There are a lot of different routes to setting up a website. You can go with the free route, or you could decide to pay for a web host. For some small business owners and start up bloggers, free sounds like a good way to go about things. It is indeed cost effective to go with a low cost, or even free solution when you’re setting up a website, but there’s a long term issue that becomes problematic when you are working with any web host or option that is 100% free of charge. Exploring those problems could be the one thing that you will help you go for a far better option overall.
Storage Limits
When you are buying a storage unit, you want the adequate amount of space to house all your goods. That’s standard across the web world as well, because without it, you will end up falling short of your goals. A free web host is going to only give you a small fraction of space, which can cripple your market share. Imagine getting 1/10 of the amount of space you would get with even the lowest cost solutions. If you run out of space, that’s it. This is not just a matter of storing photos and files, it’s also in regards to bandwidth. Most free web host options are not going to let you have an immensely popular website for free. You will reach the limit and that’s when your site goes down.
Limited Tools
Another problem with going along with free web host options is that you will get a limited amount of tools. There traditionally will not be a good editor, or even FTP access. In the case that you do get a marginal amount of tools, they will not allow you to create complex websites or even amend away from their given templates. The digital real estate provided by a free web host is inferior on every level to the amount of tools that you would get from paying for hosting overall.
Unprofessional Look
When visitors look for your website, you will have a secondary domain name. Free web host options rarely give you a full dot com for free. You’ll get a sub domain that will not only look tacky, it will look downright unprofessional. Imagine trying to sell a product or service and find yourself dealing with amateurs. Even if you’re not an amateur, you can easily come across as one if your site doesn’t have a solid domain name. The most untrusted domains online today are often times the ones that do not end in a good suffix like dot com, dot net, or anything similar.
At the end of the day, it’s important to realize that the aforementioned problems are just the beginning. You’ll find that free web host options are grand for beginners. However, they will not suffice if you want to make an impact on the internet today. For those that want to look professional, and get more space to do whatever it is they want, pay for web hosting. There’s plenty of low cost options, just avoid anything that is “free”, and crippling in terms of design.
