Wondering whether or not to choose a free web hosting? Discover the pros and cons of using free hosting and decide what is right for you!
You know how the saying goes – the best things in life are free. When it comes to web hosting, this may or may not be true, depending on your current expectations and needs. Plenty of web hosting service providers offer free hosting, but before you decide to use one, you need to ask yourself – is it really “free”?
In this article, we will take an objective look at the different reasons why companies provide free web hosting services, as well as, the pros and cons of using free hosting.
Before we discuss the pros and cons of using free web hosting, we need to clarify what free web hosting really means. When we say free web hosting we refer to a certain space on a web server which is housed on a server somewhere or a datacenter which is located anywhere in the world and it is made specifically for users without a fee. When using this type of hosting, you are responsible for installing, creating, and maintaining all kinds of applications and files. The free web host provides the tools to get these applications and files working and easily accessible via the web.
Please don’t confuse the free web hosting service providers with hosted blogging platforms or site builders that offer free or pay-as-you-go services such as Tumblr, WordPress, Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, About.met and other popular web-based services.
These services provide you with free space on web servers that they maintain or own. However, in this type of web hosted service, you don’t need to worry about the setup or anything else that is not directly related to your account. All you need to do is sign up for an account and go straight into selling your products, blogging, posting your photos or videos, showcasing your portfolio, and etc.
Now that you know the difference between free web hosting service providers and hosted blogging platforms, let’s see why companies offer free web hosting:
- It is all marketing: In order to get customers to sign up, a lot of web host service providers offer free packages and later convince their users to upgrade their packages.
- It is ad-supported: Additional revenue from marketing, which could be in the form of affiliate links or banner ads, pay the bills.
- It is for testing: There are some web hosting service providers who offer part of their hosting services for free because all they want to do is test their service.
The biggest advantage of using free web hosting is that you don’t need to pay anything. This is great, especially if you are new in the web hosting world, and all you want to do is learn about hosting, test software scripts, and etc.
Among the biggest cons of using free hosting is being limited. You will notice that a lot of features are missing such as software scripts, one-click auto installers, edit DNS settings, SMTP email, root directory access, and other features that you may need.
If you are newbie to hosting and you want to further explore this option, free web hosting is the ideal solution for you, but if you expect fast and quality customer support, you have a low tolerance for server crashes and downtimes, you plan to create a huge website with lots of traffic, and you need a lot of features, we highly recommend you to use premium web hosting