As the economy struggles, new entrepreneurs are looking for ways to save their money on start up business costs. There are many ways around some of the rising costs, from having your office at home, to buying things wholesale. Lots of services online are even free, or of little cost and relevant in helping you begin your journey. While informative, still you get what you pay for. Everyone seems to be looking for free web hosting,and internet services. So how do you choose what kind of web hosting to use?
In short, these companies make money by advertising on your site, whether it's apparent to you or not. Web hosting companies have to make money in order to run, and do make money by inserting advertisements into you page. The negative result is you have no control over what the advertisement is. What if the advertisement is a competitors ad, or even worse, what if the ad is not even appropriate for your target audience? These are just some of the facts to research while making your final decision.. Free is not so free, once it ends up costing you your most valuable tool; customers.
For personal websites, free hosting may work, assuming it is working, and you can actually get support if you need it. In fact, recently one of the largest free web hosts out there told their customers that they were upgrading, and that the customers needed to download and backup their files, because in order to upgrade, they needed to delete everything. So, if you didn't get that email memo from them, your site would no longer exist.
Challenge #1 - Advertising on Your Site & Hijacked Error Pages (404 Pages)
Another benefit of having a professional web hosting provider is that in the event there is an error loading your website it will provide them with a custom error page. A free web hosting provider will direct back to the hosting company's page of choice. Usually it's a page with ads, or redirected competely to another site.This could cause confusion to the customer and will probably give up and leave. With professional web hosting, you can provide a custom error page for each type of error. This gives the customer a peace of mind that they are at least in the right place, and not lost. This can be very critical since a huge percentage of computer users are novice when it comes to surfing the web.
Challenge #2 - Your Own Web Address / URL
Many first time business owners might not understand the risks that they are taking if they choose to go with free internet hosting. Most free hosting services use the free hosting company's name in the url (website address) and has a long drawn out name; also making it difficult to be found via search engines. This also gives the appearance that the business owner is not serious about their professional reputation. In order to make the image of your business professional, it would be prudent to invest in a domain name and likewise a professional hosting company. At some point your website/ blog will begin to outgrow the limited features offered by free web hosting providers.
Challenge #3 - Minimal or no Support
When using a free hosting service, there is also no guarantee that they will even stick around or be there the next time you need them. At some point, large providers of free hosting decide to pack it in. Another well-established business model is for these companies to sell their free hosting customers to larger, commercial companies, who then try to collect payment from the free hosting account users.
Challenge #3 - Cannot Switch to Another Host Later
Free hosting providers accounts are attractive to new business owners, because they have free website templates and other related features. There are many paid providers that have free website templates to download and keep as well. Free providers often make it difficult or impossible for you to take your web templates, graphics, etc. if you decide to switch services, which will consist of a big headache in the event you are previously using a free service.
To do things right, you may have to pay a small price to begin, but in the end you will have more business structure and stability. Yes, initially you have to set boundaries and save your pennies when starting a business, but to economize on your hosting decisions will cost you more in the long run.
And since no one can really give away something for nothing, we cannot recommend any free hosts at this time.
