Why you should say No to "Free" Web Hosting

We often fall for things that come with a “FREE” tagline with it. No matter how intimidating such free-of-charge and complimentary things are, most of the time, they will lead you to the end of the road. Sorry to prick your bubble but everything comes with a price tag except for this article for you. The same concept goes in our hovering in the space of technology too.

“Everything comes at a price”

To build your foundation and online presence, starting a blog/website is your token of stardom. There are plenty of hosting platforms available on the internet that claim to be free for creating a website and who doesn’t go for freebies? Because what appears to be free might cost you a lot more than what you have predicted. Paid web hostings will open your door to opportunities giving you more freedom of action and absolute ownership of your platform. Thus, it is not worth opting for free hosting. Let us look into some of the reasons to steer clear of free web hostings:

Low SEO Rank

To have your website always observable among the top search results, you need to have a high SEO ranking. You must be aware of the fact that sites out there competing in a race against each other for web users’ notice and attention. Reality check - Nobody really browses through 15+ page results unless it is rare to find the search. Making use of a free hosting service puts a disadvantageous impact on the overall ranking of your website. Also, it lowers your business’s credibility. 

Not just your potential viewers but also the search engines that will not find your website interesting and engaging. Hosting your website on a platform that is paid for its services not only puts you on top of the game but also ensures you stick there for a longer period of time. And who would not love that?

No Ownership rights & Lack of Credibility

This is one of the other disadvantages that free web hosting is accused of. When you want to launch your website using a free hosting service, you are bound to include the name and banner of the free hosting service on your webpage and in your URL. If you want to sell anything on your website, or even if you want to tweak some central functionalities, you won’t have any rights to achieve them. This can become very frustrating for you as you are being denied the right to run your website the way you wanted. 

Not only this, free hosts can remove/delete any content or even shut down your website at their discretion. You get no hold on your website at all if you are opting for free web hosting. It also affects your business credibility. For example, a website with the URL “example.freehostname.com” is most likely to repel potential visitors and clients with the perception that you are not concerned and serious about your business. 

Pile Of Pop-Up Advertisements

Have you ever thought about why free web hosting services don't impose any money? Well, the free hosting companies fill their pockets by generating revenue by running pop-ups and spam advertisements on your webpage. Moreover, it is compulsory that your website features the ads, or else your site will be shut down. Spams and ads are very annoying. You would always be in favor of an ad-free website that will deliver the required information rather than having to bear with needless and unwanted pop-ups.

Lack of Control on Anything

You always end up being a puppet in the process of hosting your website for free. You never gain anything significant other than hollow promises on how you can launch your website for free. Also, it is immensely unethical and unprofessional for your legitimate business processes. You get absolutely no liberty to customize your website the way you always wanted. Free hosting services hamper your overall performance and productivity as Server Uptime remains very slow. In addition to this, websites that operate on free hosts are often a lot slower and unsuitable when compared to other reliant and independent websites.

Free Web Hosting Furnish Zero Security

When it comes to securing the sensitive contents of your website, free hosting services do not care about it much. Such hosting services don’t take up efforts on safeguarding your data and contents, unlike paid hosts. Your private and confidential data might be at risk of falling into the wrong hands of hackers and fraudsters. Not only your personal data is in danger, but there is also a lot more risk of the main server getting hacked where all website links and domains are located.

Lack Of Design Elasticity

Free web hosts lack a lot of modern functionalities or the latest editing features, which can easily be found in paid web hosting platforms. You will have the lead to get access to a broad range of templates, themes, layouts, graphics, and other plugins in a paid web hosting service. Thus, free hosting services limit your design flexibility. It is always better that you pay for web hosting and gets the mobility of design by having web tools that your business will be in need of. You might be saving some money for the time being, but down the road, you are destined to suffer hefty losses.

Content Limitations

Another reason why you should avoid free web hosting services is that you get restricted features for personalizing your website. Such free hostings will have tight storage space and insanely low bandwidth. Also, free web hosts impose excessive rate limiting which restricts the access to visitors with their required content on your website, and this might impact your business adversely. Customizing your website by adding better images or templates is out of the question unless you sign up for their premium plans. Most of the free website hosting platforms offer you a trial version that comes with an expiry date, demanding users to pay up in the future to upgrade.

Website Migration is Nightmare

There might be times when you would want to move your website to another hosting provider from your existing one. In that case, you should be prepared for a shed load of struggle if you are using a free hosting service. Such providers make it very complicated for you to migrate away from their free services with the expectation that you will be confused with the migration process and prompt you to pay an unreasonable amount for their paid solution to it.

Buy Paid & Proper Hosting From Day One

As you can observe, free website hosting just puts you on a bummer. Every business demands some investment during its inception phase and paid-to-host providers are a lot more dependable and responsive. Not only will you have full rights and ownership of your website, but also get complete freedom to customize and tweak the platform the way you want. Say goodbye to slow speeds, low SEO ranking, inadequate security, uptime non-assurance, a deficit of platform support, and a lack of branded URLs and addresses. The bottom line is that you should give priority to professional paid hosts to get the same priority back from your potential and targeted audiences on your website.