Capital Hosting

When it comes to free website hosting 'you get what you pay for' may be right on the money. Before you begin researching hosting companies it will be best to have some idea of your website needs, including your budget. Keep in mind that free always comes with a price. Here are some of the disadvantages of free web hosting that should be considered.

Invasive Advertisements
Free hosting services make money through advertisements. If you use a free service you may be disturbed by the unsolicited banner ads or pop-ups flashing on your site. Even if you are not bothered by the ads, chances are pretty good that visitors to your website will be.

Unable to Host Your Own Domain Name
You will more than likely be forced to compromise on your URL by having one like this-is-my-site-name.my-website-host-name.com. This type of URL is less professional than a personal URL and more difficult to remember.

As you probably know, getting an available domain name that isn't already taken is a major problem. One solution I have found is to try adding leading characters like 'i' or 'my' to the name you are searching for or something like 'site' to the end. Be creative, you will be surprised by what you can find that is available out there.

Hosting Control
You more than likely will not have much control of a free website. You will probably not be able to install your own scripts, software, create email accounts or be able to monitor your website statistics.

The best cheap paid web hosting plans provide hosting control panels that allow you to install and configure free web applications provided like blogs, email, data bases, scripts, software, shopping carts and such. You will also be able to observe your website traffic statistics.

Guaranteed Uptime
The best cheap paid hosting providers pride themselves on a guaranteed uptime of 99% or more. If reliable uptime is an issue you more than likely can expect much more downtime if you sign up with a free website hosting service.

Bandwidth and Storage
Free hosting services provide fairly limited storage, so you will probably have severely limited bandwidth and storage space on a free website. That may be fine initially but will probably require an upgrade to your plan or change hosts entirely if/when your site expands.

You may be saving a few dollars in the short-term but you will have to deal with the headache and expense of changing hosts in the future. The best cheap paid web hosting plans often include large or unlimited amounts of disk space and bandwidth. If you do plan to use a lot of media or not to limit the size of your site, you could run into trouble fairly quickly.

BackUp - Security
When you pay for web hosting they provide the service to keep your information safe. Most of the best cheap web hosting plan providers backup nightly if not weekly. If the free hosting site loses your information you probably won't have any recourse to salvage it. Why risk it when you can enjoy the best cheap web hosting with a reputable company like iDataSite for just a few dollars a month.

Optimize Web Pages
To get good search engine index listings and attract visitors you will need to be able to optimize your web pages. You need to be able to create and modify appropriate meta tags, header tags, files names, image descriptions, navigation links and such to make your website search engine friendly. You won't be able to do these things with a website built with a free hosting account so you will more than likely be missing out on receiving traffic from the search engines.

SSL
Secure your shopping cart, if you are even able to implement one on a free website. Many new internet entrepreneurs are unsure about whether it's worth investing in SSL when launching their site. Most shoppers will not be comfortable inputting their credit card information onto a site without SSL. Not implementing SSL can only result in lost business.

Customer Service - Technical Support
The final thing to consider is what kind of customer service you may have a need for. If you expect your account to be complicated then it may be worth paying for the hosting service. Free web hosting is usually only minimally supported since the company does not have the income to provide it.

Choosing Between Paid and Free Web Hosting
Free website hosting services may be ideal for you if you have simple needs or you're practicing developing a website. If you have a definite business plan in mind or you're looking to start a blog that will become popular it's a good idea to pay for stable, reliable, full featured web hosting services from one of the best cheap web hosting plan providers.

If you have specific plans for your website then be sure to research whatever features and tools you may need to achieve those goals. If you decide that keeping costs as low as possible is your top priority, there are plenty of free web hosting services available.

Theodore Martin is the owner/operator of iDataSite Web Hosting, a low cost full featured web hosting plan provider with data centers located in the US, UK and Australia. iDataSite Web Hosting is a professional web hosting provider for some of the best cheap web hosting plans suitable for individual website hosting as well as almost any other kind of website.

Visit Best-Cheap-Web-Hosting.iDataSite.com to review some of the best cheap web hosting plans.