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.