The Disadvantages of Free Web Hosting

Free web hosting accounts are among the numerous choices available to the business-minded website owner trying to start a venture on the internet. Like everything else, free web hosting has its benefits and drawbacks, so before you invest time creating a website on a free service simply to realize it doesn’t suit your needs, here are the disadvantages of a free web hosting account so you can be thoroughly informed:

- You are going to be limited.

The quantity of web space, bandwidth and even site visitors you can receive will be greatly restricted if you use a free web hosting provider. On the other hand, the space supplied is typically perfectly sufficient for a small business or a fun fan site.

- You probably will need to have an add-on domain name.

Rather than www.yoursite.com, your domain name with a free web hosting provider will most likely be something like: www.yourfreewebhostingprovider.com/yoursite or http://yoursite.freewebhostingprovider.com – meaning that your website is right away linked with another company. It isn’t necessarily a problem, just something to be aware of.

- The definition of ‘free’.

While you may be receiving the web space for free, with the majority of free web hosting providers you will have advertisements on your site. Typically these ads are generated and inserted on your site without you doing anything – and you have no way of eliminating them. Showing the ads is basically how you ‘pay’ for your ‘free’ service. There is no way around this; the web host will have to generate income in some way.

When you are wanting to publish a small, simple website of only a few pages, it may be worth looking at free web hosting. But for a larger site, you’re going to need to self-host.

The Beneficial Aspect of Free Web Hosting

In a society that may dismiss something that is labeled ‘free’ as suspect, when users are wanting to develop a website they will probably give the idea of free web hosting short shrift. However, there are some significant upsides to using a free web hosting provider – so before you dismiss the concept, take a read of the list below.

- It’s free!

It may seem like an unusual point to include in this list – isn’t it apparent that ‘free’ web hosting is, um, free?! – but it is the element you ought to focus your attention on. No, free web hosting is not going to deliver the results if you are looking to earn an income from that website – but if you just need a little corner on the internet, for a personal site or as a small business listing, then the free aspect is beneficial.

In essence, there is no point in spending a lot of money for a website if you are not planning for that website to earn money – so it may be worthwhile putting up with the inconveniences that go along with a free web hosting service, and making use of your funds elsewhere.

- Guidance for newbies.

Many free web hosting providers have their own support forums, which are moderated by their own staff in addition to including posts from users of the service. This means you will have an instant support base should you run in to any problems.

- Technical experience is not required to build a website.

A lot of free web hosts offer WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) site building, which means you don’t need to understand HTML or any other complicated programming language. You can simply plug and play