Suppose you have just started a company and built a website listing all the resources, services, facilities, and amenities that you seek to provide to your users and customers, but how are you going to make your website available on the internet? This is where you need to start opting for a web hosting service of your choice to make your company’s website accessible to different users.
When it comes to launching a website, a web hosting service is what allows it, but not every startup or individual has the ability to pay huge sums of money to pay for these hosting services. This is exactly what the free website hosting services take advantage of, and provides you a free platform to store your website files, for free, on their server, thereby making them available to the internet users. Here are the different pros and cons of free web hosting services.
The Various Pros and Cons of Free Web Hosting Platforms
Free web hosting is a kind of website hosting service that is offered for free by hosting providers. It enables different website owners and builders to launch their website files on a server without having to pay any fee.
This is probably the best alternative for new companies and startups to host their website and make it available to internet users, solely because of the fact that not every beginner in the industry has the budget to pay for expensive hosting services like shared dedicated cloud and VPS ones.
However, just like every other type of web hosting service out there, these free alternatives also come with certain pros and cons, and in this article we will take a close look at them.
Free Web Hosting Platforms- the Pros
Here are the five pros of any free web hosting service out there in the market.
No Cost
Well, this point is an absolute no-brainer. A free web hosting service means that it allows website owners to launch their website files on a free hosting server, thereby making them available to various users on the internet.
This way, website owners don’t have to pay any hosting fee whatsoever, and it is quite beneficial especially when they’re starting a new business and don’t have an additional budget for website hosting. Furthermore, there will be no hidden fees in the future.
Extremely Easy to Set Up
Free web hosting platforms are extremely simple to set up, and website owners can get started without the need for any technical skills as such.
The majority of the free web hosting services out there on the market provide website builders or CMS (Content Management Systems) that make it very effortless to create a website and launch it without the requirement of any coding knowledge or experience.
Helps with Prior Testing
Free web hosting platforms can be effectively used to test websites and web applications before you plan to launch them on a paid hosting server.
This evidently saves the money of website owners, and even enables them to identify any underlying issue with their company’s website before it is launched and made accessible to the public.
Not Bound by Any Legal Contract
Unlike paid hosting, website owners are not bound by any legal contract by paying the subscription fees for an entire year. They can change their website hosting provider whenever they wish to as there are quite a few free web hosting services available on the internet today.
Enables Learning the Entire Website Setup Process
Website owners can simply use a free web hosting service just to surf around, learn how to design a website and set it up, and much more.
If someone is not experienced enough with the various technical aspects of making a website, then this is the best way to go ahead.
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They can practice and learn all they want without having to pay a single penny.
Free Web Hosting Platforms- the Cons
Here are the five cons of any free web hosting service out there on the market, besides the security risks like data breaches and malware infections and an imminent lack of available customization options.
No Access to cPanel
Free web hosting platforms don’t provide access to the cPanel to the website owners and builders. It is only from the cPanel that you can manage the .htaccess file and other necessary tools, thereby making it a key issue to reckon with.
Limited Customer Support
Unlike the paid web hosting services out there, you won’t get any timely customer support or assistance when it comes to an issue that you’re facing with your free web hosting server.
However, you can certainly reach out to your hosting service team via email but that doesn’t ensure an immediate response either.
The Occurrence of Unwanted Advertisements
Most free web hosting platforms earn money by displaying ads on your website.
Although this might not seem like a massive issue in the beginning, it can certainly be a matter of significant annoyance to your website’s visitors and detract from the overall user experience.
Moreover, some of the advertisements may be of questionable quality and prove to be inappropriate for your audience, thereby imposing a poor impression on your business.
Potential Unreliability
Owing to the fact that these services don’t generate any revenue, and there’s very little incentive for the provider to invest in the infrastructure that’s required to keep your company’s website up and running, it can potentially result in downtime, slow load times, and various other technical issues.
All of these can contribute to the damaging reputation of your brand, and prove to be quite frustrating for the visitors.
Restricted Storage Space and Bandwidth
Most of the free website hosting providers out there offer very limited storage space and bandwidth.
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This means that website owners can only put up selected media and non-media content, besides experiencing a frustratingly slow data transfer speed and high loading times.
If your hosting service doesn’t offer enough bandwidth, your website is going to take more time to load, thereby hindering its performance.
Final Words
If you’re looking to opt for a free web hosting service to launch your company’s website, or even your personal website, and make it accessible to users online, there are certain key factors you should consider. These include the reputation of the hosting provider, the various limitations of the hosting platform, the uptime, downtime, and load times, the customer support offered, the future scalability of the provider, the available disk space and bandwidth, and the different security services offered.
