web site? If yes,
at least consider the fact that in the age when companies
try to create a personalized image, your web site will be
condemned to be just another subdomain of your free host.
Your domain name will be measured in feet and will tell
nothing or very little of your business. This obviously
results in low traffic scores, as your visitors won't be
able to remember your URL. Can you rely only on search engines,
linked sites and people bookmarking your web site? If yes,
at least consider the fact that in the age when companies
try to create a personalized image, your web site will be
condemned to be just another subdomain of your free host.
Will your customers trust a business hosted by a free web
host? What credibility will your web site inspire? Not a
very high one.
The above list is really rather long, but as surprisingly
as it might be, it is far from being complete. Other additions
to it could be that free web hosts not always offer FTP
access to your web site file, or you only have one e-mail
address to work with and probably looks like mysite@anotherfreeserver.com.
Yes, paid web hosting requires money, but the prices are
lower than they used to be, and the advantages are rather
impressive. Just turn all the above you can't? or you have
to do without? list around.
You are searching for a solution to host your business
or even a professional personal web site, don't look for
it at a free web host.
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