25 Reasons Not To Use Free Hosting. The idea of hosting a website for free on the Internet is tempting. There are companies that offer free hosting for different types of sites. But if everything were so great, then no one would pay hosters for paid placement. In this article, we will analyze why free hosting is bad and what restrictions you can face.
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Why free hosting is bad
In this article, by a free site, we mean the ability to use web hosting without paying. Most often, this service also includes a simple website builder.
But any free service can have many hidden restrictions and costs, which we will discuss later in the article. Not necessarily every service will have all these disadvantages of free hosting, but we advise you to consider the following points:
1.Site speed can be very slow.
Free hosting providers host a huge number of websites on one server. Such servers operate in a highly congested mode, so the speed of sites is very slow. This negatively affects both SEO and user interaction with the site.
2.Not a professional site address.
Free hosting services usually provide users with website addresses that are based on the domain of the provider itself. The website address will look something like mybusiness.freewebsite.com, where the free website is the name of the provider. Visitors and potential customers of your site are unlikely to be able to take such a site seriously, much less a business that uses a free domain.
If you want to use a domain without such a prefix, then most often you need to pay for a premium account and the service will no longer be free.
3.The trial period is not entirely free.
Many of the free website offerings are just a limited trial version of a paid service. After such a period, you will be asked to pay an amount that may be more than buying regular hosting services and a domain. Add credit card information to your account carefully, otherwise, it may be charged for an amount that you did not expect at all.
4.Hidden costs.
Free site providers make money by charging for additional services. For example, image hosting, email, FTP access, website transfers, site customization, and more. Usually, the prices for such services are unreasonably high. On paid hosting, this can be obtained as part of the service.
5.Access to site data may be closed.
Many of those who make a website on a free service, after a while decides to move to a full-fledged paid service. And at this moment it is discovered that it is simply impossible to transport the content of the site. Free service providers usually do not provide any site migration tools. And in the end, you have to pay web developers to manually transport the content.
6.Annoying ads on the site.
“Free” hosters make money from advertising. You create a website and they advertise on it. These ads are often distracting and intrusive. Most likely, using the free service, you will not be able to manage the placement of such ads.
7.Your site may be closed.
If you carefully read the terms of use of the service, you may find that your site may be closed for no reason at any time. If this happens, then most likely you will not see the content again.
8.The provider company may be closed.
At any time, the provider of free sites can close their service without any obligations to users. Their terms of service give the legal right to do so. If the provider company divested its business, you will first of all lose the name of your site if it is a subdomain that is tied to the name of the service. Access to the content of the site will also be irretrievably lost.
9.Your personal information may be transferred.
Another way free service providers can make money is to share their personal information with other companies. These can include email addresses, phone numbers, and site information.
Moreover, this can be spelled out in the terms of use of the service, which few people read.
10.No WordPress.
Many providers do not allow WordPress to be installed on their free hosting. This platform requires more resources than the hoster is willing to allocate to a free client. Even if you find a provider that allows you to install WordPress, the normal operation of the site may not be supported by the server resources, and you will face a bunch of errors and problems.
Make your blog hosted with WordPress preinstalled!
11.The spread of viruses.
Free sites are often seen spreading viruses and malware. This is mainly due to poor security, but providers can also make money from it. Either way, it will damage your site’s reputation and affect SEO.
12.You can become part of a link farm.
The reason free providers keep disappearing and re-emerging is that they can make money through unethical means. Creating a link farm is a common practice for these companies. They sell thousands of their users’ links to spammers, gambling sites, online scammers.
13.Limited traffic.
Traffic is the amount of information that travels from the server to the user’s browser. It costs money, which is why most free websites have a limited bandwidth resource.
14.Small disk space.
Free hosters host thousands of sites on one server. Therefore, a specific user is allocated extremely limited disk space. If your site reaches this limit, you will be asked to pay for additional space.
15.Vulnerability in hacking attempts.
Free site providers don’t care too much about the security of their servers and user sites. Moreover, if your site is hacked, it will not be easy to restore it, since such providers provide extremely limited access to the files of your resource.
16.Only HTML sites with a limited number of pages.
Many of these companies limit the number of pages they can create for their sites. If you want a large site, you will have to upgrade your tariff plan.
17.Limited design.
Free hosting services offer a limited set of themes for your resource. Most likely, you will not be able to use your own design or download a theme downloaded from the Internet.
18.Lack of support.
Free site providers do not provide user support. If you have any questions about setting up the site, you will have to figure it out yourself. At best, there will be some kind of documentation.
19.You will not be able to add ads to your site.
Despite the fact that providers themselves earn by advertising on users’ sites, you will not be allowed to add your ads or earn money on the site, for example, using affiliate links.
20.No backup.
The free site service does not offer backups of your content. If something happens to the site, you cannot restore it.
21.No statistics and analytics.
A good hosting company provides tools for tracking your website visitor statistics for free. You can also easily add an analytics tool to your site, such as Google Analytics.
The free service providers do not allow adding such tools and do not provide statistics for you themselves.
22.Lack of adaptability.
You will not be able to adapt the resource for mobile devices and different screens. If your site is designed only for desktop screens, a large number of visitors will be lost.
23.No email.
Free services do not provide the ability to create a mailbox on your domain. Most likely, you will have to use Gmail or other email services, which looks unprofessional for business.
Also, the free site does not allow you to set up a good contact form. If providers allow it to be used on the site, then only their built-in, which does not lend itself to customization. Also, forget about the possibility of forwarding letters to other e-mail boxes.
24.Limited ways to download files.
Regular hosting allows you to upload files to your site using FTP, SSH, hosting control panel, or CMS admin panel. Free hosting providers offer one option – download via the web interface in a browser, which is not always convenient.
25.There is no way to redirect the site to another address.
When using free website hosting, there is no way to set up redirects – that is, redirecting the site to another web address.
This list contains the most common cons of free hosting. We are not suggesting that you will necessarily encounter them when using any free service because it is simply impossible to research them all. However, be prepared for similar problems when using services that offer lifetime free hosting.
Based on materials from the article Reasons Why Having a Free Website is a Bad Idea.
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