Choosing Between Free and Paid-Up Web Hosting

World Wide Web is providing individuals and organizations all kinds of possibilities; from free email accounts and now to free website hosting. With a domain name, or rather a registered website address, you can have your website hosted without paying a single penny. However, before getting consumed by the allure of “free” and signing up indecisively to such free hosting accounts, it is important to first evaluate your requirements. Else, you may end up at a cross-road.

While free web hosting may be a cost effective solution to your website requirement, at one time or another, there may be a price to pay. Free web hosting normally have various limitations, and unless you are newbie who want to try out some skills on web practice, then it may not be the best option for a serious web business. First, most free web hosting companies will offer a limited web space, bandwidth, add-on functionalities and support. Sometimes, the free offer is only on trial basis, where you start paying for it thereafter.

Evaluate your requirements

If you want to put up a personal website or blog for a short period of time, then a free hosting plan may be suitable for you. However, this is not applicable to all the cases. Some blog software like WordPress requires a database to install in, and if your free web hosting plan does not offer a database, then it means it’s not possible to you. As a matter of fact, most free web hosting plans will not provide databases. If they do, then most likely they will be limited.

If the free web hosting offer has a limit on monthly bandwidth like most of them do, then it might not be suitable for a website with large traffic. Other things to look out for include custom email accounts, the type of server platform your website runs on, for example, Unix or Windows, applications like ecommerce shopping carts, PHP, MySql and Ruby, among others.

If you want a website for a business, a free web hosting plan may not be the best choice, especially if it’s a long term business. This is because there are many services that you may require to expand your website, of which the free web hosting plan may not provide. However, if the plan allows you to upgrade your plan to paid-up, then you may start there.