Web Hosting Reviews & Ratings

October 18, 2011

Free web hosting – When is it worth it?

Many things on the web are free.  Many of us have gmail address, Yahoo chat accounts, and even free bulk file storage.  Free web hosting has been an option for a long time, but it has always come with caveats.

Those problems have not stemmed the tide of free web hosting services.  There are still plenty of options for those who want to setup shop with a free host.  So the question then is, are you one of these people?

The biggest problem – reliability

Although nothing lives forever, paid hosts have a much longer life expectancy than free hosts.  With a free web hosting service you are in danger of having the entire site disappear from you on a moment's notice.  There have been several high-profile examples of this in the last few years.  So if what you are hosting is something mission-critical, like a web site for a fully functioning business that takes orders and through which you need to communicate with customers constantly, this is a bad idea.

The next biggest problem – advertising

Of course there's no such thing as a free lunch, so free web hosts for years have kept themselves afloat by offering advertising.  While sidebar advertisements are so commonplace now that they don't carry the social stigma that they used to, they still aren't the best image for a company that is trying to establish legitimacy, especially since you will typically have little control over what kind of ads are posted.

The last big problem – no leverage

As a free web site user you are offering your host nothing.   Or at least, you are not directly supporting their income in any way, and are only helping in the advertising of their name, not exactly a strong bargaining position when you are one of their 10 million users.

This means that if you do anything at all to irk them, you can likely find your account very unceremoniously shut down, with just about no recourse you can take for it, if you even can get a hold of someone to talk about it.  This is more of a problem for someone that is hosting a site that is informational in nature and contains ideas that may be deemed controversial (say, a political blog), but it's not uncommon for web hosts to have a spectacular spasm of paranoia over just about anything, and to shut down anyone who is remotely tied to the topic, no matter how absurd the connection.  Shoot first and ask questions later is the modus operandi of such actions, if they even bother to ask questions at all.

“Other than that, how was the play?”

Now, if you can get past that, then remember that web hosts still offer free space for a reason, and that reason is not something they are going to mess with if they don't have to.  This means that if you can get past the above criteria, a free web host is a good choice for someone who is doing something small, something that can be interrupted for a day or two if it comes to it, such as a personal blog, a church, a community group, or just for personal experimentation with web design.  Free web hosting is not a good idea for anyone who requires a host that is consistent, reliable and stable.  But if your needs are not that high, then there's no reason to be spending money where you don't have to.  It's not like there's a lot of spare cash going around these days as it is.

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