Digg out

Free Vs Paid Web Hosting

By Prashant Sharma

Posted on April 4, 2009

Web hosting is what a user searches for when it comes to create a website. This article will focus on free vs paid web hosting services.

‘Free web hosting’ is something that attracts most of the newbies on the web who have little acquaintance with internet and want everything, just for free.

Such folks are already enjoying email, games, social networks, music, movies, information and most of the stuff ‘free’ on internet and they also have many service providers, offering them free hosting space to create and host a site.Consequently, most of these folks opt for a ‘free host’ rather than a paid one (and later curse their own decision, provided they turn serious about their website)

And here are the reasons that one should pay attention to, before opting for a web host (free or paid).

Below are the things that you might NOT get in ‘Free’ hosting acoounts.Many of the issues may seem less significant at the beginning but will turn up against you later.Take a look…

Ability to host website with your own domain name(You won’t have access to their .htacces file and cannot set up a 301 redirect and thus search engines will not pick up your new url if you move (even with refresh code) and you’ll have to shut down the old site and start over with the search engines)
Reliable server to prevent frequent downtime.
Enough bandwidth (if your site draws too much traffic in the later stages).
A secured server so that people can order products online from your site.
A shopping cart or no secure ordering with it.
Backups of your files in case their server crashes.
A CGI-bin so you can install small programs like forms and guestbooks.
JavaScript compatible so you can install drop down menus, applets, etc.
E-mail forwarding or autoresponders
Server Side Includes (SSIs, allows the header, menu and footer to be drawn up into the page so you don’t have to change multiple pages every time you add a new page to the site)
24/7 support, in case your site develops a technical problem and goes offline.

So, if you foresee even a slightest possibility of your site, turning a ‘utility’ for you in the future then you must opt for a ‘paid web host’.

And if you want to look at some of the decent and cheap web hosting service providers in the market then you can check out Webhostingbluebook.org, a guide for helping consumers and businesses find top quality web hosting services with best prices availability.

Img ref.- raidxblog.org