Free web hosting has been around for a while. From the outside, it looks like a good deal. Who would not want to avoid paying hosting fees? However, free web hosting comes with its own set of issues. If you are running a website for professional purposes, this may not be a good option for you. Find out why free web hosting is not the ideal solution for your business.

Free hosting service is often offered by a service who also offers paid accounts. Because they commit their resources to their paying customers first, there may not be enough support for the free accounts. Free accounts often have to put up with more down time because the servers take longer to get maintained. When the servers are down, that means no one can access your website. If you are running a business, that means a potential loss in profits. You can see why this is not the ideal solution for a business.

Free hosts often do not provide you with your own domain. Your website is created as a subdomain of the host’s domain. This is not recommended if you are concerned about ranking highly in search results. Search engines look at the primary domain when they rank websites. A subdomain does not carry as much weight.

As mentioned earlier, hosts that offer free accounts often offer paid accounts, and their tech support’s first priority is to their paying customers. That means you, as a free account holder, may have difficult getting help when you need it. It can be frustrating if your website is down. So if tech support is important to you, you should go with a paid plan.

Free accounts have very limited storage space and bandwidth. This is no surprise because it is the host’s goal to make money. Resources are sold to clients who pay for their account. It will hurt their bottom line if they give away large amounts of disk space and bandwidth. A business cannot be sustained by giving things away.

Because of the limitations of a free account, it will not be able to accommodate any growth that your website experiences. This is actually what free hosts are after. They often offer free hosting service with the hope that when your website expands, you will just upgrade to a paid plan without having to transfer your website to another host. They offer free accounts to lure in new customers.

Free hosting may not have the level of security that you desire. Again, it all goes back to the web host tending to their paid clients first. Secured servers are more costly to maintain, so that is usually reserved for paying customers.

If you really want to cut down costs but need a reliable host, sometimes going with a paid host that has very low cost is a step up from a free account. That would be one solution if your budget is tight.

There are so many benefits to using a paid host rather than a free host. Just think about your choices carefully, and do not commit to anything until you are sure of what you are getting.