Its True that beginners who dont have money for paid webhost always go for free ones but they only consider the advantage which is the fact that it is free and neglect the numerous disadvantages. Free webhosts should only be used for personal websites or websites that are non-commercial in nature and when you are learning or experimenting on building websites..
Even On Using Them, There are few questions you might ask:
** Can user use it’s own domain name or rather provide name servers.
** What form of domain name offered by the host.
** Space and bandwidth allowed by the host.
** Type and location of advertisements on user’s site?
** Features offered by the host.
** What resources does your webhost have available?
** Do the host provide feature of email address.
** Type and location of advertisements on user’s site?
Good answers to the above questions should be taken into consideration..
If you aim to setup a professional website or blog, you should not go for free webhosts. By the way, there is a saying which goes: “Nothing Is 100% free in this world” in one way or the other, you must surely pay.
Below are Few Reasons You Should Not Go For Free Webhosts::
1. Advertisements:
This is often the price you pay for hosting freely on their server just like i said earlier, “Nothing is 100% free in this world”. You might be seeing popup ads, popunder ads, affiliate links, banner links etc while using their free hosting service. Because their ads are often relevant to a sites topic, there is every possibility that they will place your competitor’s Ad on your blog/website.
2. Domain Names and SEO:
Most free webhosts dont allow her users to use customed domains, rather the users are being forced to use subdomains of the free hosting company. Meaning that your website will have the name of the free webhosting company like www.yoursite.freehostingcompany.com. Looks awkward huh??
Most times, you may have a hard time getting search engines to index your site well. This can affect your site very badly as your site will not be indexed and therefore you will not be able to garner any traffic.
3. Uptime Guarantee Fraud:
Most Free Webhosts might promise an uptime for using they which they actually dont keep to while very few of them have will add in their terms and conditions that they do not guarantee uptime for their free services So you cannot hold it against them if their services do not meet expectations. Moreover, You didnt Pay for it.
4. Limited/No Customer Support:
Free hosting Services provides little or no customer care support. This means that there are often no customer care helpline to call for inquiries/suggestions. The only communication tool you might have access to is an online forum community and it might take a lot of time to receive answers to your inquiries.
5. Overcrowded Servers:
Your free hosting account is often packed on an overcrowded server with other free hosting accounts which causes frequent downtimes of your website. This might make your website go slow and or go offline frequently.