Why free hosting can cost you more in the long term

Many small website owners today wrongly value the cost of paying to have their website hosted over a website that pays nothing for hosting.

Lack of creditability can be the demise of any website

All but a personal website must project a sense of professionalism to convey to the user a high level of trust and authenticity.

A hosting company offering free hosting must justly recover their costs by using banner or pop-up advertising on all your web pages. This type of advertising is obtrusive to the visitor and instills suspicion because the website owner appears 'cheap' by not paying for hosting.

Server restrictions limit functionality

A free hosting provider will reduce outgoing costs further by:

Cramming web pages on the server
Limiting bandwidth
Reducing hard disk space
May not allow your own domain name
May not provide adequate support
Will not usually offer advanced website features

Along with unreliability and uptime issues of a free hosting server, restrictive features imposed on the free hosting account holder, undermines the website to develop effectively unlike a website on paid hosting that will have those necessary features at its discretion.

Fewer visitors from search engines and directories

Search Engines can have problems trying to index your web pages because of frames (caused by mandatory banner advertising) or pop-up advertising imposed by the free hosting company.

Human operated directories do not commonly allow webmasters to submit their website for inclusion into their directory if it is hosted on a free hosting server. Their reasoning is these websites are treated as temporary in nature because the owner is unlikely to dedicate effort to such a website.

Traffic (visitors to a website) is what makes any website of a commercial nature viable. Traffic can be seriously impaired for a website that resides on a free hosting server.

Market competition makes free hosting less attractive

Advances in server technologies and market competition within the hosting company industry has make hosting much more affordable for the average website owner to host a website than a few years ago. The volume of websites coming online continually fuels demand for hosting.

Today, good hosting packages can be found from approximately $10/month that provides the reliability, features and support that a dedicated website owner should strive for.

The cost of hosting a business-oriented website has never been cheaper, will remain so and comfortably provides tangible benefits beyond cost than a free hosting company will ever provide.