Free Web Hosting

The concept of free web hosting is almost as old as the Internet itself. Built on the assumption that people always want a service for free, free web hosts have provided space, bandwidth, and site building tools free of charge to consumers who don't mind the inconveniences that range from the company going under completely to having their site removed without notice to receiving little to no technical support to exposing their visitors to an endless barrage of the most annoying and untargeted ads out there.

If it sounds as though I don't agree with the concept of free hosting, it's because I don't. Why? Let's take a look at a few aspects of this service in more detail.

Free Web Hosting - What's Bad About It

Low Quotas of Space/Bandwidth, Etc. : Because free hosts provide a service that you don't directly pay them for, they tend to limit space and bandwidth to ridiculous levels. The bait and switch game advertisers have been playing forever serves to hook webmasters into paying more than they'd pay elsewhere when they are inevitably forced to upgrade to a paid account.

Lack of Features : May free hosts don't provide things like .htaccess files, MySQL databases, cgi, and even FTP because these items are considered "luxary" services. Webmasters looking for these features would do well to avoid free hosting entirely.

Frequent Folding : Sure, all hosting types have seen many a company come and go, but free hosting seems to be the most instable of all. Free hosts have suddenly gone belly up (look at snap->Xoom->NBCi as an example) leaving webmasters to scramble to relocate without warning.

No Uptime Guarantee : Because you don't pay for their services, free hosts don't have to provide any time of uptime guarantee. There is no incentive to fix server problems quickly. You may be faced with days without an active site if you go with a free service.

Spontaneous Site Removal : One needs only to look in the forums of free hosts to find the most frequent complaint. WHERE'S MY SITE??? You don't pay for their service, they can remove your site whenever they wish, with or without a reason.

Little to No support : Hosting fees pay the bills, tech support included. Free hosts usually limit support to forums (often poorly staffed) and response times can be quite lengthy.

Ads Galore : I blame free hosting for the ad blocking software craze. Free hosts have to pay the bills somehow and spawning endless popups seems to be a favorite method of theirs in earning revenue. I'm not opposed to a popup here and there, but free hosts pile the ads on with a ferocity you just don't see elsewhere.

Are You Really Saving? : Free hosting with all of these added inconveniences. I run several (about a dozen) web sites. I pay $5/month total for hosting (not per site, total!). I get tech support, an uptime guarantee, stable servers, and the only ads that appear on my site are the ones I put there. My revenue from these ads (far more targetted and less obtrusive than the ones free hosts offer) more than pays for my hosting every month.

Of course, just like everything else in this world, free hosting cannot fairly be presented with only it's bad qualities pointed out. There is certainly a time and place for free hosting.

Free Web Hosting - What's Good About It

A Great Place to Learn : If you're doing your first site and it isn't especially important, more like on the job training, free hosting may be for you.

Unprofitable Site : If your site isn't geared towards making profit and falls into a category (because of low traffic, area of content, etc) where you're not likely to find advertisers, free hosting may be a good avenue to take to save you money