Free Web Hosting: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
July 29, 2008
Many times small businesses wishing to gain exposure online have a limited budget. They seek out services that offer free hosting services to ease their expenses. This is usually true for companies wanting to try an online business for the first time. This type of web hosting is offered by various companies to help small business get started. The whole idea behind free web host services is simple: the web host allows for free service for a small business in order to put a website online. In order to do this the host company puts ads on the client’s website so that they can get some return for the space given. This type of free service is supported entirely by the web host’s advertisements and comes with some limitations.
The web hosts take advantage of the desires of small businesses wanting no cost websites to make money by utilizing the traffic from those sites. The free websites often display popup advertising, banners, or other sidebar advertisings placed there by the hosts which the client has no control over. There are even some hosts that offer these services with the provisions that the clients themselves that may appear in the control panels or other management areas of the website, or put those advertisements there hoping the clients will click them.
The free web hosts have dominated the personal web site and small business web site arena for a long time but are being replaced at a quick rate by low cost, or cheap web hosts. The cheap, or low cost hosts give all of the above advantages while not placing any ads on the client’s site. They also offer dedicated domain names which is a big draw for many, and the prices are very reasonable-usually paid monthly. They offer many more services and set up features for blogs, forums, and more along with more storage and data space and bandwidth for sharing. Many free hosting companies also offer cheap services with no ads.
How reliable are free web hosts?
While they make money off of the advertisements on the client’s sites which gives them incentive to stay in business, many free web hosts have stability issues. It occasionally turns out that someone or another company will declare their web host service complaining of spam, or hacking. That can occur if the host company automatically installs utilities like CGI, or PHP. These things reduce the performance of the server drastically. Professional web hosts are rarely affected by such things. However, it would be a good idea to beware of the startup web host as they are more apt to be subjected to downtime and crashes on account of these things.
Pros of free web hosting
1. Free hosting websites are beneficial for students of web designing, hosting and development. They can use the free hosting services to store information about web designing, development and website maintenance in their knowledge bank. Basically a free web hosting service can be used for learning purposes. It can also be used as a testing procedure. Using these techniques, students can practically clarify their concept of websites without investing anything. For example boinc.ch offers free accounts in their server especially for those interested in UNIX environment. This free hosting service is targeted to students coupled with developers. People interested in personal homepage can also make the maximum utilization of such a free service.
2. Another valuable use for free web hosting services is to volunteer organizations, and those companies that are not-for-profit. These institutions need to share their messages with the world but often have a very limited budget. The internet is the best way to reach masses of people quickly and free web hosting allows these organizations to do that, and also get donations and other important business on a large scale from many people at once. The same services that are beneficial to students, and personal web site builders are perfect for the volunteer and service organizations as it allows them to get online quickly at no cost. Larger web hosts may provide free service to these organizations for emotional reasons, but the most likely way to obtain free space is with a free host.
3. There are a large number of groups or communities who are eager to share their ideas and feeling on various big and small issues. Free websites can be helpful for such groups who don’t have enough money to invest on a shared or dedicated server. They can utilize the free service by posting useful information and also providing mutual links to their respective websites. This increases their search engine visibility and improves their rankings. Therefore both from SEO and financial perspective they are enjoying the benefit of free web hosting services.
4. Free hosting services are ideal for family websites as they can use it personally for sharing photographs, important family events and other unforgettable moments. Though this kind of use is limited, there are websites devoted to such information. As these are personal information, it is always advisable that one goes for an authentic free web hosts only.
The cons of free web hosts
Though webs hosting services are best from monetary aspect, there are several disadvantages which compel the users to think twice before going for such a service.
1. Regardless of what they claim free hosts offer subdomain services not second-level domain.
2. Bandwidth to share pictures and data is very low on a free service provider. You will get much more with a paid service.
3. Since the free space provided is generally low, any file size cannot be uploaded freely in the website.
4. To earn money against such a free services web host would stuff banner and popup advertises as much as possible in the client’s website. This not only diminishes the actual space in the website for the owner but it also creates a negative impression about the website. The web host banners are also placed in the client’s site compulsorily.
5. There is usually no guarantee of uptime.
6. Not all types of files can be uploaded in the websites. Free websites have restrictions to files like MP3, MPEG, ZIP etc.
7. Most of the free hosts do not provide any customer support as they consider it as of low priority. Even if, some provide such services, it is often limited to a month or so.
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