Free domain names, cheap web hosting, free hosting, free web hosting etc. are some of the most searched terms on the internet. Also nothing sells like free. A tactic used by less popular web hosting and domain name providers is to provide free webhosting and domain name for a year and then charge ridiculous renewal rates. You may get quality web hosting but then they are charging like hell. Also the domain name maybe non transferrable. You end up paying $35 or more for renewal which would have cost you only $10 per year. Great penalty for a freebie. This is only one of the examples where you may be cheated and there are several more ways of being screwed if you choose free web hosting.
I list the top reasons why you shouldn’t go for free web hosting. At the end you will screw yourself.
Uptime issues with a free web host
If you really know what hosting is then the above statement would have given you the worst nightmare right now.
A web host is the thing which makes your site available whenever someone types in the url in the address bar or tries to come to it from Google or social media or anything.
Imagine the scenario when he is not able to access your site because your web host is cheap or because you are cheap. Imagine if that particular person was a buying customer and for no fault of yours you have lost your sale. Beautiful!!
A free web host allows more users on the limited bandwidth it has. What else can it do? You are not paying a dime to support the expenses and servers don’t drop from the sky.
The cooling of the servers requires costly air conditioners which again doesn’t come free.
Plus the company is not earning anything because you won’t buy a single stuff that advertised there. Heck you are not paying for the hosting. How the hell would you buy the stuff advertised there??
So for 99% of the time your website will not be accessible all thanks to free web hosting.
Its better if you rather go for a blogspot blog than a free web host as Google wouldn’t let your words down. But then when you finally earn enough for a .com extension be prepared to start all over again with traffic. In most of the cases there will be a substantial loss in traffic and the rss syndication will not work well.
Do not go for free web hosting.
The panda penalty and server distances
Google’s Panda updates have ensures that even if your site lacks in one or two things you will not get search engine traffic at all. One of the factors with Panda is site load time.
If your site takes a lot of time to load then you need to be ready to get a whipping from Google. With free web hosts you can be sure of the fact that your site will load slower because the server is located millions of miles away.
My traffic is from india but when your free host is in America the request has to travel all the way to the free web host and then come back. A moon mission would be easier than loading your site and remember that even after all the effort your site may not load because you are sharing bandwidth with lot of other people sharing the same resources… Period
Site unavailable on peak times and no sales when people search for you
There are peak times of search when people want your site badly but then your site is not available because the same bandwidth is being used by lot of other sites and others are trying to use the same resources along with you and that’s a bad thing for you.
This is called contention ratio. When lot of people are trying to access the same thing and contending for it.
Data privacy
Free web host. What kind of data privacy do you expect on it? You data is private only for you but not for others or your free host.
Moreover if that host is in a country where there are no substantial rules for privacy then you are done for it.
Secondly if that host is in violation of the terms of that country then they may close the company and then your site is down the blackhole.
See you in abyss!