Should You Use Free Web Hosting?

Are you considering using free web hosting to get your website online? You should go over this article before you subscribe to a free web hosting plan.

Free web hosting services are a good way to save money when you are launching your website, but you should not expect a free web host to provide the same kind of service as a paying web host. If possible, find other ways to save money or upgrade to a paying account as soon as your website starts generating money. You should be able to find some web hosting services that offer quality plans for less than fifty dollars a month.

If you are going to use a free web hosting service temporarily, you should find a plan with no restriction on the bandwidth. You might lose some visitors if you exceed the amount of bandwidth you can use. You are going to be limited in the amount of server space you can use, which should not be a problem if you do not have a lot of pictures or videos for your site. Choose a service with an uptime of 99.9 percent, and switch to a different service if your site is offline too often.

A lot of free web hosting services make their money by placing ads and banners on your website. This could be bad for your image as a professional, especially if the ads are not relevant to the topic of your site. Find a host that will place only a few ads on the side of your site and use targeted ads. Stay away from hosts that do not target ads, place too many ads on your site or use pop-ups to advertise other sites and products to your visitors.

Read reviews of different free web hosting services. Choose one that has a good reputation and a few years of experience if possible. Call customer services to get an idea of how qualified the technicians are. Do not expect to get quality customer service from a free host, and keep in mind that a lot of free web hosts disappear after only a few months of existence. Even the top ranked free web hosts might not survive very long.

Subscribing to a free web hosting service means you will not have access to certain features such as email addresses, analytical tools, site-building plugins and search engine optimization plugins. You will have access to more tools and plugins by subscribing to a quality blogging platform. Using a blogging platform is free, and you will be able to connect your domain name to your blog once you purchase your domain name with a separate service. You should put some of your profits aside and upgrade to a better plan as soon as you can afford to spend more on web hosting.

Using a free web hosting service is a good way to cut down on costs while you launch your site. However, you should plan on upgrading to a quality web hosting plan when you can afford to.