Paying for your web hosting service

Posted by Felix Okoli on Saturday September 13, 2014 at 13:1:23:

It is quite easy to get free hosting. The real question is “is it worth it in the long run?”, “is it worth the business and income you most probably will lose?” It is true free website hosting is great for websites that are not yet quite off the ground. It is also a great alternative for new webmasters who are not tech savvy.

Free hosting can actually be minutes away from you which is mostly the attraction. You can get it by doing a simple search online for free service providers and choosing one with a nice enough theme. These free hosts are also known as third party hosting. Third party hosting is great (especially for new webmasters) but it has its own pros and cons.

Here’s what’s good about free hosting:

1. You get free hosting and absolutely free support. Whether this is to your taste is sadly inconsequential if you cannot afford paid hosting.

2. Security features you do not have to pay for. Security is a big part of maintaining a website. You don’t want the “bad guys” to hack your website all the valuable information you might have. Some even hack websites and post garbage on it but that’s usually if you’ve offended somebody.

3. Free back ups

4. Great looking templates that are also usually easily customizable.
5. They are also quite easy to manage after set up and have great tools a non- tech savvy person can use.

These are truly great and helpful features of third party hosting however, it also has its cons:

1. Limited bandwidth is usually the norm for these types of hosting. This can become a problem if your website happened to go viral in one day or if your traffic builds up. As your website grows and your traffic increases, so will your bandwidth needs. So if you plan to start with free third party hosting, be rest assured you will have to move when you become successful and moving is not quite a pleasant task.

2. There are usually annoying adverts on these platforms. This means even if you run AdSense ads, your income gets split; some go to them and the rest to you. Don’t grumble, nothing’s free in Freetown.

3. You cannot customize themes exactly how you want them. You just have to make do with what is offered you.

4. You cannot get your own domain name. You are going to have to be stuck with what “dot hostername.com”. it is both pretty long to type and in most cases, tells the world, you are not quite firm on your feet just yet.

Paying for web hosting is the best way to go. It gives you control over a lot of things like themes, bandwidth etc. Also, if you do your research right, great customer support. There is the likelihood that where the web hosting is free, support might be slow or unsatisfactory plus, paid hosting gives you most of the pros listed above as well.

Paying for web hosting is not only worth it, it’s a win-win situation. Go paid guys! You’ll never regret the investment if you are in it for the long haul.