Free Web Hosting Considerations

Free web hosting has been around just as long as paid hosting. If you think back 5 or 10 years (maybe even further), you can probably remember playing around with some free web hosting. I can very clearly remember my first web site from the late nineties, hosted at Angelfire. I later “upgraded” to Tripod and eventually found a free cPanel host. The cPanel host disappeared and I made the leap to paid web hosting. I haven’t looked back since.

Free web hosting hasn’t changed too much since it first started. The technology has improved, but free web hosts still offer far less space and bandwidth than most paid web hosts. Many of them still place ads on your free web sites. Others make you post on forums and become active in order to qualify for free web hosting. The exact offers differ from host to host, but there are common themes. Some major hosting companies (Lunarpages is probably the most prominent) started off as a free web hosts and then moved to paid hosting exclusively.

The adage of “you get what you pay for” seems to apply in web hosting. There is a huge difference in the level of service and support you receive from a paid versus a free web host.

Most free web hosts don’t offer any sort of company-provided support. If support is offered by free hosts, it’s usually very limited and very slow. There is not a reputable paid host that will require ads to be placed on your site, but many free hosts do.

When looking for a free web hosting company, the most important thing to consider is the reputation of the hosting company. Free web hosts come and go a lot. If one of them happens to go while you are hosted with them, your web site (and the time you spent creating it) could be gone forever.

If you see a free web host that offers some really nice features and plans, be skeptical. Providing high quality web hosting for no money is obviously not a sustainable business, so there is almost always a catch if the offer seems too good to be true. Free web hosts that actually offer an upgrade to paid hosting or that show ads are probably safer since the companies actually have business models and income to pay for expenses like servers.

Like with paid hosts, hosts that have been around for a while are a safer bet than those that are brand new. You want to see a company with a hopefully positive track record before deciding to move your web site. Free web hosts are a lot more likely to disable your site for no reason, so be sure to keep frequent backups of your work. If you don’t, you risk losing your data. Be sure to login to your account regularly because many free web hosts will disable accounts that they think are inactive.

With free web hosting, keep in mind that you don’t “own” your URL or web site address. Since most free hosts let you use a subdomain (i. e. freehostclient.clickfire.com) or a folder on their site (clickfire.com/freehostclient), they maintain ownership over your URL. Unlike with a top level domain (clickfire.com), you don’t own this URL and can’t take it elsewhere. If you build a popular site using freehosting.com/freehostclient as your URL, you have to stick with freehosting.com in order to keep that URL. Some free web hosts will let you use a paid, top level domain name (clickfire.com), but may charge extra.

Freewebs is a well known and reputable free web host. You can use their tools to create a full featured web site very quickly. The company has a nice wizard and set of WYSIWYG tools that non-technical web site creators can use to create a web site.

All of the free sites feature banner ads above the main site, but for $1.25 per month, you can upgrade the package and have the ads removed. Some of the features included:

• About 300 free templates
• 0.5 GB of bandwidth
• 40 MB of web space
• Site Builder
• Ability to easily add logos, edit header and footers, etc.

Before making the decision about which free web host to go with, Google the company’s name and try to find information about them. If they’ve been around a while, there are probably plenty of stories and experiences (good and bad) from current and previous customers. Like with any major decision, you want to do your research and be well informed beforehand.

Free web hosting is good for those looking to experiment with web hosting and the process of web site creation and maintenance. If you need a web site for your business or for something important, then it is worth the money to upgrade to a paid web host.