While free web hosting usually sounds like one of the best deals on the web, there are actually reasons to avoid free web hosting, and that is because it is typically not all it’s cracked up to be. Reasons to avoid free web hosting usually indicate that paying for cheap web hosting is usually a better route to go.
If you are new to web hosting or building a website in general, it can be difficult to resist those ads and web hosting claims that you can get the best free web hosting around without having to pay a cent! Yes, these ads and web hosts do exist. However, are they really the best web hosting around?Usually not, unfortunately. Keep reading to learn the reasons to avoid free web hosting and what to consider paying for when you are trying to find the best web hosting provider for your online needs.
Reasons to Avoid Free Web Hosting:
There are a few major problems that are common with free web hosting accounts. First, less features are typically included in your web hosting plan. You won’t be able to use easy design tools, and you won’t have access to all of the fun features like adding a blog to your website like WordPress or Joomla. Your free web hosting account certainly will not come with e-commerce tools, so if you plan to have an online business, plan on spending a few bucks with your web hosting account. Your entire web hosting experience will simply be overall a lot less feature friendly than a web hosting account where you might have to shell out a few dollars each month. However, for some that only want to have a super simple website, then this might not be a bad thing. However, keep reading these reasons to avoid free web hosting and you might change your mind.
Because of the lack of features you can get access to with a free web hosting account, you will likely end up spending money anyway and might end up spending more money than you would have if you would’ve just gone with a cheap, affordable web hosting company in the first place. Free web hosting companies will sign up customers for a free web hosting account under the guise that everything is free. However, the new customer will quickly realize that you can’t design your website without paying extra. The customer will not be able to add any new features like widgets or plugins without paying some extra money each month. So basically you have nothing to work with when you sign up for a free web hosting account.
Lastly, this is the biggest reason to avoid free web hosting: with a free web hosting account, you will not be able to accommodate for a growing website and increased web traffic. Once your web traffic, or number of hits per day exceeds that amount allotted for your free web hosting account, the web hosting provider will simply shut down your website and will require you to pay money to get your website back up and running. Unless you are planning on having a super small website with barely any Internet traffic, you can probably get away with having a free web hosting account. However, at that point there is really no reason to have a website in the first place.
However, there are a couple good reasons you might want to consider free web hosting, and that is pretty much so you can have a website, check it out, see how it works and then upgrade to something better if you like your web hosting company. If you don’t, then you cancel this free account at no risk to you.
If you really want to go with a free web hosting account, you might instead opt to just build a free website using WordPress or even better consider doing a WordPress web hosting account with tons of cheap web hosting providers.