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Free or paid web hosting?

Just finished your first website? So it's the time to look for some hosting and make a choise. Your first qustion probably will be whether to choose free or paid hosting service. Let's have a look at some advantages and disadvantages of these solutions.

Free web hosting:
(+) It's for free. You don't need to pay for domain name.
(-) Your URL will be something like username.freehost.com or freehost.com/username. As I noticed above, the advantage is that you don't need to pay for domain. But note that if you move your website to another provider in the future you can loose some or all your traffic (there are some solutions how to solve this problem but it is not the point of this article).
(-) Your provider will probably include ads to your pages - usually 1 or 2 banners, sometimes popup windows. If you plan to use banner exchange on your site read carefully their Terms and conditions. Some free hosts doesn't allow it.
(-) Free hosts usually allow lower bandwith then paid hosts and a lot of them don't offer futures like PHP and MySQL.
(-) A lot of free hosts change their Terms and conditions during some time. If your free host offers hosting wihtout ads now, don't be surprised when banner or popup appears on your site in the future.
(-) Sometimes happens that free hosts cancel their free service and longer offer paid hosting only. In this case you have only 2 choises - pay them or loose your website.


Paid web hosting:
(+) You can host your own domain. If you decide to change the web hosting provider in the future, you easily transfer the domain to the new provider and don't loose your traffic.
(+) Most paid hosts offer 24/7 support via email or live chat and some of them provide toll-free phone support.
(+) You can expect better uptime then on free host. Some paid hosts offer uptime guarantee.
(+) Paid hosts usually offer enough disk space and bandwith. Futures like PHP and MySQL are standard. Even if you are not programmer you can download plenty of free PHP scripts from internet.
(-) Paid hosting coast money


Before you make the decision if choose free or paid host you should answer this question: How big ambitions do I have with my website? If you are starting small personal page for your friends consist of a few *.html files then free host will be sufficient. In case you plan to run serious business website, need PHP, database and don't want ads on the site I recommend to look for quality paid host.

BTS007

Also with Free Host
- You Can,t Get Data Buck Up
- 50% server Downtime

0lgi

Thanks for the information admin ,

Another bad thing of free hosting is that you don't have any rights to shout if they go away and delete all your files , you aint paying nothing so you dont have rights whereas if you pay , you will be treated as a customer and things will be different

amazing_greg

Often the support is lacking on free hosting as well. This doesn't sound too important, but when you're site's down and you need help bringing it back up, good support is second-to-none.

nansurabhi

biggest problem in free hosting is that they put their ads at the top and ur site lloks un professional

RacerLodde

Not all free hosts put their ads there. You can use them to start with and then you can start using paid servers.

But if you have even little cash enough to pay for a month's hosting, then go right there. Dont waste time with free servers uless you are compelled.

Xibit

I would recommend to go with a paid hosting if you would like to get into a professional looking website. I think it is the best thing to start with if you are serious into making money.

Lovelong

Paid webhosting is always good as you get more uptime and also you dont have to share your revenue with free hosting providing people.

nyappleboy

Wow, this post has been active for quite some time.
I do agree that ads in free hosting can be a nuisance but I do beg to differ that free hosting is all that bad. I work for a hosting company and we offer both free and paid hosting. Our free hosting is ad supported but I invite you to check out what we offer for free. It would be foolish not to take up our offer. We offer php and mysql hosting. We are also affiliates with co.cc and offer their domains. I know co.cc is not all that attractive but we run a vast hosting company on that domain and are doing quite well. Check out all that we offer and you will rethink about free hosting!!

nyappleboy

Here is the link aiyer.co.cc

nyappleboy

sb21pro

dont spammmm

smoothvibes

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manojjonam10

Thanks for the information.But free web hosting is almost an unreliable there are cases of frequent server breakdown and they are very prone to hacking.