When looking at webhosting there are two options one can choose from free hosting and paid hosting. This article aims to show you why it really is better to pay a little and join a paid webhosting company. They really do offer so many benefit that it is unreal, and hopefully by the end of reading this you will see why. Now let’s start by agreeing that we don’t all have a lot of money to throw around, especially not in today’s financial climate. So it is understandable that people look for savings when setting up their webhosting. However in many cases the saving that one will make on free webhosting will be lost when visitors cannot use the website properly. Building a house on a foundation of sand is never a good idea.
First off let’s start by saying that if you are planning on making any form of money or wanting any form of promotion off of your website DO NOT USE FREE HOSTING. Let me tell you why, free webhosting companies use the same server to host thousands of sites. Search engines affiliate sites that are on the same server IP address. That means your sites search engine ranking is somewhat affected by thousands of other free sites. Now think about what is going to be on some of those free hosted sites, viruses, a LOT of spam, possibly pornography etc. This is definitely not something you want bringing down your website’s reputation and ability to be found naturally by search engine users.
Secondly the security on free webhosting is the bare minimum. No free hosts offer https compatibility; this means your website’s data and user data cannot be properly protected. The back end structural support of free hosting is also very poor. For example you may have limited or no php script support. You may also find that you have to share SQL servers with thousands of other users. In addition to this the bandwidth limits are usually tiny. You’ll also be lucky to find a free webhost that allows you to integrate a domain based email address as well.
A final word against having free hosting is that it is less reliable in the uptime compared to paid hosting. This means there may be large periods where your website is down. Let me assure you when this happens it is a free hosts last priority to get back up. They will be picking up the paid hosting first if there is ever a crash. The support you will be offered is usually none, but if the host does offer support don’t expect it to be great. As you are not a paying customer I would not expect to be treated very well.
Overall the webhosting market is fiercely competitive and you can pick up paid hosting VERY cheap. It is definitely worth the investment of a few dollars a month to have a reliable and respectable site.
