Free Web Hosting
Many companies offer free web hosting services. This includes free storage space on a web server, basic tools to build a site, a free email address and other goodies. Most hosting companies require that you display a banner at the top of each of your pages. Many also restrict you from using a domain name that you own or plan to purchase. If these constraints are too restrictive for your requirements, consider purchasing low cost paid hosting services.
Because features offered by free web hosting services are constantly changing, it is a good idea to shop around before making a final decision on where to set up your site. Here are two free web hosts to consider:
Geocities
Geocities has now been purchased by Yahoo.com. They offer 15 MB of free space, a free email address and other goodies. When selecting a user ID, chose a meaningful one as it will become part of your web address. (URL)
FreeServers
FreeServers.com provides 20 MB of web space free. If you own a "com" or international domain name (e.g. ".ca", ".uk"), FreeServers will host it at no cost.
Free or paid web hosting?
By Petr Sejba
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 :o)
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.
About the Author
Author is the owner of Marble Host ( http://www.MarbleHost.com ), reliable web hosting service offering Free Domain, 99.9 % uptime guarantee, 24/7 support with 1 hour response guarantee, enough disk storage, huge traffic allowance, web site builder and more.
Finding A Free Host: Requirements for your host.
People on the internet are greedy. They want some ultimate free host, with unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, and no ads. That will never happen, unless it is some private host that only allows a few users. I hate seeing this greed. Why should a host give you so much, and you don't even let them make money? It's a ridiculous idea. You have to make realistic goals on what your host might be able to provide you.
The point of the article is to help you determine the specific requirements for the free host you want to pick.
Storage & Bandwidth
To determine how much storage and bandwidth you need for your website, you need to think about what kind of files you may be storing. The majority of people who don't have anything but HTML and image files usually don't need more than 5 Mb. If this is the case, don't rule out any host because it doesn't have a huge amount of space. If your website stores several megabytes of files, your choices may be limited. There are plenty of websites that give you 20 Mb+, but most will ban file types such as .MP3.
Ad Types
I have heard a lot of people complain about how annoying the ads are on their free websites. It's rare these days to find a host without ads, and when there is one, it is usually abused and goes down months later. That happens for a reason, and that reason is that there is no money to be made when you have no ads. If people aren't paying for the website, ads are the way the company pays for their bills and salaries.
But don't lose hope yet, there are options. If you are a business site, it might look unprofessional if you have a banner on the top of your page. For this reason you might choose a host that looks like it will stay around for a while but has no ads, or get a host that has pop-ups. Pop-ups are quicker for the user to click out of, and the visitor only has to see it a second every time he enters a new page. The downside of pop-ups occur when visitors change pages quickly. If your visitors go to many pages each visit, a pop-up coming back up every time may be very annoying. In this situation, a banner may be better.
A final issue that has come up dealing with advertising is whether your host will allow you to host your own ads. If your website becomes popular, and for some reason you still don't want to move to paid hosting, you may want to sell advertising space on your website. This may be a problem for some hosts, as they don't necessarily want you to make a profit off of their free service. You may want to factor this into your search for a host if you are planning to make a profit off of a free website. I would recommend that if this is even a factor, you should pay a small fee for paid hosting. You receive more benefits, and there are a lot less hassles.
Scripting Languages Supported
Whether a webmaster is a programmer, or just someone who wants interactivity with their visitors, factoring in what programming languages a website supports may be important. All free web hosts allow HTML, images, and JavaScript. But to get features such as a message board, polls, and chatrooms, you have to have more powerful languages such as PHP, CGI/Perl, and ASP. The list of free web hosts that support some or all of these languages is very small. Hosts that allow this are prone to getting abused, and usually shut down quickly if they don't take precautions to avoid abuse. If it isn't absolutely necessary, do not make this a requirement in finding your host.
Various Other Features
Other things you may need to think about include length of your URL, and what type of uploading you have.
If you have a business site that you want to be easily remembered, (http://www.freewebhostwith50megsnoads.com/sites/users/)you might not be a good web host. Length is an obvious factor, as it is hard to remember a long URL. Another problem might be the domain hosting you. If you are a business or a professional site, do you really want to have the words FREEHOSTING or ALL4FREE in your URL? Think about this when finding your host. Redirection services may seem like a good solution, but often to pay for this service, they too must have pop-ups or banner frames.
The method of uploading is important too. If you are comfortable with FTP programs, you may want to require your host to have an FTP account provided to you. This might not be the best tool if you aren't very technical and have to update your pages a lot. Try looking for an Online File Manager as a feature.
Conclusion
I hope this article helped you figure out what features you need to look for when deciding on a free host. Next article in this series will tell you how to actually find the host.
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