Free Web Hosting

Choosing a free web hosting service for your website is one of your options, however, free hosting comes with its share of issues. There are several things to look for when choosing a web hosting service, especially if you're looking to do it on the cheap.

The criteria for choosing between a free web hosting service and that provided by a commercial web hosting company are only slightly different. This article will point out the things you should find out about before choosing a hosting company for your website.

Choosing a Free Web Host

1. Advertising

Most free web hosting services require that their advertisements be visible on your website. This is done so that they will cover the costs of providing you with free space on their web servers. Some free web hosts will require you to place a banner on your web pages. Others may place a scrolling window that appears on all of your web pages and includes advertisements. There are a variety of methods that free web hosts will use to place ads on your web pages and you will need to decide is this feature is too districting and annoying for your website visitors.

Also, if you are intending to generate income from your website by selling products or placing your own Google Adsense or other advertisements on your website, you don't want to be competing with the advertisements placed there by your free website host. Don't be penny wise and pound foolish and remember the purpose of your website and the experience you want to create for your user.

2. Disk Space for Your Website

Another question to ask your web host is how much disk space will they provide for your website and how much will additional space cost if you need it. Keep in mind that a small video clip can take up hundreds of megabytes of space. If you want to expand your site in the future, you may need to decide now which hosting company has the most flexible terms for growing your website. Some web hosting companies limit the number of files you can have on your website or the amount of disk space they will allow you to use. At one of my websites, I was limited to 50,000 files. That sounds like a lot but when you start building web pages, especially if they are dynamic in nature and their are a lot of images or .php or other files, they can add up fast.

Your needs will be different depending on how many graphics, audio, video or other multimedia files you plan to use. Be certain that your web host will allow you the disk space that you will need and that it will accommodate future growth.

3. Transferring files with FTP

How you will transfer files from your local computer to the web host is another important consideration. Will they give you FTP access to the server so you can use an FTP program to transfer files? or will they require you to use some proprietary online page builder. These can be clunky and take a long time to create your pages. You may not even be able to create the type of page that you want to if you're forced to use the web hosts own builder tool.

The most useful hosting providers may offer you their own page builder tool, but they should also allow you to have FTP access so if you wanted to build your pages on your local computer with a program like Dreamweaver or another HTML editor, you'll be able to upload your pages to the web server with an FTP program like CuteFTP or some other FTP program. The best hosting companies will provide you with FTP access. If they don't then I would look elsewhere.

4. Uptime and Speed of Access

If you want your website to always be available to your users, then the web hosts reliability and percentage of uptime are huge considerations. If you're trying to make money with your website, then every hour that the site or the sever is down, is costing you income. The best web hosting companies have close to 100% up time and are very reliable. They have redundant systems in place so that should a part of the system fail, you're website will still be available. They should perform regular maintenance of their web servers and have a minimal amount of sever down time.

Slow access is also very frustrating when someone is trying to view your website and when you are trying to upload your files. Sometimes free web hosting providers will cram hundreds of websites on the same server and you're competing for server resources that other websites are using. The pipe to the server is only so big and the more websites that are on a single server the more the bandwidth that is available for your website is decreased.

You can find out how reliable and how fast your web hosting provider is by checking for feedback from anyone using the service. You can also try it out during both peak and non-peak hours to be sure that websites are available and are serving up pages at a good fast speed. You should choose a web host that will guarantee a minimum up time of at least 90% or higher.

5. Bandwidth Allotment

How much traffic will a free web hosting service allow your website to use each day or month? If you exceed this amount, what happens when someone try's to load your web page? Will they get an error message? This isn't good for business and you may loose visitors and customers to your website. Will they disable your website if it generates too much traffic and exceeds the bandwidth allotment? These are questions to ask any web hosting provider but especially those that are offering free web hosting space.

6. What's Your Reason for Your Website?

There are many things to consider when choosing a web host for your website, but the most important is what are you wanting to do with your website? Is it a professional quality business website? a family or hobby website? or just a page for you to play around with and learn about web development.

Your reasons for publishing a website will dictate which web hosting company to use. If you're trying to build a professional income generating website, don't try to cut corners by using a free web host. In the long run you'll regret your decision and wish that you had gone with a commercial web host. On the other hand, it you're just creating a page to share family information or learn how to develop a website, then a free web hosting solution may be just the thing you need.

Disadvantages of Free Web Hosts

Limits on web page space and bandwidth
Require space on your webpages for their advertisemsnts

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