An EffiMedia Article:
Free Web Hosting, When to Jump In?
Scenarios where free hosting is the smart choice.
By EffiMedia.
In fact, Web presence is essential to all businesses. To establish a web presence, you’ll need a website, and for it to go and stay online it needs a reliable web hosting service.
A lot of times, free web hosting and paid hosting offer the same security, network bandwidth, and port speed. The only difference is the hosting features included in paid plans. These features include additional disk storage, data transfer, more scripting support, more email accounts, etc.
For a business or individual opening a new website, or for any regular website, the disk storage and data transfer offered by a free hosting service would be sufficient at the start. It takes time to grow a website and accumulate enough visitors to max out the storage and/or data transfer limits of a free web hosting package. You can always upgrade your service from free hosting to paid hosting when the time comes.
Most small businesses do not need more than 5 email accounts. The more accounts you have just means the more time you have to spend managing them. Many free web hosting providers offer email aliases (or email forwarders) that allow you to create the illusion of having many different email addresses but in fact, all emails to these aliases are redirected and managed by one account.
Unless you are planning on using applications that require advanced scripting support (ie. a content management system, an e-commerce shopping cart, etc.), your web files will simply be HTML and image files. HTML and image files do not require advanced scripting support — any free hosting services will do.
So, knowing the difference in limitations from free to paid packages, you will see the different scenarios that can be good deals to choose a free package for your website.
1- You’re Learning the Ropes
Learning should be free, and it’s totally OK to use a free web host if you want to learn the ropes of setting up a website. Most free web hosts, like 000WebHost, are loaded with all the standard features of a paid hosting provider, such as CPanel, MySQL, and email.
2- When You’re Experimenting
If you’ve got a website online, it’s likely that at some point you’ll want to add some functionality with front end or back end scripting or edit the CSS and HTML.
If you’ve got a website online, it’s likely that at some point you’ll want to add some functionality with front end or back end scripting or edit the CSS and HTML.
3- You are Starting an Informal Business and your Content is not Heavy
Business or individual opening a new website, with limited or low traffic the disk storage and data transfer offered by a free web hosting service would be sufficient at the start. So, in this case, starting with a free plan have a lot of sense. It takes time to grow a website and accumulate enough visitors to max out the storage and/or data transfer limits of a free hosting package. Depending on your expansion plan, you will need to take into consideration future expansion. so scalability is a plus to select your hosting service. Remember you can always upgrade your service from free to paid hosting when the time comes.
4- You’re Not Trying to Make a Good Impression
These days, everyone has their own domain name. If you have free web hosting, you’ll only get a subdomain, and that looks very unprofessional which makes you less competitive than the rest.
So, if you’ve got any sort of blog, a personal portfolio, or a money-making website, you’re trying to make a good impression, right? So a free package is not for you.
But for those whose content is in an early stage and are starting to create their brand, Small blogs, websites, simple HTML/CSS pages, landing pages, etc. Free hosting is the ideal option.
5- You are Not Interested in Showing Up in Google
Google, and every other search engine, hate-free web hosting and will bump search results for free websites as far down as possible. So, if the positioning is not within your objectives free hosting is an option for you.
6- Your site does not have an E-commerce purpose.
E-Commerce is characterized by having to withstand high volumes of traffic and data processing, since no paying customer will forgive an unstable service. So, due to the bandwidth limitations on the free plan, E-Coomerces is not an option. But, if E-Commerce is not your thing, you are good to go with a free web hosting plan.
7- You Don't Need to scale quickly.
If your website is not heavy is not managing heavy traffic, your site can survive with the limited services offered by free plans. So if you are not expecting considerable growth you are safe with a free web hosting plan.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a website hosted for free is great for individuals, experimenting, beginners, learners, testers, or those who don’t want to commit to long-term contracts. So if you’re intending to create a proper website, free web hosts are not the way to go. unless your website requires the specific features offered by the paid hosting plans, free web hosting services might be all you need and especially if you are aiming to save on money without compromising on the performance.
The general rule you should go by, in order to decide for either free or paid hosting, is if you’re only expecting a few hundred persons to see your site, a free host is fine, but if you want the world to see your site, stay away from free hosts. The small investment you have to make for a domain and hosting is worth it.
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