Is Free Web Hosting Really a Good Deal?

When starting a website one of the first things you need to do is find the right hosting services for your situation. For brand new sites and those that aren’t likely to get a lot of traffic, one of the most important factors that you are going to consider is the price. With this in mind, many people turn to free website hosting services. On the surface, this free web hosting seems like a great deal. In most cases, however, this isn’t actually the best course of action.

The first thing you will want to do is ask why the free website hosting services are free. Hosting a website requires computer servers, which are kept in large data centers, and need to have a reliable data circuit to access the internet. All of these things cost money, so how can a company offer free web hosting?

The fact is, these types of companies make their money through other methods besides directly charging their customers. The following are some of the ways that free hosting services generate revenue:

• Advertisements– Most free hosting services will insert various advertisements onto your site so that they earn money every time a customer visits it.

• Inserting Affiliate Links– Hosting companies may also insert affiliate links into your content so if visitors click them and make a purchase, the company earns revenue.

• Contacting Your Visitors– They may also put in a pop-up or other option that entices your visitors to sign up for their email lists, which they will then use to try to sell them things in the future.

This is all on top of the fact that free website hosting is always of the lowest possible quality. This is done to help keep costs down so they can make money using the above-mentioned methods. Free hosting is notoriously slow, plagued with outages, and has very poor customer service, which is why it’s almost never a good option.

While fully free cloud hosting (or free hosting of other types) is almost never a good deal, there are free services that can be a good opportunity. For example, here at Verpex we offer a free domain name with the purchase of any hosting package. This means that you don’t have to pay to register your domain for the first year, which can help to minimize your costs when first starting up your site.

Other examples of free hosting features can include unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. We offer packages that include both of these things, which means you never have to worry about going over the allocated amount of system resources. This makes it much easier to maintain your site without having to constantly think about hosting.

In some rare situations, free hosting is actually a good idea. If you are looking to start up a website that is only going to be accessed by an extremely small number of people, and reliability is not an important factor, it might be a good option. Of course, it is also important to make sure that the ads or other funding methods aren’t going to cause problems for those visitors.

In these situations, searching for ‘free website hosting’ or some similar term will show you multiple different options. When they come up, take some time to browse through each option to learn how they pay for the services, the types of services they offer, and more. While you’ll never find a truly high-quality hosting option for free, there are some out there that may be sufficient to meet your specific needs. Just keep in mind that free hosting companies often go out of business, or begin charging customers, so be sure you are ready to move your site quickly should that occur.

Privacy and security policies are some of the main deciding factors for people that require web hosting – not just performance. Of course, everyone wants a web host that works the way it is supposed to, handling all levels of traffic, and ensuring your users’ details are kept secure. But free hosting services do not protect their customers – and they definitely do not provide the level of performance they claim to, either. Since they are not making money from subscriptions, do not expect investments in infrastructure, or for them to prioritize your protection. They will likely put their partnerships with third-party advertisers first.

While free web hosting can be very tempting, it is almost never the best solution. First of all, if you intend on starting up a website that is going to actually get visitors and provide a solid user experience, you will need to choose hosting that can actually deliver on performance. But using free hosting leaves both you and your site’s users wide open and exposed to all kinds of safety issues, like data breaches and more. While you might save money, you’re setting yourself up for big problems down the line.

Here at Verpex, we offer the best in class hosting services at a price that’s very competitive. For those who are considering the low-quality ‘free’ hosting options that are out there, we strongly recommend you take a look at our entry-level shared hosting packages. By spending just a little bit each month, you will get exceptional services that you (and the visitors to your site) will appreciate!