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Free Web Hosting - Why Might It Be A Bad Idea
When talking about free anything the legitimate question that first pops into your mind is why pay when you can get it free? Free web hosting cost no money but what can you expect from one? Your web site will be turned into an advertising machine that works for the free web host. Expect, banners, pop up windows, frames. They will all mess the look of your web site in terms of design and accessibility for your visitors that might be literally flooded with popups almost after every click-through. You can't make advertising revenue of your web site, as most free web hosts don't allow it. This is not such a big issue when you are maintaining a personal web site, but the cutting-off advertising revenues can mean significant losses for a business. For this last case, only a paid web hosting solution might be the right answer. Very little space for your web pages. With free web hosting provider offering 5 to 15 MB of disk space, your site's expansion will severely restricted. Growing your web site above the offered quota would result in transferring to a paid plan offered by the same hosting provider or finding a different paid web-hosting provider. In both cases you end paying for your hosting and you might loose traffic to your web site due to changing hosts. No online store can go without secure server to enable secure online credit card processing. The great majority of free hosts don't support secure web servers. Customers fearing fraud and concerned about their personal information will make it impossible, at least very hard for an online store to survive on a free host. And anyway, have you ever heard of a successful online store hosted by a free web host? None will hear from yours either. The uptime of your web site will be like the weather forecast. Hope for good, but prepare for the worse. Downtime through free web hosts is unfortunately very common. As web hosts generate their revenues from advertising, they don't feel very much compelled to care for the web site of a subscriber who doesn't pay them anyway. To whom will you turn when experiencing the abovementioned downtime or other technical problem with your web site? Free web hosts usually have a limited budget and don't afford to hire large customer support teams, if any. You will find yourself alone, staring at the FAQ page. Your domain name will be measured in feet and will tell nothing or very little of your business. This obviously results in low traffic scores, as your visitors won't be able to remember your URL. Can you rely only on search engines, linked sites and people bookmarking your web site? If yes, at least consider the fact that in the age when companies try to create a personalized image, your web site will be condemned to be just another subdomain of your free host. Will your customers trust a business hosted by a free web host? What credibility will your web site inspire? Not a very high one. The above list is really rather long, but as surprisingly as it might be, it is far from being complete. Other additions to it could be that free web hosts not always offer FTP access to your web site file, or you only have one e-mail address to work with and probably looks like mysite@anotherfreeserver.com. Yes, paid web hosting requires money, but the prices are lower than they used to be, and the advantages are rather impressive. Just turn all the above you can't? or you have to do without? list around. You are searching for a solution to host your business or even a professional personal web site, don't look for it at a free web host. About The Author This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the "About" and "weblinks" are kept intact.
MORE RESOURCES:  Yahoo! News Search Results for URL Yahoo! News Search Results for URL • AdWords URL Longer Than 35 Characters Need Exception (Search Engine Roundtable) We discussed the Google AdWords policy on a max URL character space of 35 in the past. They recently started enforcing this rule back in June of this year. A new Google Groups thread has an issue where on advertiser needs to have a display URL that is longer than 35 characters. So what can he/she do? AdWordsPro Sarah says that you can submit an exception. In short, make your display ... • YouTube videos go HD with a simple hack (CNET) Want to host high-definition videos on YouTube? No problem. Just get your copy-and-paste skills ready because all it requires is changing the video's URL! • High-definition videos sneaking onto YouTube (Ars Technica) YouTube is experimenting with high-definition videos on its site, and you can access the capability using a handy URL trick. If YouTube manages to score enough movie and TV content from its owners, then it might eventually give Hulu some competition. Read More... • The Sound of Personal Branding (Fast Company Magazine) Some websites need to be arrested for audial assault. You know the ones I mean. No sooner do you click on a URL but the site blasts out some atrocious music that has absolutely nothing to do with the brand. If marketer and music extraordinaire ... • Sorry: The requested page could not be found (Kerrville Daily Times) You may have received this message in error. Please try loading the page you were trying to access again. If you got here by typing a URL, or web address, please make sure the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are correct. • Why Firefox Rocks: Great Firefox Tricks, Part IV (LinuxPlanet) Today I have a useful tip that used to be enabled only on Linux, but now is available for everyone. Have you ever had somebody send you a URL to a web site, only it's so long that the mail system has broken it into several lines? • Mobispine making Telia MMS app for iPhone? (MacNN) The identity of TeliaSonera's MMS application for the iPhone may have already been revealed, an announcement hints. Mobispine has announced the creation of what it calls the "world's first true MMS for the iPhone;" critically, the software relies on the actual MMS protocol instead of a substitute, such as a text message with an embedded URL. The company is also based in Sweden like Telia, and ... • Site of the Day (AskMen) Don't be fooled by the URL, this isn't just a blog for rail-thin fashionites. • CORRECTING and REPLACING China Energy Recovery Board Member, Roger Ballentine... SHANGHAI, China----URL in second graph, second sentence of release should read: www.eenews.net/tv/ • Giz Explains: Every Video Format You Need to Know [Giz Explains] (Gizmodo) digg_skin = 'compact'; digg_bgcolor = '#f1f8fa'; digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Giz_Explains_Every_Video_Format_You_Need_to_Know'; Once upon time, video codecs and formats were really only... |
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