Free Web Hosting - To Choose Or Not to Choose?

For anyone who’s new to the world of websites, or indeed those on a tight budget, the idea of free web hosting always appears appealing. As you’re likely aware however, not much in this world is truly free. Often those offering something for free are seeking something else in return, even if it’s not your money. With that in mind, is free hosting really all it’s cracked up to be?

Hosting (like most other services) costs money to provide. Although the services offered by free web hosts are often very basic compared to those which which you might buy, that company would still soon be out of pocket if they couldn’t recuperate their costs via some means. This is exactly the reason most free web hosts display some kind of advertisements on any websites you have with them.

Although these advertisements can often (though not always) be “closed” or hidden away after they’ve been displayed, they always appear somewhat hideous and as such can vastly degrade your visitors user experience, and even the credibility of the individual responsible for running the website - yourself!

For that reason alone, anyone who is making a website for more than sheer enjoyment - especially those looking to conduct business via their website - should dismiss any free web hosts who force you to display advertisements on their behalf. In actual fact, it’s probably a better idea to dismiss all free web hosts completely, in such a case. What you’d be saving by not paying for hosting would not be worth the amount of business or visitors you’d lose as a result.

The second big disadvantage of most free web hosting services is that they’re simply not rigged up to support up-to-date technologies that many modern websites utilize and require. Most websites are no longer merely static HTML pages built in point and click web design software - even those made by amateurs. Many are blog-based, or incorporate discussions forums or the ability for visitors to leave feedback to be displayed on that website, amongst other things. All these things require that your web hosting service be capable of processing different scripting languages (such as PHP) in addition to having some sort of database support, such as MySQL. This is all functionality that a great many of free web hosts simply can’t or will not offer to non-paying customers.

Customers of free web hosts are often not obliged to provide their full personal details. Couple that with the fact that no payment is required and it’s clear that the web host has no way to verify the validity of that customers information. As such they have no reassurance whatsoever that the customer doesn’t have shady intentions - such as the intention to spam or host illegal material. This is precisely the reason most free web hosts deny customers the ability (or lack the support) to host any files beyond static HTML pages and a small number of images.

Overall, there is little alternative but for anyone who is looking to run a serious, functional website to shell out for some paid web hosting. Nowadays it’s so cheap as to be little to no burden towards ones wallet.

Doug has has many years experience of creating and hosting websites with many different web hosts. Some of his sites cater towards providing product information and reviews to help consumers make more educated purchase decisions. This sees him writing about a wide (and sometimes weird) range of products, from such things as camping tents to womens epilator reviews and everything in between.