There is a reason why free hosting is free – it comes with its downsides. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use it at all, however there are times when you should stay away from it. It depends on what kind of website you want to host.
This article will explain when it’s a good idea to use a free, and when you should avoid free like the plague.
Do Use Free Web Hosting When You’re Learning the Ropes
Learning should be free, and it’s totally OK to use a free web host if you want to learn the ropes of setting up a website. Most free web hosts are loaded with all the standard features of a paid hosting provider, such as CPanel, MySQL and email.
For example, you could host with 000WebHost to aid your learning of WordPress, PHP and MySQL. In this case, a free web host is the way to go, since you may decide it’s not worth wasting any money. However, you could also use local server software instead for this purpose.
Do Use Free Web Hosting When You’re Experimenting
If you’ve got a website online, it’s likely that at some point you’ll want to add some functionality with front end or back end scripting, or edit the CSS and HTML.
Now if you’ve got a lot of people visiting your site each day, you don’t want to risk writing some faulty code and bringing down your website. It’s an ideal way to experiment with code, without the worry of alienating your visitors while your site’s live.
Don’t Use Free When You’re Trying to Make a Good Impression
If you’ve got any sort of blog, a personal portfolio, or a money-making website, you’re trying to make a good impression, right?
These days, everyone has their own domain name. If you have free web hosting, you’ll only get a subdomain, and that looks very unprofessional.
Don’t Use Free If You Want to Show Up in Google
When was the last time you were on a website that used free web hosting? Can’t remember?
That’s because Google, and every other search engine, hates free web hosting and will bump search results for free websites as far down as possible.
Conclusion
A website hosted for free is great for experimenting, but if you’re intending to create a proper website, free web hosts are not the way to go. Instead, find out about proper web hosting here.
