The purpose of any business is to make a profit, and web hosting companies that offer free services must figure out how to recover that money in other ways. Many of them offer web hosting as one of many services, and might offer free hosting as an encouragement to buy a domain name or other services. Others offer free hosting as a sample during a trial period and being charging fees after a certain amount of time. Although these are good ways for these companies to make money and (if used correctly) a decent way for you to save a few bucks, they aren\u2019t truly \u201cfree\u201d and thus aren\u2019t what we\u2019ll be focusing on in this article.<\/p>\n
Reliability Issues<\/strong><\/p>\n There are literally thousands of hosting services out there, and while many of the free ones are reliable a good deal of them aren\u2019t. Some are run by hobbyists or unsuccessful entrepreneurs trying to get their latest venture off the ground. Since they are often small operations offering services for free, it can be very difficult to guarantee continued service. Websites hosted on second (or third, or fourth) rate services are often prone to outages, delays, and other problems. Even bigger, more well-known companies aren\u2019t immune. In the internet age, every company is only a few months away from obsolescence if it doesn\u2019t adapt and change with the times. No matter how popular a free web service is today, poor management or a few key mistakes could lead to the service collapsing within a year. That\u2019s bad news for the websites on its servers. Because of the steady stream of income, paid service providers tend to be more stable and less likely to fade away.<\/p>\n Advertising<\/strong><\/p>\n Another potential problem can come from advertising. Many free services make money by inserting advertisements into your webpages. This means that you can\u2019t make money off of the ads posted to your site. If you were counting on advertising as a source of revenue, then free hosting is not a good idea. At a certain point, your profits are helped most by paying for a web hosting service and collecting your own advertising revenue, rather than letting a \u201cfree\u201d service take all the profits. Even if you weren\u2019t counting on advertising as a source of revenue, you have no control over the ads. If you wanted your site to be ad-free, the web hosting service might not allow you to do that\u2014which can be problematic for a business website. You have no control over which ads might appear, and ads that are inappropriate or even for a competitor\u2019s website can drive away business.<\/p>\n Special Features (and the Lack Thereof)<\/strong><\/p>\n Free web hosting services often offer limited services, because they have limited resources. They will usually place a cap on the maximum size of your website, restricting the number of pages and making it difficult (if not impossible) to add multimedia options. This can hurt your organization\u2019s growth and keep you from expanding. Free services also tend to be inflexible, making it difficult to accomplish everything you would like to.<\/p>\n Other services that are offered by many paid services (but not free ones) can include:<\/p>\n These services make work easier and improve productivity. The age old clich\u00e9 that time is money applies here\u2014time could be spent on more important (and profitable) projects, rather than services that paid web hosts can supply.<\/p>\n Popular Free Sites <\/strong><\/p>\n One of the most popular free hosting services is WordPress, which is used by many different groups to build thousands of websites. However, their free hosting service only offers three gigabytes of space, without any custom plugins. There are a number of different services that you can pay a fee to gain access to, such as premium design themes, expanded storage space, or increased control over the ads that appear on your site. This is good news if cost is a serious concern for your website, and you only need a few key features (or none at all)\u2014but if you want to run a large site with multimedia support, plugins, no ads, or the best design themes, WordPress can get very expensive very quickly. It\u2019s simpler just to start with a paid host. Another popular hosting service, Blogger, is run by Google and allows you to host blogs. Unfortunately, that\u2019s about all that it allows you to do. Although running a blog is usually good for businesses, having one obviously hosted on a free Google service looks unprofessional. You cannot own your own domain name\u2014the address will be yoursite.blogspot.com. There are also limits on your storage space and the number of pages you can have. Although a free blog is nice for individuals, it is no substitute for a real business website.<\/p>\n If your organization is strapped for cash, then \u201cfree\u201d hosting services can seem like an incredible deal\u2014but the costs can be much higher than you think. You might be missing out on sources of revenue, hurting your own productivity, facing site outages, or even losing business, and in the long run a paid hosting service will almost always leave you much better off.<\/p>\n Top image \u00a9GL Stock Images<\/p>\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
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