Searching For Free Web Hosting? You Can Stop It Right Now!

When someone enters the Blogging world, he tries to start everything by saving each cent. When every blogger learns about the Web Hosting, he thinks “Is there any FREE web hosting available?”. Well, this is a common thing.

You might also have heard about this question “Why we should pay for something if we are getting one for free?”. Do remember this – “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” Well, there are many other confusions. We should move to our topic. A professional and experienced blogger would never use a free web hosting on his blog. He would rather pay for a good web hosting. Why? Let’s find out.

Today, I am going to explain many concepts and especially going to show the pros and cons of having free web hosting.

Free Web Hosting: Why ‘FREE’ Tag?

Good question! Well, if they are offering the service for free then that means they are getting benefits from it somehow. When you start a business if you don’t get profit from it then why would you continue that business without any hope?

There are many sites (like Facebook) which are for free, but they are getting money from advertisements and other strategies.

There are many reasons and answers to this question. Let me share some with you.

1. Brand Promotion

Some web hosts provide a free plan for the promotion of their paid service. Means, they are offering a limited plan. So, users can test their service and upgrade to paid one. Well, now this is a common way for web hosting to promote them. One more thing, the free plan will be less powerful (or not so good) than the paid one.

2. Advertisements

There are some web hosting companies which shows ‘forced ads’ to their customers’ websites. When anyone clicks on any of these ads, then the company gets the money. In this way, they are taking profit by providing something for free. Not all web hosting companies are doing this, however, some are. I don’t like this method of getting money.

3. Testing New Changes

Well, this is also a good reason. If they have clients and they want to test some changes to their servers. This is a risky work. If they would have the free plan, then they can test on the free users. Because free users can’t complain even if any problem occurred. This is a rare reason. I’m not even sure whether any web hosting companies do this, but still.

4. Hidden Charges/Fees

Well, some are giving for free but still charging their users. Saying “$10 for maintenance” or “$20 for our service” and many other excuses. That means they are not treating their customers well. I don’t think you should choose that type for web hosting.

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Now, the main part of this article begins. I am going to show you the pros and cons of using free web hosting.

Free Web Hosting: Pros

1. It’s All FREE

Obviously, the biggest benefit is that you’re not paying for it. When you’re getting something for free, then it is a good thing for you. There are no contracts or deals. You can quit at any time. No issues of payments or getting anything wrong.

2. For Testing

You can easily test your skills. For example, you are learning PHP and want to test your code then you can easily do so. Your money can’t get wasted because you’re not paying a single cent. There are many skills that you can learn with them. You can do the same with managing databases via phpMyAdmin.

3. Learn To Set up

Also, you don’t know how to setup web hosting account or how to setup your website on your web hosting. Then, you can learn with the free web hosting. Yups! There is no risk when you’re learning. You can freely experiment and see the results.

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Free Web Hosting: Cons

1. Bad Support

Whenever any problem occurs in your website then where will you go? Who helps you?

This is where the support comes. The web hosting you choose should have a good support. Many free web hosting sites won’t have a support department. If a few have then, their support is like opening tickets and get a reply in 2-3 days. Would you wait for two days if your website is down and losing customers?

2. Downtime

Many free web hosting sites have this problem. They don’t have any uptime guarantee. This means, your site can get down at any time. If your website is down, then that’s really a big loss for you. A few hours downtime can lose a lot of customers. That’s the most major reason I hate free hostings.

3. Lack of features

Suppose you need automatic backups, advertising credits, SEO features, etc. for your website, and then you might not get such options here. Free Web Hosting servers usually lack such features. They don’t have enough facilities for a professional website. This is not a big reason but most users need some features, to kick-start their blog easily.

4. Visitors Limit

I also don’t like this limit. These hosting servers usually have a visitors limit like no more than 200 visits per day etc. Well, this is bad news for a blogger who want to get good traffic to his/her blog. When I was using a free web hosting, I got emails and errors like “account temporary blocked due to high traffic” several times. This increased the risk of losing visitors. If your website starts to get good traffic, then your allocated resources will be affected, and your site will go down automatically.

5. Lack Of Resources

There is nothing unlimited here. If your bandwidth limit exceeds then, they can also suspend your account. They usually have a limited storage, bandwidth, etc. Another thing, many free hosting servers have low CPU limit because they are hosting many sites on one server (Shared Hosting). Their CPU limit is really low and can be exceeded without doing anything. Do you know the minimum requirements for hosting WordPress?

6. Ad – Supported

Most free web hosting sites are displaying their ads to their users’ websites. Well, I think this is a bad thing. They are showing their ads which can spoil the user experience. The First thing is that: “Would you allow someone’s ads on your website without getting money?”.

7. Security Risks

Do you know? Each day many sites get hacked due to the security bugs in their servers. Would you host your site on such a server? This is also a significant reason to be considered while choosing free web hosting.

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Who Should Choose This?

So, there are many things wrong with free web hosting, but they still have some benefits. You can use if:

1. You’re just learning how to set up web hosting, etc.

2. You’re learning a web programming language like PHP.

3. You have a site which hardly gets less than 30 visitors a day.

4. You do not have enough money.

5. You are not trusting this article and still want to test the above-mentioned reasons.

Who Should ‘Not’ Choose This?

You should never go for free web hosting if:

1. You want to build a website which would get a lot of visitors.

You want to create a professional website.

You are going to start your online business.

You have a site which is selling products.

And many more reasons.

In simple words, if your site is supposed to use a lot of resources then don’t choose free hosting. Also, if you are serious about branding your blog/website and making money out of it, then it’s wise to spend some money and get a good web server.

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Recommended Web Hosting

Well, there are many good web hosting providers. Here are some:

• Bluehost ($3.95/Month* + Free Domain Name)
• InMotion Hosting ($4.19/Month* + Free Domain Name)
• A Small Orange ($3.33/Month*)

These three popular Web Hosting brands are our favourite preferences. But again, I wouldn’t force you to pick anything. Just open their websites and see which one is okay for you. You can easily set up and install WordPress on them. I have personally used them, and I have 99.9% good experience, so hope you will too.

Conclusion

Well, you know everything has positive and negative impacts. Free web hosting company servers are reasonable for those who want to start and experiment, but if you’re a professional, then that’s not a good thing for you. Because your site can’t be reliable with little resources and features. I hope you have enjoyed this article. If you have any questions, then feel free to ask in comments.