Would you ever consider free web hosting?

EliteWriter Level 2

June 1, 2016, 10:15 am

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Would you ever consider free web hosting?

If your budget was limited would you rather go for free web hosting or see what you can do to increase your current funds and go for a more comprehensive web hosting service?

Personally I am not much of a fan of free web hosting. Some people choose to get their website hosted on a free web hosting server or hire a company which charges less money. There are however many limitations on a free web hosting server like speed, types of features etc. Information on websites may also not be secured properly, as a result of which, payments received online from this website can be at risk.

A reputed and efficient hosting company will have experts who will provide you with a professional service. One major drawback of free web hosting companies is that you might not be able to choose your preferred website name. In addition, these free and low cost sites offer little in the way of maintenance and upgrades to features. This could cause a disruption to your services if a particular payment processor upgrades its services, and your customers find they cannot use a certain credit card because your site did not include the upgrade. These are just a few of the drawbacks which lead me to take such a decision. What do you think?

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ajlancer

Yes I completely agree with anwebservices. Yes I have used free hosting website as a beginner. At the time I was using it for fun mainly. But if you want to make any site look professional, free hosting is never recommended. There are various drawbacks to free web hosting.
example:
1. limited amount of space you can use.
2. Free hosting accounts often do not provide enough storage or bandwidth.
3. Free web hosting sites' term and conditions often require that you allow their online banners and advertisements to be placed on your website and this is a nuisance to visitors.
4. A free site has their name along with your unique domain name in the address.
5. You must use their website designs which tend to be quite limited.
6. Free hosting does not allow uploading of other popular website products.
7. There is no customer support if you get technically stuck on installation or there is the need for tutorial or guidance.
8. They only offer the sub domain upon their own domain name e.g. mywebsite.wordpress.com
9. Most do not allow scripting, such as CGI or PHP
10. Many do not give you FTP access

On the other hand paid website hosting is the better option for anyone seeking web hosting for a business.

So, I never consider again free hosting for my business.

Thanks by ajlancer

9 years ago

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EliteWriter

Yes I agree with you about these pitfalls of free web hosting. The word 'free' may appeal to many, espeically beginners. However a free web hosting service may not essentially be the right service for you. Many people tend to check out cheap web hosting services, but it is worth noting that if the web hosting companies were to offer such services at a much lower price than the market price, it would probably mean that some essential services are missing.

When considering that websites are periodically updated by adding, modifying, or deleting the content on the website, a free web hosting service does not seem to be such a feasible option which can simplify these routine needs and activities. Your choices in customizing your site may be limited.

The speed at which the website can be accessed from their servers would be another downfall as people trying to get on the site may be discouraged from doing so after having waited several seconds for nothing. Also, if you wish to choose a particular name for your website, it may not be possible with a free hosting site, apart from the fact that you basically only get a subdomain name.

9 years ago

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anwebservices

Free web hosting could be OK only for absolute amateurs who are blogging for fun. It's features are very limited usually to a bare minimum. Moreover, monetization of a website hosted using free hosting is very difficult. Also you are at a high risk of losing your site content any time because many free hosting companies disappeared and so did the sites that were hosted on them. It can also be very annoying for your visitors if your free hosting company places its own ads on your website (which is actually the case with most of them).
Paid web hosting is much more affordable lately and I would always recommend to start with cheaper and smaller hosting packages and eventually upgrade when you need, rather than go with free hosting services.
From my own experience, when I was beginner, free hosting only made me worry and face problems.

9 years ago

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robertman11

Free hosting is slow which leads bad rankings/SEO and disgruntled users who bounce from your site in frustration. Even paid shared hosting has this problem which I dislike. I'd recommend a VPS or dedicated server if possible. Linode has cheap VPS starting at $5.

9 years ago

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MasterA

When I first started being a webmaster, I went with free hosting and I have to say there are a few decent ones out there with little downtime but the features are very limited. Then I moved onto paid hosting but instead of paying for it, I managed to get them to sponsor my website in return for a link back to their website. This only works with smaller hosting companies and their support wasn’t great; it takes them about 10 hours on average to reply to my support ticket. Overall, the experience was okay but it wasn’t great. Thinking back, it wouldn’t be that hard to fund a good hosting plan from a better company. Most starter hosting plans are relatively cheap and I definitely won’t use free hosting plans ever again.

A few important factors when I consider while choosing a host is:

Good technical support, preferably 24/7 support
Good uptime
Good reviews
Good customer service
Decent prices

Free web hosts do badly in most of these factors except the price and it is very hard to keep members active on your website when you can’t even pay for a decent host.

9 years ago

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vinaya

No.
First of all, when the hosting is free, it is not reliable. You never know when your website will go down and you may not know who to contact.
Secondly, since you are using free hosting, you will have to pay a certain price such as running unwanted ads. This is not very welcome.
Thirdly, you have limited diskspace and bandwith.
If you want to run a trial website, you may opt for free hosting, otherwise, choose a low cost shared hosting.

7 years ago

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jackchun

I like to use some free hosting subdomain to try for draft of my contents. After that , I will save my all contents and codes and then delete all of them.

Then I will buy a very cheap hosting plan like namecheap, iPage or cheapest plan in WordPress. Then paste back all the draft contents to my self hosting domain. Does this work and will not considered as duplicated content ?

How about Amazon associate ? Does it accept free Subdomain hosting and vice versa ?

Thx very much !

7 years ago

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wallet

I am always taking in consideration the free web hosting, mostly because my budget for investing online is very low.

7 years ago

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galegatling

If ever I get into webmaster related business, I wouldn't consider getting a free web hosting. One of the primary reason would the ads. The ads are really annoying specially if you don't have control over it since you are just using it for free. And also, they can put any ads they want specially if it isn't relevant to your niche. Another thing is, they are not reliable. These free web hostings aren't as consistent as the paid ones. Eventually, they would just be gone sometimes for no reason. And the support is terrible. You'll be lucky if you would get any reply from the support mail.

7 years ago

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Soulwatcher

I would never use a free hosting company, because your going to be asking for a lot more trouble then your going to want to deal with. They are always having problems and the support is non existent in most cases and your going to suffer in the long run even if it starts our great. My best advice would be get a hosting account at namecheap its $9.98 the first year and its $38.98 a year after.

7 years ago

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Corzhens

We have a friend who availed of free hosting from the UK. He was using his website for promoting his technical workshops in the local movie industry. When we checked his site, we had a hard time because the first problem is the very slow access that displaying the home page takes a lot of time. There is also the annoying pop up advertisement. After receiving many complaints about his site, the guy shifted to a paid web hosting.

6 years ago

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SEOClerks

Would you ever consider free web hosting?

Would you ever consider free web hosting?

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