Monday, November 19, 2007

Disadvantages Of Free Web Hosting

On the internet, you’ll find endless number of “free” products and services for each and every need. When you want to start your website, you may get free website design templates and web hosting packages.

Before you get excited, it’s imperative to understand the implications of using a free web hosting service. After all, you get what you pay for. So the free plans may not offer quality services as is promised by them. If your website is not for an ecommerce business purpose, you may opt for free web hosting services that do not offer reliability or security.

Taking a free web hosting plan means facing several restrictions. One such issue may be the advertisements that are placed at the top of every webpage of your website. These may even include ads of your competitors. When customers visit your website, their browsing experience may be spoiled by such advertisements. This may annoy them and result in loss of existing or potential customers.

Another problem is that of low quality of technical and customer support. You cannot expect reliability in services from a free web host. The FAQ section may be the only support offered to customers. Even if your website is facing a problem, your requests and queries may not get prompt replies or solutions from a free web hosting company’s staff. This has a direct negative effect on your website’s performance.

Server breakdown and website downtime may be a common feature of free web hosting. There may be lack of adequate bandwidth and disk space as the web hosting server has many websites housed on the same hard disk. In practice, most of the free web hosting companies are just looking for advertisement revenue and fail to provide any real services.

There are very few web hosts that offer good quality service and larger storage space to websites. Most of them will give no flexibility for website expansion or support for applications of various types. For example, some free hosts restrict use of several file types and scripts that consume a lot of bandwidth.

Domain names may also be longer and harder to remember. You will have to register the domain name wit the web hosting company providing free service. This will make shifting to another host difficult in the future. If your website has a long and complex URL, people will have a lesser chance of remembering it and locating your website.

No matter how much the cost saving, the primary concern for any website owner will be to ensure effective support for good performance of their websites. The above listed issues should not be ignored if you are seriously interested in starting an online business. It’s best to look for a reputable web hosting company rather than going for free web hosting.

If you want your website to succeed and grow, you will have to invest money in it.

No comments: