If you are thinking of putting your website online, you don’t have to work very hard. All you have to do is choose and purchase a domain name, host your website on a server and get it designed. Many business owners will think of getting a free web hosting plan to save money. If these free hosting plans were so great, no websites would be hosted on shared servers.
If that point doesn’t confuse you and you are still likely to go with that free hosting option, we recommend going through the following information why you shouldn’t do so.
First, let’s go through some of the differences of the two types of hosting plans.
Comparison
- Speed – A free hosting plan will claim to be fast and a shared hosting plan will be faster by more than double the speed.
- Bandwidth – A free plan means 2 to 5 GB bandwidth per month and a shared plan means unlimited monthly traffic.
- Disk space – Free plan means 100-250 MB space and shared hosting means unlimited disk space.
- Number of domains – Free plan means 1 domain and shared plan means multiple domains.
- File size -A free plan is also going to have a limit to the file size, which the paid plan will not have.
So if you look at this simple comparison, you could easily see which is the better type of hosting option.
Drawbacks of Free Web Hosting
The following drawbacks of free hosting will give you even more reasons why you should consider starting with shared hosting.
No Support – If you choose a free web host, you will not receive any support. When it comes to web hosting, technical support is the most important factor. You will hardly receive any support if there is some technical problem.
Limited Bandwidth – Do you want to have times when your website is unavailable? If yes, then you should choose a free hosting plan. There is no guarantee for uptime and your site has a chance of going down multiple times a day. So if you are not serious about your visitors and business, you can continue using free hosting.
Loss of Traffic – Thanks to the above-mentioned two drawbacks, a free web host is going to cause gradual damage to your website. You will be losing potential traffic and sales along with your business’ credibility. Poor load times are also going to affect your search engine rankings as search engines take load times as an important factor.
Unwanted Advertising – If you have free hosting there is a good chance that you will have your site ‘pasted’ with so many ads (without compensation to you). You must have seen the online ads on the side panel of the website, or the annoying banner popping up on the free hosted websites. Free web hosts are free because they generate their revenue from other sources – and one such source is advertising. So you should choose them if you are ready to have all types of annoying ads on your site.
Shared hosting is going to cost you a minimal amount on a monthly or annual basis. But it will provide you unlimited resources, uptime guarantee and no ads on your site.
The Bottom Line
Initially we all want to save a buck when we start a business but to economize on web hosting is going to cost you money:
- Your business will look unprofessional.
- You’ll have problems when moving the site if you get bigger.
- If you do change hosts, you’ll lose any incoming links you had to your site. That’s not the case with paid hosting.
- You’ll need to redesign the site if you move to paid hosting.
- Most free hosts have no provisions for making backup copies of your site.
- If your site exceeds a (usually small) bandwidth limit, it will be shut down.
- Most search engines do not index free-hosted websites.
Give your new business a good start by investing in a paid web hosting. In the long run it will be worth it. Nothing comes for free and all good things in life are paid for.
If you’ve decided to look at professional hosting, we offer recommendations for shared hosting, business hosting, or the best dedicated server hosting.
