Are Free Webhosting Accounts Really Free? - 5 Critical Things to Consider Before Choosing a Free Web Host
By Michael Turner
Many free web hosting accounts are free to use, however they will cost you a lot of money, time, and customers as well if you have a site that is meant for business purposes and is more than the simplest site imaginable. Consider the following items as to why free web hosting might cost you more than you had bargained for when you signed up.
Consideration #1 Bandwidth
Frequently, free web hosting providers offer you little bandwidth which means it will take longer for your page to load. When your page takes more than 10 seconds to load you will lose visitors because they will simply move on. Because of this, you might lose a lot of customers and sales from your free web host.
Consideration #2 Advertising
Many free web hosting companies are "free" to you, however, you will have advertising posted on your website as well as pop up ads. Most people do not like this and will not visit your site because of it. Be careful about signing up with a free web hosting company that uses advertising. It might not bother you, but it will probably affect your traffic
and sales.
Consideration #3 Web Space
Since the web host is free, you cannot expect a whole lot of web space. Frequently people do not have the space they need to upload their web page and include all of their information. Be sure to check with your free web space provider or the ones you are considering to make sure you will have enough web space to host all of the required elements of your web pages.
Consideration #4 Reliability
Another consideration with free web hosting companies is reliability. Often times limitations are put on your traffic flow and if you exceed this, your site may be disabled for a period of time or you may even receive a bill. Find out what the rules are for traffic and what the consequences are for exceeding your limits.
Consideration #5 Limitations
More often than not, your free web host will have rules regarding the size of photos, icons, and more that you can upload. You will want to check into this before you sign up for free web hosting because if you cannot upload what you need, it is time to look at other options.
While free web hosting is technically free, it frequently costs websites more money in the long run because it limits activity and business from occurring at the rate set by consumers. Because of this, if you have a growing site it will eventually be too big for the free account and you will have to make some changes. Instead of dealing with the hassle, figure out if a free server will really be worthwhile and make a plan for change and growth ahead of time.
About the Author
Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/
Free Web Site hosting without the banner ads
Looking for free web hosting with no annoying pop-ups, pop-unders, buttons, banners, headers or footers? And as well as this, you'd like 99.8 percent up-time, fast servers, access to the cgi-bin for scripts, FP extensions, PHP and MySQL databases and FTP access?
We went out searching for the best "no ads" totally free site hosting space deals around. The results: disappointing, they are very few and far between. Many have come and gone, or as in the case of Bizland, quite suddenly withdrawn their free service and demanded that all their customers begin paying. We took a look at the promotional information for over 300 free web hosting companies, but then also looked at customer reviews. There was usually a major difference in opinions.
There is still a plethora of free web hosts around, but most require that you carry their advertising or offer you a limited time for the free service, usually a year. On the up side of this, many of these companies do supply quality hosting with many services in exchange for having their banners served up on your pages. We did find that many of the non-banner supported free options were hosted on very slow servers. In a number of cases, the server failed to respond at all!
How do non-banner free hosting companies make their money?
These companies try to survive by enticing the freebie customers to take out their paid hosting space options, which is fair enough. Quite often, their paid hosting options are quite cheap. You'll find that if you utilize this kind of free site hosting, the services available are rather limited and you'll need to pay for things like Front Page extensions and access to the cgi-bin for scripts. The other way that they survive is through regular newsletters containing offers from companies that pay them for the ad space.
Strategies in using non-banner supported free hosting options
One of the common patterns for these companies is that when they first set up shop, customer support is fantastic, server response times are great, shared scripts function well and file transfer interfaces are reliable. But as time goes on, "gold fever" hits, and people begin flocking to these companies with inevitable results - things start slowing down and falling over.
If you do find yourself in the position of needing to use free space due to financial restrictions; here's a couple of things you can do:
Buy a domain name first
Register a domain name first - Many domain name registrars give you a stack of free services with each name registered. Costs for domain name registrations can be as little as US$10-$12 per year. One of the services that you want to look for is a domain name control panel and free http/URL forwarding or framing. This allows you to redirect the name as you wish, changing its destination every day if you want to! If your free web-hosting provider goes belly up or isn't functioning correctly, you can move your site to another provider and redirect the domain name to point towards it.
A word of warning - be very careful whom you register your domain name with. We recently assisted a client who registered a domain name for a couple of dollars, but had very little control over the name without having paying huge fees to the registrar. It took approximately 2 months to wrest control away from the rabid registrar and transfer the name to a more ethical company. Always read the fine print.
What if I can't afford a domain name?
You could always use a free, no-banner, no-popup URL/HTTP redirection service from providers such as:
(http://www.shorturl.com/)
(http://www.has.it/home.php)
(http://www.777i.net/)
(http://www.ipfox.com/home.html)
The only issue with using these free URL redirection providers is the question of continuity of service. Also bear in mind that when it comes to being listed on the search engines, nothing beats having your own domain commercially hosted, rather than a redirection to one.
Free web space may be right under your nose!
When you sign up for Internet access, it is not uncommon for you also to get some free web space thrown in with the deal. We receive 10 Megs of space, including Front Page extensions from our Internet Service Provider which has been invaluable for creating a mirror / backup version of Taming the Beast. Net. Email your ISP to check out what is available to you.
Ok, back to non-advertising supported, free web hosting options. While we won't personally recommend any as we haven't used them and there were too many conflicting views, the following free hosting directories may assist you in finding some (no frills, no banner web space. Remember to read the fine print before signing up for any service:
(http://www.freewebspace.net/search /advanced.shtml)
(http://www.clickherefree.com/Free_Web_Space_Directory.htm)
Looking for free web based file storage space?
(http://www.freewebspace.net/guide /diskstorage.shtml)
As you can see, there is a number of alternatives to get you started. It should be noted that nothing matches paid site hosting. But if price is an issue and you want to get your site up quickly, by all means check out the free service being offered. It may not supply much such as web space or bandwidth, but you would have taken the first step towards your online career. The most important thing to realize, is don't certain factors detain you from your goal. If money is an issue, you now have some free services to get you started.
What makes a good Web Hosting Provider!
By Jonathan White
When building your website and getting it hosted online, you want your site to be up and running on the World Wide Web 24/7 without any hitches so that it is making you money all the time and all you have to worry about then is getting visitors to your site, doing seo, getting repeat visitors, maximizing your sites revenue, etc. You don't want to have to worry about your web hosting and it's stability.
So, when choosing a web hosting provider to host your website with, you want to try and get the best web hosting provider so that your site is always up and running smoothly on the World Wide Web.
So what makes a good Web Hosting Provider?
There are many things that make up a good web-hosting provider. Some of these include good support, good uptime, good backup system in place, good hardware, offers loads of web hosting features including email features, scripting features and more.
So where can some good Web Hosting Providers be found?
There are many places across the web where you can find some of these good web-hosting providers. A good place to start is probably using a web-hosting directory as you can easily compare these web-hosting providers against what other providers are offering that's listed within any individual web-hosting directory. For example, with http://www.1hostseeking.com you can easily find and compare a large amount of some of the top and most reliable web-hosting providers online. You can easily compare each web host against each other so that you can easily see what they offer for the amount of money that they charge.
When choosing a web host it is also best to choose one that offers free set-up and also a money back guarantee. This is because if you find that they don't quite offer what you need for your website, then you can easily get your money back and choose another web hosting provider.
Even if you found some web hosting providers from a web hosting directory like http://www.1hostseeking.com that offer the features that you need for your website, but you still would like further information about the quality of their service, then you could also go to a web hosting related forum and ask others about what they think about these web hosting providers that you have chosen.
After you have done all this, you should then have a good idea or a better idea of which web hosting provider you are most likely to choose to host your website.
About the Author
Jonathan White has been involved in Web Hosting and other Webmaster activities on the Web for over two years now and is the Webmaster of http://www.1hostseeking.com - a categorized Web hosting directory listing a large amount of Web hosting providers.
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