Monday, November 4, 2013

Pros and Cons of Free Web Hosting

Beginners to the online world will be very pleased to hear that there are free web hostings available for them. They then pursue and compare those free web hostings. Generally, they will choose the one with the biggest disk space and the biggest bandwidth. Is it true that free web hosting is a dream comes true for newcomers to the online world? Let's talk about it.The good thing about free web hosting is that you are able to start hosting your website without any cost. You are able to learn to use FTP, online file manager, uploading files, etc. Immediately after registration, your free web hosting account is ready to use. You can put contents and also put in AdSense code to earn money for every click from your website.However, free web hosting has quite a few disadvantages.The main drawback of a free web hosting would be the advertisement from the free web hosting provider. Those providers need money to stay in business, and the perfect way to do that while giving your free hosting is by putting banners on your websites. Some providers oblige you to display a large banner. Some only needs one small text link. Whatever it is, an ad is a necessity or your free web hosting account is banned.The next disadvantage is the small bandwidth and the low reliability of the server. You will get at most 1 or 2 GB monthly bandwidth. Because it is free, the free accounts will be congregated in one server. This means the load of the server will incredibly high. In the end, your websites may have more down time or operate very slow compared to paid web hosting. No matter your website is only for personal use or for business, your visitors will be displeased when they find out that your server is down.Free web hosting will also experience fewer features. It is not uncommon for you not to have email account, autoresponder, PHP support, database support like MySQL, cron, and any other web hosting features. These features might be the typical for most paid hosting but not for free hosting.The last drawback could be the unavailability of a domain name. If you apply for a web hosting, you would get a subdomain or a directory for the URL. Some free hosting provider provides you the capability to get your own domain and host it along your free hosting. However, this case is sporadic. Most free hostings do not come with a domain hosting. Thus, you could never have a typical URL even if you want to. You have to stick to a subdomain or directory until you shift to paid account.Summing up, free web hosting, although gives a promising beginning, could not be compared with the paid web hosting. A forced advertisement, small bandwidth, low reliability of server, and unavailable domain hosting are just several drawbacks of free web hosting. It is true that some sporadic free web hostings have no forced banner, or come with big bandwidth, or other features. However, compared to paid web hosting, free web hosting should not be used for serious website, personal or business. Free web hosting would be helpful for people to learn how to use FTP, how upload files, and other basic tasks. Free web hosting is also a good option for testing idea or to host website prototype before transferring it to paid web hosting.