Free Web Hosting… Well, the clue is in the name! Your website needs a home on the web, someone to host your pride and joy, and that’s usually something that you pay a company for. However, there are providers out there who will host your website free of charge. Naturally, there’s often a catch to this arrangement. You may not pay a monthly fee to your host, but you will have to put up with their advertisements appearing on your site. In essence, they cover their costs by using your blog or personal pages as an advertising billboard.
There is a compromise to be made though, because free web hosting is shared web hosting. This means that your website shares resources with others on the same server. If there’s less disc space and CPU cycles to go around, then that means sites have to be small, use fewer features and have modest traffic.
If you don’t need to upload tons of media content, then this could be for you. It’s a great way to test your website or blog, and also a good way to take different hosting providers for a test drive. In this way you don’t have to make any initial investments, and if you like the service that you get then you can upgrade to a paid hosting plan that is more in keeping with your future ambitions.
Free Website Hosting Advantages
Free is obviously the main selling point, but ease of management is what also shines for beginners. It’s an easy-to-use playground where you can experiment with putting your first website together at no cost to yourself. It’s a quick and easy solution for smaller websites, bloggers and beginners who want the freedom to make mistakes as they get to grips with how things work on the web.
Free Website Hosting Disadvantages
The downsides are few but significant. Free shared hosting won’t suit you if you want to create a full-blown commercial or media website. It just isn’t reliable enough and shared resources mean that your server won’t have enough horsepower to keep everything running smoothly.
Downtime is the bane of ecommerce, so choose the paid shared plan as a minimum. You will get better tech support, more tools for building your website, better security, control, performance, as much disc space as you need and free domains hosting. You may even get a free domain name or some other promotions to sweeten the deal.
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