Free Web Hosting Versus Paid Web Hosting
What Is Free Web Hosting And Paid Web Hosting?
There are many web hosting services available on the internet where one can choose between paid web hosting or free web hosting. The novice webmasters can use the free web hosting service as a starting point and try basic skills whereas the paid web hosting service is for serious webmasters who want to use the website as their online identity, for commercial online ventures, or to host personal websites. In short, your choice of free or paid web hosting depends on the type of the website that you have or want to create.
What Is Free Web Hosting?
Web hosting which is totally free to you; that is you do not even have to pay for the domain name is called free web hosting. However, the domain name will have the provider’s name in it. For example, your website URL would be providersname.com/yourname/. Thereafter, if you change your free web hosting service provider, you will loose some of your traffic because of the change in the URL. The new provider, if you choose another free web hosting service, or your own website’s URL will have to undergo the link campaign, traffic building campaign, and the search engine optimization (SEO) campaign all over again. Therefore, you should plan what type of website you are creating, and if that website is a serious online venture, then use the paid web hosting service.
The free web hosting service provider will normally add some of their own advertising banners or a link back to the provider to your website which can be at any place on your web page. You cannot change these advertisements or these forced links because they are your commitments for using a free web hosting service.
There are chances that those advertisement banners will cover some of the important places on your web page and you will not be able to add your content or your images including advertisements on those prime spaces. Some free web hosting service providers do not even allow you to add your own advertisement banners to your entire website. Most of the free web hosting service providers will not provide many of the important features like MySQL and PHP, thereby hampering your website’s design and development..
The bandwidth that is offered by the free web host service is low when compared to the paid web hosting service. Also, the free web host service providers change their terms and conditions very frequently and you will have to abide by them. So, you have to check out many such limiting features as well. Sometimes, these free web service providers even cancel their free service and then you will have to pay them or loose the website that you have created.
The free web hosting services are also very strict about data transfer that your website undergoes. They have some limits on installing your own CGI and other such important scripts. Some free web hosting providers provider provide free applications like calendar, guestbook, e-mail service, and traffic counters. Many free web hosting services do not even allow you to earn money while you are using their service.
In short, using free web hosting has very little earning potential, and is not a viable online business. Most webmasters who choose free web hosting service often fail in their business and disappear quickly from the internet, and never try doing online business or build another website because they were unable to properly tap the vast resources available on the internet world.
What Is Paid Web Hosting?
If you want to be successful on the internet using your own website, you need good technical support and professional customer care service. You must be able to provide instant feedbacks to the users. You must be able to use all the resources available only through paid web hosting to keep your website 24/7 live, keep it secure from hackers, and must be able to fine-tune your site according to the need of the hour.
If you choose free web hosting service, most of these important tasks like instant professional website support, backup facility, security, and freedom to use various options to expand your site will not be provided to you by the free web hosting service providers.
Using paid web hosting service, you can choose your own domain name. Even if you change your service provider in future, you do not have to worry about the web traffic to your website. You can easily get the traffic from your website’s old hosting address. In fact, the visitors will never know that you have changed to a new web hosting service. Most of the paid web hosting services provide round-the-clock technical support either through e-mail, chats, or through a customer care number.
Paid web hosting service even offers more disk space than the space provided by the free web hosting service. So, the content that is present on the paid web hosting server can be huge when compared to the free web hosting service’s server. The uptime guarantee on the paid web hosting is definitely much better — almost 100% and many providers even provide full 100% guaranteed uptime — than that provided by the free web hosting service. The paid web hosting service providers can offer features like MySQL and PHP, but then there can be some other restriction factors.
If you are looking for a good and professional web hosting service, you definitely must use the paid web hosting service. The paid web hosting services are cost-effective and almost all the individuals can afford such web hosting services. By choosing paid web hosting, you can get all the necessary web tools and web technologies, web security, and experienced technical staff’s help to help you make your web hosting business professional.
However, you have to choose between free web hosting and paid web hosting depending according to your needs. If you are creating a website only for the sake of fun or for practicing your web skills, then you can to choose the free web hosting service. But, if you are planning to build a professional website for doing business or to upload your small or large personal website, then you must select high-quality paid web hosting service.
