Jumat, 26 Agustus 2011

Free Web Hosting: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

By William MacMahon


Small businesses that wish to feature their services in internet often seek free and low priced web hosting services. This statement is generally true for companies who want to feature new websites. Free web hosting services offered by several hosting companies match the requirements of such businesses. The concept of free web hosting is based on a simple idea: a web host would provide free server space for hosting a small or medium business website. In return of this service the hosting companies would display advertisements on the client's site and consequently earn from it. The free web hosting service is completely supported by advertisements but has its own limitations.

Clients of these services are easily lured by the no-cost features. Many of the hosts of free web space offer wonderful software and management capabilities for a free site. They then display pop up, pop under, or banner ads on the client's website. Some also place these ads inside the client's work space such as on their control panel with the provision they must click on them, or at least in the hopes they will. They may display these ads in other areas of the work space as well like on the file manager, etc.

The free web hosts have dominated the personal web site and small business web site arena for a long time but are being replaced at a quick rate by low cost, or cheap web hosts. The cheap, or low cost hosts give all of the above advantages while not placing any ads on the client's site. They also offer dedicated domain names which is a big draw for many, and the prices are very reasonable-usually paid monthly. They offer many more services and set up features for blogs, forums, and more along with more storage and data space and bandwidth for sharing. Many free hosting companies also offer cheap services with no ads.

How reliable are free web hosts?

Since the free hosts make money from the banner advertisements or resources related to it, they have more possibility of staying in the business. But it often happens that someone or some other company complains against their web hosting server declaring it as spam, hacker, etc, Complaints also crawl up if any free web hosting company utilizes an automated instant activation to offer other features like that of PHP or CGI. This is because free server consumes lot of downtime or the performance reduces considerably. This however, happens with the new web hosts but those who are professional generally don't go for such offers.

Pros of free web hosting

1. These free websites are terrific for students, or homemakers looking to make money online in their spare time. It gives users with a very limited budget a platform for their views, as well as products and services. These sites can be used to store data or other information thereby making it a great learning resource for students. Some people use the free websites for testing purposes. When doing that a user can test the website concept to see if it will work on a larger scale for their purposes before investing large amounts of money. As an example boinc.ch gives free space to users in order to test its UNIX applications. Most free websites are aimed at students along with developers, and people interested in creating a personal website.

2. There are several voluntary organizations and non profit institutes who want to send their messages to public via internet. Since internet is the best possible way to reach out to the world, such organization would definitely find it useful and would like to utilize them. There may be several web hosts who would serve them free of cost due to emotional reasons. But apart form this, general free web hosting services, utilized by small businesses and students, can be equally fruitful to these organizations. They usually have a dearth of capital but an urgency to communicate with the world. They can use these services and create a basic website where information and news on their activities can be published.

3. The free services are of great benefit to community groups and others that have no income but want to share their talents with the global world. It also allows those with social and economical platforms to engage and communicate with the public without expanding on their expenses. These groups and individuals can make great use of the free web hosts by placing websites on the internet and providing links between each group, or other interested parties. They enjoy great benefits both in the SEO and cost perspective with free web hosting.

4. Free hosting services are ideal for family websites as they can use it personally for sharing photographs, important family events and other unforgettable moments. Though this kind of use is limited, there are websites devoted to such information. As these are personal information, it is always advisable that one goes for an authentic free web hosts only.

Cons of free web hosting

Even though the above organizations and individuals can save a great deal of money on free web hosting there are some things to consider before opting for those services.

1. Regardless of what they claim free hosts offer subdomain services not second-level domain.

2. The bandwidth offered by the free web hosting service provider is reasonably very low and is hardly comparable to paid hosting services.

3. Since the free space provided is generally low, any file size cannot be uploaded freely in the website.

4. To earn money against such a free services web host would stuff banner and popup advertises as much as possible in the client's website. This not only diminishes the actual space in the website for the owner but it also creates a negative impression about the website. The web host banners are also placed in the client's site compulsorily.

5. The clients are generally not provided any type of uptime guarantee

6. Not all types of files can be uploaded in the websites. Free websites have restrictions to files like MP3, MPEG, ZIP etc.

7. There is generally no, or very little technical support for customers of the free web hosts since it is not their priority. At most they may offer a month or two of support.




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