Web Hosting - Free Or Paid?
If there is a such thing as free web hosting then why would anyone pay for it? That may be one of the questions running through your mind when first hearing about free and paid hosting options. You may think it's crazy to pay for something you can get free, or you may think it's obvious to pay for it because of quality issues. Either way, by the end of this article you will learn that sometimes free options are better, and at other times the paid option is what you'll want to get-it all depends on your personal goals and what you want to achieve with your website.
Let's go over the free option first. The obvious pro to the free web hosting option is the fact that you aren't paying a monthly fee to have your website running. It will cost you however. Normally with free options, you are either limited to very little space, or are required to display ads from your web host on your website-or both. Another downside is that normally you are on a sub-domain under someone else's URL which often results in an unattractive, non-professional web address for your website. There are times, however, that you may want to choose the free over paid option. One would be if you are planning on getting into blogging and want to try it out before paying for your own web hosting service and domain name. Services such as blogger provide very professional blogging solutions at no cost-all you have to do is display their navigation bar at the top (which blends in very well), and use a sub-domain on their server.
Paid options give you must more room to "move around" so to speak but also come with a monthly price tag-which these days are very affordable if you look for the deals. I would recommend using paid options only after you have evaluated your specific goals for your website, and once you know exactly what you want to do and where to go with it. If you are unsure, why not stick with a free service and sacrifice some quality to make sure your project is something you want to pursue? Once you do decide to go with a paid web hosting service, you'll notice you'll have a lot more features at your disposal, and a lot more tools such as customer support (I would hope you have that with a paid service), control panel access, etc.
Now that you know the pros and cons to using free and paid web hosting providers, I hope you are able to make a better decision on which one to choose. Not all free services are bad, and not all paid services are your only option to getting what you need-and that's what it all depends on: your specific needs and goals.
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