Many new marketers choose free hosting when they first set up a website or blog. Obviously the no cost aspect is appealing and it does allow you to get content online fast. The question that remains is, is free hosting reliable enough or should you go with a paid hosting option?
A free account will allow you to set up your webpage quickly so that you can start sharing content with your family and friends. However, if you are running a business bear in mind that a free service will often place advertisements on your site. These ads cannot be removed and can make your site look less professional.
Hosting reliability should be a key concern when choosing any type of hosting account. You want to be certain that your website is always up and running. Of course even the best hosting companies can have downtime. But you want to use a hosting provider which offers the least amount of downtime as possible.
Free hosting can suddenly disappear for hours or even days on end! Is this something that you are prepared for? Plus if you haven’t backed up your content you can lose everything. This could be valuable photos of family memories or important business documents.
All providers will have certain terms and conditions that you must adhere too. With a free service you are not contributing to their monthly income. So if you unmistakably do something outside of their terms they can easily shut your site down.
One good use of free hosting is for running an experiment or test. If you want to experiment with a certain feature or product you can this at no cost. Once you have compiled your results you can decide whether or not you want to go with a paid service.
Mind you free doesn’t always mean inferior. You can get hosting with sites like WordPress and blogger. These hosting companies offer great looking websites with thousands of themes available for users. But even these have ads on them. Plus it is quite common for people to suddenly lose their blog overnight for no apparent reason.
If you truly want peace of mind over your website and want to wake up each day knowing that your site is there, then a paid service is your answer. For any information that you want hosted on the web on a temporary basis then by all means use free hosting for as long as necessary.
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