Can Free Web Hosting Work for Your Site?

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Do you think that free web hosting might work okay for you? Many people these days have a passion or interest they want to express, and going online with a web site is a great way to do it. Never before have we had the ability to reach the world so quickly and easily. While you can use any of the free social media sites to do this (such as My Space), getting your own domain and hosting is often a better option.

Anything you put on a free social network site really isn’t yours. You are subject to rules and regulations regarding what you can post. There is nothing wrong with having standards, and this usually isn’t a problem for most people, anyway. The biggest reason to have your own site is ownership. If you spend a lot of time building content on a free social site, it can all be wiped out if that site changes the rules or decides there is something about your site they don’t like. It happens.

With the price of paid hosting down to reasonable levels, it makes sense now to consider it. You can register a domain for under $10 a year, and set up paid hosting for about the same amount per month. These paid packages have plenty of disk space and bandwidth allowance for most average webmasters, usually with room for multiple sites if you’re inclined to create them.

Despite the low cost of standard paid hosting, some people still want free web hosting. If you are just putting up a site as a hobby, or a personal blog or diary for fun, free web hosting might be a great option for you. If you are planning to sell anything from your site, or promote some sort of business, don’t even consider free web hosting.

Looking at the bright side, free web hosting doesn’t cost a dime and there is no commitment. It isn’t all wonderful, though, because somebody somewhere has to pay for it.

In most cases, the hosting provider reserves the right to run ads on your site, usually on the top or side margins. This won’t disturb your content, but can make viewing it annoying to others, and make your pretty design and setup look pretty lousy.

It isn’t unusual for pop ups to be a problem on free sites. Pop up blockers don’t get them all, and they can be a nuisance to your site visitors.

Free hosting is for small sites that don’t get a lot of traffic, and don’t use a lot of video or file transfers. Don’t plan on having more than a small, simple site with these hosts.

Your website address will the hosting companies name plus something you create, for example “petejohnson.freewebhostingcompany.com” - not exactly a personalized or glowing expression of you or the impression you want to make on the world.

Remember that free hosts are counting on making money from the ads on your site. They hope you’ll bring in traffic that will click the ads and buy something. They then make money from the click, or from the sale. It’s a great deal. Problem is, if it doesn’t go well, the host can shut down at anytime and all your work and effort is gone forever.

Unless you are just totally broke or don’t care if your site is full of ads, I suggest that you avoid free web hosting completely. Good quality hosting is so affordable now, and you have complete control over your domain and content with it. Go with free hosting if you must, but understand the pros and cons.

Getting your own website up and running is exciting. When trying to decide on a web host, you have quite a lot of often confusing choices. Find out if free web hosting is a plan that will meet your needs.

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