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Free Web Hosting - Why Might It Be A Bad Idea
When talking about free anything the legitimate question that first pops into your mind is why pay when you can get it free? Free web hosting cost no money but what can you expect from one? Your web site will be turned into an advertising machine that works for the free web host. Expect, banners, pop up windows, frames. They will all mess the look of your web site in terms of design and accessibility for your visitors that might be literally flooded with popups almost after every click-through. You can't make advertising revenue of your web site, as most free web hosts don't allow it. This is not such a big issue when you are maintaining a personal web site, but the cutting-off advertising revenues can mean significant losses for a business. For this last case, only a paid web hosting solution might be the right answer. Very little space for your web pages. With free web hosting provider offering 5 to 15 MB of disk space, your site's expansion will severely restricted. Growing your web site above the offered quota would result in transferring to a paid plan offered by the same hosting provider or finding a different paid web-hosting provider. In both cases you end paying for your hosting and you might loose traffic to your web site due to changing hosts. No online store can go without secure server to enable secure online credit card processing. The great majority of free hosts don't support secure web servers. Customers fearing fraud and concerned about their personal information will make it impossible, at least very hard for an online store to survive on a free host. And anyway, have you ever heard of a successful online store hosted by a free web host? None will hear from yours either. The uptime of your web site will be like the weather forecast. Hope for good, but prepare for the worse. Downtime through free web hosts is unfortunately very common. As web hosts generate their revenues from advertising, they don't feel very much compelled to care for the web site of a subscriber who doesn't pay them anyway. To whom will you turn when experiencing the abovementioned downtime or other technical problem with your web site? Free web hosts usually have a limited budget and don't afford to hire large customer support teams, if any. You will find yourself alone, staring at the FAQ page. Your domain name will be measured in feet and will tell nothing or very little of your business. This obviously results in low traffic scores, as your visitors won't be able to remember your URL. Can you rely only on search engines, linked sites and people bookmarking your web site? If yes, at least consider the fact that in the age when companies try to create a personalized image, your web site will be condemned to be just another subdomain of your free host. Will your customers trust a business hosted by a free web host? What credibility will your web site inspire? Not a very high one. The above list is really rather long, but as surprisingly as it might be, it is far from being complete. Other additions to it could be that free web hosts not always offer FTP access to your web site file, or you only have one e-mail address to work with and probably looks like [email protected]. Yes, paid web hosting requires money, but the prices are lower than they used to be, and the advantages are rather impressive. Just turn all the above you can't? or you have to do without? list around. You are searching for a solution to host your business or even a professional personal web site, don't look for it at a free web host. About The Author This article may be reprinted or published without the authors consent as long as the "About" and "weblinks" are kept intact.
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Dont Get Fooled by the Web Hosting Wolves in Sheeps Clothing! Are you looking for web hosting? If you want to set up a personal website, or a modest commercial one, you are probably in the market for an inexpensive shared hosting plan. Those entry-level plans may cost $5-10 per month, and often boast very generous features for that modest prize. However, the strong competition often causes the companies to oversell, and then have difficulties living up to their promises. And how do you go about telling the good ones from the bad? Maybe you go to one of the many web hosting review sites. Those places may offer extensive listings of various web hosting companies and their features; which is certainly helpful. But be aware of the fact that these review sites are out there to make money by referring new customers to the hosting companies! Therefore, they tend to praise those companies that pay them the best. I used to be naive about these things, trusting the review sites. That was until I began some serious research on the subject myself. Were they really so good, those much-praised web hosting companies? Soon, I was able to uncover large amounts of customer testimonials that told a different story. It became clear that several very large and well-known web hosting companies had surprising amounts of negative customer ratings against them. There were many angry customers that related stories about incompetent or non-existent customer support, billing disputes where the company kept charging ex-customers after they had cancelled their accounts; and more. One may say that any company with many customers is likely to have a few that are hard to please. But in these cases, there were scores of reviews, and the majority was negative! Since there are also cases where hosting companies have tried to prosecute those who have criticized them in public, I will not mention any names here. In conclusion: I advice anyone looking for a reliable and honest web hosting provider to be very careful and not put too much trust in the web hosting ratings commonly found at hosting review sites and similar places. Also be aware that the customer feedback published by the web hosts themselves on their sites is of course filtered - and may even be faked. How to Choose the Web Site Hosting Service thats Right for You There are few things as critical to your e-business success as having a reliable web hosting service ... Cheap Web Hosting, What To Look For And What To Stay Away From "Bargains for sale, Unlimited Hosting for only a Dollar." Adult Web Hosting: The All You Need To Know What sort of web hosting options should you go for if you want to host an adult website? You need to remember that this is the most critical aspect of your adult website. 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Relax - you are not really as own your own as it seems. First off, most unmanaged providers do in fact offer technical support, and most that we've seen is very good. If you choose unmanaged dedicated service you do need to have someone on your team that knows the technical side a good bit, but they don't necessarily have to be experts. While you may have to wait 12 - 24 hours or you may even have to pay extra for it, nearly all the unmanaged providers I know do have high level techs available to handle serious issues. In addition most providers give some sort of immediate reboot service. Unless you've been tinkering with some critical config files or have a hardware failure, a reboot can help with a range of issues. Lastly, unmanaged providers may not support you or whatever you put on your server after you move in, but they do stand by the hardware and software they sell you. 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Some will not provide any information about their service while others will proudly announce that they provide 24/7 service. This is quite often not true. The Big Secret of Fabulous and Mediocre Web Site Hosting Companies Most web site hosting services like the one you're probably using right now, provide you with space on which you can host your web site. These mediocre web site hosting companies will even help you set up your own email addresses and provide you with the ability to run your own scripts and programs. Solving Common Problems with Hosting Companies For those of you with Web sites, you probably know what a "host" is. It's a company that provides a location, or address, on the Internet where your Web site resides. Niche Hosting There is story of David and Goliath where Goliath would come and challenge everybody - "is there anyone amongst you who would dare to fight against me?" Who would dare to fight against him? He was a giant, there was nothing one could do to humble him. |
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