It’s been said that you get what you pay for. So what should you expect if the hosting service is free? Obviously you’re not going to get your own domain name as most free hosting comes under a sub domain of the main host.
This might be fine for a personal blog or a photo gallery or a site that does not require any kind of e-commerce application. There is nothing wrong with free hosting, you just need to manage your expectations and decide whether or not you might need your own domain name or more apps, plug ins or bandwidth in the future.
Some free hosting providers offer an easy upgrade path, others do not. It is worth searching out the ones that do. In addition some free hosting providers expect your site to carry their advertising free of charge. You might find that the amount of server hard drive space and the bandwidth is restricted quite heavily. For example if you were building a small blog site that is content rich you might have problems. Likewise; if your site does take off and that content is being downloaded often you will run out of bandwidth or worse still you might find yourself bein
g billed for excess bandwidth.
Make sure you ask your hosting provider how they deal with excess bandwidth and hard drive use.
There is nothing wrong with free hosting and many bloggers decry the use of a free host for WordPress sites. This can be taken with a pinch of salt sometimes as many of these bloggers are in faact affiliates to a paid hosting company and get a small commission for every customer taking paid hosting after visiting their site. Nothing wrong with that of course, these bloggers are knowledgeable and give of their time freely so who can blame them for trying to make a few pence for every customer they send. Doesn’t make for completely independent views though.
Ensure that you know what will happen if the hosting providers servers go down for any reason. If you’re running a personal blog then this might not matter but if you are trying to build a loyal audience then having your site down for hours or even days will do nothing to attract a returning audience.
Some free web and blog hosting providers offer free hosting in the hope that once you see their service is reliable and as your blog grows, you will want to trade-up to a paid platform. Try to find a host that gives an easy upgrade path and who can help you to migrate should you find that you need your own domain name etc.
All-in-all we shouldn’t be too harsh on free hosting providers. If you take the care to find out what ‘free’ means (you’d be surprised) and whether you can easily upgrade you should have no problems at all. On the other hand; if you are starting an e-commerce blog as a business or want to eventually have an audience of 1,000s per day then it makes sense to take the plunge and get your own domain name and low-price hosting from day one.