Free or paid webhosting

[wizard]

Free or paid web hosting?

Just finished your first website? So it's the time to look for some hosting and make a choise. Your first qustion probably will be whether to choose free or paid hosting service. Let's have a look at some advantages and disadvantages of these solutions.

Free web hosting:
(+) It's for free. You don't need to pay for domain name.
(-) Your URL will be something like username.freehost.com or freehost.com/username. As I noticed above, the advantage is that you don't need to pay for domain. But note that if you move your website to another provider in the future you can loose some or all your traffic (there are some solutions how to solve this problem but it is not the point of this article).
(-) Your provider will probably include ads to your pages - usually 1 or 2 banners, sometimes popup windows. If you plan to use banner exchange on your site read carefully their Terms and conditions. Some free hosts doesn't allow it.
(-) Free hosts usually allow lower bandwith then paid hosts and a lot of them don't offer futures like PHP and MySQL.
(-) A lot of free hosts change their Terms and conditions during some time. If your free host offers hosting wihtout ads now, don't be surprised when banner or popup appears on your site in the future.
(-) Sometimes happens that free hosts cancel their free service and longer offer paid hosting only. In this case you have only 2 choises - pay them or loose your website.


Paid web hosting:
(+) You can host your own domain. If you decide to change the web hosting provider in the future, you easily transfer the domain to the new provider and don't loose your traffic.
(+) Most paid hosts offer 24/7 support via email or live chat and some of them provide toll-free phone support.
(+) You can expect better uptime then on free host. Some paid hosts offer uptime guarantee.
(+) Paid hosts usually offer enough disk space and bandwith. Futures like PHP and MySQL are standard. Even if you are not programmer you can download plenty of free PHP scripts from internet.
(-) Paid hosting coast money


Before you make the decision if choose free or paid host you should answer this question: How big ambitions do I have with my website? If you are starting small personal page for your friends consist of a few *.html files then free host will be sufficient. In case you plan to run serious business website, need PHP, database and don't want ads on the site I recommend to look for quality paid host.

Courtesy www.webhostingtalk.com

[PyroPixelCom]

Paid web hosting is always good. Because you get what you pay for

[Sam Granger]

I hate free hosts - Its good for your first website but not that professional

[ProHostMedia]

Free hosts are great for personal Websites. The typical situation would be when you design a Website about you. In this type of Website you won't be needing very much disk space and you certainly won't be needing much bandwidth. Unless you happen to be very popular.

Another typical use of free hosts are for family sites. These will usually contain pictures of the family and of recent events such as:

• Births
• Birthdays
• Weddings
• Baptisms
• Family Reunions
• Vacations

These will usually impress the family for about a week. Then in about a month maybe half of the original visitors are still using the site due to a few common problems with free hosts:

• Difficult domain to remember- Free hosts will get advertising by throwing their domain in as a part of your domain. (example: Angelfire uses http://www.angelfire.com/Category/AnythingYouWant) This will be difficult for family members to type in creating frustration and will lead to the sites demise
• Dead links- Because the Webmaster of the site is not profiting off of his creation he will be less likely to make the appropriate updates
• Ease of use- Typically the Webmaster is showing off his newly learned Webdesign skills. He/she lacks the programming knowledge to make it easy for others to update their own pictures and content. This will also lead to the Webmaster not having the time to upload the files in a timely mannor.

Now, if it isn't worth it to you to pay the monthly fee and the domain name, the above problems could be lived with. Another reason why it would be unacceptable to go with a free host is if you are making money off of your site. This is for the following reasons:

• Lack of professionalism
• Marketability
• Overall Lack of Sales

Now, for the inexpensive hosting packages available there really isn't a reason not to go with a host. For example, my company will tailor a hosting package if needed to suit your needs. The job of a good host is to do just that, host. Hosting providers should be good hosts to their customers and be flexible to their needs.

[Kishin]

I pay for hsting since Free hosting most of the time does not have advance features or great uptime. Free Hosting I guess is good for blogs and such.

[Positive]

Paid Hosting is better. Free hosting won't give u many features and they ocassionally put adverts on your website

[dodhee]

I think paid hosting more reliable and free hosting good for newbie

[Jarrid]

Yeah if you are just starting out you might want to use a free host.. It will help in the long run maybe...

[rmh-admin]

I always would go for Paid,
You know what they say, you get what you pay for.

[wfwh]

We run and operate both Free Hosting and Paid hosting, and frankly the free hosting is just too much work to keep it up and running and free from spam and other people that are up to no good.

Our paid hosting offers highend plans starting at $4.95/monthly, and we figure affording that shouldnt be a problem for most people .