Free Hosting against Paid Hosting  

This article adds to the free vs. paid discussion. Victoria makes some good points here.

Article by Victoria Nikolayeva

There are so many services on the web hosting market today it's sometimes very difficult to identify what is best for you. Some web hosting companies offer Free Web Hosting and the idea is very tempting, but is it worth it?

To figure out whether to choose Free or Paid Web Hosting read the following article: What is Free Web Hosting?

Free web hosting services place hundreds of web sites on the same physical server. All users share the same disk space, bandwidth and operating system.

These services can be free of charge as the web hosting provider benefits from advertisements that are he places on your web site. Some web hosting companies offer your this free web hosting as they hope you appreciate its benefits and then perchance a paid web hosting package from that web hosting company. Also, if you stay free but generate a fair amount of traffic some of that trraffic will click on ads, buy stuff, and semd a revenue stream to the company.

Of course, they could be your ads...

Facts in favor of Free Web Hosting

Price

• Free is the best price of all.

Perfect for Any User

Free web hosting is suitable for all the users especially for those who are new to web hosting. Many companies offer ready Templates and Web Site Builders for you to create your web site without any problems.

Blogging platforms (Blogger.com, Wordpress.com) also offer free services.

Free Subdomains

• Many web hosting companies now offer free subdomains with their free web hosting packages.

Facts against Free Web Hosting

Free web hosting is often considered to be a perfect choice for the beginners but you shouldn't take "Free web hosting" literally. While you don't pay with money you do pay in other ways. Most of these problems do not apply, or apply less, to services such as Blogger and Wordpress.

• you pay with your web business security - you are not as protected from hackers or any other interference as you would be with the better paid systems. Massive sites, such as Blogger and Wordpress, can afford serious security, but small sites cannot.  
  
  
• you pay with your comfort as servers that are used for free web hosting are usually not reliable, they're overcrowded, and they usually go through a lot of downtime.
  
  
• you pay with your confidence as the companies that provide free web hosting often don't provide its "free" clients with qualified support or any support at all.
  
  
• you pay with your website's future as the free web hosting plans don't usually include some advanced features, such as PHP, MySQL databases or FTP accounts. This is also true of the blogging platforms: blogger, wordpress, and others.
  
  
• you pay with your web site look as you are required to place advertisement banners of third parties that might be annoying
  
  
• you pay with your reecognition as you are not allowed to register your own domain and you will operate your subdomain under the web hosting company's primary domain.

Paid Web Hosting?

With paid web hosting you save yourself from stress and time lost.

• Paid web hosting usally has a better,more responsive, support staff.
• Paid web hosting packages give you an opportunity to upgrade your requirements in the most efficient way.
• If you want a professionally done site then you will want your own domain name and your own hosting.

Free web hosting is perfect for beginner sites or to mess around with ideas or as links to other web properties. Your choice will depend on your goals and your requirements.

About the Author

Victoria Nikolayeva is a writer and articles editor