Free web hosting is all the buzz, but before you jump on the bandwagon, here are some things you should know. First of all, yes there is such a thing as free web hosting, where you get some free web space on the provider’s hosting server to create and host your web site for free. So why do web hosts offer free hosting?

1) Forced ads for revenue. Many of the small or unheard of free web hosts display ads on your websites to make money in various forms, including banners, textlinks, or popups. This may be acceptable for a personal site but would look unsightly for a corporate or business site. Depending on the type of ad and host, the forced ads may take some time to load and could affect the speed of your pages. Forced ads also mean you can’t display your own Google AdSense or other affiliate ads if you wanted to. Some free hosts do not force ads on your website but instead display ads for the webmaster to click in their control panel or include ads in email.

2) As a pre-sell or trial before upsell to paid hosting. One example is Google Sites, which offers basic free hosting with limited templates. It is a hook for businesses to buy into their “Premier” service which costs $50 per user account per year. The Premier service includes gmail for corporates, web hosting and Google Apps such as calendaring and document storage.

3) Revenue from add-ons or upgrades. Blog hosts offer free hosting and make money from selling ad-ons like paid templates, or upgrades to enjoy more features. WordPress is known to also display forced ads occasionally. Blogger and Blogspot are hosted on Google servers.

Many free website hosts provide a subdomain or sub-directory of their own domain name and do not allow users to host their own top-level domain name. Free hosting usually has lesser features. They may not have site builder tools, statistics and reporting, FTP accounts, and often do not have scripting support of E-commerce tools. Performance is also limited, for example with smaller storage space between 50MB to 5GB and with bandwidth limitations.

With free hosting, you should have little or no expectations on reliability, speed, and support. Afterall they are free and there is no incentive or means for them to provide the same level of experience as with paid hosts. Popular blog hosts like Blogger, Blogspot and WordPress are generally quite good due to their size and the need to upkeep their reputation as the leading blog hosts.

Free web hosting is fine for personal websites, or at most, for small startup businesses. But it is not recommended if your business is growing, or for hosting a professional or corporate site. We all want to save money wherever possible, but consider whether it is worth it since your website is a representation of yourself, your business, or your company. Do not sabotage or shortchange yourself if free web hosting is not suitable for you.

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