Free web hosts have some obvious limitations, such as restricted bandwidth and disk space and poor customer support, but many new webmasters still choose to host their websites on free providers due to the $0.00 price tag. Unfortunately, there are several more serious reasons why you should avoid free web hosts and this article will highlight a few of them.
1. Many free web hosts will put intrusive banner adverts and pop-up windows onto your websites. These adverts will annoy your website’s visitors and many visitors may even leave your website immediately and vow never to return until the ads are removed. Furthermore, unscrupulous free web hosts will even embed adware, malware and viruses into your website, which could result in hundreds of your website’s visitors getting their computers infected.
2. The security of any data held on free web hosts is questionable at best. Thousands of webmasters have their websites hacked into each year, so as a webmaster, data security should be your top priority. Do you really want to have to email thousands of your customers and tell them that their personal data has been stolen and that it could now be getting distributed all around the world?
3. Free web hosts rarely make backups of websites stored on their servers as it would cost them too much money. Therefore, if their servers break down or are stolen, all of the content on your website will be lost forever unless you have made your own backup. Do you really want to take that risk? Furthermore, some free web hosts are running fly-by-night operations and they couldn’t care less about their client’s files.
4. Millions of people use free web hosts, so their servers are usually stretched to capacity. As a result of this, if you host your website on a free host, it will probably take a long time to load and visitor experience will be compromised.
5. Free web hosts are not known for their outstanding uptime rates and every time your website is down, you are losing potential business. If you have no option but to use a free web host, make sure that you opt for one that has had the least amount of downtime in previous months.
6. Websites hosted on free web hosts are not rated highly by search engines algorithms, so if your website is hosted on a free host, it will be almost impossible to get it indexed and ranked highly on SERP (search engine results pages) for your targeted keywords.
7. Free web hosts usually don’t give clients access to advanced web tools and features like PHP, MySQL, FTP accounts and POP email. If you are running a business website, having access to advanced web tools and features is essential.
8. Some free web hosts include a sneaky clause in their “terms of use” document that basically implies that any content uploaded to their servers will become their personal property.
As you can see, there are many reasons why you should avoid free web hosting if you are hoping to create a professional website. Paid hosting offers so many advantages relative to its cost, so there is no reason why you should not invest a little money and host your website with a reputable web hosting company.