In this commercial world, anything that is being offered as ‘free’ comes with strings attached to it. How can a ‘free webhosting’ be an exception to this cliché? You may actually end up paying more than standard paid hosting fees by choosing free web hosting, not to mention your web presence might suffer irreparable damages as well. Let us take a look at some of the demerits of free web hosting.
Poor quality hosting
Free web hosting refers to the space on web server that is provided to a website free of cost. Most of the free hosting providers do not invest in new technologies and exist only to make some quick buck by earning revenues through push ads and so forth. In addition to obsolete technology, your web initiative will suffer from excruciatingly slow page loading, frequent down times, limitations of file transfer, and absolute lack of any support from the host. Users of free hosting are only offered space on web server and the user is expected to self host software applications, files, or blogs on the web server instead of your local machine. There is no guarantee that the host would provide facility of on click installation easy site builders. The responsibility of maintaining web pages and files lies with the user only.
Compromising your online presence
You need to know that your web address, coupled with your website is going to be the foundation of your online identity. You will be inflicting the most significant damage to your online identity by acquiring a weird web address such as www.yourcompany.xyz123.com instead of www.yourcompany.com. You will have to settle with a Subdomain by opting for free webhosting. This is the most unpalatable aspect of free web hosting. Moreover, you will soon find out that nobody is willing to get associated with a company that has a Subdomain for its web address.
Where are the visitors?
Your web presence is nothing but your shop in the World Wide Web. Free web hosting sites are not taken seriously by search engines resulting into a perpetual draught of visitors to your site. With no visitors, your online venture will not be serving any purpose other than a vague satisfaction about being up there in some corner of the Web and just gathering cobwebs. Free web hosting will cause your site to be pushed to oblivion by search engines. All the hard work that you have put in for designing a great website will hardly be noticed by your audience.
No scope to grow
Most of the free web hosting providers would provide web space that is hardly enough for creating a website with four to five web pages. That means, you will have to shelve all your growth and expansion plans. It is like cramming your web presence in a straight jacket with no room to spread out. This cannot be acceptable by any website owner who has dreams about growing his or her online enterprise. This is also the reason why free web hosting is sought after by casual minded individuals who are absolutely not serious about their business or web presence at all. If you happen to be one among them, then you can enjoy free web hosting.
Lack of reliability
You will not be offered any guarantee about uptime by free hosting provider. In case of paid hosting, it is understood that you are spending for a certain level of web hosting service and the host is obliged to offer the same by respecting Service Level Agreement. In the event of any issue you are not likely to be offered any technical assistance by the service provider of free web hosting only because you are not paying for any of their services. Since majority of free hosting providers have no resources for supporting your growth plans. Hence if you find that you need to upgrade to a dedicated hosting, then the provider might not be able to help just because there would be no infrastructure for such higher type of hosting.
Free- at what cost?
Free web hosting companies are only as serious as their users. They will introduce irritating ads into your website that have no relevance and the worst case scenario would be ads of your competitors being shown on your site. Such pop up ads will be a major irritant to your visitors who will love to leave your site as soon as possible. You will always be living under a lurking danger of the host pulling down the shutters anytime. These companies are surviving on the push ads that are being thrust into their so called hosted sites. In addition to the ads they also earn by fleecing their customers whenever they need to upgrade their free sites. Hence there is a probability that the game might come to an end anytime in absence of any ethical business plan.
In conclusion
Although the term ‘Free Webhosting’ may sound like music to your ears, one must keep his or her eyes wide open before taking a plunge. You must analyze the objective of your website. If your website is going to be a source of earning to you, then you should never look at the option of free hosting.