Free Hosting: The Pros and Cons

Are you considering using a free webhost?

Finding free web space on the Internet isn't hard. All you have to do is hit a search engine and search for "free hosting" and the results should bring back several options.

Being "free" is one of the few good things about free hosting, though. Free hosting can also bring many unwanted things that you have to deal with. With most free hosts, this includes:

Advertising: embedded into your page, pop-up ads, pop-under ads, interstitial pages and more. By they way, you're providing the content they earn revenue from, but you don't get a cut. How nice of you!
Poor technical support...or none at all.
Lack of disk storage space.
Very limited bandwidth.
Inability to run CGI or other scripts.
Inability to use your own domain name.
Slow, overcrowded servers.
Free sites have less credibility.
Restrictions on what you can do, for example, many will not allow any commercial activity of any kind, including simply linking to affiliate products.
Inability to get your site listed in the search engines.
Free hosting provider may claim copyrights to your material.
...and on and on.

This list really could go on and on. One of the biggest drawbacks is that many free hosting providers have come and gone over the years. It's not a very sustainable business model. If advertising revenue dries up, and it goes through cycles, a host often folds.

When that happens you lose all the work you've done, you lose any links you have built, you lose, you lose, you lose...and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it except start over.

Free hosting may sound like a good idea, but whether it is or not depends on your goal. I wouldn't use free hosting for anything but a personal site. Why? Hosting costs so little these days, and there are so many drawbacks to free hosting, it just isn't worth the risk.

There's a lot of competition for your Web site hosting dollars, and you can find some pretty freaking excellent deals if you look hard enough—wait, you don't even have to look hard, just check out our cheap hosting list.