Many people, in these tough economic times, often choose free web hosting over paid, and there are several problems with doing this. This article will explain why free web hosting may not be the way to go and why it would benefit you to shop around with a few of the paid hosting companies to see what they offer. It can actually mean success or failure when it comes to attaining your site goals so please continue reading.

Downtime can be atrocious when using free web hosters. This is time they spend maintaining the site as well as the servers which are limited to begin with. Paid sites will be able to guarantee up-time ensuring your visitors will see the site without disruption. This is incredibly important to your success and traffic generation.

One of the biggest problems with a free web hosting company is that your domain will be tagged with their name. This means your domain name will look like www.abc.webhostsite.com. This just doesn’t work when it comes to SEO and makes it impossible to draw traffic outside of using free marketing resources like social media networks to get the word out. You have to register your own domain to be successful, and a free host isn’t going to allow that.

There is a reason that some hosts are free. On your end you will receive inferior customer service because, well, you aren’t paying. Your site will contain ads that generate revenue for the company to keep your site alive. When it comes to actually getting assistance, you will be at the bottom of the list however you will receive it eventually. Paid services will assist you as quickly as possible and that is truly what you need if a problem arises and you need it rectified immediately.

Bandwidth and disk space are important to your survival. You do not want your pages lagging, and you certainly want enough space to accomplish your goals. Most free hosts only allow minimal bandwidth and a few pages worth of space. This is fine if it is a personal diary type page but for anything else it is not acceptable. If you choose to add flash or media of any type then a free host will certainly drag when visitors access the site.

As mentioned, the site itself will be limited in size when it comes to a free host while also limiting SEO for future growth. It’s simply impossible to expand or fine tune your site with a free hosting company which is why a paid hoster is the way to generate increased traffic and possibly revenue.

Security is a must have with any website, and free hosting, while secure, will offer the bare minimum available. These sites can generally be easily altered by people looking to make your life a headache, and it’s simply not worth it to save a few dollars a month.

Free web hosting has its place, and it is certainly a great way to learn to design a site or even make a nice personal page. As mentioned though, anything beyond that it simply is an inadequate option and will not deliver what you need to be successful in your online ventures.