Posted on February 26th, 2010If you are new to the webmaster field, you should be aware of free hosting. With free hosting, you can publish your own website online for free; no charges at all. A quick search on the internet will give you millions of results to choose from, so it can be quite hard to pick one that is right for you. Free hosting services are all similar, but never the same. Each company will be offering a different type of service and their resources will be different as well. Before you start looking for a free web host, you should think about what you require. Begin by thinking about the amount of space and bandwidth your site will need. Once you know what you want, it will make the whole “host selection” process a tad more easier.
Here are some aspects you should take into consideration when looking for a free web host.
1. Support Level: Free hosting sites rarely provide you with customer support, since there is no payment on your behalf. There is no real live support available, for technical issues or website issues. They will have a contact email where you can send information regarding the site and its services. In recent years, some reputable paid hosting companies have started their own free hosting division. These hosting sites offer a very limited amount of support to its users.
2. Space/Bandwidth: Free hosting websites usually rent out a server and they split it in between all its users. Due to this fact, they do not offer large amounts of space and bandwidth. If you find a host that offers over 10GB of space, you should think again before buying in. The usual amount a free host is willing to provide a user is about 1GB of space and 5GB bandwidth. Another thing to keep in mind is that, unlimited hosting does not exist. A hard drive will not expand as it is loaded with files, and similarly bandwidth is always limited. If you require a large amount of space or bandwidth, you should start thinking about shared hosting.
3. Ad-free Hosting: If you run your website for free, how does the company make any money? Well, the truth is that, these companies will place ads on your website, which will then bring in revenue fro them. This is how free hosting websites make money, and they continue to do so. It is hard to find a host that offers ad-free hosting, but there are some that do offer it. If your website is for a small business, ads on your page will not give a good impression. You would be better off paying a couple dollars for shared hosting.
4. Other Resources: If you are going to run a blog or a shopping site, you will require database support and certain other software’s. Some free hosting sites do no offer these extra features due to security issues. So, the types of sites you can host with a free hosting company are quite limited. Other features include add-on domains, sub-domains, emails and website statistics. Several hosts do offer these extra features for a small additional fee.