Free web hosting is really free, there are many web hosting provider offer free web hosting plan as part as they regular plan. The cost of free hosting services are usually covered by advertisements on web sites that are hosted, but you always can find many of them also don’t require any ads. Their main goal is to get you started at no cost and then convert you to become a paying customer.
Free website hosts are good for many things; there are definitely some benefits and of course some cons if you subscribe for free hosting.
The benefits of free web hosting
- They are free; most of them only required an email to sign up. The sign up process is also very fast and almost instant.
- Many of these services already install with WordPress, complete with widgets and themes. So literally what you need to set up a new site or blog are some articles and images.
- Monetized. Some free web hosting provider offer ads share revenue model.
- Free web hosting service gives you place to learn, do trial and error at no cost. Many free hosting providers provide you with some online video training to help you set up your site.
The Costs of Free Web Hosting
- Reliability, there is no guarantee on uptime reliability, no guarantee on your data and no guarantee on support either.
- High hosting cost, most of these services have much higher hosting cost compare to regular web hosting service or unlimited web hosting provider. After all, you can get as low as $2/month which consider the cheapest web hosting.
- Limited control on your website, such as limited customization on themes and most of them will not allow you to have access on database and thus if you ever want to switch to a new provider you have to start all over again.
- Basically what you get is only (limited) space; for hosting a business website, you cannot beat professional paid web hosting for reliability.
Eventhough it has many limitation, there are many people can get this service for many useful things. Below some recommended free web hosting provider and free blogging site:
Byethost
Byethost free web hosting package:
- FTP account and File Manager
- Control Panel and Automatic Script Installer
- Big 5 Gb disk space and 200 Gb data transfer
- MySQL databases & PHP Support
Beside the free plan, Byethost cheapest paid hosting plans start from $2.99/month
110Mb
Free web hosting package:
- 110 MB Disk Space and 100Gb Bandwidth transfer
- Free site builder
- Community support only
- 110mb.com link on footer
110 offers one package paid upgrade with unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited SQL at $6.95/month.
Weebly
Completely free to create and publish a website with Weebly and no option for paid upgrade. The free plan includes:
- Drag & drop website editor
- 70+ design themes
- If you already do your domain name registration, use it with Weebly, at no charge. This is very rare feature, most free hosting provider required you to pay to let you use your own domain.
- Supports an unlimited number of blogs within your website
Blog.com
The best thing about blog.com is the WordPress platform. So you can have a blog, from sign up to publish your first article, in less than 5 minutes.
Blog.com free hosting include:
- Multi-author blogs
- There is some advertisement on free blog
- Very limited space
- Many themes and design option