Advantages and disadvantages

Sep 26, 2007 14:25 GMT  ·  By

If you are planning to have a website and to use a free web hosting service to get on the Internet you have many options to choose from, because there are many providers that will give you a free web hosting account. But, first of all you will need a domain name.

In case you do not have a domain name yet, besides the web hosting space and account you can receive a subdomain name for free in order to use it for your website. Many free web hosting providers will offer their users tools to build and maintain a website online. You will be able to have an online website in a few minutes without having HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL or any other kind of knowledge, only with the help of on line tools, such as free templates, HTML generators, WYSIWYG editors and more.

There are situations when free web hosting providers will give you access to a control panel with limited facilities to manage your website and webhosting account. Free web hosting services have also disadvantages. Even if you have your own domain name, you will have to accept their terms and conditions. In many cases you will be imposed ads on your website, low disk space, low bandwidth and low uptime server. You may not be able to run certain scripts. If you want to upload your own site, it is possible not to have FTP access for example.

Another major disadvantage is the fact that your website will not be visible for many search engines and you could not have the expected level of traffic. If you need technical support from your web-hosting providers there are many chances that you will not get it in an optimal time. There are also other disadvantages that will not be mentioned here.

As a conclusion, if you need a simple web page, such as a personal homepage, you can use a free hosting service. But given the present-day low cost of web hosting, you may consider choosing a commercial web hosting service, due to the advantages it brings and the provided flexibility, as compared to free web hosting services.