web hosting

Freehostia – Free and Paid Hosting Company

Offering web hosting services for over five years now, Freehostia is slightly different from the rest.  A new customer can start out with a free web hosting account to try out the services and move up to a paid account accordingly.  Sure, there are a few hosting companies out there that offer similar free accounts, but Freehostia does it without forced advertising.

Accounts offered

Freehostia offers five different account levels – Chocolate, Watercircle, Lovebeat, Wildhoney and Supernatural.  These plans range in pricing from free to $9.95 a month.

Chocolate – 250 MB in disk space, 6 GB bandwidth, 3 PHP3/IMAP e-mail accounts, 1 MySQL database, 10 MB database space – free

Watercircle – 500 MB in disk space, 12 GB bandwidth, 100 POP3/IMAP e-mail accounts, 2 MySQL databases, 25 MB database space – $2.95 a month

Lovebeat – 12000 MB in disk space, 150 GB bandwidth, 300 PHP3/IMAP e-mail accounts, 8 MySQL databases, 60 MB database space – $4.95 a month

Wildhoney – 35000 MB in disk space, 400 GB bandwidth, free domain name, 15 MySQL databases, 90 MB database space – $7.95 a month

Supernatural – 90000 MB in disk space, 900 GB bandwidth, free domain name, 50 MySQL databases, 120 MB database space – $9.95 a month

1-Click installer

Elefante is offered with all accounts (even the free account).  The Elefante installer is a software platform that enables web site owners to quickly install a variety of programs with a single click of the mouse button.  Over 40 PHP scripts are offered in categories such as wikis, blogs, CMS, e-commerce and more.

Some of the more popular blog software offerings are Movable Type, WordPress, and b2evolution.  The CMS programs within Elefante are a bit more impressive of a list – Drupal, Mambo, Moodle, Joomla and eight other popular CMS programs are available.  In the category of e-commerce, Elefante offers osCommRes and osCommerce.  All in all, Elefante is a great added feature to all Freehostia accounts.

Support

Freehostia has a customer care department at work 24×7.  All hosting customers (with the exception of those using free hosting) can expect to receive an answer within 1 hour of contacting the support department.  Free hosting customers are not completely disregarded but aren’t given priority – expected support answer waiting time is 6 hours.

The hosting company offers video tutorials, FAQs, a knowledge base and a ticketing system for support as well.  The online contact form is easily found within Freehostia’s support area.  While not the most expansive of support areas, Freehostia offers a good solid range of options when one is in need of assistance.

Conclusion

With most free hosting accounts offered by web hosting businesses requiring that advertising be present on all web pages, it’s nice to find a company that not only offers ad-free accounts for no charge but also gives free hosting clients the standard features one would expect from a paid service.  Add in the ability to upgrade to accounts that are very economical, Freehostia is a web hosting service worth checking out.

Do You Need Free or Paid Web Hosting?

If you are in need of a website, it important to know that are many types of services that can help you achieve this goal.  Rather than going into the endless variety of web hosting types, we will discuss two of the most basic services – free and paid hosting.  Indeed, you don’t necessarily have to spend money to get a website.  However, there are a number of factors that need to be considered outside of costs, all of which will help you make an informed decision.

What is the Intent of Your Site?

When it comes to choosing a service, the first step that needs to made is determining the purpose of your site.  Some people use a website as a convenient means of sharing photos and information with family and friends while others are looking to start a business online.  Although every website is based on the same general concepts, there are extremes that greatly differentiate business sites from their personal counterparts.  Knowing the purpose of your site will make it much easier to decide between free and paid hosting.

What will it Include?

After determining the needs of your website, you should then have a better idea of the content it will include.  Some websites consist of a single homepage and others contain multiple pages with dynamic features.  If you only need to upload small text documents and photos, you will not require tons of disk space and bandwidth in a web hosting solution.  The same holds true if you only anticipate a minimal amount of traffic.

If the above sounds like your plans, you can probably get by with free web hosting.  Free services are typically easy to use and cater to individuals with no experience at creating web pages.  With the right platform, you can learn more about HTML programming and put those skills to use for a professional site in the future.  Many have used these services to build their presence online before moving on to a paid solution.

Can You Afford to be Limited?

Although a free hosting service can help you get a website, there are several drawbacks you should take into consideration.  First and foremost, you have very little control over your hosting environment.  Because of this, you may be forced to allow the hosting provider to place third-party advertisements on your web pages.  Secondly, features are quite limited in comparison to a premium hosting solution.  You only have a small amount of disk space and bandwidth to work with and technical support is almost non-existent.  Such disadvantages are the very reason free hosting services are best suited for personal websites.

Paid hosting gives you more flexibility and control with a variety of packages to choose from.

You will have access to more disk space and bandwidth along with a number of highly sought after features.  This ranges from powerful databases and dynamic programming languages to multiple email accounts and free domain names.  These are features you just won’t find in a shared hosting plan.

Conclusion

As you can see, free hosting has its purposes, howevef, the usefulness is primarily limited to personal sites.  Anyone who plans to make a serious impact on the web is better served with a premium hosting solution.  In this case, it pays to have a service that provides the features and reliability you need to achieve your goals online.